Add your comment with a link to the image. Maybe say why it made such an impact. It can be personal, of global consequence or, well, you choose . . .

UPDATE: A review of contributions appears as a Guest Blog at IMPERICA: http://www.imperica.com/viewsreviews/gary-day-ellison-images-of-2011

You don't so much commission Ralph Steadman as unleash him. The art direction is implicit in the decision to ask him for artwork. He is a force of nature. His acceptance of a commission is de facto an endorsement of a project – that adds value beyond even the illustration itself.

And I send my best wishes to the lame art director who tells him what, and how to draw. Actually no I don't send best wishes. They would be foolish. But I may send flowers as commiseration.

An example is at the top of the page. My adjectives would be, what is the word I am looking for? Pointless, that's the one.

His work has often been a rage against the system. A wildly exuberant hand and an acute, almost feral, venal eye. His symbiotic, yet combative, relationship with Gonzo writer, Hunter S. Thompson for Rolling Stone magazine is legendary. One of the great hoots being the way each blamed the other for the excesses of their exploits. And his biography is all over the web.

My simple prompt for this blog is just an urge to celebrate this man who has been a part of my life for such a long time. I could relate the time he burst into Stanley Studios demanding "Where's my fucking artwork?" Not because he thought we had any – but he did feel publishers were not returning his originals as they should – but mainly because he was living in Parsons Green. And we were the nearest. Lunch at 11 Park Walk calmed all. Fuelled by his mockery of his own wrath and significant amounts of Barolo.

I could tell you of his soliloquy on how The History of Civilization all began with the Welsh. "The first man was a Welshman, Homo Boyo. And his wife, Homo Womo. Like a side of beef with arms she was . . ." But Ralph would probably defend his copyright but arriving with a Howitzer and obliterating my cats.

I am tempted to show you a photograph of his spare room. When working on I, Leonado he took to painting The Last Supper on the wall to get under the skin of the painter, hands on. When completed he changed all the bed-linen to white and pushed the bed against the painting so the pillows became the tablecloth of Jesus and his disciples. "That'll stop visitors getting up to any hanky-panky!" OK, here it is. It is called The Last Cuppa.

You can look for yourself for Ralph's antics destroying an iphone with an icepick live on stage. Technology infuriates him. Only mention any kind of Social Media if you wish to see your giblets up close and personal. So may tales and yet I have to tell you he has a big heart, can be the very best company and the world is a better, more vital place, with Ralph in it. he work is full of passion. The man cares. He should be knighted. Go on, Queen and Government, I dare you . . .

I have only spilled a few beans here. And, for your patience Dear Reader, I end with a glimpse of personal friendship. I think of it as belligerent affection, and love it for that. A letter received when we moved into a house in London.

No chance of a medal here of course.  But I can boast a mention in Ralph's book Doodaaa: The Balletic Art of Gavin Twinge. And I'm happy with that. He lists two pages of Honorary Doodaaists. And there I am. Somewhere between Johnny Depp and Marianne Faithfull.

I have said it before. Life is very odd. Don't you think?

You can buy prints and stuff from Ralph Steadman here: http://www.ralphsteadmanartcollection.com/ or follow on Twitter (A family member I suspect!) @SteadmanArt

Against the advice of those who thought I should post every week I took a break from Blogging. I thought you had earned a rest from this place (sorry, Posterous – Space). But I just realised it has been a bit too long. Weeks in fact. Great Googly Moogly! as Frank Zappa would say, if he were still with us.

I could say that I write today about design and technology but that seems rather grand and pompous. The connection is China. Full of surprises they recently closed down several entire fake Apple Stores (yep, the whole sleek Geek temple). In fact not just one – but dozens. Extraordinary enterprise. Gasp here.

The design part is a cover of a book by William Hinton. It is an account of every day life in rural China. It is called Shenfan and it has a sister tome called Fanshen. The design is simple. Not much to say about it. A well-chosen photograph of a villager painting the name of the town on the end of a house. Long Bow. This is married to a fine choice of typeface by Joy Fox. Check out Joy's recycled jewellery.

The technology? Cow Gum for that cover to be honest. But I found a great use of current technology to amuse myself on the Devon/London train last week. I sat in the last seat before the area for luggage and seats for the disabled. Four young Chinese sat cross-legged on the floor playing cards. The two girls facing me. The two boys with their backs to me. The girls were losing every game.

Needing distraction from fretting over an important imminent presentaion at One Alfred Place I turned to technology. Taking my, now ancient, iphone surreptitiously from my pocket I channelled Spooks and started taking pictures of the boys cards. Then showed them to the girls. They stifled giggles and started winning regularly. A little creative mischief.

Eventually my cover was blown and they disembarked at Reading, amongst much laughter as a fair section of the carriage was by now in on the game on the boys blind-side. One of the boys came over trying to look menacing but grinning from ear to ear. "You owe me wun pownd!" he declared.

So there it is, China, Design and Technology. This Friday I shall use my phone to attend a feast probably at Wong Kei where fierce waiters will force march me to a table and interrogate menacingly me over a menu.

And I shall think of the kids on the train. And grin.

 

How can I write a blog post about Trey? We only physically met on three occasions. A whole bunch of Skype time. Lots of twitter/facebook banter – when he would tease me for my delight in the lexicon. I doubt there is much I can add to the exceptionall tributes already paid by Scott Gould, Olivier Blanchard and others who knew him so much longer.

But how could I not acknowledge the passing of such a special individual? We called each other friend. So to not look for some words is unthinkable.

Like Minds Exeter Conference introduced me to Trey. Unusually I was taken by the straight guy in a preppy suit. He told stories with a beguilingly soft Southern drawl. Not for him the marketeers' jargon and sometimes specious generalisations. He spoke his truth with tales of real people who breathed the same air. He struck me as a kind of Garrison Keillor of Social Media. A vital part of the oral tradition. I liked him. He took time to talk to me without glancing over his shoulder to see who else was around.

We bounced things around quite a bit on twitter etc. and again he gave his time, with those special tweets that seem to make eye-contact. We hooked up again at Media 140 Bristol. Instantly comfortable in his company. And we talked then, and later, about the conventional way his website showed him. I saw him more conversationally, as a narrator. Not a businessman. A storyteller. Almost a Norman Rockwell character of our times. Maybe fanciful but I'll remember him that way.

A kind, personable, warm, honest, generous, open guy. A suicide? What pain must he have been suffering? I learnt he had big troubles and tried to get him to talk about it. Not hard enough I guess but it seemed wrong to press him when he wanted to be private. Even in Social Media not everything has to be 'out there'. I hope the God he believed in so surley is there for him now.

And I was so looking forward to seeing him this Friday in Lincoln. But not now. Farewell my friend of two years, I would have liked more time with you.

Who will tell the stories now?

At the moment here is much hoopla about Google+. The new rival to Facebook. It may well be the best thing since the last thing and those who know about such things are happily looking under the hood. There will be reviews aplenty, which will be useful and interesting, but that is not why I write today.

I have a question for you . . .

Those who have worked with me will already know that I think avoiding plagiarism matters. I also care about giving accurate credit to illustrators, photographers, designers and other contributors. Not claiming perfection but I came into this game via pro bono art direction of The Association of Illustrators magazine and think it is an important principle. In the melée that followed my departure from Pan, a lifetime ago, I was peeved that the crew failed to credit Helen Chadwick on one of my last commissions for Picador, The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir.

In March 2011 I reformed my website with the splash page Design Works. The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that it also changed the nomenclature to Day-Ellison+ to do three things: Firstly to acknowledge that creative direction involves other contributors. Secondly, reassure client misgivings about hiring a one-man band. And crucially to set up for a forthcoming addition of skills to my store (more in a future post). I also like the way that it typographically developed my hyphenated name to an electrical – & +.

What is on my mind is this. Should I drop my new name now that Google+ has come along? My '+' was unveiled 5 months ago and planned around Christmas. I certainly don't want it thought that I am mimicking Google. Because I am not. And they are a behemoth whilst I am a minnow. Is it fair enough to keep my +? Is it a good idea to? 

In short, is my Day-Ellison+ a positive now?

 

A headline on the BBC website caught my eye, "A secretly filmed adaptation of Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children has finished shooting in Sri Lanka."

But there was trouble again for the author.

It turned out that Director Deepa Mehta chose the island location over India or Pakistan, where the story is set, to avoid religious protests. Iran had objected to Sri Lanka's Premier and filming came to an abrupt halt. You will recall Iran's former leader Ayatollah Kohmeini was the source of the misguided (potty) Fatwa on Rushie for The Satanic Verses. I have never believed the author sought controversy or intended offence. He is an exceptional writer who sets his work in complex societies he knows well. He was a soft target for zealotry.

I leave this well-worn topic and return to more innocent times, at Stanley Studios, London SW10, as I set about designing the original paperback cover for Midnight's Children. Not for the first time Pan's commitment to the significance of the book was to be reflected in the point-size of the typeface. The trouble with a brief of 'Big Author + Big Title' is that it can be a typographical blunt instrument. But Sonny Mehta's unerring literary judgement had picked another great. In fact he saw it as a possible Booker Prize winner. So the task was to work with it and bring some character to bear. Devouring the tome hungrily in my West London flat I found there was a feast on offer. I was particularly struck by the doctor who when visiting a young woman is confronted by female family members protecting her modesty with a sheet. The sheet has a carefully placed hole through which only local examination of the immediate medical problem is possible. Over time the various local areas build an overall picture for the doctor who has gradually fallen in love with her. The film-maker's must have had a such an amazing time with such rich narrative.

Potential bestsellers on the mass-market list at Pan Books (parent to the Picador imprint) endured relentless pressure, in cover briefs, to parade 70s film-poster style collages of heroes and helicopters exploding or some such chaos. It was clearly dated even then and I fought the good fight for better graphics where I could. On Picador we worked to develop ways to set the mood and entice interest with the visuals in subtler, but no less effective ways. Midnight's Children was seen to have huge sales potential yet its target audience is inclined to more nuanced sensibilities. (Read between the lines people, work with me here) As some scribbled notes on the inside of the hardback edition reveal (just unearthed from a box emptied to fill yet another new bookshelf) the 'just before midnight' clock hands were my first idea but survived scrutiny. The execution would provide the character. I would handle the type differently now but remain happy with my apparently perverse choice of Ian Pollock to create for me the pealing paint/ faded opulence wall. He was widely celebrated for his brilliantly bizarre, idiosyncratic characters at that time. And we incorporated one big peel in case it won the Booker Prize. In that space I could announce its triumph and avoid a Daz-style corner flash. And if it didn't, well it's a peeling bit. The illustrator gave me the original painting (shown) and that recently emerged from another box.

I keep reading that blog posts should be kept short. Shame. Because coincidentaly that was the title of his next novel. I took the painted wall route again with the cover. This time with 'Shame' as graffiti, in Urdu I recall and Salman popped in to Stanley Studios to write it for me. Hard to imagine within a few years he would be in hiding.

Sonny Mehta left London for New York. I left Pan (well it was important for me!). Salman Rushdie went to Penguin with The Satanic Verses. Midnight's Childen went on to win the 'Booker of Bookers' in 1993. Time sure keeps moving after midnight . . .

Can't wait to see the film of Midnight's Children. Or whatever else turns up in boxes come to think of it.

 

 

I was struck this week by the occurances of the mis-typing of Obama and Osama. In particular the spectacularly dim Breaking News headline from Fox News who announced 'Obama Bin Laden Dead' across the world's TV screens. Of course predictive text often throws up howlers. My recent attempt to say 'baubles' was replaced by 'Bibles' to unfortunate effect. The problem, more often than not, is that the rogue word is missed by spell-checkers that leave the wrong word as long as it is spelled correctly.

And then there is the time you use the right word and the spelling is tip top – and you still get a very wrong outcome.

In the days of Dial-Up (when download speeds were about the same as BT's rural broadband but with a bing-boing-chirruppy tune worthy of the late, great Delia Derbyshire) I found myself hunting a photograph that had previously made a strong impression on me. Henry Steadman, at Transworld at the time, had commissioned me for a book jacket for Almost Like a Whale. Author and Professor of Genetics, Steve Jones revisits the massive impact of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. He carefully re-traces the steps of Darwin's arguement with the Clarks Wayfinders of contemporary scientific knowledge.

Darwin had speculated that a bear swimming and catching fish might be the first transitional stage of evolution towards becoming 'like a whale'. Put that way way it almost makes evolution sound as improbably potty as Creationism. But not quite. But on discovering the source of the enigmatic title I remembered a great shot I had seen of a Polar Bear swimming. It was shot from below with the the light streaming down throught the icy waters. A huge beast made even more graceful by buoyancy. I find it very moving. Especially Hippos and Elephants. But maybe that's just me.

So, into a creaky bakerlite search-engine went the words 'Polar Bear'. No room for error there. Could have been a child doing a homework project. Nothing can go wrong.

And it didn't for a while. Page after page of the predictable and over-used as I sought the slippery Ursus Maritimus image that had stimulated my synapses and squirrelled it away for later. Cuddling, sleeping, eating, fighting, performing in case David Attenborough dropped by. Flogging Glacier Mints. All was well, if time consuming.

And then it appeared.

Slowly, line by line, the assembling pixels of one huge image whose very sloth demanded attention. It was one big beast. Lots of white fur. And, not in the heraldic sense, erect and rampant. It was a nude Pin-Up. And I learnt something new to add to my meagre education. 'Polar Bear' is gay slang for a septugenarian naked man with lots of white body hair. And a hard-on.

I'm not easily shocked but I nearly dropped my Liquorice Allsorts.

What have you found by mistake in a picture search? How has predictive text complicated your life?

You may have noticed I often let the serendipity of events determine the subject on this blog. This is no exception. In fact three strands converge to weave into a single plait. It is some relief that Maxine Hong Kingston wears her magnificent long white hair loose, as otherwise I am sure that I would be tempted into a tortured follicle metaphor. See how close it was?

The first strand is the recent publication of I Love a Broad Margin to My Life which is a memoir, in verse, by Maxine Hong Kingston. She is Senior Lecturer for Creative Writing at the University of California, Berkeley. Her memoirs and fiction have won numerous awards, including the National Book Award and an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Literature Award. I recommend a quick search for her podcast lectures available from BBC and itunes/Berkley/Yale.

The second strand is the arrival on the mat of an invitation to the Lifetime Achievement Award in International Publishing at the London Book fair in a few days. It has been awarded to Sonny Mehta, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Regular readers her will know that I worked with Sonny for a decade and I count him as a mentor. One day I will summon up the courage to write about the influence of this fabulous man had on me. But that is for another time.

And the third strand is the first 'Guest Blog' on here which is coming soon. It will be from an art director in New York who worked with us at Stanley Studios in the 80s as an intern. The eccentric Stanley Studios was our Art Department sanctuary from the steel and glass Pan head office in London. More on that later too.

These are the elements that prompt me to show two of the very first of my cover designs for Picador Books with Sonny at the helm. China Men and The Woman Warrior. She has a special voice and you know I am not going to give you a cheat-sheet on here. They are both a great read. Seek them out and see life through the eyes of a Chinese-American.

There is no perfect recipe for all book covers but some choice ingredients can be found here: Genuine original writing, crackling, inspiring publisher, a slightly bonkers studio space and an art director who reads, having the time of his life. And thrilling at the wealth of illustration talent to be discovered and enjoyed. llustrator Cathie Felstead took her maiden voyage with us. And what a debut she made!

In China Men we are taken into the world of workers migrating to America (the Gold Mountain) for work to enable them to send money home to their families. How they are seen as one amorphous group but who, by turn, see the caucasians as all looking alike. For their white-skin they call them ghosts. The Postman Ghost, the Carpenter Ghost . . .

Cathie's beautiful artwork was the first commission where I bought the original for my home too. There are few objects, except books and music, I treasure but this sure is one. The colour is built up with layers of collage tissue. The rough edges kept for character. Background off-white as in Chinese culture white associates with death. The fish, which appeared elsewhere in Cathie's glorious portfolio were added as a migration motif and to draw the eye to an early "First British Publication" slogan without destroying the cover with graphic devices more commonly linked to Daz.

Today there are so many references to Branding. Here the distinctive artwork is the success. It worked in a tough, competitive market-place. It's all about character, identity and paying due attention to the very special. Human appeal counts.

Hear Maxine Hong Kingston reading from her new book here: http://bit.ly/eCH8W4 . . . and follow @RandomPR on Twitter.