If you are in London any time until the 12th of August you should be able to see our advertising campaign for the V&A’s British Design exhibition around town. We produced posters (pictured) and video adverts, both of which can be seen on the London Underground.

For more explanation about the ideas behind the collage read out post about the print publicity.

Following our recent post about the publicity for the V&A’s British Design exhibition, we can now showcase some images of the catalogue. The landmark publication celebrates the best of British design from the 1948 ‘Austerity Games’ to the 2012 Olympics. Spanning twelve chapters in three sections, included are essays by leading curators and commentators, focus pieces on key practitioners and 350 examples of fashion and textiles, furniture, ceramics and glass, theatre design, graphics, photography, architecture, fine art and sculpture.

The challenge was to illustrate a roughly chronological progression, whilst expressing key notions of British design. This was achieved with typography. Each section of the book is set in a different typeface from three of the most important British typographers of the last Century: New Rail Alphabet by Margaret Calvert and Henrik Kubel; Verdana by Mathew Carter; and Bourgeois by Jonathan Barnbrook and Marcus Leis Allion. Front and back matter is set in Parable, a typeface designed by Christopher Burke and used in the typesetting of the eleventh Concise Oxford Dictionary.

For the design, inspiration was drawn from colour control patches that are used when artworks are professionally scanned or photographed for archive/print purposes. Key colours were extracted from every image featured in the book and used as the basis for the colour palate. The changing colours throughout the book also provide an abstract visual time line of tone, hue and vibrancy, which can be seen on the contents page above (second image).

Each section and chapter break use overlaid patterns from the V&A’s unique collection of textiles and prints.

The book can be bought from the V&A shop in hardback and paperback.

We have recently completed work on a Design Museum touring exhibition: UNEXPECTED PLEASURES, The Art and Design of Contemporary Jewellery. The exhibition concentrates on Contemporary Jewellery, a movement which sits at an intersection between art, design and craft. We have designed the catalogue and exhibition graphics, with exhibition design by the excellent Ab Rogers Design.

Curated by Susan Cohn, the exhibition showcases how the Contemporary Jewellery movement challenged conventional understanding of personal adornment. It is free to enter and tackes place at the National Gallery of Victoria from 20 April to 26 August.

Once we have images from the exhibition and of the book we will be posting them on the blog. In the mean time, if you are in Australia we recommend you take the opportunity to visit this exhibition.

We have recently completed work on the publicity for the V&A’s new exhibition, British Design 1948–2012: Innovation in the Modern Age. Celebrating the best of British post-war art and design from the 1948 ‘Austerity Games’ to the present day, the exhibition features over 300 objects which highlight significant moments in the history of British design.

The challenge for the publicity design was this: how can we distil 64 years – and over 300 objects – of British Design into one coherent piece of visual communication? We drew inspiration from one graphic technique that is prevalent throughout the period 1948–2012: collage. Collage allowed us to assemble a diverse array of visual forms into a vibrant and dynamic new image. This approach is quintessentially British – playful, explosive and celebratory. The aim was to create an image that could communicate the key messages of the exhibition (British, Style, Vibrant, Iconic and World Class) without any supporting text. British Design explodes in a burst of colour and form with the V&A at it’s heart.

Shown in this blog post are images taken by Generation Press of some of the many items we designed. Many thanks to GP who did a great job on the printing. We also designed the mammoth 350 page catalogue which is available from the V&A shop and will be featured here at a later date.

Marwan Kaabour is Lebanese graphic designer and the latest intern to join the studio. Originally from Beirut but now living in London, Marwaan has recently completed the MA course at LCC and will be helping us on a selection of projects. You can see more of Marwaan’s work on his site.

Jonathan has been invited to contribute a book list to the Designers and Books website. Given the task of providing a list of ten books, in typical form, he decided to ignore design but instead focus on literature and philosophy. The D&B blog also features a list of books associated with Jonathan, picking up that the Barnbrook Bible is included in Rick Poynor’s ‘Books Every Graphic Designer Should Read’ list.

Following on from last week’s post about the Fuse 1–20 book, we would like to explain the meaning of our poster, and what was for us a very intense project.

On the central axis, running from top to bottom, the poster features three characters from the Raterra Typeface in white. Two have already been explained in a previous post; the third is the character: How assorted would-be messiahs are sending us messages through the static on the TV.

In the middle of the poster there are six elements positioned around the corners of a central hexagon; these are the categories that Alfred Rattera stated his alphabet should be based on. Below are descriptions of these categories taken from Rattera’s notebooks (note the irrational descriptions – characteristic of his writing in later years).

The hexagonal shape is Metatron’s Cube – a two-dimensional geometric figure created from 13 equal circles, with lines from extending from the central circle extending out to the centres of the other 12 circles. Metatron’s Cube is a figure in sacred geometry and makes reference to the spiritual being Metatron.

Group A: The Physical World – represented by a platonic solid
“These characters are to be based on one of the five platonic solids indicated. These were selected to be used as the amount equals the number of wounds on Christ’s body and the lightest atomic mass for which absolutely no stable isotopes exist.”

Group B: Conflict – represented by the Little Boy atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima
“These characters are to based on the dimensions of the atomic bomb ‘Little Boy’ that was dropped on Hiroshima. In odour and taste ‘Little boy’ represents a leading member of the illuminati that I have been working with in the development of this project.”

Group C: The media – Represented by the Hollywood sign
“These characters are to based on the proportion of the famous Hollywood sign, I have found that the erratic nature of the baseline of the sign and spacing of the letters mirrors very closely the spacing and of the statues on Easter Island.”

Group D: Consumerism – represented by the RFID tag
“These are to be based on RFID tags, the layout of which echoes a human sacrifice altar. Converting ‘RFID’ to binary you get 01010010 01000110 01001001 01000100, the first byte represents 3, the last byte sums up to 2.333. Multiplying these by the end number gives you 666.”

Group E: Time – Represented by the tetractys shape
“These characters are to based on the tetractys, a shape invented by mathematician Pythagoras. It symbolises earth, air, fire & water. The first 4 numbers also symbolised the harmony of spheres and the Cosmos. The four rows add up to 10 which is unity of a higher order.”

Group F: communication – Represented by the antiproton
“These are to based on the Antiproton. Antiprotons are stable but short-lived since any collision with a proton will cause both particles to be annihilated in a burst of energy. They represent to me all that is negative in society that must be driven out by the use of these works.

Barnbrook has contributed to FUSE 1–20, a retrospective book of the influential, experimental typeface publication FUSE. Launched by Neville Brody and Jon Wozencroft in 1991, each issue featured specially commissioned fonts and corresponding posters by contemporary graphic designers. FUSE 1–20 exclusively features FUSE19 and FUSE20, two newly-commissioned and never-before published issues. We have contributed a new font (included via download link) and A2 poster to FUSE20: Antimatter.

Above: Alfred Rattera in an unusual public appearance where he appeared as part of jazz band in Soho, London late 1960s. © The Rattera Foundation. All Rights Reserved.

Rattera is a pictogram font based on the life and writings of the musician, mathematician, schizophrenic and outsider artist Alfred Rattera. After working in government and training for a short time as a priest, he became a recluse where he devised a philosophical alphabet. Each pictogram had a different (and very idiosyncratic) concept or thought, different equations and arrangements of the characters would supposedly help ensure a better future for humanity and open up new paths of consciousness or philosophical thought.

He was a very strange character with a bizarre life who is, as yet, relatively unknown in art and design circles mainly because very little of his visual works remain. As a consequence the font is reconstructed by us from his written notes which we gained brief access to via the official archive of his work The Rattera Foundation.

Above: Rattera Fuse Poster.

In addition to the poster featured in the book, there are also 3 downloadable PDFs: one detailing the life of Alfred Rattera, based on research collated when working on the project; a second with an extract from one of his notebooks, written down during the brief viewing and meeting with The Rattera Foundation; and finally, a wall chart which shows all of the characters and their specific meanings. 

Quote from Alfred Rattera:
“I will need new languages, new ways of expressing thought to be able to complete my system. The only way to do it is to create a new advanced language and notation system. Something that is appropriate to the intense and high level arguments that need to be had to further mankind and express ourselves sincerely in the Cosmos.”

As announced previously, we have designed the book published to accompany an exhibition of Wim Delvoye’s work at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Australia.

Working in close collaboration with Wim’s studio we designed a square book which comes packaged in a cardboard presentation box. Drawing inspiration from Delvoye’s interest in digestion and ephemeral design, the box makes subtle reference to pizza boxes. Contrasting with the throwaway box material, the book cover features one of the Double Helix series printed on foil paper.

The 200 page book features an essay by Bernard Marcadé, a foreword by MONA owner David Walsh, plus images of works included in the exhibition and a few landmark pieces.

Barnbrook are pleased to announce our latest book design: The Empire of Death, A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses, written by Paul Koudounaris and published by Thames & Hudson.

Beginning in the early modern period and continuing to the 19th century, charnel houses, ossuaries, tombs and chapels were elaborately decorated with human bone. The Empire of Death surveys the most important of of these sites with almost 300 images, most of which are taken by the author. Koudounaris also provides a contextual history describing the history of the macabre practices of mummification, skull painting and ossuary decoration. The title of the book is taken from an inscription found above the entrance of the Paris Catacombs warning visitors: Arrête! C’est ici l’empire de la Mort (‘Halt! This is the Empire of Death’).

The design of the book draws inspiration from the historical parallels between architecture and typography, as well as referencing gothic bibles and renaissance title pages. The books is split into two- and four-colour sections, with the contextual history printed on uncoated paper stock, and image sections on matt art. The hardback cover is gold foil blocked with the image tipped on to the front board.

This book is the first to be published of a number of books that we have designed for Thames & Hudson. Later this year more of our collaborations are due to be published and we are pleased to be working with such an eminent publisher of books on visual culture.