Hasta La Ideas

Photographer/art director Anna Murray and surface/product designer Grace Winteringham, aka Patternity, have created a hosiery range for Pretty Polly using graphic patterns found in our urban landcapes

Murray and Winteringham set up Patternity in London in 2009 with a mission to “use pattern as a tool to inspire,  explore and innovate”. The project started out as an online archive of images of patterns but has now grown to encompass a creative studio, research and events.

The Pretty Polly tie-up follows a range which Patternity produced for Selfridges in 2011. There are three designs – Bricking It, Tower Block and Shapeshifter – with the overall range taking the name Streetshapes.

The tights will cost £12 per pair and be available from retailers including ASOS, Topshop and Uran Outfitters in the UK and Bloomingdales in the US as well as online from Pretty Polly.

Illustrators Nancy Slonims, Andrew Baker and Martin Ursell are hosting a joint exhibition at London’s Coningsby Gallery featuring woodcut prints, photo etchings and extracts from a children’s graphic novel series.

From the Book is a collection of hand crafted and digital book illustrations by Baker, Slonims and Ursell, who are lecturers on Middlesex University’s illustration course.

Baker’s work is a collection of giclee prints presenting a ‘lucky dip’ of facts about various poets including Lewis Carrol, Spike Milligan and Ivor Cutler.

The series was inspired by a print Baker made for Happy Birthday Edward Lear, an exhibition of illustrations inspired by the nonsense poet’s work which he co-curated with animator Linda Hughes, and another he made for a Lewis Carrol-themed show curated by Middlesex University alumni. The prints were hand made using digital woodcuts, some of which are on display at the gallery (below).

Alongside Baker’s wood cuts and poetry trivia are extracts from a series of graphic novels Ursell is working on, based on Reynard the Fox stories – a set of fables about a red fox that date back to the ninth century and have been published in Dutch, German, English and Latin.

Ursell – who has illustrated books by Julia Donaldson, Roald Dahl and Dick King Smith – is releasing a three-volume graphic account of the complete history of Reynard the Fox, which he says “will span the thousands of years of English history throughout which they have remained popular.” A selection of cover illustrations and double page spreads from the volumes are on display alongside rough sketches.

Slonim’s work is a set of 10 photo etchings inspired by From First to Last, a collection of stories by author Damon Runyon set in 1930s New York. Slonim – who worked as a graphic designer at Pentagram – created a series of layered silkscreens inspired by the author’s work while studying at the Royal College of Art and twenty years later, decided to reinterpret the text through photo etchings.

Slonims, Baker and Ursell are clearly passionate about their craft. The exhibition includes some lovely examples of digital and hand crafted work, and offers an insight into the creative process behind three very different illustration projects.

From the Book is open until October 19 at the Coningsby Galley, 30 Tottenham Street, London, W1T 4RJ. For more information visit coningsbygallery.com

Iria Lopez, an animator at Picasso Pictures, has spent the past few months sketching passengers on the London Underground’s Circle Line. Her drawings are now on display in the company’s reception area in Soho.

Lopez sketched her illustrations while on the Tube before adding ink and watercolour at home.

Yes, she’s certainly not the first person to draw fellow Underground passengers – Antonio Jorge Goncalves’s Subway Life website features drawings of subway passengers in 10 different cities, and illustrator Tom Buddle regularly posts Tube sketches on his blog – but Lopez has picked a sweet selection of characters, and has a lovely illustration style.

She’s also an award-winning animator: last year, she made a short film, Jamon, about a teenage pig living in Spain. The film uses silkscreen printed backgrounds and has won 17 awards, making the official selection at 55 film festivals including the Austin Film Festival, the British Animation Film Festival and the BFI London Film Festival. Watch the trailer below:

Or see more of her work here.

Leanne Shapton’s watercolour paintings of scenes from black-and-white films are brought together in a new book, Sunday Night Movies, and form a meditation on the art of cinema…

Moments from nearly 80 different films are glimpsed in Shapton’s paintings – from close-ups of actors and ‘two-shots’ of couples embracing or talking, to title sequences and end credits.

With no text to introduce the sequence, Shapton allows the reader to study the images and, in many cases, wonder what they may mean in the context of the film they depict.

The films Shapton has painted are listed at the back of the book but as the reader turns the pages the images float freely from their source.

Shapton’s skill with paint was evident in her previous book (the memoir, Swimming Studies, is filled with duotone illustrations), but here it’s the perfect medium for rendering fleeting moments into still images – the paint itself hints at the fluidity of film.

Some of the stand-out paintings for me are of the typography that renders the opening titles and credits to a handful of the films. Within these simple sketches of text on celluloid, Shapton manages to capture the excitement of cinema and the expectancy of the story about to unfold.

Drawn & Quarterly; $19.95. See drawnandquarterly.com and leanneshapton.com. Shapton has also posted on the project on the New Yorker.

In Creative Review’s October issue Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja of Massive Attack discusses the artwork he created for the band, from early flyers to data-driven stage shows. Oh, and he designed the cover for us too…

The October issue of Creative Review is available to buy direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.

Our interview ties in with new Vinyl Factory book 3D and the Art of Massive Attack, a retrospective of Del Naja’s artistic output from the Wild Bunch days to this year’s Adam Curtis collaboration. The piece features sketches, paste-up artwork and previously unseen material from the Massive Attack archives over nine pages.

Readers can win a copy of the limited edition version of the book (worth £350) in our Gallery competition this month

Robert also designed our cover which has been printed on Curious Matter Andina Grey board from Arjowiggins Creative Paper. We’ve been stroking our house copies all day….

Here’s a running sheet with the back cover also

The inside back features a charge sheet from 3D’s grafitti days, amended by the artist himself

Plus, we you can bring the pages of this month;s CR to life with a series of Blippable Gifs from JWT London’s recent Loop show. Just download the Blippar app onto your smartphone, open it up and hold it over the page to animate the image of your choice

Rachael Steven reports on Football Type, Rick Banks’ new book on the typography of football

Rachael (she’s had a busy month) also profiles illustrator-turned-artist Jonathan Zawada

And, to tie in with the Festival of Marketing Punch event, we look at the impact of Big Data on creativity – can algorithms really determine whether or not an ad campaign will be any good?

While Mark Sinclair has written an in-depth case study on the work that Browns has done for international finance company, Invesco – proof that major work for global organisations does not have to be the preserve of the big international branding firms

In Crit, Rick Poynor reviews Power to the People, the Graphic Design of the Radical Press and the Rise of the Counter Culture 1964-1974

While Hamish Muir enjoys a survey of the highly influential Swiss typographic journal Typografische Monatsblätter

For regular columnist Mr DA Benneworth-Gray BA MA PgC, the onerous admin tasks of the freelance designer are made more palatable when they involve great stationery while Paul Belford lauds the great art direction in a classic 80s ad for Woolmark

Plus Gordon Comstock reviews a new documentary film by Robert Opie of the Museum of Brands

And, for subscribers only, our Monograph supplement features a selection of work from the recent Glory Glory project in which designers created posters based on the football chant of their choice

The October issue of Creative Review is available to buy direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, get Monograph and make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.