Ezra Furman and other adventures

Popped down to London last week, primarily to see Ezra Furman at the Camden Roundhouse. She was incredible. All the songs I love, played with soul and rage and love. Plus I firmly believe all gigs should feature one cover – no more, no less – and her version of Because the Night was sensational. One of the best shows of my life, up there with PJ Harvey at Somerset House and That Time Dina Carroll Definitely Made Prolonged Eye Contact With Me At Wembley Arena While Singing Don’t Be A Stranger.

Also managed to squeeze in all sorts of extra-gigular activities while I was there. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s squeezing the most out of a topped-up Oyster card:

• Stuffing a random paperback from my tsundoku pile into my overnight bag, I finally got around to starting Stephen King’s On Writing on the train down. Part memoir, part lesson; I don’t want it to end. If you write, read this.

• The Chris Killip retrospective at The Photographers’ Gallery blew me away. A black and white journey through the industrial landscape and inhabitants of 70s/80s Northern England; it’s so good seeing these images off-screen and in all their printly glory. Massively recommended – it runs until 19th of February, do catch it if you can. And if you can’t, the mammoth book version of the exhibition is rather nice.

• Loitering in the gallery shop (one of my favourite pastimes) with physical media still on my mind, I kept coming back to the new Polaroid Now+. Sure, it’s some way from the beauty of the collapsible SX-70, but it’s still satisfyingly real. The addition of app-enabled manual controls lifts it above a mere point-and-shoot. Might have a word with Santa.

• After some getting lost in the shifting Dark City streets of Soho, I managed to find Gosh! Comics and laid down my pocket money for the rather splendid first issues of the new Secret Invasion and Fantastic Four runs. Both written by Ryan North – after bingeing my way through The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl earlier this year, I will gladly gobble up anything he puts his name to. Which reminds me, I really must learn how to take over the world.

• Still clinging to that teenage notion that going to the cinema in the West End is the very height of glamour, I popped into Picturehouse Central to see The Banshees of Inisherin. I have mixed feelings about Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards … but this was just beautiful. Everyone in it is great, but if Jenny the donkey doesn’t win an Oscar, there’s something profoundly wrong with this universe.

Dolf Kruger

Given how often I find myself muttering it while perusing the internet, I’m starting to think “it looks like something out of a Simon Stålenhag book” should be my official motto. For example, there’s plenty you could say about this 1957 Dolf Kruger photograph of the Brussels Atomium under construction but dammit … it looks like something out of a Simon Stålenhag book.

How old-school writing tools will boost your creativity, concentration and speed. Totally related to this. I spend far too much time succumbing to the “freedom” of the computer; copying and pasting and shuffling things around, rather than actually writing. I can’t remember the last time I started something at the beginning and then wrote a linear progression of thoughts until I reached the end. I spiral around a subject, my thoughts unable to … sorry, you’re basically just reading me talk myself into going typewriter shopping now.

Love & Friendship

Last week I finally watched Whit Stillman’s 2016 film Love & Friendship (based, a tad confusingly, on Jane Austen's Lady Susan rather than Love & Friendship) and my word it is rather good – and funny. Kate Beckinsale is particularly glorious. So anyway, I showed my appreciation by designing a poster for it. As you do.

OutHorse

There are simply no words to describe how much I love everything about Iceland’s innovative new OutHorse Your Email service. How have I still never visited this absurd, wonderful country?

CR

After ten years, I’ve wrapped up my regular Creative Review column. Have a delve through the archive to read me babbling on about desks and comics and social media and spines and colour and stationery and typefaces and flaneurism and indices and indecision and mental spillage.

Mishka Henner

Mishka Henner's work explores and subverts the value of photography in today's media-saturated world. And it’s fun. Personal favourites: the scale model of our solar system in book form; power stations’ evaporation ponds composed from satellite imagery; and the series of paintings of – and priced according to – the Fibonacci sequence.

Sungi Mlengeya

I found Tanzanian artist Sungi Mlengeya’s paintings … okay so I forget where. She’s been living in my browser for six months, a monochromatic oasis of calm I’ll occasionally linger on while coasting from tab to tab. Her positive-as-negative use of space, as with Rozenn Le Gall’s work on fields of black in last week’s Meanwhile, it's like catnip to a book designer. So striking from a bookshelf, so much space for copy! The “early works” bit of her site is worth a look, where you can trace the development of her approach from one painting to the next; the always-fascinating artists’ journey to a signature style. Intrigued to see where she goes with it next.

Rozenn Le Gall

I first discovered Rozenn Le Gall’s work on the cover of Rebeka Elizegi’s excellent collection Collage by Women; a simple but striking juxtaposition of face and feet. Immediate and distinctive, her pieces are particularly well-suited to book design; just one or two carefully selected and composed elements against a spacious, solid … I want to say field? Backdrop? Substrate? Do we need better/more technical terminology for collage? Or perhaps it’s already out there and I haven’t found it? Anyway, I’ve gone and distracted myself, basically her work is fab and worth exploring further. Here’s a few of my favourites.

ABCD

It was a massive joy to attend the ninth ABCD (Academy of British Cover Design) awards last week, celebrating the best covers of the past year. Book design is a fantastic industry and community to work in, so any excuse for us all to converge on one place for a knees up is most welcome. Too often we’re just names behind emails – there was an awful lot of oh so that’s what you look like! – so it was good to finally meet people I’ve worked with for years. Massive thank you to organisers Jamie Keenan and Jon Gray for continuing to make this a thing.