Jun 20, 2014

BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY - Limited Edition

To celebrate the millionth copy sold of Mad About the Boy, we designed this very limited edition as a gift for author Helen Fielding. 

The book and slipcase were hand-made by Shepherds Bookbinders of Rochester Row and feature white cloth binding, gold foil and bespoke marbled endpapers produced for us by Jemma Lewis.

Jun 19, 2014

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Haruki Murakami Stickers

Haruki Murakami’s new novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage will be published in the UK this August.

Our Creative Director had the following to say about designing the cover:

This was one of those rare books where the initial idea for the cover seemed so right. The pieces fell into place and it was as if it was just meant to be. I had a strong cover idea based on the idea of a linked group around a series of different-coloured circles, representing the five main characters and close childhood friends Mr Red, Mr Blue, Miss White, Miss Black and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki.

I cut out the five circles and played with the position of each of them as physical elements away from the confines of a computer. I experimented with overlapping the circles to represent the interactions within the close friendships of the main characters. Gradually the design came together in a congruent and meaningful form.

I then transferred this to photoshop, where I could refine the colour interactions within the intersections of each of the overlapping circles. This process all happened very quickly and an elegant abstract design fell into place. However, there is a second part to the design.

Keep reading

Jun 17, 2014

VINTAGE MAGIC

With hand-drawn typography influenced by a series of 1960’s John O'Hara novels, the Vintage design team has conjured up this playful new series.

By collecting all nine you can reveal the classic poster on the reverse. (see the magic happen on our Facebook page!)

The poster was supplied by the Science and Society Picture Library. It dates from 1910 and was a stock magic poster used by smaller acts where performance names could simply be inserted into a strip at the top of the image, which would explain why so many different types of magic acts are represented.

To be published October 2014 by Vintage.

Jun 12, 2014

JOGO BONITO POSTERS

To celebrate the beginning of the World Cup and the publication of Jogo Bonito, we’ve made these special edition typographic posters which are available to download now.

Jogo Bonito is published by Yellow Jersey Press.

Jun 9, 2014

HARUKI MURAKAMI - Animation

Here is our animated trailer for the latest novel from Haruki Murakami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.

Jun 6, 2014
THE CYCLING ANTHOLOGY - Volume 1-4
Professional cycling is a rich, dynamic and often controversial sport that lends itself to great writing. Some of the most famous and illustrious races were founded by newspapermen and The Cycling Anthology...

THE CYCLING ANTHOLOGY - Volume 1-4

Professional cycling is a rich, dynamic and often controversial sport that lends itself to great writing. Some of the most famous and illustrious races were founded by newspapermen and The Cycling Anthology continues this tradition by bringing together the best in the business.

Founded by Lionel Birnie and Ellis Bacon in 2012, the first three volumes of the series were published by Lionel’s company Peloton Publishing. A great series to work on, the covers were redesigned in-house utilising original cyclist illustrations by Simon Scarsbrook for volumes 1-3 and a new illustration for volume 4. Each cover features a different coloured band, with the overall look inspired by vintage cycling posters.

Volume 1-4 is available now from Yellow Jersey Press.

May 30, 2014
THE LIVES OF OTHERS - Neel Mukherjee
Set in Calcutta in 1967 The Lives of Others is an ambitious, rich and compassionate novel, that anatomises the very soul of a nation in all its contradictions as it unfolds a family history.
We wanted a very rich...

THE LIVES OF OTHERS - Neel Mukherjee

Set in Calcutta in 1967 The Lives of Others is an ambitious, rich and compassionate novel, that anatomises the very soul of a nation in all its contradictions as it unfolds a family history. 

We wanted a very rich and colourful cover that didn’t portray India in a typically traditional way. After picking out important themes from the novel we commissioned William Bragg to illustrate them. Here are a few words from him about how he took this job on:

“The house on the cover is a key place in the novel as the story centres around one extended family who all live there. The central character in the novel ‘Supratik’ becomes estranged from the family and is thus depicted set apart leaning on the balcony at the top. 

I always start by working from my imagination, making quick sketches, trying out different compositions, with a focus on trying to capture how the scene looks and feels in my mind. When I’ve chosen a direction I’m happy with I’ll usually spend some time collecting reference imagery to inform the final drawing and help create a more convincing reality. In this case the author provided me with a photograph he’d taken of a wonderful house in Calcutta which was a great inspiration for the final image.

For this cover I supplied all the imagery separately so the designer was free to compose the final cover and make it work well with the typography.

I particularly like how the moon works, how it is caught in the power lines, its enormous size also gives it an emotional impact which draws you in at the same time as highlighting key information.”

The Lives of Others is published by Chatto & Windus

May 28, 2014

HATCH SHOW PRINT, NASHVILLE

The typography, images, and unmistakable ‘aesthetic’ of Hatch Show Print, based in Nashville, is one of the oldest working letterpress print shops in America, creating a panoply of creative and distinctive promotional posters for entertainers such as Hank Williams, Bill Monroe and Minnie Pearl. This tradition continues today with their workshop producing memorable typographic pieces for Pearl Jam, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Mumford & Sons, to name just a few. They make beautiful wrestling banners, advertising and for us at Vintage Design they produced the cover for Lovesick Blues: the life of Hank Williams by Paul Hemphill (Secker and Warburg, 2005).

On a recent trip to Nashville, one of the team visited their inspiring new workshop and gallery where the layout remains exactly just as it has always been. Crammed with stunning hand-cut woodblock type, Hatch maintains and thrives on an historic typographic tradition. Its walls are covered with antique shelving sagging and warped with their weight. The shelves themselves are fabricated from large sawn up and long-discarded woodblock typefaces once used to create huge adverts. Hatch has just started tours of their studios where you can see a selection of their historic posters and pull a print yourself.

Click here to see a time lapse video of Hatch moving offices.



May 23, 2014

H IS FOR HAWK - Helen Macdonald

‘In real life, goshawks resemble sparrowhawks the way leopards resemble housecats. Bigger, yes. But bulkier, bloodier, deadlier, scarier, and much, much harder to see. Birds of deep woodland, not gardens, they’re the birdwatchers’ dark grail.’

As a child Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including T. H. White’s tortured masterpiece, The Goshawk, which describes White’s struggle to train a hawk as a spiritual contest. The original Cape cover is shown here.

When her father dies and she is knocked sideways by grief, she becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She buys Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside and takes her home to Cambridge. Then she fills the freezer with hawk food and unplugs the phone, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals.

Helen Macdonald wanted something in the style of William Nicholson’s Alphabet. I instantly thought of Christopher Wormell.  I asked him to write some words about this commission.

Keep reading

May 19, 2014
Vintage Kennedy
From August 2014, Vintage classics will be reissuing a series of Margaret Kennedy titles, beginning with The Constant Nymph, The Ladies of Lyndon and Together & Apart.
Margaret Kennedy was writing between the 1920s and 1950s. Her most...

Vintage Kennedy

From August 2014, Vintage classics will be reissuing a series of Margaret Kennedy titles, beginning with The Constant NymphThe Ladies of Lyndon and Together & Apart

Margaret Kennedy was writing between the 1920s and 1950s. Her most successful title was The Constant Nymph; a publishing sensation of the 1920s which inspired several film and stage adaptations. Kennedy’s books are literary, elegantly told tales of upper/middle-class life, marriage and families. They are written with a sharp, insightful eye and often end in tragedy. 

With an aim to create romantic, period scenes for the series with a bit of contemporary edge, we knew that Riikka Sormunen would be the perfect illustrator for the job.

May 15, 2014
PYNCHON IN PUBLIC
To celebrate Pynchon in Public Day we’re offering this free downloadable wallpaper based on our Gravity’s Rainbow Vintage Classic.
Simply click on the image above and save to use as you wish.

PYNCHON IN PUBLIC

To celebrate Pynchon in Public Day we’re offering this free downloadable wallpaper based on our Gravity’s Rainbow Vintage Classic.

Simply click on the image above and save to use as you wish.

May 15, 2014

JOSEPH O'CONNOR - The Thrill Of It All

“O'Connor writes with such passion, such precision, such beautiful sentences, with such an ear for language and with such knowledge and hilarity, that this book could only come from an extremely gifted Rock'n'Roll obsessive… A brilliant and vital document” - Bob Geldof

Spanning 25 years, The Thrill of it All rewinds and fast-forwards through an evocative soundtrack of struggle and laughter. Infused with blues, ska, classic showtunes, New Wave and punk, the tale stretches from suburban England to Manhattan’s East Village, from Thatcher-era London to the Hollywood Bowl, from the meadows of the Glastonbury Festival to a wintry Long Island, culminating in a Dublin evening in July 2012, a night that changes everything.

For the cover there was only one image we had in mind. Once we were happy with the guitar crop we went about creating our very own band logo to be used for the title. The guitar spans the whole of the jacket and features embossed strings and a mixture of matt and gloss finish to create the desired texture.

You can read more about the music that inspired The Thrill of it All from Joseph himself on the Vintage Books website here.

May 2, 2014

JOHN DEAKIN PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION

There’s a photography exhibition well worth a visit at the Photographer’s Gallery: Under the Influence: John Deakin and the Lure of Soho. Here are the people and pubs of bohemian Soho of the 50s and 60s, and portraits of critics and artists of the time. Dylan Thomas, Jeffrey Bernard, Lucien Freud and perhaps most famously Francis Bacon are among the portraits, and many of them like Deakin himself, frequented the French House and the Colony Room.

His portraits are mostly unflattering, often seeming too close, the poses awkward. His portrait of the poet George Barker reproduced on The Chameleon Poet by Robert Fraser (Jonathan Cape 2002) is typical of his oeuvre: the poet stands in an ungainly pose against the rough wall of a lavatory in London. 

A difficult alcoholic who was disliked by many, John Deakin is now recognized as one of the great post-war photographers but he set little value on the medium and wanted instead to be a painter. When he died his negatives were rescued from under his bed, and his surviving prints are creased and torn. What’s left is highly recommended viewing. The show is on until 13 July 2014.

May 1, 2014
MR WESTON’S GOOD WINE - T.F. Powys
This post-WWII allegory of good and evil, has been beautifully re-imagined for Vintage Classics by illustrator Tom Duxbury. Tom was a perfect choice of artist for the cover image, but, would you choose Mr Weston’s...

MR WESTON’S GOOD WINE - T.F. Powys

This post-WWII allegory of good and evil, has been beautifully re-imagined for Vintage Classics by illustrator Tom Duxbury. Tom was a perfect choice of artist for the cover image, but, would you choose Mr Weston’s light or dark wine?

Apr 30, 2014

PICK ME UP FESTIVAL 2014 AT SOMERSET HOUSE

Five years in, the ever-popular Pick Me Up Festival held at Somerset House is still going strong and continues to showcase a variety of contemporary graphic art in a fun and interactive way. The annual festival brings together a broad spectrum of disciplines across art and design, from illustration and letterpress to paper sculpture and animation.

Visitors are actively encouraged to get involved in workshops where you can show off your creative knowledge in a special pub quiz hosted by Camberwell Press, or get hands on and create wooden signs, personalised tote bags and even your very own stained glass artwork.

Collectives Hero of Switzerland, Animaux Circus and Olio are all showing this year, as well as featured artists Jessica Das and Lynnie Zulu.

The festival is still on for a few more days until May 5th 2014.

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