//Front, John Cooper Clarke Directory, Omnibus Press, 1979. 10" x 7", 52pp (inc covers).//
//Front, Ian Dury Songbook, Wise Publications, 1979. 12" x 9", 68pp (inc covers).//
In 1979 pop songbook design was shaken up by Barney Bubbles and the artist Derek Boshier, who had come together to collaborate on the group exhibition Lives.
Top: Detail, Music press ad for The Rumour, 1979. Below: Detail, front cover, Cracking Up, Nick Lowe, 1979.
The collaged waving hand/face on the sleeve of Nick Lowe’s 1979 single Cracking Up is one of Barney Bubbles’ most recognisable creations, assisted into prominence by its usage on the front of Reasons To Be Cheerful.
The toothy grin was clipped from a photo of keyboard-player Bob Andrews, one-time colleague of Lowe’s in Brinsley Schwarz (and before that in 60s pop band Kippington Lodge) and one of Graham Parker’s collaborators as a member of The Rumour.
//4 x 12" colour variants, back cover, My Aim Is True, Elvis Costello, Stiff Records, 1977.//
Selected works by Barney Bubbles will appear in this summer’s group exhibition about the visual language of music, White Noise: Quand le graphisme fait du bruit (When graphics make the noise) at the 23rd International Poster & Graphic Design Festival in Chaumont, France, from May 26 to June 10.
White Noise is being put together by Sophie Demay and Étienne Hervy, the Chaumont festival artistic director and former editor of French graphics magazine Etapes, and includes contributions from a number of contemporary graphic artists – read more here.
//Back cover + outer bag, Oora, Edgar Broughton Band, Harvest, 1973.//
//Front covers, clockwise from bottom left: Neat Neat Neat, The Damned, Stiff, 1977; Damned Damned Damned, The Damned, Stiff, 1977; Boogie On The Street, Lew Lewis, Stiff, 1976 (not Barney Bubbles design); Save The Wail, Lew Lewis Reformer, Stiff, 1979; One Chord Wonders, The Adverts, Stiff, 1977; Whole Wide World, Wreckless Eric, Stiff, 1977.//
Here are some more of Sophie’s shots taken during a recent run-through of potential exhibits:
Promotional poster/double-sided fold-out tour programme for Ian Dury & The Blockheads, 1978. 59cm x 84cm.
Ian Dury With Love, 60in x 40in poster, 1977.
These two stunning Barney Bubbles posters will be taking centre stage in the graphics section of the V&A’s forthcoming exhibition British Design: 1948-2012.
//Proof copy of unused front cover for single sleeve, Your Generation/Day By Day, Generation X, Chrysalis, 1977.//
Presented here for the first time in nearly 35 years, this is Barney Bubbles’ original artwork for the front cover of Your Generation, the 1977 debut single by Generation X.
The design was rejected because the photograph was considered too routine. What a shame. This is a typically high-impact Bubbles work combining concise photographic presentation with audacious typography.
The quartet’s manager Jonh Ingham, the journalist who had been at the forefront of punk reportage, has dug it out from his archive exclusively for this blog.
“I cut, folded and glued it, so we could see what the sleeve would look like held in the hand,” says Ingham.
//Selection of slides from Hawklords projection.//
With the legacy of Situationism the subject of a couple of posts on my blog, it seems timely to point up Barney Bubbles’ inclusion of frames from Christopher Grey’s Leaving The 20th Century: The Incomplete Work Of The Situationist International in his slide-show for Hawkwind’s post-punk offshoot Hawklords.
Poster, 60in x 40in, Live Stiffs tour, 1977.
This Larry Wallis poster design – one of five of the stars of the 1977 Live Stiffs tour – is among 20 or so examples of Barney Bubbles’ work included in Rude & Reckless, the punk and post-punk graphics exhibition opening tomorrow (July 21) at NYC’s Steven Kasher Gallery.
The show samples the collection of New York resident Andrew Krivine, who started accumulating records, posters, flyers and ephemera during family visits to the UK in the late 70s.
Poster, 900mm x 750mm, 1978.
Barney Bubbles produced this striking poster for a performance of Vivian Stanshall’s one-off show An Evening At Rawlinson End at the London’s Collegiate Theatre (these days the Bloomsbury Theatre) in October 1978.
The grid overlaid an image of Stanshall aboard his favourite vehicle – the bicycle – in character as the “still unusual” Hubert Rawlinson.
7" single sleeve. Back + front of Cairo, Amazulu, Towerbell Records, 1983.
The single sleeves section of this site has been updated today with the addition of yet more images, bringing the total number of Barney Bubbles’ designs for the 7″ format there to 85 (and there are more on their way…)
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