In the earliest days of video games when bouncing coloured squares around a low-res screen was all you could expect from the experience, artists and marketeers like those at Atari worked to fill in the gaps, creating the game worlds of our imaginations.
From the medieval battlegrounds of Warlords to the space adventure of Super Breakout, illustrators such as Cliff Spoon and Steve Hendricks managed to compensate for the technical limitations of the hardware and define gaming for a generation.
Collecting a huge amount of reference material, original art, blue prints, vintage adverts and photography, author Tim Lapetino has created a definitive look at the arcade world of Atari. A welcome trip of nostalgia for me, and a brilliant case study on corporate design ethics and Art Direction. Lead by James Kelly, Atari’s coherent sense of graphic design across its illustration style, logos and fonts, even that classic red button joystick and wood-paneled 2600 still represent the language of Arcade generations after it’s demise.
A fantastic book that comes highly recommended.