Barney Bubbles positions wire lettering, west London, 1980. Photo: A. Sales.

Here we have Barney Bubbles setting about creating of the wall-mounted electrical flex and wire construction which adorns the sleeve of Carlene Carter’s 1980 album Musical Shapes.

Quaver and jukebox selector, 1980. Photo: A. Sales.

Quaver with 7" single, 1980. Photo: A Sales.

The arrival of the photos from Antoinette Sales couldn’t be more timely as we prepare for our forthcoming exhibition Process: The working practices of Barney Bubbles.

Tony collaborated with Barney on the design, providing the lettering and layout, as well as styling Carter (for whom she also designed stage wear).

With Chalkie Davies behind the lens, the cover shoot took place in the west London house Tony shared with her then-husband (and Barney’s friend and patron/F-Beat label boss) Jake Riviera.

“Barney set it up in our dining room in Oxford Road,” says Tony in Reasons To Be Cheerful. “I designed and set the graphics on the back. Barney had taught me how to lay down Letraset and make the placement and spacing impeccable. I had fun with the “N” for Notes, “S” for Selections and “P” for Personnel. In the self-effacing Bubbles tradition, there was no artwork credit.”

12in album. Front cover with sticker, Musical Shapes, Carlene Carter, F-Beat. 1980.

12in album. Back cover, Musical Shapes, Carlene Carter, Warner Bros. 1980.

12in inner sleeve, Musical Shapes.

12in album. Front cover, Around Midnight, Julie London, Liberty, 1960.

Winding away from the three-legged Dansette, the five flexes (all ending with upturned plugs) feature the album title picked out in wire and blue and red balls. These also appear to be notation; can anyone interpret what they convey musically?

One of Tony’s photographs shows that there was a try-out with a diner jukebox selector. On the back cover,  a bread bin replaced the Dansette.

Tipping a wink to the Pate/Francis & Associates 1960 design for Julie London’s Liberty album Around Midnight, the inner showed Carter reclining on a rug bearing the design of an F-Beat single (by the label’s most prominent act, Elvis Costello And The Attractions).

The sleeve was decorated with many references to the newly-launched label: on the front, Carter stood on a floor strewn with promo copies of the single version of one of her father Johnny Cash’s most popular songs Ring Of Fire (with a label incorporating Barney’s symbol of three interlocked rings and also his encircled copyright “C” familiar from designs for others such as the album’s producer Nick Lowe and Johnny Moped).

The Musical Shapes sleeve drove home the F-Beat identity by featuring the variants of the house singles bags Barney produced for Riviera.

These 7″ paper designs, based around insignia and decorations from Riviera’s office jukebox, utilised the stark colour overlays and contrasts noted across Barney’s work by such contemporary practitioners as Art Chantry.

7in house sleeve. Ring Of Fire/That Very First Kiss, Carlene Carter, F-Beat. 1980.

7in house sleeve. Ring Of Fire/That Very First Kiss, Carlene Carter, F-Beat. 1980.

7in house sleeve. Splash (A Tear Goes Rolling Down)/Hello, Clive Langer & The Boxes, F-Beat. 1980.

7in house sleeve. Good Year For The Roses/Your Angel Steps Out Of Heaven, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, F-Beat. 1981.

7in house sleeve. Head To Toe/The World Of Broken Hearts, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, F-Beat. 1982.

In line with the treatment he received from other American record companies,  Carter’s US  label Warner Bros tamed Barney’s design for fear of illegibility; the full-bleed front cover was given a white border for the artist credit and album title. In addition, the inner was dispensed with altogether.

Meanwhile, the US press kit included a standard 8″x1o” b&w shot of Carter from the Oxford Road session, and posters were given away with both the American and British versions of the release.

8"x10" glossy press photo. 1980.

US designer Vic Fieger has launched a campaign for Google to feature the “doodle” he has created by amalgamating various Barney Bubbles’ graphic devices.

Vic would like Google to run his doodle on July 30 – what would be Barney Bubbles’ 68th birthday.

This what Vic has sent to Google’s doodle team:

Hello,

My name is Vic Fieger. I am a font designer and graphic artist.

Not many people know about Barney Bubbles, as the great majority of his work was uncredited. He doesn’t have the name recognition of his contemporaries in art and album design, such as Peter Saville or Hipgnosis.

But his influence on modern design is unmatched; his creations for acts like Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, the Psychedelic Furs and countless other recording artists gave rise to many of the graphic motifs of the 1980s. Only recently has he begun to receive the recognition he deserved with the release of the book Reasons To Be Cheerful by Paul Gorman. Ten years before this, two of his covers appeared in Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell’s 100 Best Album Covers compilation.

I was hoping you might be interested in posting a Doodle paying tribute to Barney on his birthday, July 30. I’ve attached one I’ve created the other day, using an amalgam of some of his graphic devices from various pieces. Even if a Doodle is only posted in the UK, where most of the acts he worked with were based, it would still be very much appreciated by lovers of design and modern art.

I understand that Google is a very busy company and that your calendar is probably already full. Still, I do hope you consider my proposal.

Thank you for your time, and for the services you provide.

Vic Fieger

Join Vic’s campaign by writing to proposals@google.com referencing his letter and using the mail header:

Barney Bubbles for Google doodle on July 30, 2010

Pedro Marques has posted the second installment of his interview with Michael Moorcock, in which the great man discusses his working relationship with designers not only of his books but also New Worlds, the sci-fi magazine he edited over a long period .

New Worlds, August 1967. Cover: Eduardo Paolozzi.

The interview reveals the mutual respect shared by Barney Bubbles and art director/editor/and later WIRED contributor Charles Platt.

New Worlds August 1969. Cover: Charles Platt.

“Barney and Charles lived a few blocks from one another in the Portobello Road and its environs, where the offices of New Worlds and Frendz were situated virtually side by side,” says Moorcock, whose 1975 album The New Worlds Fair is housed in a Barney Bubbles sleeve.

12in sleeve. The New Worlds Fair, Michael Moorcock & The Deep Fix, UA, 1975.

Later on in the decade the New Worlds art director was Richard Glyn Jones.”By the time [Barney] was at Stiff Records, he had more work than he could handle and I never wanted to overload him, he was such a sweet guy,” says Moorcock.  “But I would have used him if I could.”

Stacia, second left, with fans at Harlow Town Park, August 1974. Photo via Bassmonster 2 at Hawkwind Free Forums.

I was thrilled that Moorcock was available to make many valuable contributions to Reasons To Be Cheerful, not least because I clearly remember him intoning excerpts from Warrior On the Edge Of Time oonstage with Hawkwind at a 1974 free festival in Harlow New Town, surrounded as I was by members of the Windsor Chapter, all of us captivated by the onstage antics of Stacia and Nik Turner (playing his sax dressed as a frog, naturellement)

Since we’re on the subject of MM, I’d also like to urge you to check out the recently published and wonderful John Coulthart-designed compendium of Moorcock’s writings, Into The Media Web.

Hats of to US designer Vic Fieger for amalgamating some of Barney Bubbles’ graphic devices in this Google logo deviation over at deviantART.

Fieger designed the logo ahead of what would be Barney Bubbles’ 68th birthday on July 30.”I might send it to Google in the million-to-one chance they use it,” he says.

Check out Fieger’s range of freeware fonts and his blog Not New York No.

Exciting news – the Barney Bubbles exhibition opens in London this autumn.

PROCESS: The working practices of Barney Bubbles will run from September 14 to October 23 at leading London gallery Chelsea Space.

PROCESS will present many fascinating exhibits  – some displayed for the first time in public – to pinpoint Barney Bubbles’ approach to the body of design work which has cemented his reputation as one of the greats in his field.

By examining  Bubbles’ activities from leaving art school in the early 60s to his death in 1983, PROCESS also traces an important strand in the development of the practice of graphic design.

Situated as it is within the grounds of Chelsea College Of Art & Design in the shadow of Tate Britain, Chelsea Space’s hosting of PROCESS will provide students of design and the visual arts and other creative disciplines – as well as the visitors to the home of British art – with vital insights into pre-digital working methods across the range of media.

Delineating the stages of production, PROCESS will also investigate the ways in which Bubbles conjured brilliance by his unique conflation of references and influences.

PROCESS will be complemented by a series of events, including an opening party, talks, q&as and performances from musicians, designers, photographers and others who worked with Bubbles.

We’ll be unveiling details of that programme over the coming weeks, so keep your eyes peeled. Already we’ve agreed participation with quite a few people, some of whom will be speaking publicly for the first time about their association with, and appreciation for, the work of this intriguing and elusive figure.

Chelsea Space is the place where The Clash, B.A.D., Carbon Silicon and Gorillaz mainman Mick Jones launched his installation The Rock & Roll Public Library, which has evolved as it has toured other spaces.

Similarly we’re looking for PROCESS to be the first manifestation in a rolling series of  Barney Bubbles shows over the coming years.

For more info on the exhibition keep in touch by subscribing here and contacting us at info@barneybubbles.com

In June 1978, the British graphic artist David Allen was introduced to Barney Bubbles backstage after a gig at LA’s celebrated Sunset Strip club Whisky a Go Go.

12in sq sleeve. Front cover, Kill City, Iggy Pop & James Williamson, Radar, 1978.

“It was most likely some punk rock-a-thon; The GoGos, Devo, The Dickies?” says David, who has been based in New York since the mid-80s and recalls that Barney’s friend and label boss Jake Riviera was present, as was local  music champion and Bomp! owner, the late Greg Shaw.

Back cover, Kill City.

“I had been an avid reader of Friends and NME, grew up in north-west London when seeing Hawkwind was no big deal, and was at the first Glastonbury Fayre, so could critique the pyramid fold-out blindfold in a box,” says David.

24in x 36in paperboard. Unfolded outer of Revelations - A Musical Anthology For Glastonbury Fayre, Revelation, 1972.

“Like many, I was exposed to Barney’s work from an early age without being aware of who was responsible,” says David. “It was Greg Shaw who identified that the anonymity he aspired to was high art, Duchamp-esque for the mid-70s. Around that time, if a clever record cover had no credits, you assumed it was a Barney Bubbles.”

Poster 20in x 30in. Freedom Of Choice, Devo, 1980.

At The Whisky, the fellow artists compared notes. “Barney was dressed like an eye test, black-and-white striped shirt and trousers, not quite matching,” recalls David. “We were both sober enough to make sociable conversation and had some common ground.”

7sq in. Front cover, Kill City/I Got Nothin', Radar, 1978.

A connection was Kill City. This collection of Iggy Pop and James Williamson demos (with contributions from David Bowie) had been released earlier in 1978 by Bomp! in the US and Radar in England, housed in David’s first album sleeve.

Back cover, Kill City/I Got Nothin'.

As explained here, when the lead track was issued as a UK single, Barney created a Warholesque sleeve and gritty promotional campaign.

David graduated from Harrow College Of Art in 1976 having studied graphic design with a “strong illustrative leaning”. A fan of Roxy Music, David Bowie, Kilburn & The High Roads, Dr Feelgood and Kokomo, he’d hung out at Biba’s Rainbow Room, Dingwalls, The Hope & Anchor and The Roundhouse, then high-tailed it to LA via a stop-over in Manhattan.

Poster celeebrating 30th birthday of The Masque, 1997.

“After a year I had found my way into the Hollywood punk scene  – see Live At The Masque: Nightmare In Punk Alley – doing graphics for bands and clubs,” says David, whose commissions included the logo and sleeves for singles by the great “Mexican Ramones” The Zeros, whose founding member Robert Lopez is over in Europe in his incarnation as the fabulous El Vez next week.

7sq in. Back and front cover, Wild Weekend/Beat Your Heart Out, The Zeros, Bomp! Records, 1978.

“I shared a rundown mansion with punks including Margo from The GoGos, John and Exene from X and Jonh Ingham,” says David. “X did their first ever show in my living room. Todd Rundgren was there, and Darby Crash started a spaghetti fight”

GoGos photosession art directed by David Allen. 1978.

By this time David was involved in the late Claude Bessey’s Slash magazine and was soon  hired as art director of Bomp! the label and magazine. When he  met photographer Jules Bates at The Masque one night, the pair launched design company Artrouble.

Late 70s: Jules Bates (left) and David Allen.

David recalls that the late 77 arrival of The Damned’s Music For Pleasure in it’s Barney-designed sleeve grabbed his attention.

Slash number 7, January 1978.

“I’d already been using abstracted typefaces for a while at Slash,” says David.  “But Music For Pleasure raised the bar on legibility vs illegibility. Like all of his work it is a great ‘design’, but with a sophisticated visual subtext delivered with sharp wit.”

In the wake of the encounter at The Whiskey, David returned to Britain and visited Riviera, who commissioned a logo and stationery for his company.

Logo/stationery header, Riviera Global, 1979.

“I met him in his tiny office and  got the idea to design a huge factory with it’s own nuclear reactor as the company logo,” says David.”For the font I chose Profil, as used for signage at London Airport in the 50s.”

During that visit, David also caught up with such Barney admirers as Malcolm Garret, Al McDowell’s company Rockin’ Russian and George Hardie, though by this time Barney was focusing on designing his furniture range so was unavailable.

12 sq in. Back and front, Freedom Of Choice, Devo, Warner Music, 1980.

Back in LA, Artrouble developed with illustrator/make-up designer  Phyllis Cohen, producing such work as Devo’s Freedom Of Choice, a number of sleeves for The Dickies, Kim Fowley’s Snake Document Masquerade and The Motels’ Four Square.

12sq in. Front cover, Snake Document Masquerade, Kim Fowley, Antilles, 1979.

“We designed for everyone from Shawn Cassidy to The Gap Band, Earth Wind & Fire to The Surf Punks, Chaka Khan to The Weirdos,” he adds.

Having moved to New York in the mid-80s, David worked at such publications as Soho News, East Village Eye and High Times, and has more recently painted and manages Sorceress.

“I still get the odd record cover and just returned from a six-week study of the Mayan empire in central America, so hope to be painting again soon,” says David.

6sq in. Front cover, Greg Shaw tribute CD, Bomp!, 2006.

David reserves particular affection for Greg Shaw,  a pivotal figure in American independent music who died aged 55 in 2004. “Greg was a soft-spoken Valley kid without whom very little of note would have occurred in the lives of many young people back then,” says David.

For the Artrouble archive, go here.

Sounds like a particularly fiendish pub quiz question doesn’t it?

7in sleeve. Front cover, Little Queenie/ Hard Lovin' Man (Live), Chiswick, 1978.

No, the actor (whose naked form cavorting on stage in a production of The Beastly Beatitudes Of Balthazar B is still emblazoned on my memory 29 years after the fact) was not a member of Croydon’s finest alongside Fred Berk and Slimy Toad.

Back cover, Little Queenie/Hard Lovin'Man (Live).

And no, Moped didn’t make a cameo in Four Weddings & Funeral as the punk-rock rival of Hugh Grant for Andi MacDowell’s affections.

However, courtesy of Barney Bubbles’ designs, Callow’s hands did appear on both sides of the sleeve of Moped’s 1978 Chiswick single Little Queenie.

Page 13, Copyright 1978, Brian Griffin.

The shot – as revealed last night by photographer Brian Griffin at a M&C Saatchi talk organised by his friend, creative director Graham Fink – was taken during BG’s Expressionist experiments which resulted in the intriguing self-published collaboration with Barney, Copyright 1978.

Exhibition postcard, 210mm x 140mm. 1979.

Callow, at that time an actor on the rise (and these days also a director, author and fine book reviewer), was one of BG’s models.

Having decorated them with barbed wire for Moped, Callow’s hands channeled the creative energy source in Barney’s design for the Derek Boshier-curated group exhibition Lives at The Hayward in 1979.

Pages 4 and 5, Power: British Management In Focus, Travelling Light, 1981.

During his illuminating presentation, BG also revealed that Barney’s frontispiece portrait for his 1981 book Power was intended as the cover, an idea rejected by the publisher (who relented for the paperback issue in 1984).

“Barney made part of my nose and face out of the numerals ‘71′,” said BG. “He thought that was when I started as a professional photographer; in fact it was the following year. The figure next to me, pointing to the future, is supposed to be my boss telling me to get out there and start working.”

Illustration, readers' letters page, NME, January 31, 1981.

BG has often mentioned that he first came across Barney’s work via his enigmatic illustrations for the NME. Above is an example for the music paper’s letter’s page.

It’s a great comment on the increasingly tribal aspects to pop fandom in the early 80s, and is made extra special by the fact that it carries a credit, something the limelight-shy Barney was avoiding at all costs by this stage.

The increasingly rare originals of BG’s collaborations with Barney are available here though, as BG pointed out last night, Power now commands a staggering £400 price tag.

In 1978 painter Humphrey Ocean dipped his toe back into the music business with the one-off charmer Whoops A Daisy for Stiff Records, a suitably quirky ditty written by his Kilburn & the High Roads bandmate Ian Dury.

The man born Humphrey Anthony Erdeswick Butler-Bowdon had opted out of playing bass for the Kilburns a few years earlier to concentrate on his art, occasionally contributing to record covers for the likes of Wings and 10cc.

7in sleeve. Front cover, Whoops A Daisy/Davey Crockett, Stiff, 1978.

The winsome Whoops A Daisy was backed by a cracking version of the 50s film theme The Ballad of Davy Crockett and wrapped in a wonderful Barney Bubbles sleeve using Chris Gabrin’s photographs of Ocean performing the elaborate dance moves he had recently enacted on the Stiffs Live Stiffs tour.

7in sleeve. Back cover, Whoops A Daisy/Davey Crockett, Stiff, 1978.

These were exaggerated by the huge white suit Ocean had bought in Brixton Market during his time in the Kilburns.

Sleeve lettering, front cover.

Barney decorated the sleeve with detailed lettering (the H on the back from interlinked horseshoes to match the rhyming-slang name of Ocean’s backing musicians, Iron Hoof) and on release there was also a version of the black and white sleeve featuring blue spot-colour.

Sleeve lettering, back cover.

The accompanying poster was a delight. With Ocean’s name picked out in dance-step style, 35 frames from the Chris Gabrin shoot were presented  in sequence with the instruction: “Cut poster out and make Humphrey Ocean’s Daisy Disco Do It My Way flickbook.”

Poster 30in x 20in, Stiff, 1978.

We’ve put them together here to accompany the tune:

And here Ocean is called to the stage to join the Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll finale of the Stiff tour and shows us how it’s done:

More than three decades ain’t a bad innings; today IPC Ignite has retired Barney Bubbles’ masthead (which survived in modified form since introduction late in 1978) as part of its latest design overhaul of floundering music weekly NME.

The new block colour version is being hammered home with 10 different covers fronting a glossy look overseen by editor Krissi Murison and realised by the magazine’s art director Joe Frost.

Murison was appointed six months ago to wrestle the magazine’s reputation from the “indie Heat” phase instituted by media-hungry predecessor Conor McNicholas and, more importantly,  address the digital-era bugbears plaguing every print publishing sector: faltering advertising and sinking circulation.

Early issues with Barney's logo, including (right) the very first: December 2, 1978

Murison describes the new design as “much more mature and aspirational” with “content which focuses on being in-depth, opinionated and above all knowledgeable”.

Ad campaign for 1978 redesign. Photograph: Brian Griffin.

This is familiar to music media watchers; why, less than 10 years ago, the NME announced it was moving towards Rolling Stone territory at a time when the post-Britpop slump resulted in weekly sales falling from above 100,000 to 70,000 copies.

Logo in use in the mid-80s.

In fact, that didn’t last. Less than two years later McNicholas reversed the design approach, driving the magazine into a celeb/gossip dead-end.

These days the NME’s official weekly sale is around 38,000, having fallen an alarming 20% last year.

It was all very different when Barney was brought on board in the late summer of 1978. The music press was booming on the back of post-punk, with the NME’s sales sometimes approaching 200,000 copies a week. Barney’s layout harmonisation, decluttering of the chart and cleaning up of the house style is detailed in Reasons To Be Cheerful and expanded upon here.

First issue to feature Barney's redesign, October 7, 1978. IPC management refused to replace the old masthead for six weeks.

But in 2010, when the NME is clearly flailing for credibility and Barney’s star is in the ascendant – on average we are contacted by, or told about, two or three young designers who are inspired by his work every week – is it entirely wise to ditch a property with such beneficial associations?

Only time will tell, though it is amusing to reflect that the NME logo font which lasted so long was, in fact, pinched from the signage on a warehouse close to Barney’s Old Street studio way back in the late 70s.

12in sleeve. Front cover, Mad About The Wrong Boy, The Attractions, F-Beat, 1980.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of one of the least remarked of Barney Bubbles designs: that for the “solo” album by Elvis Costello’s band The Attractions: Mad About The Wrong Boy. 

7in sleeve. Front cover, Outline Of A Hairdo EP, Steve Nieve, F-Beat, 1980.

The deliberately zany typography of the album sleeve – with it’s kitsch Brian Griffin photography and graphic tics – mirrored some aspects of the design for that year’s  big EC album Get Happy!!.

Back covers, The Attractions, 1980. Left: 12in sleeve, Mad About The Wrong Boy. Right: 7in sleeve, Outline Of A Hairdo EP.

In fact, for the accompanying free EP Outline Of A Hairdo – music for an imaginary film by Steve Nieve, well ahead of similar constructs by Barry Adamson and U2 & Eno – Barney appropriated a Bob “Bromide” Hall shot of Nieve from the back covers of both Get Happy!! and it’s hit lead single I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down.

Back covers, Elvis Costello And The Attractions, F-Beat, 1980. Left: 12in sleeve, Get Happy!!. Right: 7in sleeve, I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down/Girl's Talk.

Artwork, Outline Of A Hairdo. (C) Jake Riviera Collection/Reasons 2010.

In the manner of his approach to fellow F-Beat act Clive Langer & The Boxes, The Attractions were treated to a personalised label.

Left: Label. Right: 12in inner. Mad About The Wrong Boy.

On the inner Barney used a familiar trick of highlighting certain letters in the condensed font slogan “FBEAT WHERE THE ATTRACT!ONS IS” to spell out the record company’s west London location: FBeat Acton.

Double page spread advert, NME, August 30, 1980. Design: Tony Sales.

Barney repeated this on the design for the sleeve of single Single Girl. In his absence, his colleague Antoinette Sales created impressive press advertising from existing artwork. 

Back and front cover, 7" sleeve. Single Girl/Slow Patience, The Attractions, F-Beat, 1980.

The front was an illustration by Barney of the little china dogs from his parent’s mantelshelf.

Artwork, Single Girl/Slow Patience sleeve. (C) Jake Riviera Collection/Reasons 2010.

The addition of the gorgeous silhouette front cover sticker flagging up the inclusion of Nieve’s EP and a neat badge wrapped up the package, though even the musicians themselvesare likely to agree that this is one of those examples where the quality of Barney’s design exceeded that of the music it contained.

Badge and sleeve sticker, The Attractions, 1980.