& J: Joshua Bradley: Blog

A while ago I began to think of re-presenting familiar natural structures, as either other structures equally familiar, or as chimera- recombinations of separately recognisable forms. I’ve been enjoying the resulting patterns somewhat, and want to pursue the method. For these Anatomy Jams I’ve been using images I scanned from De humani corporis fabrica, the seminal work of Renaissance anatomist and physician Andreas Vesalius, as illuminated by Titian’s students/employees. There are some beautiful drawings among these pages, I recommend it. I became fascinated by the matter-of-fact intimations of mortality and of humanity- a no man’s land between art, science, philosophy. I’m not sure it’s exactly aligned in motivation, but I began to follow Morbid Anatomy, a fantastic blog which locates and exhibits a range of amazing images of anatomical diagrams, and also physical abnormalities. Perhaps the thrust is more Victorian Curiosity Cupboard than anything else, but those images, seriously. Here’s one of my favourites.

I’ll upload more of these Anatomy Jams as I develop the idea. I’d be grateful for any thoughts.

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Oh look! My work has been used without my permission! So… I met the director of All on Red Management last year for a coffee, and discussed the development of a website and logo for his management company. Things seemed to go well, we agreed to go ahead. I looked forward to a straightforward, enjoyable project. Unfortunately they failed to pay their 50% deposit, but expected work to be delivered to them on the schedule I had proposed. I continued in good faith, and produced a round of logos, and then took one of these to 2nd revision stage. A couple of weeks after commencing work,  still with no sign of the deposit, the director sends me an email saying they want to can the project, with no particular explanation.

This is fine- plenty of things go cold after a while, and a plenty of people have cash flow issues they didn’t anticipate. I considered billing for the time already spent, but given that this only amounts to a couple of hundred quid, I decided to call it quits, chalk it down to experience, and trust All on Red Management not to break the law.

But just now, on a vague hunch (“don’t trust A&R”) I googled ‘All on Red Management,’ and guess what….

Yep. That’s the logo I designed for All on Red Management, who didn’t pay their deposit, online on their Myspace page.

You can see a larger copy of it here, on Skitch.

I’m no lawyer, that’s why I have a lawyer. But I have a suspicion there’s a difference between straightforward image piracy (where you nick someone’s work, they find it, you take it down) and this, where you hire somebody to do a job, don’t pay their deposit, and then publicly use their work, for the role it was intended to fulfill.

Simply, I’m disgusted with the behaviour of All on Red Management, and I intend to pursue this as far as possible, simply as a matter of principle. I’ll keep y’all posted as this develops.

Stop Press: they’ve taken the logo off their myspace… But I’m not sure if this changes anything. I am going to check.

Just for completeness, here’s the logo. I started from the fantastic Big Boned display face, but redrew the entire thing from scratch to fit a 3 by 3 square grid. It’s not finished- I was planning on having it cut out of thick card and laid upon different red objects, for an analogue touch…