Viewpoints

Ive got a few books on aerial views, but this is the most charming..

Galore!

A delightfully comic yarn by a master story teller, Whisky Galore tracks the effects of a whisky shortage, and then a whisky surplus, on the fictional islands of Great and Little Todday, in the Scottish Hebrides, during World War II. A tale told with a tremendous love for the people and the heritage of the Hebrides... i love the offset print colour overlaps. Another awesome Penguin..

FACEtti FACTS

Persecution 1961 by Peter Benenson..cover by Germano Facetti.
This little beaut arrived last week and is in superb condition for a first edition - its is one of my all time favourite book covers.


Germano Facetti (May 5, 1928-April 8, 2006) was an Italian graphic designer and head of design at Penguin Books from 1962 to 1971. He moved to London in the early 1950s where he studied typography at the Central School of Art & Design. By the late 1950s he was art director at Aldus Books and a working interior designer, his interior for the Poetry Bookshop in Soho inspired the director of Penguin, Allen Lane, to invite him to his firm as art director in 1961. Facetti was instrumental in redesigning the Penguin line, introducing phototypesetting, the Marber grid, offset-litho printing and photography to their papberback covers.


The Observer in 1961 read "In October a Penguin Special called "Persecution 1961" will be published as part of our Amnesty campaign. In it are stories of nine men and women from different parts of the world, of varying political and religious outlook, who have been suffering imprisonment for expressing their opinions. None of them is a professional politician; all of them are professional people. The opinions which have brought them to prison are the common coinage of argument in free society."

8°

"Octavo (usually abbreviated 8vo, 8°, 8o, or Oct.) is a book size resulting from the use of standard size sheets of paper folded three times to make eight leaves. Each leaf is usually printed on each side, so this creates a signature of 16 pages in total. It was introduced by Aldus Manutius of Venice, when he produced Virgil's Opera in the octavo format, in 1501, in order to facilitate portable reading for men of leisure."

If you don't know: just 8 issues of Octavo were produced by London-based design studio 8vo between 1986 and 92. All but the final issue were printed magazines of the finest quality (the last was a CD ROM produced at a time when such things were "cutting-edge") The contents often had a distinct leaning towards matters of modernist typography: Zwart, Schuitema, Burchatz et al, alongside more contemporary exponents and theorists.

To find out more about their awesome work buy the book! I did. well.. it was given to me..


Now disbanded the partners - Mark Holt, Hamish Muir and Simon Johnston - are working independantly and are still doing interesting things..

Tales

Tales from the Arabian Nights is a beautiful book belonging to Ellie, my soon-to-be-former housemate. I dont know much about it and im struggling to find out much about this edition.. but it looks nice so what the heck.

Amazing Stories!

Amazing Stories magazine, sometimes retitled Amazing Science Fiction, was first published in April 1926, thereby becoming the first magazine devoted exclusively to publishing stories in the genre presently known as science fiction (SF). It is regarded as the world's first science fiction magazine.

Created by Hugo Gernsback, with many of its covers by the legendary Frank R. Paul, it featured a much-imitated logo of the magazine name in ever-shrinking letters. Amazing Stories was filled with stories of "scientific romance". All totalled, his magazine covers exceed 220. Check out this website for a fairly comprehensive gallery of AS covers.

I flipping love the logo, if anyone knows anything about it get in touch please.

Mr What?

Mr Clarinet is an awesome read - dark and enthralling it really did have me up all hours glued to its pages.. The fact i re-jacketed this thriller for a Penguin competiton recently is all the more reason to pick up a copy and lose yourself..