I visited type designers Dalton Maag today. You all know Bruno, right? He's not a big fan of Helvetica.
We had a great chat about kerning, cycling, Battleship Potemkin, line lengths - all sorts.
They're very smart people. And their office has a fantasic view over London.
(Click to make that view bigger)
My copy of The Manual arrived the other day. I've just started readng it. (I also bought one for the team at W+K.) It's okaaaaaay-ish so far. Maybe a bit early to judge it. It features article by Frank Chimero and Jon Tan (who co-founded Font Deck) both of whom I've seen speak this year so that makes it all the more interesting.
I made this robot at work yesterday. I liked it so I printed it out and drew a face on it.
Actually, now I can see a C and a T in there. That might become a thing.
I had a "graphics" tutor on my Foundation course who first introuced me to kerning. 21 years ago. He was called Peter and he used to obsess about how they kerned the road signs. The logistics! Who did it? Did the council workers do it! Did a designer do each one? Such questions!
This is a long time ago, Macs were around but certainly not common place in every design studio.
Then the other day, at the Kenneth Grange exhibition I think I found the answer.
I've noticed something.
No one is reading blogs anymore.
This blog still gets around 6,000 hits a day, but I suspect most of those are Google search results or people clicking through their reader by default. Not actually reading.
You don't read blogs. I don't read 'em. No-one does.
Which is great news.
Because it means we can blog like we used to in the old days. When you'd just stick a picture up of something you'd seen and say, hey I noticed this.
When you could say I noticed this coffee shop has the weirdest pricing structure ever.
When you could say I saw this church the other day. Which I kind of like. It's no Church of the Light but it's bold and graphic. Brutal. Like a Playmobil church.
When you could say here's a picture of Danny Boyle stood on the roof opposite our office yesterday.
When you could blog like no-one was reading, because no-one was reading.
I'm going blog like no-one is reading.
Roshnee popped in to say hi today. Remember Roshnee? She was my superb guide when I went to Mumbai for 28 hours two years ago.
I have lost weight since then. Everyone is older and wiser. Roshnee is looking for a job.
Good evening.
Yesterday we were lucky enough to go to the top of The Shard. It was incredible and terrifying. One of the best days ever.
Here's some stuff we've been working on at W+K. There's a new campaign for Visit Wales taking place at the moment. We've taken one unsuspecting Englishman, Piers Bramhall, and we're asking different people from all over Wales to invite him to take his holiday there. The first weekend saw him in the Welsh VIP box for the England v Wales rubgy game, sat with Ian Rush and Kelly Jones. People are brewing special We Want Piers beers, making special cheeses - all that kind of stuff. (More here).
Over in the Design Dept we've been working on the lock up or the logoy thing. Something that sits on end frames and the like. We based it on the map pins you see all over the internet.
And we had an actual tapestry made, in the style of a traditional banner used by unions, workers groups, bands and the like.
The detail is fantastic.
There's a video where the artist Cynth Weyman talks about the tapestry.
Oh.
And we made a bus! A bus!
Follow the campaign on Twitter here and see more videos and stuff on Facebook here.
Obviously I had very little to do with this, credit goes to Michael, Dan and Ray.
There's this new floor in a carpark near us. It's concrete slabs with a X shaped holes in them. It's much better to drive on than the previous grass, but it still lets the grass grow through. It's great!
The grass grows thicker where the cars don't go.
More please.
Perfect for ffffound
I sometimes cycle past this bar on the way home. It's in Camberwell, South London.
Because I used to live near Bath and because I have the Design Disease I can't help thinking this has something to do with Bath Rugby Club.
They play at a ground called the Recreation Ground. Their colours are blue and black.
What do you think? Maybe I should go in and ask.
Like the rest of Silicon Roundabout I'll be in Brighton today for dConstruct. Do say hello.
Saw this last night. I hate to be negative, but I think there are lessons here.
The typography on this ad is awful. It's a simple line, just six words, that have been made harder to read by the design.
Your eye has some real work to do getting from "the" and then back to "day" all the way on the other side of the 6 sheet. Reading makes you feel a bit sick as your head has to do so much movement from left to right and left to right and…
It looks like they're trying to hide (or lose) the word "the" which would be OK if you could read the line without it, but you can't really.
There's absolutely no hierarchy to the information. I'm pretty sure each of the six words are a different size which makes it really hard for brain to work out which words are important. If I was walking past quickly, what's the take out - start shine?
Why underline start?
This kind of typography is hard to get right, but this an example of how not to do it.
Legibility is key in any form of communication. If you can't read the line then that's game over.
(All that and we haven't even started on the puntastic line.)
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