Blog: Design

Hello My Name is Paul Smith

An exhibition that, "takes you into the world of fashion designer Paul Smith, a world of creation, inspiration, collaboration, wit and beauty".

Hello My Name is Paul Smith follows the career of the genius that is Paul Smith from the opening of his first shop in Byard Lane, Nottingham (1970) to the global 'quintessentially British label' it is today. It showcases his influences, his eclectic archives and his design process - "The whole point is anyone can come and get goose bumps and be inspired".

The exhibition opens today at The Design Museum and runs until March 2014 but don't worry if you can't make it, there's an accompanying book 'Hello, my name is Paul Smith: Fashion and other stories' edited by Alan Aboud and published by Rizzoli. 

Images copyright Paul Smith.

Fri 15 Nov 2013

Posted under: Design , Inspiration , Exhibition

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Margaret Calvert Interview

Here's a great little interview with designer Magaret Calvert at the AGI Open London 2013 by Design Indaba. I'm sure you all know, but Magaret along with her former tutor Jack Kinnear created and developed the British road signs we see everyday. 

“When you design road signs you have to start from scratch,” she says. “We looked at what they already had and then started drawing letterforms in terms of making it readable for the driver.”

 

Pop Art Design

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© Collection Vitra Design Museum

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© Collection Vitra Design Museum

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© Courtesy Foundation Beyeler, Riehen

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© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2013

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© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein-DACS 2013

Pop Art Design starts tomorrow at the Barbican! With over 200 works from over 70 artists and designers including Peter Blake, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Charles and Ray Eames, it's going to be a great exhibition.

"Pop artists commented on the cult of celebrity, commodity fetishism and the proliferation of media that permeated everyday life in America and the United Kingdom after the Second World War. Radically departing from all that had gone before, artists delighted in adopting the design language of advertising, television and commerce to create work that was playful but often also intentionally irreverent and provocative. In turn, designers routinely looked to Pop Art as a constant source of inspiration. Pop Art Design paints a new picture of Pop – one that recognises the central role played by design."

The exhibition runs until February 2014 so there's plenty of time to get down there and I have it on very good authority that the gallery shop is packed full with fabulous pop art style goodies.

Mon 21 Oct 2013

Posted under: Design , Exhibition

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Rare & Important Travel Poster Auction

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Sunshine and Surf / Australia. Circa 1936. Designed by Gert Sellheim.

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Swissair / By Swissair To The United States / Douglas DC - 6B. Circa 1952. Designed by Henri Ott.

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Swissair. Circa 1952. Designed by Henri Ott.

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Europe / United States Lines. Circa 1952. Designed by Lester Beall.

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S.S. America / United States Lines. Circa 1952. Designed by Lester Beall.

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To U.S.A. / United States Lines. Circa 1952. Designed by Armengol.

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Jet Your Way By B • O • A • C / Around The World. Circa 1960. Designer Uunknown.

Swann Galleries, New York are holding a 'Rare & Important Travel Poster' auction on October 18th. They always have an impressive selection of posters in their auctions and this one is no exception.

"From the deserts of the Mideast to the alpine resorts of Europe, this auction offers images of diverse geographical locations, in addition to bold depictions of trains, ocean liners and airplanes."

For me it doesn't matter about rarety, importance or designer. It's the bold, bright, graphic ones I like, however I will need significantly deeper pockets to be bidding on any of these.

See the full catalogue here.

Alex Steinweiss

Throughout his career, Alex Steinweiss (1917 - 2011) was art director at Columbia Records, London, Decca and A & R records. He was the man behind the record cover's very existence - before him records were sold in plain wrappers, no branding, no design, no marketing.

“I got this idea that the way they were selling these albums was ridiculous. The covers were just big brown, tan or green paper. I said: “Who the hell’s going to buy this stuff? There’s no push to it. There’s no attractiveness. There’s no sales appeal.” So I told them I’d like to start designing covers.”

Art & Artists have written a really interesting 6-part biography illustrated with a massive collection of cover designs spanning his extensive career. Check it out here.

Via Pretty Clever. Images from Art & Artists.

Mon 16 Sep 2013

Posted under: Design , Inspiration , Packaging

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From the reference box #140

#140 - A rather gorgeous 1960s Bosch spark plug brochure - 'Bosch takes you from start to finish'.

This 16pp brochure highlights the advantages of Bosch spark plugs and backs it up with examples of motorsport success from Grand Prix winning vehicles to land speed records.

There are some amazing illustrations throughout, but some very questionable typesetting with an abundance of hyphens.

I love finding little notes on ephemera that tell you something extra about the item and this brochure has a whole host of figures and calculations on the back cover which seem to refer to a vehicles mileage & maintenance - length (in time) of journeys taken, mileage covered, dates and quantities of oil added and mileage at service points. It was clearly kept either in the car or close by used as a constant reference. Wish I knew what car it related to.

There's loads more ephemera and vintage packaging tucked away in our reference box, have a look and see what you can find.

Tue 03 Sep 2013

Posted under: Design , Ephemera , Reference box

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Aircooled Apparel

Thought we'd share a fun project we've been working on recently for the guys at Aircooled Apparel - a selection of versatile, hand-lettered graphics that can be used in their marketing and across their clothing & stickers range.

See more of our work here and here.

Fri 30 Aug 2013

Posted under: Design , Delicious work , lettering

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Dutch Book Week Posters

These beautiful vintage posters advertising Book Week (1955 - 1971) and lots, lots more form the Dutch design resource ADVIZ, "a new bilingual (NED / EN) interactive platform for the graphic design industry, the advertising industry and for anyone interested in visual communication".

The two-part website was launched in 2011 to; A. bring together design reference from the collections of the Dutch Archive Graphic Designers (Nederlands Archief Grafisch Ontwerpers - NAGO), the Advertising Arsenal (ReclameArsenaal - RA) and the Poster Museum (Affichemuseum) in Hoorn, and B. to offer a platform for the public to upload their own design collections or portfolios, share design related links and interact with other users.

It's definitely worth a look around, there are some really great vintage posters on there.

Via @presentcorrect

Wed 21 Aug 2013

Posted under: Advertising , Design , Books , Posters

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From the reference box #139

# 139 - Some new additions to the reference box, and to my Carte-de-Visite collection. Cards from four different photographic studios / photographers in the South of England, all beautifully lettered and detailed.

Quite a few of the cards in my collection have 'Marion Imp Paris' or 'Marion & Co Registered' which I assumed to be the printer of the cards, and I was correct. I found this great website all about Carte-de- Visite with a whole section about Marion & Co and how to use their marks to date the cards (and photographs). Check it out here.

See our whole collection here and previous posts about Carte-de-Visite here, here and here. You can find out more about Carte-de-Visite here, an article written by Graham Hudson from the Ephemera Society.

Money, Power, Sex & Mark Wagner

These amazingly intricate currency collages are the work of brooklyn-based artist, writer and book-maker Mark Wagner.

He strives to create, "something bizarre, beautiful, or unbelievable... the foreign in the familiar" and uses only one dollar bills in his masterpieces, what he describes as, "the most ubiquitous piece of paper in America" and "a ripe material: intaglio printed on sturdy linen stock, covered in decorative filigree, and steeped in symbolism and concept".

Watch him at work in this great little stop motion...

If you're lucky enough to be in New York next month you can check out his work in person at the Pavel Noubok Gallery. His next exhibition, 'Money, Power, Sex & Mark Wagner' starts on the 6th September and runs until 5th October 2013.

Images and video copyright Mark Wagner.
Via Colossal.

Thu 15 Aug 2013

Posted under: Design , Art , Inspiration , Exhibition

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Patrick Caulfield at Tate Britain

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After Lunch, 1975 © The Estate of Patrick Caulfield. All rights reserved, DACS 2013

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Café Interior, 1973 © The Estate of Patrick Caulfield. All rights reserved, DACS 2013

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Bishops, 2004 © The estate of Patrick Caulfield. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2013

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Pottery, 1969 © The estate of Patrick Caulfield. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2013

Last week I took a trip over to Tate Britain to see the Patrick Caulfield exhibition and wow, was it worth it. Such amazing work; graphic, colourful, witty and enormous!

The exhibition follows his artistic career chronologically from the early 60s when he left the Royal College of Art through many iconic pieces to some of his last paintings in 2005.

Caulfield's work was influenced by cubism and rather than use traditional painting techniques, he developed a unique graphic style with simplistic shapes, flat colours and black outlines - a style more associated with commercial signwriters. It was great to see this style develop and become perfected as I moved through the exhibition/ years.

Anyone in any doubt over whether he could paint in a more traditional style will be blown away by the realism in some sections of his paintings. For example, take a close look at the landscape picture in After Lunch (above) - you would be forgiven for thinking it was a picture postcard, but it is in fact an extremely detailed landscape painting. The brass door handles in Bishops (above) are another fine example of his traditional painting pedigree.

These areas of detail surrounded by over-simplified objects and flat coloured backgrounds are typical of Caulfields work. They created what he thought was a reflection of how our memories record information, "I find that in treating things in different ways, they become a point of focus. It's the idea that one doesn't encompass everything, and that your eye can look around and see things. I'm not so sure whether it's your eye or whether it's that your memory remembers things in different ways. There seems no reason to treat everything evenly. It's more like a collaged memory of things. Some of the things are in sharp focus, and others, if you like, symbolise the object".

The exhibition runs until 1st September 2013 at Tate Britain.

Mon 12 Aug 2013

Posted under: Design , Art , Exhibition

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Vintage Cigar Labels

These beautifully detailed and lettered cigar labels are from a collection over on Letterology. It's an interesting post showing the elaborate designs introduced to establish more sophisticated looking brand styles and prevent counterfeits being easily produced. Check out the full post here.

Images copyright Letterology.

Sun 04 Aug 2013

Posted under: Design , Ephemera , lettering , Packaging

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Sicilian Fruit Tissue Wrap

Colourful illustrations, charming but lo-fi print and wonderful lettering all come together on these Sicilian fruit wrappers to turn an unremarkable, everday item into something beautiful.

I'm always amazed at the level of detail on packaging like this, that for the most part goes totally unnoticed.

Images copyright  Italian Ways
Via FFFFound!

Fri 19 Jul 2013

Posted under: Design , Illustration , Packaging

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Welcome

Welcome to the Delicious Industries blog. We're an independent design studio based in Brighton, UK and this is our scrapbook packed full of design, illustration, photography & typography inspiration. Check out our work here.

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