Tag: Lestaret

Happy New Year

Lestaret4 Comments

New years resolutions don’t usually feature in my life, but I have decided to put more effort into blogging after the dismal efforts last year, so I guess this can be classed as a resolution.

I hope you all had a great holiday and that you gave and received a few good pressies too. I did. Oh boy.

I was gifted a wonderful vintage DYMO label maker by my good friend Michelle (who always gives great presents, but this year she outdid herself!) and I want to show it off.

These were also known as ‘Tapewriters’ and I remember having a cheap plastic one in the 1970’s that looked like a Star Trek phaser. This one, however is from 1963 – five years older than me! – and is chrome.


Chrome! And it’s about a foot long too!


It has a purposeful heft and everything operates with a satisfying ‘clunk.’

In itself, I think this is a fantastic present. But it gets better. It came in it’s original packaging – this is new old stock!

It all fits in a nifty stiff leather case complete with carry handle and gold logo print…


And it also has its original shipping packaging too – I have photographed each side and assembled it as a net:


You gotta love those line illustrations!

And if you thought it couldn’t get any better, it had all the original literature with it!


And for the the afficionados of such retro graphics, here is the main leaflet in more detail:

I’ll be clicking away in the corner if anyone wants me.

Thanks Michelle. X

 

A Long Time Coming

LestaretOne Comment

For the last few days I have been posting some small asemic teasers on Instagram. Oh yes, my asemic mojo has been revived… For those of you who are new around here and are not too sure of what asemic is, you might want to read this first. Trust me, it will make sense of what is to follow.

I first wrote about asemics back in 2010 and published my first book ‘Four Fools’ the following year with the intention of creating a tetralogy. The book was a combination of hand written and typographic compositions based upon a style of asemic writing that I had developed independently. I expected it to be of little interest beyond a few of my friends and was surprised to see how well it sold!

In 2012 I published ‘Pabulum’ as the second installment and featured several new typographic and symbolic writing styles, along with new and original calligraphic writing.  The book was more explorative than the original, with more variety in style.

The following year ‘Underovary’ was released. The third book was pared back to two primary scripts, both of which were developed digitally for this purpose, along with a range of brush calligraphy. Having created three books in three years was mentally exhausting and the final installment was put on indefinite hold. Until now.

It’s been 5 years in the making, but the final installment of my tetralogy of asemic novels is now complete. I proudly present ‘An Isochronous Apologue’.

This book was created to complete the series by returning to hand written asemics and calligraphic brushwork with less typographic material than the previous books. There are suggestions of an additional commentary, debate and censorship within the compositions along with articles of evidence and ephemera.

Like the first three books, ‘An Isochronous Apologue’ is an 8×5″ softcover trade book, and at 64 pages is over 20 pages longer than the others.

All four books are now available from those lovely folks at Blurb.

If you like these books, you may also be interested in ‘A Kick in the Eye’ – a collaborative graphic novel created by 12 asemic artists (including myself) which is currently available at Amazon.

 

Pulping the pulp

Lestaret

I’ve been taking advantage of the recent warm weather to get some pulp prepared ready for some papermaking during the summer. I’ve been storing offcuts, spoils and spares of a wide range of papers and cards that I have used during the last year – mainly cartridge/watercolour stuff as this has good fibres for repulping, but also junk mail, bits of packaging and packing too, along with a few egg boxes for good measure.

I spent a leisurely afternoon in the garden, sat in a deckchair under a wide parasol tearing everything into little bits and dropping them into buckets of water. There may have been a cold drink or two but not from the buckets!

These were left to soak overnight before pulverising in a blender. If you’re interested in the process, I covered it here in some detail back in 2012.

I had quite a lot of blue scrap too and decided to make a separate batch – I may add this to the white during the making process, but I thought I would like to see how dark/rich the blue was before I did:
I had got a decent amount of grey and black scrap too and made a third batch – I have got plans for this but want to darken it up a bit more.

All this is leading up to some new prints which will be for sale in my Etsy shop later in the year. Watch this space.

Print Auction for Charity

Lestaret

I am putting up 10 prints for auction to raise money for East African Playgrounds, a charity that provides playground equipment for disadvantaged communities and refugees in Uganda.

The project provides opportunities for young people to make a real change for children in East Africa and relies on volunteers to work with local people to improve their school facilities and encourage play for young children who are often required to work and have no opportunities to simply be children.

My daughter, currently studying at the University of York, is planning to go to Uganda later this year to take part in such a project and is raising funds by various methods, including a 10k sponsored run! All monies raised from the auction will go directly to this*.

The prints are all from my archive, some of which are the very last ones, never to be reprinted! The work is all my own and each piece is signed and numbered where appropriate. Many of them are prints that have been recorded in progress and featured on my blog.

The first print is a large(ish) screenprint and apart from my own copy, this is the very last one…

I am setting the starting bid for each print at £10 and hope to raise as much money as possible for this.

The auctions will all be on EBAY and will begin on Saturday 3rd March, with a different print launched each day. I will also be posting on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram – please spread the word!

IMPORTANT LINKS:
Charity website: https://www.eastafricanplaygrounds.org/
My daughters fundraising page: https://www.eastafricanplaygrounds.org/fundraisers/playgrounds-for-uganda

*excluding postage and packaging

Smaller prints will be mailed flat between boards. Larger prints will be mailed in a cardboard tube.

Trumpet Blowing

Lestaret8 Comments

Hello again. It’s time to blow my own trumpet.

As a freelance designer, I am usually called upon by design agencies to create something that will be a part of a much larger project. Quite often I only see the part of the project I am directly  involved in and sometimes never see the end results. This means that I am somewhat detached from the finished work and unable to show the end result which is why some of the work in my portfolio is presented out of context.

Occasionally I get to do a little more and a little while ago I was engaged by Elmwood NY to produce a series of icons to be used in the background of a rebranding project. This eventually turned out to be almost 500 different icons!

These included:
65+ cups and mugs
30+ coffee paraphernalia
25+ donuts and pastries
30+ other edibles
30+ trees, foliage and flowers
20+ animals
40+ cultural references
20+ coffee spoons
and a large amount of other things too numerous to list!

The final project has been successful at the Mobius Awards, an international competition that recognises excellence in a wide range of creative disciplines (more here – scroll down for the listing).  The project was awarded a First Place Statuette in the Food and Beverage category.

source: Elmwood

More images and information on the project can be found on Elmwood’s website here and here.

You can see the full range of icons in their background compositions by clicking on the image below.

Also, the project won first place in the USGD 2017 Awards and if you look at the credits you’ll even find me there! (Thanks guys!)

It’s great that Elmwood have won these awards for this project and I am proud to have contributed.

There, trumpet blown!

Keeping you covered

LestaretOne Comment

More booky goodness from Nick’s collection! This time three German titles with interesting cover papers and neat tipped-in titles. If the internet translation tools are correct, this first one is entitled “Curriculum Vitae of St. Wonnebald Pück”, a light-hearted satire apparently…

Originally published in 1905, this edition is dated 1953 and is printed in the traditional heavy fraktur blackletter, with an insert promoting other titles in roman.

The second is entitled “Mozart on the Way to Prague” and appears to have been in print since it was first published in 1855. There is no date in this book so I would assume this too is from the 1950’s.

The type is a lighter fraktur, and much more elegant to my non-germanic eyes.

The last, in its elegant muted green cover is entitled “The Meadow Book” and appears to be some sort of philosophical musings upon nature…

The title also notes ‘with 16 scissor-cuts by the author’ which are these beautiful silhouettes of meadow herbs:

Two of these books are marked with the name of William Forward of Berlin. I love the evidence of past ownership in books.

And as I mentioned at the start, each cover has a separate title frame stuck to the front. Nice.

Thanks Nick – I’m sure you’ll find more gems as you sort through your collection!

 

Patterns of Poetry

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There was a time when most serious readers had a poetry section on their bookshelves but alas, no more I fear. These few gems were rediscovered by my friend Nick recently and I thought they were beautiful; elegantly understated but playful.

Penguin led in the design of these collections, but other publishers soon caught on and developed their own. A recent visit to a major High Street bookstore showed me that there were precious few poetry books on the shelves, and those that were used banal stock imagery.

So take a deep breath and settle into a moment of calm and let the patterns do their work…

The Browning, Chinese Verse and e.e. cummings each have patterns credited to Stephen Russ, who I assume probably created the rest.

Saturday night at the movies…

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Well, Sunday morning, actually, to catch an early tour around King’s Lynn’s Majestic Cinema, a lovely late 1920’s building with an arched entrance and copper domed clock tower.

Even before you get in the door you are confronted by lovely mosaic tiles – when I’ve mentioned this to people I have found that many regular cinema goers were completely unaware of this! There are also some delicate stained glass panels above the doors too. You don’t get entrances like this at your newfangled multiplex cinema experience, do you?

After a tour of the projection rooms, sadly not worth recording here*, we headed for the tower (the bit I was most interested in because I had been informed that there were original movie posters pasted on the walls. First was an old classic that probably wouldn’t stand up to modern scrutiny…

Another classic that had been elegantly enhanced by an electrician at some point.

I bet you were thinking “Zibber zibber zum” weren’t you?

After the fiddler comes the King! I love the headline – HIS NEWEST – HIS BIGGEST! Ironically though, not his best!

A little composite was at the top of the stairs…

I love the moustache – we don’t seem to do this anymore…

The Robert Redford graphic appears to have been cut from a Great Waldo Pepper poster which appear to be fetching decent money these days. D’oh!

And my favourite here was the overlayed, peeling poster for The Magnificent Seven:

A little research revealed that the poster below was The Intelligence Men by Morecambe and Wise – I was hoping it was going to be The Magnificent Two, but that was a wish too far!

Anyway, if you’re interested in the art of movie posters there are a couple of documentaries worth looking out for:
24×36: A Film About Movie Posters and Drew: The Man Behind The Poster.

*Alas, the the cinema has no team of sweaty projectionists changing vast spools of 35mm film – it’s all digital these days. Plug and play. No romance. A sign of the times…

Flatlands

Lestaret

The exhibition opened last Saturday and the private view was very well attended. There has been a steady flow of visitors all this week and some lovely comments in the visitors book!

But rather than waffle on about it, I’ll let the artwork speak for itself…

It has been an excellent experience and I am proud to exhibit my work alongside such talented artists. But now its time for some thanks. Many, many thanks to Nick, who organised the whole shebang and whose energy and commitment is beyond comprehension. Thanks also to my lovely wife, who could describe herself as ‘long-suffering’ but doesn’t. My daughter Grace for being the official photographer of the Private View, and of course, everyone who has visited the exhibition.

And finally, standing proudly in front of my prints…

Exhibition Preparation

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Lestaret2 Comments

With the ‘Flatlands’ exhibition opening on Saturday, its been all hands to the pumps, planning, prepping and hanging at Greyfiars Artspace this week, with a little more to do tomorrow. The vinyl lettering for the window was installed yesterday and looking good against the reflection of the Greyfriars Tower.

There has been much measuring, levelling, considering and squinting through half closed eyes going on in order to get everything just right, all accompanied by Nick’s amazing silent whistling – honestly!

Getting everything measured out, level and marked up really brought out my OCD!

While elsewhere, things were a little less organised!

And finally, in a blast from the past, I actually put some old Letraset to use! Ah the memories…

Our opening event is tomorrow between 4 and 6pm – pop along if you can make it!