Action Time Vision - was waiting for me

Murray GM September 20, 2016

Arrived back from a long weekend and this little beauty was waiting for me: Action Time Vision, #002 in Unit Edition's Archive Series. I'd almost forgot that I'd ordered it! I'm loving the books being put out by Unit Editions (Tony Brook, Patricia Finegan and Adrian Shaughnessy), and can't wait for the Lance Wyman Visual Diaries that just got funded via Kickstarter.

This book was a must for me. Although a little too young for Punk the design has resonated with me as much as the music over the years. It's a great collection of punk 7" single sleeves spanning from 1976 to 1984, and features such design legends as Malcolm Garrett, Peter Saville, Barney Bubbles and of course Jamie Reid. The book is created from the collections of Tony Brook and Russ Bestley. Russ is an ex Portsmouth design grad (was in the year below me) and a regular collaborator with the Ian Noble. He's also considered one of the world's leading authorities on punk and post-punk music.

It's yet another lovingly crafted book, designed by Callin Mackintosh. Mine came with four buttons (badges). Of which "99% IS SHIT" is my favourite, but "NEVER BEEN IN A RIOT" is a close second.

Grab a copy here: action-time-vision
or check out another of their publications I have here: FHK Henrion

Octothorpe

Interrobang

Octothorpes, interrobangs and other wonders in Shady Characters

Murray GM July 9, 2016

A few weeks back I saw a tweet featuring a pic of the octothorpe or hash symbol, from Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols and Other Typographic Marks by Keith Houston. It looked exquisite and I couldn't resist grabbing a copy of the book. It's a fun book, chocked full of history and geeky knowledge - a perfect gift for the graphic designer in your life. But it's the book design that really shines. The designer (Judith Stagnitto Abbate) has done a beautiful job. It's full of elegant details and the two colours (the classic typographer black & red) are balanced perfectly throughout. Overall it has a very classical feel but with the occasional fun little twist like close cropping a mark or bleeding it off the edge of the page. You can tell she had a lot of fun with this, wonderful job.

Tiny recipe collections to treasure

Murray GM May 20, 2016

Today I discovered Short Stack Editions whilst taking a perusal around Heath Ceramics. These are lovely small, 'pamphlet' sized recipe collections. I picked up two volumes: volume 8, Honey by Rebekah Peppler and volume 13, Lemons by Alison Roman. Each focuses on a single ingredient by a single author. They are beautifully put together, with each edition themed to the subject, including carefully chosen coloured stock to match the cover colour way. Even the twine used for the binding has been matched to the colour way - beautiful attention to detail and the person who sews each one gets a credit. The use of patterns on the covers makes them the perfect choice to be stocked by Heath - great compliment to their awesome tiles.

Strategy cards for the day job

Murray GM May 18, 2016

Mostly I keep this blog personal work free. However recently I put together a pack of strategy cards on working with analytics and data for my day job at Qlik, more details here. It was a fairly rapid project, 6 weeks from concept to delivery.

It's been a long time since I made something tangible (mostly digital only these days) and it was a real treat. My colleague James Richardson was the writing lead on them and I co-wrote and art directed (and artworked). The images are almost all from public domain sources such as New York Public Library's public domain archive and PublicDomainReview.org, apart from a couple of stock and a few self taken. We had a tight deadline as we wanted to distribute them at an event so we took two approaches to production. The plan was to get the cards offset printed in Singapore by Ho Printing on 420gsm artboard, then shipped and hand collated and boxed by me. Thankfully that worked out great. However, our back up plan was to use the on demand digital card printing service from printerstudio.com. We got a couple of packs as proofs and I want to stress how happy I was with the service and quality of the cards from Printer's Studio. They are really great, the stock is much lighter 310gsm but they still feel high quality as they have a slight linen texture and the colours are great (see, purchase here).

Anyway here's the cards - these are the offset versions (the colour in these pics is a little off as iPhone and indoors).

UPDATE - explore all the cards here https://murraygm.github.io/qlik-bi-strategy-cards/

Zembla Magazine issue 1 - words, pictures and graphic design gorgeousness

Murray GM May 18, 2016

Since the early 2000s there's been an explosion in high quality independent magazines. These are often lovingly crafted, hugely indulgent, hyper focussed niche offerings. Not aimed at mass distribution or high ROI and usually not the most successful business models. One of these magazines that appeared briefly (only 8 issues) on the mainstream newsagents' shelves was Zembla. It positioned itself as a literary magazine, with words fundamentally at it's core. Designed by Vince Frost, it's was a wonderful playground for typographic ideas, letter play and bold graphic design. It's not the grunge and dirt from the '90s but rather a rediscovery of type and the printed form.

Here's issue 1 from September 2003, with the rather special Tilda Swinton on the cover.