Warp Release On The Hour

Alan Partridge, Peter O’Hanraha-Hanrahan, Kevin Smear, Rosy May… just some of the characters that were originally created for Chris Morris and Armando Ianucci’s satirical On The Hour radio show – the show that paved the way for the TV series The Day Today and which first graced the airwaves on BBC Radio 4 way back in 1991. Now, for the first time, the radio show’s two series have been released on CD through Warp Records…

Victor & Susie: a snail tale made of type

Victor and Susie is a new children’s book from design studio Brighten the Corners, illustrated entirely from type. The story concerns Victor – a snail with a hole in his shell – and Susie, who decides to help him get better…

CR January: Made in Brazil

The artwork for our January issue cover was produced at Gráfica Fidalga in São Paulo, one of the city’s last remaining letterpress workshops. Here it is on press. Read on to find out how it was done

CR Annual: Extended Deadline

Don’t panic – there’s still time to enter the Creative Review Annual. We have extended the deadline to 16 January. All details are here

McDonald’s New Packaging – Lovin’ It?

Over the next two years, McDonald’s will roll out its new packaging to 13,900 ‘restaurants’ in the US and thereafter to another 117 countries worldwide. But will it ‘change the way the world feels about eating McDonald’s food’?

Ian Stevenson prints

Something to bring cheer on this cold December morning – some new prints from UK illustrator, Ian Stevenson, that have just become available on Pictures on Walls. Limited to 50 editions each – get them while they, at least, are hot.

Grace Jones in Chocolate

Image has always been an integral part of Grace Jones’ music career, her visual identity being almost as important as her voice. The artwork for her latest album, Hurricane, designed and art directed by Tom Hingston Studio, knowingly works the conceit of the popstar as visual commodity: in this case featuring life-size versions of Jones made out of chocolate. Here’s how they did it…

Saving Lives And Losing Lives

Poster from World War Two by Abram Games, Courtesy: Wellcome Library, London
As the economy plunges, optimists are clinging to the truism that great creativity comes out of times of recession. A new show at London’s Wellcome Collection links innovation to the hardest times of all – war.

Wallpaper* Pops Up at St Martins Lane Hotel

Carabo, 2005 by Benedict Redgrave. Available as a digital c-type print on crystal archive matt paper 40.5 x 51cm in a limited edition of 20 signed by the artist. £381.70
We’ve just heard word that Wallpaper* magazine, in collaboration with art publishers Eyestorm, are to open a pop-up gallery entitled Wallpaper* Selects at London’s swanky St Martins Lane Hotel. The space, which will be open to the public from 10-19 December, will showcase ten works by photographers whose work has appeared in Wallpaper* in recent years: Jonathan de Villiers, Mauricio Alejo, Jonathan Frantini, Christopher Griffith, Stefan Ruiz, Daniel Stier, Benedict Redgrove and Joël Tettamanti.

25th Estate film

Publishing house 4th Estate celebrates its 25th anniversary next year and commissioned London’s Apt Studio to mark the occasion with a stop-motion film, This is Where We Live, available to view at 25thestate.com.

Brit Insurance Design Awards Nominees

Barack Obama poster by Shepard Fairey, nominated for the Brit Insurance Design Awards 2009 in the Graphic Design category by CR’s Patrick Burgoyne
The nominations for the awkwardly titled Brit Insurance Design Awards 2009 have been announced, ahead of an exhibition that will be held at the Design Museum in London from February next year. As with last year’s awards, the inclusion of most aspects of design (including architecture, fashion, furniture, graphic design, interactive, product and transport) makes for an eclectic, but interesting, list.

Pop-up Art Store In Soho? It Must Be Christmas!

Graphic art lovers, ahoy! There’s a new pop-up store in town and it’s called KIN. The shop is situated just off London’s Carnaby Street in Kingly Court and is set up like a gallery, full of affordable graphic art, sculpture, clothing, homewares and assorted ephemera, created by a host of illustrators, designers and printmakers such as Swifty, Rose Stallard of Print Club, Si Scott, Steven Wilson, RYCA, PhlAsh (Phil Ashcroft) and many more…