Creative Futures Week

Organised the printing of the cards through I Will Print of Telford following Neil's decision to go with the original burgundy/pink colour scheme. The print run was incredibly cheap and the results OK. I had asked for the cards to be printed matt on board with a slightly rough tooth. The results are far from glossy, and have a slight texture to them, but the ink finish gives the product a satin sheen which is less than ideal. These are not artisan printers and I guess that you get what you pay for.

Neil said that they went down pretty well when given out to fellow students, although I always get the impression that he's kindly sheltering me from true opinion. I like the concept of the little tea bag card but I feel it's a bit corporate in it's execution. If time had allowed I would have liked to develop the design to make it a little more dynamic or stylised, but time has always been of the essence with this project. The supporting posters and web banners suffer even more so in this respect and I am not proud of them at all. They fail dismally to arrest the attention of passing traffic - dull, dull, dull! I'm left doubting my stamina to truly stick with a project and explore a variety of potential avenues. Sometimes I think that I'm glad to conclude a brief, see the back of it, and move on. If this is true, I have to resist because it leaves me with a product I'm not entirely comfortable with. That's no way towards a pleasing portfolio of work.

On a positive note, I did a terrific amount of 'running and carrying' on this little project, including inserting over one hundred tea bags into cards. I have without doubt been reliable and pulled my weight.

Alexander Girard

House Industries sent some info through about Alexander Girard - high profile American graphic designer 50's, 60's, 70's. Nice work in the folk art tradition.

Creative Futures Week

Neil met with the organising committee who have approved the concept in principle but have asked for a few minor ammendments to the layout. They are also not too sure about the colour of the original design and have asked me to submit a blue scheme plus alternative colour-ways. I think the blue is a little too reminiscent of the NEWI identity and has a slightly disconcerting corporate feel to it.

The way of working here is in stark contrast to dealing with an individual client who is able to make unilateral decisions. I can't help feeling that dealing with a bureacratic institution is less satisfying and I am also beginning to doubt whether the whole system will be responsive enough to get everything completed within the proposed timescale.

I do need to take more notice of the composition and layout of marketing materials and packaging - be a little more analytical. I think that design that I have lived with and perhaps considered a little more, such as book jackets, comes more easily to me. I guess that there are also many more direct comparisons and points of reference for something as utilitarian as a book cover.

Norwich University College of the Arts

January 2nd 2009 - Visited Ray Gregory at Norwich School of Art. 

Ray has been teaching at Norwich for 22 years, before that he worked in the design industry for over twenty years, both self-employed and working for the London based studio, Minale Tattersfield.

My attention was first drawn to Ray by his contribution to 'A Smile in the Mind' where he nails his colours firmly to the mast with the view that the skills necessary to conceive witty graphic design solutions can be taught. As this was the focus of my dissertation, I contacted Ray and set up a meeting.

Ray progressed from Stoke on Trent School of Art to a three year degree course in graphic design at the RCA. It was here that he became a convert to the ideas approach to visual design, inculcated by a number of American tutors including Bob Gill. It is this principle that Ray pursues to this day in his teaching at Norwich. In his words the course at NUCA is "unashamedly commercial, but from a position of challenge not acquiescence." There is no academic snobbery here. The aim of the course is to produce "design graduates who can think through problems rather than decorate around them. Style is easy because it's mostly derivative and usually self-indulgent - design by thinking is a more useful and longer term proposition," he says.

It was this fervour for the ideas approach that led to Ray's contribution to 'A Smile in the Mind'. During production of the book, an ex-student of his, working at The Partners, suggested that if the authors truly wanted to review witty ideas in graphic design then they should go to the 'horse's mouth': Ray Gregory. Ray admits that he has never read the book beyond proof-reading his own contribution and recalls turning down the free lunch at a London restaurant, offered by way of payment, for a sausage roll and two pints of lager with two ex-students. In fact Ray is slightly disappointed in the way in which the book casts him as an academic, a strategy he believes to be intentional on the part of the authors, designed to incorporate a solid educational view point. In Ray's mind they completely disregard his twenty years of work within the industry.

Without doubt there will be many graphics courses around the country that share Ray's passion for ideas but where he and his fellow team members, Ray supports 3rd year under-graduate students, impress is the thought put into the design of the course. All elements contribute to the development of an ideas approach whilst at the same time reflecting the broad range of graphic applications. In Ray's words the course is 'practice-based'. The third year students, for example, are required to tackle briefs that address corporate identity, packaging, publicity, book jackets, editorial and advertising/direct mail marketing. Throughout the course, no brief lasts longer than three weeks. The results, whilst neither ground-breaking nor avant-garde, are impressive in terms of the widespread use of wit, depth of thought and the quality of production.

How do they do it? Ray has a number of strategies and approaches that he adopts with his students. Essentially the general approaches can be summarised as:

• Begin reasearch with what you know because this is likely to yield solutions that are universally understood - if you knew it, without in depth research, the chances are that others will also know it.
• Visualise, visualise, visualise - push on through multiple ideas. Ray occasionally sets briefs where, via crits, students are not permitted to develop similar ideas. He pushes them on to unique solutions. Often those found towards the end of the process are the best. 
• Don't go for the big idea, go for many ideas.
• 'See it - Do it - See it' is Ray's mantra to describe the cyclical design process. It is not sufficient just to visualise ideas. You have to put them into practice. Realise them and then review them.
• Don't necessarily dwell on design for the 'worthy' causes. They are difficult for experienced designers to deal with. A birthday card or wine label offers as much scope and is just as worthy of our consideration.
• Relax into the process otherwise your outcomes will be tight/anxious.
• Place restrictions on the brief - rewrite it for yourself.
• Use self-questioning throughout the process. For Ray this strategy was born out of frustration in his days at the RCA. He now sees the 'what if?' approach as of enormous value and often models this process alongside students until they are able to internalise the method. Questions might vary but they should be designed to clarify and move the process on.
• Brainstorm adjective and metaphor descriptors around the subject of the brief. Look to see how the subject can be implied rather than explicitly depicted, implicit/lateral not explicit/literal. Imply by using the opposite or by missing/cropping imagery.
• Explore verbal and visual associations related to different view points and research around the subject.
• Think on beyond the product - What is it that you are really buying into/purchasing? e.g. when you go into a DIY store for a drill bit, it's really a hole that you're after.
• Collect examples of witty design solutions.

Briefs have been specifically engineered to support these skills and strategies. They include:

• Design and promote a useless object. Develops a strong sense of the absurd and suggest avenues for future witty thinking.
• One Word Poster. Poster design around one word attending to visual and typographical associations with the chosen word.
• Design a Pub Sign. Terrific scope for lateral thought and subtle implied meanings. How many ways could you suggest 'The Spread Eagle'?
• Two Random Lists. Select a word or phrase from each list and visually promote the combination e.g. Jazz (list 1) on Ice (list 2) or Singing (list 1) under water (list 2).
• Random Word Associations - Select two random words and then generate as many associations as you can between them e.g. bomb and wig - fallout. No design required, simple idea generation in the de Bono mode.
• Imply using opposite imagery, e.g. How can you use cat to suggest dog?

Ray believes that what marks out a student's capacity to assimilate and wield the skills and understanding that underpin witty visual design is intelligence. Intelligence here is not necessarily the logical analytical variety but a type that embraces humour and intuition and whose quick-witted response has the capacity to ad-lib.

Ray believes that there is always a solution that has a degree of wit to it, no matter what the brief. It's simply a question of casting searchlights in the right areas. He is an interesting if somewhat irascible character who claims never to have read a single graphic design book and who doesn't hold much truck with the design establishment. He refuses to analyse what he does too deeply, believing that such pedantry is likely to jeopardise the spontaneous intuitive aspects that he holds dear. He agrees that a certain amount of analysis must take place in order for him to assess and nudge students on, however, for Ray, instinct and intuition are king. By his own admission he wasn't on top form for our meeting. Celebrating New Year he had fallen and gashed his temple. Fortunately the booze had anesthetised the effects of this until the following day but it couldn't mitigate the shame.

What was noticeable looking around the studio with Ray afterwards was his pride and attachment to the students and their work. What was also apparent was just how widespread the application of witty thinking was throughout that work. It was both inspirational and yet disconcerting.

Creative Futures

I was contacted by Neil Pritchard, Glyndwr Careers Service, to take part in the marketing strategy for Creative Futures Week. The organising committee want to include a student in the process and are keen to devise a strategy that engages all art and design students in a way that last year's poster campaign failed to achieve. The time scale is fairly tight in that the design has to be created and produced within 3 to 4 weeks, with Christmas plum in the middle. If possible the strategy is also to operate in a number of formats; print, phone text, web and electronic flyer.

I played around with symbolism and metaphors relating to the future and its prediction and tried to combine or manipulate symbols to witty effect. I produced four draft ideas to pitch to Neil.

The strongest, in my mind, and the one that Neil and I are most interested in pursuing is shown above. Here's the rationale:

All students face choices surrounding their futures, and choice is at the heart of the concept here: you can take a considered and constructive view of future plans or you can leave your future to chance.

As one part of a direct marketing strategy all eligible students will be offered an A6, folded to A7, card containing a tea bag. The message contained plays on the idea that you can either take a kind of mystical approach to the future, or you can take control - by engaging in Creative Futures Week. You can also have a cuppa too.

The artwork supplied is by no means in finished form and will need to carry additional information such as Welsh language equivalents. I would also like to illustrate the six stage process using ‘first aid’ style diagrams. The campaign could be further enhanced by an animated web link, electronic flyers and guerilla style tea bag stickers placed in strategic locations.

The strategy is quirky, direct and personal. It also avoids reliance on poster advertising where there is fierce competition and a tendency for it all to become ‘wallpaper’.

Neil and I also considered the use of a tea bag with string and tag as a means to reduce materials and costs but considered the amount of space available for text on a tag prohibitive. It could be a nice teaser but would require further marketing materials to then place the idea in context. There would always be a risk that the audience would become too perplexed or wouldn’t then be exposed to the following stage that started to make sense of it all.

Anyway, when you put your mind to it, tea has lots of possibilities. It’s the future.

Alternative ideas were essentially poster oriented. The above plays on retro ideas about the future and the image of a stylised robot holding a paintbrush is mildly amusing and quirky. Below is an illustrative solution that I really enjoyed creating and which plays on the idea of being creative with the future - the characters are engaged in manipulating the calendar to their own chaotic ends.

The final idea is a metaphorical representation of the future, the gently blurring dots indicating a kind of succession or passage onwards. This is possibly the weakest of the presented ideas.

The problem with all these poster related ideas is their indiscriminate effect made worse by the competition they face from a multitude of other posters. The tea bag idea is direct and also promotes a fairly serious message: if you want, you can be proactive when it comes to your own future.

I can't say that I'm really enjoying this, I think it's the intricacies of dealing with a committee and also the target audience being my peers -  a savvy and demanding lot.

Portfolio Feedback - Springetts

Creative Director, Roger Bannister, gave me an hour of his time to go through my portfolio as it stands.
Roger made many comments about portfolios generally, often, then, relating them directly to my own. He started by saying that he personally liked portfolios that held great variety and that to his mind a portfolio should ebb and flow. His view is that many students assemble a portfolio from 'off the shelf pieces' completed at various points in the past with very little attention being paid to the depth of variety, right down to fonts and colour schemes being presented. His message was to consider the whole and avoid repetition of styles, genres and details which indicate a 'one trick pony'.
He was of the opinion that mine avoided this pitfall.
Roger's second piece of advice was to treat portfolio creation as a 'tick box' exercise, after all this is what busy creative directors will inevitably do. As far as my own went he said that it ticked the boxes for use of illustration, typography, ability to conceptualise and use of layout.
He suggested that a short statement to accompany each piece, to place it in context, would be useful. In the absence of the creator there is nothing else to provide this information, it sells the piece without you being there. Include, what the brief was, your thinking and what you actually did.
To Roger's mind my portfolio is varied but appears to be driven by illustration. In terms of Springetts his concern might be that I would become frustrated by the nature of their work. Much of it is tweaking or in a sense 're-creative' and there is a possibility that it would not offer sufficient creative outlet for me. He felt that my work might be more ideally suited to editorial layout.
Roger declared my work 'nice' but gave a number of suggestions for adding further dimensions to it.He talked about some focused self-initiated work demonstrating the ability to tweak existing designs that I might feel don't fully work for one reason or another. Packaging or identities would be ideal subject matter but the caveat is be absolutely sure that the existing design is not working as well as it might.

Another idea was to offer two solutions to a brief; one that is safer, more conventional and the other more conceptual and challenging.

Furthermore he suggested looking at social/cultural shifts that are impacting on products or services e.g. the move away from dinner parties affecting the sale of after dinner mints, and seek design solutions to bolster business; in this instance a more informal mint Springles product.

Roger finished by saying that it was only wise to tailor a portfolio to a specific job market if you are really sure and interested in working in that sector. Otherwise be true to yourself, submitting a portfolio is as much about finding out whether you would want to work for them too.

Springetts - Day Nine

Most of the day worked on the Roots and Wings brief. Developed the central figure to offer a variety of arm positions, although the original, with arms hidden behind her back, works well with the floral shield design. I wish I had the time and nerve to develop more radical designs of my own. I'm quite pleased with the results so far but can't help feeling that my heart and soul has not really been in the development of this one. It's not what I would choose to do.

Had a phone call from Zoe mid-afternoon to request help with the making of more Bendicks mock-ups. Not sure what had happened but all of a sudden she had half an hour before the courier was due to collect and there were still eight packages to make up. It was all hands to the pump making up the new style sachet packets. Sam, one of the junior designers, offered me a hand - it was good to feel the network of support extending to myself.

Roger had agreed to review and offer feedback on my portfolio and finally, after a lengthy meeting with clients, he was available to get down to it.

Springetts - Day Eight

Helped Zoe out by making mock-ups of the new Bendicks Mints boxes. Used the Xyron machine to create stickers of the coloured nets necessary to cover the bottoms of the original boxes. Eight boxes in four different colour ways.

The tops had been professionally printed by a repro company. I cut these out and scored them before passing them back to Zoe so that she could apply specially created silver decals to the surfaces.

Roger reviewed where I had got to on the Roots and Wings brief. He suggested developing the line quality of the drawing so that it was in greater sympathy with the overall design which has a broken and unfinished feel to it, enhanced further by the Dominican font. Jai helped me to formulate a way forward on this, suggesting that I search through the artistic brushes available in Illustrator rather than utilising effects or filters which could lead to future difficulties with pixelation.

Roger also encouraged me to apply my line drawing to a second of the designs, a shield with swirling foliage embelishment. These are good suggestions in that they create a definite workload for my final day tomorrow.

Springetts - Day Six & Seven

Day Six

Carried on working on the 'Roots & Wings' project but switched my attention to designs featuring a full length figure.  After working up several roughs I used the afternoon to trace out, what Julian and I considered the most promising, in Illustrator.

Once again my comparatively poor computer skills made this a slow process. However, I did feel that I had really got to grips with the pen tool and bezier curves by the end of the afternoon but I am still finding it very difficult to assess how to set about achieving a required or desired effect.

Day Seven

Roger reviewed progress so far and declared that what I had worked on till now was, "quite nice". He suggested experimenting with different treatments from the Effects menu in an attempt to achieve the kind of 'distressed old print' look that we are after. I spent the morning finishing the facial features and experimenting in this way and attempting to place my design into the image of the packaging. This demonstrated to me that the design works in the roundel format but inserting the design proved problematic in terms of its quality; once rasterized to achieve an approximation of the desired effect it then became horribly pixelated when attempting to utilise it against the packaging. I don't understand enough about the software and the way it behaves to overcome these difficulties by myself.

Late in the afternoon, at Julian's suggestion, I developed the wings of the figure a little more and also gave her arms, hitherto these had been tucked behind her. These represent small but significant and satisfying improvements.

Sandwiched in between I went shoping for Zoe in preparation for mocking-up some Bendick's boxes tomorrow. So it was another trip to Waitrose and Selfridges to spend £40 plus on chocolate mints. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Springetts - Day Five

Returned from my long weekend to find that Jai and Julian had taken the paper boat invitation on from where I had left it on Thursday. The preliminary electronic invitation now has the boat placed upon a very clean wave-tank style wave. Very O2.

My original design is to be used as a follow-up reminder.

Jai and I spent most of the morning placing type onto the boat template and then constructing mock-ups to test for accuracy and style.

Julian is obviously keenly aware that my time at Springetts is passing by and suggested that I try to get involved in other briefs to bolster the number of outcomes that I come away with.

Roger offered me the chance to develop the branding for a new niche market food company called 'Roots & Wings'. Springetts have already worked up two or three designs which the client has considered. However, she has offered an image that she has in her mind, apparently once seen on a book plate, that she is keen to have incorporated into the branding. It is a Mucha style portrayal of a woman executed in the black & white woodcut vein of a Beardsley but somewhat softer and with more flowing lines.

I used the remainder of the day to research further points of reference and to draw up some preliminary ideas. I am finding this a tricky brief because of the client's very specific requirements. It also appears to demand a very particular style and I wonder whether my knowledge and understanding of techniques, and more specifically application skills, are up to it. 

Springetts - Day Four

Researched paper boats overnight and made four or five examples ready for today. Julian and I were both taken by the catamaran sail boat that offers quite a bit of surface area to carry type - he encouraged me to pursue the idea. The concept involves including an image of the paper boat in the electronic preliminary notice, followed by the sending of an actual paper boat invitation, and then an opportunity to use them decoratively on the night.

We agreed a blue colour for the mock up and I spent the morning making and taking images of the boat before importing into Photoshop to work on the visual. Initially I played around by substituting the boat for the bottle in the original invitation. This worked reasonably well but I always had in my mind a version of the image with the little paper boat placed on a glassy reflective surface. This proved to be more satisfying. I coupled the image with strap-lines such as "Can we float your boat?" or "We'd like to push the boat out".

Julian used the terms clean and classy to describe the outcomes but had reservations about it being a little too arty, and perhaps too suggestive of a boat trip. I'm not so sure about this, it creates a little humorous mystery and the true nature of the evening will be revealed stage by stage.

Julian helped to get the typographical hierarchy just right. I then spent the rest of the afternoon playing with another idea where the boat rests on a sea created out of a series of S's drawn from the Springetts typeface.

Roger now has a number of ideas to consider on his return to the office tomorrow.

I felt good about today. It was the first complete day of continuous purposeful activity. Those around me also had time to offer support and feedback as and when I needed it.

Springetts - Day Three

Pleased myself for most of the morning as everyone incredibly busy. Drew a little, thought a little and trawled through some useful tutorials to hone my Photoshop skills.

Towards the end of the morning, Nick asked if I would carry out some research in support of a live brief being undertaken for Bendicks. Armed with £80 I scoured Waitrose on Marylebone High Street and then Selfridges and John Lewis etc for any examples of card packaging that incorporated a warm 'champagne' silver colour. Apparently Bendicks are keen to utilise a colour of this type and Nick wanted examples as points of reference.

Three hours or so later I returned in frustrated mood. At the moment the market divides neatly into gold or steely silver. I managed to find half a dozen examples of the palest gold but even these were too golden. I suggested to Nick that I believed they were breaking new ground.

Julian gave me some pointers for developing the invitation and I worked on that for the rest of the afternoon. He seemed pleased with the final result but as we were about to leave he asked Roger, the creative director, for his approval in preparation for sending it out.

While Roger agreed it was a satisfactory image, he regarded it as very much in keeping with the style of work carried already out for Danone. He suggested using the opportunity to do something a little bit different, to show a degree of greater creativity. Spurred on by his suggestion of sending an invitation that might have a tactile quality that could sit on the recipient's desk, I revealed a further idea that had occurred to me: uniting the ideas of water and a meal in a napkin folded origami style into the form of a boat. Roger saw some merit in this and was further buoyed by Julian's revelation that the meal was planned for The River Cafe. Roger encouraged me to think some more and try to create a kind of 'joined up' concept,  i.e. how might the preliminary electronic contact, the physical invitation and events on the evening itself all be related.

Springetts - Day Two

Victoria and Julian were too busy to look at my invitation piece, so I spent the morning tarting it up a bit and then trawling through Photoshop tutorials on the net. The designers are all busy working on packaging or ads for the likes of Listerine and Young's fish, otherwise they're attending meetings. By lunch time I was feeling very much the spare part, if not, liability. It must be difficult for them to gauge the capabilities of students and to supply a steady stream of suitable projects to undertake. But if that's the case, why take students? What's the incentive?

So, for the morning they were happy for me to amuse myself, and, in a way, I was happy doing that too. However, it leaves me with the feeling at times that the only thing I'm learning is just how much I have to learn. Still, it's early days yet.

Anyway, the afternoon was much more encouraging: I helped Dan, who was up against it on the Listerine account, by cutting out and constructing six mock-up boxes that he'd designed for Twinings tea-bags. It was interesting to see how the cardboard engineering allowed for the lids to click into place (apparently, a feature that customers like enormously) and it gave me a sense of achievement and usefulness. Above all, Dan was very appreciative. Job well done.

Springetts - Day One

Found Springetts - tucked away in a pair of mews buildings off a common courtyard in the heart of Marylebone. Nice setting. The legend outside, 'you are at springetts', left me in no doubt that I had arrived.

Met by Jai who took me on a whirlwind tour of the several floors of each building: directors' offices, accounts, creative teams, artworkers, kitchens, photographic studio etc.

The creative teams, three or four designers in each, tend to handle different client accounts although briefs can be collaborated upon if deadlines are tight or teams have slack periods.

Everyone was very pleasant and some were even interested in my experience at college and my previous work as a teacher. That was nice but I still had that feeling of being 'out of place' in a group that have obviously been together for some time and share a culture of their own as a result. It's quite difficult to break that down when you can't see face to face with anyone due to the barriers of machinary.

Anyway, after a little bit of thought, during which I tried to relax a little, Julian (ex-NEWI, very supportive and known to Pauline Amphlett) came up with my day's brief: to produce an electronic invitation to be e-mailed to Danone asking that they come to dinner and drinks - a chance for Springetts to recognise a valued client. The Danone account centres on their bottled waters so Julian had come up with the idea of a message in a bottle. Very kindly he also supplied all of the images.

I had the opportunity to go my own way on this if I wanted but after a half-morning's thought and research, where I hadn't really come up with anything better, I decided to use his concept after all. Well he had supplied all the images etc.

So I spent the afternoon grappling with unfamiliar equipment and trying to achieve effects that I had never attempted before. The typographical element gave me cause for much thought - unfamiliar type faces, trying to find sweet combinations and composition.

Anyway, by the end of the afternoon it was just about finished to an adequate standard. But, I'd taken one whole day to complete something that an experienced designer could probably have knocked up in a half an hour.

Gustav Klimt Exhibition - Tate Liverpool

Visited the Klimt exhibition at Liverpool Tate yesterday.

Klimt's often painterly style with its dominating geometric patterns and compressed flattened spaces was influenced by the decorative arts (he studied at the fine arts academy and his father was a gold engraver). Other influences come from his keen interest in Byzantine mosaics, Japanese prints and Chinese paintings.

Klimt's earlier works comprise drawings and painting that are almost neoclassical in theme. This is eventually transformed into a more expressionist style as space and form are abandoned and his figures become more distorted and exaggerated. Klimt became a major influence on later Expressionist painters. Klimt's paintings also express his love for geometric form. This is perhaps most evident in his square landscapes, but also noticeable in how his male figures tend to be represented as rectilinear shapes, whereas his female figures are often rounded and flowing.

Slightly disappointingly this is not purely a retrospective of Klimt's work. The exhibition also includes work by some of the other artists and designers who formed part of the Viennese Secession and the Weiner Werkstatte movements. The latter was strongly influenced by the British Arts and Crafts movement and as such, there are some illustrations of design work by Glasgow's Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Most prominent among the other Viennese artists is the designer Kolomon Moser, the painter Carl Moll and especially the architect and designer Josef Hoffmann. There are some striking examples of furniture and smaller household items. In particular I remember being impressed by an eloquent decorative card table and a very snazzy set of cutlery designed by Hoffman. The cutlery and many of the other objects were produced by the Weiner Werkstatte, who promoted the idea of the 'total environment', in which art enhances all aspects of life. To my mind Klimt's involvement in this is less convincing than say the work of Mackintosh or indeed William Morris. I wanted the show to celebrate Klimt the painter and this was a mildly interesting distraction.

Klimt's artworks are displayed in ten room settings. Some of the rooms are designed to give and idea of the original environments from where the artworks came. These were the homes and buildings of Klimt's patrons: Fritz and Lili Waerndorfer; the Wittgenstein family; Otto and Eugenia Primavesi. As such, you will find paintings reunited with the furniture and objects they originally accompanied. 

If you want to see Klimt's most iconic painting 'The Kiss' you'll have to travel to the Belvedere gallery in Vienna to see it, although it's probably already been seen by many in a thousand student bedsits and art shops. Another absent work is 'Judith and Holofernes' 1901, one of Klimt's spectacular gold paintings. It presents a similar theme to Judith II that is included in this exhibition. Perhaps understandably you will not see the 1907 "Portrait of Adèle Bloch-Bauer", purchased for $135m (£68.4m) a couple of years ago by a New York gallery owner. It was the most expensive painting in history at the time of its purchase. I still feel a little cheated and disappointed by the absence of such paintings. 

One important thing to note about Klimt's existing work is that possibly his greatest paintings no longer exist. A collection of 13 paintings were purposely destroyed by fire at the Immendorf Castle in southern Austria in 1945. Ironically the paintings had initially been stored there by the Third Reich in order to preserve them from air raids over Vienna, but after the death of Hitler an SS unit decided to destroy the works in order to prevent them falling into the hands of the encroaching Russians. These paintings included three of Klimt's greatest and most influential works: Philosophy, Jurisprudence and Medicine. 

One reason given for the absence of certain works, apart from their value, is that the paintings are in such a fragile state that it would have been too risky to transport them. For this reason it is unlikely that so much of Klimt's work will ever be exhibited together again - making this exhibition a once in a lifetime experience. 

It is worth saying that the exhibition graphics that greet you at the entrance are quite stunning. The low relief gold typography and pattern work are redolent of the sumptuousness of Klimt at his best. The first room of the exhibition is on the ground floor and displays a full-scale reconstruction of the Beethoven Frieze (the original is on permanent view at the Vienna Secession). I was not aware that it was a replica of the original as it is quite easy to walk in and not realise this. It was a monumental installation created by Klimt in 1902, celebrating his idea of Gesamtkunstwerk (the total work of art). Klimt's interest in trying to represent music in painting was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche's 1872 book The Birth of Tragedy that espoused the idea of music as the purest art form because of its unique ability to stir the deepest felt passions and to stimulate the very core of human consciousness. The Beethoven Frieze is a fantastic work of art and even as a replica is one of the highlights of the show.

Further on there is one room dedicated to Klimt's landscape paintings in square format. These are quite beautiful paintings that evoke a sense of calm and tranquillity. Some are impressionist in style whilst others lean towards expressionism. Their enchantingly cropped compositions offer a somewhat quirky but assured view of the world.

This is the final part of the exhibition that includes a main room open to all and an adjoining gallery of erotic line drawings that is only accessible to those over eighteen. The main room contains some of Klimt's greatest paintings in this exhibition including; "The Three Ages" 1905 showing the cycle of life - one of Klimt's most important themes - represented in the form of three female figures: the child, the mother and the older woman. A quite stunning image and my own personal favourite.

I was slightly disappointed by the explicit erotic drawings in the adjoining gallery as the room is quite dark and each drawing is rather dimly lit. Some of the drawings consist of very faint lines and it is hard to make out what's depicted unless you lean over and peer close. Some of these drawings were published in books at the time - one is displayed in the centre of the room - others were exhibited for the first time in 1910 and not surprisingly shocked the establishment and led to accusations of Klimt being a pornographer. However, it must be remembered that one of Klimt's contemporaries was Sigmund Freud whose published works about the subconscious suggested for the first time that the primary goal of sex was pleasure. Some of these drawings, of which Klimt made many thousands, can be seen as the artists own explorations in this area.