Tag Archives: Blues photos

Vintage Rock

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Vintage Rock magazine have given Brian Smith‘s upcoming blues photo book Boom Boom Boom Boom a nice plug in their current issue (September), majoring on his Little Richard photographs in tribute to the singer. It is currently on the news-stands if you are venturing out to the shops, or can be ordered direct from the publishers using the links below. Thanks to Steve Harnell for the scan. Brian has now finished his detailed proofing of the book layout so we are getting all this sorted out now. We have also had a really nice foreword for the book done by a famous British blues singer and will be revealing details of that very soon. If you have not yet read about the book, you can do so on the site.

Buy direct and get an issue delivered to your door: bit.ly/32UxeIP

Find the mag in shops with the store locator: bit.ly/2FYBUVc

On screen

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on screen

A quick snap of our designer’s computer screens during work on the Boom Boom Blues Book, as it is alliteratively referred to in the office! Most of the earlier design work has been done on the laptop but as we reach the more detailed final page layout, a split screen process is employed. The actual pages are shown on the larger monitor, with all the software windows, tools and options held on the laptop screen, along with the book pages menu which allows us to zip about the book more quickly. This enables us to see the pages at a much larger size and spot things which might otherwise be missed and do more precise adjustments. Though it does call for nifty hand eye co-ordination or the cursor disappears into who knows where! As you can see there is still room for the old fashioned skills of print-outs and a couple of pencils. Quite what the 1964 packet of Shreddies is doing on the desk though we’re not sure.

Spreads

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We’ve posted another eight pages from the upcoming Blues Photos of Brian Smith title on the site, which give you a good idea of how this is shaping up. Our designer is busy correcting the spreads right now: “I design each page as a single sheet, this allows me to focus on how it looks. Then once the bulk of the pages are laid out, it’s time to turn them into ‘spreads’, so you can see how the left and right hand pages interact with one another visually when they face each other. This then throws up some clashes and you need to love a few elements around, and make it all work visually across the spread. I use two screens for this as you need plenty of digital ‘desk’ space! But the Blues book is coming together nicely, even if I did discover some image duplication today which meant a fair bit of work to correct. But I hope to be done very shortly then it will go out to Brian for proofing and feedback.” The spread below is from the section on Chuck Berry.

Millie at the Twisted Wheel

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Millie in Twisted Wheel office 1964.jpg

Our designer was working on the Millie Small photographs for the Boom Boom Blues Photo book the other day (and researching her backing group). As he has a home office anyway, the self isolating issue has not been too hard a chore so far. “I love little more than digging through old photographs, who needs the real world! These are some of my favourites from Brian Smith’s book. Millie was a real natural anyway but seems to have hit it off with Brian, who was taking the photos up in the legendary Twisted Wheel club offices. He and Roger Eagle, who was the resident DJ there, were given the rather nice job of looking after Millie for the afternoon. It was probably a bit risky trying to walk around Manchester given that her hit single was so massive, so they passed away the time until the show just taking a few pictures and chatting. I bet a few of us would love to rifle through all the paper ephemera on the shelves too, there looks to be piles of tickets for future gigs in one corner.
During the show itself Brian tried to take a few more shots, but the teenage crowd were just going mad, you can hardly see Millie’s band and she was signing album covers during the set itself!
All the photos have a certain amount of dust and marks on them after 56 years but they have cleaned up nicely for the book. As this one isn’t in, it has not had any treatment!”
We’ve got the best of the photos in the forthcoming book which we’re pushing on with, but thought we’d show this one which hasn’t made the final edit as it is so full of life. You can read more about the book on the site.  There is a post about the book’s cover below.
Obviously the current health crisis has thrown all our plans in the air as it has everybody, so we aim to crack on with projects where we can do so safely and then hopefully pick up the pieces later.

I Spy 2020

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I Spy In Hospital News Chronicle.jpg

Well 2019 didn’t pan out quite like we’d planned!  With both Simon and Ann having had time in hospital, one after the other, current book projects had to be put on hold for some considerable time. However with the New Year, Easy On The Eye Books are starting to get moving once again and the titles which got held up are now being prepared for publication.  We anticipate that the Fire In The Sky book will be first, this is now into the final photo clearing phase, with text proofed and the book laid out. This book has become much bigger than originally planned (around 700 images in total!) so will have around 260 pages now.  This will be quickly followed by the Boom Boom Blues photo book, and then we’ll tackle the next two titles. Goodness knows how brexit will affect things this year but we’ll do our best (we print in mainland Europe, so have been dreading this). Anyhow, expect more page spreads and other updates in the coming weeks. Our thanks to everyone for their patience.

The illustration above is from the popular I Spy pocket books which were a publishing phenomena during the 1950s and 1960s.  These are a big favourite with Simon and he has compiled a few pages devoted to them on his design site – check the link above.