With their distinctive illustrations, Ladybird books offered millions of children their first taste of art. As a new exhibition opens, we pay homage to picnics, polyester and Pat the dog• A hundred years of Ladybird design – galleryA small boy in collar and tie teeters on homemade stilts made out of upturned flowerpots and bits of string, a stern-looking man in a nuclear facility barks something important into a red phone, a woodpecker perches on the side of a tree. For many of us who grew up between the 1960s and 80s, the images from Ladybird books were the first art we ever saw. And, without quite realising, we have loved it ever since.If you need reminding – or persuading – of the brilliance of Ladybird illustration, then head to Bexhill, East Sussex, where Ladybird By Design opens at the De La Warr pavilion on 24 January. Here you will find 200 pieces of original artwork from the “golden age” between 1958 and 1973 when the company was selling many millions of books every year. If you were aged between two and 12 during those decades, then the chances are you had several of those slender hardbacks on your bedroom shelves. Whether it was Things to Make, Florence Nightingale or The Story of Oil, the layout was always the same. On the left-hand side was text in a font and vocabulary appropriate to your reading age, and on the opposite side was a full-page illustration of near-photographic accuracy, packed with such colour and exuberance that, decades later, it is still... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2015-01-16 00:00:00 UTC ]