Noisy Decent Graphics

Blip?

What did you think to my kerning homework?

Nice homemade typography

Seen in the window of an Oxfam shop.

SCALES WEIGHTS WEIGHING MACHINES

"Every great designer I've ever met has gotten respect the old fashioned way, by earning it."

Great post on the harsh realities of being a working graphic designer by Michael Bierut, head of Pentagram in America. 

The Famous Rob Mortimer

I've never met Rob Mortimer. But I feel like I know him, which is the brilliant thing about the internet I s'pose.

Thanks Russell.

He's a planner, but he hasn't got a job in advertising and he wants one. He writes this blog and he leaves endless cleverish, sensible, witty comments on various planner, marketing type blogs. From what I've read he sounds like a worthwhile person to have around. And that's all you can ask for.

Now Rob @ Cynic has started a petition to get Rob A Job. That's a bit on the wanky side for my liking, but I love the sentiment.

Rob Mortimer - worth an hour of anyone's recruitment time.

Long overdue answer to Will's question

"How can Account Management, Planning and Creative work better together to both develop and sell big communications ideas?" (1)

Or

* How can we improve efficiency? (2)
* How can we ensure that 'big ideas' are allowed to flourish/be sold? (3)

Many others have already written on this, so I'll try and write some new stuff.

(1) Have you heard of a Peak Performing Organisation? It sounds like bollocks but, quickly, it's the reason why the Brazil football team are always brilliant even with different players and managers even in different decades. Ditto for the New Zealand Rugby team. It's also probably why Volkswagen have always had great ads. Essentially, everyone believes in the same goal and they're determined to get there.

This is how account management, planning and creative can work better together. Believe in making great work. No passengers here.

(2) Communicate better. Break down walls. Don't covet your ideas. Share. Be open source. Ensure tasks aren't being duplicated.

(3) Like pretty much everyone else, I don't think good ideas are sold. They sell themselves, although they often need an account man to tell the story of the idea and convey the thinking, effort etc that went behind the ad. But, how can you work better to sell better? Do better ads.

Sorry if that was a bit short, Will.

Long overdue kerning homework

And so - kerning. Around two weeks ago the Vice Chancellor of the Account Planning School of the Web set me the following assignment.

Here's your chance to educate the rest of us. I would like a really detailed explanation of why that's true ('enjoying' is a difficult word to kern). With lots of examples. Show your working.

I've heard about kerning all my life, kind of understood it, in the way that people think they kind of understand relativity. But I'd like to actually understand it.

What is kerning?
I think it's a good idea to start with a definition of kerning. In a nutshell, kerning is the act of changing the spacing between individual letters.

Or to be a bit for more formal answers.com says "In proportional spacing, the tightening of space between letters to create a visually appealing flow to the text. Letter combinations, such as WA, MW and TA, are routinely kerned for better appearance."

There is such a thing as the Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers and they say this:

(NB: Kerning is different from tracking which is making the same alteration to all the letters in one word.  That's important because a lot of people think they're the same. They are not.)

Bad kerning
Normally kerning is only noticeable when it's done badly. Like here:

or here

In the mid nineties people used to say that print was dead. (Or if not dead, dying at least. A bit like people keep telling me that advertising is dead. Sorrell must be having sleepless nights.) The same people also used to say that the grid is dead and all the old typographic rules were redundant. This came about largely because the Apple Mac meant that you could try, literally, hundreds of different arrangements of type in a few seconds. You see, you couldn't do this with old, big, metal blocks of type.

Neville Brody and David Carson are the two most famous designers from this era, Carson even wrote a book about it.

See also the Carson designed Raygun, any issue. I'm telling you all this because this era (and by implication the Apple Mac) is largely responsible for a lot of the bad kerning you see today. The craft has been lost.

Why kern at all?
More people probably 'track' rather than 'kern' these days, because the software makes this easier. Originally you would kern something to make the legibility better, nowadays I suspect that most people kern so they can fit more words on a page. If you make the kerning a little tighter on a paragraph of say 200 words, you might be able to squeeze another 10 or 20 words in. This can be vital.

Why 'enjoying' is a hard word to kern
I probably should have said that enjoying is a word that needs kerning, rather than it's a word that is hard to kern. (Wikipedia use the example WAR which is better.) Let's go back to what I was doing when I wrote that. I had just typed the word 'enjoying' in Times New Roman in Photoshop. Here's how it looked:

The software spaces this automatically to the lowest common denominator. And it's probably fine for most people. It's certainly fine for body text (the 10pt stuff). But for big, display text, in my opinion, it's not good enough.

We need to mess around with the "joyi" bit. Here goes.

That's better. But the O and the Y and the I still leave awkward spaces. Can you see? And that is why 'enjoying' is a hard word to kern.

Good kerning
Good kerning not only looks great but aids legibility (which is linked to usability, and usability is a good thing).

One outlet where I see good kerning everyday, used to aid legibility and save space, is the tabloid press. (The only problem with the tabloid press is that it's really hard to find a front page that won't offend someone, somewhere. This was the least offensive one I could find).

Can you see how they used kerning on that 'Killer Flip Flops' headline?

I also raided my little design library at home to try and find examples of great kerning.

That's not such an easy thing to do, it's a bit like a surgeon looking for examples of great stitching. Anyway, here are some good examples illustrated with bad photos.

Here's some pages from a lovely book by/about Michael Jordan. (There's loads of good typography in general in this book.)

Neville Brody actually did some great kerning.

Pentagram, of course, are very good at kerning.

On another note and with reference to Professors Davies' other course my typography teacher on my Foundation course was facinated by how the kerning was always of a good standard on UK road signs.

With massive thanks to Gaetan Lee.

I can now understand what he meant.

"Be where you are"

There's a great post on Design Observer that I've just found even though it was written in March 2004.

It's called Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School and it's facinating. I'll list the ten below, but it's worth clicking through to read the little justifications.

1. Talent is one-third of the success equation.
2. 95 percent of any creative profession is shit work.
3. If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important.
4. Don’t over-think a problem.
5. Start with what you know; then remove the unknowns.
6. Don’t forget your goal.
7. When you throw your weight around, you usually fall off balance.
8. The road to hell is paved with good intentions; or, no good deed goes unpunished.
9. It all comes down to output.
10. The rest of the world counts.

My favourite is probably number 5. Start with what you know; then remove the unknown.

"In design this means “draw what you know.” Start by putting down what you already know and already understand. If you are designing a chair, for example, you know that humans are of predictable height. The seat height, the angle of repose, and the loading requirements can at least be approximated. So draw them. Most students panic when faced with something they do not know and cannot control. Forget about it. Begin at the beginning. Then work on each unknown, solving and removing them one at a time. It is the most important rule of design. In Zen it is expressed as “Be where you are.” It works."

This all seems like good advice for the Design is the New Management Consultancy stuff.

30 things about printing and ideas and stuff

Here's an interesting thing.

Actually it's an interesting PDF. "30 things about printing and ideas and stuff" was written by Marcus Brown from Peschke. Peschke is a German printer and they've got a blog which is quite interesting. The blog is called Hyper Thinking a Printing Company. I have no idea why.

I think they're trying to break into the UK market, or something. Not sure. But the blog looks quite interesting, and I'm a sucker for a numbered list and a "free" PDF.

I don't agree with everything in the PDF, but I thought I'd list a few that I do agree with.

8. This is very true. Ever time I've visited a printer, they've been desperate to show me their latest Heildelbergs and I'm just not interested. They are big machines with ink in. I know you love them but I'm not interested. Sorry.

14. All my suppliers should be like this. Accountants, lawyers, printers, sign makers, techies, whatever. Know stuff I don't, that's what you get paid for.

17. We've only found this out in the last few years, but printers can be very helpful in a pitch.

21. No comment needed.

25. Not sure I agree with this one. A blog is nice, but I'm more than happy for you to sit watching Heildelbergs all day long.

You can download the PDF here.

Technorati envy

If you're interested in this kinda thing, this blog has shot up the Technorati rankings in the last two months.

On June 11th Noisy Decent Graphics was ranked 461,925 (54 links from 7 sties). Now it's ranked 95,979 (288 links from 33 blogs).

I'm quite pleased with that little jump.


 

China Update

A nice lady from the Government came in yesterday. Very, very interesting.

When I tell people we're thinking of opening an office in China, they look at me like I'm mad. But five minutes later they start nodding and saying that maybe it's a good idea.

The people from the Government don't think we're mad. Looks like I might be going out in November.

Nathan points me to

A great site, written in French, http://www.marketing-alternatif.com. Lots of good pics and links and stuff, a bit similar to The Hidden Persuader.

(Lots of Urban Spam too).

Sheradyn asks

"Hello, I am an aspiring graphic designer looking to go to graduate school in the US or UK and I am wondering if you could recommend any schools I should look in to. I don't really know which universities are the best and I am looking for advice."

I don't really know enough about the US, so I'll talk about the UK.

I used to think St Martin's was good. But I grew out of that. What used to be called the London College of Printing always seem good. Norwich have had great student shows over the last five years. I met some people from Northampton the other day and they seemed like decent fellows.

I don't think there's a stand out college. Go for somewhere that concentrates on ideas, that has read this and that lets you step away from the Mac once in a while.

Anyone else?

Caspian asks

Caspian from Smooth Fluid in New Zealand has asked me a question about pitches.

"Pitches. You win some, you loose some. When you loose you'll usually never hear why, and when you win the reasons given should be taken with a pinch of salt (just read BLINK and the smoke is lifting, that, in addition to a masters in psych, has proved very handy ammunition in this field of our). I digress.

Maybe I slept through a class once. Maybe it should be all to obvious, but presenting one's own work is one of the hardest thing we ever have to do, in particular for awards and the like. What would be really handy is on anonymous person who is on a panel saying what pushed his/her buttons about the presentation (not the work), but so far I
have been unable to locate any.

Do you have any advice? Thoughts? Or maybe you listeners do."

You can read my thoughts on free pitches and pitching in general here.

The main thing about pitching is that you lose more than you win. I reckon you win on average one in every (insert number of people on the pitch). So if you're always up against four agencies you'll probably win one in four.

When you're on a roll you'll win more than that, when you're going through a bad patch you'll win less.

I have sat on the other side once. I was on a pitch panel for a public sector organisation looking to appoint someone to look at their identity. It was only a creds pitch but here's a few of my thoughts.

1. Only half the agencies (there were 6) had laptops. For some reason, the ones with laptops looked better. A lot better.

2. Most people had a standard presentation. This looked shit. Someone had taken the trouble to scan in some current literature from the organisation and they talked about that for a bit. That was brilliant.

3. Everyone was nervous as hell. Even the big, experienced agencies.

4. People showed their work as if it was the Mona Lisa. It wasn't.

5. Some people were just boring.

6. Most people came in two's, but only one agency had taken the trouble to work out who was Bert and who was Ernie. All the others kept interrupting and overlapping each over.

7. Everyone wore a suit, or a least a jacket.

8. Some people forgot to hand over business cards (ooohh that makes me mad).

9. The ones who were the best were the ones who had actually read the brief. You'd be surprised how many people hadn't.

10. In the end we went for the one who inspired us the most.

"I could be a millionaire if I had the money"

Clifford T. Ward

Email Me

I may be annoyingly anonymous, but I do have an email address. [email protected]

I've had loads of interesting emails recently (which I'll try and reply to on Monday) which is brilliant. Favourite topics include links, China and pitches.

Of course, I still love comments. Even more than emails.

No blogging today, I'm off to make some videos and then I've got clients to entertain. Which means I'll probably miss this. I'll make one one day.

Blogging, the internet and life (part 3)

Can’t write about the interweb without giving Russell's new thing a bit of a plug. Him and few chums have set up what they endearingly call a global small business. Open Intelligence Agency will do all kinds of clever, planning type stuff.

I love the new identity. It really feels un-agency like which is great. It feels flexible, witty, cute (in a good way), friendly and different. All good things for an identity to be. It was done by Stefan at 344 Design.

They don’t have a corporate website, just one html page and four blogs.

Blogging, the internet and life (part 2)

I’m always reading innocent’s and Wieden + Kennedy’s blogs. Both of them are loads better than their main sites. Loads better. So why do they bother with a traditional site? I wish they didn’t.

We’re having this discussion in our office at the moment, so I’m very familiar with the arguments. Part of our website is almost a blog anyway, so why don’t we just have a blog. Just one blog. A blog is searchable, has a nice structure which shows your growth over the years, it has personality and it shows real emotion.

What do you think?

Blogging, the internet and life (part 1)

There are 2 political blogs which I read every day. I’ve mentioned them before.

I wouldn’t normally talk about them (because they’re not about graphic design), but there is a phenomenon emerging which I think is worth talking about here.

Here’s a quick intro. Guido Fawkes is a very satirical, extremely libellous, Private Eyeish blog. The writer is anonymous (like me, ha!) but amazingly accurate. From the Lib Dem leadership election through the Loans for Peeages stuff to Prescott’s pants down, he’s always been spot on with his predictions and always several days before the “dead tree press”, as bloggers like to call them.

Iain Dale’s Diary is less of a mystery. Iain runs Politico's, has stood as a Candidate for the Conservative’s and used to be David Davis’ Chief of Staff. So, obviously Tory biased and very well connected. His blog is nowhere near as funny, not libellous in any way, but just as accurate.

So, here’s the phenomenon. When the “dead tree press” or the BBC mention “internet rumours” they basically mean Guido Fawkes or Iain Dale’s Diary. In particular regarding Prescott’s affair(s) Guido has named 2 other people that Prescott has allegedly had affairs with. The traditional media have come nowhere near naming either person.

Guido held off at first, but then published the names and invited each party to sue. No-one did. The site is registered in the US (as Typepad probably is) and that makes the sueing thing complicated, but still no-one has threatened anything.

Iain hasn’t been anywhere near as bold, but seeing as Guido is anonymous, Iain has been doing the rounds, Newsnight, Radio Five Live etc, talking about political blogs.

Labour’s Spin Doctors have regularly issued statements aimed at discrediting both blogs. They've gone to quite a lot of trouble for a blog, really. Both websites get more hits than the Labour or Conservative main websites. All the major political editors and newsrooms read these sites, which gives them great power. The information which dare not be mentioned in the mass media is widely available to everyone on the internet.

So why is all this interesting to brandy people?

Well, imagine if this happened to a brand. And it hasn’t yet, despite what you may think. What if there was a marketing blog that was so popular it could control the agenda behind the scenes like these guys do. What if blogging (and that’s all it is) was more powerful than the FT or Campaign or Business Week. I mean really more important, not ‘five bloggers sat in a pub think it’s more important’ important. Imagine if one blog had the power to make or break the launch of say, Coke Zero?

What interests me is that there are so many cross overs between political messaging and traditional marketing (West Wing anyone?) that this phenomenon will be coming to a blog near you soon.

Happy Birthday Noisy Decent Graphics

It's this blogs birthday today. Which is pretty amazing.

I've really enjoyed writing it and interacting with the comments. I've become a lot, lot better at writing and more importantly editing. It's made me think about stuff more, which is always good. It's allowed me to play with theories I probably wouldn't have done otherwise.

Here's some highlights from the past year.

1. All the many people who have linked here. Thank you very much.

2. Being quoted on the BBC News website, fairly early on.
http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/2005/12/as_featured_on_.html

3. Being linked to by Design Observer which sent hits through the roof.
http://www.designobserver.com/archives/015709.html

4. Linked to that, my Future Of Graphic Design post which is probably the most comments I've ever had.
http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/2006/06/the_future_of_g_1.html

5. Slagging of Seth Godin (which also saw an upturn in hits).
http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/2006/06/fed_up_with_set.html

6. The Fucking Elle debate, which still rages.
http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/2005/11/fucking_elle.html

7. This little post which probably gets me the most hits via Google.
http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/2005/08/long_glamourous.html

8. Getting the guys from BR&Me to comment on me slagging off their new name.
http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/2006/02/brme.html

9. The Unicycle Parking
http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/unicycle_parking/index.html

10. Having somewhere (useful) to store quotes
http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/quotes/index.html

11. My first exhibition review (which is still really popular)
http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/2005/11/robert_brownjoh.html

I'm going to celebrate with a Gin & Tonic.