Manchester based Dorothy have created a wondrous piece of print called Song Map.

“A road map made up of song titles: from Highway to Hell to Penny Lane, Itchycoo Park to Heartbreak Hotel. And just like places in our own neighbourhood, some are really good and some are best avoided like the plague.”

It’s even just worth a cheap old stare to see how many you can recognise, alternatively you can purchase a copy (limited Edition or not) from their website.

A host of British artists, including Bridget Riley, Tracy Emin, Martin Creed, Rachel Whiteread, and Bob and Roberta Smith, have designed posters to celebrate the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

What do you think?

I am personally very underwhelmed, and slightly confused as to why they asked British artists to create the posters rather than British designers or illustrators. We have brilliant designers in this country as well as artists, and surely graphic designers are much more suited to designing a beautiful poster than the likes of Tracy Emin. I don’t think they reflect the creative talent of the UK as well as they should.

When two giants of the New York dance scene came together the resulting brand had to stand out from the crowd. Strategically creating an organisation model that focussed on the cross genre collaboration of artists, we created a name that reflected this new approach -
New York Live Arts.

The resulting brand marque captured the energy and dynamism of the new organisation, and neatly illustrated the core proposition of bringing talent together. The brand goes from strength to strength and continues to be the most talked about arts organisation in the city.

New York Live Arts launched with an impactful advertising campaign rolled out across Manhattan. The concept was based around the aspirations of the people that make up the organisation, from co-founder Tony-award winning choreographer Bill T. Jones, through to the artists, staff and audience members. Commissioning acclaimed photographer Philip Habib, the result was an eclectic and engaging portraiture story that gave the new entity an inclusive and approachable voice.

The exhibition, entitled Cut It Out, runs from September 17-30 at Outline Editions gallery space at 94 Berwick Street, London W1F 0QF. Worth a look if your in London!

And for those students out there that don’t know who Noma Bar is, check out some of his beautiful negative space work below.

If you fancy a go and feel like a challenge, give yourself a day to produce a creative poster marking the 20th anniversary. It is based on a voting system– people must “like” your entry through Facebook or Twitter for you to be in with a chance of cutting the top 20 and getting your poster produced.

There’s a little healthy competition bubbling at The Chase – check out entries designed by recent UCLAN graduate Ben Tustin (currently with us on placement) and designer/friend-of-TDOD Harry Heptonstall.

Don’t forget to vote!

According to their blog, all the items were actually BBQ’ed. Poor yellow pencil :(

FormFiftyFive speaks to Kevin Lan about how they were made here

In 1929, Globe Poster was founded during a card game in Philadelphia.  At the table, Norman Goldstein, a wealthy New Yorker and Harry Shapiro, a Philadelphia printer, decided to go into business together.  To settle on a location for their company, they took a map of the East Coast, folded it and opened it up.  The crease was on Baltimore, so that’s where they started.  At that time, Globe printed posters for vaudeville acts, movie theatres, burlesque houses, and carnivals.

There is a full article about this place here and more pics here and here.

More for the places to visit list… along with the Hamilton Wood Type Museum from the film Typeface and the Neon Museum if you are ever in Vegas.

…I could talk about Milton Glaser’s iconic Dylan poster. Originally produced as an insert for a greatest hits album (an attempt by Columbia records to fill the void in Dylan releases after his 1966 motorcycle accident led to lengthy pause in new material) it has since transcended it’s orginal purpose and gone on to become one of design’s best-known graphic posters.

…Or perhaps I could draw younger readers attention to the famous opening sequence from D.A. Pennebakers seminal fly-on-the-wall Dylan film, Don’t Look Back – often regarded as the pre-cursor to the modern pop video. And look, there’s, erm… some lovely hand-rendered type on the cards too.

…Or maybe I should quote musician and Dylan collaborator Charlie McCoy, who said “I can tell you everything [Bob] ever said to me on one hand [...] and everything else he said was “I don’t know — what do you think?”, and then make a laboured point about how no matter how good you are should always seek to collaborate and ask questions.

But then maybe trying link to Dylan to design is missing the point – it should be about the music after all. So why not play some Bob today and see where it takes you. I’m starting with Love & Theft.

Not sure why all these ephemera sites tend to be very difficult to navigate and pretty badly presented but there is some interesting stuff to be found here if you have the patience.

This site is making available all the playbills in the Local Studies Library collection from a wide range of Leeds Theatres such as The City Varieties, The Grand, The Princess and the Theatre Royal. The site provides a unique insight into theatre life in Leeds between 1781 and the 1990′s. The site also contains some circus bills, such as those from Pablo Fanque’s Circus.