Noisy Decent Graphics

Quantum of Solace Typography

I saw Quantum of Solace the other day. Reviews can be found elsewhere, so let's concentrate on the typography.

As the film moves from location to location these, quite intricate, titles appear informing you where the action is set. Sometimes they're simple text on screen as above. And sometimes they've part of the scene as below where a car drives over the word London.

During the film, without giving it too much thought, I liked them. They're well done, clunky in places, but they look like they've been considered.

I wanted to find out more so I googled. Turns out most people hate them. Here's a good example, "don’t even get me started on the distractingly tacky typography that accompanies every location change" and "wtf was up with some of those fonts?” Time, effort and research, thats what!". This made me question my first thoughts. Maybe they are cheesy and hackneyed? Maybe I shouldn't like them?

More googling explained that they were created by Tomato (which is where these grabs come from, thanks guys). I'm ashamed to admit that when I found out they were done by Tomato I was reassured. They must be OK if Tomato did them.

This, of course, is utter bollocks and I took myself outside and gave myself a good talking too.

It doesn't matter (at all) who did them. And I'm not even a Tomato fan. At the very least, I suppose you could say that Tomato are more likely to have researched the fonts at some length. But still, it's irrelevant really.

So I'm sticking with my gut reaction. My first instinct.

I like them. I enjoyed them during the movie. They're not perfect, but they're fun. I like them. Do you?

The Long Car Purchase

I'm going to by a new car. Except I'm not.

Let me explain.

My car is about 6 years old, and there's nothing wrong with it. Not at the moment anyway. I'm very happy with it. It does everything I want it to do. But it occurs to me that it won't always be thus. One day it will cost more to fix than a new one would to own, one day my circumstances might change and I might need a 7 seater or a 2 seater. So, realistically in the next 1 - 4 years I'll be buying another car.

But I hate cars.

I'm just not interested in them at all. MPG, MPH, torque, talk, all you do to me is talk talk, whatever. Not interested. When we bought our current car I took it for a test drive. I pulled over after about 200 yards. "What am I supposed to be looking for?" I asked. "It goes, I can sit down OK".

I'd rather not have a car at all, but unfortunately we need one. And Streetcar won't work either, although I wish it would. So I've had this thought for a long time and not really been brave enough to post it (it's a pretty personal thing a car purchase) and then talking to someone the other day reminded me that I should do this.

So here's the big idea. Let's assume that I'll be buying a car, not now, but over a 1 to 4 year period (the vagueness of the timing is part of the point). That car might be new, might not. Forget budget for the time being. I imagine there are lots and lots of people like me. People tell me the average purchase cycle of a car is 5 years. The car companies and the research companies know this.

So under The Long Car Purchase I'm going to note down all the significant interactions I have with car advertising and branding over four years (or whatever) and then maybe we'll see a picture build up of how that affects my purchase. Maybe we won't. It's an experiment.

Above I said my current car 'does everything I want it to do' so I ought to list what that means.

1. It must fit four adults in it.

2. Most of my time is spent in the passenger seat, so I must be able to do this without banging my knees.

3. I must be able to have speech radio on, on the motorway at 70mph without having to have the volume at an ear splitting level.

4. It must be able to overtake without making the engine scream like a burning kipper. Despite hating cars I have found this a useful feature.

And that's about it.

If I had to buy a car tomorrow (again, forget budget for a minute) I couldn't. There isn't a car that fits the bill. Sure there are plenty of cars that fit those requirements, but there isn't one that feels right for me. I guess that's where the branding things comes in (however much you want to ignore that).

The environment is a massive concern too. Huge. A Prius doesn't feel quite right, very nearly, but not quite right. Someone told me that the most environmentally car you can buy is a second hand German estate. Like and Audi or a Mercedes. You don't have to make any new stuff, it will be reliable and last forever, image-wise it's OK and it will fit in everyhthing you need. That makes sense.

My ideal car would be built by Land Rover, or Lexus maybe, would look like an E-Type, would fit eight adults in, would have sliding doors, would be as easy to park as a Mini and have a hybrid engine. Find me one of those and I'll buy it. I use the word 'ideal' very lightly.

Find me one of these made by Land Rover with eight adults inside, sliding doors and a hybrid engine and we're done.

Anything else? I think that will do for now. I'll try and jot stuff down as we go along. For example the Credit Crunch means there are thousands of 0% deals around at the moment, so maybe now is a better time to buy than in 3 years? People keep telling me that. The Economist reckons second hand cars have dropped 20% in price this year. It also says "The trade-in value of a Porsche Cayenne, the epitome of a boom-time gas-guzzler, hovers around £20,000 for vehicles that cost £56,000 two years earlier". And there's this, but as I said Streetcar won't work.

Anyway. All that. Who knows. We'll find out.

So. Do you think I'm mad?

I'm looking for interns. Work placements. People prepared to work for nothingish.

Possibly in January, certainly the new year. It's all a bit vague hence the vague post. It will be a lot of fun, great experience working on exciting projects for people you've heard of, there will be tea making and it will be hard work.

You'll get paid reasonable travel and a little bit else, but not much.You know, it will be good fun.

Now, here's the tricky bit. The only way to apply is leave a link to your site below in the comments. I'll take a look and get in touch with the people I think will fit. The bonus is that everyone else sees your site too.

Attention Dogs

Ziba

Also whilst in Portland (this is turning into 'and one time, in Portland'...) I went to chat to the good folks at Ziba. They showed me around and I spoke to them about what I'm up to at the moment.

Ziba are a product design firm in working in the same area as IDEO and people like that. Probably most famous for their great work on Umpaqua bank. They also did that new(ish) Wacom Pad that everyone goes on about.

When you're a graphic designer, product designers make you very jealous. They have workshops and lathe and cutters and machines. Again I couldn't take pictures, but let me take one of this. I asked what it was and they replied, "Oh it's just resin".

It may be just resin, but it looks very cool.

Thanks to Paul who showed me around and Simon who helped set it up.

London College of Printing Poster from 1977

Lovely.

The History and Mystery of the Universe

In Portland I went to see Buckminster Fuller, The History and Mystery of the Universe. Essentially it's a 2.5 hours of Bucky (played by Doug Tompos) working his way through his theories.

Yes, 2.5 hours of Bucky.



That's pretty intense. It's good, probably very good, but it's a bit heavy. One man shows are always heavy, but a one man Bucky show is heavier. It's better than reading about it though. He has props, he moves around, he asks questions, he has videos and he sketches. All good stuff.



I came away understanding a little more, but regretting that such brilliant ideas can't be packaged up and explained a little easier. I can't help thinking his theories would get a better hearing if they were a little easier on the ears.
 

Nike County

Whilst in Portland I had the pleasure of visting Nike HQ.

Big thanks to James, from the Nike+ team, who showed me round.

Fairly predictably you're not allowed to take pictures. Which is a shame because I can't show you the great design library they have. Which has actual stuff, not just books.

James commented that Nike is such a visual company everything you do is judged on how it looks. I was taken aback by this. It's obvious when you think about it (Nike as a company is almost all visual brand) but it's just not very often you hear that. Most companies are the complete opposite of visual.

Even if their external image is very visual (like, say, Apple) the interior workings are still non visual. Nike has always had a history of great visuals and I guess this has lead to a visual culture by osmosis. But James described it as more than that; if you're proposal looks shit - it ain't getting approved. Most companies aren't like that. Quite the opposite.

Nike HQ is full of little visual touches. A strong graphic influence everywhere. It reminded me of the first time I visited a Nike Town in New York, 1997. One memory I have is of swooshes being used as door handles. Again, obvious when you think about it, but so great to see In Real Life as opposed to a concept. Nike HQ is like that, but more.

I wish you could take pictures because they have lots of great stuff. Lance Armstrong's first ever bike in the Lance Armstrong building, for example. A copy of one of the Palm Springs tees outside the Tiger Woods building. And so on.

 
Oh yeah. And we stopped by the Employee Store.

Use Both Sides

Remember Yoni? Him and his buddies at JWT London have started this little campaign called Use Both Sides. It encourages you to use both sides of paper. You might think that's pretty obvious, but I'll bet you don't use both sides of paper.

Anyway, you don't have to sign up or anything. You just do it. Just start using both sides of paper and we're done.

The posters look cool too.

Typographic Portland

Portland, Oregon, USA has some of the best typography I've ever seen in a city.

There's loads of good stuff everywhere. I didn't manage to photograph all of it, but here's a small selection.

 

I liked this too. The best trouser measurement typography I've seen in a long time. Nice big serif numerals. Lovely.

And this. This is great. This explains lots about what's good about America in one simple piece of type.

To most people these fonts would look old fashioned. But they don't, they look great. And they look American, so that makes it relevant. They are classic display faces yet they've been used on a cooker. Fantastic.

The GM logo. GM make cookers? Cool. Imagine if Land Rover made fridges? That's an iconic American brand right there on the side of the cooker, with the logo nice and proud. Simple, fun, bold, good.

Pentagram Marks Party

I'm trying to be clever here. Well, not exactly clever, but flash. You know. I've just got back from the launch party of Pentagram's new book, Pentagram Marks: 400 Symbols and Logos.

I know that those of you who don't live in London and those of you who don't get invited to things like this love these Behind The Party Scenes posts. (Stop laughing you cynical ones at the back, I'm being serious. These posts are really popular.)

So, what's the clever bit? It's 10pm now and the party is still going strong and I'm blogging about it. It's like live blogging. But not live. Good, eh?

OK I'll stop now.

Amid all the usual tales of gossip and canapés the most interesting thing was this xylophone / z book device. A clever way of solving the near impossible problem of how to show small graphic works. 3rd year degree students take note.

 

I've been in Portland for a few days and I've a few things to tell you about that and we'll also have a review of the book coming up. Exciting times, listeners, exciting times.

Happy Thanksgiving

Look what I've got

At last, a senisble, humorous, relevant tagline.

And it rhymes too.

Please recycle this post when you've read it

How about Please Provide Some Fucking Recycling Bins Then You Large Media Owner?

I hate these bloody free papers. Really hate them. They are full of rubbish, they are cheap in every sense of the word and you can't move for the fucking mess they make.

And it really angers me that you can't get people to go to the trouble of spending 30-100 pence to read a decent newspaper with proper stories about the world, but give them a FREE one and they'll read puffed up press releases til the cows come home.

So where the hell am I supposed to recycle this thing? Am I expected to carry this object of no value around with me until I get to the recycling bin at work? If you're gonna preach about recycling the least you could do if provide one. Surely a great big recycling bin at every Tube station would be a Good Thing, a Useful Thing and a Media Space Opportunity Thing. I can't be the first person that's thought of that.

Richard once told me that HHCL / Red Cell once worked on some ideas for The London Paper. A product designer had the idea of putting a hole at the top and bottom of the paper so that when you folded it up it was easy to carry around. So you'd be more likely to carry it to work to recycle it. They also wanted to hang them papers inside the Tube carriages to encourage reuse.

So stop preaching and let's see some action.

Inspired by Design

I was on a panel last week talking about design to 800 design and technology A level students. Some younger ones too.

Wayne Hemingway was up first. Always good value for money. Nice and provocative too. Although he made me realise that the Big Breakfast was well over 10 years ago. So the audience were probably 5 years old when his slot on BB used to air.

And he slagged off Bros which upset me. Because Bros were great. Honestly. Watch this and tell me you're not dancing round the office.

Jason Iftakhar was also there and he was brilliant. He had lots of 'Ooh I wish I'd done that' work. This chair/bench for example.

This is made from compacted cardboard. He persuaded Sainsburys (and other supermarkets I think) to let him put a tool inside their waste cardboard compacters that cuts these chairs. For free! Obviously they give him the cardboard for free, they let him cut the chairs and then he does them a favour by taking the chairs away! Something like that anyway. Brilliant.

He's also got some great packaging that's made from the old cardbaord boxes Argos Direct use. He has a factory in Manchester that's across the way from Argos Direct and they give him all their waste cardboard. For nothing! All clever stuff. Have a look at his site, there's lots of really interesting bits in there.

He had this great quote, "If you want to make a product cheaper, reduce the number of parts". That seems true of many, many things.

I had a really good day. And it made me realise (again) how important it is to get out and talk to students. They get so little contact with industry and they are so happy and enthusiastic when you go and speak to them.

So I want to do more of this. If you're a college or a school, drop me a line I'd be more than happy to come and talk to some of your students. (Is that arrogant of me? Too late, I've said it now...)

Angry Logo Roundup

Right  then, recession week over, angry head on. Three logos I hate and one that's not good, but it's better than what went before.

First up, Channel Five.

I really can't stand this. Channel Five (or Five as I suppose it's now called) have a history of terrible branding and this is no better. And it's certainly no better than what went before. So why bother changing it?

To be fair it's better when it's animated on screen, which is it's main usage, but overall it's dull and lifeless. It has no punch, no point, no edge. It feels flat and very ordinary.

Five branding by DixonBaxi all images taken from their website. Usual rules apply.

Museum of London.

If you'd have told me about this over the phone, I'd have said that I loved the idea. I think the idea of having three logos that come together to form one is clever and solves one of the biggest problems the organisation faces, getting people to link all three museums. This bit “The colour palettes of Museum of London Docklands and Museum of London Archaeology’s new logos, feed into the layers of the main brand mark, creating a family of three destinations, united in a single mission: to inspire a passion for London.” is good. Very good.

Brave idea, good thinking - it's just a stylistic mess.

It's looks too now, too of the moment. It looks like it wants to play with all the other swirly rubbish logos around at the moment. And that's not a good thing.

It's like the confidence of the idea didn't come through in the execution which is a tragedy. Coley Porter Bell are one of the big names of graphic design; this is an opportunity missed.

Creative Review have more on this.

Barclaycard.

Fucking hell. Where do we start with this? Awful. Meaningless. Irrelevant. Confusing. Ugly. What's the point? And why is that bloody Y floating in mid air?

 

Logo by the Brand Union, another big name. Again Creative Review have more on this. Check out the comments.

Currys.digital

Now here's an odd one. We've talked about Currys before and their awful renaming, rebranding exercise. But let's recap quickly. Dixons and Currys rebranded all their high street stores as Currys.digital. it looked like this.

Pretty bad, huh? So imagine my surprise when I saw this the other day.

 

Not fantastic, but it's a lot better. A great improvement. But what's going on? I haven't seen this anywhere else. It turns out that Dalziel & Pow are trialling a new store format. It's being trialled in 25 stores up and down (and presumably across) the land.

This bit sounds interesting, "What you'd see as a customer would be grid layout of the store as opposed to the old herring bone, so when you walk in you will immediately have clear line of sight right to the other end of the store, we have much better clarity with the signage and the look of the stores."

I haven't seen anything in the design press, so we'll see how all this develops. As I said, not fantastic, but a lot better.

So, what do you think? Like any of those logos?

I have the courage of my convictions and so I've linked to all of the companies responsible. If any of them would like to comment on here, that would be great. I'm also aware that big branding exercises like these are fraught with difficulties and obviously there are individuals out there toiling away for hours on these projects. Please don't take it personally.

Recession: Simple Advice for Designers | 4. Printing

Ladies and Gentlemen, Marcus Brown surely needs no introduction. Germany's most Internet Famous Printer. Stop laughing at the back, he wrote one of the most popular Guest Posts ever on this blog 'Green(ish) Printing.'

Marcus works at Peschke Druck in Munich. Let's finish this week and this series with his advice on how to deal with your printer in a recession. Read it, it's good.

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Printers in general, at least in the countries that I have worked in, tend make the same mistake when the market takes a nose dive; they drop their pricing and flood the market with cheap print,  which is a short term win for the people procuring print but fatal for the printing company.

 

So my recession advice to any printing company would be;

 

1. Keep your pricing up (once you go down, it’s nearly impossible to get your pricing back up again – and you drag the rest of the market with you).
2. Try and reduce external costs (that’s you – getting invoices that you need to pay) and form alliance network with complimentary businesses that you trust. If you have deliverables that you need to procure (paper, plates, ink) try and get them through your alliance network and leverage your consolidated spend.
3. Concentrate on doing a good job and make sure you have tools in place that ensure that you and your people are doing a good job. In a time when margins are really tight an error can break your neck.
4. Get out and talk to your clients. Talk to them a lot.
5. Do not dump your pricing. Ever.

 

If you’re buying print, I have some advice too:

 

1. Keep your eye out for printers who are panicking.
2. Always ask for a detailed breakdown of the costs and keep your eye on how much the printers are asking for paper. Always do this. Always.
3. If you get a quote in that is 40%-60% cheaper than any other printer you’ve asked, ask yourself why and ask yourself if it is possible to have a long term relationship with this supplier.
4. Build up a supplier network based on trust, quality and price.
5. Get out and talk to your printers. Talk to them a lot.
6. Do not support price dumping. Ever.

Recession: Simple Advice for Designers | 3. Running a design firm

Richard Williams is co-founder of the award-winning brand consultancy Williams Murray Hamm, whose clients include Hovis, Unilever, and McVities. WMH were recently acquired by the Loewy Group. He appears regularly on TV and radio programmes (including the Today Programme) and now on this blog. Prior to all that he set up Design Bridge, one of the biggest design firms in the UK. He's also on the council of the Design Council. So he knows what he's going on about.

Here's what he has to say.

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Being 59, this is about my third recession. They are survivable.

Cash is king
Manage it like a hawk.
When you start a project, make sure you get client sign off.
Make sure each stage has an order number. Don’t start work without it, it’s tantamount to a contract that assures you of payment.

When the work is finished, get the invoice out immediately and chase for payment the moment it is due.

Make friends with the clients accounts department.

If you can, devote someone in the company to debt chasing.

Charge interest on overdue bills.

Charge for work outside your contract, but do agree a fee in advance.

New business
The best new business is with your existing clients. Take them out to lunch, send them stuff that’s relevant that you’ve seen on the web or in the press – become completely engaged with them, but don’t prostitute yourself. Don’t work for them on cheap rates or for nothing. They won’t respect you.

Pitches
They are often the biggest waste of resource in a design firm.

Here’s a simple guide:
Ask yourself, if the pitch will deliver a long-term client or a one off project? Don’t bother if it’s the latter. The investment won’t be worth the prize.
Never, ever pitch for nothing. Get at least 60% of your normal fees covered and all of your costs.
Never pitch against more than two other agencies (the more agencies in a pitch, the less chance you have of winning.)
If the pitch is abroad make sure they cover your travel costs too.
If the client asks for ‘sketches’ for nothing, don’t do it. Sketches contain the idea – the rest is mere execution.

Marketing
This is the one activity you shouldn’t cut.
I have a personal aversion to cold calling. It’s a numbers game and delivers the wrong sort of meeting. One day, you’ll find yourself on an industrial estate in Burnley on a dark, rainy Friday afternoon having just met a halitosis ridden yoghurt pot manufacturer with a comb over, who the calling agency managed to lure into having a meeting with you. This is to be avoided.

Spend time defining the right clients for you. Filter out people you couldn’t help or would hate to work with. This will probably leave a reasonably small cluster of people to write to or network with.

Write intelligent letters that are not about you, but about what you think might be keeping the client awake at night. Follow them up, but take the hint if the client refuses to speak to you.

Think of witty stunts that will engage them (we once had a student walk up and down outside United Biscuits offices dressed up in a sandwichboard saying ‘Jaffa Cakes needs WMH’ and won the job). 

Go to conferences and network like hell.

Get your website working for you, track those who come onto it and follow them up.

Keep your profile in the news. Journalists need good stories – feed them interesting thoughts and news and you’ll be in all

Your staff
You’ve taken ages to find and develop them and probably paid 18%+ of their salary to recruitment consultants.

Keep them by being fair to all of them.

If it’s getting tight, cut your own salary first, put on a pay freeze if you have to and, at worst, cut the week down to four days. Remember you’ll need them in the upturn.

Your work
Don’t do work that’s below par because you want to get it out of the door – great work gets repeat clients, poor work lets the competition in.

Recession: Simple Advice for Designers | 2. The Accounts

Here's the second in our series of Guest Posts on the recession. And it concerns the most important bit - the bottom line. 

Nick Forsyth is a Partner with Lambert Chapman LLP a firm of Chartered Accountants and Business Advisers in Essex. (I can personally recommend them, they even have a blog). Here's what Nick's got to say.

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I’m not sure that I appreciate not being a recession virgin but if you saw Gilzean and Chivers play for Spurs you’ve been around the block before and maybe earned the right to shake your head at Bent and Pavlyuchenko! My experience of recession was gained in a small accountancy practice that has now grown to the £3 million turnover level and in which I am now a Partner. As I recall the “r” word started being used when large companies which no one expected to suffer began falling over without warning – a little like the Banks have done this autumn. Parkfield was one, a listed company in the video industry who took my favourite client with them.

In those days we had base rates of more than 10% all of the time so you could easily be paying 20% once small business rates were put onto base rate so interest cover was particularly important. Mortgages payments were also high through the rates of interest rather than the amounts outstanding and negative equity was a real problem for me and many of my peers.

How long did it last? Easily a couple of years. Once a business comes under pressure it can build up debt quickly. Costs continue unabated whilst income comes to a stop producing instant cash burn. Once Management have brought the situation under control at first break even is reached followed by small profits. In my experience it takes three times as long to pay back losses as it does to make them and this means the period of difficulty is extended over and above the length of the recession.

So what advice can I offer to you at this time? Firstly understand your costs. These will continue at their current rate unchecked irrespective of income and you need to understand which are fixed and which are variable. I often tell small businesses that as a rough rule of thumb most costs are 85% fixed and 15% variable so the opportunities for cost cutting are a bit limited. You may be able to reduce some fixed costs but there may be extra costs associated with doing that. Have you looked into what those might be? If you are an employer head count might become an issue. An early assessment of redundancy issues and cost is always useful should this become necessary.

Secondly, keep close to your customers and suppliers. We all recognise it takes a lot of effort to win new customers yet all too often we spend insufficient time with existing clients and all efforts into PNC’s. In good times one can keep income streams alive but when it gets hard those with the right balance will do better. Expect attacks upon your customers as with a downturn in their own incomes they may become shoppers, testing your rates and value for money. This suggests that you need to be upfront about bills with clients so that they are informed rather than ambushed.

With pressure on fees you need to be efficient in your design process. In a strong economy this is less of a problem but as things slow and customers shop you may be under pressure to deliver quicker to produce a good recovery on hours spent on the project. Clearly quality should not be sacrificed and pricing needs to reflect the hours required to deliver this before deciding your pitch price and what recovery rate this will be.  A good costing system can help to identify levels of profitability on jobs.

 

Thirdly, in testing times profits are important but cash is king. The Banks have brought this home to us very recently; clearly profitable businesses but without cash rushing to the Government in a state of panic. A cash forecast is a wonderful thing but it is only a guess. Having committed yourself to this guess and maybe secured an overdraft facility based upon it you need to compare your actual performance to it and be able to see how you might vary from it in the coming months. This does not have to take hours to do, but once done it allows you to plot what steps you might need to take to keep onside with your Bank.

Fourthly, take advice if you are unsure. That’s what the accountant is there for; to help you assess your position and provide options for you to choose from. As an example, if you cannot pay the taxman don’t wait for him to come calling. Talk to your accountant who should be able to suggest the types of payment you could make to spread the bill. My firm negotiates on behalf of those clients who need that help and know what line HMRC are currently taking.

Before providing the Bank with bad news talk through your message and reports so that you are happy they are hard to turn down rather than hitting the wall with a “NO”. I would expect to know a local banker and be able to discuss the plan with them if required to ensure that it gets a fair hearing upon presentation. 

And lastly, never give up. I expect to lose some clients during any slowdown but I hope to win some new ones to replace them. Don’t allow yourself to lose confidence - you can do this by being proactive. And if things look very bleak remember something can always turn up as a few Sundays ago showed us with a win against Bolton and goals for both Bent and Pav!

Nick Forsyth is a Partner with Lambert Chapman LLP a firm of Chartered Accountants and Business Advisers in Essex who delivers straight talking advice to his clients and is involved in the Firm’s marketing as a speaker and author in the firm’s publications, website and blog. He can be contacted at [email protected] quoting “Noisy Decent Graphics” for a reply to any questions you might have.