Dear friends,

Please join us for our upcoming evening ‘Activists in Ink’, which will take place from 7-9.30pm on 8 March at St Bride Library in London. This will be our first in-person Type Tuesday since March 2020, and we’ll be joined by three special guests: reportage illustrator Lucinda Rogers; graphic designer Greg Bunbury; and poet, activist and letterpress artist Dennis Gould. Tickets cost £12.50, £10 members/concessions, £8 students, in support of the St Bride Foundation.

We will begin the evening with a presentation from Lucinda Rogers on her reportage drawings from COP26 in Glasgow. She recently collated her illustrative observations into Around the edge of COP26, a publication documenting the activists, delegates, panels, speeches, protests, as well as the general mood throughout and following the summit.

Lucinda will be joined by Kevin Wilson, editorial creative director of the Financial Times, to discuss the use of reportage illustration in newspaper journalism.
 

After Lucinda, there will be a presentation by graphic designer Greg Bunbury, who founded the Black Outdoor Art project (in partnership with outdoor agency Brotherhood Media), which uses donated billboard space as a platform for other Black British designers. Greg will also talk about his type designs (including the all-caps display typefaces Empire Windrush and Bradford ’81) and his work for cultural and community focused clients.

We will also be screening a short documentary entitled The Last Cuckoo: Dennis Gould, by British filmmaker and designer Mark Chaudoir. This is an intimate portrait of poet and printmaker Dennis Gould, capturing his love for activism, letterpress, wood type, cycling, football and life in general – it’s a highly enjoyable film, and Mark and Dennis will be on hand to chat about it.

Copies of Around the edge of COP26 and a selection of Dennis Gould’s letterpress works – plus current and bargain back issues of Eye – will be available for sale in the Farringdon Room next to Bridewell Hall. There will also be a small bar where you can buy beers, wines and soft drinks.

Though our website is still undergoing repair, there are many articles in our vast archive we would like to remind you about. A recent example is ‘Word play’ in Eye 101, where I wrote about Sarah Boris’s contribution (among many others, including Gould’s) to ‘Reverting to Type 2020: Protest Posters’, an exhibition curated by New North Press (see also ‘The printed howl’.)

In the Eye 66 article ‘Whose space?’, activist, designer and educator Noel Douglas examined the relationship between Neoliberalism and graphic design. And there is a review of Liz McQuiston’s Visual Impact: Creative Dissent in the 21st Century by David Crowley, ‘Fighting back with pictures’, Eye 91 (still available at the Eye shop).

The Eye Events page is full of talks, lectures, exhibitions and festivals for the coming months. In its final days (and continuing the ‘activists’ theme) is the exhibition ‘With Gérard Paris-Clavel’ at the Museum of Printing and Graphic Communication in Lyon (see ‘Reputations: Gérard Paris-Clavel’ in Eye 27). Or if you fancy something different, test your typographic knowledge in a virtual pub quiz hosted by Sarah Hyndman on 1 March. And of course there’s Eye’s Type Tuesday on 8 March.

We’re all looking forward to getting back to St Bride (and there are signs that this will sell out quickly), so please book your tickets now, by clicking this Billetto link. All proceeds go to the St Bride Foundation. 

Best wishes from the Eye team.    
 
John L. Walters, editor

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