Hasta La Ideas

Detail of the poster insert included with the new issue of Think Quarterly: the grid references reveal the drawings used on each of the 2,500 covers

The Church of London took a hands-on approach to creating 2,500 bespoke covers for the latest issue of Google’s Think Quarterly: each one is a different section of a huge floor drawing made by 16 illustrators over the course of three days…

Each cover of TQ comes from a different part of the original drawing

The new issue of the Google TQ publication has “people” as its theme and from the outset, says Church of London publisher/MD Danny Miller, the designers discussed how to bring a sense of community to the project. “We decided to create a huge image that would work across as many as 2,500 different books and see if we could chop it down into individual covers, so that no two people received the same piece of cover art,” Miller explains.

TCoL worked with YCN to assemble a team of illustration talent for the project. They then met up at a warehouse in Haggerston, East London to be briefed by consulting designer, Jeremy Leslie, on the theme of “technology bringing people together”.

Close-up of the grid

“We mapped out the overall canvas on the floor of the warehouse, but didn’t show any of the illustrators the actual borders of each cover,” says Miller. “We just tried to maintain even coverage overall, safe in the knowledge that the covers would kind of choose themselves, rather than us choosing them.”

This one minute ‘making of’ film shows the size of the canvas:

The full poster insert showing thumbnails of 2,500 individual cover sections

Leslie admits that the project became far larger than the team had initially anticipated. “Two and half thousand individual pieces that also hold together as one complete piece is such an abstract idea,” he says.

“Even when you break that down as a grid of 50 x 50 covers it doesn’t seem ‘so’ tricky. But extrapolate that in real size and you get an artwork something like 12 x 8 metres. We spent some time on the mathematical possibilities: we reduced the size of everything to about 45% real size, so it was more manageable.

Poster insert and inside front of the new issue, showing the scale of the original floor drawing (see illustrator with pen, bottom left)

“We worked out we needed a minimum of 1.5 drawn characters for each cover, which meant getting artists who could create approximately 3,750 individual characters. By that stage you’ve left the art room and moved back to maths class: ten artists x 3,750 characters = 375 each. How long would that take? If they each drew one every five minutes that would take about 30 hours each. It got complicated!”

Instead of marking out a tight grid of the individual covers, it was agreed that a set character size would be used throughout. “We didn’t want the group to mimic being one artist,” says Leslie, “but to bring their own characterisations to the piece, and we set parameters so their individual contributions worked together. We provided an endless supply of black Sharpie pens so everyone had the same line style, and asked them to move about the space so that all their contributions were mingled rather than each individual having their ‘own’ corner.”

Leslie says that by way of a direct brief, he “wanted characters doing daily activities. They could be realistic, fantastic or humorous, but needed to be light rather than heavy. There were a few pretty obvious no-nos: no nudity, sex, violence. We were working just after the riots so that was off-bounds, too.”

The outlines of three characters appear on one of the opening spreads; they can be pushed out so they stand on the page

The key issues, he says, were to maintain scale and good positioning, filling each cover neatly without leaving some with apparently random lines. “We wanted each one to carry a face or character somewhere without being neatly ‘contained’ on the cover – we wanted the lines to cross from one to another.

“To add a tech element, he explains, visual references to Google and their products were also included. The theme of how their technology can help ‘bring people together’ was loosely interpreted: “there are eighties brick phones as well as modern phones and tablets, along with playful visual linking between the devices,” he says.

After three days of drawing the canvas was photographed in 100 sections and pieced back together in Photoshop, with minor retouches and tidying up – a process that took two weeks in itself. TCoL then worked closely with the printers to ensure that recipients would be able to find their individual cover on the larger drawing, included as a poster insert, via a set of grid references. The reference is included on the back of each issue.

“The complications were in the planning and the finishing,” adds Leslie. “The actual execution was pretty painless other than some sore wrists. For all the maths involved in working out what was needed and the technology required to digitalise the artwork, it is a pure piece of raw creative work. Sixteen people doodling with felt tips.”

The illustrators who worked on the project were Ryan Chapman, Jasper Dunk, Dale Edwin Murray, Daniel Frost, Matthew Hams, Yasmeen Ismail, Jean Jullien, Chetan Kumar, Paul Layzell, Maggie Li, Dominic Owen, Hattie Stewart, Toby Triumph, Robbie Wilkinson, Paul Willoughby, and Dan Woodger.

Here are some of the inside pages from the issue, also finely illustrated throughout. More on the People issue of Think Quarterly at thinkwithgoogle.co.uk.

Mailer for Geigy designed by Max Schmid, 1951; Courtesy of Display

In the late 20th century, medicines became big business, with marketing budgets to match. Pharma, a new exhibition at the Herb Lubalin Study Center in New York, will look at the role of Big Pharma in the evolution of graphic design and advertising

Ad designed for Wm. S. Merrell Company by Herb Lubalin, photo by Carl Fischer, 1954

Herb Lubalin created some of his most influential work while working for Sudler & Hennessey, an advertising agency which specialised in pharmaceutical marketing. He was not alone. Other design and advertising  luminaires, including Franco Grignani, Lester Beall, Paul Rand and Will Burstin, all worked for drugs companies. Some of the leading examples of this new marketing sector will be displayed at Pharma.

Advertisement for Geigy c. 1954-55; Courtesy of Display

Advertisement for Geigy, c. 1958; Courtesy of Display

Though these liaisons produced some memorable work, they also raised ethical questions. As the organisers (curator Alexander Tochilovsky and coordinator Emily Roz) put it, this was a time when “the marketing of brand name drugs to the consumer marked a paradigm shift in medicine away from physicians and into the hands of pliable public opinion”. Suddenly, patients were asking their doctors for particular drug brands, swayed by major ad campaigns.

Ad for Dompe by Franco Grignani, 1955; Courtesy of Display

Ad for Dompe by Franco Grignani, 1954; Courtesy of Display

The exhibition promises to “reflect and question the role of graphic design in the marketing of drugs, how that has changed over the years and, more importantly, why”.

Penicillin ad in Scope Magazine, designed by Lester Beall, 1949

Ad for Roche by Aldo Calabresi for Studio Boggeri, photo by Sergio Libis, 1959

Promotional mailer for Ciba, designed and illustrated by Jerome Snyder, 1950s

Ad for Dompe by Franco Grignani, 1954; Courtesy of Display

Advertising cards for Geigy; Left & Middle: c. 1958; Right: designed by Roland Aeschlimann c. 1964; Courtesy of Display

Pharma is at the Herb Lubalin Study Center at the Cooper Union, New York City, from November 1 to December 2, 2011. More details here

Related Content

Read our piece on the contemporary influence of Herb Lubalin here
CR’s Ptrick Burgoyne visited the Hurb Lubalin Study Center and its archive of beautiful work here

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Lui è Elif Varol Ergen.
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Lui è Kimiaki Yaegashi aka Okimi.
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Zdrajczyni, designed by Jerzy Flisak, 1978

Eye Sea Posters is a new website that showcases and sells original vintage film posters, with a rather strong leaning towards Polish posters from the 60s and 70s. We spoke to founder James Dyer about the venture…

Dzieje Grzechu (The Story of Sin), designed by Jerzy Flisak

“I got a postcard years ago with a Polish film poster on it designed by Maciej Zbikowski for the film Seksolatki and it really caught my eye,” explains Dyer of the beginning of his fascination with vintage Polish film posters. “I used to manage a record label and the designer that created our sleeves and logo, Scot Bendall from La Boca, is also a Polish poster fan so sometimes we’d reference them for sleeve inspiration,” he continues.

Godziny Grozy, designed by Krzysztof Nasfeter. 1975

“Polish posters seam to have a style all of their own,” says Dyer. “It’s the amazing and often bizarre artwork that I love – and the posters produced in the 60’s and 70’s in particular. During the communist period in Poland the state controlled the film industry and established artists were commissioned to design film posters. Unlike most film posters, the use of photos of film stars or film stills wasn’t mandatory, and most of the time even the main actors’ names didn’t feature prominently in the designs. The artists had to convey the essence of the film in their designs and were given artistic freedom to do so which led to some truly original posters that sometimes feel completely detached from the film itself.”

Syn Part II, designer unknown

Wazzzz (SSSSnake), designed by Jakub Erol, 1975

Regarding the sourcing of Eye Sea Posters, Dyer tells us he has a friend in Poland who keeps a look out for such works. “I’ve only been collecting them for six months or so,” he adds. “I used to collect records but now I’m getting obsessed with collecting posters instead.”

Prices of the original posters range from around £30 up to about £75. Check out the current stock at eyeseaposters.com