History in the making
Liverpool has always been a great place for history – there’s quite a story to tell and the many museums we have, do it with aplomb. For a relatively small city, we’ve got more than our fair share of these great places. I vividly remember visiting Liverpool Museum as a kid and being amazed by it. As an art student, I remember regularly visiting the Walker Art Gallery and spending hours staring at those massive oil paintings and the contemporary works that would always enthral as the John Moores Painting Prize made its regular splash every couple of years. Then we got our very own Tate Gallery in 1988 and I knew I’d never have to move to London! I became a Tate member very early on and even met a ‘blind date’ in the café there, it was a disaster in case you were wondering (the date, not the early days of Tate Liverpool, they were fantastic).
Read More
Episode 2 – Laurence Stevens
Finally, episode 2 is up and running. This was a joy and a massive pain to complete… A joy because Laurence Stevens was an absolute delight to talk to – a total pop fan and enthusiast who is still involved in design today. A pain because I ended up with a corrupted audio file which meant I had to do the interview twice, and a trip to London for the interview was a waste of his time. Very frustrating indeed.
Read More
- Podcast
- December 13, 2016
Episode 1 – Introduction
I’m back Back BACK! as Smash Hits would have once declared. It’s been a while since I podcasted, but the time is right and I’ve got something worth sharing. You may be aware that I write about design and music for a fine magazine entitled Classic Pop. Each issue I use up plenty of lovely colour pages waxing lyrical about the beautiful design work that once adorned record covers. I usually feature a specific designer and explore their archive of materials and I’ve interviewed some fascinating people. These podcasts will be a supplement to the magazine, allowing me to include additional content that due to word count limitations, often can’t make it into print.
I hope you enjoy the show, please subscribe at iTunes HERE and if you’re very nice, you could even leave a review there.
https://soundcloud.com/oftctopus/art-on-your-sleeve-episode-1-introduction
Read More
- Podcast
- September 30, 2016
Still infected after all these years
I went to London last week to see a rare screening of Matt Johnson’s 1986 video epic – ‘Infected’. I haven’t been to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) since the early 1990s, so it was good to be back. We arrived just in time, after getting a bit lost, and my memories of this film didn’t disappoint.
Read More
Vinicius and Tom
The 2016 Olympics is coming to an end this weekend, in Rio. I’m not a big fan of sports in general, but it’s hard not to be seduced by the spectacle of it all, particularly when your home country manages to exceed all expectations. As one of the millions of spectators of this worldwide event, it’s always interesting to see how design is used as a tool to promote, package and visually harmonise a huge global event.
Read More
The ins and outs of it all
Well, the day is almost upon us. The UK gets to decide its future in the European Union tomorrow. I started off about 70% leaning towards Vote Remain, the uncertainty of the alternative wasn’t something that I could comfortably reconcile. As with anything I’m unsure of, I did some reading – a lot of reading, actually. I appreciate that facts will always come with a degree of bias, depending on what filter we choose to view them through, but it didn’t take long for me to move that extra 30% to a unanimous decision.
Read More
Colour to die for
Recently in the UK, all cigarette packaging brands have been stripped of their alluring design. Big Tobacco has always worked with top creative agencies across the world on lucrative deals to promote smoking in clever and creative ways. Times have become increasingly tough though for those who still choose to smoke themselves to death, as their weapon of choice has been gradually edged into the fringes of invisibility.
Read More
Back to the future
I design a lot of logos. I spend ages on them, pushing around every element – pixel by pixel, vector by vector. They’re hard work, what often appears as deceptively simple, is usually the result of dozens of iterations and experiments. Preparing something that harmoniously sits together, with considered capacity for use in multiple formats across multiple platforms isn’t something that can be automated or rushed. Good logo design is an art form for graphic designers.
Read More
Inside a dream
Imagine if someone decided that it would be a good idea to create a whole event dedicated to your favourite musical act of all time. Imagine if it focused on aesthetics and graphic design, gay politics, journalism, music composition, branding, the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and enduring pop perfection, amongst other things. How perfect would that be for me? It would be like living inside a dream.
Read More
Read all about it
This morning, I learned that David Bowie had died via a push notification to my iPhone, this information was with me within seconds of it being announced by his family. I didn’t need to read a newspaper or switch on the television and wait for a news report. This is now the de facto way in which I largely consume media – things have changed. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, turn and face the strain… (to quote Bowie himself).
Read More
Recent Comments