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Tag: BBC

Recovering a Lost Typeface

In this short video for the BBC, designer Robert Green talks about his reconstruction of the lost Doves Press typeface:

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Front Row: The Art of Book Cover Design


BBC Radio 4’s Front Row talks to Suzanne Dean, creative director at Random House UK, about the art of book cover design. Dean, who was very publicly thanked by Julian Barnes for her work on his book The Sense of an Ending, has been responsible for more Booker-winning covers than any other designer apparently.

Host John Wilson also chats with designer Matthew Young about the relaunched Pelican Books, while authors Ian McEwan, Tom McCarthy and Audrey Niffenegger, and Telegraph books editor Gaby Wood, share their thoughts on what makes a good book cover.

BBC Radio 4 Front Row: The Art of Book Cover Design mp3

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Iggy Pop’s BBC Music John Peel Lecture

Last week, Iggy Pop delivered this year’s BBC Music John Peel Lecture on the topic of ‘Free Music in a Capitalist Society’ at Radio Festival 2014 in Salford:

I worked half of my life for free. I didn’t really think about that one way or the other, until the masters of the record industry kept complaining that I wasn’t making them any money. To tell you the truth, when it comes to art, money is an unimportant detail. It just happens to be a huge one unimportant detail. But, a good LP is a being, it’s not a product. It has a life-force, a personality, and a history, just like you and me. It can be your friend. Try explaining that to a weasel.

As I learned when I hit 30 +, and realized I was penniless, and almost unable to get my music released, music had become an industrial art and it was the people who excelled at the industry who got to make the art. I had to sell most of my future rights to keep making records to keep going. And now, thanks to digital advances, we have a very large industry, which is laughably maybe almost entirely pirate so nobody can collect shit. Well, it was to be expected. Everybody made a lot of money reselling all of recorded musical history in CD form back in the 90s, but now the cat is out of the bag and the new electronic devices which estrange people from their morals also make it easier to steal music than to pay for it. So there’s gonna be a correction.

You can read the complete transcript here, or listen to it (for the next couple of weeks at least) on the BBC’s iPlayer. You can also download it as a podcast for posterity.

Iggy Pop’s BBC Music John Peel Lecture 2014 mp3

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Trailer for Life and Fate

London-based creative agency Devilfish has created this fantastic Saul Bass-inspired animated trailer for a new BBC Radio dramatisation of Vasily Grossman’s novel Life and Fate:

Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant star in the eight-hour dramatisation of the book, which will be broadcast from 18 to 25 September on Radio 4. All the episodes will be available for download(!).

(via Creative Review)

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Henning Mankell | BBC World Book Club

Author Henning Mankell talks to Harriett Gilbert about Faceless Killers, the first novel featuring Inspector Kurt Wallander, for the BBC World Book Club:

BBC WORLD BOOK CLUB: Henning Mankell

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Edward St Aubyn | Open Book

Author Edward St. Aubyn talks to Mariella Frostrup about his brilliant, funny, and very, very harrowing semi-autobiographical novels for BBC Radio’s Open Book:

BBC RADIO OPEN BOOK: Edward St. Aubyn

At Last, Edward St. Aubyn’s new novel, and the conclusion of the Melrose series, is being published next month.

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Jo Nesbø | BBC World Book Club

With A.A. Knopf FINALLY publishing his novel The Snowman in the US this May, Norwegian author Jo Nesbø discusses his earlier Harry Hole novel The Redbreast with the BBC World Service Book Club:

BBC WORLD BOOK CLUB: JO NESBØ

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Midweek Miscellany

The Eyes Have It — An interview with gentleman book cover designer and advertising copywriter David Gee about his design for Jim Hanas’s e-book short story collection Why They Cried. You can find my interview with David here.

Writers on Process — Writers of every stripe talking about how they write (via Largehearted Boy).

In Their Own Words — A BBC archive of television and radio interviews with modern British novelists including Virginia Woolf, Daphne du Maurier, Anthony Burgess, J.G. Ballard,  and Muriel Spark. One could quibble about about selection of some of  contemporary novelists, but otherwise this is pretty amazing collection.

And speaking of archives…

Design is History is an expanding reference for graphic design history created by designer Dominic Flask.

And finally…

The only page of Jason’s silent and sadly aborted adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat.

e-book short story collection, Why They Cried

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Midweek Miscellany

Vintage Dostoevsky, design by Michael Salu

Precisely and Concisely — The Caustic Cover Critic interviews designer and Artistic Director of Granta magazine Michael Salu:

Bizarrely, designers looking for employment are often judged by what software they’re able to use. Intellect, cultural awareness and often creativity don’t seem to be values worthy of a resume. There is no substitute for good ideas, the rest are just supportive tools. I have always been quite a craft-led designer, but I am of the generation that studied with a mac in front of them and I think its good to understand the importance of both.

The Honest Bookseller — Erin Balser of Books in 140 profiles Toronto independent bookstore Ben McNally Books for The Torontoist:

“I’d rather have a book that sells one copy that no one else will sell than to stock several best sellers you can get anywhere,” McNally says. “That’s what makes this store. That’s why people come… My first responsibility is my customer. When I think a book should be cut by a third or if there’s a subplot that goes nowhere, I have to tell you that… I’m often a very critical reader. When people come and ask me ‘Is this any good?’ I have to be honest.”

William Kentridge: Five Themes — Beautiful book design from Abbott Miller and Kristen Spilman at Pentagram.

Speaking of Pentagram… Pentagram partner Paula Scher has some blunt stuff to say about design in a interview with Pr*tty Sh*tty.

The Rules — Inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, The Guardian asked authors — including Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Neil Gaiman, and PD James, Hilary Mantel, Michael Moorcock, Philip Pullman, Ian Rankin, Will Self, Sarah Waters, and Jeannette Winterson — for their personal dos and don’ts. (Part two is here).

On the subject of writing, the wonderful BBC radio series The History of the World in a 100 Objects has recently touched on the history of writing, literature, and mathematics in episodes about the Early Writing Tablet, the Flood Tablet and the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus. The series is a collaboration with The British Museum. Great stuff.

Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy
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