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You don't see this sign very often, anymore.

Won't be any posting today as I'm out on a photoshoot all day. See you tomorrow.

What do we do?

Just had a meeting with a client who was complaining about her new brochure.

She said the text wasn't black enough.

The text is black. Just standard black. 100 K printed in a four colour process on to pretty standard stock. We tell her it can not be any blacker. She's not convinced. We can't use a different font becuase that would break her company's strict guidelines.

We eventually come to the conclusion that she wants the text in bold. But you can't have a 12 page brochure with all the text set in bold? Can you? (Well you could, but not emanating from this consultancy...)

So what do we do now?

Tyographic Fifties

I’ve spent the best part of this morning trying to photograph this little beauty.

But it’s too early, too difficult and too just not working. So I thought I’d try and find one online.

And then I found the Royal Mint website, which has all sorts of little 50p gems. I love the typographic one (that I was originally trying to photograph) but these are ones are great as well.

Nice aren’t they? Wouldn't it be good if every coin had a different design on the back, that changed all the time.

There are some quite interesting two pounders too, not quite as good but I imagine the two tome effect makes coin designers go weak at the knees.

The typographic 50p is still my favourite.

Neon Women

Some nice signage in Top Shop, Oxford St. Neon is a great medium, normally too expensive for most budgets, so it's nice to see it used on the High St.

Have any questions?

Carter Wong Tomlin

I’ve just been looking at Carter Wong Tomlin’s website. Carter Wong are a great design company, they designed those brilliant Howies display/wardrobes a few years ago.

They also designed that great F1 logo. The one where the space between the F and the speed lines forms a number one. The logo has been in use for over 10 years and would be an asset to any portfolio. However Carter Wong aren’t allowed to show it for “copyright reasons”.

How strange.

"They have no shoes"

"A shoe factory sends two marketing scouts to a region of Africa to study the prospects for expanding business. One sends back a telegram saying, situation hopeless STOP no one wears shoes. The other writes back triumphantly, glorious business opportunity STOP they have no shoes."

The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander

Beautiful and scary at the same time

These incredible images are taken by a photographer called Michael Wolf (no relation).

They're from a brilliant series called Architecture of Density.

The breathtaking images are all of housing blocks in China. You can see more here. Beautiful and scary at the same time.

PS Michael, if you want me to take these images down, drop me a line and I'll happily do so.

Where have all the clouds gone?

I've had to delete the post about Zoom Clouds. The cloud wasn't really working as a post, and I've (finally) managed to add the cloud to the bar on the left. So, to answer your question Russell, it did make me think about what I wrote!

It's been a busy week, but I've finally had the 'last meeting of the week'. And tomorrow we're all off to the Dan Flavin exhibition. I'm looking forward to that.

I hired Jeff Clark

Actually I didn't hire him, but that's the name of his online resumé ihiredjeffclark.com

I can't get as excited about it as Seth Godin does, or these people do, but it's still good. And it's definitely much, much better than all the CV's I get sent. The best thing about it is the name and the ballsy tone of voice.

He is standing out in a crowed market and the fact that I'm writing about it and (more importantly) Mr Godin is writing about it means it's having the desired effect.

Nice one Jeff, and good luck.

Nice signage at the RSA

Spotted last night, some very nice backlit signage listing the names of all the RDI. This replaces the painted names on brown boards which had been there for hundreds of years. I know the old signage had caused the RDI and the RSA trouble for years and years and I also know that Mike Dempsey and his team had agonised over a replacement.

Good solution, in the end.

 

If you're not a graphic designer do you find this appealing?

Saw this in Waitrose yesterday.

Lovely, lovely packaging for a range of spices. This is pure beauty to a graphic designer. All those letter forms, all those colours. But do i only like it because I'm a graphic designer? If you're not a graphic designer do you find this appealing?

On another note, doesn't this look eerily similar to the NewsMap screenshot?

Britain's busiest railway station

Or Britain's coldest, wettest, miserablest station. When I was there anyway.

NewsMap

NewsMap is an experiement where they display headlines as a series of coloured squares. The colour depicts the subject (business, sport, politics, world) and the size of the square depicts the amount of news articles on the web.

I love the idea, it's gorgeous. And it looks great. But it doesn't work too well in the UK as all the news is from the US. Yes, you can change the preferences to reflect UK news but you can only do that for the main headlines, you can't get UK sport or UK business for example.

So, until they make a UK one, I'll stick to my BBC News addiction.

Jon Snow starts blogging

When I started this blog, I promised that I would only write about Graphic Design. I'm going to break that promise now (just once) and I apologise in advance.

I'm going to justify this because it's about blogging. I think I can justify that.

Jon Snow has starting blogging. I am a big Jon Snow fan. He's probably the only mainstream journalist who is willing to invetigate rather than assume, to challenge rather than acquiesce. His autobiography 'Shooting Histoy' is a facinating behind the scenes look at late 20th Century history (be warned it does carry a very liberal bias).

Channel 4 send an email every night called 'Snowmail'. Essentially this features, every night, Jon Snow's take on the news. Very 'behind the scenes' - he once got in to trouble for saying that he couldn't understand why the Lords had voted against smaking when he knew at least two of them would be paying for that very same thing later on in the evening. Brilliant.

Channel 4 News are in Iran for a week and they've started a blog, it's even on Typepad. It's only just started but I'm sure it will be fantastic. Read the blog and sign up to Snowmail.

Normal service will be resumed next post.

"The work doesn’t get any better the longer it hangs around, old son"

This was said by a Chairman I once worked for. The agency had been through a very quiet time and consequently we’d had loads of spare time to work on pitches and briefs. Everything was getting twice the man hours it normally would.

When things picked up a bit, I remarked that there was a better feeling in the agency, a buzz if you like. He replied that it was better when there was more work and less time, "the work doesn’t get any better the longer it hangs around, old son". How right he was.

A good idea is a good idea, and often the more you work on it the more it gets diluted.

Whenever a deadline gets extended I always groan a little. You seem to lose the energy that comes with a tight deadline, living on the edge a bit. Russell touches on the same thing in his post about “charette”.

Risky Buildings

I don't care what this website is about. The fact that there is a website called Risky Buildings is a very good thing.

What to do when you get that job

Hopefully that great CV will get you an interview and your fantastic work and personality will get you a job.

Then comes the hard part.

As usual, Russell has some great tips for starting out in an agency (it's aimed at ad agencies but the same stuff applies for design agencies). The short version - don't act like a twat, be interested in stuff and be nice to people. The long version - available here.

"Don't water the plant"

I've just got back from a meeting on the 24th floor of a very tall building in Central London. (There aren't that many very tall buildings in Central London...) The views were breathtaking, you could even see the new Arsenal stadium.

However, what struck me most was a green, leafy looking plant right in front of you as you walk in. Stuck to the front of the plant pot was a Post-It note which read, "Don't water the plant".

Humans eh?

Brandalism

According to The Daily Telegraph on the 5th April 2001,
"Brandalism [is] the creeping corporatisation of schools, libraries and other public buildings, which are gradually being daubed with company logos and slogans. The process is all too common in the United States and it is starting to happen here. Have you been in a Yahoo! taxi yet?"

Generally speaking that's called outdoor advertising, or an eyesore, not "brandalism". More about this incredible insight here.