graphic design, art, typography and architecture

From reading this blog you may well have some idea of what I like in terms of art and design; however, today I was thinking about the art and design I liked as a child. It’s somewhat like travelling back in a time-machine, hurtling back through the decades (yes, the decades!) and falling out of the sky into the 1980’s (first I typed 1970’s, but that makes me look and feel too old!); so, there I am, in the 1980’s as a child. What do I see around me? What do I like the look of? Well, there’s my red Raleigh Chopper, an odd-looking contraption sold as a bicycle, but any kid worth his salt had to have one. I remember offering to wash the dishes every day for a year if my parents would only buy me one - that’s some sacrifice for a child (my parents bought a dishwasher instead); however, I eventually managed to buy a second-hand one… and a red one at that!

I also loved to draw as a child, and would often copy (badly) Rembrandt’s etchings. I drew them over and over again and learned a great deal in the process - I learned technique; I learned about creating texture and about light and shadow. Well, that’s quite enough reminiscing for one blog entry, so it’s over to you, the reader: tell me about your art and design favourites from your (misspent, or otherwise) youth. I wonder how our choices about art and design now are influenced by those early - formative? - years. Perhaps if I look very closely at my own art and design, I’ll see the faint semblance of a Chopper moving at speed past one of Rembrandt’s windmills… now what would Don Quixote make of that!?