www: the basics

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

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

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.

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.

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Spin: branding the LOGO book

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

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

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.

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

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

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: