Penguin Classics

I absolutely adore the new posters for Penguin Classics, by brand director Sam Voulters and designer Tom Etherington. Not sure what the long term plans are, but I can really see this campaign going on indefinitely, a new batch of battered/loved paperbacks appearing on billboards every couple of months. I tweeted about this the other day, and opinion is very split (natch) about whether these books are loved or incredibly unloved.

Jack Kirby

Fascinating article looking at Jack Kirby’s use of collage, putting it in the context of his pop art influences. Collage is going through something of a Moment right now, so it’d be nice to see more of it in modern comics.

Klekshops

Rent too high? Why not do what the Bulgarians do and put your shop in the basement and serve through a floor-level hatch? Klekshopp! A great way to maximise that window display! Just spare a thought for your customers’ knees though.

Odeon Relics

Photographer Philip Butler’s new book Odeon Relics, currently on Kickstarter, charts the history and fate of the UK’s Odeon cinemas. There’s something rather melancholy about it – a lot of these bizarre, beautiful buildings have been turned into shops or bingo halls. Still, it’s nice to see that the Bromley Odeon, beloved fleapit of my youth, has been rescued and restored by Picturehouse.

Chongqing Zhongshuge

Like the idea of Heatherwick’s Vessel but think it could do with just a few more books? With it’s Escheresque use of stairs, mirrors and more stairs, Chongqing Zhongshuge, a stunning new bookstore in China, should see you right.

Visions

New from Mathieu Triay, Visions is “a science fiction magazine where writers, designers and researchers of the past and present come together to explore the future”. Stack recently listed it as one of the top literary magazines in the world right now, so definitely worth a look. Also it looks like it smells nice.

Denis Medri

Artist Denis Medri is great at shifting the context of well-known comics into other genres, fitting the characters into analogous archetypes: 1950s greaser Batman; medieval/fantasy Avengers; Steampunk Spidey; Western Justice League. Particularly well done is his transposition of Star Wars into a high school cliches. Nerd-droids, teacher-jedis, jock-sith, vending-carbonite – it just fits perfectly.

List of lists of lists

“This is a list of articles that are lists of list articles on the English Wikipedia. In other words, each of the articles linked here is an index to multiple lists on a topic. Some of the linked articles are themselves lists of lists of lists. This article is also a list of lists.” – Wikipedia’s list of lists of lists.

How to draw a horse

I don’t want to give anything away, so just trust me, Emma Hunsinger’s New Yorker comic How to draw a horse is well worth your time, even if you couldn’t care less about the intricacies of equine portraiture.

Zhurnalnaya Roublennaya

Fonts In Use explores the history of Zhurnalnaya Roublennaya, aka “poor man’s Futura”, an unusual geometric sans born out of necessity in a Soviet Union of limited type choices. It’s not the delicious (and divisive) type used throughout Chernobyl – that’s a custom face designed specifically for the series – but it’s in the same haunting abandoned ballpark.

Birmingham Design Festival

This week sees the return of the excellent Birmingham Design Festival, liberally scattering wonderfulness across the second city for three days. There’s lots to choose from, but I’m rather excited about Friday’s talks on design for film and television, featuring Erica Dorn discussing her work on Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs and Aardman’s Gavin Strange on “graft, craft and being daft”. Plus Nick Asbury’s “the truth about what writers think of designers” should be good.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

First edition of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? from 1962. No idea who designed this cover, but it's quite, quite perfect.

Hyperlinks

A few stray hyperlinks:

• How SimCity inspired a generation of city planners – Loved this game so much growing up; it definitely had a lasting impact on how I view the world around me and contributed significantly to my griddy path in life. 

• The lab discovering DNA in old books – “It was in the archives of the Archbishop of York that he had an epiphany: he was surrounded by millions of animal skins.” Michael Collins is filling in the gaps of written history by studying what it’s written on.

• Steven Heller talks to the New York Times For Kids art director Deborah Bishop about her work on one of the best looking magazines around. 

• Little bit obsessed with the art of Greg Ruth, particularly the film-based pieces. His artwork for Criterion’s release of Notorious is sublime. And keep your credit card handy: Mondo are selling prints of his Twin Peaks series later this month. 

• Regarding the thoughtful cultivation of the archived internet, in which Jason Kottke raises interesting questions about the problematic permanence of blogging. What do you do when you no longer agree with the you from twenty years ago?

The Putter

The Putter – a lovely short film about the craft of making scissors. In a round about kind of way, makes me want to listen to Echo and the Bunnymen. 

To all the introductions I’ve loved before

To all the introductions I’ve loved before – Michael Chabon on the front matter, back matter, intros, outs, forewords, afterwords and prefaces that he treasures most. 

Women in Red

Rather shockingly, only 17.6% of the biographical articles on Wikipedia are about women. The Women in Red project aims to turn those red links blue. I’ve never edited anything on there before, but this looks like a great excuse to change that.

Architect to book designer

Train as an architect, work as a book designer. Elaine Ramos discovered that sometimes studying the wrong subject in school can lead to the right career. Can totally relate to this. (By the way, as with all Eye on Design posts, leave the tab open for a few days for added freakiness.)

Endpapers

Hold the front page! Endpaper enthusiasts are falling in love behind the covers. Which sounds far more sordid than it is. Expect much marbling. 

The era of statement wallpaper and fatty text

The era of statement wallpaper and fatty text – an interesting (and rather contentious) look at how book design has acclimatised to the physical/digital realm of social media, with covers serving multiple purposes at wildly different scales. Just how much influence do the influencers have?