Heavenly Bodies for sale . . .

From today Sandy Nightingale's first four cards under the banner of Heavenly Bodies are available for sale online. The cards are blank inside and cover a range of scenes: Marie Antoinette, Egyptian Temple Dancers, Eve and a group of jolly ladies collapsing with the giggles.

There will be more cards to follow. All your comments and suggestions are welcome. In the mean time please visit the shop and share with your friends . . .

Every Little Helps . . .

We have joined the 10:10 Climate Change Campaign. The aim is to reduce our carbon emission by 10% in 2010.

When we were Art Students this was known to be a vital issue, especially to post-hippies. But whereas back then it exposed us to ridicule (weave your own flip-flops out of tofu do you?) - today it is seen as not only sensible and desirable, but essential for our survival. We already urge our clients to use low-carbon alternatives and recycled materials wherever possible and hope for positive responses in future. No lecturing or hectoring, just pointing out the alternatives for clients to decide.

We want to do our bit.

Heavenly Bodies Take Off

Heavenly Bodies is the series name for Sandy Nightingale's new line in greetings cards. We chose  Abacus, in The Lake District for the repro and print. The proofs have been given the OK by the artist (our thanks to Danny at Abacus). And the first print run is happening this week.

They will be on sale online and at discerning West Country retail outlets soon. Watch this space  as we will be revealing the details soon.

Peter Williams - the man who captured calm

In the Abbey Road post we acknowledged the contribution of photographer, Peter Williams. An uncharacteristic shot for Peter who was, as ever, being helpful and responsive to the brief.

It was with great sadness that we learned of the passing of this talented, beautiful and kind man. A fine craftsman with a faultless eye and rock-steady hand, he created some of the most beautiful still life compositions and natural history images to be found anywhere. In his obituary in the Guardian the authors note, "Many fledgling art directors learned from him never to accept second best." I know this to be true as I was one of those learning early lessons with a true master. Many very happy, hard-working hours were spent in Rossetti Studios, Chelsea with Peter. We worked with celebrities such as Clive James and Ester Rantzen, classy models, food and even a couple of parrots. One stuffed for Julian Barnes' novel Flaubert's Parrot and the other, very much alive, for Raymond Chandler's Playback. So alive in fact that we grew to believe it was not only overhearing but anticipating our requirements of it's pose. We ended up discussing it in the privacy of the studio kitchen and collapsing in giggles.

But it was his still life work that stunned us every time. He worked in advertising, for the Observer, the Guardian and Sunday Telegraph. In 2000 he won the Glenfiddich Food & Drink Award and began his work for Kew magazine which he took enormous pleasure in. I think of him as 'The man who photographed calm'. In this noisy, boisterous world his images are a refuge of tranquility that, by their very silence and stillness, speak volumes above the cacophony outside their exquisitely constructed frames. As architects depend upon craftsmen, art directors rely on relationships with the best photographers and illustrators. Peter Williams was one of the finest.

He was a very special man and will be deeply missed. Thank you, Peter, for your art, your skills, your patience and fine company.

Abbey Road revisited

This summer saw lots of media coverage for the anniversary of The Beatles' Abbey Road. All their albums became iconic and you can often gauge how much album art has been absorbed into popular culture by the number of parodies. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, The Simpsons, Booker T & the MG's, Lego, and many more have paid homage to Abbey Road.

In 1984 Pan Books published Pete Brown's account of his time with The Beatles. Gary Day-Ellison, then Creative Director for Pan, wanted the cover to show the exact spot with the band now missing. The record label would not permit the re-touching of the original sleeve. So one Sunday morning it was off to St.John's Wood with delightfully gentle photographer Peter Williams and a set of step ladders to shoot from scratch. With a very limited budget for models or props the were some Hitchcock cameos by Gary, Sandy Nightingale, Richard Moon, Creative Director of The British Council at the time, and his VW. We left the 'For Sale' sign in for Beatles' fans to spot.

The zebra crossing itself is an international pilgrimage destination for fans of The Fab Four braving the London traffic to get that souvenir shot of themselves on location.

Visually, we are quite taken by the wit of the tank on The Beatles Bike that puts the motorbike in Abbey Road wherever it is. A shame the airbrush artist went on to pepper (apologies) the machine with so many other references too. Neat tank though.

Great Women

Sandy Nightingale  is busy in the studio on a favourite project she has been developing with Sandi Toksvig. There are quite a few paintings with accompanying text as the project looks for the right home. History is festooned with fabulous females. Sandy and Sandi take unusual slants on the most famous - Elizabeth I and Mata Hari - and relish the marvellously obscure women who deserve to be discovered and celebrated - Pope Joan and the chaos that caused, Domestic Goddess, Fanny Farmer and Dame Ethel Smyth conducting an orchestra of suffragettes with a tooth brush from her prison cell window, to name just a few.

The list of subjects and paintings is always growing while publishers tread water over the potential of a book about half the population with an audience of more.
  
They are having great fun with lots of women to celebrate but suggestions are always welcome . . .

Introduction

Sometimes our clients wish to update the content on their sites. We can update or develop the site. More complex sites may need a database CMS (Content Management System). For simple text changes there are a client-side solutions such as Adobe's InContext Editing (rumoured to start charging ongoing fees) or Open Source software such as CushyCMS. Whichever is the right tool for the job, everyone wants to avoid compromising the appearance of the site and the client's brand image.

What about the potential of Posts instead?

Twitter is popular but designed for short messages.  We monitored Tweets for some weeks with a tool called Twendz (Exploring Twitter Conversation & Sentiment) we found on Ubercool. The brevity seems to tempt users to more towards reaction rather than reflection. Of course, like the Web itself, the delivery technology does not determine the quality of the content. But then Ubercool is a Blog that includes Tweets. Interesting to see how it develops . . .  What do you think?

A  Blog is a longer-form option and it can provide a good way to for a site to keep its audience informed, advised with both text/images/relevant links. It too encourages book-marking and mail-links that improve the traffic driven to your site. 

We are opting to test the Blog option on ourselves. 

What we will do is introduce our new projects, promote selected links, post some of the things that we are finding inspiring, curious or might even suggest to future clients something they hadn't thought of us for. We might even show a little work from our archives if it has a story to it.

Your feedback, opinions and enquiries are very welcome.