Noisy Decent Graphics

Boring, boring accounts yawn, yawn

Graham Salmon, writer of a blog called OMB (Owner Managed Businesses) was written about my post What Do Clients Really Want.

His blog is gives "Practical ideas for Owner Managed Businesses - from an accountant". If you run an "OMB" it's well worth a read.

He's written two excellent posts "Where it goes wrong for OMBs - my Top 10 list" and "How to put it all right - My Top 10 remedies". As I agree with pretty much everything he says I thought I'd run through the list with some comments and the ultimate judge, do we do this in our business!

1. Crap financial records
Like Graham says, get a bookkeeper. A proper, professional bookkeeper. Our accountant does our books every month which gives us a fantastically realistic view of the business and ensure there are no surprises come End of Year. 1 point.

2. Putting a heap of private expenses through ‘the books’ (..’just to get the VAT back-honest’)
We don't do this either. We're too virtuous. 1 point.

3. Not working out the profit on a job before it’s started
Oh dear we're guilty of this, we're far too keen to do some exciting work to bother with silly things like profit. 0 points.

4. Not having a formal structure for the business
We have this, all signed and sealed. 1 point.

5. Not having an exit strategy
Hmmm. We don't have an official one, but I think a consensus is emerging. 1/2 point.

6. Not having a marketing plan - or not measuring the results of advertising (particularly in Yellow Pages !)
We don't advertise in Yellow Pages but we do have a marketing/business plan, that we're broadly sticking too. 1 point.

7. Not knowing how much the business is worth
We think about it, but we don't know for certain. I'll ask someone. 0 point.

8. Employing people at low rates of pay because they’re cheap - not necessarily because they’re good.
This is a great point. We don't do this. 1 point.

9. Not delegating.
We delegate. 1 point.

10. Instructing an accountant to prepare annual accounts and then not asking him/her for advice (because it might increase the bill…).
Hahaha I can imagine this happens a lot. Our accountant is a God. He acts as a business advisor and is always right. He tells us lots of uncomfortable things we don't want to hear, but we still listen. 1 point.

7 and 1/2 out of 10. Not bad...

Need your eyes tested?

Don't kill music

Fantastic poster

Great photograph too. Buy one here.

Visual Thesaurus

Been using this for a while now, and it's brilliant. Especialy if you're a visual person but think in words. Or if you're a visual person that needs some words.

It's like some of those mind mapping things, but it seems simpler. Like it's not trying as hard to be clever. It's just a Visual Thesaurus. Like it says on the tin.

How do they do that?

http://interact10ways.com/usa/information_interactive.htm

Brilliant from Barclays

I love this clear, simple thinking.

In the past, banks logos have always appeared here on credit cards.

But now Barclays have designed one with the logo here.

Why?

Because nowadays credit cards are most often seen like this, in Chip & Pin machines.

That's brilliant isn't it? Graphic Design at it's best. I haven't seen any other bank do it. Yet.

Frank Lampard is a priest

This is a picture I took this morning in a popular sports retailer.

Not sure who's responsible for this, but shouldn't someone have noticed that they've ordained Frank Lampard?

"already, today, 30 or 40 of the most visited 100 blogs in the world are Chinese"

Russell Davies

Winner of Designer of the Year

More info from a good minisite that's part of the truly dreadful Design Museum website.

A table without legs

From yesterdays Independent

How much is a first class stamp to Iran?

Someone emailed me today from a library in Iran. They wanted some examples of our work.

Here's a picture of the envelope.

It's a funny old world.

Blogging the D&AD awards (kind of)

As promised here's some pics from the D&AD awards last night.

I had a good time. Didn't win anything, didn't get too drunk. There were a lot of people there, including Jason Donovan who won an award for a hilarious Virgin Mobile Australia ad. Follow the link if you want to hear Jason saying "stop calling my fucking mobile". Brilliant.

Graham Norton hosted and did a good job. He remarked that this was the only awards ceremony he'd ever been too where they have categories that don't have any winners. He suggested they should do that at the Oscars, "And there is no best actress this year becuase none of you were good enough". That sounds like a good idea.

There were very few winners. Only 2 black pencils (or gold, or silver or whatever they call them these days). Bravia won lots which was brilliant, but not a black pencil, strangely. This brilliant, brilliant website from Leo Burnett Canada won a black pencil. Hardly any graphic design won anything. The bloody Guardian redesign won a black pencil. You can see all the winners here.

The food was paella, which was a bit of an insult at £200 a ticket. Still it's probably ironic, or something. The D&AD stuf was nicely designed, here's the menu if that gets you going.

This is what it looks like when you win a pencil.

This is what it looks like if you're presenting.

At the end of the ceremony Dick Powell and Graham Norton had a clapping duel.

Then they went to the D&AD night club.

President's award went to Phillipe Stark.

You didn't realise the awards were so big...

...did you?

Stop

D&AD Awards

We're off to the D&AD Awards in a minute.

We're not nominated for anything, but I'm sure we'll have a good time. I'll post some pictures from the night on Friday hopefully. Meanwhile here's the plan for the evening.

All our clients are women

OK, not all of them, but around 90% are.

I can count on one hand the senior marketeers we deal with who are men. Why is this? We're not a heavily female design agency. We have a female director (which is so rare in UK design it's scary) but that doesn't explain it. Our new business person is a woman, but that doesn't explain it either. Typical make up at a chemistry meeting would be one male, one female I guess. So why all the women clients?

Maybe we're all feminine star signs or something?

Any ideas?

RDINNER

I saw this at the RSA the other day. It's an old menu for the RDI's Annual Dinner.

I'm sure it's an idea lots of people have had, but it's still a nice little idea.

BBH Retrospective (unusually good)

Went to the BBH Retrospective D&AD lecture last night. And it was good. Very good.

John and Nige talked about setting up BBH, international networks, ideas, Levis, Audi, content and they showed some ads. Great iconic ads. They talked about content a lot.

There were lots of people there.

They made some interesting points;

Ideas are what matter, nothing else

Ideas cross borders TM this matters particularly from the global perspective

Ideas cross borders TM also matters re content

The best ideas are the simplest

China / India = important

John hates words, loves pictures

Hates it when a team some to see him with a song or a video and not an idea

Feels it’s harder to see clients face to face because they’re all over the world

All John looks for in new recruits is interesting people

John originally wanted to call the agency Bartle Hegarty Bogle

These D&AD talks can be tedious, no matter how good the speaker, but this one was about as good as you can expect. John and Nige were a good double and act and they spoke interestingly. They told an interesting story (probably told a million times over the web) about how the script for the Levis laundrette ad was originally turned down because the BACC didn’t approve of the Y fronts. So reluctantly they changed it to boxer shorts, BACC approved and sales of boxer shorts went through the roof.

BBH have spawned 9 number one singles, which probably tells you that they know more about content than they realise.

Walking home. Tower Bridge. In the rain. Brilliant stuff.

China

Someone is coming in today from the UK Design | UK Trade & Investment to talk to us about China and UK Graphic Designers and stuff.

I'm looking forward to that.