** This post is dedicated to the New York design thinker and doer Jim Walrod, who has passed away. Just a couple of weeks ago I mentioned my intention to post about On 1st to Jim over dinner. Of course, he knew about the store but was excited to see what fresh info I might have turned up. I’ll write about Jim when I have collected my thoughts; wherever he is, I am sure Jim will join us all in the necessary proclamation: Fuck Trump**

//At the entrance to 1159 1st Avenue at 63rd was Sven Lukin’s two-tonne illuminated sign. Photo: Bert Stern//

//On 1st interior including displays of Roy Lichtenstein wallpaper and Gerald Laing plates. Photo: Bert Stern//

In conversation this summer, British artist Duggie Fields revealed to me that, during a sojourn in the US in 1968, he had been in line to work at photographer Bert Stern’s “architecturally mind-blowing” art store/publishing house On 1st in Manhattan’s east side.

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Tags: Alden Projects, Alice Pollock, Bert Stern, Bill Cunningham, Billy Apple, Chicago Tribune, Duggie Fields, Earl's Court, Gerald Laing, Isadore Seltzer, James Lee Byars, Jim Walrod, Julie Baumgold, Kenneth Jay Lane, Marilyn Monroe, Milton Glaser, New York magazine, On 1st, Ossie Clark, Pink Floyd, Roy Lichtenstein, Sven Lukin, Syd Barrett, Todd Alden, Walter Bernard

//Back Cover, Jesus Of Cool, Nick Lowe, Radar Records, 1978. Photo: Bob Bromide. Design © Barney Bubbles Estate//

//Back cover, Darling Let’s Have Another Baby/Something Else/It Really Digs, Johnny Moped, Chiswick Records, 1978. Design © Barney Bubbles Estate//

//Clock, Stiff Records, 1978. Design © Barney Bubbles Estate//

//Front, Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs Spy, Billy Bragg, Utility, 1983. Design © Barney Bubbles Estate//

“In graphics, in the music business at least, Barney pioneered the use of everyday objects in his work. He could see the design and the beauty in the apparently banal”
Suzanne Spiro, artist

The Barney Bubbles exhibition Optics & Semantics at London gallery Rob Tufnell closes tomorrow evening; if you have a chance, do go along and enjoy the late graphic arts maestro’s unique celebrations of the mundane and workaday.

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Tags: (I Love The Sound Of) Breaking Glass, Billy Bragg, Brian Griffin, Charisma Records, Chiswick Records, Clarice Cliff, El Lissitzky, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, F-Beat Records, Get Happy!!, Is That Love, Jake Riviera, John Arlott Talks Cricket, Johnny Moped, Life's A Riot With Spy Vs Spy, Moholy-Nagy, Nick Lowe, Paul Carrack, Radar Records, Rob Tufnell, Squeeze, Stiff Records, Strongbow, Suburban Voodoo, Suzanne Spiro, Teenburger, Terence Conran, They Called It Rock, Utility

I’ve organised a small exhibition of artwork relating to designs used in the forthcoming Barney Bubbles x Fred Perry collaboration; it opens later this week at Fred Perry’s flagship London store.

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Tags: Clementine Zawadzki, Elvis Costello, Fred Perry, Hero, Nick Lowe

//The Stiff Records clock. Concept: Jake Riviera, design: Barney Bubbles, lettering: Caramel Crunch, 1977. No reproduction without permission//

Stiff Records was on fire in 1977.

The British independent record label, with owners Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson snapping up acts and art director Barney Bubbles applying his unsurpassable skills to the visualising of their music, came straight out of the traps 40 years ago this month with the release of the first ‘punk’ LP Damned Damned Damned by – who else? – The Damned.

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Tags: Caramel Crunch, Dave Robinson, Demon Records, Elvis Costello, F-Beat, Ian Dury, Jake Riviera, Larry Wallis, Max Wall, Mick Farren, Nick Lowe, Stiff Records, The Adverts, Wreckless Eric

//Voodoo and Magic Practices, Jean Kerboull, Barrie and Jenkins, 1978. Translated from the French by John Shaw//

This is the book which inspired the late Malcolm McLaren to unite the design ideas he developed with Vivienne Westwood for their Autumn/Winter 1983 fashion collection Witches.

At the time McLaren was completing his album Duck Rock, which was conceived as an ethnological travelogue and modelled on the  LP series Dances Of the World’s Peoples released on the ethnographic Folkways label; in fact, Duck Rock was originally titled Folk Dances Of The World and the incorporation of an illustrated insert containing track-by-track explanations was taken from the one which appeared in the 1958 albums.

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Tags: Dances Of The World's Peoples, Duck Rock, Folkways, Jean Kerboull, Keith Haring, Legba, Nick Egan, Nostalgia Of Mud, Voodoo And Magic Practices, Witches

//Four of the five 60in x 40in posters designed by Bubbles for the 1977 UK tour by Stiff Records’ artists//

//Jacket sported by Jake Riviera in the late 70s decorated with badges, adorned with a ‘Jesus Of Cool’ promotional tie produced for Nick Lowe and accompanied by a Roberta Bayley photograph of Riviera in the jacket in 1977//

Music fan and pop ephemera collector Mike Hobday is realising a long-held ambition this weekend with a show of designs by the late graphic artist Barney Bubbles at The White Room Gallery in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.

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Tags: 1977, Clive Langer & The Boxes, Jake Riviera, Leamington Spa, Live Stiffs, MIke Hobday, Roberta Bayley, Stiff Records, The White Room Gallery

To celebrate today’s opening of the exhibition Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges: Joining The Dots From The Situationist International To Malcolm McLaren, this rare footage of McLaren talking about the genesis of the bondage trousers design has been issued by the Malcolm McLaren Estate through Dazed Digital.

The film is entitled Subversive Trousers and is from Being Malcolm, which was written and performed by McLaren and produced with Première Heure for Canal Jimmy. The series won a prestigious French TV award.

//From today’s Guardian Guide//

Among the many rare items in the exhibition are materials related to McLaren’s collaboration with graphic artist Jamie Reid, as demonstrated by the exhibits below.

// Sex Pistols -Fuck Forever. Design by Jamie Reid for Great Rock N Swindle, 1979, produced as t-shirt by Reid 1987, with source of image, front cover of Picturegoer, January 1959, and original copy of Leaving The 20th Century, Christopher Gray’s collection of Situationist texts designed by Reid, 1974//

Read Dazed Digital on the show is here .

The Guardian Guide’s preview here.

Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges opens today (September 26) and runs until November 14.

Find out more here.

Tags: Being Malcolm, Canal JImmy, Christopher Gray, Great Rock N Swindle, Jamie Reid, John Hansard Gallery, Leaving The 20th Century, Picturegoer, Sex Pistols Fuck Forever

//The Dance, from the series News From The Metropolis, Derek Boshier, 2014. Ink and collage on paper//

//From Best Foot Forward, Derek Boshier, 2014. Film//

To coincide with the publication of the Derek Boshier monograph Rethink/Re-entry, writer/curator Guy Brett and I are putting together an exhibition of the same name which will be held at Flowers Gallery in Cork Street, Central London this autumn.

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Tags: Arts Council Of Great Britain, Clash 2nd Songbook, David Hockney, Flowers Gallery, Guy Brett, Joe Strummer, Lives: An exhibition of artists whose work is based on other peoples' lives, Lodger, Mick Jones, News From The Metropolis, Pennie Smith., Posy Simmonds, RB Kitaj, Steve Johnston

//Front and back of Vive le Rock/Punk Rock Disco and the radical political and military texts used as source material for the design//

There were T-shirts left over from the Wembley Rock & Roll revival festival in our cupboards in South Clapham; we had to do something with them. Sid Vicious liked them just the way they were and was often photographed in the original Vive Le Rock! design. But I needed to throw a few messages across them and reinvent them. So, I married the slogan and images of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis with words and drawings from various texts, using the title of The Anarchist Cookbook as well as the famous phrase of the Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durutti.

Malcolm McLaren 2008

Imogen Hunt is a recent graduate from London College Of Fashion who tells me she was inspired by my work to write her thesis for the college’s history of fashion and culture course.

Part of Hunt’s dissertation – on the importance of the Situationist International and King Mob to the development of punk style – is dedicated to an examination of the influences and source material for the double-sided design Vive Le Rock/Punk Rock Disco, which was printed on the front and back of t-shirts and tops first sold in Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s King’s Road store Seditionaries in 1978.

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Tags: Abbie Hoffman, Buenaventura Durruti, Christopher Gray, Hiroshi Fujiwara, Imogen Hunt, Internationale Situationniste, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ken Knabb, King Mob, Leaving The 20th Century, Little Richard, London College Of Fashion, Pierre van Paassen, Seditionaries, Steal This Book, The Anarchist Cookbook, The Return of the Durruti Column, The Toronto Daily Star, US Army Improvised Munitions Handbook, Vive le Rock/Punk Rock Disco, Vivienne Westwood, William Powell

//From Print’s 75th anniversary issue, illustrations (clockwise from top left): A section of Bubbles’ design for the sleeve of 1979 LP Armed Forces lines up with work by Ruth Ansel, Andrew Loomis, Ladislaw Sutnar, Cipe Pineles and Paul Bacon//

For its 75th anniversary issue, US visual culture publication Print has selected Barney Bubbles as one of six “unsung heroes of design”.

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Tags: Andrew Loomis, Angela Riechers, Cipe Pineles, Harper's Bazaar, Ladislaw Sutnar, Paul Bacon, Print, Ruth Ansel, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair