{ feuilleton }

In Spaces Between from The Great Old Ones (1999).
Some noteworthy pieces of news as the month draws to a rain-sodden and dismal conclusion.
• Frank Woodward was in touch this week to let me know that his excellent HP Lovecraft documentary, Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown, will at last be appearing on DVD in October. This [...]

Looking at Willy Pogàny’s work last week I was reminded that as well as illustrating books he worked in Hollywood for a while as an art director and set designer. Among those jobs was a credit for “Technical staff” on the only film for which director Harry Lachman is remembered today, a curious 1935 melodrama, [...]

I drew attention yesterday to the abraded look of the Taking Woodstock poster and mentioned a recent book design of mine which used a similar effect. This is that cover, created for a collection of Joe R. Lansdale’s horror novels coming soon from Underland Press. Lansdale is known mainly for being the writer of the [...]

A conversation with Rick Veitch, with an introduction by Alan Moore | An exclusive interview/feature at Arthur.

Oh, Mr. Roeg, you’re wonderful, I love you! | Alan Moore gets justifiably excited.

Graphic artists condemn plans to ban erotic comics

Continuing an occasional series.
The poster at the top left is the unused Ministry of Information design created to maintain Britain’s resolve after war had been declared in September 1939. This simple slogan struck a chord recently among Britons sick of the climate of fear, security theatre and authoritarian coercion which, deliberately or not, appears to [...]

Coincidence abounds: on Wednesday I was following a few referral URLs to see who’d been linking here and was led to a Lexic.us page about hermaphrodites which in turn had me looking again at the wonderful Borghese Hermaphroditus in the Louvre. Thursday’s postal delivery brought issue 1 of The Gnostic which prominently features the Louvre [...]

Alan Moore: an extraordinary gentleman | Novelist, magician and “guru of the graphic novel” Alan Moore talks to Steve Rose about Watchmen, the dark side of Hollywood and the morality of pornography.

Rorschach from The Mindscape of Alan Moore.
The hype over the Watchmen film reached critical mass this week and as a consequence there’s been a spike of interest in the two Alan Moore interviews I posted in 2006, with Empire magazine and other movie sites linking here. I won’t bore you with my lack of [...]

A design for life | Jon Savage on the history of the Smiley symbol: Watchmen, Acid House and beyond.

The HAL Project.
January flew by in a blizzard of work so posting here tended to rely more on pictures than words. As usual the things I’ve been designing will be unveiled when they’re closer to being published or released but for now here’s some new or not-so-new items worthy of note.
• The HAL Project screensaver. [...]

Some work news. I finished this CD design last year but, as is often the case with these things, it’s taken a while to make its way into the world. This was the final piece of the Mindscape of Alan Moore project and it’s probably the last thing I’ll do which makes use of the [...]

Yes, it’s that film again. The feature-length documentary by DeZ Vylenz about the Northampton Magus receives its official US release through Disinformation on September 30th. I designed the packaging (the original EU inlay is shown above) and the DVD menus.
As I’ve said before, this is a great film—shot on film, not video—a revealing insight into [...]

From the Hollywood Gothic series (1984).
Jeff VanderMeer has a great post about artist/illustrator Ian Miller at io9 which prompts me to write a few words about his work myself, something I’ve intended for a while.
Miller is indelibly linked for me with HP Lovecraft on account of his covers for the Panther Horror editions of the [...]

Fenella Fielding, May 2005.
A few things of interest in the Coulthart world this month.
• The Independent on Sunday this weekend ran a feature by Robert Chalmers on film and stage actress Fenella Fielding which included some discussion with my Savoy colleague Dave Britton about the recordings Savoy has been making with Fenella for the [...]

The Mindscape of Alan Moore; film poster by John Coulthart (2003).

Alan Moore: An Extraordinary Gentleman;
event poster by unknown designer (2008).
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Design as virus #2: album covers
• Design as virus #1: Victorian borders

Proving once again the centrality of James Bond to contemporary British identity, the Royal Mail releases these stamps on January 8th, 2008, the 100th anniversary of Ian Fleming’s birth. If a misogynist state assassin seems an awkward choice of cultural ambassador, Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill present a more iconoclastic view of the super spy [...]

Alan Moore: the wonderful wizard of… Northampton
| Alan in the Telegraph.

top left: artist unknown (1969); top right: Patrick Woodroffe (1975)
bottom left: Peter Elson (1988); bottom right: artist unknown (1995)
The Men with snakes post at the weekend finished on a note of Freudian melodrama with a picture of Doc Savage battling a giant python. Lester Dent’s brazen hero has appeared a number of times in the [...]