Eye Magazine

The new edition of Eye is out – number 110, volume 28 – and it smells delicious.

There are features about Samar Maakaroun (Pentagram); Gordon House; Japanese legend Tadanori Yokoo; Truman’s Brewery letters; and a tribute to Andy Altmann. James Alexander’s article ‘Type, art and The Beatles’ profiles House (1932-2004), a prolific artist-designer who worked with a host of 1960s ‘names’ – Paul McCartney, Pentangle, Peter Blake, Robert Fraser, Theo Crosby, Richard Hamilton and many more.

House’s ideas and projects were often highly visible – not least his work on The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ with Richard Hamilton, yet his name is largely absent from histories of that time.

In ‘Truman’s Show’, Dr Elena Veguillas documents the architectural lettering on pubs once owned by London brewery Truman’s (aka Truman Hanbury Buxton and Co. Ltd.), the subject of her PhD.

As part of her extensive documentation of pub lettering, Verguillas made digital collages (such as the one above) as a way of identifying patterns in the letterforms.

‘Andy Altmann remembered’ is a tribute to the late graphic designer, a co-founder of Why Not Associates, with moving tributes and anecdotes from friends, colleagues and family.

David Jenkins (Circa), David Ellis (Why Not Associates), Chrissie Charlton, Gordon Young, Gert Dumbar, Justine Tabak (Andy’s wife) and Andy Stevens (GTF) contribute lovely memories of the man and his work. Altmann’s posthumous Typo* will be published later this year thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign.

‘Uncoated’, the thirteen-page review section, covers nine books and two exhibitions, including Joe Pearson’s Bedford show about publisher Noel Carrington and Kelli Anderson’s Alphabet in Motion.

‘We made this’ describes the making of Baskerville’s Teardrop Explodes by the late John Morgan and his studio.

Long-time Eye readers may have noticed that we started to make every issue a type special, with regular type reviews and many type-focused articles and reviews. Each edition of Eye (since Eye 72 in 2009) uses a different typeface; for Eye 110, the ‘guest typeface’ is Spectator by Commercial Type.

The wide-ranging Reputations interview is with Pentagram partner Samar Maakaroun.

And there is ‘Empire of posters’, a multi-author piece in which Stefan Sagmeister, Noel Douglas, Liza Enebeis, Jonathan Barnbrook and John Warwicker explain what they admire in the posters of Japanese designer-artist Tadanori Yokoo.

Eye’s extended family of writers, designers, editors, technicians, advertisers and friends have put a lot of effort and hard work into the the latest edition, and we are sure you will enjoy reading its extensive. An online article like this one, or the little extracts we put on the main Eye website and on social media can only give you small taste of Eye 110’s collection of words and pictures. You can read Rick Poynor’s latest Critique (below) online, but it’s better on the printed page.

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Eye editors, Haggerston Riviera, London