Friday, 3 July 2009

Munich Olympic stamps



Three examples of stamp sets commemorating the1972 Olympic games: an Australian set produced for the summer games at Munich; one from the USA for the same games; and a German set publicising the subsequent winter games at Sapporo in Japan.

The pictogram used on the USA stamp is part of Otl Aicher's famous set, but I don't recognise the ones used on the Australian stamps. They appear to be half-way between the 1964 Tokyo pictograms and Aicher's work, but I don't have information about the designers
of any of these sets, and would be glad to find out if anybody does know.

Friday, 1 May 2009

Pulp round-up

They're not design classics but I love pulp fiction sleeves. They transport me back to the days when you used to get big wire baskets of these exotic items outside Woolworths, yellow-edged and notched, like some initiation mark commemorating their long journey to these shores.

They promised a world of suspense, adventure and horror in the most hyperbolic of language. Though their more pedestrian brethren, the airport novels are still with us, the pulps seem to have vanished entirely, victims of a more sophisticated age, perhaps.





Germano Facetti Penguin cover

Mid-year resolution: start posting again. Make them shorter. Make them more frequent. Picked up this nice Germano Facetti Penguin in a West country charity shop last week. Great integration of the front and back covers.