The Small Letter

The Small Letter is a type primer produced by Desmond and Libertad Jeffery in 1956. It was donated to the BA (Hons) Graphic Design course at UCS for its book archive recently, along with various other books, and it has become an object of fascination to me. With an introduction that states: "We do not expect this booklet to be of any use to anybody, except possibly as a Dreadful Warning to the thoughtful against undue distortion & ornamentation of basic letterforms," how could it not?

So intrigued by this, and other such books that have either been donated or I've personally acquired, that I have started a research/archive project on Tumblr. At this stage, I'm intending it to consist of pre-digital print, type, and graphic design related books, although this may change depending on what I uncover. The blog is titled after Jeffery's booklet.

The Small Letter project

The power of print

What started out as a bit of a shitty day, literally—I trod in dog shit on the way to Ipswich Station and got crapped on by a bird on the same walk—ended up being a great, but busy day. Firstly, I took 20 second year UCS Graphic Design students around a print works. Alphaprint in Colchester, once again, pulled out the stops and gave a fantastic tour of their fascilities. This is the second year on the trot that they've given this tour, and the students were fascinated and learnt a lot from seeing printing and finishing processes in action.


Students smell the ink on a 5 colour Mitsubishi.

Then I hot footed it across town to meet with my colleague, Russell Walker, who had arranged a talk by Abram Games' daughter, Naomi Games, of her father's work to final year graphics students. She told many a tale about his incredible life and strong willed nature, as well as discussing airbrushing (with an impromptu [dry] demo from Russell), and other techniques.


Naomi Games talking about her father.

The show is currently at The Minories Gallery in Colchester and well worth a visit, but be quick, it comes down on Monday 20 February.

More photos to follow on Flickr soon.

Links:

Alphaprint

Abram Games

The Minories

Two ends of a spectrum

Today I've been impressed by two items of publishing, both at opposite ends of the media/medium's spectrum.

Firstly, this morning I got my first copy of Varoom through the post. For those who don't know, it is the magazine of the Association of Illustrators. We'll, it used to be, it is now the newspaper of the Association of Illustrators. It is sensitively designed, beautifully laid out, and, suiting its content, tactile. Intelligent writing about contemporary illustration and its relation to society, graphic design and art make this a fully formed publication and it is stuffed with great work.

What is really interesting about this publication though, is that it has rejected its previously 'glossy' magazine format as a response to the economic crisis on everyones doorstep. This has resulted in the price dropping to an affordable £15 for 4 issues (one issue free for subscribers), with no change to its previous high editorial standards. I've only read Varoom in libraries, or been loaned someone else's copy, but I can immediately see this new stance of change for survival sake, sets it apart from many other design/illustration magazine's out there. Instead of trying to impress with some major stylistic overhaul, it has zagged where everyone else is zigging, and is all the better for it. Eye and Creative Review are great magazines for different reasons, and I will continue to get both until they give up due to falling sales, and, I suspect, the strength of the free content available on their blogs. But Varoom really does beat Grafik–which is untrust worthy in its existence, having nose dived several times in the 10 years I've been reading it–and It's Nice That, which is a new kid on the block. While being well produced with varied content, which strangely makes it more transitory than interesting, it does tend to be much more of a surface read and concerned with the über trendy. But then a magazine with the word 'nice' in the title always was going to be more of a showcase rather than a critique.

So, onto my second revelation of the day; I downloaded The Guardian iPad app this morning. I wasn't expecting much, to be honest. I like the paper edition, and usually flit between that and the website depending on whether I want to sit, read and contemplate, or whether I want to get the most up to the minute information. I wasn't sure this was going to be anything other than forced content. However, after 10 minutes getting to grips with how it functions, I must say I'm impressed. It's certainly better than the website in terms of making you feel like you are navigating through the days paper edition. And as long as you've wifi connectivity, it links to the most recent stories on their website, (and external sources). This, on first impressions, is a real contender to the print edition and certainly beats the New York Times app, the only other newspaper app I've downloaded, (but stopped using once I had to pay for it). The layout of the articles is logical, it is clear how to get between stories, suggests other stories that relate, and like the paper edition, as opposed to the website, each page feels like it belongs to the whole. One of the things I don't like about guardian.co.uk is that when I jump to an article, because of the greater blank space around it, I feel like I've left the main website. In design terms, the app has the sense of cohesion between different elements that is lacking online. In this, the design team behind this app have managed to make the interaction relate much more to the paper version than the website, which is an impressive feat in itself.

Whether I will completely go over to the app version once my free trial runs out, or still continue to buy the daily print version, is difficult to say. During the week I can get the paper cheap from the Student Union shop at work. The paper version also gets me away from a screen for a while, which is always a good thing. However, the advantages of getting the Saturday edition for the iPad was that I didn't get the frustraitingly ultra-middle class Weekend magazine, (apart from the odd article). But then I didn't get the excellent Guide either. Nor does the print edition's commitment to commissioning contemporary illustrators seemed to have made it across the digital divide. So I guess I'll have to use my few months free trial wisely to assess the pros and cons between print and digital, but on the current evidence, this app will set the bar for many other cross overs.

Printing for all

I haven't been to the Museum of East Anglian Life for a few years so it was a joy to see that they are slowly but surely making lots of improvements for visitors when I was there this weekend. They are even running printing workshops, brilliantly titled Printing For All, in their mock up of an old print shop. This holds several small letterpress machines and a lovely Columbian Press, as seen on the flyer above.



I also found this book in the replica corrugated iron school/chapel. I was immediately taken with the endpapers.

Link:
Museum of East Anglian Life Stowmarket, Suffolk.

Hacks hacking hacked

The recent and still unfolding events at the News Of The World have bought back memories from 25 years ago as I stood on a picket line in Wapping in support of striking printers and journalists.

The dispute was staged as a protest against Rupert Murdoch moving News International from Fleet Street to a fortified industrial plant at Wapping, along with the introduction of new technologies, working patterns and no-strike clauses. As a printer at the time, I felt it important to show my support.

Despite having lived in Nottinghamshire during the 1984-85 miners strike and attending many demonstrations in solidarity with their cause, Wapping was the first time I saw indiscriminate and heavy handed police tactics. On a nightly basis they ensured The Sun, News Of The World, The Times and Sunday Times left News International on time. In the name of Murdoch and Margaret Thatcher, they were brutal. I can assure you that printers' blood runs red. The irony that the Metropolitan Police are involved in this current scandal isn't lost on me.

Murdoch had good reason to fear his workers. During the '84 miners strike, the unionised workforce refused to print a front page of The Sun where by a casual photograph of the NUM president, Arthur Scargil, was made to look like he was Sieg Heiling. The paper had to run without the offending headline and photo, and instead displayed a statement that introduced the public to the historic vocabulary of print unions, (union branches are called chapels and shop stewards either Father or Mother of the Chapel).

Left: The offending article, right: as it appeared on the news stands. Image courtesy of: the-sun-lies.blogspot.com

These sort of insidious tactics to discredit political opponents were common place in the pages of The Sun and the News Of The World in the 1980s, and not much has changed in 25 years. Their influence doesn't stop their though, I've always believed that these papers editorial stance influences the public mindset; you only have listen to a pub conversation to realise how the national debate on immigration aligns so closely to that of a right wing press. Successive governments and power hungry opposition parties realise this, which is why they desperately rewrite policies in an effort to keep in touch with a tabliod version of public opinion. No wonder there is so little explicit and intelectual ideology in politics in 2011.

It doesn't stop there either. It is impossible to discuss these papers without mentioning the duplicitous attitude to sex, as scandels appear next to page three 'beauties', and pedophiles are shamed next to half-naked women dressed in school uniforms. Mixed values emerge, and ones that have bought attacks on innocent people after a pedophile naming and shaming exercise by the News Of The World under Rebekah Brooks', (nee Wade), editorial control. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that I have ever been able to find that is redeeming about these publications.

Billy Bragg's take on the tabloids

As I remember back to standing on the picket line at Wapping, I could be forgiven for thinking that there is some sort of moral victory in the News Of The World being axed. However, I know this is just game play and while The Sun still stays in circulation, I can not toast the demise of this single despicable cog in a wider power machine that is Rupert Murdoch's empire.

History story

I've just returned from a very enjoyable and thought provoking day at St Bride, 'The World's Foremost Printing and Graphic Arts Library' in London. I was attending the Graphic Design: History In The Making conference. Speeches by Rick Poyner, David Reinfurt, Catherine de Smet, Christopher Burke and Sonia de Puineuf, and the panel discussions afterwards, will be feeding future posts here as I reflect on issues raised, and after I've trawled through the 28 pages of notes in my Moleskine!

Shamefully, this was my first visit to St Bride, and I will certainly be heading back there. However, I was disappointed to find that the soap dispensers in the toilets didn't have Swarfega in them!

Link:
St Bride

Support your local printer

Many thanks to everyone at Alphaprint, Colchester, for their hospitality when giving a tour of their premises and processes to second year Graphic Design students from UCS earlier this week.

Link:
Alphaprint

RIP Celia Stothard

I was lucky enough to see the poster artist Alan Kitching speak about his life and work a couple of years ago. It was extremely touching as he had to take breaks because he was getting overwhelmed with emotion as he was realising, mid-talk to a room packed full of design lecturers, that many of the people he was mentioning as having been a great influence on him had passed away. It was really quite moving as he chocked on his own words and asked the audience to bare with him while he composed himself.

It is with this in mind that it is very sad to hear the death of Kitching's long-time partner Celia Stothard. The design community has lost one half of a creative partnership that produced many iconic posters. I particularly like the story of the two of them blowing their pension on a huge collection of theatrical type. As Celia wrote of their finding the collection in Eye 74:

"Alan climbed up a ladder to check a range of condensed letters stacked on the barn wall shelves. Some had become damp and infested with woodworm. They would have to be dried out and treated, but first the make-ready (random bits of printed paper, glued to the underside of letters to bring them to type height) would have to be removed. As I logged, measured and photographed cabinets and randoms of type around the barn, I heard a shout of ‘Schwitters!’ and joined Alan, looking in amazement at the first of many examples of the Wrington pressmen’s unconscious ‘make-ready’ art, reminiscent of Dada collages.

Alan already had enough type in his ‘palette’ but the prospect of working with this range and scale was thrilling. In June that year I had up-sized from a two-room flat in SW7 to a former alehouse in Kennington SE11. I had envisaged Alan and some of the Typography Workshop in the covered rear yard, but almost an entire print works? Still, there was plenty of room on the ground floor, the joists could take the weight and the old beer cellar was dry. Who else would or could do it?

Perhaps it was the full moon over the horseshoe atop the Organ’s barn door, or the sweet Somerset air that added to the feeling of fate, but I turned to Alan: ‘Pension payments or this?’ ‘This!’ we chorused and returned to London to make the bid."

RIP

Links:
Eye announcement
Celia Stothard - 'Buy a pension or…' Eye 74
Fine words article, Eye
Vauxhall Society Obituary

I wanted to go to Chelsea

I spent the day in London today visiting 'must see' exhibitions with UCS graphic design students. I ended up at Tate Britain checking out the Muybridge show which I found much more engaging than I thought I would, but the main attraction was Process: The Working Practices of Barney Bubbles.

For those that don't know, Barney Bubbles created many of the sleeves for punk and post-punk pop favourites such as The Damned, Generation X, Ian Dury and The Blockheads, Elvis Costello & the Attractions, Nick Lowe, and was Stiff Records' designer in residence. Before this he had a history of designing record sleeves for Glastonbury Festival and Hawkwind, as well as creating light shows for Pink Floyd, which is where his name was coined, as he mixed oil, water and ink and projected this to form psychedelic 'bubble' back drops for live shows.



It is only in the last few years that he has been getting much deserved recognition as he preferred anonymity to fame during his working lifetime, with much of his work going unsigned. 27 years after his death, with Paul Gorman's excellent 'Reasons To Be Cheerful' biography (2008), and this show, Barney Bubbles is finally being seen as a hugely important figure in the history of graphic design.



Paul Gorman was on site this morning and together with Donald Smith, Director of Exhibitions at Chelsea Space, kindly gave an introduction to Barney's working life and practices to students. The show was put together on the basis that most of the finished outcomes, (the products) were displayed along the entrance ramp, with the focus being squarely placed on Bubbles working methods. Sketches, Letraset and Rotring artwork, overlays of tracing paper with notes to printers and PMTs were all given pride of place. Students were amazed, enthralled and daunted in equal measures by the fact all the artwork was produced by hand - Barney committed suicide 2 weeks before the introduction of the Apple Mac in 1983.



The show unfortunately finishes this coming Saturday (23 Oct) but find below more images and links to Paul Gorman's blog, the Chelsea Space website, and unusually for Dublog, a link to Amazon for Reasons To Be Cheerful book; go buy it.

I look forward to the coming weeks where this exhibition will form much debate and discussion among students about process on display, ideas informing application, application informing ideas, and old school design methods.















Links:
Barney Bubbles blog
Chelsea Space
Chelsea Space 'Process' images
Reasons To Be Cheerful biography

Printing errors #1: The Hickey

See the hole in the F? That's a hickey.

This is caused when a piece of grit gets onto a printing plate on the press. An inkless outline of the offending article is created as the piece of grit gets coated in ink, but the immediate area surrounding it isn't.

You have to have a keen eye to spot them while on press and when you do, you have to remove the piece of grit by stopping the machine and carefully using a cloth or finger to wipe it off. I've seen printers try and do this while the press is still running. Not a good idea if your rag gets caught.

The printer should also hunt through the printed sheets and remove them, or tag the affected batch for the finisher to remove later, and add an according number of overs to the print run to make up for the wastage. However, they can often get missed and end up in the finished job.


Printing errors will become a repeating post to Dublog, as and when I spot print errors in publications I come across. They will consist of terms and explanations of errors I picked up in my time as a printer/finisher many years ago. For the purposes of these posts, printing errors refer to anomalies that are thrown up through the process of offset lithographic printing, not typographic mistakes, which are often wrongly attributed as 'a printing error'.

Pantone