Noisy Decent Graphics

Design something that works in a display without you having to be there

Sorry this post got saved as a draft and it's taken me ages to finish it.

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Visited the LCC show and went back to CSM yesterday. Popped into the RCA one evening last week. Some observations.

Bahamut That by Hiro Hong fires smoke rings at the dragons. (Subtly aimed at the Head of College's office.)

 

I liked these letterpress posters "visualising how dyslexia looks and feels to non dyslexic readers' by Hannah Constable.

"An interpretation of the main character's development within the film Fahrenheit 451, with each sequential book chronologically symbolising his standpoint within a dystopic society that has outlawed books." by Thomas Fursdon

There was an Oculus project at every show.

 We enjoyed these screens a lot. No idea what they were about. But Mark described it as "sick".

And now the grumpy bit. There was a lot of this.

 

And this.

One show I got to early, a student turned up and spent a good half an hour trying to turn on various projects. I reckon they managed to get less than half working.

I know I'm not saying anything new here and I know it's hard to organise and put on a show. I've done it, as a student and at the Designs of the Year show.

It's genuinely a tricky problem. Visit any gallery and you'll see screens with error messages or mistaken screensavers. But this feels like a design problem - design something that works in a display without you having to be there - and it feels like a challenge design courses should be tackling, particularly the interactive ones.

Grump over. Anyway.

 

 

Show Time

 

Poster by Timothy Tyndale Brockbank

The Central Saint Martins show is really good. Kings Cross, open until Sunday. You should go.

 

Local History of Small Dorset Towns - Update

 

Told you.

Never Mind the Bollards / Public Image London

Went to see Never Mind the Bollards this week.

There were some interesting bits. I wasn't sure whether Public London: 10 years of transforming spaces was part of the same thing. So that's slightly confusing. But it's all just walking around Instagraming stuff so no harm done.

 

Some observations.

Slowly, cutting across different timelines and agendas, stuff is getting better. 

This big, public stuff takes a long time. It's not complicated, it's just hard.

I love stories like this one below.

I'll talk about this type of stuff in my talk at Sheffield Design Week this morning. See you there.

Calculating the split - nice touch

 

I'm starting to see more of this sort of thing in the world. Reminds me of this from Google.

It's like a dumber Google Now. The language and the immediacy make it feel like personalisation, but it's not really. Simple, predictable, useful calculations. 

We'll see more of this pattern.

Or you could have put the buttons in the right order in the first place

Fashion trends

He's a good Chancellor.

Chelsea Flower Show

 

I always wanted to go to the Chelsea Flower Show. I went this year. Now I never have to go again.

 

Explore. Dream. Discover.

I saw this terrible ad in a terrible magazine and immediately thought 'that's never a Mark Twain quote'.

He never wrote like a terrible copywriter writing a brand values. In fact, people in general never wrote in that odd one word per sentence way in the old days. Did. They? And those words, feels too much like the Everyday Contemporary Luxury style of copywriting you see on housing developments these days. Never a Twain quote.

Turns out he might have written it as part of a much longer piece, but probably not.

" 'Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.'

This quote has been attributed to Mark Twain, but the attribution cannot be verified. The quote should not be regarded as authentic."

More here.

Anyway.

Making it worse

Someone has made a digital version of the keypad on a vending machine. In almost every way they have made the interaction worse. (Ignore the bit about no product at the end, that can happen any time.)

While we're on the subject it's a Flickr video and I have no idea how that works any more. You may have to click here to watch it.

 

Google Art Project

 

I've been using Google Art Project for a while now. Install the Chrome extension and you'll get a work of art every time you open a new tab. The art changes every day.

 

 

 

It's a really nice texture change during the day. Just enough change to make you notice and not enough to be annoying.

 

 

Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty at the V&A

Was lucky enough to get a before opening hours tour of the Alexander McQueen exhibition at the V&A. It's stunning.

McQueen was clearly a creative genius. Able to take random moments of inspiration and turn them into a rich supply of ideas, enough to fill a collection, a show, all the marketing, and much more.

Able to give those ideas deep meaning, so that you could enjoy the clothes just as clothes (and lots of them you could actually wear down the shops) or you could keep digging and probably still be finding stuff weeks in. And then he did that every six months. If you talk about "storytelling" you should go and learn something.

All that and he seemed to have a very clear sense of purpose. A huge drive to make things and change things. 

He's a CSM, UAL grad taught by the brilliant Louise Wilson. And there's a particular Britishness to his work. The graft, the directness, the wit and the piss taking comes through.

And if you're not bothered by fashion, it's worth going for the exhibition design.

You should go*. Everyone says it's sold out, but Poach pointed out you can still get tickets during the day.

 

* Not you Russell. This review will do for you.

Local blogger surprised to discover new sculpture obeys Davies's 3rd law

There's a new sculpture in the park. By Conrad Shawcross (ex UAL) it consists of three structures one of which is shown above. Look how climbable that looks! Hard to resist climbing on that. Especially if you're 6. Or 39.

Approaching the new sculpture I kept looking for the Do Not Climb A4 notices stuck to it, but there were none. You are allowed to climb on the climbable looking thing. This is a sculpture that is fully compliant with Davies's 3rd law. Well done park people.

We talk about this a lot on this blog, but for listeners who are unfamiliar, Davies's 3rd law states:

"if you make something that looks incredibly climbable, you shouldn't be allowed to say people can't climb it"

There's a much broader point here. In interaction design this means; make a thing look like it does what it actually does. 

It is a crime to make it look like it you can do something and then say you can't do that thing. Usability beats training. I don't just mean websites. Applies to door handles as well.

And here's one I saw this morning when trying to log on to an energy supplier.

You enter you username password and then click the big green button. Which takes you to a registration page and asks for your detail again. Endless loop.

Took me three or four goes to realise you need to click the small orange button that's slightly cut off. 

Anyway, back to sculpture news. Here are some examples that do not obey the law, with a blog post.

And here's one that does, with a blog post.

 

The Conrad Shawcross sculpture is in Dulwich Park and well worth a visit. More info here.

Good buttons

 

Samsung, Sony et al, make some TV remotes like this.

There's a theme

Three good speeches from the last six months.

Mike Bracken to the policy profession - you need to understand the Internet better.

Emily Bell to journalists - you need to understand the Internet better.

Martha Lane Fox to everyone - you need to understand the Internet better.

 

Designs of the Year 2015

 

Very interesting, as usual.

There's no furniture category this year. If you really want to nominate a chair it has to go in the product category.

Type archaeology

 

Two typefaces. Probably the result of a small rebrand from long ago. Is this the new ghost signs?

ual: blog

As a governor of UAL I thought it would be a good idea to start blogging about it. If you're interested, it's over here.

I really want to align those roundels

Marketing quiz instead of ad

I've seen this a few times recently. You answer a marketing quiz instead of watching a pre-roll ad. 

 

 

Which is kind of OK. It's quicker than an ad, and you don't really care so you click any button.

Except this one had a quiz AND a pre-roll ad.

Anyway.