I really love this London A-Z style “Song Map” poster, it’s a brilliant idea and looks great too. A bit late now to buy it as a Christmas present for someone so just get one for yourself, I know I will.

The London A-Z is the one guide book that even natives of the city own (or at least they did before the invention of Google Maps) and I’ve always loved its visual style, it says “London” to me just as much as the Tube map does. I have an old hardback colour A-Z from the 1960s that used to belong to my Dad and I think it’s as beautiful as any art book I’ve got.

This song is on there, head left on The 59th Street Bridge Song, right on Desolation Row, and it’s the first left.

Download: Beasley Street – John Cooper Clarke (mp3)

You wouldn’t think something as ordinary as this Lard wrapper would have any deep meaning whatsoever but one look at that and I’m in our kitchen in the 1970s and mum is cooking Sunday dinner, putting big lumps of it in the roasting tin to cook the meat and potatoes in. The product itself is nostalgic enough, from back when people happily cooked things in pig fat (and apparently are starting to again) but it’s the Sainsbury’s wrapper that adds the extra Proustian layer to it.

The image comes from a book called Own Label which is all about the (at the time) radically modern packaging design of Sainsbury’s supermarkets own products from 1962-1977. Not, on the face of it, the most riveting subject for non-designers (or a lot of designers either for that matter) but if you are a certain age, seeing this stuff all collected together stirs not just admiration for the design but a whole flood of memories of going to the supermarket when you were a kid — and with their shelves stocked with this bold packaging Sainsbury’s left a more vivid impression than Tesco’s or The Co-Op.

Sainsbury’s were quite the forward-thinking company in the 60s, not only with these designs but they pioneered the whole concept of the own-brand product and their new, convenient “super” markets were where modern mums shopped. These days this graphic and minimalist style might seem more appropriate for pharmaceuticals than food but back then “modernism” hadn’t yet become a dirty word synonymous with ugly tower blocks and desolate shopping precincts and still meant optimistic progress toward a bright, shiny future when the world would be all efficient clean lines designed by clever men in suits. In this brave new world food would be convenient and modern too which even extended to feeding babies, like a lot of people my age I was bottle fed because artificial milk was seen as being better and more “advanced” than the natural kind.

Though they have a certain amount of retro cool I doubt if these would sell today, “progress” failed and the future went out of style sometime in the early 1970s, at least when it comes to things you eat. Not surprisingly people now prefer their food to look like it was grown by farmers and not men in white coats.

Speaking of mod-ernism…

Download: Shopping – The Jam (mp3)

Well worth a read: Terrific article about the current nasty legal battle over the Keep Calm and Carry On poster (stylistic inspiration for the design of this here blog) and its origins in the Ministry of Information at the start of WWII.

The language of the original poster is an odd thing, it’s state propaganda with a particularly English tone — like 1984 written by PG Wodehouse — as if the bad thing they were urging us to get over was a broken teapot and not bombs raining down on our heads.

Download: Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye – Vera Lynn (mp3)

This is a rendering of what Zone One of the London Underground map would look like if it was geographically accurate (the whole thing is here). It’s not a new idea, the original Tube maps were done this way but the system had fewer lines back then and looking at the messy spaghetti above makes me appreciate the brilliance of Harry Beck‘s famous 1931 map even more.

Beck was an electrical draughtsman who based his map on circuit diagrams and his genius decision to ignore above-ground reality and strip it down to its need-to-know basics influenced the maps of almost every subway/ metro/ underground system in the world. If you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose the single greatest piece of graphic design ever (but why would you do such a thing?) I’d probably choose that.

The design of the map has evolved over the years (and inspired several different interpretations) as the Tube system has got bigger and more complex, my personal favourite version is the 1986 map because it symbolizes my travels around the city during the time when I felt that London really did belong to me and I was taking full advantage of all it had to offer, especially at night. I should have a poster of this on my wall with the title “Good Times 1986-1992″ underneath.

One criticism of the Tube map is that it distorts the actual locations of some places in the city and the distances between them. Tourists can emerge from a station having no clue where they are or that they could have more easily and quickly have walked to get where they wanted to be — Leicester Square to Covent Garden for example. But I don’t care about the bloody tourists — serves them right for standing in the way everywhere — one of the best things about being a native of a big city is the feeling that you have some secret knowledge not available to outsiders (like where to get a drink after 11pm) and while Harry Beck might have brought logical order to the city’s unfathomable sprawl, London does not reveal all its beautiful complexity that easily.

Download: Sunny Goodge Street – Donovan (mp3)
Download: King’s Cross – Pet Shop Boys (mp3)
Download: Mornington Crescent – Belle and Sebastian (mp3)

This is a scan of an old flyer I have for an Anti-Nazi League rally in Fulham in 1981. If I remember correctly the National Front were going to march through the Broadway so the ANL were staging a counter-protest. I didn’t go to the rally because, for one, I thought it might get a bit violent (it did) and, secondly, it was on my birthday and getting a brick in the head from a skinhead wasn’t my idea of a good way to spend it.

The main reason I kept the flyer was because I loved the style of the ANL’s graphics. Their very bold and direct posters were the work of the great David King who in his time also designed The Sunday Times magazine, the covers of City Limits, and the sleeve of Electric Ladyland.

On the back is a polemical description of what the NF and British Movement are really all about and what life in England would be like with them in power, written in very simple language (“Don’t be conned, they’re all supporters of Hitler! And look what Hitler did!”) and obviously designed to appeal to the kids — the same ones the NF were also trying to recruit — especially bits like this:

Not sure if the musical part of that message would have worked though, I knew people (friends, even) who supported the NF and every single one of them loved reggae and soul music. Go figure. But I suppose you shouldn’t expect logic from a racist.

Download: (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thing – Heaven 17 (mp3)

The muse having deserted me for the moment (the bitch, probably lolling on a beach somewhere) I’m taking a cue from Davy and featuring some Francoise Hardy from her 1970 album “Alone” which is really just an excuse for me to post a picture of the wonderful sleeve. Isn’t that gorgeous? Speaking as a designer the best thing to do when you have a photo as great as that is just get out the way and let it shine without any typographic or designer frippery which is just what this does. I would sell my left nut for a copy of it on vinyl but can’t find one anywhere.

Francoise sings in English on “Alone” which doesn’t quite have the same, um, je ne sais quoi as her French recordings but it’s still awfully pretty. Doesn’t sound 40 years old either.

Download: Strange Shadows – Francoise Hardy (mp3)