Noisy Decent Graphics

G

Now that's what I call a G. A great G.

"Never assume"

Paul Smith said that at a talk at the Design Museum. Actually, he says that everywhere, all the time.

Talking of Paul Smith, since he began almost all of his graphic design has been done by Aboud Sodano. And what a fantastic job they have done too. I would link to their website, but I can't find one.

Remember Jesus?

I saw this sticker on a lamp post today. It makes me wonder if people sometimes forget about Jesus? I imagine two people walking down the street when suddenly they see a three legged chicken singing the national anthem, "Jesus Christ!" says one, "Oh yeah" says the other, "Jesus. I forgot about him,".

Have you forgotten Jesus?

Chicago 6: Bloody Americans

Chicago 5: Wink

Spent an enjoyable afternoon drinking in the W hotel. In the downstairs toilets there is an opaque window where you can see into the Ladies loo's from the Gents loo's, and vice versa. By the window there's this nice little sign, "smile, wink, wave or meet her outside". Witty, sexy, brilliant.

Chicago 4: A Londoner - obviously

This is unbelievable. It's 2005 in the year of of Lord and this is how they sell brands to the world's most powerful nation. This guy was promoting a gin, called Broker's Gin, in a wine warehouse in Chicago. He is dressed in a pinstripe suit and a bowler hat. Yes, a fucking bowler hat. At least the salesman was English. You can read more about the founding brothers here. Truly atrocious.

Chicago 3: Gently Used

I'm not really sure what this is. Well, it's typography painted onto a garage door. But what I mean is I'm not sure if it's an instruction or a company name. I think it's a garage and the "gently used" refers to the type of cars they sell. I don't even like the typography that much. It's just interesting. And interesting is always good, even if it's bad.

Chicago 2: More painted logos

Saw this building in Streeterville Chicago. I love all this painting on buildings stuff. The should be more of it. Doesn't this brighten up the street? Nicely designed website too, nicely designed but the usability is shite.

Chicago 1: House red

I was in Chicago at the weekend (great city) and I've got loads that I want to blog about. It's pretty hectic here though so I'll have to upload them one by one, as and when. Here's part one.

These wine labels are the own brand wine of a local wine store. I think they're great. Things like this normally fall down because people don't go far enough with the hand made effect. These labels do not fall in to this trap. Simple, elegant, witty, unpretentious. Great stuff.

Kate

Ms Moss. She needs a seriously strong brand and some clever next moves to survive all this.

She is one of the strongest "personal brands" in the world. She will survive. You read it here first.

This is still "Your Input Required" month. So what do you think? Will Kate survive?

Life taking the piss out of designers

All that flowery stuff. It's everywhere. You know what I mean stuff like this

or this one, slightly better art directed.

I quite like it. It's starting to look a bit dated, but then it has been around for a while.

The other day I was walking past a poster of Keira Knightly and I noticed the same effect on the poster.

Except that this was actually created by the shadow of a nearby tree. Truely, life imitating art. Or I like to think of it as life taking the piss out of designers.

"One meeting too many"

When The Guardian had a previous redesign in 1988, Spike Milligan wrote in to suggest that the editor had had "one meeting too many".

I think the same could be said about a few of our clients.

David Hillman on The Guardian

David Hillman from the fantastic Pentagram has his say on The Guardian's redesign in The Indy.

Full article here: http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article313654.ece

It does sound a little like sour grapes but he makes some good points. For instance, "they've lumbered themselves with that blue stripe and I don't think they know what to do with it" and "The type of journalism I've never been happy with is when the front page is full of digests. Once you've read them, you feel 'Why do I have to go on and read 2,500 words?".

He says he "wondered if the blue masthead might change hue each day". I wish it did. That would be very interesting.

I nearly met David Hillman once. I was on this panel thing and so was he. But he never turned up. Shame.

Inevitable Industry Wankers

I'm struggling to find a pcicture of the new guinness ads I want to blog about. I keep seeing them around town, but i see them through cab, bus or traion windows. So i haven't managed to take a decent picture yet.

Meanwhile here's Stefano Hatfield writing about them in the Media Indy (Mindy?).

"I know that the inevitable industry snobs are already coming out of the woodwork to have a pop at these posters from AMV BBDO, because they draw on the famous old Guinness toucan icons. But, to me, they stand out in the cluttered streets of London."

You fucking tell 'em Stef. "Inevitable industry snobs" indeed. Those ads are great and I'm sure brighten many a dull day.

Pictures coming soon.

PS You lot feel like writing any comments yet?

PPS Those of you that are still coming here looking for Beattie Big Mac McFlurry, it's not here I'm afraid but please leave a comment.

PPPS If you are from Beattie McGuinness Bungay sort your SEO out. Ta.

What a lovely logo

I saw this Boots logo on a wall the other day.

Great isn't it? There ought to be more of this. Rise up and paint your logos on your walls brand owners.

Newspaper critique

Yesterday we held a crit in the office of all the recent newspaper redesigns. We do that kind of thing here.

We looked at the new Indy, the old Indy, the new Guardian, the old Guardian and the new Neville Brody designed times2. It was very interesting to look at all the different fonts, leading, column widths etc. Interesting if you're a designer anyway.

The new Indy was our favourite.

The new Guardian is a nice size, but the headlines are too thin and it's lost a lot of the power of the Pentagram designed classic. There's too much colour and it only has 5 columns making the text hard to read. Interestingly when they dropped from broadsheet to tabloid the Indy went from 8 columns to 7, the Guardian went from 8 columns to 5.

times2 is just a mess. Neville, where did it all go wrong?

Re:minder

Just a little reminder to myself.

I must blog;

1. The new design of The Guardian.

2. Neville Brody's redesign of times2.

3. Those fantastic new Guinness ads.

Easyspace

Complete fucking arseholes. Avoid them like a new parent would avoid Michael Jackson and Gary Glitter in the Early Learning Centre.

Cabvision

Hmmm. Not sure about this.

I had a 20 min cab ride the other day on my way to a meeting. In the back of the cab I noticed (couldn't fail to miss) this.

it's called Cabvision. Essentially it's a TV in the back of the cab. Obviously it's there to play ads, but this one had classic comedy clips and CNN latest news. I thought it looked interesting. I grabbed the remote, flicked through the channels and thought I'd watch the news, it was 8.30am and I'd been working all night in preparation for this meeting. But CNN wasn't doing it for me. So I thought I'd watch BBC comedy. Nope wasn't doing it for me. I tried the music channel. Nope wasn't doing it for me.

In the end I turned it off and went through my presentation one more time.

Which all leads to me thinking - what's the point? Who's going to watch it? It wasn't loud enough anyway. The news wasn't live it was recorded like you get on planes or on the Heathrow Express. Very annoying, surely they can do a live feed these days?

They have a similar thing to this in the US and that's shite as well.

On the Cabvision website it states "As an advertiser have you wondered how to efficiently target an ABC1, under 35, affluent audience in London?" Whoa, whoa, whoa sweet child of mine! Under 35?? Surely the majority of black cab users are over 35?

"Cabvision is a 'Total Taxi marketing solution'". What the fuck does that mean?

"allowing 1:1 communication with c1.4million young affluent consumers working full time and mobile". Hold on a minute. Black Cabs are expensive. Brilliant, but expensive. Mostly used by middle aged business men. Young? I don' think so.

Anyway, this is "Your Input Required" month. So what do you think?

Your input required

There are loads of you reading this blog, I know because I've just been looking at the stats, but hardly any of you leaving comments. The last comment was on the 23rd August, which frankly, is pathetic.

So, if you're reading this leave a comment. What do you think to this blog? Good? Bad? Do you work in design? Do you come here often? How did you find this blog?

(Oh, and all those people who search for Beattie McGuinness Bungay and end up here, what do you think about life?)