//Kiss Kiss, Go To Work On An Egg, Christopher Logue + Tom Salter, 1968.//

//Go To Work On An Egg, Mather & Crowther, 1964.//

“People do love huge pieces of paper”.

So runs the quote heading up a section in V&A curator Catherine Flood’s excellent overview British Posters: Advertising Art & Activism, published by the museum to coincide with its multifarious design celebrations this Olympic year.

And it’s true. We do.

Or we all did, when this vital form was simultaneously a mass-medium and a highly personal communications device, when huge promotional budgets and lack of urban controls resulted in the accretive papering of our street-scapes. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, we gave posters pride of place on the walls of our bedrooms, bedsits and sitting rooms.

//Top left: Your Britain, Fight For It Now, Abram Games, 1942. Right: Keep Death Off The Road, Carelessness Kills, William Little, 1949.//

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Tags: Abram Games, As You Like It, Carateles la Candelaria, Catherine Flood, Christopher Logue, Eduardo Paolozzi, Hapshash And The Coloured Coat, John Morris, Ken Briggs, Lissitzky, M&C Saatchi, Mather & Crowther, Mike McInnerney, Richard Hollis, See Red Women's Workshop, Society Of Revisionist Typographers, Tom Salter, Typoretum, UFO, V&A, William Little

//Holding foldout sleeve for the 1972 album Revelations: A Musical Anthology For The Glastonbury Fayre, designed by Barney Bubbles and released in 1972. Photo: Sophie Demay//

Artist/curator Sophie Demay and I are continuing to sort through potential materials for this summer’s exhibition White Noise, which Demay is creating with Etienne Hervy as part of this year’s International Poster & Graphic Design Festival in Chaumont, France.

See more images from the selection process on the Barney Bubbles blog.

Tags: Chaumont, Etienne Hervy, International Poster & Graphic Design Festival, Sophie Demay, The Glastonbury Fayre

//Build-your-own poster adverts for Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True in music papers published July 1977.//

Selection has started on the Barney Bubbles presence at this summer’s group exhibition about the visual language of music, White Noise: Quand le graphisme fait du bruit (When graphics make the noise) at the 23rd International Poster & Graphic Design Festival in Chaumont, France, from May 26 to June 10.

I have supplied the text for the catalogue and last week met co-curator Sophie Demay to start the exhibit selection; Sophie is creating White Noise with Étienne Hervy, the Chaumont festival artistic director and former editor of French graphics magazine Etapes.

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Tags: Elvis Costello, Etienne Hervy, Experimental JetSet, Graham Parker, James Goggin, Laurent Fétis, My Aim Is True, Oz, Shoboshobo, Sophie Demay, Studio Moniker

If you’re in Austin TX – and there’s a chance you might be since hundreds of thousands of people have descended on the city for the annual SXSW film/music/interactive conflab taking place there this week – try and nip along to the Ray Ban Legendary Visions house at 78 Rainey Street on the eastside for a gander at the room collages/installations I have engineered to reflect my take on the look of music.

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Tags: Austin TX, Boy George, Glastonbury Festival, Henry Diltz, Hipgnosis, Jeff Dexter, Judy Nylon, Kate Moross, Mark Powell, NCompass, Nick Ebeling, Nick Lowe, Ray Ban, Sheri Timmons, Steve Pross, Stiff Records, SXSW

Ian Dury With Love, 60in x 40in poster, 1977.

I sourced this incredible large-scale Barney Bubbles-designed poster from a private collection for the V&A’s forthcoming exhibition British Design: 1948-2012.

Chris Breward, co-curator with Ghislaine Wood, credits my 2010 exhibition Process (which focused on Bubbles’ working practices) for having persuaded the V&A to foreground the work of the late graphic designer in the new show.

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Tags: British Design: 1948-2012, Chris Breward, Ghislaine Wood, Ian Dury, Process: The Working Practices Of Barney Bubbles, V&A

Last week I gave a talk about the work of Barney Bubbles at Bold Italic, the annual graphics conference organised by Michaël Bussaer of Ghent’s St-Lucas Institute for Higher Education in the Arts.

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Tags: Alexander Negrelli, Bold Italic, Ghent, Jake Riviera, Kommando Otl Aicher, Michaël Bussaer, Munich Olympics 1972

Pauline's Gone Digital (for Pauline Boty), Derek Boshier, 2011. Diptych, 5' x 10'. Acrylic on canvas from the series Paris Texas, Paris France, Paris Hilton.

This month’s arts calendar in London is marked by a rare treat: From Doris To Chemical Cowboys, a talk by the great British artist Derek Boshier at Chelsea College Of Art’s lecture theatre on January 18.

Los Angeles-based Boshier will be discussing recent projects as well as providing insights into earlier achievements, including his part in the Pop Art explosion of the 60s and his Texas work of the 80s.

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Tags: 1973, Allen Jones, Chelsea College Of Art & Design, David Bowie, David Hockney, Hayward Gallery, Ken Russell, Lives, Lodger, Palisades, Pauline Boty, Peter Blake, Peter Phillips, Pop Goes The Easel, R.B. Kitaj, Ready Steady Go!, Reel, Royal College, The Clash

//Nowhere Buses print on Jamie Reid's website.//

David Jacobs – the US activist who says that his Situationist group Point-Blank!, not Jamie Reid, created the infamous “Nowhere Buses” punk graphic (see yesterday’s post) – is calling on the Sex Pistols art director to donate income from sales of the artwork to the Occupy movement.

//Back + front cover of Point-Blank! pamphlet, 1973.//

“Neither I nor anyone in P-B! ever wanted any commercialization of what we had done; that was the antithesis of commerce,” says Jacobs.

“But if Jamie Reid were up for contributing the gains from this artwork to a good cause such as Occupy – in which we are very much engaged – we would be cheered.”

Tags: David Jacobs, Jamie Reid, Nowhere Buses, Occupy, Point-Blank!

I heartily (groan…) recommend Alistair Sooke’s half-hour radio documentary on Milton Glaser’s I ♥ NY logo.

Glaser is interviewed, as are Seymour Chwast and Steven Heller among others.

Tags: 1977, AListair Sooke, I ♥ NY, Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast, Steven Heller

Ray Bradbury, date unknown.

According to Letterheady.com’s Shaun Usher, the adjective “letterheady” describes the feeling of being overcome by emotion at a strong letterhead design.

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Tags: Andy Warhol, Col Tom Parker, Dada, Elvis Presley, Eva Peron, Hal Roach, ian Fleming, letterheads, Letterheady, Roy Lichtenstein, Shaun Usher