Noisy Decent Graphics

Hello Mike

So that's it from me for a bit. Next week it's Mike, all week. Again, I'm looking forward to reading some decent, properly spell checked posts. Play nicely and make sure you comment. Make him feel at home.

I'll see you next week.

Spare an hour of your incredibly valuable, important time

The nice people above are all from Bournemouth Uni. They popped in to the studio yesterday to have a quick look around and ask us a few questions.

I asked them who they were going to see after us and they said no-one. They'd contacted loads of studios but no one else had said they could come and have a look around. Some people (no names mentioned) didn't even reply. That's not very nice is it?

I've heard this before (can't find where I wrote about it) and it really fucks me off. It's just so rude.

Students are always saying to us that agencies never get back to them. Whether it's a short list of questions or a request to come and have a look around, no one bothers to reply.

I know we're not the biggest or the busiest studio in town, but surely everyone (or at least someone in the agency) can spare one hour? Just one little hour.

Let's be realistic. When these guys turned up it was a bit of a surprise as didn't realise it was one o'clock. Consequently I think my first words to them were, "Fuck". I was very busy on Thursday and could have done with having that hour to myself. But you could say that about any day, in any week, in any year. There's always something to do and there's never enough time.

But we enjoyed showing them round and we enjoyed answering their questions. But most of all I enjoyed their appreciation. You could tell it meant a lot to them that someone had bothered to show them round.

And I know the big well known studios get hundreds of requests like this and I know you can't say yes to every one. But you could say yes to one a week, couldn't you?

And you could actually take the time to reply and say no to the others.

Graphic designers not offered much tea in meetings exclusive report finds.

After this grumble, I thought I'd keep a list of all the meetings I attended (externally) in one week and all the beverages I was offered. Here are the shocking results.

Number of external meetings attended: 7
Meetings where beverages were offered: 4
Meetings where that beverage was tea: 2
Meetings where a beverage was requested: 1
Meetings where that beverage was tea: 0

FFS

Vignelli's typography.

Versus David Carson's typography.

All this via Design Observer and NY Mag.

Moscow by Martin Parr

Martin Parr blogs from the 2nd Russian Millionaire's Fair. With pictures. Brilliant.

Guest Writer: Mike Reed

Because of the success of the last guest writer I've gone and asked somebody else to host a week. Some of you (in fact lots of you) probably know the copywriter Mike Reed already.

In case you don't know him, he's a copywriter mainly for graphic design clients. He's been in the D&AD Annual, he's started an agency, he's written for good people like The Chase, The Partners and Howies and he's a member of the brilliant writers group 26 (which is endorsement enough in itself really).

So, next week, from Monday 3rd until Fri 7th he'll be taking the reins. Same rules as Henrietta; he's allowed to write whatever he wants under the broad umbrella of design.

To kick things off he's "planning a to open up the dialogue between designers and writers, and perhaps bring the two a little closer together".

So he wants you to email him and let him know what you love and what you hate about working with copywriters. No holds barred. The good, the bad and the ugly. He's also asked all the people at 26, so it should be good fun.

If you'd like to contribute, please email him mike at reedwords.co.uk.

It's me for the rest of the week and I'll remind you lot about Mike on Friday. I know you're all terribly busy.

London's Christmas lights

London's Christmas lights have recently been not very good.

This year they are good.

There are these lovely colour changing things on Regent Street sponsored by Nokia and created by w+k. Much more about that over on the consistently good w+k blog. Ideally I'd like them to be a bit bigger, but that's being a bit picky. Incidentally they are nothing whatsoever to do with Apple, I just thought that made a cool photo.

There are these paper chain things on Carnaby Street which look fab in the bright sunlight. Seven Dials in Covent Garden are always worth a mention too.

And there's this graphic Christmas tree device from John Lewis.

Not that exciting, but they've used it well in the stores.

Especially as it gets more abstract.

There's still lots of dross around, obviously. Top of the list is this lacklustre effort from Oxford St which is an uninspiring advert for this rubbish from Disney.

Home truths.

"If you were cooking steak at home and you dropped it on the floor, you'd pick it up, scrape off the dust and put it back on the grill.

If you saw that happen in a restaurant you'd scream and shout, insult the waiter, ask to speak to the manager and threaten to sue."

Gordon Ramsay.

The Guardian Animals featured in The Guardian

Remeber Wil who cut out all those animals from The Guardian posters?

The Guardian did a big double page spread on it on Saturday. More over here from Wil. Everything digital becomes real and so on.

Pantone Xanthophyll

It's been a good autumn for colour in London.

Apparently this is something to do with warm days and long frosty nights (the sunny early autumn days have produced large amounts of sugars within the leaves whilst the dry weather has allowed these sugars to become highly concentrated).

There's a good BBC video on the subject here.

But whatever, enjoy.

Via Swissmiss

Russell's leaves

 My leaves

Stereoscopes

Tom and I popped down to the Photographers Gallery last week for a signing of the new Magnum book. I didn't buy a copy, and I should have done. I should have done. And I could have got it signed by 5 or 6 Magnums. Damn.

Still. Whilst we were there they had an exhibition called Seeing Is Believing, which is about all sorts of things, but which has some fantastic old stereoscopes.

I don't have any big point to make here, I'm not advocating the arrival of wifi enabled stereoscopes or anything. I'm just saying that old stereoscopes are a good thing. If a little fragile and fullstopless.

Commissioned by Tower Hamlets Council

Tom went to have a look at this the other day. Great use of double yellows. (Triple yellows over here.) Apparently it's huge. Look at the parking sign on the lamp post for an idea of scale.

Anyway, he also spotted this.

That can't be right, can it? We don't think it is. What do you think?

id8 Business Cards

We've just designed an identity for my brother's company in Chicago. The business cards have this particularly nice rainbow foil.

"Tell people something they know already and they will thank you for it. Tell them something new and they will hate you for it."

Steady on. George Monbiot via David.

Flickr Joke

Sigh.

Amazing Animals

Wil's blog is amazing pretty much all of the time. But he's surpassed himself today.

He's collected all those posters The Guardian did, he's cut out all the animals and he's gonna make wallpaper out of them. Yes, I said he's cut out all of the animals.

More here.

Interesting Sofa

Interesting South is coming along nicely. Lauren has been doing some great stuff with the logotype. She's even put it on a sofa.

Looks cool, doesn't it?

It's really weird (that's the wrong adjective, but you know what I mean) seeing someone take something we've designed and rip it up (that's the wrong expression, but you know what I mean). Weird, but great. It feels right and it looks interesting.

Remember what I said here "It's all there, you recognise it as Interesting 2007, it all fits, it's all on brand... and yet there's no big identity manual, there's no brand manager, there's no marketing plan."

I think the design / branding industry is gonna see a lot more of this kinda stuff in the future. And I'm looking forward to that.

How to get a job at The Design Conspiracy

Lots of people ask me, "How do I get a job in the design industry?". Normally I answer, "Sorry, I haven't got a clue. Sorry."

Sometimes people ask me, "How do I get a job at The Design Conspiracy?". Normally I answer, "Sorry, We don't have any jobs at the moment. Sorry."

But we've just taken on Alex, who's a brilliant designer, and I thought I'd explain how and why we employed him because it sort of answers both questions.

We first heard of Alex in 2004. A client of ours rang and said they'd seen someone talking about us in a D&AD thing. It turns out it was the D&AD Talent Pool website. Alex had been short listed in the London 2012 Bid logo competition and because of this he'd been interviewed by the guys at Talent Pool.

We found the interview and when he was asked what his influences were he'd said, Henry Moore, Mother and us. Yes, us. We were a bit shocked by this (in 2004 there were 3 of us in one room) so we invited him in for a cup of tea.

We loved his work and we really liked him, but we didn't have any jobs going.

He / we kept in touch. Sometimes he would ring and ask if we needed any help. He helped us out during holidays and even at weekends. He came to all the parties.

When we moved into our new studio he sent us this moving in card. By now there were 7 of us.

April.

Tom, Kingsley and Paul.

Rebecca Cox and Emma.

And of course me.

Good isn't it? So when we finally needed another designer there was only ever going to be one choice.

Next time, when someone asks me how they get a job in the design industry I'm just going to point them at this post.

(By the way we're currently looking for a Business Development Manager and some freelance junior web developers. If you fit the bill drop me a line, ben at the design conspiracy dot com.)

The digital world is your friend

That is a picture of me, watching a video I downloaded from the internet of my brother giving a talk at a conference in Las Vegas, on my iPod, on a train journey to Maidenhead.

That's good isn't it? The digital world, my friends, is your friend.

(I'm also reading a horrendous supplement about design that I shall hopefully write about later.)