JOHNNY BULLETINS

Valentine fun: Graphic hearts and salvage

2012-01-20T13:26:00.000Z

A few things that have surfaced as I try and 'internationalise' my work and sell with a degree of optimism that has so far eluded me as I stare woefully at a khaki coloured mudscape and think more dismal thoughts about the immediate environment. I'm desperate to find a bigger audience for all this stuff, and the chance that someone in Germany or Japan, or wherever, will see something they like, means that I have to spend so much time networking that it's become a more pressing task than sitting down and creating images. I'm on Google+, Facebook, Twitter and Posterous and I have a growing number of outlets on Zazzle... More later, but meanwhile, here's some Valentine imagery that I didn't have the heart to trash!

Dare 2 Festival: Chore-free design

2012-01-17T16:44:00.005Z

LOGO-FREE ZONE

Jeeeze, it's been a while since the last post, but since I don't blog from home, I haven't really had time to catch up. There's another festival looming, well, looming as Summer has every right to be in this iron-cold January day, and I've had a lot of fun over the weekend getting some images prepared for this family-friendly get-together.

Taking place in July on a farm in mystical, magical Tollard Royal (which sounds like a very expensive and debonair cigarette from the '20s) I've tried to give it some energetic imagery, colourful, poppy and animated in approach; something that tries to express the atmosphere as well as giving the event some imagery to promote it. I think it shouldn't have a logo as such. The name is the logo. And the sound.

Hey, I dared 2 do a no-logo poster!

Joyeux Noël. Christmas cards are a pain to come up with...

2011-12-09T13:17:00.001Z

SHOP #8 LE FOLIE DU PAIN

A bit last minute, but I thought it would be fun to use this really festive bread shop as a card.

My wife and I were thinking along the lines of The Folie and The Ivy, Christmas shopping being a pain etc... Then I thought of my very favourite part of the Christmas food galaxy; the perfect accompaniment to turkey... et voila.

Always make your bread sauce the night before (sit up at the back), or, at least put an onion (studded with cloves) in some milk with a bay leaf, and bring to the boil. Then turn the heat off. So on Christmas morning, get rid of the onion and chuck in your (freshly grated) white breadcrumbs and bring back slowly to the boil... Then add some double cream and a cloud of pepper. I think nutmeg might make an appearance, but anyway, my brother, who is a great cook, likes to blend half the onion and add to the mixture. It's nice. I've got to go. I'm hungry!

The time has come for all good Gooners...

2011-11-18T12:09:00.001Z

HIGHBURY 7. 5. 06 (Put yourself in the picture!)

To come to the aid of the party. That party. The last game at the Highbury Stadium. If you weren't there, then you can be, now. I want to fill this picture up with Gooners young and old, big and small, to send off to the Royal Academy as a huge print as a candidate for inclusion in the Summer Exhibition. Where you'll be seen by millions...

Send a jpeg (head to toe, preferably, so you can be treated in my inimitable style). I want as many as possible to chuck into this merry throng, leaving the beautiful ground for the last time... so pass this on to anyone who supports the most deserving team on the planet. That means you, Chris, and your mates, and you, Arsene, I can put you up in the front with Charlie George.

Players and fans, Gooners and Goonerettes! I want to create an football image with a difference; something with a bit of taste and creativity. A bit like Arsenal in fact.

Please send your photos to me as soon as you can! They don't have to be hi-res; I can sort that out.

Do it now to make sure you get into the most memorable bit of football imagery ever.

Halloween: What's it all about, halfwit?

2011-10-21T18:27:00.002+01:00

I know I haven't got a commercial bone in my body now. I used to have a passable talent for following a brief, and delivering on or ahead of the deadline, but... For a shameful and humiliating bout of time, I've been trying to design a sell-able Halloween print, or some image exploiting the usual: owls, pumpkins, ghosts, snaggly trees, zombies (actually not too sure about that one) cats and bones. I remember really cool Halloween parties; improvised ghoulery is lovely, messy fun. Now it's gone corporate, with slave illustrators trotting out their depressing stuff.

The whole kitsch carnival of abysmal badly drawn stuff is right here, on my screen. and I have nothing in my robust and versatile armoury to improve on it all. Nada. Nix. So here it is, the result of my struggles with the empire of dross, my anti-gift for this tawdry celebration of kiddie blackmail.

Trains, Boats, Tractors and Ponies: Exhibition preview at Smith & Williamson

2011-10-20T12:50:00.000+01:00

Yes, it's the kind of gig David Cameron would give his eye-teeth to be at. It's just so big society. Well it's Salisbury so it can't get much posher.

In fact Smith & Williamson are a firm of accountants who always have space available for artists' work; they have an opening night and they have the pleasure (and their super-rich, art connoisseur clientele) of looking at nice pictures for a few weeks, I'm hoping that I'll make enough on the night, that I'll be flush enough to hand over my financial affairs to them, but it's a fairly hefty hope...

They're local and they're located in the old library building in Chipper Lane.

I'll chuck a map on here in a minute... The building is beautiful, and you can see the original French Shop pictures that caused so much fuss in Homes and Gardens recently (I'm no stranger to controversy) and look at the famous Queen Mary print, while downing glasses of chilly Muscadet or whatever they've got on offer at Majestic. They've got a lovely panelled boardroom where you mill contedly around Polo Match and Skaters. Oh and there's three very fetching Italian images...

More valley ghosts: 2012 Chalke Valley History Festival

2011-10-11T10:38:00.002+01:00

“To promote the entertainment and relevance of history to the widest possible audience so as to furnish it with enough sense of the past to make sense of the future.”

Last year's Chalke Valley History Festival was an outrageous, runaway success. It actually made a profit, and the feedback was all positive. I didn't start working on it until May last year and the work on the graphics for the brochure, the advertising and the all the attendant bits and pieces took all the time from first meeting to opening.

This year I've started designing early. We're producing postcards and letterheads to prepare the ground visually as prospective speakers, sponsors and advertisers are contacted. And those who were aware of the previous look will see that nothing fundamental has changed: the subjects drift transparently around a now luminous green valley; the Hawker Typhoon just airborne hints at Antony Beevor or James Holland. I've still to add Thomas Cromwell and a few more visual clues to produce an interesting, as well as arresting cover for a bigger brochure, for a bigger festival.

Oh, and a Trojan Horse...and Elizabeth David

Speak The Culture: All Poland in two colours

2011-10-03T12:03:00.000+01:00

Speak The Culture Books are more than paperbacks on business and travel; they aim to supply readable, witty insights into the living and historical fabric of a particular country. Business is more than just turning up at a client's office, shaking hands on a contract and getting the next plane home. Well, I imagine that getting to know a client is as important a part of the job as analysing the business. Even accountants are known to be forced into the odd bar and made to down a drink or two in the cause of profitable detente...

Even if language is a barrier, the Speak The Culture aim is to provide any traveller, not just the business flyer, with bite-sized chunks of memorable information that, as well as providing several conversational entrées that will endear you to your host, they help to establish the character of the country visited; and the illustrations that I love doing for them, do their best to make the information memorable. They are limited to 2 colours, but instead of opting for dreary duotones, the range of effects is made as wide as possible. This selection from Speak The Culture:Poland shows how Rubine Red and Black work hard to make the most of their limited resources.

All Yesterday's Parties: Celebration of a celebration

2011-08-22T12:54:00.001+01:00

These are fun to do: images commissioned from scratch. Pictures of parties, weddings or anything that's worthy of making into a picture. The more photographs you send the better (the location can of course be photographed after the event). You can have carnival colour, or you can have colour that's subtle, or you may not have a view on it until you see a proof, then you might want to change it. It's all possible.

The images are colour-soaked giclée prints, and the quality is always superb; remember 'giclée' is just a posh word for inkjet, but there are a few more colours to achieve the richness and density that your desktop printer couldn't offer. They can also be made quite large. Very large if you want.

I've produced this image using a photograph of Compton Verney in Warwickshire (a massive Georgian pile, that you can hire for parties, incidentally) that I took a few years back, and dotted the grounds with the unlikeliest assortment of revellers plus a few bits of fauna, inspired by the Turners at Petworth House.

So, if you can imagine, a large (or not so large), colourful (or not so colourful) and beautiful image that records an occasion in the way you want to remember it, then drop me a line; this occasion might have happened, or it's yet to happen, it doesn't matter. You'll have a beautiful picture which is about you and your mates, who were there at a time, a place, an event that you'll never forget.

In praise of Doug Binder: The dream teacher

2011-08-14T13:50:00.006+01:00

DOUG BINDER TODAY. PAINTING SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL

My first recollection as an art student at Portsmouth in late '68 was marked by a sit-down strike by all pupils and young staff in an effort to shake things up a bit, I think... I don't think it lasted very long: a couple of days, maybe... There was quite a bit of shouting, friendly and not so friendly barracking; students were elected to various posts and the politically-charged echoes of the Hornsey sit-in (big news at the time) subsided and vanished completely. The tear gas had long evaporated from the Left Bank; the world was becoming quiet again, even Cream were giving up the ghost, but the New Yardbirds (later Led Zeppelin) came to Kimbell's Ballroom. They were louder – no songs about rainbows or the colours of your mind – but essentially the still-molten power-trio template (plus proto-metal voice) being hammered into a emblematic and durable business.

But what the fuck did I know? I loved Portsmouth and Southsea; lived there during my formative years, and absolutely loved the distractions of the harbour, the liners and the cool boy stuff, not to mention the post-war mess that made play so adventurous and dangerous (you're not really going to go in for crazy shit like para-snowboarding or bungee-jumping if you've grown up with the constant threat of a really scruffy, premature death in some forgotten air-raid shelter).

Also I'd seen art students at the bus stops when I was much younger; they looked like refugees from the Beaulieu Jazz Festival. They were too old for Beatle music and they used words like 'invariable' and probably 'conceptual'. They had goatees and wore lilac cords and slip-on shoes over stripey socks... They moved their hands as if to convey ideas and the shape of their cool sculptures. Every time I saw art students, I just wanted to be one. It was invariable.

I often say that the Foundation Course was the happiest year of my life; not so, but it was certainly by far the most productive and fruitful academic year I ever had. By a belting margin. The man responsible for this state of virtual bliss was a quiet dapper geezer called Doug Binder.

I'd only done art for a couple of years at school; having moved back to the Isle of Wight and swapped an unbelievably miserable existence at a boys grammar in Portsmouth (run by those strict Catholic imbeciles who have a taste for ritualised punishment and a deep desire to fuck you up for a lifetime – no art for me there, just incomprehensible shit taught by the even more unpleasant lay teachers, but that's another blog. It hasn't all been said. Fuck those joyless tobacco-reeking wardens of misery.)

Where were we? Oh Christ, I'm sitting on a donkey (a stool you sat astride with a drawing board at one end) doing a paint exercise in oils on paper for Mr Faraday, the princely head of Foundation (who told the obnoxious and arsey Terry Setch – he was a gallery star, Gawd knows why – to fuck off when he decided to give us all a post-lunch bollocking, for not drawing well enough. You should see Terry's stuff. Jeeze-us...) and in walks this quiet, smiling late twenties-ish chap in very smart clothes, rolling an Old Holborn and telling us we were going to make installations tomorrow.

So there I was doing a sketch the next day of what I thought my piece would look like. It was going to be wrapped, like a Christo building; my drawing was done quickly to look like a wrapped chair. I loved it because I'd never ever thought of anything so nice before... When the thing, the construction was suspended and lit by some raking spotlights he came up behind and said "What a fantastic shape. Doesn't it have power? Isn't it amazing?". I had to look at him to check he wasn't being sarcastic. After our wretched Setch experience we were all a bit wary, but no... he was like our David Hockney (a quiet Bradford lad), a positive man born to encourage. To be fair, he praised everybody's; it was such a great thing to do and the homogenous wrapping-up effected quite beautiful transformations.

I can't really remember being so pleased with anything I'd done, ever, because I was impractical to the point of absurdity and the idea of producing a drawing (no problem), then a construction based on same, was a bit of a stretch frankly. But I did it. We had to photograph our pieces, then regretfully take then down and dismantle them. I just wish I'd checked my negatives before... But it's a luminous memory.

All through that year, a beautiful smorgasbord of delights: drawing, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and for me, probably slightly too enjoyable because at the end I had no idea where my talents lay. Still don't if I were honest. But the idea of going into graphic design seemed the more realistic option, not one I had a burning desire for. What I really wanted was three more years of watching Doug Binder drifting in and out of his teenage charges trailing Old Holborn smoke, chatting, smiling, nodding, even adding a mark or two if he felt tempted. He was so friendly, so constructive – always, always constructive – that he perfectly suited that time.

Now, we're different; it's as though the DNA has been changed. We go to college or poly or uni in order to pay back the fees for 3 or 4 years' hard graft. You gotta work, bitch. It's a hard art now, you sometimes think. And you also feel here's no love for the students; they're there to be ripped off by shitty expensive bars and by scandalously mean deposit-stealing landlords. I'll leave the next few thousand predictable words out; you get the drift. But against the bright techno wallop of conspicuous disciplined achievement, there's got to be a battered 12-string being tuned and a counter current stirring of an inclusive, kinder and more sensible, creative world. Somewhere, in some place or other, maybe in Bradford, Sheffield or Brighton, there's somebody with a burning mission to get children to discover and celebrate their talents without actually caring too much about their chances of making it big in the mad swirl of greed and insanity that we take for granted, where they can use all this adventure and failure as a reservoir for later life.

Well. I hope there is.

I still think of Doug Binder and his words of encouragement after forty years and more. I still want to do stuff that pleases him and the people like him. I still want to be creative.

It's invariable.

Art of darkness: Cover design for The Message

2011-08-04T18:19:00.004+01:00

SEE WHAT I DID THERE?

Tariq Goddard's fifth novel, The Message is his best yet; he gave me the manuscript to read after very kindly suggesting I have a go at the cover. It's a fast, rich and violent story set in an African country that's going off the rails and sliding into bloody mayhem. So it's pretty topical.

The tale, like Tariq's others, has its quota of memorable maniacs, mercenaries and madness. It's like The Wild Geese given a twist, or as Goddard says, it's redolent of Conrad with just the slightest nod to Chuck Norris. And at the centre of this tale of realpolitik and various betrayals, is the Mahdi, the new Chosen One, a pretender to the leadership of the Islamic world, happily making war on his own people,

I thought of all the characters. The SAS squad, the Iranian advisors, the Kalashnikov-toting children in their colourful flip-flops, the comically sinister family (Dad, nipper and girlfriend) of mercenaries straight from Come Dine With Me. Would it be a film poster, like The Wild Geese, brought up to date?

I didn't think of anything until one morning I woke really early having dreamt about the book for most of the night. I had this image of Africa basically as you see it on the cover, with the calligraphy as the rictus grin, but I also remembered a poster done by Grapus, one of the world's most resourceful design groups, about 20 years ago, that dealt with the map as a skull, but as a bleak, silk-screened image to carry the Aids warning. So I decided to do the map, but keep it loose (as Paul Motian used to say).

After doodling a shape a few times, then scanning my favourite, I found it worked better than I expected, then I added an Islamic moon, and it was there: giving me a nasty look and a lovely warm feeling of achievement.

Down in the valley: design for a festival

2011-07-13T15:56:00.011+01:00

AD FOR THE CHALK VALLEY HISTORY FESTIVAL SHOWING GRAPHIC THEME

The inaugural Chalke Valley History Festival is over, and by all accounts is was a complete and magnificent success. Most gigs sold out; parking, catering and ticketing all flawlessly organised. Three days of speakers from Michael Wood to Amanda Vickery, Greeks, Romans, Georgians and some horrific Popes all being explained with passion and knowledge; all sounding good. And all being heard. There was a professional air about the whole thing. They seemed to know about PR and stuff, and not one hand-painted sign... Wow, and all in Bowerchalke, in deeply sleepy Wilts.

Jameses Holland and Heneage had the idea; finding favour almost immediately from a slew of impressive names (Antony Beevor, Max Hastings to name a a couple) and after a lot of work by a huge, dedicated and happy team of volunteers – the Chalke Valley Cricket Ground (one of the beneficiaries; the other being Help For Heroes charity) is now as it used to be before; without the massive marquees and the portaloos. Not to mention the stylish (ahem) flags and signs. I was really happy about being involved; I've moaned long and hard enough about design not really being appreciated in the country – its being a bit of a mystery – that I had to do something just to prove my point; so that the people who never want to spend any money on graphic design get a chance to see how it can make a difference.

Originally the cover was a wrap-around, and thanks to the tenacity and optimism of Rachel Holland; I was only left with the front to fill, and I think given a bit more time we would have had to sacrifice even that space for some more lucrative advertising.

Casual observers, (well, fairly committed observers since the type size is minute ) will see my design credit and Dave Stallard the printer's company squeezed onto page 2. The printing was excellent and Dave, as well as Steve Whitbread, at Printing Ideas, were as committed and helpful as everyone else. Even down to advising me on the finer points of artwork! But soon, here and on the website will appear a list of credits as long as an evening shadow. This was an example of something succeeding beautifully because the idea was followed up and executed by everyone involved with precision and enthusiasm.

Apart from James Heneage and James Holland (who is, along with his brother, Tom, a best-selling historian), the co-ordinator in chief and finance officer was Peter Bell who kept on top of things with with incredible clear-headed zeal. George Ashe who sits nearby developed an on-line ticket system in a stupidly limited time. He and Hannah Bell who manned the booking office, were responsible for converting the idea into currency.

Another big moan I have about doing business in the country is the comical amount of time that usually passes between sending an email, or leaving a message, and receiving an answer. When I was putting the artwork together for the brochure, I was working very closely with Rachel Holland who was selling advertising space. To my shame, I think I'd written off the idea of getting sponsors – we had a couple – and the thoughts of more advertising were receding as we were so close to copy date, when I found myself having to make space for more sponsors, more half pages, then full pages... She would only stop when I said there was no room for the Inn. She had the B and Bs queuing up. I could only give myself a pathetic high-five as the artwork finally disappeared into the night to hard-pressed Dave Stallard. (I know Rachel's energy was directed elsewhere later, but she actively got a school to re-think its image as a direct result of her persistent coaxing!)

Bin Scaburri, who was in on this from the start was instrumental in getting speakers to agree to come and importantly to send photographs to adorn their biographies, which she and James Holland diligently edited to a measly but necessary clump of words.

As the graphics got more and more diverse and last-minute, Pam Clover almost answered my queries before I'd asked them. Posters, bookmarks and an ad in Salisbury Life were all calmly chased up by her and I didn't have to make one phone call. She and Elli Lanyon, who was in charge of distribution, were always on the case.

And interrupting Pam's gentle missives were daily messages of public relations successes; Alex Hippisley-Cox was steering the festival towards more and more exposure and public anticipation. You thought, this better be good. And, I think it was.

Chairs:
James Heneage
James Holland

Finance and planning:
Peter 'Ding Dong' Bell

Adverising/Sponsorship:
Rachel Holland

Press:
Alex Hippesley-Cox

Coordinators:
Ab Ashton-Johnson
Pam Clover
Elli Lanyon (distribution)
Bin Scaburri
Penny Marland
Helen Harvey

Distributors:
Pat Weeks

Emma Cuff

Andy Brown

Ian Fowler

Martin Holland

Paul Sampson

Dave Gooden

Sue Bourne.

On-site:
Emma Verdin
Bin Scaburri
Ticket Desk and Checkers:
Hannah Bell
George Ashe
Ted Fry
Ian Nason
Alex Hippisley-Cox
Pam Clover
Ab Ashton-Johnson
Tommy Hooper
Elli Lanyon
Annabel Walters
Sandra Maurer
Sue Wharmby
Ashley Truluc

Bar Managers:
Nick Woolgar
David Brown
Dingle
Geoff

Bar Staff:
Milky
David Brown
Nick Woolgar
Dingle
Geoff
Will
Toby
Banger
Joe Brewer
Simon L
AJ
Emma
DC
Tom K
Phil Hill
Mark C
Dec
Ian Newman
Sophie
Nic Goodridge
Paul Boatwright

Main Car Park:
David Brown
Barry Goodbridge
Big Dave
Will
Jamie Bundy
Ian Newman
Stuart
Geoff
Joe Brewer
Mark C
Stuart
Harry B

Security:
Mark Farmer
Matt Tandy
Paul Boatwright
Hugo Armstrong

Stuart Moxham: A private listen

2011-05-09T14:03:00.003+01:00

INVITATION TO A PRIVATE LISTEN FROM AN ORIGINAL IDEAR BY STUART MOXHAM

I was a bit past it in, even in 1980 to be a reliable rock and roll witness. I was 30 and well into jazz; rock seemed to be going the polite quiffy way it always does when the raw power of something original crashes and burns out on the horizon and somebody starts calling it showbiz again, and you know you've got a fucking long wait for anything interesting to come along. A big fluffy ball of something called New Romantics drove pink Cadillacs up to crap night clubs, got let in by the bouncers, wrote songs about it, and that was it for a whole decade. The sound of Camparis, make-up and weird drugs. You couldn't make it up. It was, some of it, nicely and wittily hedonistic; but all I can remember was the shitty drum sound and the Fairline computer-as-producer. Homogeneity ruled. Rock had become shiny and shitty again.

I remember, though, in France in that year, as I stopped off at a bar somewhere in the Loire, the jukebox had its usual indigenous pop stuff; probably the vaguely punky Indochine and most probably Johnny Halliday, but had I looked a bit harder I might have found a track by The Young Marble Giants, a band just out on Rough Trade, who had an uncompromising minimal approach to making music. Their record was called Colossal Youth, one that is still talked about as a classic. And an influential one at that.

There are names from the early 80s who for various reasons just faded away. I'd heard of them; vaguely remember a film of a very understated band and a song that was underpinned by an elusive and quite plaintive riff. There were also the very confident and tuneful Original Mirrors who had that geezer from The Lightning Seeds... I saw them at the Marquee with someone from Phonogram. They were good. Quite tasteful before it became a dirty word.

I digress. One of the figures from this peripheral 80s memory has become a mate; His name's Stuart Moxham and he was the principal songwriter and creative spirit behind those elusive Young Marble Giants – he was too modest to let on at first – we met in a local choir and got on famously (also as part of this warbling mayhem was Mathew Priest, Dodgy's powerhouse drummer) and after about 4 post-choir pub meetings he told me he'd been to France to play a gig. And they had a lot of fans there. Well, you have to ask, don't you?

What band are you in?

It's like linking arms with the past, or giving the past a pat on the back for being so understanding. I know it's selfish, but if Stuart hadn't fallen out with the enigmatic chanteuse Alison, or had trod the boards more happily with his brother, they would no doubt have made a second album (the difficult one, they say) after the seminal Colossal Youth and life would have been different. But it's looking good for Stuart, and not before time.

He's been busy since the days with the Marbs. I was actually quite shaken when I started to pick his songs off the Spotify tree. I thought, well, he'll be shorn of that drum machine and all that stark, Krafty presence. He'll just be a geezer with a guitar. Which was true; what I wasn't expecting was the sheer drama of his emotions. His voice is a resonant deep tenor, and he sings with such a physical and lyrical honesty, that some lines just catch you off guard and you have to play them again. He's a natural, born again musician. I've heard a sneak preview of Six Winter Mornings and it is a stupidly beautiful record. It's full of atmosphere; like a ticking clock near a kitchen table when the sky's going weird...

I asked him to play an earlier song of his, Cars In The Grass, when we sitting in his house recently. "It's a Lou song, really..." He was talking about the chords, I think, but there was more than a hint of the Reed melancholy, but most of all a mood, to this Cardiff lad's strange and beautiful gift.

14 French Shops: Travail in progress

2011-04-22T19:27:00.005+01:00

I love 'em, those French and their cheeky shops. The chocolatier Joël Durand has a shop that just reeks of class and, er, chocolate; you'd think he was part of a huge chain with all his specially printed boxes and tissue paper.

There's a universe of difference in attitude between us when it comes to service; don't ask me why, it's a bit more of a vocation with them. I'd feel quite happy going to work at the Folie Du Pain... How couldn't anyone? What a beautiful place. Full of attitude and all of it friendly.

So there's now a few more, and still I have to paint a few more. I'm making up sauces – very French – for the background colours, so I can slop them on nice and thick.

Nature's best designed island: my typo fun.

2011-04-13T10:12:00.009+01:00

I've always loved the shape of the Isle of Wight; it's a real design job in progress. An island that has this distinctive layout, obeying more or less, the cardinal points of the compass. Not a discarded sock or dead guinea pig like the Isle of Man, this is a professional job. The place has identity. It's a diamond.

My mate Laurence has a gallery in Yarmouth, and he was asking me to think of stuff he could sell beside the people prints. Could I think of something more local; could I come up with a tasteful souvenir? I started mucking about with Adobe Illustrator and the letters that make up the name, and I quickly hit upon a shape that would obey the boundaries of the actual topography, but what excited me more than anything (pathetic, I know) was that the THE became a sort of typo symbol for The Needles (you can't thread), its best-known landmark. I also liked the letters in reflection (some designers do jigsaw pieces, I stick to reflections, but so far nobody's said anything...) which do give the basic letterforms a seaside context.

It could exist in many contexts this shape. So far it will be sold as an open edition print as a simple evocation of, well, sea, sun and yachts. Maybe in more than one colourway... I just love it because it really seems to work. I then thought, that someone must have designed something for the Isle of Wight Tourist Board, and I hadn't even checked to see if there was anything that might be clashing with mine. Er, no there wasn't.

Usually, like universities, resorts have got hip to 'identities'; modern-speak for those dreary scribbles that appear mostly to have been knocked out by a bored designer or a golf-buddy's equally vacant teenager. Anyway, as far as the authorities who adopt these wonky little talismans are concerned, they're getting something cool. A sexy little button that will make up the web-surfing holiday planner's mind really quickly. No matter what TripAdvisor says of the over-priced clapped-out little dump that passes as a guest house. (..."the landlord just stood behind my husband during breakfast and read the paper over his shoulder..." sort of thing). No, get a yourself an overpriced, clapped-out little logo.

I'm not saying, of course, that the logo the Isle of Wight Tourist Board uses is any of these things. It doesn't look overpriced for a start. It doesn't really matter that it might have been previously rejected by a ten-pin bowling club, or a bird sanctuary near Benidorm. It's a logo. It's an identity. It says... er, Enjoy!

Get over yourself.

Sigh.

Ashley Wood Acoustic Fest: Logo for website

2011-04-01T11:35:00.003+01:00

This looks quite good as a button graphic; it's advertising a festival in July near Tisbury in Wiltshire on Ashley Wood Farm. I was knocked out when I first went there to take part in an exhibition in November. It's a collection of stone buildings that used to be part of the original farm dotted about a huge circular gravel driveway.

Jim, who's organising the event, insists on the gig being totally acoustic; not one microphone for anyone... So, when it came to putting together a graphic device, I thought a tad predictably, "So, that will be an f-hole to cover the acoustic angle, then..." But the f-hole is quite an ungainly shape, at least I thought so. A Bodoni lower case f was used in the end; streamlined a bit and then dropped in the middle of what could be a record centre; but that was neither here nor there...

Since the farm looks down onto a lake, it seemed as good an excuse as any to trick the eye by offering a reflection of the lettering, and reflecting (but not quite) the character to produce a lovely f-hole that is simply a pure typographical bit of good fortune. Also, it seemed to me to chime with the idea of a festival that is to be unadorned by any amplified malarkey. It makes its own fun.

Commission for Keith Jarrett poster

2011-03-19T15:15:00.006Z

The last time I saw Keith Jarrett, he spent quite a lot of the time looking distracted, and then, as if too annoyed to continue playing (it was a Miles Tribute at the QEH with his Standards Trio) he strode to front of the stage and pleaded with whoever was videotaping the gig – he could see the red camera light – to discontinue, or there was the strong possibility that he might if things carried on this way.

As it turned out, (I remember a nervy hand-wringing attendant gave him the embarrassing news) the object of his ire was a security camera, parked just above the exit, unblinkingly recording Basin Street Blues, Summertime and all of that night, and probably the rows of seats that emptied that evening, and filled up again the next day, and a week later, when the affable and surprisingly scientological Chick Corea made mention of it to an ironic cheer from the audience. Both audiences, I suppose were more or less the same people, coming to hear modern jazz masters at the peak of their powers.
I'm listening to Summertime now, and the appeal is obvious and none the less extraordinary for that. In fact if more people knew of Keith, he'd be even richer, even more of a universal jazz icon.

Somewhere though, in the first stirrings of electric jazz according to Miles, Keith and Chick Corea sit well together in the Davis band with the ecstatic rhythm machine of Jack de Johnette and Dave Holland (with Airto Moreira, on esoteric percussion woodwork, with the easiest job in jazz I used to think, unkindly) and the modest and melodious Gary Bartz is his sax player of that far-off time.

They all radiate confidence and concentration on the film of the concert (http://amzn.to/eQmoJ9) and bask in the rays of a warm day (and the occasional baleful Miles glare) in 1970 at the Isle of Wight playing to a million rock fans, sprinkling some avant-garde dust in the warm breeze, probably not knowing that history would regard this miraculous moment so highly. but certainly in the knowledge they were creating important, exultant and necessary music. It's fantastic alchemy.

This is good, it's Keith's discovery of that special trance and a beautiful appreciation of the Master. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBTM6blPbUQ

Mike Westbrook - The Piano in the Room

2011-03-14T09:11:00.006Z

I just found this as a link from an email to advertise Mike's 75th birthday gig in London in April http://tinyurl.com/6bljy6c which will be more than just a concert, but a celebration of lots of things, but mostly for me, it will remind me, whenever I see him, and I've been seeing him play live since he was a nipper of thirty six, but already a jazz star, up there with the finest, most satisfying British experimental music of the early 70s: Soft Machine, Keith Tippett, John McLaughlin, Mike Gibbs, Nucleus, Terry Riley. I think I spent a good proportion of my first weekly wedge as a designer seeing Mike Westbrook's Solid Gold Cadillac playing downstairs at a pub in Cavendish Square, The Phoenix, I remember asking the way, (it was behind the College of Fashion in Qxford Street) and finding the upstairs pub crowd a nasty, change-rattling bunch of blazered reps, but the band-room downstairs held about thirty of us eager jazzers waiting to be taken on a journey with a 5-piece electric band that might start numbers with things I could reference; bits of Roxy-ish noodling, then extraordinary intense singing from the 'divine Mister M' as Mike called Phil Minton, who also played a handsome trumpet when the band started to sail before the wind; when a fresh musical squall hit the combo and a riot would start in your heart.

I shiver with pleasure, even now, at the jaw-dropping intensity of those moments; George Khan playing free sax over the stupidly handsome Brian Godding's tremelo dive-bombing on his Gibson SG (a similar left-handed guitar to the one played by Ollie Halsall in a band I would see nearer Christmas at the Marquee, the insanely overlooked Patto). You just knew there was no finer music on offer that night; not anywhere. And the serene master of it all, sitting at his Fender Rhodes smiling as the musical adventures got more and more dangerous and unhinged.

I remember coming away from there a changed man. I had actually witnessed real creativity generated with apparent ease and with ferocious efficiency. I was talking to someone afterwards who asked what I did, and when I told her I was a designer and had the pleasure of working in a studio that made record sleeves and posters, she said how interesting my job must be, and whilst agreeing with her, I went home thinking that it didn't really compare with some. Not really.

Years later, and after many a gig, and all without fault as far as I'm concerned (some musicians have you in mind, you think stupidly, when the spot is hit time and time again) there is still a compelling happiness and such a brilliant un-Englishness about both Mike and Kate Westbrook; coming off stage at the Jazz Café in Camden, Mike said, "In France we'd just be ready to play!"

They very graciously agreed to do a gig at the Bridport Arts Centre when I had an exhibition there nearly 10 years ago; I was overjoyed: among some classic tunes they performed My Ship, Pirate Jenny and from their Off Abbey Road album, An Octopus' Garden. Yeah, I know, but imagine Duke Ellington producing the Fabs that day. They were beautiful, and overwhelmingly so.

Afterwards I remember feeling that Kate might be a tad formidable, her stage persona can be a bit, er, cross but I think she's possibly the nicest person I've ever met. She's a busy painter, lyricist and she plays flute and tenor horn and she's chatty, she's beautiful and... oh yes, well this is particularly touching for me, I had to down tools to write this, being a show-off, but as the camera sweeps the room during this beautiful piece of Westmusic, at about 3 minutes in, is a picture Mike bought at that show. It's a picture I made of the very wonderful and perfect Kate, and stupidly I made her look a bit cross.

If you ever get the chance to see them, then you must; they are still making wild and Westerly music. I guarantee a good night out, and there is no-one like them. I totally love them.

Good homes wanted for Charlie, George and Eric

2011-03-11T15:16:00.003Z

A BALANCE OF FRAGMENTS (ERIC DOLPHY) 1999

OF THEE I SING, BABE (GEORGE GERSHWIN) 1997

SWING BECKONS CHARLIE (CHARLIE CHRISTIAN) 1997

All these paintings were products of the 90s, and they were part of a great series of big metre-square canvases depicting my jazz heroes, from John Coltrane to Mike Westbrook. When this lot go, all of my jazz pictures will be out into the world (apart from a large MJQ picture called The Ministry Of Jazz).

I need to say goodbye for two reasons, first, I need the money, and second, so does my family. Also I think I need to fund some research of a non-jazzy commercial application of my work. So, bye lads, it was nice knowing you.

They are all 36 inches square. The most famous buyer of my work is an inventive, prolific and melodic bass player who bought a picture of Miles called Moondreams, and also worked with Miles and Gil Evans. Anthony Minghella phoned me once to see if I could provide him with some Billie Holidays for The Talented Mister Ripley, but they wee too big.

They are unframed and they are oil paintings, They are painted from photographs, but inhabit a context of their own, inspired by the music and times they lived.

They are £3500 each.

Contact me by email or phone +44 (0) 7881 911063

Inspired by Hockney: 3 French Shops

2011-02-16T15:36:00.000Z

A commission I really wanted, but couldn't quite figure out the angle. At last, inspiration struck when I remembered that little French shop picture by Hockney, Alimentation – Go ogle it, it's well sweet – and it seemed I could exploit his treatment of this mysterious isolated little building.
These are rough sketches, but I hope the finished articles have the same cheeky sense of style.

7th February 1964: The Beatles break America. And badly.

2011-02-15T14:52:00.005Z

Some anniversaries are unforgettable, indeed the 6th of February to a Manchester United supporter of a certain age would always be a date as memorable as one’s own birthday, but fused with those dismal images of the stricken Elizabethan airliner and the accompanying pictorial roll call of the victims. The 9/11 disaster, without the Americanised mnemonic would be probably be recalled as another iconic image, rather than a particular day, that signified abysmal loss.

An anniversary whose date won’t mean much, but whose picture certainly will, involves another aircraft. This time it’s a Boeing 707 that, as far as we know, goes on to fly many more trouble-free miles as a transatlantic clipper. Just over forty-seven years ago Flight 101 lands at New York and on board are a British rock and roll band. They are photographed descending those Pan-Am steps whose blue confident logo was irretrievably and fatally stamped on the hellish images from Lockerbie in 1988. To a wage-earning musician in America in those days, from lounge jazz trios, doo-wop groups to bourbon-laced crooners, it was a day that would profoundly affect their collective futures.
America, the home of jazz and rock and roll, had managed, by its sheer wealth of material, talent and entrepreneurial chutzpah, to turn entertainment into an industry.

Literally owning the copyright on post-war popular culture, they had successfully exported the experience of a rich, limitless, American life. A style of living that had such potency for the young inhabitants of drab, bombed-out Britain.
America had spawned Rock 'n' Roll; they had given us Elvis, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. We had, er, Lonnie ‘Putting On The Agony’ Donegan, Joe Brown, Adam Faith and, of course dear Cliff…

How secure those American performers must have felt. Singing their real American Rock 'n' Roll in their real American voices. Would anyone have bought a Marty (Kim’s Dad) Wilde record in Manhattan? It’s doubtful that his face was ever shown on American television or his music ever played. Why would it be? Those Brits; how sweet, they must have thought.
How sweet indeed, until 7th February in 1964, when 3,000 fans greet the American Clipper Flight 101 from London delivering The Beatles to America.
To anybody who was a young teenager the image is unforgettable – John in his leather cap, the band bemused, embarrassed, even – but the date is a statistic that means little compared to the incredible figures that chart their fortunes after clearing Immigration.
They had broken the gates of the citadel, and within a week had changed Rock 'n' Roll for all time.

Unbelievable.

Happy Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T09:55:00.000Z

Mute: Miles Davis 1991

2011-01-21T17:34:00.001Z

This was the image of Miles that appeared on my 1991 Christmas card.

It was the year he died and Richard Williams used this picture on his jazz round up in the Independent On Sunday magazine when he was editor. It was the most handsome of magazines and the writing was excellent. A true marriage of form and content; I was always a fan of Zoë Heller's interviews, and I remember a passage when she leaves a wine bar with Norman Stone, a confident right-wing historian, where the alcohol fumes rise from him like steam... One of my favourite designers and best mates bought the original; the late and great Laurence Grinter, and I was glad it went to a good home. He was a typographer of rare taste and instinct as well as a truly gifted fretless bass player.

I miss them both.

Giclée print for Summer Show: The Return Of The Native

2011-01-16T19:14:00.023Z


THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE. EXHIBIT 280 AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

This is an updated introduction, and I'm really happy to say that the Royal Academy has been by far the most effective selling space any work of mine has ever occupied. I must do it again, if they'll have me.
It's in Room 1 – the print room – high up and out of the way so you can marvel at Tracey's calligraphy and Humphrey Ocean's little dog etching, but just visible enough to make out the subject. Also, I've had emails from satisfied customers telling me of their connections with the liner, or various officers. Someone was once a neighbour of Roger de Grey, the last captain of the Royal Academy; under whose stern eye my big painting of the Modern Jazz Quartet, The Ministry of Jazz, failed to get sea room in this illustrious people's palace. But times change.

You might have read this before. It hasn't...

This is one of my first memories brought to life. They're gone forever now, the giant, heavy ships built with a billion rivets and stuffed with the posh pamperatti of the day, ploughing the Atlantic between the wars. Cruise liners today aren't the same; they aren't built to take a sea; the Queens and the Normandie were over-specified in every way; they were solid sea-going hotels where half the crew would labour by firelight below the waterline to keep those huge propellers churning at full speed for three thousand miles of deep water.

Living as we did, very near the sea, we took them for granted, and though their time was nearly up, you still saw a lot of very grand traffic. My Dad once told me that when he was a kid he heard that the Mauretania came through the Solent a tad too briskly after winning the Blue Riband, and just before powering down to take the corner into Southampton Water, she created so much wash that Cowes got flooded. News like that does tend to stoke a ten-year-old's imagination!

They had so much mystique, these quiet leviathans, and maybe none more than the Queen Mary; for some reason the most popular liner of them all, even though not as chic a Deco fun palace as the Normandie, or as new as the Queen Elizabeth; she saw service as a troopship during the war. Painted grey and crammed with thousands of GIs, she swept to-and-fro across the pond with almost brutal impunity. There's no way a U Boat can snare anything, even a small city when it's travelling at 40 miles an hour.

Some time in 1953 or 4, I was sitting with my mother on a bus looking down at the vast empty beach of Ryde. When the tide's out there's a good half mile of sand; I could see a tiny figure at the water's edge who was probably digging for bait but I didn't understand what Mum and her friends were saying. I was about 3 years old and what I found disturbing was the sight of this huge red-funnelled ship, luminous in the thundery light, going so close to this oblivious, industrious figure – bending, digging and probably smoking...

I've given Ryde Pier the luxury of a couple of paddle steamers as they shuttle between Ryde and Southsea laden with trippers and luggage, augmenting the diesel ferries by a healthy and quite an aesthetic margin. Gouts of smoke show a fresh load of coal's been shovelled into the boiler as the paddles serrate the green channel, getting briskly underway to give the passengers a close up of a looming national treasure.

A warship hurries West, raising spray – (another early memory I have is of a destroyer blowing up depth charges, near another horizon, then sending a boat to the beach at Bembridge which picked me and Dad up and other nosy sunbathers to have a look round. I think it was the Vigo...) occasionally you heard their siren whips as they came and left Portsmouth Dockyard. How comforting that aggressive, shepherding racket must have sounded to a nervous merchant seaman on the way to Murmansk, crawling slowly across the crosshairs of a periscope, You want some?
I used to wonder at the life on board the liners, the people and their wealth; trying to fathom their infinite happiness at being where they were, being who they were...

I think somewhere on board, lighting a cigarette with the last black coffee of the day cooling on the teak rail, squinting at the shore, is a very famous Hollywood actor, coming back after an absence so long he feels apprehensive and tense, not only from too many piano bar martinis, but at the thought of setting foot ashore in England once again, the place of his birth.

From the archives: Cool birthday compilation

2011-01-14T10:26:00.000Z

This was done for Mandy and Jimmy when they were an item; they're still the best of friends so I thought I'd just show what I did for their joint birthday card in 2003. To any jazz record sleeve fan, I hope it's a recognisable pastiche of the fifties' illustrator David Stone Martin whose work provided awe-struck kids like me with more reasons to love America. He and jazz were inseperable; he took risks, didn't bother to ponder the details of a piano, or a tenor sax or a drum kit because he was giving you the straight, no chaser, experience of the music. So this was made to fit a CD case and inside I made a compilation of Horace silver, Miles and Cannonball Adderley classics.

In the 50s and 60s jazz sleeves were either photographs or drawings and unless the photographs were great, which they sometimes were, then DSM and his fluid calligraphy won hands down every time. See an example on the brilliant Ulcercity blog, by D B Dowd, a St Louis-based illustrator and commentator.