Eye Magazine

The Graphic Art of the Underground: A Counter-Culture History (Bloomsbury, £29.99) by Ian Lowey and Suzy Prince aims to give an overview of underground art which opposes ‘wider society through the creation and development of their own distinct common cultural identities’. The authors worked together on the counter-culture magazine Nude from 2003, and covers and spreads from Nude illustrate the book’s introduction. The book looks to a wide array of source material, starting with American car customisers in the 1950s and 60s via punk and new wave to ‘graffiti knitting’ in the 2000s and some decidedly ‘overground’-looking Tunnock’s Tea Cake cushions by Nikki McWilliams.

(See ‘In search of Barney Bubbles’ in Eye 6.)

Rian Hughes’ most recent book 112 Hours: A Device Fonts Collection looks to clock faces, smoke boxes, cab plates, timestamps, electric meters, travel ticket stubs and betting slips, numbering stamps, food stamps and telegraphs for inspiration. All the fonts are limited to the numbers one to twelve (derived from the project’s original clock face source material) with a selection of supporting characters – currency symbols and punctuation. Hughes intends to extend a selection of fonts to include the full alphabet. (See ‘Books received #4’ on the Eye blog.)

Modern Toss: A Decade in the Shithouse celebrates work by Jon Link and Mick Bunnage since the launch of their first comics in 2004 (the website was launched in 2002). The hardback book, funded via Kickstarter, is funny from the outset – the foreword mocks forewords and the early Q&A-formatted text divulges that Modern Toss was originally to be called Shitflap but when printed out, it made Link and Bunnage ‘feel sick’. The pages are largely filled with Link and Bunnage’s ‘space guzzling’ cartoons, with expressive line drawings of foul-mouthed characters such as Mr Tourette the master signwriter and the disagreeable employees from the Work series.

A double gatefold makes the most of their shockingly expletive-free ‘Punctuation Networking Event’ first unveiled in ‘They work with words: 2’ in Eye 75 and the less restrained ‘Periodic Table of Swearing’ (see ‘Graphic language’ in Eye 78.)

Eddie Muller’s The Art of Noir (Overlook Duckworth, £19.99) is an expanded and generously illustrated version of a book first published in 2002.

Though the movies covered (Ace in the Hole, Rear Window, Touch of Evil) may be starry classics, the illustrators, designers and lettering artists behind the pulp imagery of the posters and lobby cards are in the main anonymous or forgotten.

The new edition includes an additional chapter with some interesting finds such as this atypical Danish poster for Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place and a French photomontage poster for Dark Passage that is adapted for the new edition’s cover. The book’s design is by by Bernard Schleifer.

Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published quarterly for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture. It is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy subscriptions and single issues.