The Things you Didn't Know you Didn't Know...about Charles Front

My Dad said, when I visited him a few weeks ago, "that thing Rumsfeld said about the 'unknown unknowns', the things 'we do not know we don’t know'; it's starting to make sense to me". I can't remember the context he (my Dad) said it in, but despite the fact that it made me laugh, it does make sense, dealing as it does with the philosophical concept of the unknown known. The Slovenian philosopher and critical theorist Slavoj Žižek describes it as "that which we don't know, or intentionally refuse to acknowledge that we know...". Which, if you think about it in the context Rumsfeld was using it, WMDs, really suggests that he might just be admitting that he "sort of knew" there were no WMDs, but kept it from himself. Oh heck, talk about a digression; let's get back on track.

Yesterday, Saturday July 31st 2010, I was looking through The Times and I spotted a big story about ex-Oasis front-man Liam Gallagher's new clothing line, and shop, Pretty Green (which, being an old Suedehead/Mod I'm into, by the way), and right there, staring me in the face, was a new twist that just impossibly, through sheer serendipity, segued into my blog post about the illustrator Charles Front. You see the logo for Pretty Green is a bit of a Beatle-hat tip to Charles Front, whether those concerned know it or not.





You see, Charles Front was the young illustrator who designed the lettering on The Beatles Rubber Soul album. Back in 1965, Art Director Charles Front was asked by Bob Freeman, the Beatles' photographer, to create artwork for a new album sleeve; Rubber Soul. Front's design, squeezing the words Rubber Soul into a shape that resembled the drip of rubber from a milked- rubber-tree (an early example of playful bubble-shaped lettering) quickly became a template for the poster art of the period, and would slowly, very slowly, influence the design of more creative forms of typography over the coming decades.



A cursory glance at the Beatles album designs around, and even after Front's design, reveal that whilst album covers became increasingly innovative, vivid, and colourful, the typography was more often than not less adventurous. And the fact that the influence of that iconic design can still be detected today, with very few people knowing a great deal about the designer himself, speaks volumes about the quality of the work.









This is where the "not knowing what you don't know" part comes into the equation. If you look at the work of the cartooning-godfather of graffiti art, Vaughn Bode, with no knowledge of the Rubber Soul design, then the only illustrator who produced typography that could have influenced today's Urban Art, beginning with the bubble lettering, "Softies", of PHASE2 on the streets of New York in 1972, is Bode. Indeed Bode, who used balloon lettering in his strips Deadbone, in Cavalier Magazine in 1969, and later in Cheech Wizard, is acknowledged as an influence on that movement.











When you look at the lettering on Rubber Soul again though, and think of the popularity of the Beatles, then it is not impossible to imagine that Charles Front's iconic Rubber Soul font, might also have been an influence on that Art form. It is, I would suggest, a possible cultural influence that you had no idea you knew existed.



Although other artists who worked with the Beatles are better known, you will surely be hard-pushed to find more t-shirts, logos, key-rings, and the like, out there devoted to a Beatle-related image, than the Rubber Soul typography designed by Front. In fact it is pretty rare to see an album typeface, other than the later YES designs, take on a life of it's own in this fashion.










Indeed, the only other really daringly playful use of typography on a Beatles album, can be seen on Magical Mystery Tour, released in the US in November 1967, and that album also uses bubble writing, but in a more conventional way. And whilst Peter Blake's cover for Sergeant Pepper (Jun, 1967) is pretty spectacular, the lettering is incorporated into the drum in the image and is therefore, more or less, pretty conventional.

I would argue that nobody who worked on the Beatles's album art played the kind of daring game that Charles Front played with the text, in fact very few artists of the period seemed to have been daring enough to try. Even the late Heinz Edelmann, brilliant creator of the hallucinogenic landscape of Pepperland as art director for the 1968 animated Beatles film Yellow Submarine, who like Charles Front also produced artwork for albums, never produced typographic design as innovative as his album cover art.

Outside the Beatles hit-factory there was also a dearth of daring typographical design, and even the great Andy Warhol was producing covers with unadventurous lettering.

One of the few artists who who worked on album art, and who did experiment with typography, including bubble-lettering (most famously on Keep on Truckin' (1968))alongside colourful, playful, artwork, was Robert Crumb, who, coincidentally, worked alongside Vaugh Bode back in the day. Again though, Crumb could be a little conventional with the typeface, and it is surely a little fanciful to see that big upturned shoe sole that appears in much of Crumb's artwork, as slightly reminiscent of the shape of Charles Front's Rubber Soul design.

If you search for "Rubber Soul" on Google, and check out those images you will see some evidence of the influence of Charles Front's innovative design. You will also see little or no mention of Charles Front, the man who created the design. I took some advice in regard to the copyright of the Rubber Soul font, and of the design in general, those in the know, Nate Piekos and Daniel Poeira, are of the opinion that Apple would be responsible for establishing rights. My feeling though is that there is certainly a case for moral rights belonging to Charles Front, and of course it very much matters what his original deal with the company was. In the meantime, it would be a nice gesture to acknowledge Charles Front as the original creator of what is very clearly a popular design. I mean, how many people have seen their artwork adorn a Beatles cover, countless t-shirts, influence Urban Art, and act as a backdrop for The Righteous Brothers? Respect.

As a caveat, bear in mind this post makes no mention of the many books Charles Front illustrated, and the fact that while you were young you enjoyed his drawings on Jackanory. Now there's a thought, you saw his work in books, on TV, and sitting there in your big brother or sister's or even your parent's record collection. It was influencing you, and you didn't know it. More things you didn't know you didn't know about Charles Front.

The images here are copyright their respective copyright holders. If you have any questions, ask me.

Mike Lynch interviewed by Mister Media

My friend and fellow cartoonist, Mike Lynch was interviewed by Mister Media (click this link to hear the Podcast) on Friday. I was impressed by Mike's memory for the things he said earlier in the interview and how he managed to relate later questions and answers back to what he had said before; because it was live and because when these things are live, like lectures, it can be a little like being dragged in many directions by a team of wild horses. Any beginning-cartoonists would be wise to listen to the Podcast and if possible, to download it and listen to it more than once.

I've been a fan of Mike's cartoons from the moment I saw them. When he draws domestic situations they seem very contemporary to me, very now, and that is something that a lot of cartoonists can't capture. But he also has a bizarre, surreal, twist to his humour that allows him to tap into recognised cartoon tropes and add a new twist to them; as this mixture of whimsical fairytale and modern political practices illustrates so well.

Copyright, Mike Lynch, 2008. Visit Mike's Blog to see more cartoons.

I do like lots of cartoonists, but I have a special affection for just a few, as cartooning is a business full of people who are simply either 'space-fillers' (they produce the sort of unremarkable cartoons that editors use to fill white gaps in the text) or insiders who, frankly, will never sell a cartoon outside a publication staffed by the people they went to school with.

As for entering cartooning as a profession, well, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, I would caution you about one or two unknowns that "you don't know, that you don't know". For instance, this can be a problematic profession and the lie that humour is "subjective" (so there's no such thing as universal humour or worldwide releases for comedy movies then?) is often used as an excuse for the continued publication of work that is demonstrably sub-standard, and the rejection of cartoons that subsequently sell elsewhere and meet with acclaim. The phrase "it wasn't right for us" is of course a hollow-sounding, transparently dishonest declaimer that allows certain individuals a get-out clause and that allows them to exploit educational affiliations, social affiliations, sharing the same agent, and much, much more insidious relationships, determine whether or not work is accepted. It is an unacceptable state of affairs that would be outlawed by a variety of anti-discrimination laws that would almost certainly apply were all cartoonists not work-for-hire and/or freelancers who dare not upset the applecart.