Research Object: The Beatles 'Revolver' by Klaus Voormann

Klaus Voormann was an undeniably creative and talented person – being a musician, record producer, and even winning Grammy Awards. But he is probably most known for designing artwork for popular bands, most famous of them all being the frount cover for the Beatles record ‘Revolver’. This happens to be one of my favourite album covers.

I love the collage effect and how Voormann’s line drawings of each band member are mixed with the pictures taken by Robert Whitaker (who produced many photographs of the Beatles during 1964 and 1966), as well as the plain black-and-white colour scheme. It’s also worth noting how despite the insane amount of detail with the tiny photos surrounding the thorough illustrations everything looks unexpectedly simple from a visual standpoint. These elements help give the artwork a very strong and memorable look.

Voormann would revisit his classic cover design decades later when using it alongside various other images of Beatles albums in another memorable music artwork: ‘The Beatles Anthology’ compilation series. Both of these pieces use a heavy amount of collage in their creation and, in my personal opinion, it is rather unsurprising to see how clearly the latter work is influenced by Voormann’s previous creation.

Research Object: Penguin Books

The covers of Penguin books are classics, with their simplistic use of typography, colour and clear layout structure. A concept devised by Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin Books, who considered illustrated covers at the time to be trashy and maintained that his book jackets follow a plain horizontal grid. Each genre was represented by its own colour dominating the frount cover: fiction was orange, biographies were blue and crime was green.

Penguin’s creed for distinctive cover design would continue to be followed by Jan Tschichold and Germano Facetti during the 1940s and 1960s respectively. Tschichold had a firm belief in typographic systems and was responsible for the most iconic features of Penguin Books: he designed the original template of the title and author’s name separated by a line, adapted the Penguin logo into different variations, and produced a set of Composition Rules so each cover would maintain the same design. Twenty years later Facetti gave Penguin Books an edgy and contemporary reinvention, with brighter colours and visually exciting images.

Penguin's design is similar in approach to what I go for in my own work - clear, balanced and informative. Penguin has held the test of time, something that I am aware that I need to achieve!

Research Object: Jock Kinneir

Born in Hampshire in 1917, Jock Kinneir was a well-renowned typographer and graphic designer, best known for his work with Margaret Calvert in designing the British road and motorway signs. Kinneir and Calvert worked together for ten years (1957 to 1967) on this ambitious project, each of them creating bright and simple signs that were still carefully organised with interesting details including the Rail Alphabet font and the memorable shapes and symbols.

Jock Kinneir also designed signs for Gatwick Airport from the late 50s to 1965, finding black letters on a yellow background to be the most graphically effective, and created the font type Transport. He went on to design signing systems for national hospitals and the Airports Authority, and was Head of the Department of Graphic Design at the Royal College of Art in London for five years.

As a designer, I've always liked Kinneir's use of sharp colour contrast and distinctive spacing, and often try to incorporate similar elements into my own work. Even after his death in August 1994, Jock Kinneir's impact in design is still recognisable to this day and relates to my approach as a designer to create simple yet distinctive pieces of graphic work.

Designer's Statement

What is kaiD?

Kai Design - or 'kaiD' for an informal short - is a blog about graphic design. That's the simple answer, anyway. However, there's a bit more to this blog than merely being about graphic design, and its purposes are as follows:

• A showcase of both my past and current work;
• A compilation of my research analyses on any particular objects, people or works of art that capture my attention and relate to my own practise; 
• A promotion for my own abilities as a designer, which I hope people will admire and enjoy.

About Kai

Ever since I was little I've always enjoyed drawing pictures and going on the computer, and it was my gradual discovery of Photoshop that helped me realise many years later that I wanted to be a designer; the fact that both my parents studied at Saint Martins College together and work in jobs related to art and design was also a major factor in furthering my interest in the subject, and they continue to support me and this chosen career of mine.

I spent my secondary school years studying at Stoke Newington School, a well-known media arts college, and went on to complete a two-year course at Hackney Community College, achieving a BTECH Level 3 National Diploma in Multimedia. It was there that my designing skills really began to advance in quality and, odd as it sounds, in maturity - I learnt basic skills in web design and rough planning away from the computer, and pushed myself in order to regularly complete my assignments. At the moment I have just finished my first year at University of East London, working towards an MA in Graphic Design.

Design

As mentioned previously, one of my strongest skills is my knowledge of Photoshop, and I have used the application to create practically all of my design pieces. I will occasionally plan out projects in my notebook if I have a particular idea stuck in my head, but a majority of my work is designed on the computer right away. I also like to design typographical logos and book covers in my spare time, and find that it helps me improve my abilities.

I would like to present a small collection of some of my past work in graphic design, namely during my previous term at university - these images showcase my strong approach towards different principles of graphic design, namely typography and colour contrast.

Goalscorers infographics poster (2013) - 4961 x 3508

Penguin edition Ivanhoe infographics poster (2013) - 7016 x 9933

Courier booklet FROUNT COVER (2013) - 3508 x 4961

Courier booklet BACK COVER (2013) - 4961 x 3508

Alphabet Book page: 'u is for underscore', FROUNT (2013) - 2480 x 3508

Alphabet Book page: 'u is for underscore', BACK (2013) - 2480 x 3508

Tate poster (2013) - 4950 x 7008

To conclude...

Graphic design has always been more than just a hobby to me - it shapes the way I look at the world, helping me notice even the tiniest and most unusual details in everything around me, whether they be improvements or flaws, but never failing on any occasion to make me feel happy and enlightened with this incredible combination of art and logic.

Now that you've gotten an extensively big glimpse into my creativity and mindset as both an artist and a designer, feel free to continue browsing my blog - just like with graphic design, there's a lot to see and so much to learn from every little detail...

Kai :)