{design} – Page 266 – { feuilleton }

Gandharva by Beaver & Krause

I mentioned Wilfried Sätty’s collage work last week and this album sports one of his few cover designs. A cult object for several reasons, not least Sätty’s involvement. The title lettering was by fellow psychedelic artist David Singer who I had the good fortune to meet in California in 2005 whilst researching Sätty’s career. That chunky Seventies lettering style now looks distinctly contemporary having come back into fashion over the past couple of years.

Beaver & Krause were among the pioneers of Moog-based electronic music in the 1960s and notably provided the throbs and drones which Jack Nitzsche mixed into the soundtrack for Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg’s Performance. Gandharva was released in 1971 and one of the few all-electronic pieces on the album, Nine Moons in Alaska, is an outtake from those sessions. The first side is very uneven, with a blues jam and a gospel piece that don’t sit well with each other, never mind with the Moog tracks. Side two, however, is a far more successful suite of improvisations with organ, electronics, guitar, harp and saxophone (played by Gerry Mulligan) recorded live in Grace Cathedral, San Francisco.

Cover photo from the Psychedelic Music Flickr pool which features many fine examples of cover design from the late Sixties on.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ginsberg’s Howl and the view from the street
• Further back and faster
• Quite a performance
• Borges in Performance

Penguin science fiction

The Drought, 1968; design by Richard Hollis, photography by Dr. J Comroe.

James Pardey contacted me earlier this week announcing his site devoted to Penguin Books’ science fiction covers. I posted some of my own dishevelled copies a while back and this news gives me an excuse to throw up another Ballard cover. Pardey’s site is just the kind of thing I enjoy seeing, with a comprehensive collection and detailed notes for each design. The front page is especially good since you can see immediately how the look of the titles evolved, from spare layouts and pictorial covers through to bold graphic design which culminates in David Pelham’s great run as designer during the 1970s. Creative Review posted a talk Pelham gave a couple of years ago which explores his work at Penguin and touches on the covers he did for Ballard. A shame they didn’t do a complete set of Ballard’s titles at the time, I’d have loved to see how he treated the other books.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Penguin Labyrinths and the Thief’s Journal
• Penguin Surrealism
• Penguin book covers

Psychedelic Life

left: “Hippies in a psychedelic coffee shop“, San Francisco, 1967; right: “Pair of long-haired Londoners in a psychedelic corner of the Beatles’ Apple boutique“, London, 1968.

A few of the photos which turn up when searching for pictures of the psychedelic era at Google’s LIFE archives.

Continue reading “Psychedelic Life”

Ropetackle Golden Ale

The last of the current round of new work updates is a beer label design for the Adur Brewery. The company specialises in bespoke brews and so commissions labels for each new ale. This one will be sold exclusively at the Ropetackle Arts Centre in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex. If anyone sees a bottle in the wild this summer, send me a photo and I’ll post it here.

Update: Andy at Adur Brewery tells me that the beer isn’t exclusive to the Ropetackle Centre but will be sold elsewhere. Cases are already being sent out.

Das Haus zur letzten Latern

From HP Lovecraft to another writer of weird fiction, Gustav Meyrink. Das Haus zur letzten Latern is a tribute to Meyrink by Silence & Strength and the package I designed late last year for Horus CyclicDaemon has just been released. I’ve mentioned before that Horus make a particular effort with all their CD productions, choosing their materials carefully, and this release is no exception. An envelope of green textured card has two of my designs embossed on either side. Inside this there’s another envelope containing the disc and an 8-page A5 booklet of dark green ink on heavy paper with a grainy texture. The music is suitably dark and atmospheric and would work very well as a soundtrack to Paul Wegener’s Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920). Seeing as Wegener’s film is the most famous Meyrink adaptation I borrowed the shapes of Prague buildings from one of the original film posters. The rest of the graphics are done in a very spare, quasi-Expressionist drawing style which was a pleasure to do since it’s quite different to my usual work. The background of the booklet pages show an old map of Meyrink’s city, Prague.

When people have asked me recently what I think about the proliferation of music downloads I tell them that the best way for record labels (and book publishers for that matter) to continue to attract purchasers is to make beautiful objects which people feel compelled to own. The content is always endlessly reproducible, the packaging isn’t. As far as this argument goes, Horus CyclicDaemon has been ahead of the game for some time.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• New things for November II
• Hugo Steiner-Prag’s Golem
• Nosferatu
• Barta’s Golem