in the limelight

Stop press: next year's big lunch weekend same as queen's diamond jubilee: http://www.thebiglunch.com/about/jubilee-2012.php

Our friends at Laithwaites

We just had a nice reminder of the old days from Tony at Laithwaite's Wine. His latest blog post contains some artworks Jo did for them to mark the move to a new warehouse.

Good people and good wines.

Here are two of the paintings

 

 

 

 

Hiding our light under a bushel

Two days day before we went on holiday in March, we got a call from Creative Review asking us if we had seen the emails sent about Creative Review's 20 best logos of all time edition. The messages telling us we were included had been sitting unseen in my junk folder for some time, so a frantic search for material to meet the print deadline began.

Some of you will know the story of the NT logo. It was originally revealed in David the Designer's blog a few years ago. I signed away all my rights in return for a £50 bonus. Actually I don't think I ever got asked about the rights!

 

I'd always expected to visit the theatre one day and find that the NT logo had been purged, so it unfailingly lifted my spirits when it was still in use. I was tempted to tell the staff 'I did that', but always resisted. Jo was less good at keeping quiet when buying souvenirs! So it was great to be reassured by NT designers Michael Mayhew and Charlotte Wilkinson that they'd always liked the logo.

The Creative Review selection is very well balanced. Interesting to see the common themes too - missing parts of letters, typographical snakes (NASA, CNN, British Steel), negative shapes, stencils, logo systems (Deutsche Bank).

It was very pleasing to share a page with Randstad (which I thought was Wim Crouwel's design - just goes to show!) a logo I really admired as a student.

Also interesting to see that some logos took a second to conceive and a few hours to draw, and others took weeks of meetings etc. How do you get the estimate right? I don't think the NT logo ever had a design manual, at a time when Henrion et al would have normally been pitching to do a £50,000 ring binder.

By the way, NT got an amazing 10th place, ahead of famous logos such as Apple, NASA, Rolling Stones, London Underground and Pirelli.

Living with Legends

Last year Jo and Ian visited New York, and created an artwork in homage to the legendary Chelsea Hotel

In the Chelsea Hotel we stayed in the room Sid Vicious (allegedly) killed Nancy in.

Resident Ed, of the Chelsea Hotel blog Living with Legends recently wrote to us saying the drawing is now hung in the reception.

You can just see it in the photo below, which Tom Barnes posted on flickr

Thankyou to Tom for taking the pic, to Ed for letting us know about it, and to Jerry for keeping his promise to display the drawing.

 

 

Eleven Nine

Our postings dried up over the summer, as work and other commitments left little spare time.

You can thank or blame Friends Reunited for one of these distractions.

Returning to the theme of social mobility from an earlier post:

A few years back Al, Andy and I rediscovered each other after almost 40 years on the road of life. We grew up in and around Barnsley, descendents of miners, glassblowers, weavers and other long-gone local trades. Eventually we went to Holgate Grammar School, where we studied art as one of our A-levels and Al and I played in a short-lived teenage group.

After A-levels we went our separate ways, married and raised families. Andy lived in Zimbabwe and now works in Dubai.

Al moved southwards and is now settling in the west country. I put down roots in Reading. Music has been a big part of all our lives, and Al and Andy have played in bands on and off for years. Which is where this DVD springs from. We got together in our gardens in pairs, and twice as a trio, to play tunes and drink beer, wine and whisky. And I got the urge to perform.

Leonard Cohen talks of being ‘just a sixty-year-old with a crazy dream’. That (loosely) described me in early 2010. So when friend Marti mentioned her 60th was coming up in September, I rashly said we would play a gig for her. The initial idea was a few songs from each decade of our lives. A weeding process turned this into about 30 classics which we managed to try out a couple of times. An unexpected encore meant finding some more which we never rehearsed at all. Fortunately we had a supportive audience. Al and Andy’s talents were augmented on the night by Paddy’s brother Steve on bass. Paddy, Marti, family & friends provided a wonderful stage and crowd for us in their garden in Ellerker, and some small musical miracles happened.

Jo took along a video camera just for the fun of it. We were amazed by the results, so we ended up with a music DVD to edit and produce – something we'd never tried before. Apple iMovie and iDVD did the trick and we had 100 copies run off. Here are the YTube highlights:

http://www.youtube.com/my_videos?feature=mhum.

 

 

First we take Manhattan

The blog has been on holiday, as we recovered and caught up from our New York trip.

Great holiday. Three very different hotels in different parts of New York.

In the Chelsea Hotel we stayed in room Sid Vicious killed Nancy in. Our artwork below should hopefully soon be on display at the hotel and has just been featured on the Chelsea Hotel Living with Legends blog.

 

Lots of sightseeing and art galleries.

 

Next hotel was one we chose to have a pool for two days to rest before coming back. Turned out to be the one Cristiano Ronaldo was staying in, so we were by the pool with him for a couple of afternoons.

  

We also enjoyed talking about music to Andreas Carlsson and his partner

And we had breakfast at a cafe with Lou Reed at next table.

Sorry, slow with the iPhone camera. By then we'd lost our real camera in a taxi.

The lay of the case in NY

Readers will have seen a number of Dylan tickets in the typecase. Jo & Ian's 40th wedding anniversary on 4 July dictated a pilgrimage to NY and the infamous Chelsea Hotel.

 

 

Following in the footsteps of Kerouac, Dylan Thomas, Ginsberg, Patti Smith, Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and many others we find ourselves staying in rooms 101-103, where Sid Vicious (allegedly) stabbed Nancy to death and where Rough Trade had their office. An artwork will follow!

We planned to see Macy's fireworks from near the riverfront, but by great good fortune we were offered a view from a mansion block by Steve, a local resident. Steve has lived in the block for 45 years and told us stories of his times in Knightsbridge, and advised on the art museums to visit and those to avoid. His 99 year old friend Mel came up to the roof with us to see the display to end all displays. If we had come with the right clothes and had a bit more time we could have visited the opera at the Met with him! Thank you again Steve.

Happy anniversary, America!

 

 
 

 

 

 

The lay of the case: 2nd generation

The blog has taken a backseat recently to more important things like the World Cup and additions to the family.

A son was born to Joh and Seb on Tuesday at 1.31pm. And the typecase also has burgeoning offspring in Hackney as can be seen in the background.

Love to and from all concerned.

Typesetting of grandson's name will follow when signed-off copy has been received from the authors.

 

The lay of the case: Put your St George flags back in the cupboard

The news that Emile Heskey’s first contribution to England’s World Cup challenge is to put Rio F in hospital sent us homing in on a Queen Victoria coin from 1890.

 

I reckon it's a guinea, but I could be wrong. It was a present from my Grandmother Heyhurst when our Johanna was born and has clearly rattled around a few purses and pockets in its day. Rio would need about 100,000 of them to pay his weekly wage, which I reckon would reach 3.8km if placed edge to edge.

He's made only 13 starts for Man Utd this year.

 

Many Patronages of Saint George exist around the world, including: Aragon, Catalonia, England, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, and Russia, as well as the cities of Amersfoort, Beirut, Fakiha, Bteghrine, Cáceres (Spain), Ferrara, Freiburg, Ljubljana, Pomorie, Preston, Qormi, Rio de Janeiro, Lod, Barcelona, Moscow, Tamworth and the Maltese island of Gozo, as well as a wide range of professions, organizations, and disease sufferers.

In our experience Manchester is not as wet as Gozo at the New Year.

The lay of the case: Never mind the Wenlocks

More printer's pie today. Munich Olympics matchboxes lead to musings on what has and hasn't changed in nigh-on 40 years.

The two boxes were collected when we visited the Munich Olympic design studio run by Otl Aicher, with assistance from Ian McLaren. (Of whom more another day). The 1972 Olympic graphics were hugely influential and stand as a benchmark against which more recent offerings will be judged.

1972 was also the year of Waldi, the first official Olympic Mascot.

And it was the year that a young sprinter, Charlie Francis, had the conversations with other Munich competitors which persuaded him that racing "clean" was not an option. Fast forward to Seoul in 1987 and the Francis-coached Ben Johnson's disqualification for use of a steroid, stanozolol. Francis's obituary appeared the same day that the 2012 mascots were unveiled.

The Games were overshadowed when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually murdered by Black September, a militant group with ties to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization.

We don't imagine we're the only ones who see an unfortunate echo in the design of our new strange couple. Let's be optimistic.

 

Different Stuff Same Day. In another strange conjunction, the cycling world is today digesting Floyd Landis's claims about doping in the sport (SSDD). Makes Mandeville's choice of headgear looks a bit unfortunate.