RIP Maurice Sendak and MCA

I’m sad this morning, as I learned that Maurice Sendak died last night at the age of 83.

I’ve been a huge fan of his work all my life and have written about him several times in the pages of this blog. I read in the paper that a final story is due for publication later this year, and I shall keep my eyes open for that. If it’s only half as good as Where The Wild Things Are, it’ll still be worth having.

NB: this is not actually me in the photo above by the way, but ask my mum and she’ll tell you that this is exactly what I looked like circa 1970… spooky and rather disconcerting (not me, the resemblance)

Writing of Sendak’s death reminds me that Adam Yauch, or more usually MCA of the Beastie Boys also passed away a few days ago… This is both a sad and sobering thing as, give or take a few months, MCA was the same age as me… and that’s no age to have to pack it all in…

Intergalactic was always my favourite video, and was also directed by MCA under hs Nathanial Hornblower pseudonym. It contains the geniusness of the jerky stepping and pointing moves through a very urban Tokyo (?), the safety gear and flourescent strips, the Tokusatu/ daikaiju or classic Japanese giant monster fight references and of course, the tune itself…

I would suggest that their influence is bigger than most people realise…

Celestino Piatti

I came across the amazing work of Celestino Piatti (1922 -2007) recently; colourful, stylish, simple and beautiful.. what more could you want from illustrations.

Piatti was a Swiss graphic designer and illustrator who in the 30 year period bewteen 1961 and 1991, designed almost all the book jackets for the German paperback publishing company DTV, (more than 6300 titles…)

His immeadiately recognisable style usually involved bold illustrations placed on a white background and almost always used the Akzindenz Grotesk typeface (most famously used by Max Meidinger as the basis for Helvetica in 1960)

Possibly his most well known work is the childrens book The Happy Owls from 1963, which I havn’t seen, but looks like I should certainly try and get a copy to sit alongside my Brian Wildsmith and Maurice Sendak books.

As always seems to be the case, there is a dedicated Flickr group and some more of Piatti’s wonderful work can be found here..

Fabric Fliers from 2001

I was inspired by finding the Lemon Jelly Lucky bag the other day, so I thought I’d delve through the rest of my collected stuff, to see what else I could find, (and belive me, there’s loads…)

First up are some beautiful Fabric fliers from 10 years ago, a very scary thought. They are by the artist Tommy Penton  whose work I haven’t seen much of recently, but whose distinctive and immediately recognisable style seemed to be everywhere a decade or so ago, adorning album sleeves, magazine covers and book jackets. Check out his site, see what you recognise…

I particularly enjoyed this set of images when they came out. I liked the story of a morning they told over the six months: In January we see our man at breakfast, February he leaves the house, March and April see him travelling on the underground (I like his reflection in the carriage window), whilst in May and June he walks out to sit in the park.. And much like Tommi Ungerer or Maurice Sendak before him, Penton uses the device of a little repeated motif in every image (in this case a cat) linking them all together. Very nice…

Little A tells me that we went to at least three or four of these nights, and it’s interesting to read some of the names, still relevant (in my opinion) and still banging it out on a regular basis: Tom Middleton, Terry Francis, John Digweed (natch), Ralph Lawson, Bill Brewster and Lee Burridge to name just a few… Whilst my “what are they doing now/ greatly missed” list would have to include Circulation, Dave Angel, Doc Martin and our favourite deep house don, Jon Marsh.

I’ve written about Fabric’s excellently varied and democratic approach to design before, and these fliers are another example of the club giving  young illustrators free reign, without dictating a house style, an approach which is very much to be commended.

If you’ve got this far, I’ll finish with the footnote that this is actually my 200th post… and I’m no where near bored yet… So thanks for tuning in and hopefully the next 200 will be just as good…