Inspiration is Everything: 2010

Wednesday, 15 September 2010

Great Penguin cover

Penguin can almost do no wrong in my eyes. This cover is from their new Central European Classics range. I'm afraid I didn't get the designer's name though.

Best of British

Spotted in a shop window in Hampstead, London. I believe it's by the excellent Satoshi Hashimoto, but if you know otherwise, please let me know.

Lambretta

A symphony in chrome, leather and steel. Just perfection.

Intriguing calligraphy

Beautiful flowing script found in an antique shop in Bromyard, which reminds me of the work of the great Marian Bantjes.

Shop of delights

From the window of a fascinating collectibles shop in London's West End.

Location:London

Baby and the Virgin

Spotted at the Whittington Hospital, Archway. The fading and warping has lent this painting an eerie quality.

Location:Islington

Friday, 25 June 2010

Spotted these nice flyposters the other day. Apparently the design is by Red Or Dead, usually better known for their fashion work. It reminds me a little of Barnbrook's excellent new work for the Sydney Bienniale, which you can see here: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2010/may/17th-biennale-of-sydney-identity

1980's magazine design

I picked up a copy of the SPD Annual from 1989 in a charity shop the other day. The eighties was such an overtly stylised decade that many of the spreads now look as incongruous as a Cyndi Lauper puffball skirt, so I can't pretend that much of the work has aged well, but nevertheless, in amongst the tics and tropes of the time—over-compressed and letterspaced capped serifs, leaderlines etc—there is some genuinely good stuff tucked away.

There's this for instance: remember the excitement when word began to spread about what David Carson was doing? Here he is, pre-Raygun, cutting through the crowd like a lightning bolt with Skateboard magazine from 1987. This is a clear statement of intent, and presaged much that was to come in the 1990s.

And here's another art director who was soon to become a household name: the late, great Tibor Kalman, pre-COLORS, with a powerful and witty pair of covers for Art Forum magazine, again from 1987.

And finally, from Life magazine and art directed by Charles Pates, an introduction to a certain young boxer, destined for great things…

Thursday, 24 June 2010

London Life

We featured this work last year in Creative Review, but I came across it again whilst tidying up, and it's so good that I think it really deserves another outing. London Life ran for eighteen months in the mid sixties, and was one of the first titles in which David Hillman—later to be known for Nova and his Guardian redesign—really came to attention.

That a magazine with such confident, bravura art direction and a creative team that included Duffy, Terence Donovan and Gerald Scarfe should sink without a trace can only give some idea of how fierce the competition must have been in those days.

Shown above are a selection of spreads and covers, plus the original, dummy cover, numbered 14th August.

Lifeforms by Buggy G Riphead

For me, one of the defining images of the early '90's is that of the inscrutable, enigmatic girl who adorned the cover of Future Sound Of London's 1994 album 'Lifeforms'. The artwork was created by a digital artist cum designer called Mark McClean, alias Buggy G Riphead, and though a quick google reveals him to be still working today (hypersonique.com), I don't think anything he's done since quite matches the impact of that strange, hermetically sealed world, part 2001, part Dali, that he created for FSOL.