Noisy Decent Graphics

Urban Spam

I'm not sure if this is what Russell meant when he talks about Urban Spam but this story from Brand Republic is certainly "oppresive commercial clutter".

British Airways staff have reacted angrily after Virgin Trains staged a guerrilla marketing event on one of its planes. A Virgin team, including a dwarf wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the line "Shorter journey times on Virgin Trains" and a man in a chef's hat promoting its breakfasts, boarded an early-morning BA flight from Manchester to London. A Virgin spokeswoman said stewards wanted to stop its team boarding the plane. One tried to prevent passengers seeing the slogan T-shirt by standing in front of it. "It is good to see Virgin has realised the fastest, most efficient way of getting its employees from Manchester to London is on the BA shuttle," said a BA spokeswoman.

I love a bit of guerilla, but this would just piss you off. The flight is a short 40 mins, the plane is cramped, your hungry, you're in the middle of a stressed day, you've had to fight your way through the airport and now you're faced with a living breathing marketing dwarf.

I think that would just send you over the edge.

Seems like Virgin Trains are gunning for that London - Manchester route. That's what all this was about.

Microsoft makes ammends?

I spotted this, this morning at Waterloo. To make a mistake on an ad is unforgivable. For a company with a budget the size of Microsoft to make a mistake like this is even worse. To make a mistake like this on an ad about Microsoft Office is...

Create a great CV 4

If you rang a prospective employer, you wouldn't say,

"Erm, umm, yeah, have you got any junior design jobs ?"

would you? No, good. I didn't think you would. I get lots and lots of phone calls like this and it pisses me off no end. You see, I'm employing you for your communication skills and that means being able to talk to people, being able to speak clearly and being able to think of a cleverer approach than, 'do you ahve any jobs'.

So here are some tips for that phone call:

1. Be confident, be clear, be friendly and don't be scared.

2. Research, research, research, "I've been looking at your consultancy for a while now, I love that X you did for MTV last month..."

3. Flattery will get you everywhere, "I love your website / your companies approach / your work / that article you wrote the other day".

4. Be realistic. "I know you probably get loads of phone calls like these but I wonder if I could come in and have a look around the studio / I wonder if I could come and help out in the summer".

As ever, I hope that helps.

A little challenge

A little challenge for all your clever communications thinkers out there.

Can you make one word out of the letters in the phrase 'new door'?

Answers below please. I'll reveal the answer in a bit.

Night time at the Tate Modern

What's your url?

Had a very interesting chat with one of the Design Council directors last night.

He asked what the company I worked for was called. Then he asked for the url. "Oh that's unusual, a design company where the url is the same as the company name."

Deep breath.

I launched into a big speech about stupid fucking design company names, StrawberryFrog, Nude Brand Creation, Dave, Voluntary United Group of Creative Agencies, An Agency Called England et al.

Then he asked if I thought it was important that your company was easy to find on Google.

Deep breath.

I launched into a big speech about stupid fucking design company names, StrawberryFrog, Nude Brand Creation, Dave, Voluntary United Group of Creative Agencies, An Agency Called England et al.

While we're on the subject, Voluntary United Group of Creative Agencies. Every time I hear that I want to cry. "Good morning, Voluntary United Group of Creative Agencies, Tracey speaking, how can I help you this morning?" All the fucking drugs in the world couldn't make this sound like a good idea.

In my dreams I imagine some ballsy CEO listening to a presentation about how his brand doesn't fit in with todays "Web 2.0" age. How his "brandscape" is losing him money. How he needs to spend some sizeable cash to rebrand. CEO listens quietly, pours a glass of water. Leans back in chair.

"But you're called Voluntary United Group of Creative Agencies, so what the fuck do you know about branding?"

Free First Class Tickets

Brandscape

"The brand landscape; the expanse of brands and brand-related items (logos, ads, and so on) within a culture or market."

Or utter nonsense made up word. More wisdom here.

"News 24 wins news channel of year"

Mind you, they had some tough competition.

Bloody hell, what a lame awards category.

Wireless Advertising

If you use a wireless hetwork you will appreciate the brilliance of this advert for an IT Support guy. Fucking genius.

I won't spoil it with any images, just follow the yellow brick link my friends.

Arsenal and Liverpool hierarchy

I think this is a really good example of information design and has lessons for all us designers. I’m going to describe why in a bit.

But first I want to set some terms of reference. Firstly, I’m going to presume this was not crated by anyone with any design training at all and secondly I’m not going to eulogise about the intricacies of the design. It’s a pub sign, after all.

I saw this on Tuesday afternoon in a snowy Guildford. Take a look at the hierarchy inherent in this notice. The date and time are in the same place every time and are written in a basic black. The most important information (the teams) are bigger and use colour. The bit which is most likely to attract people in to the pub (the English teams) stands out in red. The one key bit of information that differentiates the two signs (upstairs or downstairs) stands out precisely because all the other elements are in the same place.

Very simple, but effective.

How many pieces of information have you seen, like this, but confused with flying footballs, curly fonts and funky colours. This sign lets me know, quickly, that this pub is showing both games, one upstairs and one downstairs.

This was not produced by a designer, just by someone with an inherent understanding of information (they probably don’t realise they have those skills and like I said, I'm not going to eulogise about the intricacies of the design).

As a designer I think hierarchy is one of the most important things you can master, especially in these times of an emphasis on usability. A good designer can make anything look good work and well with one colour and one font. And a hierarchy will help you achieve this. All the great examples of design, Beck’s Underground Map, Muller Brockman, use hierarchy to great effect.

Bad kerning

Very, very bad kerning from Thompson Holidays. Tut, tut.

Brandwidth

Oooh one of my favourites this. Brandwidth. According to our friends at Word Spy it means "The amount of brand recognition enjoyed by a product or service".

According to our friends over at planet Earth that's normally called brand value.

New category - Brandsphemy

Today, I'm going to start a new category. It's going to be called Brandsphemy. That is intended to be deliberately crap, cheesy, hard to say and bad English - all at the same time.

In case you hadn't guessed it's an awful hybrid of two words, brand and blasphemy. It perfectly sums up the phenomenon I'm going to be talking about in these posts. The awful trend adding a descriptive word to the end of brand in the hope of inventing some amazing new buzz word or insight. And so, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Brandsphemy which means:

"A contemptuous or profane act, utterance, or writing concerning branding."

I admit some are better than others, but most of them are simply lazy attempts at communicating a weak point.

(I've just done a quick Google for Brandsphemy and nothing comes up. If you are reading this post days, months or even years after it was written click up this link to see if it remains that way.)

Undress

This lovely lighting is in Selfridges in the women's lingerie section. I hope (but I'm not certain) that it's by the entrance to the changing rooms.

This website might make it seem like I spend all my time in Selfridges, which is untrue it's just that they have bloggable stuff in there.

Visitor: World Trade CenterDate: September 11 2001

These stunning set of images are from a new press campaign for BBC World.

This one is Stephen Evans' visitor pass to the World Trade Centre on September 11th 2001 (he had a meeting there when the planes struck). What an amazing piece of history. If you want to know how to create drama on a page, this is it. Breathtaking.

John Simpson's flak jacket form Iraq.

Emily Buchanan's notebook from Zimbabwe.

Beautiful, heroic, powerful. Take a look at the full ads here.

90% of the world's population have never made a phone call

826 million people on earth are undernourished

Earth from the air is closing down

Simply can't think of an appropriate title for this 5