Noisy Decent Graphics

Beautiful? Nope. Useful? Nope.

This is the William Morris pub in Hamersmith, which is neither useful or beautiful.

Which is odd* because William Morris famously said, "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”.

Here's something else that's neither useful or beautiful. Introducing the modern day Useless Saucer.

I hate saucers. Bloody useless saucers. Here's the worst modern day offender, the Conference Useless Saucer.

Ever tried to stand chatting, at a conference, holding a cup of coffee in one hand, a saucer in another, an agenda and then trying to drink the coffee? It's hard isn't it? Especially when the point of a conference break is to stand chatting!

Another one that annoys me is the Table Too Small Useless Saucer. This is especially annoying when you've got kids. Waiters have a habit of putting the most dangerous part of eating right in front of the kids, boiling hot coffee, sharp knifes or open bottles of wine. This problem is exasperated by the fact that the table is short of space. This problem is exasperated by the fucking useless saucers. Look I made an infographic!

I just don't see the point of these saucers.

The point isn't to hold the tea bag, you should take that out beforehand. Obviously. And the point isn't to look good either. If I went round my Gran's house I would expect a cup and saucer like this.

But in yer modern day coffee houses you get this hideous hybrid.

It's like they've used a trendy coffee glass and then thought, "Fuck! We forgot the saucers! The Englishmen will be revolting!"

But no one cares anymore. David Cameron doesn't wear a tie. Traditions change. And anyway, my Gran doesn't go to Costa Coffee.

I also know that saucers used to have a point. People used to pour tea into the saucer and drink it from there. That way it was cooler, quicker and you could slurp at it which aerated it and made it taste better. I know that because Richard Seymour told me over lunch. He knows lots about saucers and you should expect some exciting saucer news from his direction very soon...

Until then. Unless you're a Grandparent ditch the Useless Saucers.

In a little digital natives / silver surfer crossover thing I've been posting Useless Saucer pics to Flickr for over a year now. A few months ago my Mum and Dad went to Venice and uploaded pictures of all the "Useful" Saucers they saw to their Flickr account. Bloody digitally literate piss taking parents.

 

* Yes, yes, I know that Kelmscott House is in Hammersmith. But still.

The worst kerning ever?

Gary from Oxford sent this in. Simple question, is this the worst kerning you've ever seen?

PIZZA & LOVE

Henrietta just sent this in from Barcelona. Cool, innit?

Design and Maths

Many years ago I very nearly did a Maths A level.

I used to love Maths. I was even in the A stream at school. Then late one night in a dark bedroom (I had black ash furniture) I was doing some GCSE maths homework. I had a bit of a moment and I promised myself as soon as I'd finished the compulsory curriculum maths I'd never do any more. That was the A level out the window.

I loved maths because the idea of it was so easy. I don't mean that I'm some Beautiful Mind style genius, what I mean is that it's all just variations of 1+1=2, right? Each and every sum has a definite answer and all you've got to do is find it. Actually, you don't even have to do that, all you have to do is construct the answer using the tools you've been given, + and - and x etc. That easy.

Easy compared to staring at a blank piece of paper every day.

In the design industry you have to come up with totally new concepts, sometimes every day, sometimes three or four a day. Inventing new things - that's hard.

My ex boss had a husband who was Head of Maths at Kings College. Every couple of years he flew out to some conference somewhere and a load of mathematicians worked on solving the world's hardest sum. They had been working on this sum for years. The hardest sum in the world? It can't be that hard, surely? A whole clutch of very clever mathematicians are a lot better at maths than me. So if they think it was a hard sum, then it was obviously a hard sum.

The other day Matt informed me that each sum doesn't have a definite answer, they discovered that in the 30's. So I've accepted that maths is harder than I first thought and now I'll get to the point of this post.

It surprises me how often you use maths in design.

I was hanging some picture frames. So naturally I did a layout in InDesign first. I used maths to work out the spacing for those pictures.

I'm sure there are loads of big heavy books on Design and Maths, but I don't really mean that. I just mean the simple stuff. Working out 6 columns, making 12 indentations in a path and so on. You use maths all the time.

All these pictures are of little scribbles or notes that I've made when I've been designing this week. Loads of maths. Maybe I should have done that Maths A level after all.

The Planners Are Coming!

I had the shock of my life when I turned on the telly tonight. The Planners Are Coming! Arrghh!

Quick Thinking

Now available in Boots. Might come in handy. Especially in meetings.

Large Capello Collider

Great back page from The Sun today.

Wouldn't you just love to do graphics for a tabloid, just for a day? Also liberal use of the word Boffin in today's Sun, which is always good.

Who wins the first set wins

You can't read that but it says, "If Federer wins the first set, he wins the match - 37 out of 38 times at the US Open that has been the case".

Thus proving, again, that he who scores first wins.

Ikea take Authentic Marketing too far

If you score first you will win.

I meant to turn this into a data visualisation infomatics piss take thing. But I didn't.

You know on the football commentary they keep saying things like "the first goal is so important" and "the first goal was always going to prove crucial". Over Euro 2008 the BBC kept loads and loads of stats.

From that we can conclusively state that if you score first you are more likely to win. In fact out of 34 games 22 of them were won by the team that scored first.

Summer of Design Books: Étienne Robial

Not written by me, written by Bureau L'Imprimante (mostly) as part of the Summer Of Design Books series. You can write and post a review too, go here and follow the simple instructions.
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After graduated from the national school of fine arts in 1967(where he was awarded the first prize France with the highest possible score of  20/20) , Étienne Robial quickly became one of the first booksellers specialized in comics.

This activity, taken by chance, led the guy to become a publisher himself, and to be involved in the design process.
He had the opportunity to work for himself, and design hundreds of various books and collections, with a very close attention to fonts and to the quality of print.

He had parallel adventures in his love story with print, working on movie posters, other publishers, record companies, etc.
but the main turn in his career was when he was asked to think about the art direction for Canal +, a pay-TV channel broadcast in middle of the '80s.
This was for him the opportunity to invent the concept of screen idents.

Since then, he's been doing this for many various networks , Canal + remaining his main employer - and he's still there, holding the design commands with flying colours.

With his clients, he only shows one answer.
He's been working a lot, on many many different routes, but he chose to come up with only one.
The client may be a bit frustrated, but the solution he has to offer is often strong, balanced, and filled with possibilities.

Now with this book: it's a small, light and unexpensive collection, filled pictures (almost no text), but most important, it's the only book - as far as I know - with such a large panaorama of Mr Robial's work. And of course it comes with a disc featuring samples of his motion work.

Étienne Robial
Pyramyd editions, Design & Designers #028, Paris 2004
ISBN 2-910565-84-X

Bollocks

I was gonna write about this:

But they've already done it. They being David and AceJet and every other internet person.

Help Required

Says it all really. That picture has not been Photoshopped in any way. My camera is fucked. Every picture has this funky effect on it. Not good. Can anyone help me get to the bottom of the problem?

I've got a Samsung NV10 which I love, and it's about 2 years old. There's nothing wrong with the lens as the video bit works fine. I haven't got a new memory card or anything, it just suddenly started doing this one day. It's driving me a little bit mad. Can anyone help?

Graphic Design Pub Quiz

I was on a winning pub quiz team the other day. That doesn't happen very often.

Picture by abroomhe, used with thanks, usual stuff applies.

I was on holiday in Yorkshire and we stumbled upon the quiz night at the local pub. Before the quiz started my companions and I all picked our specialist categories. My wife (who got 47 of our 52 correct answers) chose science as she has a Masters from Imperial. One of our friends chose history as she has a degree in the subject and has worked at some of London's most famous museums. The third team member chose music which was handy as he owns more albums than anyone I know and is one of those bizarre people who still buy CD's.

For my specialist subject I chose British and American Graphic Design from 1975 onwards.

You won't be surprised to know that very few graphic design questions came up. Actually there were none. There was one colour question, which I claimed as mine; which colour did Smarties introduce in 1988?

But it got me thinking, what sort of graphic design questions would you ask at a pub quiz? Sure, you could easily have a 'who designed this logo' picture round but what about the other 70 questions?

You couldn't ask 'what is kerning' as pub quiz questions have short, often one word answers.

I guess you could ask things like 'which year was the D&AD founded' and 'which type of printing is commonly used to print stamps'.

What other questions would you ask?

Face Your Manga

 

Been around a while, but you may have missed it if you were on holiday. Good fun - Face Your Manga.

Oh, and hello again, I'm back.

Summer of Design Books: Graphic Designers

Not written by me, written by you as part of the Summer Of Design Books series. You can write and post a review too, go here and follow the simple instructions.
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I found this pair of jewels in the window of an antique books store.
I had never seen this collection before, anyone here did?
It seems there's been 4 volumes devoted to each side of the Atlantic, and I guess it's a japanese project.
Printed in Tokyo, photocomposition in Neuchâtel, lay-out designed by gan hosoya in the early '70s.
The inside of each book is divided in 4 parts, each one containg a quick presentation of the designer (sometimes written by the guy himself)

followed by a series of works.

The text is in french, english and german, so if you spot any of these anywhere, just jump on'em.

I tried to sum up each portrait in one sentence and one spread, and it goes a little some like this:

Graphic Designers Europe vol.2

Giovanni Pintori built his own house, and could build a boat as easily.

Edward Bawden travels, paints, and teaches a lot.

Hans Hillman: “JUST WORK”

Herbert Leupin is from the old school, but so Swiss…

Graphic Designers USA vol.1

Louis danzinger prefers to do less work and continue to remain more directly involved in its production.

Herb Lubalin talks about the future of the design business (i.e. the '70s): focus on the 25-yeras old people if you want to sell.

Peter Max closed his commercial studio to build a new art form: Cosmic Art (it is supposed to have a calming effect on the nervous system).

Henry Wolf is glad that big business is now looking for the odd-ball thinker to show him off.

Graphic Designers
USA Vol.1
1971
Europe Vol.2
1972

Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, Tokyo
& Office du Livre, Fribourg

No ISBN

And by the way, if you're around here I can guess you like design books reviews, right? So let me suggest you this amazing blog I discovered while preparing this post.

Summer of Design Books: Book Imprimé

Not written by me, written by you as part of the Summer Of Design Books series. You can write and post a review too, go here and follow the simple instructions.
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1985: Straight outta Washington DC, Susanna Shannon starts working in France with Etienne Robial at the Futuropolis editions.
1985: My father brings home avant-garde comic books published by Futuropolis. I really enjoy these, and the lettering on most covers is fascinating.

1993: Design Dept., the design studio co-founded by Susanna Shannon publishes Irrégulomadaire n°3, totally dedicated to the BHV shop. The cover is print on green + black on a green paper.
1993: In a design magazine, I notice loads of spreads from different issues of a strange publication called Irregulomadaire.
I learn that designers can publish their own stuff, and also that publishing a magazine only from time to time is possible and is even quite cool
The design of the pages is awesome, it'll inspire me a lot in my art student's work.

1996: SS  designs a lot of stuff for labor unions, especially in two colours, and especially for the newborn Sud, wild and tough.
1996: I put black+yellow Sud stickers against the privatization of France Telecom in the streets of my neighbourhood.

1998: Irregulomadaire is now at its 5th issue, and Design Dept. has the idea to design and sell a diary.
1998: I ask (and get) Design Dept.'s diary for christmas. I learn that using the scanner as a camera is possible and is even quite cool.

2001: S.S. is called to re-design L'Expansion, an economics magazine.
2001: I now am a freelance illustrator. I work for L'Expansion's AD, Jean-Paul Van Der Elst,  he tells me he's now working with this american girl, she's nice, but, you know, americans are sometimes a bit wild.

2006: S.S. is called to re-design Les Inrockuptibles, a magazine about culture.
2006: I'm so fed up with the editorial content of this magazine, I don't even notice the qualities of the design.

2007: Invited at the 18th International Poster and Graphic Arts Festival of Chaumont, I am lucky enough to meet up with Catherine. She's Susanna's assistant for a while now, she learned the design job from her and we talk until late about the right way to work, the printers, the photographers, etc. The wine flows.
A few weeks later she sends me this big red book, and I realise how much S.S. has been close to me all these years, how her design was a part of my environment, and its influence on my own work.
I have not met her yet, but as we seem to get closer year after year, I guess It may happen around 2010.
And one more spread for the road:

Book Imprimé
Déballage de design graphique

Susanna Shannon
pictures by Loren Leport

Irrégulomadaire + école des beaux-arts de Rennes 2006, Paris

ISBN 2 908373 56 4

Month 8

Can you guess what the song is? Found via Russell who found it via Dan.

You're probably not aware but there's a team of around 42 (plus interns) working on Noisy Decent Graphics these days. It's time we all had some well deserved rest. So apart from the excellent Summer Of Design Books reviews (more on that later) that's it until Monday September 1st, when we shall be back.

Same Bat channel, same Bat place, same Bat fonts.

Meanwhile keep the Summer of Design Books reviews coming in, they'll still go live in August. They're always really popular and I love reading them. Find out how to post one here and someone from the team will approve them as quickly as possible.

"my advice to startups in this particular category is if you’re going to put your product in beta — put your business model in beta with it"

Joe Kraus, CEO of JotSpot via 37signals.

Children's Interaction Designer Wanted

I met Jeremy the other day and he's looking for an interaction designer that specialises in stuff for kids. Not just web design, actual interaction - if that makes sense. He can't say much more about the project here, but it's very exciting. If you've got a passion for children's stories and interaction design this would be your dream project.

Importantly he's not necessarily looking for an agency, it could be a student or graduate that's been working on this type of stuff. There's got to be a recent graduate out there who's got a children's interaction project in their portfolio? Someone who's got a passion for both things. Anyway. Here's what Jeremy has to say.

Do you know how to push children's buttons and which buttons they will push?

A major publisher is looking for an interaction designer to work on an exciting digital storybuilding project for 5-11 year olds. If you have an interest in designing compelling experiences for this age group email interactivestories@googlemail.com, ideally with an example of your work.

Contact him on that email address above. Don't contact me.