Noisy Decent Graphics

Recession: Simple Advice for Designers | 1. New Business

Here's the first in our series of Guest Posts on the recession. Good sensible advice for designers.

Adam Whittaker is one of the founders of Reardon Smith Whittaker (commonly referred to as RSW) a new business agency in London. Here's what he's got to say.

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I worked at a branding and design firm during the last recession and set up RSW as a result of my experiences there. So here is my advice …

1. Get rid of as many non-fee earners (suits) as possible and find your optimum size. You could well find that you could be twice as profitable if you were half the size.

2. If necessary take out a long-term loan to buy your way out of an expensive lease and move into smaller offices more appropriate for your new, leaner, meaner, size.

3. It may hurt a little, but cut back on the perks. Personal as well as staff. Do you really need the pool table or the foosbol table? They take up 100 square feet each. And reception; how often do your clients visit you? Is it important for them that you have a swanky reception area?

4. Get mean with your new business team. If they’re not winning enough, get rid of them and don’t immediately replace them; give it a try yourself. Nothing sells as well as a hungry business owner.

5. Register at www.agencyfinder.eu if you’re in the UK or EU or www.agencyfinder.com if you’re in North America. It’s a no-brainer and relatively risk-free new business introduction service.

6. IF YOU’RE A REALLY GOOD SALESMAN then use a new business agency to get you some face time with new prospects. Your time should NOT be spent on the phone, but on the road!

7. Ditch the PowerPoint. Talk to people (that’s all they are, people, like you an me) about the things you’ve done and show them examples, preferably real-life, if not, then real photographs. You want them engaging with YOU, not a computer screen.

8. Swallow your God damn pride. Win without pitching? More like fail without trying!! Pitching DOES NOT cost money if you’re paying the wages of the designers anyway and you don’t need to invest in research or photography. Make a commercial decision for each individual opportunity based upon your situation at the time.

9. Ask for 50% of the fees up front. Sure, they won’t always agree, but if you’ve made them like you enough, you’d be surprised just how many agree.

10. Pray.

Introducing Recession: Simple Advice for Designers

Right then, let's talk Recession.

There is a recession coming. People have been unsure for a while, but that uncertainty has faded. It's coming. Here at NDG our job is to help you through these difficult times with jokes, tea and Guest Posts. So all this week we're going to be running a little series on the Recession. Err, we can't think of a better title than 'Recession: Simple Advice for Designers' so feel free to suggest one in the comments.

Anyway, recession is probably going to affect the listenership of this blog significantly. Most of you work in small, owner managed businesses and traditionally marketing budgets get hit hard by a downturn. So we've rounded up a series of experts to comment on various aspects of the recession. From New Business, through Accountancy and various other disciplines these Guest Posters all have some suggestions to help you out and crucially they have two things in common. One, they are not the usual suspects, they may blog elsewhere but you probably won't be that familiar with them. Secondly, they are wise enough to have seen a recession before and to have some experience of the difficult times.

So that's this week. But before we do all that, I'm going to add my bit. I'm not going to offer any practical advice at all, I'm just going to talk about Credit Crunch graphics.

I've mentioned before how miserable the Credit Crunch Graphics have been. Truly woeful. I was kind of hoping for something better. It's just been the usual fare of downward arrows and red boxes.

There's been some funny stuff, and as you'd expect the British tabloids have risen to the challenge. This Sun front page from the morning after the Bailout being a highlight.

Talking of the Bailout here's The City the morning after that historic event.

Err, doesn't look any different does it? As Chris correctly points out it's very, very hard to picture intangibles. As anyone who has ever worked in Pharmaceutical advertising will tell you, it's very hard to depict things like 'ill, but better than a few weeks ago' just like it's hard to depict 'my mortgage now costs £50 a month more' in a concise witty way. Which is why most newspapers revert to pointy red boxes.

If all else fails they resort to the dramatically distorted depiction.

You'd think in this day and age Data Viz would help us out wouldn't you?

Phil has a brilliant post over on his blog about this chart. There's lots of peculiarities here. Apparently the FTSE started at 1000 so possibly showing the zero line would be pointless. However, the graph does significantly distort the truth to make a point. But then maybe that is the point. To show you the drama of one day? Whichever, Phil went to the trouble of redrawing the graph with a zero line to inject some reality into proceedings.

That's good isn't it? Illuminating. But it's still not perfect. The best stock market chart I've seen inevitably comes from the brilliant Khoi and the gang over at the New York Times.

 

It's hard to see in that screen grab, but this brilliant interactive graph compares the current fall in stocks to other falls in history. It makes for scary reading.

This is a cool thing by the Banksyesque K-Guy, witty and well done. It's clever and very of the moment.

Actually I'm surprised we haven't seen more of this kind of stuff. Surely something like this would suit a Guardian front page? I did see this leaflet for a Princes Trust event. Close, but no cigar. Definitely no cigar.

So there you go.

Simple, honest, practical advice will follow this week. Don't miss it. A see if you can think of a better title than 'Recession: Simple Advice for Designers'.

(I ought to mention that all those pictures were taken from the Credit Crunch Graphics Flickr Pool and they all link back to their original pages. Thanks to the photographers!)

Large Type Killer

Portland

I'll be in Portland, Oregon at the end of November and I wondered if anyone fancied meeting up for a coffee? Is there a coffee morning in Portland?

Maybe we can start a Portland Beersphere? Leave comment or email me.

Answers from Matt Dent

I guess with a name like 3 Fish In A Tree it's apt that their office should have some of characteristics of a goldfish bowl.

I don't mean that in a bad way, I'm sure there are lots of you reading this who would swap your office for 3 Fish In A Tree's place in the Oxo Tower on London's Southbank. It's a vibrant community where tourists and jewellery makers mix freely. It also means 3 Fish effectively work in a shop and anyone can look in, hence the goldfish analogy.

3 Fish's work for Allied London

From the outside I can see seven designers, one account manager and one studio manager. I'm here to meet one of the designers, Matt Dent. Some of you might remember that Matt spoke at Interesting 2008 and that he is the designer of The Royal Mint's new coins.

Matt and his colleague Chris Davies have both been promoted to the role of director at 3 Fish. This follows eight years of growth for the company; during which time they've worked for clients such as Olympus, Samsung and GB Airways.

“We are winning some great creative work at the moment against some big-hitting agencies,” 3 Fish founder Ricky Oh observes. “Matt and Chris are directly responsible for making that happen. Their promotion just recognises that fact.'

Before I put your questions to Matt, I sat down with Ricky and Matt and we chatted more generally.

Let's start with that name. In 2000 when Paul and Ricky started 3 Fish In A Tree they where searching around for a name and Ricky remembered a rhyme from Dr Seuss he used to read his son. "Three Tree / Three fish in a tree / Fish in a tree? / How can that be?" and so it stuck. 3 Fish In A Tree was born.

Matt's been with them for 3 and a half years and has possibly the oddest route in to a job as graphic designer I've ever heard. After Matt left college he travelled to London all the time looking for jobs, with no success. So he went to New Zealand for a year. When he came back he signed on. At the same time  3 Fish In A Tree had placed an ad with the Job Centre. Ricky says they got all sorts of odd letters. Lots of ones along the lines of, 'I have no qualifications but I've got to apply for this job to keep getting my benefits, that said being a graphic designer sounds like fun...' Eventually this process turned up Matt.

 
3 Fish's work for frijarc

Matt first worked on a rebrand for a firm of lawyers. That was a big project taking 3.5 years. Apparently the hardest thing about that project was the franking stamps. They kept getting lost in the post. And now Matt's a director of a 9 strong design firm at the age of 27. Ricky goes on to say, "If you're responsible for bringing in work and managing clients then you can be a director. Everyone can be a director."

We spoke a lot about Recession. They're not unduly worried by this. In what I think will be a familiar tale up and down the land there will be tightened belts but nothing drastic. They were due to expand into the unit next to them but a client just got bought out and so this is on hold. They don't see the company growing much beyond 15 people, "Stay small, do good work. Good work for good clients and stay profitable."

And then I asked your questions.

Look! Matt Dent signed my coins!

Why was the £2 coin left out of the collection/design?
It wasn't in the brief. 1-50p only. The pounds have a separate strategy that they are updated regularly, but it was but in the collection because it acted as a unifier.

Who would win in a fight between Chrissy Waddle and Cinderella ? No rules.
Gut feeling - Chris Waddle.

What other class of everyday objects would he like to give a systematic overhaul?
The thing I'd like to design above all else would be a tree house. The one constraint is that it would have to be practical; it would be designed with a particular tree, a particular set of branches, in mind. I like the idea of choosing the right spot so that some of the tree's branches shield the house from view, so from certain angles it was invisible. It would also be completely dismantleable. You wouldn't know when it was there, and you'd be none the wiser when it wasn't. I'd probably then need to design a map to find my invisible tree house.

What other concepts did you toss around before coming to and settling on the Royal Arms?
They asked for 6 designs that represented the UK, but there's 4 countries in the Union. Initial idea was a landscape, but then I realised that heraldry makes a nice mass of objects.

What has been the establishment’s response to his groundbreaking design and will he be doing stamps next ?
I would love to do stamps. The enthusiasts magazine liked them a lot. The enthusiasts (and particularly their magazine) have a lot of clout.

Why did he decide to work for that company... their website looks crap?
You should ask him why he’s working at such a dodgy company?
I think it's a good website. It's only a matter of time before 3 Fish In A Tree gets the recognition it deserves, recently we've been beating CDT in pitches, so I don't agree that it's a dodgy company.

How long did it take him to do the coin design... i.e. 3hours... 2days...?
I was involved in some capacity for 2.5 years. The first stage was to present vector drawings of the designs and then I developed it with the people at the Royal Mint. For a long time it was down to me and one other guy.

(Matt emails this extra information afterwards.) It was a design produced by David Gentleman. And strangely enough, his designs (although of different subject matter) like mine had an order to it, a sequence. His sequence was determined by the development of an oak tree, beginning as an acorn on the penny, maturing to a majestic tree by the fifty pence. Each design was supported by the elegant typography of the coin’s denomination and framed by the border of the coin. The crisp lines of the design, together with the simplicity in the arrangement of the typography gave the set a clean, bold approach. A lovely series.

Why are there no numerals on the coins?
Numbers aren't normally used. They don't have numbers on US coins, for example. The only reason you're used to seeing them is that they were put on the last set of coins because they were produced for decimalisation and it was thought that the numbers would help people understand the concept. (The coins are updated periodically. Their last major overhaul was for decimalisation which happened to be 40 years ago. These designs are likely to remain in production until the Queen is succeeded - there is no fixed timescale.).

What’s your favourite money? Other countries etc?
I liked the old Irish ones before the Euro, they had animals, fish and cows and stuff. And everyone likes the Australian notes, the unrippable ones.

What were you working on this morning?
Researching an online game for a major airline.

Tell me about 3 Fish In A Tree. Why’s it called that?
"THREE TREE / Three fish in a tree / Fish in a tree? / How can that be?" taken from the Dr Seuss book.

How many people from your BA course are designers  now?
There were 37 on my course, about a third of them are designers now.

Thanks to Matt and Ricky for a good chat and a nice lunch. If you wanna find out more Creative Review did a more in depth interview with Matt in April.

Graphic Design and Obama

In the past few weeks I've had lots of students emailing me to ask what I think about the Obama branding.

I know a little bit about this having run some sessions in the summer which covered this topic*. I don't want to offer my personal opinion on Obama or even his brand. That has been done many times before and it has been done better elsewhere. So instead I will point you to some things I think you will find useful.

First up, if you read nothing else, read this article in Newsweek where Michael Bierut talks about Brand Obama. It's the best thing I've read on the subject by a long way.

"There's an absolute level of control that I have trouble achieving with my corporate clients."

Armin at Speak Up wrote probably the first decent article on Brand Obama. It set the tone, it's comprehensive and it's very good. It also includes all those variations of the logo.

"For each segment of people, the logo changes accordingly, tip-toeing a fine line between cliché and clever, and never crossing to the former's dark side."

Obama has used the web very well. His Twitter feed is here and an article on him and Social Networking is over here. It tells you why they say Obama is very Cybergenic.

And there's lots more. Here's a great image gallery from The Guardian. Every Presidential candidate needs a private jet. Obama and the kids? Read that here. Richard on the great Great Schlep campaigng.

Did you know that Obama's supporters made an iPhone app in 3 weeks? User generated Obama posters. 30 graphic designers present 30 reasons to vote for Barack Obama. And even that wassup commercial remixed for today.

And finally I presume you've all read Michael Johnson's round up in this weeks Design Week.

* Yes, that is deliberately vague.

What The City looks like at night

"glowing changing rainbow tron grid filling a square in the City, underlying structure of the universe shining through" as Matt would say. Well, as Matt said.

Lego Wall Hacks

Brilliant. Mad. Good. Let's do this more.

A Management Guide to Corporate Identity

A while ago Julian very kindly sent me this lovely, wonderful book. For free. As a gift. What a nice man.

It's from 1971, it's a handy Management Guide to Corporate Identity and it's bloody brilliant. Lots of bonkers charts.

Loads of gorgeous stuff in there including Crown, Smiths, Peter Dominic and the British Transport Docks Board. Wonderful. Thanks Julian.

D&AD stuff

I'm sorry I haven't done a review of the D&AD Annual like I have in previous years. It feels a bit late now you've all seen it haven't you? It's online anyway for members and non-members alike. Which is fantastic.

Now, some other D&AD news. They've started putting lectures online as podcasts, which is brilliant. Easy and accessible and the quality is good.

Lots of people leave comments on my review of the Ivan Chermayeff lecture saying they wish they could watch it. Well now you can.

Tony Davidson is up there as well, as is Irma Boom and Paul Davis. You can subscribe straight through iTunes (opens link in iTunes).

There's some good interviews with Kyle Cooper and Garrick Hamm on YouTube, all well worth watching.

The brilliant 45 years of pencils exhibition is now on Flickr.

Last but not least you can now enter the D&AD Awards. After all the fuss last year it's important that us graphic designers enter some bloody good work and that we win. There's only one way to win and that's to enter. So enter. They've made it cheaper this year too!

That Fiat pic in Autocar

The Fiat post for a few days ago made it in to this weeks Autocar (with full credit etc etc).

The guy that owns the Fiat has gotta be happy with that?

The story has also been on blogs all over the place, especially a couple of big US ones. If Fiat have been watching all this they should give this guy a new van and see if they can turn this into a brilliant little story. Let's see what happens.

My Internet Remix

Michael has brilliantly printed out My Internet and stuck it on his wall. It looks so good Swiss Miss picked up on it. Whilst we're talking about that Matt wrote a very similar (and brilliant) version of this in 2001. it's called WebDogme 01 and it's well worth a read. it contains the great line, "The browser must not be violated".

Books you should own

Sometimes people, usually students, email me and ask me what books they should read.  Here are two classics that should never be over looked. They're pretty famous, but if you're a new student you may not have heard of them (and let's face it one of them is 12 years old) so I thought it worth mentioning them again.

You'll notice I've said 'books you should own' and not 'books you should read' that's becuase you should OWN these books. They're not really the sort of books you can read, they're the sort of books you should own and keep coming back to again and again. And it's Christmas soon, so you can put them on your list.

A Smile in the Mind is a lovely book. It feels a bit dated now but that doesn't stop it being a great book. And it shouldn't stop you buying it. Just don't copy every logo for every project you work on. It's full of witty, penny dropping moments in graphic design. There's some great stuff by some great designers. It's also a book you can give to non-designers and they'll happily spend an hour looking through it.

The Art of Looking Sideways is an equally lovely book. If magpies were graphic designers and they could write books, this is the book they would write. And wonderful collection of images, quotes, thoughts, photos, stuff. I guess you might call it a thought starter. If you spoke like that. It's a book full of inspiration and one that can get you out of the deepest funk.

Both of these books get better with time.

Quiet Please

Great photo, borrowed with kind permission from Cakehole and seen in The Design Disease Flickr pool. You should sign up to that.

 

My Internet

Ages ago a Head of Internet (or something like that) from a big high street retail brand asked me why a website looked smaller on my computer than it did on his.

"Well, my screen resolution is different" I answered. Obviously. There was a small silence. "Explain to me about screen resolution again..."

This wasn't the first time this had happened. Someone very high up in an organisation and in charge of an internet didn't know what srceen res was. Now, I'm not being facetious you can't expect everyone to know everything. But I thought it might be a nice idea to get everyone to describe 'their internet' at the first meeting of any new client. Like they do at school when the new kids arrive mid term. Get everyone up to the same level. That way, everyone would know the 'level' of everyone else and there would be no clangers later on.

Here's My Internet, it's not finished so feel free to add your own in the comments.

1. My Internet doesn't use flash, evahhh. Unless it's a video, and then only for video.

2. My Internet prefers html text wherever possible.

3. My Internet lets me use my email address or my usual username as a username. It doesn't give me one or make me create a new one.

4. My Internet lets me use a password entirely of my own choosing. It doesn't make me add numbers or Capitals wH3re I don't want them.

5. My Internet values simplicity and clarity over almost everything else.

6. My Internet prefers tools that I'm familiar with like Flickr, YouTube, iTunes, Google etc. It doesn't reinvent convention for the sake of it.

7. My Internet has a screen resolution of 1024x768. Today. As I write this. That will change sooner than you think.

8. My Internet has absolute urls for everything.

9. My Internet may not have exactly the same colours as My Printed Matter.

10. If My Internet was forced to choose between speed and visual lushness, speed would win easily.

11. My Internet has no back, forward or print buttons. That's what My Browser is for.

12. My Internet has contact details clearly accessible right from the word go.

13. My Internet will not work for everyone, everywhere, always, at the same time, all the time. It will especially not work for CEO's Aunties.

This could be the best book ever.

I'll read it and let you know.

Wouldn't it be better if it said 'Please Reuse'?

I know that 'Please Recycle' is very good. I know. But it's a big box and it could easily be reused.

I Mean, Grand

I don't know about you, but I love the smell of a fresh new Tube station first thing in the morning.

This is Shepherd's Bush. Brand spanking new. Lovely new signage.

All clean and nice. Strong, non faded colours.

Like a blank canvas.

The only thing they've lost is the funny little sign which used to tell you the origin of the name. Oh well.

This Fiat Is Very Unreliable

I saw this earlier today and rushed up to take a photo.

Obviously I know very little about it apart from what I can see;

1. It's on a Fiat.

2. It's a new Fiat, March 2007.

3. This is looks like a genuine van for a genuine tradesman. It has contact details.

So we can assume that it's a authentically pissed off van owner and not a TV prop or a stunt or something. It looks like a pretty effective way to take revenge. I bet Fiat hate it if he turns up at the local dealership. And it's highly visible on the road, and now thanks to me, on search engines.

I'm sure there's a name for this. Antivertising or something. But that's for other people. It made me smile, so I thought I'd share it with you.

D&AD 45 Years Exhibition Book

Anyone want this? I don't.

I don't mean that to sound ungrateful. It's a very nice thing. It's just that it'll sit on the shelf and you know, just sit there. Doing nothing. Adding no value to the world. So I thought someone might be able to give it a better home.

Errr, you can't read that, sorry.

It's designed by Build (I bet you lot love Build, don't you?) and it features all the text from the excellent D&AD exhibition. It's all the Presidents talking about their favourite piece of work from their year. Very good.

So pop over to the FAQ's, find my email address (think of that as an initiation test) and send me your address. First address I get - gets the book. Simple. Bosh. Break it down.

UPDATE: Competition closed. It's going to Matthew in North Yorkshire.