Name that tune

A very quick lazy post today, but this clever and original music-related artwork really appeals.  As someone who thinks visually (often to my detriment), loves nature and who has difficulty remembering lyrics, I think I’d like every one of my favourite songs to be illustrated by graphic artist Katrina McHugh.

Take a look here.....

Black and white

Looking for inspiration the other day I delved into my tatty copy of the  *'Encyclopaedia of Patterns and Motifs' and found myself once again captivated not so much by samples of intricate Gothic metalwork or illuminated manuscripts, but by the graphic simplicity of these.  Sometimes less is definitely more.  Lovely, aren't they?

Carved soapstone zebra from Zimbabwe

Native American food bowl decoration from Arizona

Art Nouveau book illustrations based on images of Can Can dancers

Japanese nobleman badges

Japanese crane

Snake design from Ghana

Mexican monkeys

*Encyclopaedia of Patterns and Motifs by Dorothy Bosomworth 1995

Sheet music

I love the graphics on these two pieces of sheet music, picked up from a second-hand bookshop in Cornwall some years ago - one of those places where you get sore knees from looking through boxes on the floor, a cricked neck from trying to see what's on the unfeasibly high top shelves, then come out covered in dust, sneezing and coughing and with that damp smell still lingering in your nostrils for the next week.  But it's worth it.

This one's from 1922:

And this is dated 1938:



I adore the typography, the shapes, the flat colours.  Must get them framed.

Nylons for the young and gay

Coincidentally I'd just been looking at some 1950s illustration as inspiration for working in a different style - trying out flat colour and using shapes without lines - when this fabulous box turned up in a local charity shop.  99p.  No seamless stockings inside it, unfortunately! - but don't you just love the stylish and simplistic graphic design?