Merry Christmas from Yeats County

Christmas Deadline for Orders from Standard Designs

Just to let you know, I’m taking orders in the Standard Designs shop only until 7AM GMT Wednesday 18 December (i.e. tomorrow). Orders placed after that will be dispatched on 3 January 2014. It’s Christmaaaaaaaaaas! etc.



http://standarddesigns.etsy.com/

Turnable Kitchen’s Holiday Gift Guide: Music And Vinyl Records | Turntable Kitchen

Turnable Kitchen’s Holiday Gift Guide: Music And Vinyl Records | Turntable Kitchen:

Turntable Kitchen has my Radiohead In Rainbows print at No. 1 in their festive rundown. Sweeeeet!

Pottery Through The Ages

A Pelican from 1959. Am digging the just-stick-the-title-on-the-cover-Fred use of Albertus. Am digging less the cat-lion-thingy. Still, not bad for 10s/6d.

Scientific Research

From 1956.

Quizkids 1960

Lucky brainboxers were well served with enchanting geometric designs back then.

Gill Sans and Perjury

After seeing how the old war horse Gill Sans was pushed and pulled about in this little sign at our registry office yesterday I have to admit that perjury was the last thing on my mind. Mission accomplished, little A6 vertical sign!

James - Laid

My new albums-as-books print is of James’ 1993 album ‘Laid’. A core slice of tuneful, writerly goodness, given a delicate polish and the occasional synth wash by producer Brian Eno. An album for all occasions, really.

I’m very, very busy with new prints and other such flittery matters… of which, more soon.

This James print is available right now in my Standard Designs Etsy shop. Enjoy!

Coming Soon in Late-1960s Academia...

Personally I can’t wait to get my hands on ‘Statistical Analysis in Biology’. I hear it’s a hoot.

Read around the Fountain: Standard Designs re-imagines classic Smiths’ albums as books

Read around the Fountain: Standard Designs re-imagines classic Smiths’ albums as books:

Back in 1986 the Smiths drew their literary battle lines with distinct passion, as Morrissey famously offers up in “Cemetery Gates” that “Keats and Yeats are on…

Vanyaland in Boston has a lovely write-up of my Smiths albums-as-books prints.

Isosceles International Airport

I love it when Air Traffic Control goes all Pythagoras above me.

IKEA Chocolate Is An Object Lesson In Pan-Continental Empiricism

I love this packaging. It simply says:

This is a big slab of brown something-or-other, and at the same time you buy it there will be many, many people across Europe speaking all kinds of languages you couldn’t possibly ever learn, not all of them, who are also buying it too. And to quote Keats, ‘That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know’.

Or something like that. I can confirm however that it is indeed 63p worth of happiness.

LS Lowry at Tate Britain

The Lowry show at Tate Britan (until 20 Oct) is, if not a greatest hits show, full of great hits. Over only a handful of rooms you get an impression of an artist who was not only consistent in his technique but also in his world view (which then informed his technique). It’s relentless, but the relatively small scale of the show means it ends leaving you wanting more. At least, it did with me.

And here’s a very nice 1957 BBC documentary on Lowry. There’s another one on the Tate website from the late 1960s or early 1970s, I think, which shows him working at the same easel, with the same painty piece of board behind it, as seen here. That’s what it’s all about.

A Panther Is A Pelican. Almost.

This past weekend’s book-buying turned up this head-scratcher. The Penguin/Pelican cover layout has been aped often of course, but this… I like on its own merits. I think.

London Transport Museum

ten awesome dorm room posters from etsy - that girl magazine

ten awesome dorm room posters from etsy - that girl magazine:

That Girl magazine has my Jean-Paul Sartre print in their Dorm Room Posters feature. Très bien.

Barnett Newman/Penguin Plays

When they’re this sparse (and this contrasty) Penguin Plays paperbacks really remind me of Barnett Newman.

William Haggard: The Telemann Touch

From 1966: A radioactive green Penguin Books logo on the front cover (the main photograph is taken, I believe, from p.102 of ‘How Not to Take Photographs At Night’). What irks me most though are the blurb colours on the back cover. Crazy! (in a very low-key way).

Depeche Mode/Electronic Beats

My Depeche Mode ‘Music for the Masses’ print is Electronic Beats’ Picture of the Day today (Monday 12 August 2013). Nice.

The Art of Simon James: Band Albums Reimagined as Classic Paperbacks

The Art of Simon James: Band Albums Reimagined as Classic Paperbacks:

Bookriot.com has some very complimentary things to say about my prints. I am suitably chuffed.

Literary Condiments

This caught my eye in one of our many local supermarkets today. How I wish this was some kind of celebrity sauce cash-in by Anthony Burgess. If it was, imagine how complex the recipe would be (and full of references too, although half of them would be to Beethoven).

Mentionings

It’s always a treat to find other people have picked up my work, liked it and told the world about it. Last week BuzzFeed ran an article entitled ‘32 Dorm Room Posters That Won’t Make You Feel Like A Living Cliché’, and my Smiths ‘The Queen Is Dead’ print was in with a bullet at no. 31:

Today Domestic Sluttery have mentioned my Stone Roses print in their article ‘Spine Thrillers: Beautiful Things for Bookworms’:

Consider my cockles well and truly warmed.

More Stone Roses

The Stone Roses blog ‘Spiral Through Another Day’ has posted a nice mention of my new Roses print here.

Gold Goldsmith Gold

There’s something about ornate 1870s-1910s book covers that’s just too… ornate. Too much going on, as if they’re trying to go one better than the (usually mountain of) words within. But I saw this one in Waterstones on Gower Street this lunchtime and was quite impressed. It’s relatively restrained… relatively.

1904

The front cover of this book was punchy enough to get me to pick it up, but the back cover was slam-bang crazy enough to get me to buy it. Those large letters TBE, the strange geometric ribbon at the bottom, the publisher’s logo top right… it’s barely holding itself together.

Home Town Doctor Conundrum

I’m guessing the answer to this question is ‘No’.

Le monde intérieur

I don’t think this cover has enough visual metaphors for its subject matter. Oh no, wait, it does.

Taking Crazy Pills

This 1979 Penguin is m-e-s-s-e-d u-p. The green background to the Penguin logo on the front, with CRIME in all caps just below it, and the blue Pelican spine. Little wonder then the man in the rather disturbing cover photo is having some almighty kind of brainwrong.

Our Language

This Pelican (A227, first published 1950, this reprint 1961) is semi-weird. But the back is stranger (in a very quiet sort of way):

What’s with the big ‘Published by Penguin Books’ thing? Crazy year, 1961.

Penguin War Tube

Shades of Penguin in these WWII posters, I’d say.

Taken from this wonderful book.

The Disinherited Mind

Pelican A527, published in 1961. Hmmmm.

Write-up Round-up

My Albums-As-Books prints are getting a good deal of attention in the webisphere at the moment. Here’s a selection of links to the articles:

Life & Style Mexico

A Piece of Monologue

Crome Yellow

LifeBoxSet

The uman nima

Bold wraparound choice from the 1960s.

Openculture.com

There’s a rather nice little mention of my Radiohead prints on openculture.com today. Thanks, Dan!

The Cure

Ah, The Cure. The hairspray, the lipstick, the refreshingly easy-to-copy guitar lines. I’ve had a soft spot (or, should that be, a soft smudge) for them ever since, as a teenager, a friend played me ‘Dressing Up’ from ‘The Top’. I’ve been revisiting their albums recently, and I’ve made a few new prints in my albums-as-books series. Above is my print for their 1989 album ‘Disintegration’.

Next is ‘Faith’ from 1981 (‘All Cats Are Grey’ from this album is easily one of my Top 5 Cure songs):

And finally, ‘The Head on the Door’ from 1986:

(I don’t know where my vinyl album of this is but, wherever it is, I bet it’s super-thin considering the number of times I played it.)

I could write quite a lot about how and why these are great albums. But the main thing is it’s impressive that almost 30 years after I first played some of them they still give me goosebumps. Well done, Messrs Smith et al!

The prints are now available in my shop.

The Comprehensive School

I have no idea what these boys are cooking up and, frankly, I don’t want to know.

German Perpetual Calendar

I’d love one of these. Via presentandcorrect.com

New Order - Substance 1987

Here’s my latest New Order album-as-books print. It’s their 1987 compilation album ‘Substance’ (or more accurately ‘Substance 1987’), which contains all their great early singles including ‘Blue Monday’, ‘State of the Nation’, ‘Thieves Like Us’ and so on up to ‘True Faith’.

I thought it’d be good to use a compilation of different Penguin and Pelican books for this one (instead of the more ordered look of the ‘Power, Corruption and Lies’ print, which I think will be the model for future New Order ones). It’s kind of to reflect the similarities and differences between the songs - different synths and drum machines, the increasing influence of the 12” single and remix culture on song composition as you go through the album, etc. Fact-fans will note that the title of the single ‘Sub-culture’ is written ‘Subculture’ here - that’s how it’s (mis)labeled on the original vinyl release. In life, as in the tawdry world of music publishing, it’s the little things that make all the difference.

The print’s available in my shop here.

Tom Eckersley

A great, somewhat eerie Tom Eckersley watercolour from 1961 in the National Railway Museum archive. Found via Quad Royal. Lincolnshire looks… empty.

electronicbeats.net

Very excited about this. The lovely people at electronicbeats.net have made my New Order/Power, Corruption & Lies print their Picture Of The Day. Excellent!

Kraftwerk

Here finally is my new set of albums-as-books prints - all seven of Kraftwerk’s main studio albums from ‘Autobahn’ to ‘Tour de France Soundtracks’. They’re now available in my shop (with a special humdinger of an offer where you can get all seven for the price of five).

Here’s the first one - Autobahn:

Next is Radio-Activity:

This is Trans-Europe Express:

Here’s The Man-Machine:

Computer World:

Electric Café:

And finally, Tour de France Soundtracks:

I’ve loved Kraftwerk since the mid-70s, when bits of ‘Autobahn’ were used continually as background music for TV documentaries and even schools programmes. With this set of prints I wanted to replicate some of that feel - simple but complicated, analogue but precise. They demanded something different from the Penguin books I’ve used in my recent Smiths, Joy Division and New Order prints. On a recent book-buying trip I found some shelves full of university mathematics text books and - bingo - an idea was formed.

Just super stuff. Simple, austere, but with something quite cryptically human about them. So I’ve gone for a textbook look on these prints. I made them to work as blocks of colour with subtle tonal variations, like late-50s/early-60s New York abstract painting - and to work together, in pairs or trios or as an entire set.