The popular music scene eventually came to employ lots of talented designers and was the industry to be in for many years. In the immediate post-war years however publishers and manufacturers sometimes struggled to adapt to a new young market.
Disc Jockey Chewing Gum was a short lived confectionary range from the 1950s; a series of colour cards of the day’s popular music stars wrapped in wax paper along with a stick of gum (normally bubble gum). This print has been pulled from a surviving wrapper, flattening out the colours and stripping away other signs of age. At the time the graphics probably already looked old fashioned and I’ve no idea how well the cards sold but although never intended to be seen like this (the original packet would only have been a couple of inches across) it achieves a status the original designer probably never envisaged. I hope so anyway.
The sixties, a decade when hand-drawn typography always had to have curved edges following the explosion of psychedelic graphics on the West Coast. It also gave us a style which every school-kid copied to scrawl names of pop bands on their school books.
This particular three word graphic I used on a reissue CD some years ago. I found the original newsprint advert again recently and initially planned to feature a series of classic album covers behind the text. But as I worked on the advert to separate out the lettering, I became interested in the budget sleeves they were trying to sell and decided to retain that element instead. For every classic sixties pop or rock album there were dozens of these knock-off budget records which are now largely forgotten. Most of them are not worth much more than the 10/- they originally cost, though a few have become sought after often for the most obscure of reasons.
Limited edition signed prints are available via the Easy On The Eye online store.
More prints can be found on the site.
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