Roaming suburban boys
Hello hello.
One week after returning to the fray, an immediate format change as I revert to a good old numbered list. It was bound to happen. And a quick thank you to those of you who've upgraded your subscriptions. Meanwhile is supported by you lovely folks, and it’s massively appreciated. Anyway, on with the numbers …
This week I illustrated Hillary Clinton’s guest essay in The New York Times, addressing the parenting/affordability crisis in the USA. A joy as ever working with art director Shoshana Schultz.
FLOTUStration aside, this week is all about the publication of Pet Shop Boys Volume, a comprehensive visual record of the band’s visual output over the past forty years. I suspect this is as closest we’ll get to a comprehensive Farrow monograph. Another volume collecting their music design for the likes of Spiritualized, Manic Street Preachers and Kylie Minogue would be amazing, but instagram will have to do for now.
Mark Farrow recently talked to Wallpaper about the beginnings of his creative partnership with the band:
“Everything in the mid-Eighties was big and bold and had five different typefaces competing for your attention. A very bright, poppy Smash Hits feel. The 12in white square that is the ‘Please’ sleeve was just so different to anything else, it really jumped out in the HMV or Virgin Megastore window. I thought people would want to know what the tiny image in the middle was, and would be curious to read the little bit of type. It felt logical to me that it would stand out by not standing out.”
This collection of transit tickets on instagram is an absolute treasure trove of type and colour and all round design loveliness. Proof that functional design and expressive beauty can coexist. Via the always splendiferous Present & Correct blog.
Beth Mathews visits the Manhattan Project site and ends up deep-diving into the work of the National Safety Council, the 1940s industrial colour-coding of Faber Birren and discovers why so many control rooms were seafoam green. I particularly like Birren’s approach to extreme psychological decorating:
“In the fall of 1919, Birren entered the Art Institute at the University of Chicago, only to drop out in the spring of 1921 to commit himself to self-education in color, as such a program didn’t exist. He spent his days interviewing psychologists and physicists and conducted his own color studies, which were considered unconventional at the time. He painted his bedroom walls red vermillion to test if it would make him go mad.”
Which reminds me … there’s a new Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Hayward Gallery this summer. Looking forward to red stuff being pushed through other stuff, red stuff dripping onto stuff, just lots of red stuff. And circles!
When a book cover designer writes a book, who designs the cover? Oliver Munday on the creative process behind his first work of fiction, Head of Household:
“As a book cover designer, I never imagined the tables being turned and finding myself in the position of an author awaiting cover designs. But after selling my first work of fiction, Head of Household, I did, and an urgent question was asked by nearly everyone: Will you design your own cover? My editor ultimately decided against granting me special treatment because of my profession, and I was extremely relieved to hear this. I’m far too close to the material to imagine the perfect cover; even my initial, private attempts at doing so were as fruitless as they were daunting. I had only one designer in mind for the job, and that was Chris Brand.”
It’s never been easier to build an impressive-looking library, especially if you’re mostly interested in the colour and size of your books. Are books by the metre necessarily a bad thing?
Did you know that models from Assassin’s Creed were used to help in the restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral? Next week’s Twentieth Century Society talk Videogames as Architectural Archives will explore how game designs can be utilised in the preservation of history and culture.
Seriously, where and when and why did the numbered newsletter originate? I’ve been back and forth with the format for over ten years, and it’s the shape a lot of my favourite writers go for – Austin Kleon, Russell Davies, Jude Rogers, Laura Olin. It just works. But why?
That is all.
