On the subject…

On the subject of tat, we’ve just spent our lunch hour perusing Caroline Archer’s book on the typography of tart cards, published by Mark Batty and available from all good bookshops – especially that one with the curtains in Soho’s Brewer Street. According to Archer, the graphics of tart cards – you know, the colourful ones in London phone boxes – ‘have influenced mainstream printed communication’. We thought they were just graphic. But nothing grabbed our attention so much as the photographer’s credit. Copyright: Rob Clayton. Cue misty-eyed voiceover, ‘Dad, is that you?’