Mechanized Mules of Victory

The Paul Rand work I mentioned earlier was the brochure titled Mechanized Mules of Victory which dates from 1942. It was printed using just black and yellow ink. There's more on that publication via this link.

Anyway, the Northern Quarter's brilliant Marc The Printers shop has a risograph printer that's available and I wondered about its potential to produce two colour work with a similar feel. There are some limitations (for example, it doesn't produce blocks of colour - specifically black - very well) but its halftones and very unglossy look bears some relation to some of the material that has been inspiring me of late.

Here's the information that they supply on the service:

"If you wish to do printing for a community group, charity or other voluntary sector organisation, you can book one of our Risograph machines and print it yourself. (DIY printing). This avoids all the charges for staff labour and makes printing very inexpensive. Professional help is always on hand to lead you through the printing process.

You can also use our finishing equipment to produce booklets, guillotine paper and card, or fold your finished printing.

Risograph printers are the modern equivalent of the old duplicators. Today they are clean, easy to use and produce a much better quality finished product. They use soya-based inks and we have a very wide range of recycled paper and card. This is ethical printing at its best.

You must book DIY printing in advance, in person or by phone (not by email or fax!) - it is only available on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and to bone fide voluntary and community groups. Full colour printing cannot be done as DIY."

Books #1

I've been collecting together some of the books that I like from a design perspective. Amy and Nicola picked up two very nice publications for me while at the market in Toulon and I also got a pile of old Penguins and Pelicans from eBay.

The Penguin By Design book that I treated myself to is also proving rather inspirational. It documents the development of some of those more iconic covers including some real insight regarding the grids and logos that have been used over the years. I'll be posting more on these at some point.

For my own records, I just wanted to note a few links here that I'm sure will prove helpful over coming months. One is Joe Kral's Flickr collection of Penguin books that you will find via this link. There is also another Flickr group for Penguin collectors to upload their favourites via this link. And while eventually they may stray into cliched 'shiny robot' territory, there are some interesting Penguin sci-fi covers via this link.

Looking at other publishers around the globe, A Journey Around My Skull documents some very beautiful books which can be viewed by clicking this link and there is also Martin Klasch here, The Book Cover Archive here, the delightful Grain Edit blog here plus The Graphis Collection which has some astounding retro work here.

I also picked up By Its Cover - a compendium of modern American book design - from the library alongside a very nice Paul Rand book. I'll certainly post more about the latter. Specifically there's his mid-century brochure for an American automobile company that I really, really like.