I got sent these great cut out / pop out letters by Lauren today.
No reason, she just thought I'd like them. Which I do. A lot. The thing is Lauren lives in Australia, so it took a little more effort than usual. Thanks Lauren! (Speaking of Lauren, read this and try not to see red with envy.)
If you want to send me nice stuff please do. Please don't ask me to blog about parties that I wasn't invited too.
They look cool on my oh-so-modern all white desk ensemble, don't they?
We had a printer turn up this morning, unannounced. He just knocked on the door. His business card assured us that he was "passionate about print". Which made me wonder how many other printers were "passionate about print".
Lots, as it happens.
Random House and Creative Review have been running a competition for designers to design the new cover for Jeff Howe's new book Crowdsourcing. (Did you see what they did there?) All the entries get uploaded and you can vote for your favourite.
Richard AceJet170 has submitted his entry and it's lovely.
I'm not just saying this because Richard is a friend, I'm saying it because the typography is nice and it's sensitively handled. The image is intriguing, relevant on several levels and beautifully shot. All this and it's clever too.
So vote for Richard.
You decide.
Here are three things I'd like to tell you about.
1. As I've mentioned before (in graphic detail) we compost in our house. It's very good fun. But it's a little inconvenient to take potato peelings or banana skins or Tesco's compostible packaging out into the garden as and when. It's nicer to store them up and then take them all out at once. That's a better use of time. So I looked everywhere for a kitchen compost pot, or a compost-before-it-goes-to-the-garden holder thing, but I couldn't find one. So I made do with this little tupperware box instead.
It does the job perfectly. It has a little flap for slipping in a tea bag and a big lid for emptying the thing. But still, you would have thought that someone would have designed such a thing, wouldn't you? You know, to encourage people to compost.
2. We drink a lot of milk in my house. So much milk that I ended up having to pick up an extra pint almost every night on the way home. This combination of bad household management and post Tube forgetfulness anger led to me stopping a milkman and asking if he delivered to our street. He did and now we have lovely milk delivered straight to the door. And of course it's absolutely brilliant.
I suspect millions have people have said this before but it's reminded me what a brilliant system a milkman is. Those glass bottles are wonderful things, much more sustainable than all that plastic and we're reusing them too! On the Refuse, Reuse, Recycle scale a milkman is firmly in the Reuse bit.
Which reminds me that new isn't always better, and this tugs at a thought I've got that we've probably already got a lot of the climate change/ sustainability / design solutions it's just that we threw them out in the name of 'progress' or more likely 'revenue' and 'sales targets'. But it's not just that, you instantly trust your milkman more than Tescos and you've very quickly got a decent relationship with him. I don't want to be the billionth person to bore you with the suggestion that milkman should deliver post and parcels and so on, but this reminded me of the Yakult Ladies. Yakult Ladies deliver Yakult in Japan in a similar way to how we deliver milk in the UK. Except they do much more than that, in some instances they have the keys to your house and they pop in and put the Yakult in the fridge. They also do something Yakult calls 'Social Activity Born of Delivery Work' [scroll down]. Brands, you could learn a lot from that.
3. Lastly, I've started a DVD rental website.
It's called eBay. Here's how it works; say you were reminded by Wil's illustration that you'd always meant to watch Any Given Sunday. Log on to eBay and buy it. It's gets delivered direct to your door in a few days, total cost - a couple of quid. When you've watched the film, sell it again. You could even use the same envelope if you wanted. You'll sell it for, ooh, a couple of quid, making the whole transaction fiscally neutral to you. Obviously newer DVD's cost a bit more, older ones a bit less, but repeat forever and you're effectively getting DVD rental for, err, nothing.
I've been doing this for a few months now and it works like a dream. I know you have to wait a few days for the film to be delivered and I know (shock horror) that the DVDs are second hand, but when I hear friends' tales of woe regarding Lovefilm or Amazon DVD Rental I can't resist a little chuckle to myself.
This is a brilliant unproduct idea. No more stuff is being created and yet money is still being passed through the system fulfilling the urge humans have to spend and greasing the wheel of capitalism at the same time. More money, no more stuff. Surely the Holy Grail?
Welcome to 2008.
This year I started using del.icio.us. I love it. It's brilliant, unobtrusive and very useful.
Since the start of the year I've bookmarked over 700 links. So when I sat down to write a review of the year and I worried that I'd focus too much on the last three months rather than give a true reflection of the year I simply looked back at everything I'd bookmarked through the year.
Ladies and Gentleman, I bring you a del.icio.us review of 2007.
You could use this post as a handy page of interesting things to read over the rest of the Christmas season. Good, eh?
My most popular picture on Flickr this year with 4,199 hits. Odd.
So let's begin with Dynamo Projects, a cool site where Malcolm Garret reviews web design and other digital stuff like this smart summary of the iPhone's interface. Swiss Miss is always full of gems like this typeface based on each letters frequency of use in the English dictionary. Our old friend Jakob Nielsen wrote a brilliant article called Usability In The Movies Top 10 Bloopers. Includes the hilarious "The Hero Can Immediately Use Any UI" and "Time Travelers Can Use Current Designs". Very funny.
I never understand why more people don't talk about disambiguated URLs. They make so much sense. Don't know what I'm on about? Read Good URLs are important. The best URLs are readable, reliable and hackable and find out. I hope you've read this by now but if you haven't then you MUST read the BBC's Fifteen Principles. It will improve your web design.
On a lighter note you could watch Steve Job's All Time Favourite words or you could read about Matthew Smith who takes broken iPods, fixes them, and gives them back out to the freecycle community for free. You could look inside Steve Ballmer's office or you could browse the most helpful html website known to amateur coders like you and me.
Glance at The Economist and look at how colour builds language and language builds colour or map the flow of people round a city in real time via the mobile phone. Read how w+k Neil's blog of the Nokia pitch induced "a stir". Had the last laugh on that, eh Neil?
Lewis Moberly appointed two board directors to help create the 'consultancy of the future' (wonder how they're getting on with that?), Google gave everyone a free bike and Durex looked for condom testers.
I loved watching the 7 minute Sopranos and intend to visit all of London's 50 Best Unsung Museums. Obviously. I'm always thinking about signing up for the RDI Summer School, but I never get round to it. There are some great pictures from inside ILM and there were all these great pictures in the bad usability 'This Is Broken' Flickr pool. The excellent Khoi Vinh writes about the "subtle, dotted grid pattern printed on the backside of Hallmark gift wrap that serves as a guide as customers cut away the necessary amount to wrap presents" which is the kind of little design twist I love. More on Khoi later.
Alice Rawsthorn wrote this great article about designing for the other 90% and the BBC talk about a typeface. Yes, that typeface. The Guardian wrote this good list of incredible uses for everyday things, it's the kind of thing Readers Digest would have written many moons ago. The Boston Herald worked out all the things you could buy with the cost of the Iraq war ($456 billion). Did you know that $456 billion dollars would feed and educate all the world's poor for five and a half years?
There's gotta be some Bierut in my del.icio.us and there's no better place to start than these two posts, why Michael Bierut hates ITC Garamond and 13 ways of looking at a typeface. Brilliant. Have a look at his brilliant typographic campaign for Saks and read why a Bierut design will increase your share price by 25%. Lastly read an interesting article in the beauty/strategy debate.
Take a look these postcards from 1900 predicting what 2000 would look like. Includes Roofed Cities and The Moving Pavement.
Earlier in the year someone asked me what my favourite blog was, which kinda misses the point because it's the combination of blogs that makes them so interesting. But anyway. If you had to pin me down I might say Khoi Vinh, I might say AceJet170. Here's an example of AceJet170 from back in May, Found Type Friday and the Penguin Car Handbook. In fact the whole Found Type Friday series is well worth a look.
Someone reckons we've done a D&AD lecture. Which we haven't. How to sell books on mobile phones (and it's not a Kindle). Some fantastic stuff from Wil at Ghost School, airplane food trays, there will be tears and a hip hop sound track and a difficult day at work. Wouldn't it be nice if all news was reported like this?
Why Facebook is the new Apple including my quote of the year "looking at it isn't like pouring acid into your eyeballs". One of those posts which makes you go yes, yes, yes by Dan G for Howies. A fantastic proposal for a replacement Vegas sign. A link which needs no explanation, "German woman drives into underground station entrance".
That logo. David, really, really hated it. Claire Beale hated it. Beeker's receptionist was worried, Michael Johnson was crossing his fingers and Coudal Partners liked what it wasn't. Armin liked it and Bowbrick loved it. The Government weren't for turning and Wolff Olins never asked to be liked. Which is just as well, really. There was a lot of talk about what could have been with, really, the only elegant suggestion being Daniel Eatock's. Although I doubt very much they'd let you do that with the rings.
Rhodri Marsden plays Wichita Lineman on a saw at interesting2007. Amazing.
The equally amazing Thomas Heatherwick beach hut. A defining and much quoted post on flexible identities from Michael Johnson. Bad design harms pupils. Yes, harms - "90 per cent of those who took part in the research said that classroom layout is the single most important factor in the school environment when it comes to teaching and learning.". Tom Jones' hard-to-believe-he-did-that cover of the Arctic Monkeys' I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor.
Some good, funny, stuff from David and some interesting thoughts on the Royal Festival Hall and new media from Chris. "We’re moving from a world of stuff, from the idea that there’s a finite amount of gold out there, a finite amount of almost anything out there. Throughout all of history, people fought over stuff: land, fuel, stuff." Important stuff.
The 7 Deadly Sins of Digital by the king of blog lists Mr Iain Tait. See also 10 Things Digital Planners Should Be Able To Do and 10 Reasons Why Digital Is Better Than Anything. The amazing "A Birth in 13 Places" series by Dan Hill. The Relentless Lisa Strausfeld. The new shite Chrysler logo "I have seldom seen so graphic an expression of how far we have fallen, in 45 years, from the skill and confidence of modern design."
This bit is the impossible-to-spell-right Khoi Vinh section. First up how much design is too much design? Next up, aging gracefully, "an object should be designed not just for sale, but also for day to day wear and tear. With use, this iPhone should get more attractive, should become like a trusted and inseparable friend." Then, eloquently stating the obvious, "I’m more of the school that content should be designed appropriate to each medium." His brilliant Control presentation and teaching design to Management Information Systems students and last but not least, how to design like Khoi.
Paula Scher's off the shelf designs. Hmmmmm. And Paula on Brand America.
You must look at this original Macintosh user manual. Cracking. "Life is good with your clients when you get along and communicate well. Often, that's not the case." Very, very true. Ziba on buttons. Every one of Michael Johnsons 873 D&AD Annuals. Are Big Ad Agencies shit etc etc yes yes there there. An article about blogs in The Sun, but only the sex ones and there's no url's; int the dead tree press brilliant? One Laptop Per Child is a failure, maybe because people want clean water and not YouTube? Just a thought.
All the best Gorilla remixes from the Head of Planning at Saatchi and Saatchi.
Are the best studios truly multi-disciplinary without realising? The different Pantones used to promote brands. The London Fire Brigade Museum. I'll say that again, The London Fire Brigade Museum. The plan to get rid of agencies. Ooops, I didn't realise there was a plan! "The only thing I can tell you for certain is that we are not sitting here saying, "The answer is six blades." Err yeah, right. Inside the Ideas Room at the Gillette Technology Centre in, er, Reading. How to present a brief to creatives, good superfluous free advice from Andrew.
If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers - "My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms."
The iPod death clock, try it. You'll be surprised. Do we need it? Can we live without it? Is it designed to be durable or multi-functional? 11 Questions to Ask Before You Design, Specify, or Buy Anything. Lovely, lovely, lovely signs. "The sensitivity of artists, the technical know-how of production engineers and amused and well-tempered minds" - RIP Richard Guyatt.
"It's fine. Nice looking enough. Works. Makes calls. The apps run. But it's nothing overwhelming. You couldn't put it in a plexiglass case and make nerds drool looking at it." The gPhone.
Those fucking charts. MIT sue Gehry. What The War did to packaging. A truly sustainable design firm in SE1. "Google kids I hooked up with yesterday -- fucking brilliant. They care deeply about Africa...THE SOLUTION: (RED) Ads by Google" Hilarious. The brilliant Ruby on brands.
And what better way to finish the year than Mr Davies showing why he's better at all this than anyone else. Have a great 2008.
This year's annual has just launched. Click here to download a free copy!
Last year's Annual is over here, it feels great to have done two in a row.
Special thanks must go to Wil Freeborn who drew us this wonderful illustration for the spread on Interesting 2007 and who is also featured in this month's Creative Review.
Is it just me or is it getting harder and harder to do an agency Christmas card?
It's a well known fact that designing a design agency Christmas card is the hardest brief going. But nowadays it just seems so unnecessary? I've long been in favour of not doing one, but I was talked out of it because others say that we do print stuff and we should use this opportunity to show off our print stuff. That's a valid business reason and I can buy into that.
However, opinion seems to be turning. Certainly elaborate paper cards are out. Business e-cards are the most miserable greeting known to man. So maybe next year we won't do one. We'll see.
This year, we were pondering all these dilemma's when Alex said, "Is it just me, or does everyone's Nan give out tea towels at Christmas?"
We knew we were on to a winner. Every year Alex's Nan gives all the females in the family a special festive tea towel. Which is a brilliant idea.
And so in honour of Alex's Nan please see our Christmas tea towel; screen printed in house, designed with a slight lyrical twist, and sent to friends up and down the land. One may even land on your desk this week.
As I'm sure I've mentioned before, we bank with the Co-op. We do this purely because of their ethical policy. It's something we feel quite strongly about. Which is good because just about everything else they do is rubbish.
So the other day I emailed them, specifically to complain about their online banking, which is just generally bad - one day I couldn't log on because the 'log on' button was missing. When I called, they said, "Oh yeah, it's fallen off. Our technical team are looking into that."
Anyway, they emailed me back to say that they were in the process of making changes and did I have any suggestions.
I have lots of suggestions, obviously. For example, we have two banks accounts with the Co-op but I can only access one of them online, which is frustrating. You can't search it... But then I thought there are probably loads of problems that people have with their online banking and probably all the banks have all the same problems. And there are probably loads of good things that banks do too. For example the Co-op allow you to set up timed payments which is brilliant for paying wages and things.
So I thought I'd ask you lovely people. And we should try and be positive. How could internet banking be better? What things do your bank do that are really good?
Put your suggestions in to comments and I'll pass them on to the Co-op, who by this time next year will have the world's best online banking system. Obviously.
This lovely wrapping paper is just lying around the office. It's gorgeous, but no one can remember where we got it from. Anyone got any ideas?
Some photos that you may enjoy from a very cold trip to Chicago.
Once again, that was pretty good, wasn't it?
I'd like to say a really big thank you to Mike, it takes a lot of effort to write that much original stuff. I gather from the comments that he was a big hit, and quite right too.
I really like these Guest Weeks. It give the blog a different feel and it seems to bring a slightly different audience, it raises different issues. Personally I loved the writer/designer stuff, I like the copywriters look at the ad and it was interesting to see a different point of view on the never ending webpage. It was great to see the Puttnam review too. All really good stuff.
Thanks to everyone for commenting ad making him feel welcome.
OK, now back to normal.
That's it from me, I think. I have a couple of urgent things to get done before what clients insist on calling COP, and I don't have any more Post Idea Post-its on the wall.
I've had a great time playing with Ben's blog, and I hope it's been of some use and pleasure to some of you. Thank you very much to everyone who commented - it's strangely thrilling, and rather addictive, checking the comments sections. I'll miss our little chats.
Thanks also to to everyone who emailed me with their views on The Great Writing And Design Debate. I don't think we've solved anything major, but I think I've done a little bit to encourage some dialogue. (Special thanks to David for his kind encouragement.)
I'd have liked a bit more input from the writers, if I'm honest. I think many of my own niggles about the lack of writer/designer collaboration are shared by others, and I thought they'd jump at the chance of a little ding-dong with the "design community". Thanks to those that did, but I wonder if maybe Tim's right.
As if this week hasn't been self-indulgent enough already, I hope you won't mind if if I end with a lttle bit of PR for a favourite cause. Having this temporary soapbox is too good an opportunity to miss.
Quite by fluke, I became the UK's first member of 1% For The Planet a few years ago. This is an association of businesses that each give at least 1% of their income (not profits) to environmental causes. It was set up by Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, and the membership is growing all the time. The last I heard, the average was one new member every day.
It would be great if this blog resulted in a new member or two. So do have a look at the 1%FTP site, and see what you think. You know it makes sense.
Thanks for listening, and biggest thanks of all to Ben for trusting me with the reins. Cheers everybody.
Mike
...of environmental matters, here's all the packaging that came off two pairs of trousers I bought recently. (All right, my wife bought them. We've reached that stage.)
We hear a lot about the evils of food packaging (quite rightly most of the time), but look at this. Isn't it all a bit silly?
Facebook is kind of the reason I'm here. Ben and I are Facebook friends, and one day I wrote a random little status thingy about liking Amy Winehouse. Ben likes Amy too, and dropped me a note. We had a little chat, and he suddenly said, 'Do you fancy doing the blog for a week?' And here I am. That's 21st Century networking for you.
Except it seems like it may not be for long. There's this row about Beacon, an advertising initiative that tracks your online purchases and then sells targeted ads on Facebook. Rather creepy. (50,000 users signed a petition against it, which shows the kind of near-instant people power you can generate online.) And apparently the Facebook bosses have been handling it all very badly and everyone now hates the site. (I have to say, I hadn't realised.)
I just thought this was all rather interesting. And as it's tangentially relevant to my presence here, I thought I'd pass it on.
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