Eye Magazine

Self-styled ‘graphic entertainer’ Alan Aldridge shot to fame in the mid-1960s with his work for The Sunday Times magazine, Penguin Books, The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and The Who. Aldridge regards The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics (see Eye no. 57 vol. 15) as an ‘illustration of the 1960s’, and you could say the same for much of his new book The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes (Thames & Hudson, £24.95), published to coincide with the Design Museum show of the same name. In this extract, Aldridge recounts his experiences after being fired from a job as a junior finished artist at Charlotte Studios – ‘supply your own steel rule and X-Acto knife’ – in a London that was just about to Swing.

Alan Aldridge’s art direction of Beatles lyrics gave a graphic twist to the Swinging Sixties