The affluent's snapper

The book is a celebration of where the affluent escape to, whether it's surf, snow, pools, sand, isles or parks (this is the chapter sequence). Gray Malin takes to the air for most of the photos throughout the book but I thought his shots rather bland, especially when compared to the superb aerial work of Alex MacLean (his Over book was also published by Abrams). People enjoying the surf and snow don't come out too well when photographed from a great height which means the images lack a focal point for the viewer. Parks from the air are more positive because they include buildings and vegetation.

Despite the book being a rather lavish production with matt art paper for the two hundred screen printing (and when was the last time you saw blocking on the edges of a title, in this case it's silver on three sides) the layouts and sequencing seem very haphazard and unimaginative. The photos that introduce the chapters have headings on them making the type unreadable, captions are frequently on photos despite being surrounded by plenty of white space, descriptive text on grey panels are butted into images.

A very disappointing book of photos but I think the readership it's aimed at will enjoy it despite its shortcomings.

Print in paradise

The design of the printed ephemera contents of the book are very typical of socialist countries who couldn't afford (for ideological and financial reasons) to be part of global trade in past decades. Trading just with other state run countries meant that design creativity was generally of poor quality. The same look of food packing, for example, was very similar in North Vietnam, Albania, China or the Soviet Union. Perhaps an exception was Cuba which always had a lively print design culture before the 1953 revolution.

The author's collection of DPRK print is of interest though because of its broad range, illustrated are cigarette packs, sweet wrappers and boxes, tickets, can labels (lots of these) postcards, stamps, beer labels, wrapping paper, packaging, comics, badges and more. There is an intriguing set of stamps issued in 1982 to celebrate the birth of Prince William showing Lady Diana holding the baby. All the material has a simple, bland look and as the author says none of it is designed, in the western sense, for a hard sell. The contents also look dated because they were collected up to 2005, I don't know but I assume since then print is designed on the pc even in this people's paradise.

The eight chapters all start on a spread, each with an interesting essay about various aspects of North Korean life, especially as it's lived in Pyongyang, as the city is stuffed full of bureaucrats perhaps it's not very representative of living in the DPRK.

I found it an interesting book and Phaidon have added their bit by printing it on fairly course paper like most of the examples shown throughout the pages.

Yesterday's design classics

Mid-century is now far enough back to be considered historic and art book publishers think it worthwhile to have the creative efforts of the period in their book lists. Put 'mid-century' into Amazon search and you'll come with a wealth of titles. This book is a reprint of the 2012 edition (published by Mitchell Beazley) and I found it a reasonable, though very generalized, look back at the wonderfully designed products for the home.

The title is basically in two sections: products (170 pages) and a designers index (45 pages) before these there is an illustrated essay about the origins of the style and back pages have a Resources and Index but the book is really a collection of huge product photos (floating in rather excessive white space) and captions with a brief essays explaining their historic context. As such there is not too much new here that isn't available in other books. Perhaps of interest is the price guide for each item, ranging from under $65 to $390,000 but the prices are the same as the 2012 edition.

For those interested in a much broader and comprehensive look at the period I think Dominic Bradbury's 2014 Mid-century modern: complete (544 pages) is better. It covers the same subjects as the Miller book but also considers industrial design, graphics and architecture and the usual illustrated designer index.

INDEX and Face the Futura

A fascinating and very detailed look at one of world's favorite typefaces, least until Helvetica and Arial took over with the help of the pc. Designed by Paul Renner (and incidentally his heirs still receive royalties) ninety years ago in conjunction with the Bauer type foundry. It's the original geometric sans and its immediate success convinced the foundry to release a complete range of weights from light to extra black. Success also meant that other foundries issued their own versions and the book shows several of these: Granby; Kabel; Metro; Spartan; Tempo; Vogue.

The eight chapters poke around in the corners of Futura's history and its use today including sixteen pages of photos revealing the way the face is used on contemporary shop fronts and signage. Page fifty-seven has an intriguing 1939 ad from a printing trade journal with the headline: Boycott Nazi type! and lists German made faces and American types available to replace the most commonly used Nazi faces. NASA was a big fan of Futura, using it on a whole range of printed matter and products.

The book looks at several examples of Futura used in branding and its availability on the pc, the author makes an interesting point that despite a face being called Futura it comes in all sorts of different styles though they are all the same weight. Nike; USA Today, Volkswagon, BP, Samsung all use the type but made subtle changes to various letters to create their own corporate version. Even as a digital alphabet available to everyone there are variations, page 124 shows six versions with near impossible to spot differences, page 125 has an outline cap S from Adobe, Bitsream, URW showing variations in the curves and letter endings. The book is heavily illustrated with images printed in black, red and blue (and maybe it was a mistake to print the six point captions in red or blue).

Douglas Thomas has written about a type that most designers have used at sometime or other without realizing its interesting background.