RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

11
bomb season
Radical Middle | 127
In the eighties the carlton was king of hotels and
richard Smith was king of cartoonists. I asked richard for a
cover picture showing the way we least wanted things to go. He
picked on the carlton and laid it in ruins, burnt-out and shelled,
the bluntest future-scare I ever saw. It gave me a fright.
Mind, it gave everyone a fright, but mostly they could
take two whiskeys and put it behind them. I had to answer a
question: could I consciously inflict 10,000 crumbling carltons
upon the world?
The edition could be banned for that, and advertisers would
run. But… it was too good not to publish, so with heart in mouth
and the slogan “a future That Must Not Be” it illustrated my
first cover-story in the direction-finding field. I don’t know that
anyone was struck by the direction-finding – that piece looks
so primitive now that you wouldn’t believe it had once been
pioneering – but plenty of people were struck by the picture.
There were several offers for the original but richard wanted