As part of my ongoing work for New Weird Australia I’ve recently produced a template and artwork for the first in a series of releases entitled New Editions.

New Editions aims to help promote and distribute new experimental Australian music in a collection of physical and digital releases. Punters like yourself have the option of downloading a digital version of each album for free, or to help support the project and artist by purchasing a physical copy.

The first New Edition is by Melbourne based ambient / industrial / hip-hop group Caught Ship, with their album Start Dencing Dad Start Dencing. It’s a great release, and really helps set a high quality standard for future releases.

The artwork (and overall layout) concept uses the system and assets created for the New Weird Australia branding – which is essentially built around a 4×4 grid filled using a library of geometric shapes, strange images and hand-made textures. Part of the idea behind using a square grid for all artwork was so that it could easily fit into both CDs and posters, so it’s great to see that it actually works in practice.

Again, type is set in Nimbus Sans – which is the primary New Weird Australia typeface. A strip of text with the New Editions label name and “edition number” runs vertically down the front, and next to that is the band name and catalogue number which makes up the sleeve spine (also vertical).

The artwork is being printed onto a white sticker, which will be affixed to a recycled carboard wallet containing an audio CD and artwork created by the band themselves.

I used the band’s artwork as a reference guide for the cover art colours and (to an extent) the imagery, which features decorative Middle Eastern textiles and jewelry and ancient Egyptian artwork. A nice RGB colour scheme emerged out of it all too – which also helps tie it all together. There’s a bit of improvised formalism to the way each piece of art comes together for each project, so I’m glad that the system can not only accomodate that and also allow for the specific project to have a unique look.

Future releases in this series may continue to reference supplied artwork in unusual ways, or they may also directly use assets supplied by the band (such as photography). There’s still quite a bit of tweaking that goes into each image and a great deal of consideration into the way each element fits into the composition. To a large extent the final result really comes down to how pleasing everything looks and well each element fits together, so how and when new assets are used will largely depend on those considerations.

The image below shows just how the template comes together. Click for a larger version.

You can download (name your price) the album right now from here.

A new design for Tantrum Theatre this week – an identity, poster and flyer for a performance that will be part of the Sydney Fringe festival this year called Peepshow. This will actually be MK2 of the Peepshow performance, and the first time it has been performed outside of Newcastle.

“Tantrum Theatre will present the bold and challenging installation performance, Peepshow, at PACT 107 Railway Parade, Erskineville, NSW 2043. This tantalising work was the success of the 2009 Newcastle arts scene with its innovative use of a found space. The work exposed performers and audiences alike to an experimental mode of performance, challenging perceptions and allowing an active collaboration between audience and performer in each show. It presented audiences with an insight into the darker recesses of Newcastle’s psyche, as seen through the eyes of its young people, and highlighted some of the social concerns that our young people have, as well as concerns of the community around issues of disused and abandoned spaces and safety within the CBD. Peepshow explores our fascination with what is hidden behind closed doors. The inner workings of us all will be on full display as you enter the Peepshow.”

As the performance is not strictly a part of the 2010 season canon, it was an opportunity to do something a little different visually and really interpret the themes and ideas behind the performance (as outlined above).

As I mentioned in yesterday’s Roundup, I’m currently working on the artwork and design for Tantrum’s 2011 season – which should be finished and revealed in the next few months. Expect something quite different, yet again.

The fabulous photo featured in the poster and flyer was taken by Marcus Ranum

Big thanks to Justine and Brendan at Tantrum for continuing to be such supportive and open-minded clients!

10 weeks of blogging— a minor milestone.

I’m currently busy preparing my mailer and applying for jobs overseas, however I’ve got a backlog of great articles and items (including the followup to my Depeche Mode discography) so normal posting should resume soon.

Regarding the big move, if all goes well I should be arriving in Berlin early June, so if you’re a European or UK studio interested in me and my work, I’d love to hear from you.

Wherever you are, have a great week.

I was previously using Flickr as a second portfolio, and while I’ve enjoyed using the service for that and being part of the many design communities, it seems a little redundant to be managing multiple portfolios.

I’ll try and keep this new account as frequently updated and interesting as possible, with plenty of design goodness and shots from my travels and daily life.

Please join me if you’re so inclined. For now here are a few samples of what I’ve posted so far, some vintage Australian graphics, found design artefacts, and a few images of vintage signage from my home town of Newcastle. Enjoy.

Heath Killen Flickr

These are both from the Dreamtime 79 series and are currently limited to a run of 25 of each

These A3 posters are printed on 225 GSM stock with custom inks. They are all hand-pulled and as such they all unique, containing lots of lovely off-resister detail.

Each print is priced at $60 (plus postage & handling) or you can buy both for $100, giving you a saving of $20 on the total.

These will also be numbered and signed, and they’ll look superb when framed. Once they’re are gone, they’re gone, so get in quick!

Jump over my new online store to purchase.

This ongoing series will take an informal look at the work of world’s best designers & illustrators, and discover what’s inspired them to create. Each entry will contain two parts: the first will be a selection of five of the profiled individual’s finest work, as chosen by me, complete with commentary and critique. The second part will feature five pieces chosen by the profiled designer, with their own notes on how or why they have been inspired by each selection. It should be a lot of fun, and will provide some interesting and inspirational thoughts in addition to some delicious eye-candy.

I’m fortunate enough to be kicking off the series with one of the best designers to emerge from the last few years— Darren Wall aka Wallzo.

After graduating in 2003 – Wallzo started his career in the art department of Simon & Schuster, designing and illustrating book covers. A few years later, he began working on designs for friend Owen Clarke’s then little known band Hot Chip. The results of this collaboration would become the artwork for the unexpectedly huge album The Warning, the success of which not only helped propel the band into superstardom, but Wallzo into a successful full-time freelancer. Now running his own busy studio, Wallzo continues to produce some of the freshest and most exciting design coming out of the UK. His work is highly conceptual and provides no easy answers, but there’s a sense of fun and playfulness that makes it accessible and engaging.

Wallzo continues to explore new ideas, styles and different disciplines. He’s got some exciting new stuff coming up too, including designs for a well-known classical composer and a stand-up comedian. Additionally his site will be updated in early March, with both new projects and some fantastic looking prints for sale, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, let’s check out some of his truly unique and beautiful work.

1. Made In The Dark

This cover for Hot Chip’s third album is not only my personal favourite Wallzo design, but one of my favourite album covers from the last decade. Often referred to simply as “The Artifact”, the illustration is the result of experimenting with the oxidizing process on copper, which results in the appearance of verdigris, often in strange yet beautiful shapes. It’s easy to get lost in the undulating, labyrinthine structure of the object and discover new meaning in it. Is it an ancient tablet left over from some forgotten civilisation? Or is it a manhole cover on an alien world? The design is made all the more striking in its physical form with the use of textured copper ink. A brilliant design solution for a wildly experimental and capricious album.

Following the album’s release, the cover was reproduced in a number of limited edition prints, including a laser cut version for Blanka. While they’re all sold out now, check out how amazing these prints with with verdigris ink printed on copper Celloglass stock look.

2. The Warning

Released two years prior to Made In The Dark, Wallzo’s first collaboration with Hot Chip resulted in a truly confounding but utterly compelling cover. Exactly what are these weird, bright little objects? What do they mean? What are they made of? They remind me of the fidgety, subconscious little mini-sculptures you might make with bits of plastic or packaging lying around the place. In the design I see elements of pop art, Bauhaus industrial design, surrealism and kid’s toys. It’s a spirited, bold and genuinely iconic cover – the sort that is impossible to look past in a record store.

These fantastical graphics ended up becoming surprisingly versatile icons too, translated into different illustration styles and 3D renderings for use in the album’s single artworks and marketing materials. Check out this Sleevage review to see a few examples.

The typeface used on both this album and Made In The Dark is Trade Gothic – chosen for it’s neutral personality and condensed form. It may seem like an insignificant choice to some, but it’s design decisions like this are hugely important. By avoiding clichéd or overly fashionable typography for dance music, Wallzo helps to give the band a unique identity and visually set them apart from their contemporaries. It also gives the design a timeless quality, preventing it from becoming dated and locked into the style of a particular era. Great stuff.

3. Cybele

Pronounced ‘Khi-ber-lee’, Cybele is a 3D typeface that was produced by Wallzo in collaboration with Eskimo Square. Reminiscent of molecular structure models, the letterforms are composed of smaller pieces which essentially snap together to create the alphabet and beyond. It’s another example of the playfulness in Wallzo’s designs – in this case triggering memories of the young scientist or inventor in us all.

While currently only existing in virtual space, Wallzo hopes to one day produce these as a physical, modular kit — enabling you to actually interact with the alphabet and create your own forms. It’s an exciting idea, bringing together sophisticated design with the tactile pleasure of constructible toys like Lego, and as far as I’m aware it’s the first of its kind.

Prints with designs using the Cybele typeface are currently avaliable from Wallzo’s site, featuring metallic ink detail and printed by Generation Press.

4. Loops

Loops is a bi-annual publication, produced in collaboration with Domino Records and Faber. I think the official bio sums up the philosophy behind it perfectly:

“(Loops) offers a landscape, both in print form and online, for today’s exceptional writers to engage with subjects, individuals and issues that colour all corners of the pop music world. Free from the shackles of release schedules, Loops provides a space for artists to publish tour diaries, non-sequiturs and think-pieces and an opportunity for writers to stretch out and go off-map to share their thoughts and ideas.”

Wallzo’s identity for Loops is essentially made up of interconnecting shapes, which link together to create letters. Once the basic shapes connect and the letterform is made, the object essentially becomes an infinite loop. It’s brilliantly ornamental without being overly ornate, and the core shapes are able to be reused as punctuation marks and other design elements, creating not only a fabulous logo and masthead but a collection of supplemental decorative graphics. Additionally each issue features the use of a different 2 colour palate – the first featuring being pink & blue and the upcoming second issue being yellow and blue. I always love seeing brands that can be modified in some way without losing their core identity, and this is a great example of that.

5. Manchester: Looking For The Light Through The Pouring Rain

Kevin Cummin‘s book is a collection photos from the heyday of the Factory Records / Madchester music scene, and features subjects such as Joy Division, The Fall and the Happy Mondays as well as interviews with some of the bands and their associates.

Wallzo’s work here is restrained and elegant, allowing the photos to speak for themselves. The use of black, white and silver throughout compliments the monochrome photography perfectly, and the book is given an extra bit of personality with the occasional page printed with full-bleed Cyan. This colour is a reference to UK street signage, as is the typeface ‘Transport’ which is used on UK road signs.

According to Wallzo— “The thinking behind the colour and typeface was that the book brought together an entire generation of musicians that had one thing in common: they were raised on the same streets, and they took pride in that fact. So the visual language of a UK city felt like the appropriate choice.”

This degree of honesty and considered rationale goes into all of Wallzo’s work and it’s a huge part of what makes it so great. He’s a designer who clearly loves what he does, a perfectionist with big ideas, and an all-round nice guy. We could definitely do with a few more Wallzo’s in the industry.

Wallzo’s High Five

1. Yuzaku Kamekura

It feels like Yuzaku Kamekura is something of a secret, as his work is somewhat difficult to locate online and he has no monograph still in print. I discovered his work in a volume on japanese book design and then later stumbled across his magnificent poster work. His work bristles with energy and life while still being unmistakably modernist. There’s a beautiful balance between complexity and restraint in his work, and his purely graphic posters are probably my favourite pieces of design. I was lucky enough to receive his Design Expo ’89 poster as a birthday present from my girlfriend, I’ll hang it in my studio and bow before it every morning like a cult member.

2. Jean Widmer’s Centre de Creation Industrielle posters

Jean Widmer is a Swiss graphic designer who introduced modernist principles to France at the end of the sixties, and this set of posters constitute his most popular work. There’s a real playfulness about these pieces that I love, and the impeccable choice of inks give them real ‘muscle’.

3. Cinefex

Cinefex is a US magazine which covers special effects in modern blockbuster movies. It has superb, in-depth articles about how effects were achieved in recent movies, minus the surrounding hype that normally accompanies pieces on big budget cinema. I find it hugely inspiring reading about the sheer amount of work, invention and passion that goes into pushing the boundaries of special effects. Not that any of it excuses Terminator Salvation, which was bobbins.

4. Hobby Japan

Whenever I get the chance to get to Japan I always try and pick up a copy of this magazine. It is a review of all things plastic and collectable in Japan, and is normally a huge read at about 400 pages an issue. There’s something uniquely satisfying about the way every single page is overcrowded with colourful robotic imagery and regimented japanese typography that – to my Western eye at least – becomes a barrage of abstract shapes and forms. Its essentially like an Exchange and Mart from the distant future, and I never tire of browsing its pages.

5. North packaging for Yauatcha

I saw this on the brilliant September Industry site recently, and it really bowled me over. It is part of their identity for an oriental restaurant in London and according to North ‘the identity … was inspired by the undulating terraced terrain of the tea plantations of Long Jing in China. Equally customers might see in it a cloud of dim sum steam’. Put simply, this is the kind of work which makes me love graphic design, its simply perfect and a joy to look at. While on the subject of North, I really like the fact they’ve never had a website. I’m sure its not their intention by any means, but their permanent holding page which is just a mysterious animation of their marques seems only to add to their mystique. In short, they are appallingly good.

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Many thanks to Darren for helping kick off High Five in great style, with some fantastic and inspiring selections and thoughts. Thanks to you for reading and be sure to check back in next week for another entry in the series.

Wallzo Home
Wallzo Twitter
Wallzo Flickr

Inspired by a mutual love of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, cosmic horror, library records, English surrealism, and arts & crafts psychedelia, boutique record label Ghost Box was founded in 2003 by designer Julian House and musician Jim Jupp.

To simply refer to it as a record label doesn’t quite do it justice. Ghost Box feels more like a collection of relics and artifacts from a parallel world. It’s built on fragments of forgotten culture and half-remembered fictions. It’s output contains mysterious allusions and arcane histories, and offers a glimpse into a past that never happened – something that House refers to as “a lost Britain”.

Ghost Box is a genuine attempt to immerse the audience in a fictional world. Our entry point is the small town of Belbury – a place where some type of occult “event” has occurred, disturbing the natural order of things, As a result Belbury has become a site where the past and the future collide, and the real and imaginary co-exist. The pastoral mythology of Belbury is both wondrous and haunting. Disturbing and beautiful. Eerie and amusing. It’s a place that stays with you, long after visiting.

The music of Ghost Box possesses a timeless quality, drawing on a range of influences as broad as radiophonic electronica, field recordings and musique concrète. There is the bright and mystical Belbury Poly (my favourite), the playful Advisory Circle and the nightmarish soundscapes of Eric Zann & Mount Vernon Arts Lab. New to the label is Roj, whose album is a hypnotic, psychedelic journey into space. While all the releases are unique and diverse, there’s an analogue warmth to each production. They’re oozing with atmosphere and ideas. You get the feeling that it’s all created by tape loop splicing, vintage synthesizers and electro-acoustic instruments. Combined with the inseparable element of the design and artwork, the Ghost Box music truly transports you to that “other-place”.

The label is currently home to 5 artists, and there are 12 releases to date. While the artists involved all share the collective Ghost Box vision, they also contribute their own personal aesthetic and ideologies, and this helps to give the label depth and texture. While the Ghost Box experience is all about the catalogue as a whole, each album is unique, and deserves the be thoroughly enjoyed on its own merits.

The visual elements of Ghost Box are the work of Julian House, who also makes records under the name The Focus Group. Often created in consultation with Jupp, there are numerous visual reference points that contribute to the overall aesthetic, including pulp novels, weird folk-art, modernist institutional textbooks, vintage science fiction and occult paraphernalia. The myriad of influences combine to create a through-the-looking-glass collection of album covers.

Most of the early Ghost Box releases bear a resemblance to the classic designs of vintage Penguin and Pelican paperbooks, however it’s so masterfully deconstructed and reassembled by House that it feels fresh and unique.

With each new release, the layout becomes looser, abandoning old design elements and introducing new ones, and yet somehow they continue to visually fit together. Illustrations usually feature some of House’s characteristic, abstract collage style, although the themes subjects also change and evolve with each release. It’s actually a great study in how to grow and experiment with a brand without slavishly adhering to a style guide.

Of course all the releases feature the unifying Ghost Box logo in the top left hand corner – which itself seems to visually fall somewhere between obscure 70′s community television identity and early 80′s personal computer company.

The visual world of Ghost Box (and Belbury) extends beyond the discography. House has created numerous flyers, videos, and artworks for the label. There’s even a strange, text-book like zine titled Folklore & Mathematics which features fake newspaper clippings, excerpts from supernatural texts and bizarre imagery from the ancient world. It’s this type of myth-making and attention to detail that makes Ghost Box so utterly compelling.

The label also hosts Belbury Youth Club Nights – evenings of multimedia entertainment, featuring music and videos created and presented by the Ghost Box extended family. One such upcoming BYCN (featured as part of the Flatpack Festival) is said to feature public information films, haunted old TV programmes, a new version of Julian House’s short film Winter Sun Wavelength and music by the Focus Group & Belbury Poly.

Also coming up for Ghost Box is their first vinyl release – a reissue of The Advisory Circle’s Mind How You Go, complete with new tracks and remixes. Vinyl is a natural fit for the label’s aesthetic and philosophy, and it’s going to be fantastic to see House’s stunning designs rendered at the larger size.
Order here.

Ghost Box appeals to me in a big way. There’s something in the design and the music that triggers many memories and emotions. The sensation of exploring an abandoned library and finding an encyclopedia of spells and magic. The feeling of seeing a ghostly figure appear in the flickering light of an old television set. From sun-soaked hippie folk to creeping cosmic terror, it really taps into that space of ancient knowledge and psychic wonder. In the age of the disposable and the digital, it’s truly inspiring to see such dedication to the physical product, and providing an honest and unforgetable experience to accompany it.

Phenomena & Occurrences Video:

Ghost Box Flyers:

Author insert a music with WS Audio Player.
(Download) this music.

Ghost Box
Ghost Box Wiki
GB Facebook Group
The Belbury Parish Magazine

These are both from the Dreamtime 79 series, and thanks to screen-printing extraordinaire Kate Banazi they’re looking absolutely amazing.

Both posters will be A3, printed on high quality archival stock. Black Swan Ceremony is on white and The Call Of The Lyre Bird on extra special bright red.

The Black Swan Ceremony print is looking particularly fantastic with gold and orange-gold ink.

These hand pulled screen-prints will be limited, so if you’re interested in purchasing one, let me know and I’ll keep one aside for you.

Pricing and purchasing details, as well as photos of the final prints will be revealed next week. In the meantime check out these tests!

Reinvention. If I had to pick one, unifying word to sum up Massive Attack’s discography so far, that would be it. I can think of few other bands with a profile as big as theirs who continue to take such dramatic risks with their music and design. This is a band who actively seek to defy expectations and challenge preconceptions.

The trajectory of their career could have turned out very differently. A lesser band would have coasted on from their early success, happily returning to the well time after time, pumping out diluted facsimiles of their winning formula in an endless stream of soundtracks and chill-out compilations. But not this band. This band took the sound that made them superstars, and flooded it with darkness and distortion. When that brought them even greater success, they stripped it all back for a deliberately obtuse and personal album infused with ice cold electronica. And now seven years later, nearly 20 years after their debut, they give us Heligoland, an album almost unrecognizably different to anything they’ve done before.

Heligoland is the soundtrack to a haunted circus. From the nightmarish clown face on the cover to the fractured carnival music beats, the album takes you on a journey from one dark sideshow exhibition to the next. It is at times dirty, distorted and arrhythmic. The pace of the album ranges from glacial slowness to brisk quicksteps without warning. From the first track, it draws you in to its eerie soundscapes, and you never know what’s around the corner. It might sound like an unpleasant experience, but it’s not. Not at all. The darkness is balanced by moments of incredible beauty and bliss. The songs quickly get under your skin, but in a way that makes you want to keep revisiting. It’s experimental, challenging, hypnotic and ultimately a deeply rewarding album.

Given the diversity of the songs, and the collaborative nature of the production, Heligoland sounds remarkably cohesive. There is more live instrumentation used here than ever before. Rumbling bass lines, live drums, handclaps, piano, frantically plucked acoustic guitar and most surprisingly— horns. There are still electronic elements, but they’ve never sounded more like a traditional “band” as they do here.

While they have always had a revolving cast of guests singers, this album contains no less than 6 individuals sharing vocal duties. Horace Andy returns on a track that might be his best collaboration with the band yet. Girl I Love You is a completely different type of song for Andy, and he sounds incredible, going round after round with a thunderous horn section. Elsewhere Tunde Adebimpe appears, as does Martina Topley Bird, Hope Sandoval, Guy Garvey and Damon Albarn, who puts in his most emotional performance in years.

There are also numerous musical guests appearing. In addition to the return of long-time producer Neil Davidge, there is Portishead’s Adrian Utley and John Bagott on guitar and keys respectively. Beak’s Billy Fuller on bass duties, and the late Jerry Fuchs fills in on drums. DFA records co-founder Tim Goldsworthy is also credited with additional production.

The album is dedicated to Blue Lines co-producer, Jonny Dollar, who sadly died last year.

The focus of the design is entirely on 3D’s paintings. His artwork has been featured liberally throughout their back catalogue, but never used as much or as prominently as it is here. The cover art is rather disturbing, yet strangely comical: a stencil-painted visage that could very well belong to Daddy G. He’s given a harlequin style tattoo over one eye while the other eye appears to be damaged or missing. His face is smeared with smudged clown lips, and above his head rests a greyscale rainbow, replete with drips of paint. The monocrhome image is made all the more striking with the bright, textured, orange background.

The cover image itself has banned band from appearing in advertising on the London Underground. According to 3D “They won’t allow anything on the Tube that looks like street art … They want us to remove all drips and fuzz.” It’s a bizarre act of censorship, and seems like a hasty and misguided knee-jerk response. It is interesting that the British street-art movement that 3D had such a strong hand in building over 20 years ago still creates such controversy, and that the very public debate over the distinction between art and vandalism continues.

Throughout the rest of the sleeve, all the hallmarks of 3D’s styles and themes are on display. The stencils. The layered textures of aerosol and acrylic paint. There’s the fascination with anatomy and the human form. The machinery of the body. We’re shown hearts, lungs and skulls in unflinchingly real form. There’s the sense of being exposed and laid bare. It’s startlingly honest. There are some notable differences in this new work though, most striking of which are the lurid colours and stark contrasts. There’s something quite post-apocalytpic about is all too. Vivid and nuclear. Rough and raw. It’s the punk side of Massive Attack and it all reflects the sound and mood of the music perfectly.

Tom Hingston returns to his role and designer, and essentially allows 3D’s artwork to live and beathe, unecumbered by any other design elements beyond typography. The typography itself appears to be another bespoke font, based on OCR. It’s set with massive, seemingly random spacing, and in most cases takes up the entire length of the artwork. Another smashing success in what has proven to be one of the great music and design creative partnerships of all time.

There’s something truly special about this album. It’s a specialness that might not be fully appreciated for a while— but it’s there. I feel like this is the album the band has always wanted to make. Despite the fact that it’s had such a tortured and protracted birthing process, there’s a looseness to it, and while they have never made a dishonest or inadequate album, they sound most comfortable and at ease in these songs.

I’ve really enjoyed revisitng these albums, and building up to a context for this new one. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as me, and that you give Heligoland the time it really deserves to sink in and inhabit your head for a while.

I can’t wait to see and hear what they come up with next.

Blue Lines
Protection
Mezzanine
100th Window

Massive Attack Home
Heligoland Wiki
Tom Hingston Studio

*(sorry trees)
Vince Frost

A chronicle of Frost’s journey from London to Sydney, and from Pentagram associate to international design icon. This is a fantastic book with the right balance of eye-candy and information, exploring case studies spanning from the mid 90′s to the present day. Simply one of the best and most inspiring designers working today.

Not sure what stock used was, but it feels incredible and is unlike any other book I’ve held. I can’t recall any other book typeset in Franklin Gothic Bold either, but it works.

Love the black on fluoro-orange cover too.

Cover Art By: New Music Graphics
Adrian Shaughnessy

One of my favourite books. Cover Art By is an indispensable guide to some of the best in contemporary music design, and features the likes of Julian House, Kim Hiorthoy, Rune Mortensen, Steve Byram, Jeff Jank and Grandpeople.

It’s great to just flick through and enjoy the hundred of images, but there’s actually some quite in-depth interviews with the artists and designers profiled, as well as detailed information on all the images.

Typeset in Lineto’s Simple— which is a personal favourite.

Made You Look / Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far
Stefan Sagmeister

If you don’t own both of these books, stop reading and purchase them immediately.

Sagmeister’s two books compliment each other nicely, and not just because they are identical in size. Made You Look doccuments Sagmeister’s life (literally from day one) and professional development, and provides one of the most honest & candid accounts of the design business you’ll ever read. Things I Have Learned… is more of a design exercise than an autobiography, but it still essentially picks up where Made You Look left off, and examines where Sagmeister’s journey has taken him and where it might go next. Very inspiring.

Both books are also incredibly rich in content and detail too, with visual gags and little anecdotes hidden throughout.

Vaughan Oliver: Visceral Pleasures
Rick Poynor

The amazing, inimitable Vaughan Oliver. Poynor’s book chronicles almost all of Oliver’s career, and provides plenty of images and insight into his work with 4AD. This is one of my most read and beloved design books.

display copy only, a book of intro work
Intro

This is extremely hard to get hold of, but it’s well worth hunting down, particularly if you’re as huge a fan of Julian House & Mat Cook as I am.

There’s a great forward by Intro founder Adrian Shaughnessy, followed by another great forward by John O’Reilly, but beyond that there are very few words. This is no bad thing when you’re treated to the beyond-brilliant work the studio has done for Stereolab, Broadcast, Primal Scream, and Depeche Mode to name just a few.

Plastered. The Poster Art of Australian Popular Music
Murray Walding / Nick Vukovic

Like Symbols of Australia this book is the result of a labour of love, and it too is a must have for any lovers of Australian design. It features an abundance of music related poster art collected from the 1950′s to the present day, and is an absolute feast for the eyes.

There’s plenty of information about each period, interviews with selected designers and artists, and almost all the posters are annotated.

Perfection.

Perverse Optimist
Tibor Kalman / Peter Hall

This book will make you a better designer and a better human being.

Mmm Skyscraper I Love You
John Warwicker & Karl Hyde

A non-musical collaboration between one of my favourite studios Tomato and one of my favourite bands Underworld. This book is essentially a typographic map of New York, taking in the architecture, culture and movement of the city and translating it into designs built from abstract illustrations and fonts.

It’s part concrete poetry and part experimental sketchbook. A dark, dense and hugely compelling exploration of the city that never sleeps.

I haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy yet, by John Warwicker’s new book The Floating World looks incredible too.

Non Format Love Song
Non Format

Who doesn’t love Non Format? Their work is big, bold and incredibly sexy. It’s what the future should look like. The sheer volume of incredible images makes you forget that it’s pretty light on written content. It contains quite a few images that are only available in this book too, including a selection of fantastic typographic experiments.

Pure, unadulterated, and delicious eye candy.

The End Of Print
David Carson / Lewis Blackwell

Carson is probably the most contested and debated designer of all time. Few designers inspire such extreme positions of love and hate within the industry. Whichever side of the fence you sit on, there’s no denying his influence, particularly during the 90′s where his gritty, digital, rule-breaking designs changed everything.

There are a number of books by and about Carson, but this is my favourite. It contains mini essays on Carson by luminaries such as Tibor Kalman and Douglas Coupland, and covers some of his best work, including the groundbreaking designs for Ray Gun Magazine

Town Of Mirrors
Robert Pollard

While I don’t listen to Guided By Voices much these days, they provided much of the soundtrack to my high school years. Singer Robert Pollard composed not only most of the band’s music, but also the artwork for their album covers.

Pollard’s collage art is sublime, quite surreal and mostly quite minimalist. There’s a great deal of humour and fun (as well as some darker material) in there, and you can see Pollard’s love for vintage film and animation in almost every image.

As well as all the artwork for Guided By Voices, there’s a huge amount of content from Pollard’s personal sketchbooks and collections, some of which is published for the first time in this book. Great stuff.

Jazz Covers
Joaquim Paulo / Julius Widemann

Of all my many Taschen books, this is my most prized – a bumper collection of Jazz record covers, from the iconic cool of the 50′sBlue Note era to the explosion of colour and psychedelia inspired by the jazz-fusion records of the 70′s. The book also contains interviews with design giants like Rudy Van Gelder.

I bought this one while in New York last year, and I pick it up and flick through at least once a week. Superb.

I’d love to know some of your favourite art and design books, particularly some of the more obscure and vintage in your collection. Feel free to leave a note below.