Copy Stand Weblog

VIDEO GAME MAPS

2009-11-18T09:08:00.011Z

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

2009-10-14T23:12:00.012+01:00

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

2009-09-03T10:42:00.002+01:00

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

2009-08-26T10:06:00.003+01:00

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

2009-07-29T14:40:00.006+01:00

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

2009-07-14T12:29:00.007+01:00

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

2009-07-03T09:17:00.004+01:00

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).

TONY AREFIN

2009-06-18T08:30:00.008+01:00

Ann Veronica Janssens and Richard Venlet exhibition catalogue, Chisenhale Gallery, London, 1993. Designed by Tony Arefin.

Gereon Lepper exhibition catalogue, Chisenhale Gallery, London, 1992. Designed by Tony Arefin.

Cornelia Parker exhibition catalogue, Chisenhale Gallery, London, 1991. Designed by Tony Arefin.

Richard Deacon and Bill Woodrow exhibition catalogue, Chisenhale Gallery, London, 1993. Designed by Tony Arefin.

Tony Arefin designed a series of 12 extraordinary exhibition catalogues for Chisenhale Gallery in the early 1990s. His approach owed more to magazine design than to the conventional form of exhibition catalogues, pages appear designed purely to emphasise visual connections between the works being reproduced, often with no sense of a strict underlying grid guiding the designer. Last year I interviewed Jonathan Watkins, who was Director of Chisenhale during this time, for Grafik magazine. The full interview with lots of illustrations was published in their February 2009 issue. Here is a short extract:

Looking across the series one gets the sense that Tony wasn’t much interested in the material qualities of the books – the fairly ordinary matt coated paper and satin covers are consistent throughout.

Graphics and typefaces were what interested him. He would be so excited that he might be the first person to use a particular typeface. For the Cornelia Parker book, for example, that was the first time that typeface [Template Gothic] had been used in the UK – he would know that and be excited by it. As far as the format and the materials were concerned, I think we had decided that there was a point to having a strict format. It was a way of communicating a certain substance and solidity about Chisenhale. It was an alternative space, but by the time I left I think it would be fair to say that it had established a considerable reputation internationally. And that was to some extent due to the fact that we had these publications that were reassuring in their regularity and sameness of format. You felt you were in the middle of some kind of programme, and that was quite a deliberate strategy.

DESIGNERS AS ARTISTS #1

2009-06-12T18:22:00.005+01:00

Three Structures by Buckminster Fuller in the Garden of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1959. Designer unknown.

ARTISTS AS DESIGNERS #1

2009-06-09T21:58:00.003+01:00

Four Monuments for V. Tatlin 1964–1969 by Dan Flavin, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, 1970. Invitation / poster designed by Flavin.

THE BUREN COMPLEX

2009-06-09T08:57:00.021+01:00

In January of this year James Goggin delivered a lecture as part of The Form Of The Book conference at the St. Bride Library in London. Titled The Matta-Clark Complex, Goggin’s lecture discussed several recent publications concerning the American artist Gordon Matta-Clark and the various ways in which their designers had responded to the signature effects of his work: cutting, splitting, revealing and the treatment of surfaces.

Particularly explicit, the eponymous monograph published in hardcover by Phaidon in 2003 (designed by Julia Hastings) has a four-inch section of the boards of its case binding cut away at the spine to reveal the sewn and glued sections of the book block beneath. Another example, Object To Be Destroyed: The Work of Gordon Matta-Clark, published in hardcover by MIT in 2000, features what appears to be foil-blocked type applied to a velvet-textured material wrapping the boards of the cover – the type is apparently intended to wear away and disintegrate in everyday use.

Goggin considered how we might measure the appropriateness of such gestures. In one sense they evidently constitute some form of engagement with the practice of the artist, but at what point do they become insensitive – graphic or formal puns only superficially concerned with the task of representing an artist’s practice with the minimum of mediation?

Because he died at just 35, Matta-Clark’s oeuvre might be the perfect platform for this treatment. As Goggin described, his enduring legacy is not strictly a product of the work he produced in his lifetime (much of which was impermanent, existing only through documentation), but is the construction of a reading of that work through its posthumous representation in exhibitions and publications.

With this in mind, it is interesting to consider what the approaches discussed by Goggin actually express about the editorial agendas of the publications they represent. Do they say: “we are remaking Matta-Clark”?

In this context, Daniel Buren is an example of another artist whose work has been consistently documented in publications and has a similarly suggestive visual language that designers have responded to. Beginning in the 1960s he has developed a practice consisting almost exclusively of applying stripes in various media to reveal and respond to existing conditions in the contexts in which he has exhibited. Below are 3 early examples of what might be described as The Buren Complex.

Position – Proposition by Daniel Buren, Städtisches Museum Mönchengladbach, 1971. Designer unknown.

Hier Ici by Daniel Buren, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1976. Designed by Wim Crouwel and Daphne Duijvelshoff (Total Design).

View magazine, Daniel Buren issue, 1979. Designer unknown.

CUT-UP

2009-06-08T14:21:00.012+01:00

Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau, Gaberbocchus Press, 1958. 'Permutations' of the author's photograph by Stefan Themerson derived from a device used in the text.

Jazzbeat, February 1966. Cover showing Duke Ellington and his orchestra during a 1965 concert. Designer unknown.

The Growth of Personality by Gordon R. Lowe, Penguin, 1972. Cover design by Patrick McCreeth.