Monday 17 December 2012

..OUR HOUSE IS A VERY VERY FINE HOUSE.....

 
 
 Well , its Christmas and with five granchildren its difficult to avoid having an Advent calender , so we thought we might as well get a decent one ; this one is lazer cut from ply and arrives ready assembled, complete with LED lighting , and the boxes are just the size for a chocolate...........just wondering now whether to sprinkle some icing suger on as snow........................  
 
 
 Merry Christmas and a happy New Year
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Saturday 8 December 2012

...AND IT's BEEN A LONG LONG TIME.....

.....Design Classics : I suppose at the mention of the phrase , the usual suspects leap to mind - the Zippo lighter , the Jeep , the E-type Jag , the Parker fountain pen , the Barcelona chair and the Charles Aimes chair , various Apple products , all examples of industrial design . Graphic design , not so many , possibly because of the more ephemeral nature of graphics . The question of typefaces aside , I suppose you are left with the London Underground map , David Gentleman's stamp designs for the Post Office , some of the Penguin paperback covers from the 1960s - iconic images all , but mostly of their time . Can graphic design - more specifically packaging - transcend its time ?

This thought wandered across my mind recently when I was in my local art shop buying some Winsor and Newton drawing inks for my MA course work, and it occurred to me that I had been buying them in the same bottles , same labels , same boxes for what seemed like ages - and ages and ages and ages and ages......was I really buying them in this self same packaging when I was last at art college - in 1970 ?.......the best part of forty five years ago ?..........and it's still the same packaging ?  No tweaking ?........even Coca-Cola/ Oxo / HPsauce logos get tweaked......

 
 
 
If they can remain unaltered since 1970 , still in production and still the same packaging then surely they rate as design classics. They were designed by Michael Peters , who won a D&DA design award in 1973 for his packaging design for Winsor and Newton , so they must have been on the shelves before then . Check out the interview with Michael Peters at

 
........and after all that , I realised when I got back to the studio that I needed a couple of shades darker . Oh well , another couple of really nice little boxes to add to the collection.

Sunday 2 December 2012

...AND LET THE LIGHT , THE CANDLE LIGHT, SHINE

Late November and we brave the Christmas shoppers and the Christmas Markets in central Manchester - row upon row of brightly coloured sheds full of christmas cheer , selling mostly stuff that you wouldn't buy at any other time of the year.......

........and then we come across this shed..................

 
.......and it's lit inside by candlelight..............


.......and it has illustrations inside.......icons..........mysterious  eastern European icons...


.........and they are wonderful.

This particular shed is tucked away inside that enclave of peace and sanity known as the John Rylands Library on Deasgate in central Manchester , well worth a visit in its own right. The illustrations are purported to be the work of one Herman Inclusus , a name that comes from the Codex Gigas ( a medieval manuscript also known as the Devil's Bible ) that is said to have been written by a Herman Inclusus ( Herman the Recluse ). The overall occult mood of the works with their images of plague and misery blended with a more contemporary style of illustration make for a quite impressive visual representation of doom and death , and I really liked the way they were presented , in a quasi eastern european chapel complete with onion dome.

Herman Inclusus is the alter ego of illustrator Stuart Kolakovic : the web site
www.stuartkolakovic.co.uk/hermaninclusus.html
Stuart's own website is www.stuartkolakovic.co.uk - and the John Rylands Library is definately worth a visit.