{design} – Page 253 – { feuilleton }

Baroque snowflakes

I haven’t done a seasonal card design for a couple of years, I often feel too enervated by the whole idea or else lack sufficient inspiration. But after seeing recent snowflake designs by the wonderful Marian Bantjes I thought I’d try some similar ones of my own. Looking back at her work just now I’m amused to see that she kept her designs simple and elegant while I went overboard with the detailing as usual. I created quite a few of these shapes but the ones that make up the final card are the best of the bunch. In a rare fit of generosity you’re welcome to download a high-res PDF and print it yourself. The size is A4 (210mm x 297mm) and—unlike most cards—when folded down the middle can either stand vertically or horizontally.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Kirsten Hassenfeld’s paper sculptures

Reasons To Be Cheerful, part 3: A Barney Bubbles exclusive

Or why Barney Bubbles rules… The Rumour were a Seventies band I never had any interest in, being part of the Stiff Records’ pub rock axis along with Nick Lowe and others; not weird or noisy enough for petulant moi. This is a shame since the Barney Bubbles design for their albums shows him at the pinnacle of his powers with an integrated, multi-media approach to packaging and advertising.

The pictures and text here have been very generously supplied by Paul Gorman whose BB monograph, Reasons To Be Cheerful: The Life & Work Of Barney Bubbles, is now on sale. This is an expanded extract from part of the book with the NME ad and Vinyl Factory graphic being exclusives to this posting. If you need to know why we keep raving about the man, simply scroll on down, bearing in mind that this was only a clutch of releases from a single band. Barney was pulling together work like this all the time for a host of different artists.

For more BB goodness there’s my original, sprawling post, further samples from Paul’s book at his site and also David Will’s blog which features all manner of rare historical material, including a feature about the Brian Griffin book referred to below.

Over to Paul…

An important yet overlooked Barney Bubbles design project of the post-punk period sprang from an unlikely source: the album with the unprepossessing title Frogs Krauts Clogs And Sprouts, released by Graham Parker’s backing band The Rumour in March 1979.

The pre-PC name took its cue from the album track Euro. Bubbles chose a less prosaic route in realising a remarkable and thematically-linked design package predicated on the ceremony and colour schemes of EEC officialdom. This was very much in the news in 1979, ahead of the first European elections held that summer.

Continue reading “Reasons To Be Cheerful, part 3: A Barney Bubbles exclusive”

Steampunk Horror Shortcuts

Time again for some work updates and other news. I mentioned in August that this Steampunk design—created to illustrate a formula definition of the genre by Jeff VanderMeer—was originally going to be a T-shirt. That idea fell by the wayside when an opportunity arose to submit it to Modofly who were asking for Steampunk-related work for a new line of their laser-etched Molekin books.

I’m pleased to announce that the books are now done and on sale at the Modofly store. These are available in two sizes, large (5.25ins x 8.25ins; 13.3cm x 20.9cm) and small (3.5ins x 5.5ins; 8.9cm x 13.9cm), $36 USD and $22 USD respectively.

Next up is issue 11 of Penny Blood, an American horror magazine due out shortly which includes a feature on David Britton’s Lord Horror character and runs through the often tormented history of Savoy Books. Savoy’s Mike Butterworth and I were both interviewed and the piece should also include some comments from Keith Seward whose Savoy title, Horror Panegyric, examines the Lord Horror mythos. They don’t say yet when the magazine is out but it’s available for pre-order now.

While we’re on the subject of his lordship, I recently updated my pages for the Reverbstorm comics with a lot more samples taken from the re-scanned and re-lettered artwork. Work is still progressing on assembling the definitive single-volume edition of Reverbstorm as time permits. I’ve finished work on all seven published issues and am now engaged with the eighth and final section. More about that, and Reverbstorm itself, at a later date.

Finally, there’s another new CD design out, my fourth this year and there are more on the way; I’m starting to feel prolific. As can be seen from the cover, this was a very minimal job. A Made Up Sound is a pseudonym of Dave Huismans, aka 2562, whose excellent Aerial album I also designed. Shorctuts is a collection of electronic sketches and Dave took the moodily anonymous photographs himself.

Heaven and Hell Calendar

It was only a week ago I announced a new calendar for 2009 and now here’s an additional CafePress creation which manages to offer more than another collection of Lovecraft illustrations. This is a sampling of my work from the past few years gathered under the vague rubric of Heaven and Hell. A couple of pieces are variations on earlier designs reworked so as to fit the square page format. Details follow below.

1: Angel Passage (CD cover)
2: The Lucid View (detail; book cover)
3: MBV Arkestra (magazine cover)
4: Emissaries (CD cover)
5: Snakes and Ladders (CD cover)
6: Salomé
7: Fallen Angel
8: The Highbury Working (CD cover)
9: Acid Mothers Temple (poster design)
10: Steps of Descent (CD cover)
11: Metal Sushi (detail; book cover)
12: “Mirage in time—image of long-vanish’d pre-human city” (detail)

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Coulthart Calendar 2009

Last in Line by Light Syndicate

Last in Line is the debut album by Manchester band Light Syndicate and the CD packaging is something I put together after being asked to rescue a design which wasn’t quite working. I kept the band’s original idea of black trees on a red background but substituted their drawing with an adaptation of a 1910 folk tale illustration by Reginald Lionel Knowles. Knowles’ name is an obscure one today, his most visible work being the florid endpaper design which the Everyman Library used on their books up to 1935.

Last in Line is available locally from today (I guess that means Piccadilly Records) and nationwide from January 12th.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive