Asbury & Asbury

Pentone Boxset

To coincide with the opening of the After Hours exhibition (see yesterday’s post), we’ve produced a Pentone Boxset, featuring the same 30 swatches that are now on display at the Jerwood Space. The boxset is available to order from today.

The postcards are presented in a very smart (if we say so ourselves) box, handmade by a company in Manchester. It contains 30 A6 postcards, ranging from the tear-jerking Pentone Sad to the laugh-a-minute Pentone Funny, via some disturbing detours to Pentone Drunk and Pentone Horseshit.

We hope it’s not just an enjoyable read, but also a useful aid to creative thinking and writing. But you’ll be the judge of that.

The boxset is on sale in our new Tictail store. We’ve been using Tictail to sell diaries since Disappointments Diary launched last year, but we’ve now expanded it to include Pentone Boxsets, copies of Corpoetics (still flogging that one) and the few Pentone mugs we have left.

For his generous advice on the production of the boxsets, we want to thank Jack Jackson of Polite, an independent art publisher from the same hometown as us. Among many other things, Polite produces postcard sets on behalf of artists and photographers including Peter Blake, David Shrigley, Kevin Cummins, Harry Hill and Factory Records. We’ve used the same format for the Pentone Boxset, and we’re pleased with the way it’s turned out. (There’s a subtle nod of respect to Polite in the layout of the text on the boxset cover, but this is a more upfront thank-you.)

Buy the Pentone Boxset
More on After Hours
More from Polite 

After Hours at the Jerwood

Things have been busy lately in the run-up to an unusual exhibition hosted by Jerwood Visual Arts at Jerwood Space in London. After Hours is a collection of personal projects by graphic designers. It opens this week and runs from 15 May to 23 June.

The exhibition is curated by Nick Eagleton of The Partners, who has gathered together a great list of contributors, including Robert Ball, Anthony Burrill, Phil Carter, Michael Johnson, Joe Phillips, Alan Kitching, Magpie Studio, Craig Oldham, Jack Renwick, Steve Royle, Jim Sutherland, Alex Swatridge and a selection of projects from the Young Creatives Network.

My contribution is a collection of 30 framed Pentone swatches, pictured above on our kitchen floor, but hopefully on a gallery wall by now.

Pentone is a project that began in 2006 when we produced a mailer of nine swatches, each containing a sample of a written tone of voice – a verbal play on the Pantone colour-matching system. It later evolved into postcards, greetings cards and mugs. But I’ve always felt it should turn into some kind of ‘definitive’ collection at some point, and this exhibition has been the catalyst to make it happen. The 30 swatches are mainly new ones, with a handful of old ones mixed in – Pentone Boring remains as dull as ever.

To coincide with the exhibition, we've produced a Pentone Boxset including all 30 swatches, more of which to follow.

There will also be a reading table at the gallery featuring publications from the contributors, with Disappointments Diary and Corpoetics both included.

As well as contributing to the exhibition, I’ve been working with curator Nick Eagleton on the writing that goes around it. The principle has been to keep it simple – it’s more about celebrating the contents of the exhibition rather than theorising about them. To that end, the opening panel in the exhibition contains a rhyming list of the many and varied items on display, an evocative taster to set the tone. For the detailed analysis, there will be a couple of talks at the Jerwood Space over the course of the exhibition, going into the thinking behind the work and the wider questions it raises.

I’ll write more about the exhibition over the coming weeks. For now, here are a few related articles:

Design Week feature
My contribution to a related Design Week voxpop
More from johnson banks
Details and visitor information

Bank Insecurity Questions

A personal milestone this week as I've had something published by online literary journal McSweeney's – a quietly harboured ambition for some time.

It's a list of Bank Insecurity Questions and it's probably not recommended if you're feeling psychologically fragile.

Celebrating John Hanna

The April edition of Creative Review carries an article I contributed on the illustrator John Hanna. Some readers may remember I posted about him in 2009, having stumbled across some copies of a magazine called Country Fair. The original post is here. The cover illustrations were all signed simply ‘Hanna’, but I was surprised to find next to nothing about him online. There was a flurry of comments that confirmed his identity as John Hanna and led to some sketchy biographical information, but then things went quiet.

Early this year, a new comment appeared on the post. It was from John Hanna’s son, Max. We exchanged emails and I ended up meeting him to find out more about his father’s life and work.

To read the full story, you’ll have to track down the Creative Review article – available to buy here or subscribe here. 

There are a few images that didn't make the article but are worth sharing:

A poster for the British Travel Association, featured in the Graphis Annual 1955/6 and found by Sandi Vincent on Flickr. 

Also this detail from a Shell ad, from the Graphis Annual 1956/7, again rediscovered by Sandi Vincent. 

A personal piece, combining a tiger, walrus and kangaroo: the Tigerusaroo.

Two birthday cards lent to me by John's son Max.

And two more Country Fair covers, copyright the estate of Macdonald Hastings, and kindly supplied to me by Jenny Duff, who is now selling a range of John Hanna place mats (echoing a promotion that took place in the 1950s).

The Creative Review article includes an appreciation of the work by contemporary illustrator Joe McLaren, whose work you can see here.

Finally, thanks to Max Hanna for getting in touch and sharing a fascinating story.

Spam flypaper (Instagram Facebook Design Copywriting Logo)

If you are a human being, please don't comment on this post.

Like anyone with a blog, I regularly have to delete stupid spammy comments on other posts, particularly the one I wrote about Instagram for some reason.

So I thought it would be at least mildly amusing to have one post where I don't delete the spam comments, but do point out that anyone you see below is an AUTOMATED SPAMMY IDIOT TIRESOME WASTER OF HUMAN TIME AND ENERGY. AND A TOOL.

If they're linking to a site selling trainers, please note the trainers are rubbish and this person wets themselves every night and has no friends.

I should probably mention Instagram, Facebook, design, copywriting and logo again to draw them in. It may take a while, but they will come.

Thanks for bearing with this, which is purely for my own cathartic purposes.

Mr Small Print

I sometimes miss writing Mr Blog, a character who lived a brief but intense life in late 2010, documenting all the ‘Mr’ shops on Britain’s high streets.

So it’s nice to see him immortalised in a small way in the credits of this year’s D&AD Annual, a copy of which has just arrived at my door.

Mr Blog was approached  by Venture Three to help with the writing on the rebranding of Little Chef – at the time, they didn’t know who was behind the blog and whether I did any commissioned writing. Mr Blog had to adapt his voice to fit with Little Chef’s more populist positioning, but hopefully a few traces remain.

Well done Mr Blog.*


* And well done Mr Tweets too.