Hasta La Ideas

To mark its 50th anniversary, this weekend’s Sunday Times Magazine cover will feature an image of an installation of over 100 magazines hanging on wires to form the number 50. The image, conceived and art directed by The Sunday Times Magazine’s art director Alyson Waller, was created by CG specialist Taylor James…

“I didn’t have much notice – not much more than a week,” Waller tells us. “The editor asked if I could think of something for the 50th Anniversary cover,” she continues. “Of course the most important thing to get across is that it’s 50 years old, an incredible amount of time for a magazine to run. It’s a bit obvious, but having the number 50 was important. The editor then mentioned that we were going to do an exhibition to celebrate the 50th anniversary and that’s when I started thinking about creating some kind of installation that could appear in a gallery. There wasn’t enough time to create an actual installation so I approached Taylor James to see if they could create a virtual one.”

“The challenge with this project was to create a sense of scale and power,” says Dave Wortley, lead 3D artist at Taylor James who worked on the image.” We wanted to make sure it would look like an installation in a large gallery and not a scaled model. Each magazine is unique in shape and form and there are over 100 covers from 50 years of the Sunday Times Magazine in the image, so we used a bit of scripting to avoid repeats on the front row and make the rest appear random.”

Waller at The Sunday Times Magazine was able to provide Taylor James with digital files of photographed covers from the magazine’s archives, with some issues having to be re-photographed especially. Then dozens of emails were exchanged between the art director and Taylor James as the image started to take shape.

“It was a challenge to complete this project in the timeframe,” adds Wortley, “with a lot of our attention given at the early concepting stage. We created a model of the magazine made to scale and then each [virtual] magazine is threaded onto a wire. If you look closely enough you can even see the staples in the fold of the magazines!”

The anniversary edition of the magazine will be in the newspper and online this Sunday February 5 and will feature the 50 greatest front covers from over the 50 years.

To further celebrate the ripe old age of 50, The Sunday Times is marking its half century with a free exhibition at London’s Saatchi Gallery, (running until February 18) showcasing the cover image and also some of the features and world class photography which has defined it over the years.

Photographers featured include Dan McCullin, David bailey, Eve Arnold, Richard Avedon, Eugene Richards, Sam Taylor-Wood, Terry O’Neil, Chris Floyd and Stuart Franklin. More info at saatchi-gallery.co.uk

See more of Taylor James’ work at taylorjames.com

CR in Print

If you only read CR online, you’re missing out. From the meaning of beans to the power of love, the February issue of Creative Review features our 20 favourite slogans of all time and the stories behind them.

What makes a great slogan? We investigate the enduring power of these clever little phrases in our special slogans issue, dedicated to our choices for the top 20 slogans.

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

For the cover of Faber’s landmark edition of The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin, designer Mark Swan played down the poet’s typically austere image by referencing his love of jazz. The result is a beautiful tribute to Larkin’s work…

Larkin has been perhaps unfairly regarded as something of a bleak figure in English poetry. Many of his poems are blunt and unforgiving, but equally there are plenty that, while plain speaking, attempt to convey the complexities of love, life and death.

The new Complete Poems, edited by Archie Burnett, brings together all of Larkin’s published work and features poems from typescripts and workbooks, stanzas of verse discovered in letters, and an extensive commentary on the poems, often including Larkin’s own remarks. Its cover is in part an attempt to redress the sombre, black and white image of Larkin that dominates his oeuvre; using colour, shape and a sense of movement that, in particular, reflects the poet’s taste in music.

Swan, who works under the studio name Kid-ethic, says his brief was “to take inspiration from the Faber type-led poetry covers but give this a more ‘celebratory’ feel. Larkin was known for being glum,” he continues, “so I wanted the cover to have some dark and monotone shades but these would be changed through the use of dramatic angles and textures; making the cover feel more human, not flat and dull.”

It’s an attempt, Swan suggests, to reconcile what the poet and critic Andrew Motion referred to as “the life-enhancing struggle between opposites” in Larkin’s work. So there are, the designer says, “energetic splashes of colour to show the life and beauty here, that this is a celebration of his work.”

To make the cover, Swan cut out various shapes from bits of carbon paper and photocopies and also produced a series of “paint textures” in different styles. These were then photographed and the cover constructed on the computer. “I always like to get some sort of hand-made element into my work and use the computer more as an editing tool,” says Swan. “With this particular job, I felt the more organic looking style would lend itself well to the subject.”

For the typography Swan used a Faber classic: Albertus. “I wanted the type to look like part of the cover and not just plonked on as an after-thought,” he says. “I’d always liked Albertus as a font and felt it captured the time and still had a modern edge – it’s irregular, jaunty angles complimented the design perfectly, and its curves added a friendly playful side to an otherwise hard edged design.”

As well as a committed music fan, Larkin was also a prolific jazz critic and contributed reviews to The Daily Telegraph from 1961-1971. This upbeat persona is often deemed at odds with the private, solitary librarian who turned out four collections of poetry, one in each decade from 1945 to 1974, and a self-published edition in the 50s.

In referencing “how jazz album covers reflected mood through shape and colour,” as Swan has it, the design of The Complete Poems enlivens this extensive collection of work, offering a refreshing take on how we might see Larkin’s poetry. In that sense, this is a book cover that does its job perfectly.

The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin is published by Faber & Faber; £40. More details on faber.co.uk. Mark Swan’s website is at kid-ethic.com. While we were discussing his designs for the new book, Swan also sent over these alternate versions for the cover:

This badge is believed to be the first time the famous slogan Make Love Not War ever appeared in print. Its designer was a young activist in Chicago whose group was behind what went on to become the phrase that epitomised a decade

The current issue of Creative Review features our top 20 slogans: Make Love Not War is at number four in the list.

Several people have laid claim to the slogan: Wikipedia notes that American ‘cultural critic’, and folklorist the late Gershon Legman has laid claim to it but there is little corroborating evidence. A more substantial claim was made by one Diane Newell Meyer who was a student at the University of Oregon in 1965, the year in which the slogan first appeared.

In an August 2010 piece in Oregon’s Mail Tribune newspaper (above), Meyer says she wrote ‘Let’s make love not war’ on an envelope and pinned it to her sweater before attending a rally in April 1965. “It just popped into my head – I remember I started giggling when I wrote it,” Meyer, now 67, said. “I know I hadn’t read it anywhere before. There is no way to prove it but I think I’m the person who invented the phrase.” Meyer was photographed wearing her envelope and the picture appeared in the local paper as well as being distributed nationwide by Associated Press, ensuring that plenty of others would have seen it. A New York Times report of the rally also noted, somewhat creepily, that “A pert co-ed decorated her sweater with a card that carried the sensible entreaty ‘Let’s make love, not war’.”

Proof of authorship? Not so says artist, writer and designer Penelope Rosemont (above). “We think we invented it here in Chicago.” Rosemont was, along with her husband Franklin, a key member of the activist scene in the city at the time. The pair founded the Chicago Surrealist Group and spent all their lives campaigning for the causes they believed in (Franklin died in 2009).

Their endeavours at the time centered on the Solidarity Bookshop. “In March 1965,” Rosemont says “we wanted to do a button. The slogan we thought of first was the old Fellowship of Reconciliation [the interfaith peace movement founded in 1915] slogan ‘Make Peace, Not War’ but it seemed too tame for the 60s. Several of us together at Solidarity Bookshop – myself, Franklin, [activist, printer and editor] Bernard Marszalek and [activist and artist] Tor Faegre – thought about this and what we came up with finally was ‘Make Love, Not War’. The button [shown top] was printed at a shop above Krocks & Brentano’s Bookstore on Wabash Avenue. Bernard was working at the bookstore at that time. I helped design it. I remember doing the curved type by hand around the CND peace sign.”

The buttons were first distributed at a Mother’s Day Peace march but the Rosemonts and their friends made sure that it, and its message soon spread. “We sold the button through our magazine, the Rebel Worker, and a lot at the Mole Hole, a button shop in the Wells Street area which at that time was a big destination for young people,” Rosemont says. “It was owned by Earl Siegel who was a founder of Chicago’s underground newspaper the Seed [cover shown above]. People wandered up and down Wells Street all weekend, going into head shops, buying oddball trinkets or books on Malcolm X, trying to buy LSD. One of our good friends, Lester Dore, also worked on the Seed and got the slogan into his weird 60s graphics. We also sold them at demos in Chicago, New York and distributed them to other radical bookstores all over the country.” The Rosemonts’ circle also included people working at Second City, the improv comedy club that became world famous, the Chicago Tribune, the Black Panthers and the legendary broadcaster Studs Terkel. “I guess for people who didn’t have the internet we did have a complex net of connections,” Rosemont says.

All of which makes a compelling case for Chicago not just as the birthplace of ‘Make Love Not War’ but also explains how the simple, cheeky phrase spread from a Chicago bookshop to placards around the world. Even if Rosemont’s group was just one of several likeminded authors of the phrase, it was they who appear to have done most to popularise its use.

The full story of Make Love Not War and the other slogans in our top 20 can be found in the February issue of Creative Review.Other slogans featured include Meanz Beanz Heinz, Just Do It and Keep Calm and Carry On

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

Last year image retoucher Steve Bland revealed his new identity as The Great Blandini. Now his ‘Photoshoppe’ skills are demonstrated in a brochure befitting his magical transformation…

In The Little Book of Photoshoppe Trickery, devised by Interbrand Australia, readers can behold the full range of Blandini’s mastery of manipulation.

See The Gentlemen Transformed Into a Lion; then look on at his proficiency with The Glowing Edge and The Adjustment Layer; his handling of Shadow and Highlight.

A custom retouch reveals The Charming Lady Mysteriously Intersected – i.e. sawn in half. And it’s fair to say: we can’t tell how it’s done.

But we warned, lest the Photoshop Disaster (shazam!) be unwittingly invoked.

“The power that performs wonders may also unleash horrors,” the booklet claims. “These arts are to be practiced with finesse, or elsewhere left to those that possess more cunning in the craft.”

And by way of a grand finale, the text of the entire brochure, including the body copy, has been drawn by hand. Magic.

The book was devised by Interbrand Australia and designed and art directed by Mike Rigby, Jefton Sungkar and Diana Chirillas. It was written by Mike Reed. More at Rigby’s blog, here.

We first picked up on graphic designer Malika Favre‘s remarkably expressive vector artwork last year and she’s pleased to present her latest project, the cover illustration for the forthcoming Penguin Deluxe edition of the Kama Sutra.

Favre gladly shared some insight into the brief and process:

I was approached last summer by Paul Buckley at Penguin US about designing the cover of a new Deluxe edition of the Kama Sutra for Penguin.

This book is part of the Graphic Classics series: Basically every classic they re-edit is paired up with an artist that pretty much has free range to design the cover. The whole concept of this specific range is to make each classic a collectable item and to push the boundaries of book cover design.

The book itself is the original text written by Vatsyayana (no pictures inside the book) so the challenge was to make the cover sexy, modern and daring without being vulgar or over the top. I decided to create a very bold and playful alphabet that would run across both flaps and front and back cover spelling KAMA SUTRA.

Once folded, the words become hidden and the big letters themselves turn into acrobatic positions.

As with our previous post on Favre, it gets semi-NSFW after the jump… in extremely good taste, of course.

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