The best part of creating art and design, is often afterwards, when your creation takes on a life of its own. This logo was designed for the Sonoma Coast Surf Shop. Owner, Drew Reinstein, had a vision, based on road signs he had seen on a surfing adventure in Mexico. The logo designed from that vision has now been spotted all over Sonoma County.
I collect old paperbacks, mostly Science Fiction. This book has been sitting face-out on my shelf for many months. The edition is from 1953, published by Harcourt, Brace in tandem with Signet. There is no illustration or cover design credit.
The last eight years gave a heightened relevance to Orwell’s work all over again. I remember thinking how ironic that we had “The Great Communicator”, Ronald Reagan, in office during the actual year, 1984, but I never thought that the term “doublespeak”, would have the currency it did during the Bush years. Now, with the recent economic climate, there are new relevancies to ponder.
Recently, while browsing at City Lights Books in San Francisco, I found a book I had designed for them offered at a large discount. The Consul, by Ralph Rumney, is the second volume in a series titled, Contributions to the History of the Situationist International and Its Times. The first volume, also published in the U.S. by City Lights, was The Tribe, by Jean-Michel Mension. These books sold terribly and it wasn’t surprising to see a garage sale of The Consul. Such an obscure series never would have been published at all without funding from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Editor James Brook and myself were probably the only people even mildly excited the day these books shipped from the printer, though they have found an audience among scholars of the Situationists. The French Ministry thought the books had enough merit that they footed some of the bill, which is sort of like the United States government partially bankrolling a book on the Beat poets in North Beach.
Letterism preceded Situationism, and its trickle-down effect on modern culture has been huge. Remember the great clothing covered in writing that Joe Strummer created for the Clash? He was inspired by the Lettristes. One of the images below is a detail from The Tribe showing Jean-Michel Mension’s pants, as photographed in Paris by Ed van der Elsken. The other two images are full pages from The Tribe.
Letterism (and Dadaism) have certainly had a significant impact on graphic design and the books are full of collages, posters, manifestos and obscure ephemera (the Situationists were more influential on politics and activism). The amazing cast of passionate characters that populates these volumes, makes it clear that intellectual advances arise from tumult, dissension, and experimentation. These movements were disdainful of living only for love of money, and found their success in following a passion for life. They managed to leave a fascinating legacy (despite the over-consumption of red wine) and The Tribe and The Consul document it well.
Situationist comic strip, 1966
Guy Debord poster
clothing pre "the Clash"
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. Steve Jobs appropriated this phrase from the back cover of The Whole Earth Catalog for his memorable Stanford commencement address , 2005.
Stewart Brand launched this innovative publication in 1968. By focusing on tools, hands-on experiential learning, place, the catalog allowed a new generation to define itself. It was a sort of prototype, analog internet, rich in diversity and depth, irreverant and far-reaching in scope. It was groundbreaking, enlightening, and it spawned a whole group of later publications.
When I read The Whole Earth Catalog as a teenager, I suddenly found a community. There was a vibrant peer group out there that shared and expanded on my developing interests and curiosities. Would I have ever tried living in an authentic Tipi without the WEC? Would I have built a composting outhouse? Become a lifelong backpacker? Maybe. The Catalog simply picked up on the zeitgeist, it didn’t create it. But the style of communication was bold, experimental, inventive. It was exciting as hell.
And it sold. It sold so well that Stewart Brand wanted out, and the Catalog kept spawning new publications, new forms, grounded in the massive success of the original. By 2000, the catalog had mutated into an eclectic and ambitious, but financially struggling quarterly magazine. Editor Peter Warshall posted an ad on craigslist seeking a new Art Director, and I was hooked.
From 2000 through 2002, I art directed and designed seven issues. The process was grueling and chaotic, the funding always tenuous, the rewards difficult to discern. More people in the Bay Area knew Whole Earth from the Whole Earth Access stores than from the magazine, which had a dismal presence on the newstand and mattered to only a core group of aging subscribers. But I was a believer.
Finally, the entire output of Whole Earth is easily perusable online. It is a tremendous archive and valuable cultural resource. The XML data base allows for comfortable browsing and searching. I have posted a few memorable pages from the issues I designed, starting with Winter 2000 and ending with the Fall 2002 issue. The horizontal Antarctica photographs by Stuart Klipper, were run vertically, two on a page, to create a disorienting vision of a vast land of ice.
