Barney Bubbles’ unused paste-up design for Ian Dury & The Music Students’ album 4000 Weeks Holiday, from 1983
Currently showing at the Chelsea Space in London is an exhibition exploring the working practice of the late, great Barney Bubbles. The show gives an insight into the imaginative mind of Bubbles, featuring letters, sketches and artwork proposals, alongside finished works.
Bubbles’ contribution to graphic design has been increasingly recognised of late, especially since the publication of Paul Gorman’s monograph, Reasons To Be Cheerful: The Life & Work of Barney Bubbles. Gorman has also curated the exhibition at Chelsea Space, and the show includes many items never seen in public before, including Bubbles’ student notebooks and sketchbooks, as well as artwork proposals for bands including Ian Dury, Elvis Costello and The Damned. There are also numerous examples of finished work by Bubbles, demonstrating the prolific nature of his talent. Included are record sleeves and artworks for bands, as well as advertising campaigns for the music press and videos.
Paste-up artwork by Barney Bubbles
Selection of photography working proofs by Bubbles. Photo: Donald Smith
Bubbles began working as a graphic designer in the mid-60s, and died in 1983, which, as Gorman points out in the notes accompanying the exhibition, was just two months before the introduction of the Apple Mac computer. Alongside being a record of Bubbles’ work, the show is therefore also a fascinating insight into the graphic design process in the pre-digital age. An in-depth text (by an unattributed colleague of Bubbles) on display in the exhibition describes the production methods that Bubbles and other graphic designers of the time used, and the show includes a number of PMTs (photo mechanical transfers) by Bubbles, created for preparatory artwork as well as a selection of working proofs, some of which include corrections.
Proof of sleeve for Punch The Clock by Elvis Costello and the Attractions, 1983 (not released in this version). Photo: Donald Smith
Poster included in Get Happy!! by Elvis Costello and the Attractions, 1980 (Paul Gorman’s Vote Labour sticker featured bottom left)
The text by Bubbles’ colleague also highlights the designer’s playful approach towards the rigid production processes of the time. “As well as working within its limitations, Barney liked playing with the printing process,” it states. “He enjoyed turning convention on its head by creating imperfections and being open to serendipity. The sleeve of Elvis Costello & The Attractions’ Get Happy!! bore deliberate wear scuffs, and there is a paw smudge on Rockpile’s Seconds Of Pleasure where a cat jumped onto the wet painting.”
Installation shot of finished artworks in the exhibition
Limited edition version of Damned Damned Damned by The Damned, 1977. Photo: Donald Smith
Bubbles’ sense of humour arises elsewhere too, particularly in a limited edition version of The Damned’s album Damned Damned Damned, which came complete with a deliberate printing error and an ‘erratum’ sticker stating: “Due to Record Company error, a picture of Island recording artists Eddie & the Hot Rods has been printed instead of The Damned. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and the correct picture will be substituted on future copies.”
Self-portrait in cap, from sketchbook, 1964-8
Letter and drawing by Bubbles
The complexities of Bubbles’ character are also revealed within the examples of sketchbooks and letters that are displayed at the exhibition. These include self-portraits, lists and both personal and professional correspondence, as well as photographs and concert tickets designed by Bubbles in the 1960s.
Letter from Uwe Tessow, Line Records, 1983, and Kern & Co equipment case
Display of finished artworks and music press ads
Bubbles has been cited as an influence on designers from Neville Brody to Peter Saville, and his inventive approach created some of the most striking imagery in 1970s and early 80s pop music. The show at Chelsea Space celebrates this work, while giving an excellent lesson on the practice of graphic design before the arrival of the Mac.
Process is on at the Chelsea Space until October 23. More info is at chelseaspace.org.
One of the first talks of Vienna Design Week was by Eero Koivisto, one of three partners of Claesson Koivisto Rune, a Stockholm based architecture and design practice that was founded almost 17 years ago.
Based in the Kunsthalle, the hub of the design festival, and part of Design Week Laboratory talks, Koivisto shared the ups and downs of designing and developing products. He introduced a number of past projects from their portfolio illustrating the breadth and depth of experiments, prototypes, and manufacturing successes and failures that go into developing any new product.
Wired magazine’s Scott Dadich reveals the primary goals of setting out to create a digital version of the magazine
OFFSET festival drew to a close in Dublin yesterday evening and I’m thoroughly exhausted. While I’d love to say I was hitting its myriad satellite events hard, sadly my hotel wasn’t conducive to sleep so I was too knackered to party. Despite that, OFFSET was one the of the best design conferences I’ve ever attended…
And I should point out that it is more than just a brilliantly scheduled conference. OFFSET is a visual arts festival that could (and perhaps should) be considered as Dublin’s premier annual design festival.
Exhibitions, related club nights, discussions and debates focussed on illustration, street art, short film, design, photography, publishing and artistic collaborations have been taking place all week. Way too much, in fact, for a sleep deprived visitor to the city to take in the three days during the conference – although I did check out Daniel Eatock’s show last Thursday night at the Monster Truck Gallery shortly after arriving in Dublin.
Burnt rubber circle created by a motorcyclist to open Daniel Eatock’s show at Dublin’s Monster Truck Gallery last week. Photo by David Wall of Conor & David
The exhibition saw the gallery turn into a studio for a week as Eatock encouraged volunteering participants to create as near perfect a freehand circle as possible, plus other collaborative artworks under his direction. On the opening night of the show on September 24, there was nothing in the space – but a motorcyclist revved up a high performance machine to burn a rubber circle directly onto the gallery’s concrete floor: a spectacular opening to a participatory and fun week long art event. Watch a film of the motorcycle circle being created here.
I should also mention that at the conference there were two rooms running events simultaneously. While talks were delivered in the main auditorium of the theatre, upstairs in “Room Two” a series of discussions and debates had been scheduled. Topics such as routes into illustration/graphic design, the benefits of internships, and getting your childrens book published were explored, and delegates were also offered the chance to ask questions – in dedicated hour-long sessions – to some of the conference’s illustrious speakers, such as graphic design legends Lance Wyman and David Carson.
On Saturday evening I sat in on the Future of Publishing group discussion in Room Two, fronted by a panel comprising Unit Editions’ Adrian Shaughnessy, Stephen Heller (author and former art director of The New York Times), Scott Dadich of Wired magazine (as well as being the creative director at Wired, Dadich is in charge of digital magazine development for Condé Nast), and Hugh Linehan, online editor at The Irish Times.
When Stephen Heller suggested, in his role as devil’s advocate, that the death of print publication was inevitable, Linehan said he doubted that was true and that, actually, almost all forms of communication ever invented, bar the telegram, are still going strong: cinema, painting, magazines, newspapers. All of this stuff still exists and thrives despite the arrival of new technologies and media over the years.
Printed matter may decrease in terms of the sheer amount of newspapers and magazines that are sold, but people will still want the physical things, Linehan added. He then memorably likened the will-printed-publications-disappear situation to the part in Spinal Tap where the band’s manager defends decreasing sales of the band’s albums by saying: “Er, I just think their appeal is becoming more selective…”.
I’d made sure I got to Dadich’s talk on Friday evening (shortly after completing my first post from OFFSET), hoping he’d talk about the development of the Wired iPad app, and he didn’t disappoint.
He explained how he’d been thinking about digital magazines for years and also how he’s been talking to the bods at Adobe for several years about introducing functions within InDesign CS5 that will enable editorial designers to also design and develop iPad versions alongside their print publications.
As well as showing Wired’s approach to structure, and thus the architecture of the magazine’s iPad edition (the slide above shows the basic architecture of the Wired Reader), he talked about various interactions that his team have developed and embedded within the iPad editions of Wired magazine – most notably an interactive feature where users can explore the surface of Mars.
He then showed the difference between how the New Yorker iPad app is different to the Wired Reader because the content demands to be updated more – so it makes more sense to have a much more html-led content management system, rather than an InDesign reliant one.
Each title entering the world of digital editions, either on the iPad or other tablet style gadgets must, he suggested, understand their audience, their content and, of course, the very nature of the interactions possible via said gadget. His goals when working on the Wired Reader (see this post’s topmost image) can be applied by most titles in terms of basic approach.
There were more great talks on Saturday, all of which ran like clockwork until David Carson’s talk, scheduled for 3pm.
At 2.55pm, three of the festival’s organisers were in the foyer of the theatre looking worried. No sign of Carson. But then, hang on – here he is with only a minute to spare. And so relax… I took my seat in the auditorium and waited. And waited a bit more. Carson finally took to the stage fifteen minutes late. Not too bad considering he’s been known to not turn up at all to scheduled talks. The auditorium was packed: apparently there were about 1,200 people in attendance. Carson began by struggling to find his opening slide on his messy-looking laptop desktop…
After making a bit of a show of not really being able to navigate through the myriad images he’d brought along for his talk, Carson did manage to show lots of images.
Predominantly he shared dozens of photographs he’d taken of things that make him tick, things that inspire him day-to-day. Amusing street signage, beautiful rubbish bins in Zurich, a shadow cast by typography on glass, surfboards, and the occasional image of a young woman’s breast kept the audience amused and entertained.
As well as these photographs of things that inspire him, Carson also showed various projects he’d worked on explaining his approach to each particualr piece.
Although his talk lacked any kind of formal structure, the gist of it can be compressed to just a few sentences: “Put some of yourself into the work,” he said. “Nobody can pull from your experience so use it in your work – it will be unique and you’ll have a lot more fun with it.”
Regardless of the fact that Carson then proceeded to run over his allotted time (despite promising to wrap up several times when prompted to do so, thus totally screwing with the well-honed timetable for the rest of the day’s events) – one thing was clear. Carson was putting something of himself over in his talk – and he was clearly having fun with it.
Next up, Mark Farrow took the stage with Adrian Shaughnessy in comfy looking chairs to look through various pieces of work by Farrow’s studio Farrow Design. The interview format worked really well, with Shaughnessy digging for extra insight on working processes without giving the feeling that Farrow was being put on the spot.
Pharmaceutical style packaging for Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space album
One of several images created for Manic Street Preachers’ Lifeblood album and campaign, art directed by Farrow, shot by John Ross. “To be honest, I consider this image as much my work as I do it John’s,” says Mark Farrow. “I know John feels the same way.”
“I put this in [the slideshow] because, well, I’ve worked with Kylie.” Mark Farrow
As well as talking about projects such as the identity and packaging for Peyton and Byrne, work for Levi’s, artwork and packaging for bands Manic Street Preachers and also Spiritualized, perhaps inevitably it was work done for the Pet Shop Boys that was discussed in most detail, with Farrow talking about the work on the Yes album and the subsequent Pandemonium tour as a special case study.
While Farrow spoke of the collaborative relationship he has with the Pet Shop Boys, Shaughnessy asked about the relationship with the record label who, Farrow told us, don’t get involed, they just “take delivery of the artwork.”
(Actually, we posted about Farrow’s work on the sleeve in March last year. Read that post here. Read about the special edition vinyl edition in our blogpost about it here.)
Shaughnessy asked Farrow at this point about whether he thought that he had copied in any way the Richter artwork. “Where we ended up is far away enough from what was a reference point for us,” Farrow explained. “Gerhard Richter doesn’t own coloured squares.” Shaughnessy then pointed out that Farrow’s ideas get ripped off a lot. “That’s completely fucking different,” came Farrow’s instant and laugh-inducing reply. “There’s nothing wrong with being influenced by something,” Farrow continued. “Where we ended up is so far divorced from that image, I really don’t think it’s a problem.”
Perhaps the most telling revelation about the work on PSB’s Yes artwork – and of Farrow’s relationship with the band – was that there were originally 12 tracks on the album, with one square of the tick on the cover representing a track on the album. “But the tick looked much better if it was just comprised of 11 diamonds,” said Farrow.
The band duly dropped a track to make the album artwork work better. Er, wow.
Lance Wyman’s first ever poster, created at high school
OK – I realise this is a long post – but I just wanted to share one last highlight of OFFSET 2010: graphic design legend Lance Wyman talking yesterday morning.
Wyman condensed his life story into just an hour, starting with his childhood in Kearny, New Jersey, the tales his grandfather told about his contemporaries such as Billy The Kid, through to his studying of industrial design (the term graphic design hadn’t been coined at that stage) at the Pratt school in Brooklyn, and his early days designing for General Motors.
His wayfinding work for the Chrysler Pavilion at the New York world fair in 1964/5 was charming and hinted at the kind of universally readable icon-based work that he would later become famous for / prolific at.
Of course, he spoke of his experience working on the 1968 Mexico Olympics logotype and identity and how, because Mexico didn’t have much money to spend on architecture (Tokyo had spent a fortune on new stadiums and other buildings for the 1964 Olympics) the Mexican Games “became the graphics Olympics.” With graphics being applied to all sorts of things, both on a huge architectural scale, right down to clothing and hats….
Lance Wyman’s original compass drawing showing how the numeral 68, the year of the Mexico Olympics which he designed the identity for, could actually work, graphically, with the five rings Olympics logo
As well as talking of how the icons and other graphical elements of the Mexico 68 work were influenced by Mexican culture, both ancient and modern, Wyman also showed how his graphic work was referenced in work, such as the one above, during the student uprisings of 1968. They found that Wyman had created a graphic language that they could use and recycle to express their feelings visually.
Wyman showed more great work that he created in Mexico over subsequent years, such as the Mexico City Metro logo, typeface and icons created for the Metro’s opening in 1969, and the logo and mascot (shown above) designed for the 1970 soccer World Cup held in Mexico. He also told how he loved seeing the mascot hand painted (not always correctly – see image below) around Mexico city.
Wyman spoke of his return to New York and of setting up a studio with Bill Cannan – Wyman & Cannan. He showed a selection of the studio’s brilliant logo and icons for the National Zoological Park in Washington DC, created as part of a comprehensive branding and wayfinding system…
… and his later studio’s work for Minnesota’s Zoo exhibit areas:
To see Wyman present his work was a real treat and a really good moment for me to bow out of Dublin’s Grand Canal Theatre and head towards the airport to return home.
If it wasn’t press week here at CR towers this week, perhaps I could have stayed for the rest of yesterday’s talks… I was particularly sad to be missing the Wooster Collective talk, and also animator David O’Reilly’s talk too. I bumped into O’Reilly on the Sunday and he’s a different character since I last interviewed him back in 2007 when we named him as a Creative Future and commissioned him to create a new piece of work, Please Say Something. He’s promised to show me new work soon and keep in touch.
So that was my OFFSET experience which, apart from the insomnia, was a thoroughly positive and enjoyable one. My hat is doffed in the direction of organisers Richard Seabrook and team who, to their credit, have entirely self-funded the whole event and who have yet to work out whether this year’s event has even broke even.
Ireland’s economy is just as screwed as ours here in the UK – if not more so, with unemployment rising at a similar frightening rate to property reposessions. Encouraging its own design community to be inspired and to work harder, as well as giving designers and creatives from around the world a very good reason to visit Dublin, OFFSET is a huge asset to Ireland as well as to the international design community at large. I really hope we get to again next year.
A collective of young architects and designers from AlArchitects of Prague have designed a range of jewellery made from recycled medical waste.
Reclaimed infusion lids and lengths of hose are adapted and augmented to create decorative earrings, bracelets and necklaces.
The jewellery will be available to buy at Designblok10 in Prague, which opens tomorrow.
All proceeds from the sale will fund the renovation of the hematology department interior at Královské Vinohrady University Hospital in Prague, designed by A1Architects.
The Design Help initiative was set up to support and improve hospital environments in the Czech Republic.
The initiative was prompted by some of Design Help’s cofounders’ experiences as patients of the department.
Here’s more info from A1Architects:
Design Help For More Amiable Hospitals
The Support for Heamatology Department at Královské Vinohrady University Hospital, Prague, Czech Republic
Design Help, the association of young architects and designers from a1architects, take aim at supporting and directly improving the hospital environment in Czech Republic.
They are in active cooperation with The Heamatology Department at Královské Vinohrady University Hospital in Prague.
Some of the cofounders have their own experience as patients at this department, that is why they had decided to find new way to improve the treatment from the environment design point of view.
Important part of the high quality health care makes with no doubts the atmosphere of the environment within all patients are treated.
The group has designed original jewellery collection made from recycled safe hospital waste. Unique earrings, bracelets and necklaces were made out of different kinds of infusion lids, outdated infusion hoses etc.
The collection is presented at Designblok10, Prague Design Week,which is one of the main partners and has provided a free space for Design Help.
Proceeds from the charitable sale will be used for Design Help projects in cooperation with Endowment fund Janele, which was found by team of doctors and nurses from the Heamatology Department.
A1architects as part of the Design Help team has prepared the project of new interior of the main hall of inpatient department at the heamatology pavilion.
The realisation of new interior arrangement will be financially supported from the charitable sale of Design Help jewellery collection.
Come and support us at Designblok10, Prague Design Week!
In collaboration with designforum Wien, Dyson celebrates 10 years of Dyson Austria with an exhibition detailing the whole Dyson range since the Ballbarrow, including his new air multiplier. Other highlights are cardboard prototypes and models sliced open to reveal the ways he and his huge R&D team have developed innovative air suction/flow patent.
In case you missed it, the New York Times had a nice little interview last week with George Sowden, designer and co-founder of Memphis and now creator of SoftBrew, a pitcher introducing a new way to brew coffee. The interview and the object reveal one of those great moments when a designer’s personal obsession results in an innovative solution to a problem. Sowden talks about visiting factories instead of museums as a tourist, and laments the loss of connection between manufacturer and designer. For this reason, with SoftBrew, Sowden closely oversaw production of the coffee maker’s two components: a porcelain jug, and a stainless steel filter insert with photo-etched micrsoscopic holes, at porcelain and metal factories in China.
Procter & Gamble has an immediate opening for a Design Leader at Duracell in Bethel, Connecticut. The Duracell Design Leader will be responsible for end to end holistic design across all strategic business priorities. This includes strengthening the core business, broadening our footprint and establishing Design vision/requirements for upstream innovation. You will elevate the role of Design to deliver Duracell brand purpose while bringing to life the equity. You will also lead, inspire & build Design capability that delivers against the business needs now and into the future.
A couple of weeks ago we showed you a “Future of Screen Technology” video by TAT (The Astonishing Tribe), which seemed pie-in-the-sky amazing and almost too fantastic to be realized. But just today TAT has announced that Fujitsu Japan “will reveal a ground breaking dual screen mobile phone user interface powered by TAT’s design and technology initiatives.”
A couple of weeks ago we showed you a “Future of Screen Technology” video by TAT (The Amazing Tribe), which seemed pie-in-the-sky amazing and almost too fantastic to be realized. But just today TAT has announced that Fujitsu Japan “will reveal a ground breaking dual screen mobile phone user interface powered by TAT’s design and technology initiatives.”
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