VIDEO GAME MAPS

Map of Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond's Batman (1986), Your Sinclair. Illustrator unknown.

Extract from map of Tim and Chris Stamper's Knight Lore (1984) by Paul Dunn. Retrieved from www.maps.speccy.cz

Extract from map of Kirby's Adventure (1993) by Will Mallia. Retrieved from www.vgmaps.com

As a boy these were among the most revered articles in my graphic consciousness. First published in gaming magazines such as Computer and Video Games and Crash as screen-grabs or hand drawn illustrations, the game map later migrated to the internet, where it now thrives. At the time the revelation of the breadth of the miniature worlds and hidden details contained in the primitive isometric platform games played my friends and I was exhilarating. Today I am struck by the beautifully graphic, highly coloured images and the curious fascination shared by a community of early gamers that these maps represent.

THROUGH PAGES

Albert Angelo by B. S. Johnson, Panther, 1967 (first published 1964). Die cuts reveal fragments of the text from later pages.

Collected Works vol. 7 by Dieter Roth, Editions Hansjorg Mayer, 1974. Holes die cut systematically into found printers' make ready sheets produce unexpected compositions.

UNPRINTED PAGES

Ed-Werd Rew-Shay Young Artist by Ed Ruscha, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1972. Designed by Ed Ruscha and Gus Foster.

The final 150 pages of this 420 page book are unprinted, with the exception of a small colophon.

THE SHAPE OF AN IMAGE

Close-Cropped Tales by John Baldessari, CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, 1981.

An article I wrote on cropping and the qualities of the edges of images, inspired by this book, has just been published in Grafik magazine's September issue, #177.

MANUAL MATERIALS

Reader's Digest Repair Manual, 1972. Designer unknown.

Quarter bound hardcover with natural linen spine bearing two-colour foil-blocked type and coloured PVC covers bearing two-colour silkscreened type.

TYPESETTING PROFOUND QUESTIONS

What is Philosophy? by Harold Chapman Brown, California Labor School, ca. 1943. Designer unknown.

Has Man a Future? by Bertrand Russell, Penguin Books, 1961. Cover designed by Richard Hollis.

Is Today Tomorrow? by Jerome Agel, Ballantine Books, 1972. Designer unknown.

ARTISTS AS DESIGNERS #2

Fluxus boxes designed by George Maciunas.

George Maciunas designed and produced almost all of the voluminous printed matter that accompanied the output of the loose collective of artists he sought to unite under the banner of Fluxus. He designed labels, flyers, posters, stationery, pamphlets, catalogues and various containers for the distribution of artworks: books, boxes of all descriptions, ‘expanded’ books and other experimental bindings of loose materials, cases and cabinets.

Maciunas was also a dedicated, often obsessive researcher and collector. Through his fairly extensive travels, and his study at the New York Public Library and the Library of the Metropolitan Museum of Art he discovered everything from the exhaustive art histories which he translated into diagrams, painstakingly pasted together by hand, to the proto-clip art cuttings and illustrations that adorned many Fluxus editions and publications (favourites included pointing fingers, knots, gory medieval scenes).