Noisy Decent Graphics

I hate the way iOS7 doesn't show you the full url

 

 

It just says bbc.co.uk rather than bbc.co.uk/football or whatever. It's confusing and unhelpful. It's an odd choice and appears to have been a victory for style. Sad.

 

26 weeks of Diana's Diner

I've been a big fan of Diana's Diner for many years. Since roughly 2001.

It's near to GDS and I'd recently started going there again. Great place. I came back after the summer holidays and it had closed. And a new sign had appeared.

Let's call this Week 1.

I thought I'd take a picture every week to measure progress. Here's week 2.

 

And yesterday was week 26. Half a year.

Here are the rest of the pictures.

Random is the new black again

I'd forgotten about this site I made. Looks like the domain is going to expire in a few days and I'm not going to renew it, so enjoy it while it lasts.

 

Tom Eckersley at LCC (ends next week)

Very good. You should go. 11 – 29 January 2014, 10am – 5pm (closed on Sundays). Upper Street Gallery, London College of Communication, Elephant & Castle, SE1 6SB

 

I'm on hold to British Airways

"We are experiencing a high level of calls at the moment. If your call is urgent we suggest you call back at another time."

 

20 metre number plate test

 

I love this at DVLA Swansea.

 

From the drafts folder

I've saved up a few half written blog posts and put them together as one loosely joined blog post. If I'd have posted it over the Christmas break it would have been a sort of review of the year. Warning: jumps around a lot.

In praise of Nest
I'm a huge fan of Nest. I think they're one of the most exciting companies around at the moment. Taking the exciting stuff of the last x years and putting it into boring things. Making boring things better. The internet of boring things. I love that they are taking dull but useful and important things and making them much better. A smoke alarm is exactly what clever people like that should be working on. Not shiny things for a niche, smart, clever things for the masses. That's good, that's the goal.

They have had criticism for making a £100 smoke alarm, but that is how they have to start. The price will come down. There is a lot more to come from Nest.

And their marketing is good too. Simple, well crafted. "It should warm you before it alarms you" is a great line with a good visual. Brilliant stuff.

(I actually wrote this last year before the Google acquisition, but in my mind that changes nothing.)

Good + scale, not good + niche
That's what you're aiming for a friend told me. Does what you're working on pass the taxi test. Taxi test? "What do you do mate?" " Oh, I work on X" Has the driver heard of it? Does it make sense? I bet they remember the original Carling Black Label ads... See also; In praise of Nest.

Marissa Mayer / Christoper Bailey / VCs
Christopher Bailey - a designer recently promoted to CEO of Burberry. He had actually been shadowing the old CEO for sometime, so is more than ready to step up.

Marissa Mayer - not a designer in the traditional sense, but someone that understands the design of products in the fullest sense. Not everything at Yahoo! is perfect (see blog post here) but she's doing exciting things. Momentum.

And stuff like this is interesting to me. VCs specifically targeting start-ups founded by designers. Like this one and this.

And John Maeda has joined well known VC Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers as a partner. More here. 

This isn't really a thing, but it's something I'm interested in. I've always been interested in the business, management, spreadsheet side of things.

Which brings me on to "the strategy is delivery" a blog post Mike wrote at the start of this year. It's one of the most popular GDS blogs and keeps getting referred to. It ties in with the point above and has been something I've always been keen to focus design on. What's the point of what you're doing? If you're a designer that doesn't understand delivery then you're just making pictures. And that's OK, but be sure to know the difference and be sure to know which one is needed when.

Beyoncé released an album solely in iTunes.
She announced it on Instagram. Went to number one everywhere. Marketing spend? I know some people at record companies and it seems no-one knew anything about the release date. Not her record company or anyone else's. And they are not happy off about that. Highlights the power and freedom a successful artist who understands digital can weald. Would make me extremely worried if I worked at a record company. Lessons here for others too.

Play is playful play
I've spent a lot of time last year out and about in the UK with people working on government services. Important, but unglamorous things like Carer's Allowance. Trying to use design to make those services better. As I sit on the train reading Tweets from the usual suspects, one thing has really struck me - how would that sound to Maureen in Arcacia Avenue, MIddletown, England? Would that sound like help? Does it make sense or does it sound like jargon. In my opinion, most of it sounds like jargon. Play is playful play is a phrase I just made up. But you know what I mean. We've all done it, I'm sure I have. But next time, ask yourself if this is helping real people make stuff better. Say it out loud and ask yourself what it would sound like outside of zone 1. (Works for smoke alarms.)

GDS won some awards this year (more here)
Winning Design of the Year and a Black Pencil was an odd experience. Design of the Year got by far the most attention, by absolute miles. Francis Maude, our minister, enjoys telling people and you can see it makes sense when he mentions it. Black Pencil? No-one mentions it and I think that's because it's so hard to explain what it is and why it's good. The narrative is too complicated.

To my agency friends, Black Pencil is disproportionatley exciting. It's like catnip. The effect is startling. I remember when Tony D was president of D&AD and he was always saying it should become like a hallmark and it should be on things that have won so that the public get used to seeing it and it would mean something. He was on to something there. D&AD should think about that.

Service designers
I went to service design conference in November and they made a poster about it. I met a lot of service designers this year. As ever I'm wary of all terms (see also Design Thinking, Mobile First) but they are starting to feel like the right sort of people. Less ego, less superstars than other areas of design. Less "we can fix this with more design". More actual doing. More desire to fix things and go outside of design if that's what's neccessary. Good, thoughtful people. They need to do more, have more successful examples, but still - good.

Anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

The form not following the function

 

We got this over Christmas. It's a handy little tool for opening that horrible sealed plastic packaging that's everywhere these days. I have seen life hacks where they recommend you do this with a tin opener, but this tool is better.

It comes packaged in that horrible sealed plastic packaging. 

Something about the product is the service is the marketing and the form not following the function and packaging / marketing not understanding the product. A missed opportunity.

 

New stuff from Newspaper Club

We're working on a bunch of new stuff at Newspaper Club. Expect exciting launches later on this month.

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to talk about it, but you know. Anyway.

I've completed @michaelbierut's 100 days project

I've just finished Michael Bierut's 100 Days Project. Above is the final "design operation" and below is the first. I still like that one.

The full 100 is here on Flickr.

A quick recap. The brief (given by Michael to Yale students) is to do a "design operation" every day for 100 days. I chose to imagine my life was a New York Times Op Ed column and do a little graphic illustration for each column.

It is incredibly hard. Just remembering to do it every day is hard. Finding time to do it with a family and a job is hard. And choosing the 'op ed story' each day was hard. Making them good was hard, but if you wanted to make one hundred good graphics this isn't the way you'd go about it.

 

This project is about process. Michael told me he gives the brief to teach students what work is like and to help them develop ways to cope with that. Repeating a design operation every day whether you want to or not. Doing it when the ideas are flowing and then doing it when the ink has tried up and the computer doesn't work and the client hates everything. Doing it late on the train. And then doing that all over again the next day. That, after all, is what work can be like.

You learn techniques to get you through the days. Little mini systems that get you through the dark days. You let a few duff ones go by. You get good patches. And eventually you get a decent standard you can pretty much deliver all the time. Occassionally you do a really good one.

The one big difference from real work for me, was that you can't easily ask for help and you can't commission your way out of it. Or rather you could but I didn't. I'd like to have tried a week of commissioning illustrators.

I enjoyed it immensely but I'm glad it's over.

For what it's worth here are some highlights and low points.

I think these are my five favourites.

And here are five I'd rather forget.

Days 45 - 51 was the series that worked best for me. I'd like to repeat that.

Day 81 got the most views on Flickr.

Day 21 got the most favs on Flickr.

 

I was happiest with the little techniquie I'd developed by the end. I wrote about that in the 93 days update. 

I wrote about the project as I did it. Here's the original brief + 15 days update + 23 days update + 42 days update + 54 days update.

I woud do it again. Maybe I will. I'd quite like to talk about it somewhere, maybe at a college? And I'd love to set it as a project. I'd better ask Michael if that's OK.

100 days project update: 100 days

 

I've finished! Bigger write up to follow.