Gary Day-Ellison

Design Works

A Piece of China

Shenfan009
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.

Iphone1

 

Salman Rushdie

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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.

 

 

Maxine Hong Kingston

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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: . . . and follow @RandomPR on Twitter.

Michael Ondaatje

Slaughter_2
This week I overheard two boys, about 8 years old, at the magazines section of WHSmith. One asked the other if he read comics. "Back in the day." was the reply.

Back in the day, this designer worked on the cover for Michael Ondaatje's early novel, Coming Through Slaughter. Michael is a very charming man who writes like an angel. This book is a 'fictionalised' account of the brief life of Buddy Bolden. Fictionalised because so little documentation remains. But – back in the day – in New Orleans, he played Jazz on the trumpet for the very first time. The Birth of Jazz. 

Miles Davis & Coltrane move me but Jazz is not my first musical port of call. And I am sure that is my short-coming, not the music's.

 But this story makes the hairs on the neck stand up. He was called the first great jazz trumpet player. No recorded music. How tremendous does your impact have to have been for that colossal appellation to form your legend? Now that, for me, occasions use of the over-worked word 'awesome'.

Ondatjee relates a tale of massive, high-impact collision. The explosion of a creative talent. The implosion of drink, drugs, excess, squalor and madness. His description of Bolden's rampant trumpet outpouring, in a public town parade, at his musical peak, and at the same moment as the fissure to his final insanity.  This is one of those very rare times a writer truely does justice to the potent alchemy of music.

Not only are there no recordings and sparse documentation of this pyrotechnic talent, there is little visual record. One fire damaged glass plate. At the time it seemed to0 obvious to use it on the cover. Beautiful, on reflection but as a grabber maybe just another bunch of sepia negroes as entertainers. Once into the text, it holds a howl of melancholy. On the shelf, another poignant, but passive moment awaiting Ken Burns' genius for his trade-mark, slow-motion, re-ignition of the past.

This is probably the point where I should tell design students to sit up straight and learn what you do when you want someone's image but do not have the subject available. Nah. All I can do is tell you what I did. On that day with that problem.

I fibbed a bit about me and Jazz. I love Louis Armstrong too. In fact I once speculated about my funeral music (as you do) and chose two tunes to bookend my experience of adult life. I fancied David Bowie's 'Ziggy Stardust' at the start and Louis Armstrong's 'Stardust' at the end. Then I forgot about it. Until just then.

I remembered that a signature visual for Louis 'Satchmo' Armstrong was the way, during performance, he would mop the sweat from his face with his handkerchief. Some rascals suggest he kept cocaine in it to revive him during a particularly vigourous set. I doubt it. In fact, I expect that would produce a Woody Allen moment. But the point is that it totally obscured his face.

And I had it. My muse moment. A portrait of a man who was not there. A hope for a pause in performance of exhaustion, intensity and pain. I wanted a close-up study and often have a mischievous desire to commission out of genre. I took the idea to Robert Golden. At that time he was the man for food photography. A serious man, he know makes documentary film, I believe.

No drug dust. Maybe just a little Stardust. Back in the day.

Italo Calvino

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Today's delivery by Miranda, our delightful Postie, has decided this week's blog Post. It contained the catalogue and details of a new exhibition. "Uncanny Surrealism and Graphic Design". Curated by Rick Poynor, the legendary visual communication critic and commentator. He is writer-at-large and columnist of Eye, and a contributing editor and columnist of Print (magazine). The exhibition, at The Morovian Gallery, forms part of the 24th Biennial of Graphic Design Brno 2010, Czech Republic.

If you delight in the strange, as I do, I recommend the catalogue. It contains the work of some real favourites of mine: Jan Švankmajer - you are in for such a treat if you haven't seen his short and utterly fabulous films. Vaughan Oliver (V23) , stunningly original designer famed for his work for 4AD and beyond. Vaughan is now teaching, BA Graphics at UCA, Epson and MA Graphic Design at Kingston. (The very thought of him as a tutor makes me want to be an art student again). And the star that is Andrzej Klimowski, Illustrator and Professor of Illustration at The Royal College of Art.
 
I am not tipping my hat to these people - they, and their work are truly outstanding. More of them in later posts.
 
So, back to the plot. The cover designs of mine that feature in the exhibition are the Picador editions of the work of post-war Italian novelist, Italo Calvino. I think of my time as Creative Director at Picador as like having the biggest and best tin of coloured-pencils in the world. Sure, it wasn't wall-to-wall bliss. Nothing is. It was also stressful. The external pressure of commercial imperatives and the general school playground that is London office life. 'Nothing new there', I hear you cry and quite right too! But internally you put demands on yourself. And if you don't then you should. It is not in the Job description. It is part of being human, and driven.
 
How to live up to the standard of my predecessor, David Larkin? How to stretch to be worthy of many of the finest writers alive? How to work with a wildly talented generation of illustration talent? Vertiginous stuff. A thrilling mix of excitement and fear. Curiosity, and some unconventional approaches to work seemed to turn it all into energy.
 
Italo Calvino. I wish I had met this man. His writing is so simple, or rather, so apparently simple. Deceptive. How can such clarity be so intriguing? If I had the scholarship and skills of a literary critic I would lavish the language on him. His roots seem to come from earlier, undefined times of Italian city-states, paladins and purgatory. Several dozen expensive sessions on the psyche-couch may reveal more but I turned, with the inspiration of foreign stamps in the back of my mind the Quay Brothers. Timothy and Stephen Quay are identical twins from Philadelphia whose work is soaked in a Polish art tradition melded to Max Ernst. Enough, I'll just sound pretentious - ask Rick Poynor. My instincts are strong but such critics can bring a deserved majesty and erudition to such matters that is beyond my qualifications.
 
And, just maybe, dissection will leave us none the wiser? A little poorer for the loss of elusive wonder? Their work is full of wonder.
 
On holiday on the black sands of Lanzarote. Hand luggage - clean T-shirts. Suitcase - manuscripts and bound proofs. The latest Italo Calvino, Mr Palomar, my guilty pleasure in amongst the bestsellers with their Kalashnikovs and silicone breasts. It's a diamond. Small and perfectly formed. I try not to wolf it down in one go. Save some till tomorrow.
 
Morning coffee and the obligatory four-day old Guardian. I read of the sudden, unexpected brain haemorrhage and death of Ital Calvino. With this fresh information swirling in my head, I finish Mr Palomar. And find the last sentence, in what proved to be his last novel, reads "He dies."
 
Back in the studio in Park Walk, SW10, I change the colour palette of the Calvino livery so that it has a large black band. A tiny mark of personal tribute to a great writer.
 

 

Brian Eno

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Not quite like the posts so far. Not a linear tale, which given, the exquisitely non-conventional nature of the subject, is probably apt.

Art School, Brighton. Student. Main-lining music without frontiers. Captain Beefheart, Joni Mitchell, Velvet Underground, Dylan, Roxy Music, Bowie, Frank Zappa, Toots. But finding gold in the crevices. Peter Tosh, Brian Eno, Winston Rodney, The J.B.s, Lee Perry, Fela Kuti. I loved the line, "The matchless privacy of the obscure." Now I can't remember if it was Peake or Joyce.

Nigh-time DJ for Soul Society and Friday Night Club in The Basement. Playing Funk not Disco and clearing the dancefloor with a compulsive obsession with Dub Reggae that I used to buy in a record shop in Brixton Market that was the size of a phone booth. Putting Stevie Wonder on to get them back dancing. I hated Glam Rock. They were all a bunch of over-weight Kwik-Fit fitters in glitter. But Bowie and Eno, they were the real deal. Exotic explorers.

And there I was one day with performance artist, Charlie Hooker, listening to Eno's solo album "Here Come the Warm Jets" and I was away. Unusual, pioneering and no big fan base intruding in my private pleasure. "Taking Tiger Mountain", "Before and After Science", the playful, determined, occasionally bonkers vocal albums. It seemed most people just sniggered when I went on about it. And, clutching the purist badge of the completist, I took to the early Ambient Work. 

Blissful, straining, serene, epic emotional landscape . . .

Anyway, back on earth I am to be found later working for a living at Pan Books. The logo (called a 'colophon', in Publishing) was a hairy-legged fellow with a flute. To me it was Pan as in Panorama. Breadth, Scope. Jackie Collins' "Hollywood Wives" in the morning and Samuel Beckett in the afternoon. The Becketts, and many other design projects were collaborations with my 80s soul-mate Russell Mills. More of that another time. But the initial bonding with Russell was music (and Guinness). He was the first person since Charlie Hooker that 'got it' with the Brian Eno thing.

Excuse the fan bit here but Eno's music was ubiquitous for me. "On Land" in particular seemed to just be around, like breathing. It influenced me in haunting ways. When I could escape meetings and the cacophony of studio days, I would slip into my office and listen on the Walkman as I worked. Shifting between Eno, John Hassell, Harold Budd, mixed in with Ennio Morricone, I worked on my personal passion, and challenge, on the Pan Catalogue - Picador.

I struggle to relate this without sounding a bit of a tosser. If you think that, tough. This my story and my truth, so blame the writing not the wiring. So there.

A new writer to Picador. Graham Swift. Publisher, Sonny Mehta and editor, Tim Binding had impressed on me how highly they rated his new novel "Waterland". You become immune to pressure. It doesn't produce results with Literary Fiction in the same way as it does for Mass-Market Properties. Great writers have a unique voice. I had to 'feel it', become attuned to it. There was an elusive atmosphere to this novel I was struggling to identify. Frequently attempting, with Picador cover designs, to avoid the graphic mini-poster of the mainstream. Seeking the sense of expectation as the house-lights go down and the curtain rises . . .

With "Waterland" I found the muse in music. In an early morning black-bean soup of a fog, driving at a snails-pace, "On Land" loud and all-pervasive on the stereo, all the windows open in the BMW320 with my future wife, Sandy and Russell & Annie Mills, off for a weekend in Norfolk. This atmospheric moment was the inspiration I needed and I commissioned photographer, Charlie Waite. Murphy's Law stepped in and Charlie had the misfortune of beautiful weather. We had to grossly over-enlarge a detail for one shot to get the effect we needed. Charlie is one gracious gent and he went along with it. The result was  a piece of work that pleased the author and sold very successfully. That year, at the Edinburgh Book Festival, Graham Swift referred to me a the 'genius who produced his cover'. And I nearly died with pride. Good times. 

Later, I was able to feature Brian Eno's installation work on the Picador catalogue above, and I went on to design the original Opal Records branding, for Brian, which Russell Mills developed beautifully. Graham Swift's writing continues to be true 'genius'.

If you design book covers don't look at other book covers for inspiration. Look outside.

 

Oliver Sacks, MD

Man_who_mistook

 
Oliver Sacks MD, FRCP began working as a consulting neurologist for Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx. He encountered some fascinating cases and writes about them in a way that is both compelling and full of empathy. He describes the seriously bizarre characteristics of patients suffering a range of conditions from Tourette’s syndrome to autism, parkinsonism, musical hallucination, epilepsy, phantom limb syndrome, schizophrenia, retardation, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Now that does not sound a barrel of laughs but his humanity and utter fascination in his patients is nothing like as dry as it may initially seem. At Picador books I had previously designed the cover for Awakenings which I cannot find but will add later (software permitting). That was made into a film with Robert de Niro and Robin Williams and tells the true story of a number of patients suffering persistent coma who Sacks diagnosed as survivors of a global pandemic that lasted from 1913-26. He administered a new drug called L-Dopa (you couldn't make it up). They all awakened to a short-lived but euphoric state.

The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat is about some other extraordinary patients. Particularly those with 'object blindness'. In the absence of Dr Sacks medical training I understood this as a problem, not with vision, but with the connection from eye to brain. One man could not recognise the the left side of objects. Confronted with a pizza he would eat all the right-hand side but say he was still hungry. Rotating the pizza for him 180 degrees he ate the other half contentedly.

Another man was totally puzzled when given his own glove and asked to identify it to Dr Sacks. Defeated in this task he called it a leather pouch with smaller leather extensions, possibly for use in carrying different denominations of coins. I found the innocence of the account poetic. However when he went to leave at the end of the session. He took his coat but neglected his hat. When reminded he tried to yank his wife's head off her shoulders believing it to be his hat. 

Object blindness? Another visual challenge in the daily life of an art director.

Belgian painter René Magritte came to mind. In particular "The Betrayal of Images" which depicts a lone smoker's pipe with the legend, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" beneath it ("This is not a pipe"). The point being that it is not a pipe but a painting of a pipe. What I wanted was the hat/wife link. I have done a lot of work with illustrators and I love to reach past their 'style' to engage their creative thinking on books they will respond or react strongly too. But on this occasion I had something specific that needed to be executed with skill and élan. I called Paul Slater. Master craftsman, good egg. And what a good job he did. Now I dislike plagiarism, and so I made damn sure we clearly credited our homage to Magritte as such on the back cover. 

The book was published and was well received. It deserved it. Our efforts to communicate complex issues of neurology with apt graphic imagery worked. I mentioned how great a job Paul Slater did? I got a letter from the solicitors representing the Magritte estate who, in their zeal, thought we had used a real painting from the collection without permission. All was cool once we pointed out the fulsome credit acknowledging the great man, in fact they were pleased (In fact Paul has reminded me I wrote "Ceci n'est pas une Magritte"). Paul Slater you were just too good! Dear readers, please see the full range of Paul's fabulous work unfettered by concept-obsessed art directors. www.cuttergallery.com