Favourite Animals
Very much liking the artwork for Favourite Animals’ self-titled album, designed and printed by the group’s Cath Roberts.
Available from Sloth Racket’s Bandcamp page
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The New Line: Works from the Jobbing Printing Collection
Continuing my habit of visiting exhibitions just before they close, I went along to Bexhill’s De La Warr Pavilion – one of my favourite haunts – to catch The New Line, featuring work from the V&A’s ‘jobbing printing collection’ of 1920s and 30s graphic design. The exhibition places (timely) emphasis on the importance of migration in the fostering of an international discourse of ideas and aesthetics vital to the development of modernism.
Pieces that particularly caught my eye: Tom Eckersley’s 1938 poster design ‘Time to Change to Winter Shell’ – both the final printed poster and also the original artwork paste-up which incorporates an actual fingerless glove knitted by his wife Daisy; brochures by Herbert Matter to publicise Swiss tourism (1935) and Fretz Brothers commercial printers (1933); copies of Gebrauchsgraphik and Typography 2 magazines from 1937; printed ephemera from E McKnight Kauffer’s identity programme for Orient Line passenger ships (1935) as well as his programmes and set designs for the Gate Theatre; a front cover proof for the first issue of German lifestyle magazine Die neue Linie (from which the show takes its name) art directed by Herbert Bayer and designed by László Moholy-Nagy; a 1933 brochure for the Schulthess washing machine company by Max Bill; a 1932 Imperial Airways poster featuring Theyre Lee-Elliott’s ‘speedbird’ logo; a spread from the booklet Het boek van PTT by Piet Zwart (1938) and a 1935 pacifist pamphlet Peace Under Earth by Beatrice Warde under the pseudonym ‘Paul Beaujon’.
Also includes work by John Piper, Graham Sutherland, Serge Chermayeff, Clifford & Rosemary Ellis, Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious and Len Lye.
On Saturday 11th March there’ll be a panel discussion on migration from the 1930s to the present day in relation to the exhibition, which runs until Sunday 12th March.
(pictured: Tom Eckersley ‘Time to Change to Winter Shell’ (1938) via De La Warr Pavilion)
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Stano Filko: Poetry on Space – Cosmos
The Stano Filko exhibition Poézia o priestore – kozme continues until 25 September at the Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava.
(pictured: Asociácie V (1968) by Stano Filko)
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Alison Bechdel ‘Are You My Mother’
Impressive sequence from Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir ‘Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama’, in which she speculates an almost-encounter between Virginia Woolf and psychoanalyst D W Winnicott.
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The Village of Type, pt 3
After visiting Ditchling itself and having witnessed the wonders of Big Steam Print, I went along to join Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft once again as they continue their Village of Type events with Letterpress by the Sea, a free pop-up print workshop on Hove seafront.
The pop-up studio is housed in a tent replica tube train carriage (to tie in with the ongoing celebrations of the 100th anniversary of Edward Johnston’s typeface for London Underground).
You can watch typesetting and printing demonstrations by top letterpress practitioners Pat Randle of Nomad press and Nick Loaring from The Print Project.
And you can have a go at printing your own posters on a hand-operated press and postcards on one of three Adanas.
Letterpress by the Sea continues today from 12–6pm on Hove Lawns
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The Village of Type, pt 2
The day after my visit to Ditchling, I went into Brighton to witness the use of another historic machine in the business of printing but this time in the unlikely shape of a 90 year old 12½ tonne steam roller.
This ‘slightly bonkers’ roving print project – the brainchild of Pea Crabtree of Lucky Budgie Letterpress and organised by Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft – has seen a number of artists including Anthony Burrill, Angie Lewin, Jonny Hannah and Rob Ryan create their biggest ever relief prints at various venues using Amberley Museum’s vintage steam roller as an improvised printing press.
It’s gloriously eccentric and loads of fun.
Prints which survive the pummelling process will be exhibited at Brighton’s Phoenix Gallery in August.
Each printing pass was heralded by an ear-splitting peep from the roller’s whistle; while waiting for this, you could take advantage of the materials provided by Ditchling Museum on-site staff and have a go at making your own lino print, which I duly did.
The next – and final (for now?) – chance to see Big Steam Print in action will be at Ditchling Village Fair on the 18th of June – go if you can!
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The Village of Type, pt 1
Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft’s current exhibition marks the centenary of the creation of London Underground’s iconic typeface Johnston Sans by Ditchling-based calligrapher and educator Edward Johnston. Throughout May Ditchling itself has been transformed into The Village of Type, and features a programme of events and exhibitions celebrating the beauty of lettering, typography and letterpress. Last weekend I went along to have a look.
The first, unmissable, sign that something is afoot is the huge 3D bold capital letters emblazoned irreverently on the exterior walls of shops and houses in the centre of the village by lettering artist Gary Stranger.
Next stop was the Blue Shed where Viktoriya Grabowska, as the inaugural British Council international typographer in residence, has moved her studio from Poznań in Poland to Ditchling where she is studying Johnston Sans as well as exploring and creating work in response to Britain and Poland’s respective road sign typography.
From there to the former studio of artist Frank Brangwyn which is playing host to an international showcase of letterpress print entitled Interrobang. This features work by some of the finest letterpress practitioners working today, selected from an open call by a panel of designers including Anthony Burrill, Catherine Dixon and Simon Lewin.
Accompanying the show is a special issue of the St Jude’s periodical Random Spectacular which features all the selected artists and more, articles by Burrill, Counter Press and Phil Baines, as well as pieces on letterpress doyen Alan Kitching and the Occasional Print Club.
Finally, a visit to the museum itself where, as well as the aforementioned Johnston exhibition, artists from the Interrobang exhibition are in residence, demonstrating their letterpress skills printing new work on the museum’s historic Stanhope press – the original one used by Johnston and his contemporary, Eric Gill. On the day of my visit, Richard Small was running off copies of his setting of a quotation by Gill, using the museum’s holding of Gill Sans.
Village of Type events continue in Ditchling and Brighton this weekend while the Johnston exhibition is on until September. Recommended.
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Type detail
Stephen Coles’s great book The Geometry of Type (The Anatomy of Type in the US) is a beautiful and highly practical in-depth guide to the details of 100 classic and contemporary typefaces. Each typeface is given a double-page spread, with some of the most distinctive characters enlarged and annotated to reveal their distinguishing features and details.
It’s never far from my desk – in fact it’s one of my favourite design books, not least because of its elegant design by Tony Seddon.
Evidently I’m not alone in my admiration as New York-based designer Wenting Zhang has created Type Detail, a superbly-realised online project that applies the same structure to popular webfonts.
The site includes a template so you can get involved and contribute an entry for your own favourite typeface, as well as a very good list of general typography resources.
See more at the Type Detail website.
