London

Just spent a thoroughly exhausting yet rewarding couple of days in London. Could probably write a thousand words on each of the things I did, but I’m very tired so instead I’ll just spurt it out in a bulleted list.

• Foragers of the Foreshore, a wonderful exhibition on mudlarking. Particular highlights were the messages in bottles, a chance to see the Doves Type in the flesh/metal, Johnny Mudlark’s stunning sketchbooks, and the venue itself. The industrial innards of Bargehouse have barely been touched, so there’s lots of bare brickwork and ramshackle staircases that lead to vast, scary spaces that you’re not meant to wander into. Really must get my boots on and have a sift through the Thames myself one day. In the meantime, will be adding Lara Maiklem’s new book, Mudlarking, to the reading pile.

• Olafur Eliasson at Tate Modern. I’d only ever seen Eliasson’s work on screen before, but experiencing it in person is something else entirely. I loved all of it, but Foggy Tunnel (Screaming Child) was an entirely new sensation, both terrifying and beautiful. This show combined with his episode of the new season of Abstract … I have a new art crush.

• Talking of art crushes, it was a pleasant surprise to find a few rooms dedicated to Ed Ruscha. I adore that man.

• The Big Book Look. This is what I was down for – the annual book cover talk at St Bride Foundation. I rarely get to spend any time with other book designers in person, so it’s always a joy attending these things. Lots of speakers this year, all talking about the dreaded brief “it has to look like a big book” brief, whatever the heck that means. Particular highlight: Jack Noel’s mathematic approach to defining genre.

• A slightly hungover morning at the V&A. How has it taken me so long to discover this place?! It’s absolutely magical. I aimed for the photography and architecture rooms, but kept getting distracted en route. What a fantastic place to get lost in. I was wearing particularly clacky brogues, so each room had its own particular sound – a whole aspect of the museum experience I’d never even considered before.

• I found a comfy bench in one of the rooms, and hunkered down for a couple of hours to put this month’s Creative Review column together. So much nicer than my desk – I’m tempted to always write it there.

• Orc’s Nest. Okay so it isn’t exactly a world-renowned gallery or anything, but I remember seeing adverts for this little wargame shop in White Dwarf some thirty years ago, so finally stepping foot inside felt kind of important to me. Now regret not buying a t-shirt.

• National Portrait Gallery. Always great, always a bit oo crowded for my liking. The pieces in this year’s BP Portrait Award exhibition were incredible, but I couldn’t elbow my way to any of the captions, so no idea who painted who.

• And finally I departed from Kings Cross. Shout out to the chap in WHS who picked up Creative Review, flicked to the back page, sighed and then put it back on the shelf. Thanks for that.

World of the Unknown: Ghosts

Rather excitingly, the new edition of World of the Unknown: Ghosts arrived in the post today. The reprint came about thanks to Usborne’s Anna Howorth, who campaigned for it after a tweet about the 1977 book got a huge response – it would appear that it was an early gateway to horror for a lot of people around my age. There’s a bit about that tweet-to-print journey here. Aside from a new foreword by Reece Shearsmith and a few choice quotes on the back page (including, somehow, me), it’s absolutely identical to the original. Hopefully the love will continue and the others titles in the series – Monsters and UFOs – will get a similar treatment.

Films

Some very small reviews of recent films:

• Rams. Yet another brilliant documentary from Gary Hustwit. Watching it, I could feel a Vitsoe-shaped hole burning into my wallet. Would gladly watch an extended cut with more of Dieter Rams waving his walking stick of judgment at the contents of the Vitra Design Museum.

• It Chapter Two. Not as good as the first, and it is very long (although that kind of feels right – I recall the original going on forever), but still a lot of fun. And the casting-up is spot on.

• Overlord. Remember watching Band of Brothers for the first time and thinking this really needs a random Resident Evil episode? Watched in black and white, because why not. Not much to it, but it looked fabulous.

• Happy Death Day. Really rather fun. Tone and setting reminded me a lot of Scream 2. Jessica Rothe is particularly good – a little bit Jodie Comer, a little bit Rachel McAdams. The second one isn’t as good, but deserves points for weaving in and out and around the first.

• Fast Five. First of these I’ve seen since the first one, many years ago. Rather fun, in an “Ocean’s 11 fanfic written by a teenager who is trying his best to avoid some very big questions about his sexuality” kind of way.

• Searching. Fantastic. Does marvellous things within the constraints of its high concept. And it completely Up’d me within the first ten minutes.

• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Spent most of it thinking, where is this going? Nice to look at – it’s well worth checking out Clothes on Film’s costume analysis – but felt like two or three better films mashed into one (see also: Toy Story 4). Mostly just made me want to revisit The Quick and the Dead.

• Ralph Breaks the Internet. Enjoy screaming “well that makes no sense whatsoever” at the Cars movies? You’re going to love this!

• The Emoji Movie. Imagine if Inside Out and Ralph Breaks the Internet had a baby. And then you dropped it.

More of this sort of thing on my Letterboxd profile.

Peter Mendelsund

I recently interviewed Peter Mendelsund for Spine magazine; mostly about his fantastic debut novel, Same Same, and the connections between writing and designing. One question I almost didn’t ask, because I thought it was dumb and the answer obvious, would he ever consider letting someone else design the cover for one of his books? He surprised me with an effusive YES.

It’s very, very hard. I made so many covers for this thing. In the end I needed someone else to choose one for me. For my next novel (The Delivery, pubbing in 2020, FSG) I’m going to let someone else do it for me. For the first time. I can’t go through it all again. I have no perspective on the thing. No arm’s length at all.

Questionable moral of the story: ask dumb questions.

Peter Mendelsund

In recent years, Peter Mendelsund has been shifting his career from designing books to writing them. The former Associate Art Director of Alfred A. Knopf already has a couple of non-fiction titles to his name – What We See When We Read and Cover, with another, The Look of the Book, on the way – and has now stepped into fiction with Same Same, a twisting metafictional meditation on creativity. I asked him a few questions about this latest adventure between the covers.

Book tours, editors, interviews, etc. – it's a heck of a shift from the solitary calm of the cover designer. What is it like seeing the other side of the publishing circus?

It’s amazingly satisfying! First off, I’m not sure my life as a designer was ever particularly calm. Working in-house meant that I was constantly at the beck-and-call of editors, marketers, sales team members, publicists, production folks … basically anyone who felt that I owed them something. As an addendum to this thought: it never particularly mattered how well-received my work might be in the world; how much I read; how much I wrote; how adept or credentialed I was as a consumer and critic of prose; how much I knew about the marketplace or the business of selling books…. I was always, in that job, looked at as an underling. As a member of a service bureau. So there was that. This also meant that the sheer volume of work—especially at the beginning of my career in design—was staggering. And mostly of the stupid, “I don’t’ like what you made, make something else,” variety (or worse, the “keep what you made, but make all the elements of what you made different.”)

Writing though, is solitary, and calm, as you put it. I have lots and lots of time alone now, serving no one and nothing but my own taste. I get to decide was works and doesn’t. I’m not attending the whims of capricious and often under-informed deciders and gate-keepers. It’s heaven. I honestly don’t know how designers and art directors stay in these positions of subservience for so long. It would’ve driven me mad after a while. 

I truly enjoy working with editors now: but as the talent, rather than as the servant. My new editor at FSG is incredibly erudite, keen person and professional. I trust his judgement about my writing implicitly. 

In terms of interviews, the only difficulty I have is trying not to repeat myself.

It's billed as a homage to Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. Did that feel like a natural fit, interpreting an existing text into something new?

That’s so interesting. It never occurred to me that there was something structurally similar between the act of writing of this novel and the idea of re-interpreting a text as a cover. Huh. I guess it was a natural fit! 

I do have to say, my preoccupation throughout the year of the novel’s writing was with the ideas of duplication, simulacra, commoditization, recapitulation, and hyperreality. The ways in which everything—or at least every consumable artifact—is essentially a copy or collage of some preexisting material. So, I suppose what I’m saying here is that it is also true that everything is an homage, and a re-interpretation. 

Same Same is filled with procrastination and blank page anxiety and the struggles of motivation – are you exorcising some demons?

They say “write what you know,” and, while one is writing one’s first novel, all one knows is: the writing of one’s first novel. 

It seemed somehow more honest to let the facts of my life as an aspiring novelist colonize the text than to concoct something new or resurrect some older biographical material. And, as it happens, I did spend a fair amount of time during the composition of the book combating ennui, frustration, despair. There were doldrums and longeurs. Writing a large novel is a form of insanity. And so the novel took that form. The hardest thing about writing a novel is the sheer strength of will it takes to stay at the thing, in the face of boredom, confusion, anxiety…It’s very hard actually. So yes, the book became jam-packed with my worries about making books.

What's your writing routine like? Do you write where you design?

I write in the mornings and at night (at home), and on the subway (often I’ll email myself a chapter I’ve written on my phone from the train) and in any free moment at work (on a laptop). I don’t design really anymore, so there isn’t, in fact, a place where I design. Sometimes I write freehand, sometimes on the computer. Sometimes I’ll text a passage to myself. I have no set routines, and don’t fetishize any either. It seems like the important thing about writing is that you write. By hook or by crook. Words on the page. Accumulate them, hour by hour, day after day.

You illustrate with type throughout the book, playing with the constraints of prose text to create diagrams of scenes. Do you find yourself switching to design mode in the middle of writing?

Ha. Yes. It seems strange for writers to ignore the shapes and colors made by typography on a page. I can’t not see pictures in things. But for Same Same I wanted to explore, in a playful fashion, the various ways in which these “pictures” can be constructed through the arrangements of words. This is, in fact, more like concrete poetry than design really. By which I suppose I mean, super lo fi, and heavily constrained in terms of technique. I don’t think of these prose pictures as pretty, or smart or compelling in anyway. It’s all just me exploring the idea of things standing in for other things in an almost extra-linguistic way. It is the same reason that I included charts, lists, word maps and interviews in the book as well. A novel is, like it or not, a visual medium on some level. We’ve just trained ourselves not to see words as pictures, but rather transparent signifiers.

So what's it like designing covers for your own work? Is it easier or harder to work without that layer of reinterpretation?

It’s very, very hard. I made so many covers for this thing. In the end I needed someone else to choose one for me. For my next novel (The Delivery, pubbing in 2020, FSG) I’m going to let someone else do it for me. For the first time. I can’t go through it all again. I have no perspective on the thing. No arm’s length at all. 

Originally for Spine

Day of the Tentacle

Fantastic long read on the making of Day of the Tentacle, one of the greatest games of all time (hyperbole be damned, it’s just true). Disney are sitting on this and a few other point-and-click classics (notably Monkey Island games and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis) – it’ll be interesting to see if they have any Bandersnatch-style plans to remake them for Disney+

BLDG BLOG

BLDGBLOG – Geoff Manaugh’s utterly wonderful architecture/built environment/everything blog has just turned fifteen, and is still one of my favourite rabbit holes on the web. One of those writers whose words immediately make you feel a little bit smarter. I’m very aware that I use the word “fascinating” an awful lot – I struggle to limit it to one or two instances per newsletter – but his book A Burglar’s Guide to the City is ffaasscciinnaattiinngg and I heartily recommended it to all known humans.

Stranger Songs

Currently playing on loop in my studio, Ingrid Michaelson’s Stranger Songs, an album of eleven (natch) songs inspired by Stranger Things. Nowhere near as naff as the concept sounds, it’s really rather lovely, even if you’re not a fan of the show. Imagine a sci-fi-romantic Roxette. It’s also a good excuse to delve into PopJustice, another longtime favourite blog.

Modulex

Somehow the existence of Modulex, a line of smaller-scale LEGO bricks, designed in the 1960s specifically for use by architects, had passed me by completely. As well as the bricks themselves (such pretty, pretty bricks), this potted history is worth a look for the beautiful packaging design. Time to hit eBay methinks …

Mr Bingo

Don’t forget to have fun – Lewd correspondent Mr Bingo has just added miniature concrete gravestones to his shop, and they’re really quite delightful. I could do with a new memento mori for my desk – the boy has pinched my LEGO skull for his own nefarious purposes – so this will do nicely.

Ottobiography

Otto Preminger talking to Roger Ebert about his memoirs in 1977:

“You know you are really missing the best part of the book. The cover. It was designed by Saul Bass, who came to me and said, ‘Otto, do you mind if we run the back of your head on the front of the book, and the front of your head on the back? You know you really look much better from behind.’”

I’d never seen this Bass design before, but I love the simplicity and wit of it – especially the way both images are framed to favour the back of his head, making the face-on shot weirdly cropped. Trying to think of other books that use the reverse angle of the cover on the back, but coming up blank.

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.

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.