Recovering the Classics is an effort to spread awareness of good design and classic literature – two excellent causes! The site canvasses artists and designers to put a contemporary spin on book covers for 50 public domain classics. Given such an eclectic array of adventure, horror, romantic and non-fiction titles to deal with, I’ve been impressed with most of the results – some are beautiful and straightforward, while others take an offbeat approach. Although I’d love to share my favorites here, perhaps it’s best that you go there and dig around.

I had to make my own contribution. The roster offered a lot of tantalizing ideas, but I ultimately ended up selecting Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio because it was a book I remembered cherishing a while back (perhaps we’re overdue for a re-read). Hands was the name of one of the more memorable stories from this collection, which all take place in a rural Ohio town – so the design I went with is built around an evocative photo from the period. I thought it came out nice (and, unlike many other titles, mine is currently the only available design!). Download or buy it here.

I’ll admit it. This Summer mix, all 96 minutes of it, isn’t for every taste. Don’t Make Me Over delves into the scourge of “Golden Oldies” covers that took over the pop charts in the late ’70s and early ’80s. While the vapid California Soft Rock typified by Linda Ronstadt is well-represented here, there’s an intriguing eclecticism here that gives a little insight on the music scene (and its audience) in 1978-83.

It all begs the question: why? The obvious answer? Baby Boomers who couldn’t let go of their childhoods made up a huge portion of the record buying public back then. When Carole King included a couple of mellow covers of ’60s hits she co-wrote with Gerry Goffin on her mega-selling 1971 album Tapestry, it unwittingly set off the trend that continued well into the end of the ’80s. Re-imagining a familiar hit from the recent past was a sure-fire move, for both the artists who enjoyed the creative challenge and the labels who could bank on radio play from deejays seeing a familiar title on a 45 record or long-player. The practice reached critical mass in 1980-81 with a rash of updated oldies hitting the lower rungs of the Billboard Hot 100 – some whitewashed and wimpified, some given a more soulful spin, others with a New Wave twist.

The twenty eight tunes that comprise Don’t Make Me Over can be grooved to in the embedded playlists below, divided into two sections. Shout-out to the ’70s California airbrush artists whose evocative work adorns the covers for this mix: Dave Williardson (above) and Peter Palombi (below). Occasional episodes of cheesiness aside, I find this mix fascinating and hope you will, too.

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1. Linda Ronstadt – Just One Look (#44, 1979)
2. Yipes!! – Darlin’ (#68, 1980)
3. Josie Cotton – Tell Him (1982)
4. Elvis Costello & The Attractions – I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down (1980)
5. Phil Seymour – Let Her Dance (1980)
6. Nicolette Larson – I Only Want To Be With You (#53, 1982)
7. Carole King – One Fine Day (#12, 1980)
8. Jennifer Warnes – Don’t Make Me Over (#67, 1980)
9. Deniece Williams – It’s Gonna Take A Miracle (#10, 1982)
10. A Taste Of Honey – I’ll Try Something New (#41, 1982)
11. Eric Hine – Not Fade Away (#73, 1981)
12. Devo – Working In The Coal Mine (#43, 1981)
13. Gentle Persuasion – Please Mr. Postman (#82, 1983)
14. Sandy Posey – Love, Love, Love/Chapel Of Love (1978)
15. Chris Christian and Amy Holland – Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing/You’re All I Need To Get By (#88, 1982)

Don’t Make Me Over- Scrubbles.net Summer 2013 Mix Pt 2 20130516 1558

16. Amii Stewart and Johnny Bristol – My Guy/My Girl (#63, 1980)
17. The Spinners – Cupid/I’ve Loved You For A Long Time (#4, 1980)
18. Melissa Manchester – My Boyfriend’s Back/Runaway (1983)
19. The Tourists – I Only Want To Be With You (#83, 1980)
20. Robert John – Sherry (#70, 1980)
21. The Reddings – (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay (#55, 1982)
22. Daryl Hall and John Oates – You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling (#12, 1980)
23. Gary O’ – Pay You Back With Interest (#70, 1981)
24. Garland Jeffreys – 96 Tears (#66, 1981)
25. Kim Carnes – Cry Like A Baby (#44, 1980)
26. Heart – Unchained Melody (#83, 1981)
27. Andy Gibb and Victoria Principal – All I Have To Do Is Dream (#51, 1981)
28. Bernadette Peters – Dedicated To The One I Love (#65, 1981)

There’s a new girl in town, and she’s looking good – my LitKids Little Bo Peep screenprint, that is!

After getting saddled with a heavy workload throughout the early part of this year, I was so relieved to find some time in the past month to develop a new print. This particular one has been in the works for a while. It started a few years back, when a craft fair shopper asked if I had any nursery-ready subjects for parents with babies. Before blurting out “All of these are great for that purpose, have a little imagination,” I stopped myself and agreed that it was a good idea. Indeed, some kind of print that could serve as a baby shower gift was needed to flesh out the variety of items at the store.

Casting aside the subject matter (which was a delight to draw), I’m really happy with how this print came out. I’m getting better with using the color layers in an offbeat way, and the print quality is coming out less amateurish with each new design. Little Bo Peep and her sheep is availabe, as usual, at LitKids.

I have very specific memories connected with the posters at Disneyland – approaching the park, driving into the no-longer-there parking lot, striding towards the gingerbread ticket booths, the first concrete thing I’d see of our adventures ahead would be those iconic posters, affixed to the bases of the Monorail pylons and inside the tunnels leading to Main Street U.S.A. Each poster was a trip in itself – the vine-entrenched intrigue of the Jungle Cruise, the topsy-turvy whimsy of Alice in Wonderland, the hitchhiking ghosts of The Haunted Mansion, the kinetic energy of the PeopleMover’s Superspeed Tunnel – a gallery of future memories waiting to be experienced.

Poster Art of the Disney Parks, a coffee table book published by Disney and written by Danny Handke and Vanessa Hunt, comprehensively explores this angle of that pixie dust-strewn universe. As Tony Baxter’s intro explains, poster art is an integral part of the Disney theme park experience. The book’s 11″x14″ size gives ample space to the best posters, with many getting a full page to themselves (although one of my personal faves, the Columbia sailing ship, gets a mere quarter page). Divided into “lands,” the book includes nearly every poster created not just for Disneyland but for all of the Magic Kingdom theme parks (Epcot, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom are absent). It’s interesting to note the different ways Disney uses to approach the same attraction in each park, with some intriguing little differences – such as the Euro Disneyland train engine sporting a pair of antlers. The book also contains separate chapters reproducing the Art Noveau influenced designs used for Tokyo DisneySea and the optimistic 1920s to ’50s era throwbacks employed on Disney California Adventure’s recent overhaul.

Two things in particular impressed me about this one. Firstly, they give credit to the unsung artists behind these posters (hooray for that). Secondly, they include lots of fascinating unused poster concept art. Before getting this, I never realized that most of the iconic poster designs from Disneyland’s early years were tied into one talented man – Bjorn Aronson. Aronson’s playful, cleanly modern, eclectic yet unified poster art probably did more to establish Disneyland’s visual identity than anything else. It’s astonishing stuff, and this book reproduces them with vivid clarity.

Poster Art of the Disney Parks can be purchased here at Amazon.com.

• Also: A detailed article and interview with the authors of Poster Art of the Disney Parks.
  

Side-by-side poster comparison for Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

Bjorn Aronson’s illustration skill is evident on this close-up of his fantastic Red Wagon Inn poster.

Casa de Fritos and the Lucky Nugget Saloon (Disneyland Paris) in the Frontierland section.

Not a good photo, but at least it gives you an idea of the chapter openings (using another excellent Aronson poster).

An undeveloped Adventureland poster concept is shown next to a printed one.

A demo of the silk screen color-layering process (that looks familiar).

Oh, how I wish they would have made Aronson’s Candy Palace poster design a reality!

Tomorrowland: all about the primary colors.

Cyrk poster, Bohdan Bocianowsk, 1971.

This circus poster, created by Polish artist Bohdan Bocianowski in 1971, will soon be a new addition at 4 Color Cowboy. That image perfectly encapsulates the 4 Color Cowboy aesthetic – a glitzy, once-removed version of the classic American Western themes.

I actually found a ton of great Polish circus poster designs on the web – pieces striking in their bold colors, simplified imagery, and lack of text. While the Polish artwork on ’60s-’80s era film posters is justifiably celebrated, these circus design were totally new – and inspiring – to me. I love how the various artists incorporated the single work “Cyrk” and found unusual ways of depicting typical circus animals. Funky! I chose some of the bolder, critter-oriented designs to share here.

Wiktor Gorka, 1969.

Wiktor Gorka, c. 1968.

Wiktor Gorka, 1970s.

Uninked was an exhibit, curated by cartoonist icon Chris Ware, that ran at the Phoenix Art Museum in the Spring of 2007. It was mounted in the basement of the museum’s newly opened North Wing, giant paintings and tiny models somewhat awkwardly placed in an enormous, fluorescent-lit space. It was a little odd, but I enjoyed the exhibit a lot – especially seeing actual pieces by idols of mine like Gary Panter and Kim Deitch. This was the first time I was excited about something PAM did since they teamed up with Keith Haring on a few community-building projects in the late ’80s.

In addition to curating the exhibit, Ware also contributed original art and design to the Uninked catalog, published by Phoenix Art Museum in 2007. I was happy to receive it as a Christmas gift from my spouse, who volunteered at the museum recently (naturally, I dropped a few hints with Christopher about the book being sold at the gift shop). This catalog, a companion piece with the McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern Comics issue Ware edited in 2004, is a work of art in itself. Ware seems to genuinely admire the people spotlighted in the exhibit, a cross-section of artists including old-guard guys from the ’60s Comix movement (Deitch, Jerry Moriarty), a ’70s-’80s trailblazer (Panter), and two from the younger generation (Seth and Ron Regé, whose whimsical work was unknown to me prior to this exhibit). In addition to concise bios and reproductions of all the pieces from the exhibit, the book includes extra artwork not on display in 2007. It’s an intriguing peek at what kinds of work commercial artists create purely for their own expression.

The catalog for Uninked: Paintings, Sculptures and Graphic Work from Five Contemporary Cartoonists was printed in just one run, and it’s apparently getting harder to find. It can be ordered from Amazon.com here.

Kim Deitch art from Uninked, 2007.

Jerry Moriarty pages from Uninked, 2007.

Gary Panter – Clog Area, 2004.

Seth pages from Uninked, 2007.

Chris Ware’s back cover art for Uninked catalog, 2007.