//News about the nomination has been flagged today by It’s Nice That + Design Week//

Blimey!

Designer Barney Bubbles is among the list of visual artists nominated by the British public to appear on the new £20 banknote.

Bubbles – born Colin Fulcher and the subject of my 2008 monograph Reasons To Be Cheerful – features on the 529-strong list alongside fellow graphic designer Alan Fletcher and a wide variety of popular figures from Francis Bacon and Pauline Boty to Leigh Bowery, Aubrey Beardsley, Alfred Hitchcock and Derek Jarman.

/Barney Bubbles with his poster/programme for Elvis Costello & The Attractions’ 1979 Armed Forces tour, west London, 1979. Photo: Chalkie Davies//

There is next-to-no chance of Bubbles appearing on the note (a decision is expected next year), but still this nomination is particularly gratifying for me and my wife Caz, who designed Reasons To Be Cheerful.

Very few people outside of Bubbles’ circle of friends and associates and a clutch of aficianados and design experts even knew his name let alone the hugely important body of work he left behind on his death in 1983 before we started to prepare RTBC in the mid-00s.

With the support of  high-profile fans from Peter Saville and Art Chantry to Billy Bragg and Sir Paul Smith, the book, the 2010 revised edition  and the subsequent exhibitions, talks and other activities we have organised have helped spread the word around the world.

//Front cover, Reasons To Be Cheerful: The Life & Work Of Barney Bubbles, Adelita, 2010//

But this public recognition for Bubbles’ talents lies not in our banging the drum but in the sheer excellence of the work he produced between leaving Twickenham Art School in the early 60s and taking his life in 1983.

The nomination announcement comes a week before the date which would have marked Bubbles’ 73rd birthday; we hope wherever he is, this news has raised a smile.

Read the full list of the £20 banknote nominees here.

Copies of Reasons To Be Cheerful available here.

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