A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Design
The Tugra, or imperial monogram, of Suleiman the Magnificent, c. 1550–65. From the calligraphy section of the Islamic art collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ottoman calligraphy and Arabic typography
• Flourishes
• Ghubar
• Calligraphy by Mouneer Al-Shaárani
• The Journal of Ottoman Calligraphy
• Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East
New York magazine, April 8, 1968. Design by Milton Glaser.
Part of an occasional series.
It’s probably only coincidence that the sleeve of the second High Llamas album resembles the cover of the first (?) issue of New York magazine. But many of the other High Llamas albums feature design elements borrowed from the Sixties and Seventies and the music on this one owes much to American music of the period, notably Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys.
New York magazine celebrated its fortieth anniversary this year. I tried my hand a couple of years ago at designing the magazine’s High Priority graphic for an online competition. I didn’t win but I did make the runners-up list (along with 120 others).
Gideon Gaye by The High Llamas (1994). Art by Kevin Hopper, design by André & Brown, Tony Lyons.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Design as virus 4: Metamorphoses
• Design as virus 3: the sincerest form of flattery
• Design as virus 2: album covers
• Design as virus 1: Victorian borders
• High Priorities 2
• High Priorities
This splendid clock is unveiled by Professor Stephen Hawking later today at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. If it hadn’t cost a million pounds to develop I’d probably be demanding that someone find me one for Christmas. The mechanical monster perched at the top is explained by its creator:
“It is terrifying, it is meant to be,” said John C Taylor, the creator and funder of an extraordinary new clock to be unveiled tomorrow by Stephen Hawking at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. “Basically I view time as not on your side. He’ll eat up every minute of your life, and as soon as one has gone he’s salivating for the next. It’s not a bad thing to remind students of. I never felt like this until I woke up on my 70th birthday, and was stricken at the thought of how much I still wanted to do, and how little time remained.”
Unfortunately there are few decent pictures to be had of the device but the Telegraph has an article which describes its “grasshopper escapement”, while the Guardian goes one better with a video of the clock in action.
Update: Longer video at the university site with Dr Taylor explaining the clock in detail.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Gold robots
• The art of Sergei Aparin
• The art of Almacan
• The sculpture of Christopher Conte
• The Bowes Swan
Textorizer takes a raster image in a format such as png, jpeg or gif, detects edges using a Sobel convolution filter and replaces them with supplied lines of text.
In a similar vein, you can Textorize a picture using a downloadable application. Flickr has a pool of examples.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Word games
Dilettantes by You Am I (2008). Illustration and design by Ken Taylor.
Dilettantes is the eighth studio album from Australian band You Am I which is released this week sporting a very creditable Beardsley pastiche by illustrator Ken Taylor. Sleevage has more details about the creation of the CD package, including preliminary sketches. Those familiar with Beardsley’s work may see in the cover drawing references to The Peacock Skirt and the colour print of Isolde. I like the way Beardsley’s peacock has been exchanged for a more suitably antipodean lyrebird. This isn’t Beardsley’s only influence in the musical world, of course. A few more examples follow.
left: The Peacock Skirt from Salomé (1894); right: Isolde (1895).
Revolver cover by Klaus Voorman (1966).
The over-familiarity of Klaus Voorman‘s collage/drawing for the cover of Revolver by The Beatles tends to obscure its Beardsley influence but that influence is certainly present in the stylised faces, the figure details and the rendering of the hair. The Beatles themselves were enthused enough with Aubrey to put his face among the pantheon of “people that we like” on the sleeve of Sgt. Pepper a year later. I’d thought for a while that Voorman might have been inspired by the landmark Beardsley exhibition which ran at the V&A in London from May–September 1966. Some correspondence with Raymond Newman, author of Abracadabra, a book about the album, disabused me of that when Raymond confirmed that Voorman in 1966 had already been a Beardsley enthusiast for a number of years.
As well as being possibly the first Beardsleyesque album cover, I wonder whether this was also the first major album release to drop the name of the artist from the front of the sleeve.
Everyone went psychedelic in 1967, even tough mods like The Who. This Hapshash and the Coloured Coat promo poster for I Can See For Miles (incidentally my favourite Who song) is one of Hapshash’s more overt Beardsley borrowings. The sun (or moon) in the background is a variation on Beardsley’s The Woman in the Moon from Salomé (the face is Oscar Wilde’s) while Pete Townshend’s florid sorcerer’s cloak owes much to Aubrey’s incredible cover design (blocked in gold on the book) for Volpone.
The Woman in the Moon (1894).
Volpone (1897).
From the sublime to the ridiculous. Cathy Berberian was the mezzo-soprano wife of avant garde composer Luciano Berio, with a long career as a singer of serious classical and contemporary classical works. Her rendition of Berio’s Thema (Omaggio a Joyce)–an electroacoustic setting of the “Sirens” prelude from Ulysses–was one of the tracks on the 1967 electroacoustic compilation Electronic Music III discussed here in April. She also had a separate career as an operatic interpreter of pop music and this collection of Beatles songs dates either from 1968 or 69, depending on which source you choose to believe. Whatever the year, the designer pulled off a decent enough copy of the Revolver sleeve. For a taste of the Berberian style, there’s a sample here. And if you’re desperate for the entire album, this page has a copy.
I’m sure this doesn’t exhaust the Beardsley influence in sleeve design, there must be others between 1968 and 2008. Once again, if you know of any further examples, please leave a comment.
Humble Pie by Humble Pie (1970).
Update: Added Humble Pie’s self-titled third album. The illustration this time is Beardsley’s own, The Stomach Dance from Salomé.
Dreams by Gabor Szabo (1968). Design by David Stahlberg.
Update 2: Therese discovered this great sleeve for an album by the Hungarian jazz guitarist. Closer in style to John Austen’s illustrations for Hamlet 1922) but Austen’s use of black-and-white at the time was very influenced by Beardsley’s work.
Witchcraft by Witchcraft (2004).
Update 3: Another addition, the debut album from Swedish metal band Witchcraft which uses Beardsley’s Merlin vignette from the Morte Darthur. Thanks to Cyphane for the tip.
Molly Moonbeam by Coach Fingers (2007).
Ballade Of Tristram’s Last Harping by The 17th Pygmy (aka 17 Pygmies) (2007).
Update 4: Added a couple of new discoveries. The 17th Pygmy album apparently includes further Beardsley pieces in its booklet while the Coach Fingers single also has a label featuring designs by Beardsley’s contemporary, Sidney Sime.
La Beale Isoud at Joyous Gard. (1894).
Come Hell Or High Water by The Flowers of Hell (2009).
Update 5: Added the Flowers of Hell cover which is based on La Beale Isoud at Joyous Gard. from Le Morte Darthur. The band also has a video which works variations on the same picture.
Procol Harum by Procol Harum (1967).
Update 6: Another one I’d missed, Procol Harum’s debut album doesn’t have a credit for the cover art which is perhaps just as well since it doesn’t stand comparison with some of the works above. The same artwork appeared on later reissues when the album was re-titled A Whiter Shade of Pale.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive
• The Aubrey Beardsley archive
• The illustrators archive