Category: {design}

Design

Alexander McQueen, 1969–2010

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“He was a Brothers Grimm of fashion, enchanting and captivating the audience with the most incredibly beautiful clothes, only to make their stomachs lurch with the underlying menace that shot through his work. Because every show contained outfits designed to thrill, shock – and catch the eye of picture editors – many people never realised that much of McQueen’s work was, quite simply, heart-stoppingly gorgeous: exquisite tailoring, beautifully sculpted dresses and glorious print.”
Jess Cartner-Morley. (More.)

Butterfly-print dresses (how fitting for Darwin Day), Giger-style shoe designs, skull key chains… Yes, Alexander McQueen was something special.

Guardian obituary | Independent obituary

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Weekend links 1

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• Two covers from a new range of Penguin reprints for the AIDS awareness fund (RED), all of which are based around quotes from the books in question. Non-Format‘s stylised extract concerns the blazing red of the Count’s eyes while Coralie Bickford-Smith plays some Tom Phillips games with the text of The Secret Agent. The random circles no doubt relate to those which the doomed Stevie Verloc occupies his time in drawing. More at Caustic Cover Critic.

• Artspeak? It’s complicated. Jon Canter at The Guardian makes a blazingly obvious point which few in the art world would ever admit: that the specious pronouncements of many galleries and contemporary artists are the worst kind of bullshit.

• I helped judge the Ballardian/Savoy Microfiction competition whose winners were announced last week.

• Designer Jonathan Barnbrook enjoys Neu! and Wendy Carlos.

• Nuit Blanche, a short film by Spy Films.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

Vickers Airship Catalogue

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Just the thing for when you need to build your own… From a page of plans at Forgotten Futures. The photo of the Vickers Parseval craft is from this early aviation archive.

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Meanwhile, my good friend Ed alerted me to a documentary film which will be released in March this year. Farewell is directed by Ditteke Mensink and uses archive footage to tell the story of Lady Grace Drummond-Hay, the only female passenger on the first journey around the world of the Graf Zeppelin in 1929.

The voyage took 21 days and started off in New York. Via Friedrichshafen in Germany, across Siberia to Tokyo, across the Pacific Ocean to Los Angeles, the airship finally arrived back in New York greeted by much cheering and a ticker tape parade. During the adventurous trip the printing presses were working overtime, as it was followed closely and covered extensively. The voyage was a symbol of both technological progress and the improved relationship between two great nations: the United States and Germany. The outside world is unaware of the passionate love affair between Grace, a young widow, and Karl, a married man.

More at the film’s page here which includes a trailer. Looks fascinating, I’d love to see it.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Air Ship
• Dirigibles
• La route d’Armilia by Schuiten & Peeters
• The Airship Destroyer
• Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls

The Air Ship

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More dirigibles. Posters from the Library of Congress Performing Arts Poster Collection for The Air Ship (1898), a musical comedy by JM Gaites.

I’ve had some longer posts planned but I’m chasing a deadline this week, hence the resort to brief picture posts.

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Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dirigibles
• La route d’Armilia by Schuiten & Peeters
• The Airship Destroyer
• Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls

Margaret Armstrong book designs

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Millionaire Households and their Domestic Economy (1903).

More Art Nouveau cover designs, this time by celebrated American designer Margaret Armstrong (1867–1944) whose life and work is documented here. The University of Rochester has examples of her work, as does the Atheneum of Philadelphia and the University of Alabama’s Publisher’s Bindings pages, the latter being an incredible resource for 19th and 20th century cover designs.

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The Golden Key (1926).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive