CR Annual Best in Book: Autechre Quaristice


The CD comes in a steel slipcase with etched typography

The current issue of CR features The Annual, showcasing the best work of the past year. Nine projects have been chosen for our Best in Book section, the ultimate accolade. We will feature each of them in a series of posts this week. First up, the Designers Republic’s steel-encased CD for Autechre


CR May issue, incorporating The Annual

The selection of this special edition of Autechre’s ninth album, Quaristice, as one of our Best in Books has taken on an added significance with the recent demise of the Designers Republic. The Sheffield-based studio, which closed earlier this year, had a long-standing and fruitful relation­ship with the Warp label.


Reverse of the slipcase with die-cut window revealing the cardboard sleeve within

Released in March 2008, this ‘deluxe two CD version’ of the Quaristice album, limited to just 1,000 copies, comes housed in a photo-etched steel slipcase. Said slip­case is die-cut so that the minimal graphics within are revealed. Inside it, a gatefold card wallet holds not just the 20-track album, but also an extra CD with 11 different versions of selected tracks from the album.


Gatefold card inner sleeve

The overall effect is as much sculpture as music packaging, underlining the fact that, in this digital age, the album sleeve is still capable of enormous appeal. From the judges’ point of view, this was a deciding factor in making it one of the Best in Book projects this year – to celebrate something physical and beautifully crafted in a sector shifting irrevocably toward the digital. Although the judges were not told who was behind the project, its selection also provided a fitting finale to one of the most important and productive design studio/record label partnerships.


The CDs themselves

Credits:
Entrant/Client: Warp Records.
Design/Art Direction: made in The Designers Republic™.
Production: James Burton, Warp Records.
Steel case etching: Precision Micro.
Print: St Ives Crayford

Jarvis and Kenworthy Go Onwards For Nike

Illustrator James Jarvis and Shynola director Richard Kenworthy have collaborated on a lovely new film for Nike. Oh, and you can see Jarvis talk at our Portfolios event


Onwards from akqa on Vimeo.

The film is Jarvis’s first. To get the accurate running action, Kenworthy filmed Jarvis (a very keen runner) on a treadmill, then recreated his movements (it’s not motion capture).

Here’s more from Jarvis on how the project came about:

“At the beginning of last year I was thinking about what kind of project I would like to work on. I had become interested in the idea of characters that were less referential and more iconic and abstract. I particularly wanted to do something with a potato-headed stick-man that I had been drawing at that time.

I liked the idea of a moving image project that involved my obsession with running. Rather than make a narrative-based film, I wanted the content to be non-linear, reflecting the way I make drawings that have a logic all of their own.

I was talking to a friend at Nike, Kerry Shaw, about this idea and, given the subject matter, she suggested that Nike might be interested in supporting the film. I had been an admirer of Shynola’s collaboration with David Shrigley in their promo for the track Good Song. I liked the way it maintained Shrigley’s drawn aesthetic in its transformation into moving image, so I contacted them to see if they would be interested in working with me on the idea. Richard ‘Kenny’ Kenworthy agreed, and worked heroically on the film.

The film was inspired by certain personal experiences in running – a favourite run over Blanchland moor in Northumberland, being attacked by a crow in Singapore – and also by the transcendent, almost psychedelic experience of the simple act of running.

Rather than a marketing project inititated by Nike, the film was something proposed and produced by myself, and as such I hope represents a much more equal collaboration with a brand.”

See a full-screen version at Nike’s Onwards site

Lazy Oaf’s In-store Drawing Club: Tonight

Lazy Oaf, a store in London’s Soho with a penchant for all things jolly, illustrated and graphic, is starting a new regular in-store Drawing Club to encourage people to get doodling (the events are being sponsored by pen manufacturer Posca) and, but of course, to encourage people to peruse the wares of the shop. Attendees of the events will be offered a 20% discount off everything (including items from the new Lazy Oaf collection) and the best submissions will be showcased on the Lazy Oaf website and on the walls of the shop itself.

The first installment of The Lazy Oaf Drawing Club is taking place tonight and will also serve as the launch of the brand’s new Spring/Summer 09 collection. On the walls of the event space, Lazy Oaf have stuck up hundreds of sheets of paper printed with frames on – for people to get doodling on AND there will be work displayed by the likes of Tado, Kate Moross, Gemma Correll, Gaston Caba, Kate Sutton, Jon Burgerman, Andrew Rae, Jean Jullien and Bob London. Illustrators Ian Stevenson and John Slade will be doodling live on some big boards and the exhibition space will remain open through Sunday 26 April.

If you can’t make the event tonight, but want to get involved in some drawing, feel free to download some of the specially created Lazy Oaf frames by clicking on them below. Print and draw then send or take your efforts in to the store.

Lazy Oaf’s Drawing Club is set to take place tonight (Thursday April 23) at the Lazy Oaf Shop, Kingly Court, Carnaby Street, London, W1B 5PW Tel: +44 (0) 207 287 2060

Grafica Fidalga On Film

Remember our January cover? The one where we had the artwork made at a letterpress workshop in São Paulo? Coolhunting has made a very nice film at the same workshop, interviewing the guys who printed our cover artwork


CR January cover, artwork printed at Grafica Fidalga

We spotted this at The Denver Egotist

Royal Mint Launches 2012 Olympics Coin

‘The 2009 UK Countdown to London 2012 £5 Coin is an Official Licensed Product of London 2012 and as such is housed in specific London 2012 packaging and features the official London 2012 logo.’ And that’s the problem.

The coin is the first in a series of four to be launched annually from now until 2012. On the reverse, it features the number three to signify three years until the start of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, alongside images of swimmers racing to the finish line, while the framework border is a reference to the new Olympic stadium as seen from above.

A press release explains that “The gold and silver versions of the coin are the first UK £5 coins to feature the Olympic rings and logo in full colour.” And doesn’t it stick out like a sore thumb?

Ever since the logo was first unveiled, designers have been querying its ability to work alongside other visual elements. In our May issue, we have a major feature on design and the Olympics in which this issue is further discussed and cited as a reason for some leading design groups choosing not to apply to work on the games (read it here).

Print ads from sponsors have been featuring the logo for sometime now, with decidedly mixed results. Every morning, I pass a BP billboard on which the logo appears in black and white, stuck as far as possible into the bottom left corner. And still it looks wrong.

In this instance, it doesn’t help that the logo has, bizarrely, been rendered in bright blue. While it’s an interesting development to see colour used on a coin, here the effect is to make the logo appear even more awkward as it totally overwhelms designer Claire Aldridge’s composition.

Anyway, here’s what she had to say about the design: “The central theme to the coin’s design is counting down to 2012, with the design depicting the idea of a ticking clock and the number of years until London 2012. The 2009 coin represents the sport of swimming and features figures made up of angular shapes to echo the style of the London 2012 logo. While the idea of counting down is dominant, it shouldn’t jump out immediately due to the use of frosting.”

Only 4,000 gold proof coins (which cost £1,295 each) will be produced by the Royal Mint. In addition, 30,000 silver proof coins (£54.95 each) and 500,000 cupro-nickel coins (£9.95 each) will be available.

CR May Issue/The Annual


CR May issue cover, issue side. Photography: Luke Kirwan

The double, May issue of CR features nearly 100 pages of the finest work of the past year in The Annual, plus features on design for the London Olympics, advertising and YouTube, the amazing rollercoaster ride of Attik and, we hope, lots of other interesting thing too…


Cover, Annual side


The Designers Republic’s special issue steel cover for Autechre album, Quaristice, was one of our Best In Book selections. Warp and tDR have produced so much great work that this seemed a fitting endpoint for a great client/designer relationship


More spreads from The Annual


Will designers remember the London 2012 Olympics as fondly as they do those of 1968, 72 and 84? Not without an improved tendering process and a strong creative director, says Mark Sinclair


Inspiration? Rip-off opportunity? Eliza Williams looks at the effect of YouTube on advertising


The amazing rollercoaster ride of Attik


Beatrice Santiccioli colours your world – she may even have chosen the colour of your Mac


Airside is ten, but it nearly wasn’t. Gavin Lucas interviews Fred Deakin


Rick Poynor on Milton Glaser, artist


James Pallister reports from the Colophon magazine festival


Do we need 128 versions of the same typeface? David Quay responds

This month’s Monograph (for subscribers only) features Dixon Baxi designer Aporva Baxi’s collection of Nintendo Game & Watch games, shot by Jason Tozer

The May issue of CR is out on 22 April. Or you can subscribe, if you like…

Disney: The Cut And Paste Years

Or, ‘I’m sure I’ve seen that dancing bear before somewhere’. Thanks to Chunnel.tv for alerting us to this clip (by Vinichou) pointing out that, when it comes to recycling, Disney was way ahead

“I would assume that Disney regarded some of these sequences as sort of ’stock’ motion,” says Chunnel’s Stu, who posted the clip, “and it was probably the new guy’s job to go dig out those Jungle Book cells and translate all the monkeys into dwarfs.”

Chunnel.tv is a creative showcase site that is run by WPP’s United Network.

Just What The World Needs: More Design T-shirts

Weary cynicism aside though, this one, from Skreened.com’s new Graphic Design Heroes series, did make us laugh…

Also in the series are T-shirts for devotees of Paul Rand:

And Alvin Lustig:

Skreened.com is based in Columbus, Ohio. It was started by former communication design student Daniel Fox who invited his former professor at Ohio State, Paul Nini, to design the series.

Also available is the Great Typefaces T-Shirt Series which includes these two perennial faves:

Low-Fi Sci-Fi

If the main objective of a book cover is to make you stop, pick up said book, perhaps read the back or the first few lines (and consider buying it, of course) then the new Gollancz range of science-fiction classics has certainly got something right. The ten titles stood out when I saw them on display in a bookshop earlier this week, so I asked one of Orion Books‘ designers to explain the decidely low-fi approach they took to this new sci-fi series…

“The idea was to bring sci-fi to a wider audience,” says James Jones, who worked on this particular series that uses images designed by recent graduate Sanda Zahirovic. “We wanted to create a series style that would adhere to the nature of the content – eg its complexity – but employ a hands-on approach.

“We’d recently seen Sanda Zahirovic’s work at the D&AD student awards and in working with her over a period of two weeks, we asked her to develop an existing concept into real books.

“Sanda created each cover using A4 paper, with all the typography printed and placed on the structure by hand,” Jones continues. “We then photographed each paper structure and, upon seeing the original black and white images, we didn’t feel that any tweaking or further alterations were needed.”

On closer inspection, some of the most striking covers were achieved by photographing a single piece of rolled-up or chopped-up paper or, even – as with Paul McAuley’s Eternal Light – the discarded paper circles from a hole punch. Here’s the rest of the set:

Design: Sanda Zahirovic
Creative director: Lucie Stericker
Series editor: Simon Spanton

Gollancz is Orion Books‘ science-fiction and fantasy imprint.

All the titles in the series are on sale now at £7.99.

Faber’s 80th anniversary poetry covers


The new Faber poetry set includes a Sylvia Plath edition with a cover by Peter Lawrence

Next month, Faber & Faber publish a series of six new hardback editions of twentieth-century poetry, each with a specially commissioned cover. The new designs are part of the publishing house’s 80th anniversary celebrations, which also include new editions of the complete works of Samuel Beckett (which we’ll feature on the blog next week)…

Faber invited a selection of prominent illustrators and printmakers to create the covers for the series; the results include a striking series of woodcut and linocut designs.

The titles and illustrators for the poetry series are paired up as follows: WH Auden (selected by John Fuller) cover by Paul Catherall; Sylvia Plath (selected by Ted Hughes) cover by Peter Lawrence; John Betjeman (selected by Hugo Williams) cover by Joe McLaren; TS Eliot (selected by TS Eliot) cover by Clare Curtis; WB Yeats (selected by Seamus Heaney) cover Heaney Nick Morley; Ted Hughes (selected by Simon Armitage) cover by Mark Hearld.


TS Eliot cover by Clare Curtis


Front papers of the Eliot volume by Clare Curtis


Joe McLaren’s cover for the Betjeman volume (note the train at the top)


Front papers for the Betjeman edition by Joe McLaren

The other three books in the series:


Yeats cover by Nick Morley


Auden cover by Paul Catherall


Hughes cover by Mark Hearld