funnybutnothahahafunny

Less is More: Dieter Rams

2010-01-11T09:29:00.001-08:00

Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design makes a product understandable.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is long-lasting.
Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Good design is environmentally friendly.
Good design is as little design as possible.

I must to confess to not generally being a big fan of manifestos. Of course there's nothing wrong with having principles, or aspiration, but I have this impression that manifestos tend to be limit creativity rather than promote it, and usually lead the way to contradiction and hypocrisy. Still, Dieter Rams' 10 principles for good design (above) proved to be a very sound basis for a career spanning over 40 years at German home appliance manufacturer Braun. The current exhibition of Rams' work at the Design Museum features many of the products produced by Braun under Rams' tenure, which helped to make his name synonymous with the idea of functional, timeless, and beautiful design. Although well worth a visit for Rams' work alone, check out the impressive and thoughful exhibition graphics by London design studio Bibliotheque, which reproduces elements from the products, at large scale in giant wall panels. These images are from the Monograph supplement featured in the current issue of Creative Review.

DVD cover sketches

2010-01-11T09:08:00.000-08:00

Here are some quick Illustrator sketches for the John Carpenter DVD cover project. I've been experimenting with using very simple illustrations, repeated to form patterns. I've attempted to sneak a twist relating to the film into each pattern, for example, a break in the razor wire on the cover of Escape From New York, a white-faced pumpkin (mimicking Michael Meyers' mask) among the jack'o'lanterns for Halloween, or, in a different version, a single blood stained kitchen knife, pointing upwards, while the others point down. The covers for Assault on Precinct 13 and They Live! feature type integrated into the illustration. For the type itself I've been trying a combination of slab-serif faces like Rockwell and Memphis to reflect the American Western character of the films, with several different European sans-serif faces, like Futura and Avenir, to reflect Carpenter's arthouse sensibilities. The next step is to nail-down which fonts to go with, and set about redrawing the elements for the illustrations.

Brown Smears

2010-01-08T02:43:00.000-08:00

I found this on Johnson Banks' Review of The Year, (about which I'll post more soon) and it made me laugh out loud for so long that it deserves its own post here too. I don't know if it's a real headline or not, and frankly I don't care.

Book of the Film

2010-01-06T13:53:00.001-08:00

Illustrator Spacesick has done a cracking job so far of re-imagining cult movies as pulp paperbacks with this series of fantastic vintage-style covers. Olly Moss employs a similar style in his remade film poster series Eight Films in Black and Red.

From the archives... Silent Madness (in 3D!)

2010-01-05T03:23:00.000-08:00

The other day, in a search for illustrated film posters for John Carpenter films, I stumbled upon a site named Cover Browser. Maintained by Phillip Lenssen, the site features nearly half a million images from the covers of comics, pulp magazines, books, as well as movie posters, and unusually for an archive of this size, the quality remains pretty high throughout. The site also contains this helpful piechart, which explains how the contents shape-up.There are plenty of similar archives out there, such as B-Movie poster site Wrong Side of The Art, or the 100 posters featured on Andrew Lindstrom's Well Medicated blog (Andrew's site also features some great collections of vintage tobacco ads, gig posters, and vintage space-age scenes), and I'll try to get round to featuring something on them soon. For now though, these examples come from Cover Browser's horror movie posters archive. Some, like this Saul Bass poster for Otto Preminger's 1965 thriller, Bunny Lake Is Missing, are refreshingly understated. Even this poster for George Romero's Day Of The Dead (not a film known for holding back on the red stuff) is well considered and very unlike most horror movie posters.
...then again some others are, y'know, not quite so understated... but then what would you expect from film with titles such as Silent Madness (In 3D!) and, er... The Cauldron of Death? Hard-hitting stuff indeed.

Simon Page

2010-01-04T03:28:00.000-08:00

Self-taught, maths-inspired designer Simon Page is interviewed in Grain Edit this month. It's a revealing read that introduced me to a designer I really think I should have noticed sooner. I have to admit that the portfolio section of Simon's website irks me a bit, with that unnecessary crazy perspective toggle thing it does, but there's no doubting the quality of the stuff within it. Both the self-initiated International Year of Astronomy, and Futurism series are spectacular (and from the looks of them, it's no surprise to learn that Simon's filling his pants about the new Tron film...)

There's also a nice post that details the working process of designing a designing a movie poster. Designers don't often divulge this sort of information (though sadly there aren't any half-baked or abandoned ideas transplanted from the sketchbook, that would be asking too much), so it's refreshing to see behind the curtain for once.

More Book Covers

2010-01-04T02:50:00.000-08:00

The aptly named Book Cover Archive is a great place to look for inspiration. the archive includes over 1,100 contemporary book covers, which you can search for by author, title, designer, publisher, and even typeface (there are a whopping 66 covers which feature Futura, but only 2 that use Frutiger). Fine examples include this innovative series of A4 paper-based designs by Sanda Zahirovic, Jenny Grigg's covers for Peter Carey, or the consistently excellent Jonathan Gray.
Back on the vintage-theme, but also well worthy of attention is this collection of 30 Polish book covers featured

on A Journey Round My Skull, and while I'm at it, there's a feature on some excellent Dick Bruna Covers (he's not just for rabbits, y'know) on Grain Edit.

Your Studio

2010-01-04T02:22:00.000-08:00

In promotion of their new book, Studio Culture*, United Editions (the new publishers set up by Spin and Adrian Shaughnessy) are currently featuring a collection of photographs of designers' studios, as submitted by the studios themselves, on their blog. While the exercise does nothing to refute the reputation graphic designers' have for egocentricity, it's interesting to have a peek into someone else's working space. Some illicit the wow-i-want-to-work-there! response, some appear to have been designed solely for client hospitality, some art messy, some have pets, some are absurdly minimal, some are hilariously Scandinavian-looking, some are very obviously a bed room with a bit of sheet nailed-up, and some pose important questions, like who is this douchebag posing with his acoustic guitar?

*there's a favorable review of the Studio Culture here on FormFiftyFive

Art Of The Arcade

2010-01-03T08:56:00.000-08:00

Got a hankering for some retro graphics? Take a look at Paul Giacherio's Art Of The Arcade blog, which features images of original promotional materials, psychedelic illustrations of game environments, portraits of some of the righteous dudes who created the games, and proof that, for a very short time at least, the marketing people behind these campaigns tried to convince the public that video games were sexy.... yeah, that didn't quite catch on, did it?

DIY Branding: Apollo Home Entertainment

2010-01-03T08:27:00.000-08:00

My local video shop is staffed by a middle-aged old school heavy metal fan (so you're pretty much guaranteed to hear Iron Maiden every time you go in there), and a guy who is so embarrassed by the state of the place that if you ask him for a particular film, her will look at his computer and pretend to type something into a non-existent data base before telling you "er, no, we don't have it". I dimly remember a time at the tale-end of the 80s when Apollo video was a contender, a worthy rival to Blockbuster, at least in the north of England. How the mighty have fallen.
Or have changing times simply heralded a shift in focus? Apollo Home Entertainment now offers internet access and cartridge refill services, as promoted by these giant yellow and purple banners. Do they also rent dvds? Well sort of, so long as you're not after anything released post-1998. I assume Apollo is a franchise (I can't image even the head office of The Little Chef allowing this kind of thing), and that the local branches are presided over by an East End entrepreneur, a little like Alan Sugar (nowadays Lord of Clapton, following the granting of his peerage last year), who, in his wisdom, has shaken-up the business model to incorporate new technologies, and remain relevant to today's switched-on consumer. Well, sorry Alan, your business model is fucked, your dvds are shit, and the only good thing about your shop is the two weirdos who run it, long may they remain to rock-out.

Diversification in 2010

2010-01-03T08:12:00.000-08:00

It seems diversification is the key to survival in the economic climate of 2010..! Happy New Year LCC.

John Carpenter: Art-House Cowboy

2010-01-02T08:45:00.000-08:00

To my mind, John Carpenter is one of the greats of late 20th century cinema. He's a cowboy boot-wearing auteur, mustachioed genius who writes, directs, and scores many of the soundtracks to his own films. Films which have, since the mid-70s, explored the middle-ground between European Art House and American Western traditions. Okay, he's made some stinkers (Ghosts of Mars, Escape From LA), but even those have remained true to his singular cinematic vision; in which the existential tough guy battles with themes of hidden identity, isolation and paranoia, and kicks butt while he does it. As the hero of They Live! proclaims - "I came here to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I'm all out of bubble gum".
Despite such an achievement, Carpenter's films have largely remained the territory of teenagers and fanboys (I'll bet Quentin Tarantino has the whole lot on Blu-Ray). The marketing strategy has always fallen short of, or willfully ignored the maker's artistic vision. So to help Carpenter's films realise their full potential as art-house classics, I've decided to design a box set of my favorite of them. Here's a quick run-down of my top five, each with a selection of promotional artwork...
Halloween (1978)
The movie that defined the rules of the slasher genre (don't have sex, don't go outside/into the basement alone, never assume you're the monster is dead, even when you've shot him repeatedly), and spawned many inferior sequels and copy-cat titles, Halloween is held in almost universally high regard for its slow-burning tension and a soundtrack second only to Jaws for its hummable sense of dread. America's favourite holiday turns sour when escaped mentalist Michael Myers heads back to the suburban neighborhood of his youth.

They Live! (1988)
I'll be the first to admit this is not the finest of Carpenter's works. It's badly acted, badly scripted, very silly, has a throwaway ending that suggests the producers ran out of cash half way through. But this is also Carpenter's most political film, with a plot that involves the consumerist-brainwashing of society by a hidden Masonic alien race. Starring American "Sports Entertainment" wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, the film makes amends for wooden acting and ropey characterisation with some spectacularly choreographed extended fight scenes, as recently praised by director of The Wrestler Darren Aronofsky.
Escape From New York (1981)
The second of Carpenter's films to star Kurt Russell, Escape From New York is a futuristic (1997!) cyber-punk fantasy in which our hero, one-man army Snake Plissken, must rescue the president (Donald Plenence, seemingly still under contract after Halloween) from Isaac Hayes' gang lord of New York, now a maximum security prison with only one way in, and no way out...
Basically, when I was 8, I wanted to be Snake Plissken.

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
Though this was Carpenter's first Hollywood movie, it appears retrospecively to be possibly the most art-house of his works. Inspired by the zombie hoards of George A. Romero's Night of The Living Dead, wave after wave of drone-like LA street gangsters attack an isolated police precinct the night before it is due to be closed, as the few remaining civillians and officers barricade themselves inside. Three years later, Walter Hill's The Warriors arguably upped the stylistic street-punk-ante, but failed to maintain the creeping dread of this classic.
The Thing (1982)
Kurt Russell returns in what is possibly Carpenter's finest film, a remake of the 1951 pulp sci-fi movie The Thing From Another World. An alien creature escapes its icy tomb to infiltrate an arctic research base, disguised as one of the crew's dogs. This might sound like a ridiculous premise, but to his credit, Carpenter plays it straight from start to finish. In the original story the crew work together to defeat the beast, while in Carpenter's remake they turn on each other as paranoia spreads like a virus. The award-winning special effects hold nothing back, and Kurt Russell just about proves that he can act afterall.

Penguin Books in Series

2009-12-31T11:55:00.001-08:00

I won't attempt to add to the reams and reams already been written about the design of Penguin Books, from the systematic approach defined by Jan Tischold during his brief stint in charge of typography and production, to the distinctive design of books in a particular series, such as these examples of popular fiction, science, crime, and science-fiction from the 1950s to the early 1970s. Its the consistency of the design within each series that appeals to me as much as the styles involved. For example the restricted green and black colour palet and simple-but-striking, Saul Bass-like illustration of the crime series. There are numerous archives of Penguin covers online, but particularly worth a look are the Pelican Project by Things Magazine, which organises the covers by decade, and Joe Kral's personal collection.

From Red Bull to Bull Shit: strategies in energy drink branding

2009-12-31T11:53:00.000-08:00

First came Redbull. (I'm going to overlook Lucozade, in its traditional form, and Irn-Bru because they pre-date the energy drink boom by many years. By the way, Scotland is the only place in the world in which Coca Cola is outsold by a local soft drink, that soft drink being Irn-Bru, of course. First brewed in 1902, and so named "Irn-Bru" in 1946, decades before txt spk was invented, the popular orange beverage contains o.oo2% Ammonium Ferric Citrate, a food additive that contains iron).
...okay, so. First came Red Bull. Based on a Thai drink named Krating Daeng, Red Bull is a vile-tasting drink in a small can, that contains caffeine and taurine, which is famously an derived extract from bull's testicles (it's not really from bull's testicles). Red Bull was marketed in a small can. The small can is important here, it serves the practical purpose of administering a smaller dose of these mind-altering chemicals, but also signals to the consumer that Red Bull is not just another soft drink. The small can says "I am a serious proposition. I am full of good stuff, that will make you feel amazing, but you have to be careful with me, for I am also powerful." And maybe it signals exclusivity as well. Or it used to, until the rest of these suckers got in on the energy drink market and ruined everything.
After the other drinks that looked just like Red Bull, came the BIG CANS. The big cans refused to play by the rules. They forever moved the goal posts by repositioning the concept of "energy drink" as something that could be chugged indiscriminately, perhaps by extreme sports enthusiasts looking to take it to the next level, or perhaps by builders on their way to work, instead of breakfast.Also aimed at the extreme sports fans (not necessarily the participants) were beverages packaged in the mould of industrial floor cleaners, because industrial floor cleaners and protein shakes have basically the same packaging anyway, and are pretty much interchangeable.
Brands like Monster the appeal to the meatheads too, but also seem to go after teenage heavy metal fans. Check out this seriously horrible section of their website if you're having trouble imagining what I mean by this. Mouse over the guitar and it plays a riff! Shiiiiiiit!
...this brings us conveniently on to the tattoo drinks, as represented here by Relentless, Rubyy, and Full Throttle. Relentless have actually gone so far as to create/sponsor/hijack a film, Lives Of The Artists, which features, in three segments, profiles of a surfer, a mountaineer (not like the bearded union jack touting mountaineers of old, but the contemporary x-treme kind, who like to leap off their mountains after climbing them), and Watford's finest hardcore punk band, Gallows. The band's insanely tattooed front-man Frank Carter is about as close as Relentless could come to a living, breathing advert for the goop they're pedalling - he looks just like a can of the stuff, and, oh yes, he's mental.
With a more spiritually aware take on a similar aesthetic, are the herbally-flavoured, mist-swathed brands like Mana and Gloji. Both have vaguely mystical-sounding names and secret ingredients derived from various kinds of rare tropical vegetation. The manufacturers of Mana even refer to their product as a "potion". Gloji at least has an award-winning bottle design on its side. In fact, I'm being a bit unfair lumping them together like this. Gloji probably has more in common with other more (and I'm using the term loosely) sophisticated beverages, such as Purdeys.
Then there are the drinks endorsed by celebrity muscle-cubes Hulk Hogan and Steven Segal. One Amazon reviewer of Segal's Asian Experience, describes the drink as "so horrible it brought tears to my eyes", while another boldly admits how "my penis got smaller but it really helped with midterms". 1 in 3 Trinity goes a step further though, as the only energy drink to be endorsed by Jesus! Low in calories, and containing a "special blend handed down from the flourishing vines and trees of the Holy Land", the brand appears to be cynically aimed squarely at Christian fundamentalists and confused teenagers (I see a pattern emerging here with the confused teenagers).
novelty drinks like Cocaine, Battery, and Bomba, which comes in abottle shaped like a grenade and has a ring-pull top. Bomba has an odd website with a homepage that plays funk bass, and a picture of a naked couple locked in some kind of wrestling embrace. By the way, Cocaine does not actually contain any real cocaine, however it does have 350% more caffine than Red Bull, and, according to its manufacturers "tastes like a fireball, a carbonated atomic fireball".
So that brings us back to the issue of can size and to the latest development - the shot. In a pleasingly symmetrical fashion, the drink that began with the stuff Thai lorry drivers consume to help them stay up all night, has returned to its original format. The idea that less is more, that if Red Bull which comes in a small can is powerful, then Red Bull which comes in a tincture the size of a baby's fist must be really powerful. Plus the new packaging is of a convenient size to secrete within your utility belt and the myriad pockets of your extreme sports jumpsuit.
What will be next, I can't say. Perhaps consumers will get tire of being so juiced-up the whole time, and want a drink that will help them have a nice lie down instead. There'll probably be a product called Heroine within six months.

Good Water / Bad Water / Weird Water

2009-12-31T11:52:00.000-08:00

How do you market something that is, in most places, naturally abundant, and free. This sounds a bit like one of those "if a tree falls in a forest, but no one is around to hear it fall...etc, etc." philosophical problems. Granted, in many countries clean drinking water is hard to come by, but the bottled water market in Europe and the US is just as strong as elsewhere. So strong in fact that bottled water is now a global industry predicted to be worth over $85 million by 2011. But how did this happen? And how do new brands differentiate themselves in a crowded market place?
Do you abide by industry-standard of blue bottle for still, green for sparkling, perhaps with the addition of some vaguely watery, natural imagery, like the Evian mountain-tops, or the Highland Spring babbling brook? Or attempt to fashion a classic brand like San Pellegrino? (actually that might be tricky - according to San Pellegrino's website, the brand originated in the year 1250, and is officially endorsed by Leonardo Da Vinci). So, what are the options...?

Option 1: blind them with science! Or not, as the case may be. Ogo is one of a number of hyper-oxygenated waters, containing 35 times more oxygen than regular water. Apparently there is no scientific evidence to support Ogo's claim that their product "serves as an energy booster, revitalising concentration, reflexes, and memory", but then, perhaps surprisingly, the company offers none, relying instead upon the popular conception that oxygen and water are good for you, so oxygen + water must be really good for you. Still, the "oxygen molecule" bottle designed by Parisian firm Ora-ito, is a winner, even if it must be a bitch to stack in a fridge.

Neau is an interesting one. Sold in the Netherlands, for the same price as a bottle of mineral water, Neau is actually a range of different designs of empty bottles, each containing a flier with information about the product... or lack of it. The idea is for the consumer to fill the bottle from the tap, keep hold of it, and refill when necessary. In other words, its a way of encouraging people to drink tap water. As if that isn't worthy enough, all the profits go to environmental causes. Menno Liauw, of Amsterdam-based advertising bureau Vandejong and Stichting Neau (the Neau Foundation) explains "we sell conscientiousness and social responsibility".
"Starting life at London's top hotels in 1989", Ty Nant is hotel water for yuppies, with a Gandalf-sounding Welsh name. Still, Ty nant (meaning "house by the stream") is remarkable from a design perspective for both it's award-winning cobalt blue glass bottles, and the asymmetrical plastic bottle pictured here, which was created by Ross Lovegrove to "evoke the fluidity of water".

Ty Nant produce another mineral water named TAU, which, from the design of the bottle, looks a bit Japanese, but is apparently just as Welsh. Designed seemingly to plug a hole in the market of hotels that don't like Ty Nant's blue and red glass bottles, TAU takes its name "from an ancient Welsh word for ‘to be silent’, TAU Spring Water is specifically designed for outlets such as designer hotels, restaurants, bars and cafes where colour may not be appropriate but purity, quality and elegance are essential."

Belu claim to be "the UK's first carbon-neutral water", thanks to off-setting, eco-friendly production processes, and compostable bio-bottles made from corn starch (although these are the up-market glass version picture above. The plastic ones have pictures of icebergs and penguins on them. Ahhhh.) Like Neau, Bleu is a only non-profit organisation, with all profits donated to clean water projects. They even go so far as to claim that "every bottle you drink gives someone clean water for a month". How's that for emotional blackmail?

Drench, owned by UK soft-drinks company Britvic, is aimed at the 16 to 24-year-old youth market. There's nothing particularly different about the product, or even the way its presented (the name is the most obvious thing so far, which I suppose sounds a bit sexy or frivolous, and might appeal to the average Skins fan), though their new jazz-hamsters advert is poking about in the right area.Fiji Water. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Someone in marketing came up with a great idea - exclusivity is the buzzword here. Fiji Water is "untouched by man", produced "Far from pollution, far from acid rain, far from industrial waste" and shipped thousands of miles to its consumers in Europe and the US. Fiji have responded to accusations of supporting a military dictatorship, involvement in political shenanigans, and of course responsibility for the devastation of the environment, courtesy of an elephantine carbon footprint by greening-up their act with claims that "the production of each bottle will actually result in a reduction of carbon in the atmosphere". There's also some gumf on their website about "investing in local Fijian communities" to off-set the detrimental effect of diverting clean water from local usage, for the company's exclusive access via a "17 mile-long aquifier", whatever one of those is. "Lipstick on a pig" was one critic's response.

Bling H20 is the brainchild of (no joke) "Hollywood writer-producer" Kevin G. Boyd. Click on his name there to see his list of Hollywood credits.. oh, there aren't any? I wonder why that is..? Kevin presumably thought-up Bling to give him something to talk about while sniffing coke off a hooker's arse at his friends house parties, or perhaps because an inner voice told him "you can tell a lot about a person by the kind of bottled water they carry". Like, for example, if they're an insecure narcissist who thinks that paying FIFTY DOLLARS for a jewel-incrusted water bottle will mean they end up sitting next to Brad Pitt at the Oscars. And don't just take my word for it. What. A. Tit.

Project 7 Purified Water really milks the "it's for a good cause" argument. The texas-based company also produces t-shirts, gum, and mints, which are branded with a range of 7 worthy causes - Build the Future, Feed the Hungry, Heal the Sick, Help Those in Need, Hope for Peace, House the Homeless, and Save the Earth. Half (only half?) the profits from any product go to a charity in suppport of the cause promoted on the label. So, for example, if you want to help "Build the Future", but you don't like homeless people, you can choose where your money goes.

Tap'd NY is, as far as I can tell, unique in being the only bottled water that specifically markets itself as coming from a tap. Available only (or should I say, exclusively ) in New York, the water is purified through a process of "reverse osmosis", and shipped to the streets in robust-looking bottles bearing quotes like "no glaciers were harmed making of this water" and "bottled water without the funny accent". As their strapline "Truth in Hydration" confirms, the brand aims to lay its cards upon the table - challenging the naysayers with the argument that while it may only be tap water, it's the finest tap water in the world, and it doesn't harm the planet in getting to the consumer. See, this is a very canny product that manages to appeal to a sense of civic pride, environmental consciousness, AND the tourist market simultaneously. They even have a street team of Hydrators, who dress like Ghost Busters and will refill your bottle for free.

Clapton Is Good

2009-12-23T07:38:00.001-08:00

While we're on the theme of local findings, here's another photo I've had on my phone's memory stick for a while. This appeared on a hoarding next to Clapton Pond. I found out recently that the author was local artist Shane Deegan, who intended it as a riff on the Clapton is God graffiti (in this case Eric Clapton) that appeared in Camden in the 60s.
A spate of murders and some creative media headlines between 2000-02 earned Clapton the nickname Murder Mile, and the area's notoriety had achieved nation-wide acknowledgement by the time it was named by Channel 4's Property Ladder as the worst place to live in Britain in 2006 (the show featured a shot of the block of council housing in which my friend Jill lived. I've never seen her so proud of anything before or since).
The Arts Council may well bang-on about inclusivity and "engaging the community", but I'd be impressived if anything inside a local gallery managed to reach half the number of people this did (the 38 is a popular bus, afterall). It's simple, funny, optimistic, and gently self-mocking.
The grafitti lasted only a week or two, but was another soon too its place (not one of Shane's, according to a local blogger known as Fat Hands), suggesting the message found sympathetic ears. Clapton is good, I might even go so far as saying it's Super Good.

Grandma Jailed For Xmas

2009-12-23T07:21:00.000-08:00

So I've finally gotten off my lazy bee-hind and made a new blog* to house the snapshots of the Hackney Gazette headline boards that I've been collecting for the past 3 years or so. The blog is named after one of my favourites - Grandma Jailed For Xmas, and is formatted to contain a homepage that lists words taken from the featured headlines, each one a link to the related image. I've used the same yellow and black colourscheme, and stripped away any extra details, so the list itself resembles a headline. By presenting a single word from each headline I'm attempting to focus upon the source of the humour - the limited and superlative vocabulary. Sort of like listening to someone speak! With! An! Exclaimation! Mark! After! Every! Word!
*While creating the blog I found that there's already another very similar blog that reproduces the headlines in text form, without images. There are no contact details on the blog, but if anyone reading this knows who's behind it, then do please put us in touch somehow. It's always good to meet your neighbours.

Before & After

2009-12-14T07:41:00.000-08:00

The web is indeed a many-splendored thing. You only have to type the words "Before and After" into Google to be treated to a truly eye-popping selection of images, brought to you mostly by either "satirical" cultural comment sites, or spare-room enterprises peddling wonder-drugs and software tutorials.* Behold the jaw-dropping results of...

Weight loss:

Athletic weight gain:

Ageing:

Ill-advised plastic surgery:

Retouching:

Property development:

Crack:
And, my favourite, being turned into a weird little orange man:

*I am neither of these, honest.

Movie title stills: part 2 (in COLOUR!)

2009-12-13T09:19:00.001-08:00

Okay, so I've gushed over film title screen shots from the earlier half of the 20th Century, now how do the later ones fair? Well, some of them are very good. There's no unifying style, instead the titles tend to either reflect the content of the film, or ignore the content all together in favour of more discreet use of typography.

And there's definitely a trend in more contemporary films towards very discreet titles. Although each of the following uses a distinct and no doubt carefully chosen typeface, from first glance they appear virtually identical.

So what does this say about modern audiences? Are we more astute in our understanding of typographic detail? Or do the film-makers simply want to let their films (and in some cases, the special effects) do the talking?

Toys

2009-12-13T08:48:00.000-08:00

Dutch designers Stevijn van Olst and Johnny Slack' Cartelle studio site includes several online "toys" to amuse the web-weary designer. Among the delights on offer, you can burst balloons, bungee a skeleton doll, taunt sperm, and blow up fire-crackers, and programme beats using little blob creatures. Not involved or competitive enough to be described as games, the toys are more like a virtual version of those Newton's Balls executive toys.

Stevijn and Johnny's blog features thiis promo video for a Swarm Racer 3000, which I presume uses similar programming to achieve the "swarm intelligence" displayed by the sperm in their The Birds & The Bees game.

Movie Stills: part 1

2009-12-13T07:58:00.000-08:00

This Movie Title Stills Collection, compiled by web-designer Christian Annyas is very special. Featuring over 800 title stills from movies dating from 1920 to the present day, the site presents the stills in handy chronological order.

Most of the earlier featured films (up to around the 1950s) include alternate screen shots from the films' trailers, and the screens that appeared to announce the end of the film. Some of these are obviously stock images used by the studios for a variety of films, but other, such as this first one, from King Kong, follow the design of the opening title.

Christian also runs a site called Art of the Title Sequence, which features appraisals of many sequences, plus interviews with their creators. Well worth a look, as it also contains quicktime videos of all the sequences, many of which are not available on YouTube.

VW archives

2009-12-13T04:32:00.000-08:00

Volkswagen's advertising of the 1950s and 60s was ahead of its time in promoting affordability, practical solutions for large families, and low fuel consumption. Minimal, and characteristically deadpan, the ads still look fresh today.
Roy's VW Ad Archive compiles printed adverts, postcards, billboards, calendars, and even stamps, from 1952 up to the present day (or thereabouts), and features examples from the US, Europe, Canada, Brazil, and Australia. The site may look a bit unsophisticated, but the content is well organised and extensive. Nice one, Roy!

Now, I'm certainly no Beetle-geek, but there seems to be no shortage of VW-related online resources provided by people who are. VW Postcards and Found VW Postcards are, perhaps unsuprisingly, collections of postcards of the 1950s and 60s which feature the eponymous vehicles. Although some were obviously produced by VW for promotional reasons, many are simply scenes in which the photographer just happened to capture the image of VW in the landscape. This indicates the VW's popularity at that time, as well as the broader importance played by the automobile in leasure and hoiliday activities of the time - postcard of a carpark, anyone? I find the images fascinating not for the vehicles featured within them, but for the colour, tone, and architecture of the landscapes, which provoke such a distinctive nostalgia for post-war America.
Finally, for the kids, there's a Spot the VW game. Happy hunting.

Jazz Hamsters

2009-12-11T09:39:00.000-08:00

Did you know hamsters could play jazz? Neither did I, until I came across a post on the Creative Review blog, about Infinity Productions' new campaign for mineral water manufacturer (can you manufacture mineral water?) Drench. Their strapline Perform At Your Best. Stay Drenched. taps the whole your-brain-is-75%-water-so-without-enough-water-you're-a-goggling-idiot argument, using it to suggest that well-hydrated hamsters will display unexpectedly high standards of improvisational musicianship. Obviously i don't care about any of that, but look at those hamsters go!

While common wisdom suggests that working with animals is generally a bad idea, I think this ad proves that if you can find a way to let animals just do what they do (like drag their bum across the carpet, or, er, hibernate), then you can save a packet on your budget.

Wall Drawing

2009-12-11T09:32:00.000-08:00

The Turner Prize was won this week by Richard Wright, a painter who creates his images directly upon the walls of the gallery, providing them with a finite life span - that of the duration of the exhibition. The work that sealed the deal at Tate Britain was Wright's enormous abstract fresco no title, a kind of rococo riot in gold leaf.
This is the second time in recent years that a wall-painting has won a major UK art prize, after Toby Paterson was awarded the Becks Futures prize in 2002, for an at the ICA exhibition that featured a 69ft long wall painting inspired by his encounters with urban architecture as a skateboarder. And not yet a prize-winner, but no doubt with his fingers crossed for 3-in-a-row, will be Philippe Decrauzat, a Swiss multimedia artist, whose wall paintings feature in publisher Gestalten's recent book on contemporary abstract art and design, Neo Geo.

Sleevage

2009-12-11T08:31:00.000-08:00

So I'm stuck at home recovering after having holes drilled in my sinuses earlier this week (don't worry, this was a medical procedure, that took place in a hospital), subsisting on a diet of cups of tea and DVDs.

Something else I've been amused and informed by is Sleevage, a cover-art blog maintained by members of Soap Creative, a Sydney and Los Angeles-based digital media firm. It contains insightful appraisals and stories on subjects such as the pulp men's magazine-origins of the cover of Frank Zappa's classic Weasels Ripped My Flesh, working drawings from Queens of the Stone Age's Era Vulgaris, the unused covers for Beck's Highway 65 Revisited tribute Modern Guilt, and the revelation that Metallica's debut Kill Em All, was originally to be entitled Metal Up Your Ass, with a cover featuring a knife protruding from a toilet bowl. I don't know about you, but I feel better for knowing this kind of stuff.

GDF project finished! (almost)

2009-12-11T08:11:00.000-08:00

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah, now after being too busy for the last 2 weeks to do anything other than work on this goddamn project (yes, personal hygiene was one of the first things to go), I finally handed in my research PDF and campaign outcome on Monday. Along the way I discovered some interesting facts and theories about marketing to the over-50s, and spent hours measuring the adverts in newspapers - probably more interesting for me than anyone else, so I'll leave it there. Above are some pages from the research PDF. Now I'm going to do some xmas shopping.

GDF Project: Target Audience

2009-11-27T03:11:00.001-08:00

Meet Alan and Janet, my target audience guinea pigs. Not a great deal of science involved here - they're based upon my preconceptions of the "recently retired professional". My parents are both recently retired, so I have the benefit of a bit of insider knowledge from them, but the exercise is more about emptying these pre-conceptions out of my head, and making room for some new ones based upon my research. Also to do something visual. The bulk of my work at the beginning of this project has been in the form of lists and notes, so this is a way of converting some of those ideas into visual symbols. For example, Janet's divorce is represented by a pair of broken wedding rings, and the fact that Alan's wife buys his clothes is represented by a pair of Y-fronts. Hmm.I've also been doing some research into Visual Communication theory, to better understand how to communicate effectively with my audience, and what sort of things might get in the way of that communication. Jonathan Baldwin and Lucienne Roberts' book Visual Communication: From Theory to Practice is an accessible introduction to this area, with the inclusion of references to a range of theories by others in the field. According to the VALS system, my target audience of Recently Retired Professionals are "Actualisers":

This modified version of Shannon and Weaver's process model of communication suggests how a messages can be conveyed from client to target audience, via a team of Media Planners, Market Researchers, and Designers. However well conceived or constructed, the intermediary stages of Noise Source and Media Outlet have the potential to distort the message before it reaches the audience. For example, in the weeks following the 9/11, airlines withdrew advertising to avoid the risk of association with the terrorist attacks (a noise source). Just as an airline offering a premium business class service would be unlikely to advertise in the sports pages of the Sun - in this case the media outlet is inappropriate (does not reach the target audience) and would potentially harm public perception of the brand.

IDEO research methods / Zidane

2009-11-26T11:01:00.000-08:00

Last week Darren introduced us to a series of target audience research methods developed by design consultancy firm IDEO.

Techniques include Behavioural Mapping, Scenario Testing, Error Analysis, and Quick and Dirty Prototyping.

Here's a behavioural map showing the points at which visitors paused while moving through a room of Joseph Beuys sculptures at

Tate Modern. The crosses indicate all visitors, the dots represent visitors of the appropriate age-range of my target audience for the project.

Another of the techniques, Shadowing, simply involved choosing an innocent bystander to follow around the gallery for half an hour.

Applying this technique to extreme, Turner Prize winning artist

Douglas Gordon made Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, a documentary

of a match between Real Madrid and Villareal, filmed in real time by 17 cameras, with the sole focus of the film being Zidane himself.

With no match commentary and very little dialogue picked up from the pitch itself, the film is a sensory, rather than narrative, experience.

Beautifully shot, and with an excellent soundtrack by Gordon's fellow Scots Mogwai, it's well 90 minutes of your time. Meat pie and Bovril

are optional. There's a low-res version of the entire film online here.

22 logos in 22 minutes

2009-11-23T05:57:00.000-08:00

Last week I read a post on David Airey's Logo Design Love blog entitled 33 logos in 33 minutes, in which he includes photos of the first 33 logos he sees every morning - toothpaste, shower gel, etc. I had a go at doing the same thing myself, and quickly realised that I see way more than one logo per minute for the first half hour of the day.

(there are probably trappist monks living in complete isolation at the top of mountains in the desert who would struggle to see fewer than one logo per minute while undertaking their morning routines).

So here's a selection of some of the most interesting ones, including the hubcap from a Morris Minor, lip balm from New York, the Coca-Cola logo on the side of a crate bought in a flea market in Rio, and a tin of Lyle's Golden Syrup, which features the bizarre image of a lion's corpse being picked-over by bees*.

*apparently a biblical reference, as is the company's motto - "Out of the strong came forth sweetness". Wikipedia is useful for something!

Chip Kidd & The Cheese Monkeys

2009-11-23T04:14:00.000-08:00

This week I've been reading The Cheese Monkeys, debut novel by all-American book jacket designer Chip Kidd. The novel presents the semi-autobiographical tale of the beginning of Chip's college life, and his transformation from naive comic-book-enthusiast to graphic-design-wunderkind comic-book-enthusiast. It includes some sharp, and very funny, observations on the creative process and the college environment:

"On the first day of class, the Visual Arts building reclined before me like an old brick whore, egging me on to show her one, last, good time."

Also featured are Himillsy Dodd, a kind of super-cynical art chick who sounds great on paper but would most likely be intolerable in real life, and "shock-prof" Winter Sorbeck, the sociopathic tutor with whom our hero falls in love. Sorbeck is described as looking like Gary Cooper, circa High Noon. Here is an image of Gary Cooper, and one of Chip below it:

...see what he's done there?

Through his work at Knopf, Chip has become extremely well know, and although John Updike (for whom Chip has designed several jackets) once called his designs "monstrously ugly", he remains widely respected. Some of the designs are a bit ugly, and he can be a bit mannered in his use of imagery (enough with the circa-1950s comic books!) but there's a conceptual nugget at the heart of most of the designs that makes them successful nevertheless. There are a couple of good interviews with Chip in Seeing & Writing 3, and Identity Theory, and here are images of some of the jackets that made him famous:

GDF project: Oxfam, the brand

2009-11-19T10:42:00.000-08:00

I won't go into great detail here, but I've decided to side-step the dubious politics of smaller Pressure Groups such as the Countryside Alliance and Fathers 4 Justice (seriously, these guys are just plain wrong. Just have a look at their self-congratulatory FHM-tastic website) and select a larger organisation as the Client of my GDF project. This will allow me to explore a wider scope range of possible formats (larger budget = more choice), and provide a consistent brand to work with. I'd like to see how creative I can be while working within the confines of a set of existing brand guidelines, as a designer in a real world, or live project would. So - Hello Oxfam.

Oxfam's sprawling website contains details of their core Health and Education Campaign, as well as other issues such as Climate Change, Gender Equality, and Fair Trade. Also featured are profiles of Oxfam health workers from around globe, some quite nifty reshaped world maps created by Mapping Worlds, and most relevant form me, branding guidelines, which give details of the correct fonts, colour combinations, and use of the their logo:

Letterpress: part 2

2009-11-19T09:20:00.000-08:00

At long last, the conclusion of our letterpress induction project. As you can see, we adopted an "ambitious approach" (Alex's description, translates as: "they don't know what they're doing, oh God why me???") with regards to the colour scheme, with a fade between two shades of green for the word "GREENER", and a silver and green blend for the smaller text. It took a few attempts to get right, but I think the finished print works. Well done, team.

Fuck Buttons

2009-11-19T02:37:00.000-08:00

To celebrate the release of electro-noise duo Fuck Buttons' superb new LP, Tarot Sport, here's a selection of their cover artwork, created by band member Benjamin John Power. Lovely stuff. The progression from the 8-bit graphic influence of the artwork from their first album (top) to the more photoshop-y covers of their new material follows the progression of their music too. I found the image at the bottom in an editorial about the band, and while I'm not sure if it's one of Benjamin's, but I think it fits well with the other images.

Periodic Table of Type

2009-11-18T14:53:00.001-08:00

I found these images of a periodic table of type at Steven Heller's The Daily Heller blog. Produced by a guy who calls himself Screenprintedbymatt, there are larger images available here. Matt had planned to produce and sell them as a limited run, but discovered someone else had beaten him to the idea.

Matt's table certainly looks better than the one by the Squidspot guys (in fact most of their work is pretty hideous) but theirs is at least more informative, with the inclusion of designer and year of production. The ranking system is based upon surveys conducted by several other websites, more information on that here.

Wordle + $19 Dollar Logos: The End of Graphic Design

2009-11-18T12:18:00.001-08:00

Wordle is a website that creates automatic "word clouds" from your own text, a bit like how with Bablefish you can translate text into a different language. Above is one I made using the lyrics to Prince's Gett Off (though the little fella refuses to allow his music onto youtube, so this link is to a clip of Hilary Swank doing a karaoke version in the film P.S. I Love You. Don't rush out to see it.) Wordle reduces the creative process to the push of a button, just as Bablefish reduces entire languages in the same way. Of course, just because you can "translate", doesn't mean you can actually speak another language. And Bablefish's translations are notoriously, er, bad.

Here's that first paragraph translated into French and back again:

Wordle is a Web site which creates the " automatic; clouds" of word; of your own text, a little as the way in which with Bablefish you can translate the text in a different language. In top one is that j' made using the texts with Prince' ; S Gett with far (although the small type refuses to allow its music on the youtube, thus this bond is with staples of Hilary Swank making a version of karaoke in l' love of book per square inch of film you. Don' ; T precipitate outside to see it.) Wordle brings back the creative process to thorough the d' a button, just like reduced Bablefish of the whole languages in the same way. Naturally, just because you can " ; translate" ; , doesn' ; T mean that you can really speak another language. And Bablefish' ; the translations of S are manifestly, heu, bad.

See what I mean?! Now imagine the same thing happening when translating text into visuals. Wordle seems to provide a way of being "Creative" and "Visual", without having to understand or be either. I can imagine this kind of thing would be very popular in pitches within the boardroom...

Here's one from the Tory-blogging-hub that is Conservative Home, and another (taking the Bible as its subject!) from from St Mary's United Methodist Youth, or SMUMCYOUTH:

Perhaps the boardroom exec's (or their flunkies) is exactly who Wordle is designed for, and I shouldn't get upset about it. But then I can't escape the feeling that it, or other online tools like it, will eventually be harmful to the Graphic Design Industry. We had a discussion in VCT a couple of weeks ago about the recognition and acknowledgement of expertise that Graphic Designs receive as professionals. Not nearly enough, we agreed! The problem being that "Graphic Designer" is a job title that only emerged fairly recently (1950s, or there abouts), so the role doesn't have the heritage possessed by, say, silversmiths or architects. There's no Guild of Graphic Designers to hand-out licenses or certificates of competence.

So, give people the power to create something quickly and without any thought or expense and will they run wild with it, ruining the party for everyone else? Maybe not. Look at the proliferation of £10 logo websites, such as the very straight-forward 19DollarLogos.com:

Would you buy a logo from a company who's own logo looks like that? Credit to them at least for standing by their product. Perhaps someone with not much money and no sense of pride in their own company would be persuaded by arguments as compelling as this -

"FACT 1: In majority of cases the initial logo idea is usually the best.

FACT 2: The more revisions you make, the less professional result is."

...er, okay. Well, at least their work is consistent. In fact, many of their logos look like they could have been automatically generated using drop-down menu parameters. Take a look at this one, where they appear to have spelt "mom" wrong:

Anyway, the point I was eventually getting round to is that plenty if these websites exist quite happily alongside the likes of Wolff Olins. They're at different ends of the food-chain. VERY different ends.

100 Bill Murrays: Part 2.

2009-11-18T11:56:00.000-08:00

Okay, another 30 if these damn things out of the way. Less than half left to complete. I've cheated a bit this week and printed off some cut-out element sheets, from images I looked for online. Actually, I thought about this for quite a while and I don't think it is cheating, I'm just "using the available resources". So what do we have?

Rhythm: employing the old fold'n'cut technique.

Humour, perhaps? This is not just because I like Garfield. Bill Murray actually provided the voice of Garfield in the live action/CGI film and it's sequel, Garfield 2.

Texture (though it's not real wood. You have to imagine it is.)
Repurposing? I don't think I've done any of those yet.
This could be Editing, or Composition. Jack Nicholson, of course, from the famous bar scene in The Shining. By this point in the film he had long ago started talking to himself, so it's no surprise to see three Jacks lined-up for a drink here.
Same scene, different cast. Look how similar they are!
...and same guy, different movie. This is Bill Murray as Steve Zissou in Wes Anderson's film of the same name.
Is this wearing thin yet? Bill Murray again, in the same set-up this time, but with better company, in Sofia Coppola's Lost In Translation. I think I've given up for now on deciding which theme to put these under.
Like a well-oiled machine...
Okay, I know this one, this is definitely REPURPOSING!

And the final one for now, the three characters and the beer reduced to RGB blobs.

www: the basics

2009-11-18T11:03:00.000-08:00

The other day David gave a tutorial in the basics of web design. We used Freeway and Dreamweaver to set up files and create two pages, with buttons to navigate between them. There are short instructional films on setting up a domain name, as well as basic tutorials in both programmes, on his Doing Graphics site.

I'm also starting a short course in Dreamweaver at City Lit in a couple of weeks. I've got absolutely ZERO experience in web design (I'm at the same stage as your dad, when the new video player has just arrived arrived, and he's trying to feed the cassette in sideways), so David's workshop was a timely introduction. Everyone* keeps saying how important it is to have examples of work online already, so I'm going to bring forward my own deadline for setting up a portfolio site to the New Year.

*The latest person being Toby Leigh, a freelance illustrator who gave a talk today about his experiences in business. His work's very professional-looking, and certainly commercial, but I'm far keener on the info-graphic-parodies he produces under his alter-ego guise of Tobatron:

Erik Spiekermann Arial/Microsoft rant

2009-11-16T09:36:00.000-08:00

Here's a clip from the extras section of the DVD of Gary Hustwit's film Helvetica, with typographer Erik Spiekermann ranting about how much he hates Arial and those "mean bastards" Microsoft...

What a legend.

Saul Bass: Alive and Well

2009-11-16T02:24:00.000-08:00

So what is it with the exclamation mark in the title of Steven Soderbergh's new film, The Informant!..? Anna Pickard complains in The Guardian of the unnecessary deployment of such superlative punctuation, but personally I think it's spot-on. The listing of all three films from the Ocean's series - "From the Director of Ocean's 11, 12 and 13" - is similarly over-done, but to great effect. Combine these details with a

Saul Bass homage poster, in which

a middle-aged-looking Matt Damon is ridiculed by his own shadow, and the film sits neatly within the

current retro-screwball-comedy-revival, as spearheaded by George Clooney and showcased by the Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading.

Upcoming Oscar-contender Precious uses the same aesthetic to darker means, while Spike Lee's Clockers took Bass' image from Anatomy Of A Murder and ran with it, right out the door.

James Houston video good mmm.

2009-11-15T11:19:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of great films by recent Glasgow School of Art graduate James Houston. James has also recently made a bigger budget promo for Frightened Rabbit's Swim Until You Can't See Land, but while that features a innovative use of the humble maglite, it lacks the low-budget retro charm of this earlier effort for Official Secrets Act, or the effective huh??!-factor of this MTV promo. Enjoy.

Spin: branding the LOGO book

2009-11-15T11:17:00.000-08:00

Patrick Eley and Ian Macfarlane of Spin gave a talk last week on some of their recent studio projects, including work for West-end gallery Haunch of Venison, and new self-initiated publishing project Unit Editions. The project that particularly stood out for me though was their design of Michael Evamy's book on logo branding for publisher Laurence King. Their approach was to reflect the content of the book by creating a brand identity for it. Early ideas included a cover spread of small reproductions of featured logos, much like the that which appears inside the dust jacket of the finished design, and a more detailed logo derived from the title of the book, which was rejected for looking too plausible and generic.
Black and white reproduction throughout most of the book, enables the reader to concentrate upon differences in form without the distraction of brightly-coloured logos leaping off the page. The use of a tight grid complements a navigational system that allows the 1,300+ logos to be divided into 75 categories without appearing cluttered or fussy. And the logo chosen for the title itself performs extremly well - the blacked-out shapes suggest an interchangeable identity, which represents potentially all and yet none of those contained within, and a black dot performing as a stand-in for the trademark symbol, itself a logo indicating the legality of brand ownership.

Hand-painted signs of Guatemala

2009-11-15T10:50:00.001-08:00

This summer I took the opportunity to visit Guatemala, as my last proper holiday in advance of the impending poverty of studenthood. Guatemala is an incredible place, rich in natural beauty and indigenous tradition, with relatively little influence of US culture, compared to some central American countries.
One particular thing I noticed there was the abundance of these hand-painted signs. They were all over the place! Even the large road-side adverts for multi-national brands such as Coca-Cola are hand-painted. I was unable to get photographs of many of them though, as some of the best examples I saw only from the window of the bus as we sped through rural towns. After graduation (and once I'm out of debt) I plan to go back with take a stock of memory cards and a rented car, and do the job properly.Finally, here's a weird baby-chicken-man mural from the side of a shack in the Caribbean coastal town of Livingston. Livingston is generally quite an odd place - with a crocodile in a swimming pool next to the dock, and one guesthouse built to look like a castle (though it actually resembles a big concrete prison) - but I've no idea what this is all about...

Mr. W

2009-11-14T07:54:00.000-08:00

Nordpol + Hamburg won a Gold Lion Award at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Awards for this film promoting the use of wind-power for German company Epuron. Well done Nordpol + Hamburg!

100 Bill Murrays: Part 1.

2009-11-11T03:55:00.001-08:00

So with just under a month to go, and a new project brief breathing down my neck, I've completed barely a third of the number of collages required. I need to either employ some child slave labour or think up a few more ways of creating collages without thinking too much about them. Here's a selection of some I've made so far:

Narrative. Here I've provided a different setting, perhaps altering the narrative of the image. Have they missed their plane? Do they care, given that they appear to be on a tropical beach? Or are they off-duty pilots?

This edited composition amplifies the loneliness of Billy Murray's character.
Surreal head-tentacles...
Rhythm. Rather than cutting and individually pasting each strip, I left them connected at the top, and laid them concertina-like across the backing card.
This collage - a post-it stuck to the backing card - refers to a different aspect of the process of making the collages. Not too sure which category to put this under though. Narrative maybe?
Contrast. Not the kind of thing you'd expect to hear coming from the mouth of a drunk. Or maybe it is?
Composition. Images removed, with cut'n'paste words standing-in, to describe the content of the image.
Composition again, with the key elements of the image presented as a simple formula.
Editing. This image refers to the editing process of choosing the still from the movie.
Editing again. The focal points of the original image have been removed, but the white shapes in their place are perhaps more visually striking.
Narrative. Speculation over the roles of the three characters. Poor Barney Gumble on the end is a nobody.

Ed Ruscha at The Hayward

2009-11-09T02:46:00.000-08:00

Last week I visited the Hayward Gallery to see Ed Ruscha's 50-year retrospective, and oh boy is is a treat.

Besides the work itself, there are some nice touches, like this billboard-style greets the visitors with introductory information on the exhibit.

Ed studied alongside graphic design students at the California Institute of Arts, worked at a type foundry early in his career, and later even designed his own typeface, Boy Scout Utility Modern (as used in the top image here). I won't bother regurgitating from the press release, so here's an excerpt of an interview with the man himself instead:

Cheestrings

2009-11-09T02:00:00.000-08:00

Spot the difference:

The recent news of Cadbury's recent rejection of Kraft's hostile takeover bid reminded me of the bus stop ads that came out a while ago to promote the rebranding of freakish children's dairy product Cheestrings. The ads bore an uncanny resemblance to the long-established Cadbury's Dairy Milk branding, both in the purple and white colour scheme, and the "glass of real milk" imagery.

Now, consider that the people behind the Cheestrings rebrand are advertising golden boys Fallon, who also produced the recent Cadbury's Glass And A Half Full Productions, featuring the gorilla, the kiddie eyebrows, and the airport trucks. Although there's nothing much yet to promote the Cheestrings-connection on their slightly creepy rustling flash website, I get the distinct impression that Fallon are operating above the law here.

And weirdly, although the Cheestrings product is unrelated to Kraft, there has been speculation that Cheestring producers Kerry foods may benefit from the current buy-out wrangling with an opportunity to consolidate their own portfolio of cheese-based products...

...this is too much, my head is hurting. Here's an Eastenders remix of Fallon's Cadbury Gorilla ad:

PDF makin'

2009-11-06T00:59:00.000-08:00

Here's the PDF that Daniel, Adam, and I created in the all-day PDF tutorial last week. We used a 5-column grid, Univers regular and bold in 9 and 20pt, and a key-line in the top left corner as a consistent feature across all three pages. Our choice of images could have been better, and there's the glaring error in the first paragraph of the conclusion, where our carefully placed soft returns were disrupted by an accidental squeezing of the text box. In our defence, like every other group, we were very pushed for time.

The conclusion reads:

The Image Workshop focused upon the relationships between image and text elements within a design, and how varied combinations of both alter the message presented to the viewer.

We explored this through a series of 2-minute collages, each one based upon one of 10 themes - composition, editing, contrast, rhythm, texture, repurposing, juxtaposition, surrealism, narrative, and humour.

We were encouraged to work quickly, bypassing the usual decision-making process, and introducing a random element to the imagery.

A second exercise took this further, as Darren asked us to devise and use a system to produce as many collages as we could within 20 minutes.

Here are some unfinished layouts from this week's PDF/InDesign sessions with Jo. These feature text-styling, master-page elements, sequential page numbering, They're all based on a 5-column grid, and are set with various weights of News Gothic and Myriad Pro. The images are a a mixture of some bits of my work, and a few random pictures (that's not my dog, though I sort of wish it was)...

Finally here's a PDF I made of the VCT text about Process and Collage. A 4-column grid this time, with Univers again. I'll make hundreds of PDFs over the next couple of years alone, and I'm sure I'll look back at these layouts and bow my head in shame, but then I think it's important to be able to see progress. At least that's what I'll tell myself then.

Monumental Type

2009-11-04T11:37:00.000-08:00

I mentioned in a previous post the opening credit sequence of the film Panic Room, which sets a foreboding tone for movie with the use of monumental 3-dimensional type, integrated into a sequence images of the buildings of upper Manhattan. The font (I think it's Copperplate Gothic) recalls the early 19th Century stone-carved lettering from the frontages of the societies and banks of the area, and it has an architectural quality appropriate to a film in which a room is the central character.

A film which uses the same technique to similar effect, albeit in a very different setting, is first-time director Duncan Jones' Moon (pictured above). Essentially a 1-man performance by actor Sam Rockwell, the film explores the theme of paranoia and madness as a result of extreme loneliness. As the text floats in the space around Rockwell's character as he works, it resembles a silent companion or invisible friend. Critics have described the film as concept sci-fi in the tradition of Tarkofsky, with a 70s-era retro-futuristic aesthtic. The accompanying publicity poster certainly fits the bill:

Next a couple of works by American painter Ed Ruscha (pronounced Ed Roo-SHAY... I always get that wrong). Ruscha apparently wanted to be a sign painter, but fell in with the wrong crowd. A retrospective of his 50-year career is currently showing at the Hayward Gallery.

Formerly a puppert-creator for psychedelic kids tv show Pee Wee's Playhouse, Wayne White these days creates paintings which sit just on the fun, folksy side of Ed Ruscha's work. With careful rendering of light, shadow and reflection, he integrates 3-dimensional type on to found thrift store paintings of often twee or sentimental landscapes.

Traditional wooden frames recall the canvases' former domestic status, and make them function as objects just as they do as images.

3D workshop: art, advertising... carrots

2009-11-04T09:14:00.000-08:00

Jesse Wine, a fine art sculptor and 2nd year student at the RCA, gave a workshop yesterday on creating narrative using 3-dimensional objects. We looked at the photographed paper environments of Thomas Demand, Erwin Wurm's 1-minute sculptures (above), Tim Noble and Sue Webster's silhouettes and piles of rubbish, and Bruce Nauman's early post-college empty studio performances, not to mention Fischelli and Weiss' The Way Things Go:

(guilty secret: this is almost certainly the wrong thing to say, but I think we just about all agreed that we prefer the Honda advert version)

Another relevant artist, I think, would be Daniel Eatock. Despite a tendency toward bad visual puns, Eatock produces some thoughtful stuff. Works such as these sagging, and counter-balanced book shelves explore his interest in the intrinsic physical qualities of, and relationships between, everyday objects.

The session inspired me to look again at some other artists that were influential to me on my Fine Art BA, such as James Ireland, whose collections of "low" or "non-art" objects resemble something (usually landscapes) from a certain angle and if you squint a bit.

Another artist I took a lot from is Tom Friedman. In the tradition of the readymade, which began in 1917 with Marcel Duchamp's shop-bought urinal, entitled Fountain, Friedman explores the effect that isolating an object within the white space of a gallery has upon the viewer's perception of it. though instead of just presenting the objects as they are, Friedman looks at the fundamental characteristics of an object - What size is this? How does it fit together? - and assembles combinations that defy logic and patience, such as an infinite ring of plastic cups, or a pencil polygon.

I explored similar themes in my own work, by balancing either very large or very small objects, and having a go at replicating a modernist aesthetic with isotonic drinks pouches wedged between concrete slabs.

I remembered as a child baking crisp packets in the oven to shrink them, and tried the same thing with a plastic ruler, resulting in a 27cm-long ruler with 30cm markings just a little out. Another childhood trick - folding a banknote to make the Queen look like John McEnroe (well, it sort of worked...) - inspired a portrait of Charles Darwin as an neanderthal. (The portrait sadly didn't last long, as it was stolen from the wall of a Deptford gallery. Such appreciation!)

There's a fairly clear line between a lot of this stuff to advertising, though I think a lot of it may be coincidental, after all its only playing around with objects, not rocket science. Perhaps it's that disparity between the simplicity of production and the wow-look-at-that pay-off that makes these objects so appealing.

Here are two campaigns - for 42 Below Vodka by The Glue Society, and for Wallpaper Magazine - which use a virtually identical trick of stacking chairs into an arch:

And finally here are some images of the carrot-based sculptures that Ashley and I produced (with very limited materials) during the workshop, starting with a carrot-wasp:

Carrot-henge:
Face with carrot-cigar:
Carrot-wand-extender-thing:
And finally some kind of ropey-architectural model...

Text & Image: Brand Identity

2009-11-04T09:03:00.000-08:00

Faced with the prospect of only a little more than a month now to write my first VCT essay, with still no decision made on the subject, I've decided to narrow my search to the field of logo design and corporate branding. It would be reductive to say that branding involves the production of a single image, in most cases the logo sums up the project and can be used as a staring point for discussion. Ideal for, say, a 1,500 word essay. Here are a few examples I've looked at this week, and first a bit about what got me started on this line of enquiry...

Sean Perkins of London-based studio North gave a lecture one evening last week, in which he not only discussed examples of his company's work, but also showed a couple of "pitch" films, of the kind they use to convince clients their clients to say yes and hand over the money.

Their rebranding of the RAC (shown above, next to the old version) stood out for me as a particularly impressive achievement, given the amount of work involved (including livery for vehicles and uniforms). Sean explained the problem was that for a company which, when it started out over 100 years ago, was at the cutting edge of technology ("it was like they were servicing spaceships"), the RAC's image had grown stale and antiquated, the preserve of old men with life time memberships purchased in pre-war. The bright orange and custom type of the new logo certainly look more like they belong on the side of a spaceship than a Morris Minor, and membership shot through the roof as a result.

Rebranding the Tate Gallery in 1999, Wolff Olins applied an amorphous treatment to a custom font, and dropped the prefix "The" from the name, successfully creating a more contemporary feel to an institution founded over 100 years ago. The result is a coherent and flexible solution that could be applied across a range of media and according to the needs of each gallery.

Like the RAC and the Tate, mental health charity Mind found themselves with too many disparate elements, and an out-dated and inappropriate identity. The dove motif of their old logo was deemed too Christian for a modern organisation with a pan-cultural audience, and has been eradicated so thoroughly that I've not been able to find an example of it online. The solution presented by Glazer in 2004 is friendly and accessible*, and employs an effective visual metaphor - the scribble communicates the confusion, frustration, and perhaps creativity of mental ill-health, from which comes the organisation's name in hand-drawn script. Glazer describe the logo as "reﬂecting the organisation’s mission to help its users create answers and solutions to complex problems". As with the RAC, the success of the rebrand was dramatic, with annual donations increasing from £8 to £17 million.

*According to Wikipedia (yeah okay, okay..), the name was changed from upper to lowercase in the mid-90s, presumably to project a friendlier and less austere image.

Produced around the same time as Mind's new logo, homeless and housing-equality charity Shelter received a revamp courtesy of Johnson Banks. The simple insertion of the instantly and universally recognisable peaked roof shape into the letter "h" sign-posts a whole series of connotations, and also makes a personal connection to the viewer by allowing them viewer to make associations with their own idea of "home".

Worth noting is that the Johnson Banks website actually contains quite a good blog, including this post on logo design and Michael Evamy's useful and aptly-named guide Logo.

Of course the logo that has swallowed up the greatest number of column inches in recent years would be another by Wolff Olins', this time for the 2012 London Olympics. Commissioned at a cost of £400,000, and met with public outrage upon its release in 2007, it may be that this is the most sensible subject for the essay, simply because so much discussion already exists, and there are so many questions to be asked about it, staring with: WHY?

There's not enough space to go into any real discussion about the logo here, but my first impressions are of it as a kind of bad-on-purpose-in-a-funky-urban-dad sort of thing. Horribly awkward, and self-consciously zany, just awful really. But it does stick in the mind, and everyone recognises it.

Font Game

2009-11-04T07:46:00.000-08:00

How about a quick and painless way to test your skills in font identification? Have a go at ilovetypography's Font Game. I surprised myself by fluking a score of 27 out of 34. Perhpas it's not so "rather difficult" after all...

Designer vs Client

2009-11-04T05:18:00.001-08:00

Please excuse the language, but this is very funny:

...is this what we're letting ourselves in for?!

VCT collage: System

2009-10-30T01:44:00.000-07:00

A description of our collage-based VCT session in 257 words:

Briefed as a group to create five newspaper collages in relation to the word "system", we chose to focus upon five different daily publications - The Evening Standard, Metro, London Lite, The Mirror, and The Guardian - and highlight the differences between them. We set aside the most obvious elements of headline, image, and content, and concentrated instead upon the underlying grid systems that define the structure of the page. To expose the grid we removed all content from the page, leaving only the margin and gutter spaces that lie between the text-blocks and images.

We decided early-on that it was important to employ a systematic approach to the creation of our collages, so that our work methods would reflect the theme of the exercise. To this end, we each produced a cut-out from a page of our chosen title, before collaging them one on top of another to create the single image pictured above. Overlaid in this manner the differences and similarities between the grids of each newspaper became apparent.

We found there were more similarities than differences - all the newspapers seemed to use a 5-column grid, with the bottom fifth of each page separated for an advert or body-text. The Guardian, as the only publication here to be traditionally a broadsheet rather than a tabloid, is a larger format and contained a higher proportion of text columns.

To further investigate, we could compare pages from a wider selection of newspapers, and perhaps look at historical examples of how grids may have changed over time.

Conclusion on this exercise:

I soon realised that the guideline of 150 - 250 words in which to describe the exercise doesn't provide much room for waffle. I found that a re-wrote most of the text, opting for more straightforward descriptions - a more matter-of-fact approach, you could say. The 1,500 word-limit for our first term VCT essay is pretty strict too, so I'll bear this in mind...