Bob & Blossom

Bob & Blossom have a straightforward, positive approach to development, production and promotion. Adapting designs for a range of their quality children’s t-shirts was effortless and enjoyable… I hope it shows.

Early Years

Releasing new products in a shrinking market is hardly sound business acumen, if I was ever in this for the money though, I’d be sorely disheartened by now. I’d wanted to produce childrens' birthday designs for a while, but couldn’t reconcile myself to the idea of hand-printing multiple variants. Glad I finally came round to it... the results (Birthday Bus and Bertha) are quite sweet.

Easter

• Bel Cowie, Easter Egg, screen print, 1979

I stumbled across this scrappy print in a tub of the usual discarded posters of footballers and dolphins. A stock study I’m sure I once would’ve hated, I now find myself drawn to its earthy domesticity. True, most of the seven colours are drab variations of 70s tobacco but the flat areas of pattern and the dubious dual perspective lend the print a quiet audacity. Maybe someday I'll even frame it.

Overlapping Colour

• Un-attributed /dated textile, Charleston Farm House
  
• Kenneth Farnhill, Collins, 1962
  
• Poster, Lacome, 1964
  

Spring!

As spring becomes more promising with each passing day, my seasonal mug for Melt and their Selfridges concession should be available any moment. Here’s one of the rejected designs… which may or may not have been my favourite.

Tiles #2

Some items seem somehow different as soon as you learn a little about the processes behind them. Here are some of the tiles that lay/hang around my home in varying degrees of decoration/uselessness. The second one is like the world’s toughest cheese on toast.

With news that the recession will see fewer donations and greater custom at charity shops, I doubt this collection will ever swell to Sheila Hughes proportions.

• Lisa Larson for Gustavsberg, Sweden
  
• Cemar, Italy
  
• US Plastics, Sweden
  
• Pilkington, England
  
• Unmarked
  

Tiles

I usually set aside Monday night for pottery practice in a small local workshop. I’m still something of a novice, but it’s good learning about glazes and skills on the wheel… the hard way. Mostly it makes a change from printing or click-clicking a mouse. I’d recommend it, though I’m still unsure whether to try something in multiple to tie in with the cards, or keep them as separate as possible.

Inked Edges

Perhaps I’m easily pleased, but it gave a little thrill to see coloured page edges emerging from an Amazon package last week. Imagining untold others had passed me by, I had a one-handed search of the shelves during breakfast. Sure enough, there were a handful of drab hues (burgundy, black and something akin to moth’s wing), but it was these vintage volumes that truly paid off.

A pity there’s been no discernable revival of this detailing; either on editions from bibliophilic publishers like McSweeny’s, the former Black Sparrow Press, Persephone Books, retro-obsessive book-jacket designers like Chip Kidd… or just notebooks even!

Valentines

Foolishly, I cast a critical eye over my portfolio before sending it out recently and so began a weekend of rushed/radical update. Ransacking the archives (a bag in a box in a cupboard), I came across these valentines; some of 12 completed last year for Otto Trading in Japan (a curiously beneath-the-radar company considering they licence both Barbapapa and Curious George). With full-colour outside-and-in and a complete Pantone choice on envelopes, they certainly do things differently… such a pity then that our Japanese agent is soon shutting-up shop.

Snow Business

Wow, so much snow in London today! I watched the neighbours’ kids build a snowman… then sweep it into a cardboard box. Perhaps they imagined it’d keep until next year.
  
Here’s Charles Schultz, creator of Peanuts, circa 1930. It's as though his laconic, beleaguered snowman portends the characters to come.

Congratulations USA

This Democrats' campaign handkerchief from the 1930s or 40s has hung on my wall—in one place or another—for as long as I can remember. I’d all but stopped noticing it until recently. 12 square inches like an LP cover, the palette of primary colours reminds me of airmail letters, time-bleached rosettes and tickertape parades.

Given the choice of political memorabilia, I’d pass even on Paris ’68 agitprop in favour of Womens‘ Suffrage. There’s something about those colours (purple, white and green) that seem utterly modern, eschewing the fusty heraldry of Trade Unionism like a gelato advert with an extra toppings of righteous indignation and bitter commitment.

Love/Hate

The drying rack was creaking beneath the weight of pink card this week as we geared up for Valentines. Sometimes it’s easy to forget, but printing any design for the first time reminds me why I started doing all this in the first place.

Saul Steinberg

My mum tells me that Maggie Thatcher lives in Dulwich and there’s definitely the whiff of the conservative in how little the suburb’s altered in the last 150 years-or-so. My visit to the Picture Gallery was rushed, paying scant regard to the handful of great masters in the permanent collection and making instead for Illuminations, the retrospective of Romanian/American illustrator Saul Steinberg.

Illuminations should grab the attention of anyone with a passing interest in contemporary illustration. Moving, as it does, through the social and stylistic changes of the 20^th century… though not necessarily in chronological order, esoteric themes seem to rise, recede or recur over decades. Photomontage; faux-naïf assemblage; dour Eastern Bloc surrealism; simple line drawings of hopelessly complex subjects, all eventually give way to a brand of post-modernity you’d expect from Raw Magazine or the Memphis Group.

  

  
It’s the quieter, more personal still life and interior studies that occasionally, affectingly cut through the clamour, though with its startling similarity to Audi’s excellent animated ad, it’s a pity this portrait in a box wasn’t also included. Here’s hoping this show inaugurates a new wave of timely and knowing exhibitions that ensure I’ll visit again… though next time I’ll check-out tea and cake in the café too.

Happy New Year!

Nice graphics on this old New Year flyer found in a junk shop recently. Clever use of an economical two-colour process and the hand-rendered type is great. I also love the way somebody’s written the date a second time, like they only read their own writing.

Not sure who’s the more odious character though, the guy for throwing over 1965 in an instant or 1966 for being so easily bought. Just wait ‘til he notices how her hand sometimes grows an extra digit, it’ll be out-with-the-old-and-in-with-new come 1967.

Season's Greetings!

Triangles

Tasteful press is always a bonus and December’s Grand Designs Magazine managed to thematically tease our Tessel wrap into a fine festive feature.

I realise simple geometric tessellation (repetition/rotation) is never going to yield truly unique results, but since working on the pattern I’ve spied so many precedents that I’m beginning to question my creativity!

New Prints

Phew! Managed to do a small run of two new prints in time for Open Studios… have I mentioned open studios?

'Snowflake' Poster

Reconnected with old friends this week, a pair of pinking shears. It’s funny how no other, more sophisticated framing device would do on this year’s Christmas poster. People must have been a good deal tougher in olden days though, these are like a compete workout for the adductor pollicis (a muscle between thumb & forefinger. I just looked it up).

 
Intended primarily for architectural plans, these A0 photocopied posters prove quite pricy, but I’m pleased with the halftone effect and it’s definitely refreshing to have a machine do the printing/folding for once. While I sit on my gluteus maximus.

Sweden

Turns out blogging wasn’t quite the breezy, weekly hobby Lisa had hoped. She’s been quite busy putting the shop online & scaling-up for some proper-size prints, so if you ever sense a change of tone, it's me (Edward) typing.

Admittedly, there's been time enough to visit fine friends in Sweden, where we saw the madly underrepresented illustrative work of Jane Bark. A weighty monograph, Jane Barks Bilder, covers the early paired-down exuberance of jobs for H&M, to the more pedestrian but complex style, where a handful of recurrent themes take disturbing shape.

Trying not to let customs notice our bulging luggage, we returned laden not only with Scandinavian ceramic goodies from the lopis (think car-boot sales with no the car-boots), but also two of these lovely prints.

Produced by Johanna Kalin (one half of design duo, Och Studio), these lithographs utilise the shortcomings of the CMYK print process by over-laying and over-printing the re-fed paper stock to create random effects.

Also stuffed into over-head storage were these wonderful vintage Belleri moustache handlebars for Lisa’s bike, salvaged with the expert aid (and tools) of Daniel Rybakken from the scraps of a forlorn 'donor-bike'. Mmm, a pity that one shiny new part suddenly casts others in the shade.

Gena's Genius

I  know it's pretty schmaltzy, but who wouldn't enjoy a night weeping in front of Nick Cassavetes’ The Notebook, like I did when it aired on BBC2 this week. At 74, Nick's mother turns in another exceptional performance.

My interest in Gena Rowlands began after seeing Gloria, where she’s all heels, hair and sassy comic timing. By turns challenging and rewarding, I dedicated nights to watching A Woman Under the Influence, the madness of Minnie & Moskowitz, Love Streams and the gut-wrenching Opening Night… even the DVD interview extras had me bawling.

Of course, hubby John Cassavetes was no slouch either. If you don't know his own films, you'll recognise him as the colluding spouse from Rosemary's Baby. In fact, here's a shot of him with Mia at the Dakota Building. Too stylish. Speaking of Mia, I might try Woody Allen's Another Women or Alice sometime this week.