Saturday, 31 January 2015
Thursday, 29 January 2015
Tuesday, 27 January 2015
New Print: Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumours' As A Series Of Books
My new print, available exclusively from the Standard Designs Etsy shop, is Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album ‘Rumours’ as if the band had written it as a collection of novels instead of songs.
To see more, and to order one for yourself (or the Fleetwood Mac fan in your life), visit standarddesigns.etsy.com now.
Sunday, 25 January 2015
The 1970s: Corn Cobs And Meat In Erotic Soft Focus
1970s food photography is, typically, quite crazy. Lots of soft focus, lots of either lurid or very dark backgrounds, lots of trying *rather too hard* to look ‘inviting’. So I was thrilled (?) today to pick up this 1977 Penguin at the local country park secondhand bookshop (another 10p bargain). The cover’s so of-its-time… enjoy the full wraparound.
Tuesday, 20 January 2015
Blood On The Tracks: Bob Dylan's 1975 Album Reimagined As A Set Of Books
My second print of 2015 commemorates an album that was released exactly 40 years ago: Bob Dylan’s ‘Blood On The Tracks’. Here it’s reimagined as if it had been written as a series of novels instead of songs. The print is available now in the Standard Designs Etsy shop.
As with all my albums-as-books prints, each book represents one of the tracks of the album, and they’re all arranged in the original track order.
Also, the books used have been chosen specifically for their colours, so that overall they reflect the colours seen in the original album cover artwork.
For the book-loving Dylan fan it’s the ideal gift. Visit the Standard Designs Etsy shop for more details.
Monday, 19 January 2015
The real reason why Lidl is becoming a dominant force in the...
The real reason why Lidl is becoming a dominant force in the supermarket world - their bread/roll/croissant-baking machines play a pleasant minimalist composition once they’re finished baking (and as long as no staff are there to interrupt the gently phasing melodies of two or more baking machines playing at once).
Saturday, 10 January 2015
Confessions Of A Penguin Thesaurus
I bought this 1954 Penguin Roget’s Thesaurus in our local park’s secondhand bookshop yesterday for just 10p. Interesting to read the entries on pages where the book’s spine has been stretched open - the words the previous user might have needed to look up the most. They include:
Disagreement, Oldness, Softness, Irresolution, Plea, Fatigue, Restraint, Resignation, Discontent, Irascibility.
Read into that what you will…
Thursday, 8 January 2015
Everybody's Somebody Unless You're On The Cover Of A Book
This is a close-up of a tiny section of the front cover of an old Ladybird Book (‘you know, for kids’, to steal Tim Robbins’ line from ‘The Hudsucker Proxy’ for a moment). A bunch of gawping bystanders stand by and gawp at the main action (a park keeper rescues a boy who’s fallen through the ice of a frozen lake). They’re characterful but anonymous. Whatever happened to these figments of somebody’s imagination? What are they doing now? Still gawping?
Wednesday, 7 January 2015
Tyger! Tyger! Selling cereal/In the forests of the past
Spotted the other day in my local hyper-uber-mega-supermarket: Kellogg’s rolling out back-catalogue designs, including a Norman Rockwell Santa on the Cornflakes and this very simple & pretty Tony the Tiger on the Frosties. This does much to explain why orange and blue has always been my favourite complementary colour pairing.