Noisy Decent Graphics

More Applied Green

If you enjoyed this, read Michael Johnson's talk from the same event here.

Alphabet of Endangered Species in the British Isles

Lovely stuff. See it here.

Get some Z at the Design Museum by Henrietta Thompson

I went to see the Zaha Hadid exhibition at the Design Museum the other day. It's good. It's not just about the buildings, Hadid does some really interesting drawings and paintings. And she's one of those rare people who manage to make the finished product look like the concept sketches. You can see more pics over on Flickr.

My good friend Henrietta Thompson has been writing for the exhibition blog and she's spotted something I think you'll find interesting. Henrietta is a professional writer (for proper publications like Arena, Monocole, Blueprint and the Guardian) so the words are by her and the pics are by me.

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Get some Z at the Design Museum

Give us a “Z”! Give us an “A”! Give us an “H”! Give us an “A”! Zaha Hadid is the queen starchitect - the undisputed champion of signature architecture.

Critics and fans alike have long wondered where she finds her inspiration - where do her forms come from? Her architecture rarely fails to astonish, and yet it is always unmistakably her own. It has been attributed to her willingness to experiment with new technologies, her tireless pushing at the boundaries of materials and construction methods. Over and above all that, however, Zaha is an artist. And her conceptual approach begins by taking a long hard look at herself.

From the moment she could write her own name, Zaha has been creating masterpieces. Her trademark geometric Zs are almost certainly the starting point for every project, but it is perhaps only when we see all her buildings, paintings, plans and projects together that we can fully appreciate how she follows through with those perspective warping combinations of As and Hs. And every now and then she will surprise us with a beautiful sinuous D curve and a rare straight vertical I. There’s no doubt about it, this architect puts the “I” in “iconic”.

You can see more pics over on Flickr. This post also appears on the Zaha Hadid Exhibition Blog.

I’m a designer. Use me better.

Big talk today. I'm speaking at Campaign's Applied Green Conference thing with Michael, Russell, John and loads of other grown up, important people.

I thought you might like it if I posted my talk here. For the first time ever I've followed Jon Steel's advice and written my talk down, in long hand. One of the benefits of this is that I can post the whole shooting match, here, for you wonderful people.

So I'm doing that in a timed post that goes live round about the same time I'm supposed to be speaking. It's like a simultaneous streaming blogcast.

So here you are; what do you think?

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Hello. My name is (etc, etc, I'll skip that bit here. You lot know who I am.)

Today I’m going to lay out a case for how I think designers, and the design industry, can help with the challenges facing us. I’d love to know what you think about these ideas.

But before we do all that, let’s start with some fun.

Let’s be honest, all this Green / Sustainability stuff can get a bit heavy, can’t it?

I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear someone say Sustainability, it reminds me of Phil Collins. You know, sus sus sustainability, like sus sus sussudio. So in the spirit of that Gorilla ad I wanted to play you this little film I made especially for today.

If you're reading this via rss, see the video here on YouTube.

Seriously, we hear a lot of talk about sustainability in the design industry. Sometimes it even says “sustainability” in client briefs.

According to the Design Council, 95% of design consultancies have less than 5 staff and a turnover of less than £250k a year. So the problem is that when you mention sustainability to 95% of designers they’re not thinking about saving the planet, they’re thinking about next years Annual Report & Accounts.

And that’s part of the problem.

I’m a designer, I run a design company and I accept pounds. We all do.

As an industry we’ve learnt that more stuff equals more pounds. And pounds are good for our sustainability. That’s a pretty simple business model.

If a client asks us to design two postcards; we think, a lot of the time subconsciously, if I can get them to do three postcards that will be great, four will be even better. Because more stuff equals more pounds.

If a client asks us to design a brochure; we say silly things like, “Wouldn’t it be a great idea to send them a letter with the brochure. Yeah, and let’s send them a postcard before we send them the brochure so they know the brochure is coming. And if we send them a postcard before we send them the brochure we really ought to send them a postcard after we send them the brochure.” Much nodding of heads.

I once sat in a meeting where someone said, “I always say, if you’ve got a full colour RPC you should have a full colour envelope”. Yes, they said, “I always say.”

OK, so by default as an industry we produce more stuff because that’s gets us paid more. We all get that, right?

But as an industry we don’t just do that, we also do this:

and this

in case you didn’t spot it

that’s freshly prepared crispy potato slices.

Yes, freshly prepared.

That’s pretty ridiculous, isn’t it?

It’s easy to stand up here and slag off unnecessary packaging, but it’s not just packaging designers who are at fault. Designers, by default, just produce lots of stuff.

Here’s our letterhead.

(I'll skip through these pictures to save pixels...)

Nice isn’t it? Nice big arrow. Bit of Helvetica. You know. That’s the one we use for short messages. This is the one we use for longer letters. Oh and there’s this one as well. We use that, er, when we’re bored of the orange one. And there’s this one too. We use this one for invoices.

So here they are all together. Hands up - I designed these. But it’s ridiculous isn’t it? How can we justify 4 different letterheads? You can’t.

And it’s not just packaging and it’s not just self indulgent self promotional stuff.

It’s classics like this.

Is there really a need for this nowadays?

I know there’s more than a designer involved here, marketing managers and brand managers and account managers can all take their share of the blame; but seriously, as designers we could have stopped this. Really, someone should have stood up and said, “Excuse me, but isn’t that a little unnecessary?”

So, the climate change elephant in the industry is, designers, it’s our fault.

I honestly think we have to admit that before we can move on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, as I already mentioned there are loads of other people involved, but whose fault is it that a swede comes wrapped in cellophane? That potatoes come, freshly prepared, in a great big fucking plastic box?

It’s the designers fault.

And if you won’t agree that it’s the designers fault at the very least you’ve got to admit that the designer has done nothing to stop it – which in my view makes it the designers fault.

Now, I don’t want to stand up here and say all designers are bad and we should just get everyone to make less stuff. That’s lovely and everything, but it’s very unrealistic and it’s not gonna help with this bit.

If more stuff equals more pounds, than less stuff equals less pounds, right?

OK. Here’s an interactive bit. Hands up if you’ve read Jon Steel’s book, Perfect Pitch?

Hands up if you drive a Porsche?

The car assholes drive, I think that’s how Jon Steel put it.

Anyway. If you ask Porsche about their sustainability policy they will proudly tell you that  60% of all Porsches ever made are still on the road today.

Think about that for a bit.

Now you might think that a gas guzzling 4.8 litre car can never be environmentally friendly, but just think about that stat for a bit. What they’re saying is that 60% of the stuff we’ve made is so desirable, so well put together, so well designed, that people are still using them.

Imagine if 60% of other stuff was still in use. I don’t know about you, but I’d be happy if 60% of the iPods I’d owned were still working.

Imagine if 60% of carrier bags were still being used. Imagine if 60% of computers were still in use today. 60% of food packaging was still in use.

Lewis Mumford, the historian said “Why should we so gratuitously assume, as we constantly do, that the mere existence of a mechanism for manifolding or of mass production carries with it an obligation to use it to the fullest capacity?”

Or why do constantly we make as much stuff as we can, rather than as much stuff as we need?

Now. Take a look at this:

This is a video simulation of all planes flying across America in 24 hours.

I got that brilliant video from here, but I had to upload it to youTube so I could embed it here. If you're reading this via rss, see the video here on YouTube.

Messy, isn’t it?

These are the flight paths from a Heathrow take off.

The designer in me says wouldn’t it be nicer if some of those lines were, y’know, a little bit straighter. I could drop those flight paths into Freehand, mess about with the Bezier curves and straighten that mess out in no time at all.

A report in June in that well known design journal The Economist found that “if air traffic control systems were reorganized” a fuel efficiency gain of 12% could be made. Fuel efficiency gain of 12%.

What do they mean by reorganized? A continuous gentle descent into the airport (as opposed to a stepped descend, hold, descend again approach) could save around $100k per year, per aircraft. British Airways have 235 planes so that’s a saving of $23.5M every year just by redesigning the flight paths. 23 million dollars just with a bit of Freehand work!

And obviously, not only are we saving money, we’re saving fuel.

Ok, I’m aware that all sounds a bit naive.

So I spoke to some air traffic controllers. They said that whilst that would work, you can’t just go around redesigning flight paths. There are all sort of restrictions. For example you can’t fly over Buckingham Palace.

But listen to their other ideas for making flight paths shorter, this is the exact words,

“Better airport signage = better retrieval of baggage = better turn around time for aircraft loading and unloading = more gates available through operating hours = more aircraft can be landed in a given time period = less aircraft time in the air waiting to land = less fuel wastage from circling aircraft.”

“Even better carry on luggage storage may mean less time loading/unloading = more gates available for a new plane to land at = less time in the air waiting to land. Maybe it's not better storage but better carry on luggage.”

“Maybe it's better exits in an aircraft - could the side of the aircraft just roll up?”

“Maybe the aircraft could be a "canister" carrier, unload the canister, pickup a new one and away you go.”

Let’s look at what they said there: Better airport signage. Better luggage storage. Better carry on luggage. Better exits. Just better aircraft. Aren’t these all design problems? Are you starting to see what I mean?

That other esteemed design publication, BBC News online, reported in February that Belkin, the people that make USB sticks etc, reviewed the packaging on one of its network card products.

“The alternative design signified a 50% reduction in box volume, which will boost transport efficiency and cut material costs.

The new design saved more than 18,000 kilograms of paper and 2,400 kilograms of plastics each year and reduce packaging-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 104 tonnes annually - with clear financial and environmental benefits.”

18,000 kilograms of paper. 2,400 kilograms of plastic. 104 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

   

Clear financial and environmental benefits. Ahh ha, we’re back to pounds again. Good.

You see - I want designers and the design industry to move towards a business model where design is a way of thinking rather than a way of creating more billable units.

Someone with a designer’s brain can spot these problems and can go about solving them.

Someone with a designer’s brain can be invaluable in the fight against climate change.

I keep having this thought that the best design minds in history would see Climate Change as amazing opportunity. Don’t you get the feeling Da Vinci could have knocked up an alternative fuel in his spare time? Don’t you think that Raymond Loewy would have found an efficient way to package some of Tesco’s Finest Swede before his elevenses?

I want this speech to be a rallying call to the design industry. We ought to say to companies don’t use us to implement your shit ideas, use us at a much higher level.

Now, I don’t just mean chuck loads of designers into every boardroom in the country, that wouldn’t work. I mean that people who think like designers think, can see these solutions more easily than others.

In the FTSE 100 38% of CEO’s have an accounting background, 23% sales 18% general management (whatever that means) 0% have design backgrounds.

I want people with design backgrounds to be CEO’s and CFO’s and CMO’s and town planners and air traffic controllers and European Commissioners.

European Commissioners?

You’ll probably have noticed recently that Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, LG, and Nokia have all agreed to standardize their mobile phone chargers. Everyone can agree that’s a brilliant idea. And I’m sure some designer at Nokia or Motorola had the idea ages ago, but why have they only done this now?

Because the EU's WEEE directive makes manufacturers responsible for some of the costs associated with recycling their equipment, and a broadly applied standard removes the need for a new charger to be distributed with every phone.

This is cheaper (ahhh pounds again) for the manufacturer, and also results in a smaller, less heavy box, which reduces on shipping costs, storage costs, warehouse costs and so on.

So regulation forced them to do it. Wouldn’t it have been nice if it was the other way round? Wouldn’t it have been nice if the CEO of Samsung had a design brain and stuck his neck out and they’d done this off their own back?

I want design to be a management tool. I want designers to get paid (more) for brilliant thinking.

“Reuse, reduce, use less, make smaller, make clever, we're running out of resources can you still do something clever?”

Well to me, that’s a design brief.

All these climate change issues look like design problems to me.

Maybe we won’t be able to get people to change their behaviour so we’ll have to work around that.

My brother lives in America and so I got over there quite a lot. Am I going to stop flying out to see him? Well, yeah, I might but my Mum and Dad won’t.  And they’re not gonna miss the opportunity to fly out and see their grand children. So may we have to redesign the planes so that they use 50% less fuel. Maybe boats were the answer? We just need to design them so they’re a little bit faster…

Maybe we need to design a communications system that means they can get the sensation of holding that grandchild from their lounge. I don’t know the answers, but I know that the problems are design problems.

You think I’m mad? Remember when people used to think you needed the tactile feeling of an LP to sell music?

I guess I’m saying to you – I’m a designer. Use me better.

You can also read Michael Johnson's talk here and Russell Davies' talk here.

Closed for two weeks

Meet The Amazing Nintendo Wii

And other modern products rendered as old ads. Fun. (Via Speak Up).

Which is X and which is Y?

Is this the X button or the Y button?

A brilliant, useful and very true post from History of the Button.

What's this the cover of?

You can find out in this brilliant post here.

Clue; I've got 5 of them, he's got 45.

Questions

The D&AD have asked me to write an interview with the designers of the current Annual, Fabrica.

This has come about because you guys mentioned you'd like to know more about what goes into making an annual. So I thought it was only fair to open up the questions to you lot.

I thought it would be interesting to make the questions pretty geeky. Do you use the same grid year after year? Who photographs all that work? And so on.

If you'd like to ask Fabrica a question about how they designed the latest D&AD Annual, drop it in the comments.

RDInsights

Some fantastic podcasts from the RSA's Royal Designers for Industry here. Mike Dempsey interviews Thomas Heatherwick, Gerald Scarfe and others. Really good.

Coming next, Malcolm Garrett. Well worth a listen. Or a download.

Design is so simple, that is why it is so complicated.

Conran & Partners.

Maybe Peter did the artwork?

There's a really nice story about the design of a logo over on David's blog.

Open House 2007

I love Open House. Even if I have seen the logo somewhere before.

I love architecture and I love going to buildings that you don't normally get to see, I love London and, obviously, I love design. So Open House is right up my street.

Technically Open House is the name of an organisation that promotes appreciation and debate of the built environment in London. The organisation started in 1992 and I think the Open House London Weekend started later than that, but I could well be wrong. During Open House London Weekend, many famous, hard to access and residential buildings of architectural significance open their doors to the general public. For free. Fancy going to the top of the Gherkin? With Open House Weekend you can.

I moved to London in 1997 and for the first time in my Ten Year I went to Open House this weekend. For the previous years weddings, birthdays, holidays, more weddings and other such must attend events have stopped me attending Open House. Trust me, it's become a bit of a 'thing'. This year I finally made it.

An hour long queue of people wanting to see a small house in Peckham.

Something that I guess has changed in ten years is the advent of serious architecty property programmes like Grand Designs, serious as opposed to Changing Rooms etc. I hate these programmes.

I like architecture, I like design and like most Londoners I can sit and talk property prices with the best of 'em, but these shows leave me cold. I find them really boring. Another wet room - sigh. Another wall of glass bricks - sigh. Another standard two bed flat turned into a one and half bed apartment with the kitchen on the roof and the bedroom in the wet room - sigh. Oh shit we're £30k over budget, how did that happen? Etc etc etc.

I reliably informed by people whose opinions I trust that Grand Designs is the best of these programmes. The house shown below had won some sort of Best of Grand Designs Award.

I can see why. The house was brilliant. Really clever and interesting. (It has a retractable roof for fuck's sake!) The photos don't do it justice but the house was squeezed into a piece of land that was 4 meters wide at one point. There were loads of really clever ideas.

There wasn't enough room for a proper bathroom so you slide back the bed and voila! There's a bath underneath.

Round the corner a bit and there isn't enough room for a sink, so you pull a drawer out and voila! There's a sink.

I don't want to be down about the house, it was brilliant. And it was really clever and it was really well done and well thought out. But it all just felt a bit, laboured. A bit hard work. A bath under a bed is a brilliant piece of design and engineering and it may even be practical, but isn't it just a bit - complicated?

I think there's a huge amount of visual comfort in seeing stuff laid out before you. Remember those beds that flip up into the wall? That's a good idea, but isn't it comforting to see your bed in the room? Wayne Hemmingway talked about this once, he said one of the reasons so many new housing estates were really ugly was because the British insisted on parking their cars right in front of their house so they can see them.

Like I said I don't want to slag the house off, but this whole Grand Designs sort of thing leaves me cold.

Open House isn't just about modern architecture. There are old buildings too. This house is from the 1700's. It was lovely. But this really brought home the Openess of Open House.

This is a picture of someone's clothes, in that person's house on a public website. It's a bit weird isn't it? Maybe it isn't.

I also went to look at the HQ of the Thames River Police. Not clever, not good deisgn, not prying. Just jolly good fun.

There are a few more photos on Flickr.

The Visual Dictionary

Visual and Dictionary by MINORBUG, used with thanks, usual stuff applies.

This does that brilliant thing of pulling together, building on and bundling up in a nice url all those things you'd been trying or meaning to do. The web is great at that.

The Visual Dictionary does what it says on the tin. A dictionary of 3000 single words all represent by a photo of that word. Presentations will never be the same again. Is this the new clip art?

Put together by Matthew Knight.

Brilliant by Flicko used with thanks, usual stuff applies.

Like Clintons, but without the shit grey bears

For years we have talked about setting up a little online shop.

We've tried a few things in the past and we tried this last year. But now, because lots of people have emailed me wanting to buy copies of this card and because we often get asked about the cards shown below and because Anne promised me it was dead easy we're going to set up a little online shop.

In the spirit of 'desktop research' I thought I'd upload some of our most popular greetings cards and ask if you consider buying one. All you have to do is drop a yes or a no in the comments. If we get some interest we'll set up the shop and you can buy them for real. That sounds like a fun game, doesn't it?

Here are the cards. Obviously they will all be printed dead nice on fancy paper and come with envelopes etc.

First up; I Asked Banksy To Sign Your Birthday Card.

Front

Inside

Here's F**k Birthdays, part of the very popular F**k series.

Front

Inside - double page spread

F**k Weddings

Front

Inside - double page spread

The classic, and getting timely, F**k Christmas


Front


Inside - double page spread

Kinky Christmas

And last but not least, The Copywriter's Birthday Card.

 

Hand Written Letter Project

Do you remember a while ago, Craig from The Chase asked me to send him a hand written letter?

Here's what I sent back.

He's scanned all the responses he received and uploaded them here. He's had an absolutely amazing response. There are letters from Wim Crouwel, Daniel Eatock, The Sagmeister, Tom Geismar, Milton Glaser, Wally Olins, Aziz Cami from The Partners, Alistair Sim from LOVE, Simon From Poke,  Lewis Moberly, Alan Dye from NB:Studio, Phil Carter from Carter Wong Tomlin, Harry Pearce from Pentagram and many, many more. Have a look at them all here.

I know I'm biased, but I think our letterhead looks bloody brilliant amongst that lot.

Loewy buy Seymour Powell

Another impressive, significant deal. First Williams Murray Hamm, now Seymour Powell. You can read more here.

D&AD Annual 2007

Last week the 2007 D&AD Annual was launched. Last year I posted about it and lots of people who couldn't get their hands on one (Mike in particular) liked looking inside. So this year I thought I'd do it again.

First up, the flags. You will all remember the flag project. You kinda helped after all. You can see all of the flag submissions here, some of them are good. Some of them are absolute bollocks. Creative Review covered Mike Dempsey's objections here and Michael Johnson talks about it here. 500 people were invited to take part and I think 39 people had their pictures used in the annual.

Five of mine were used, which is brilliant. Really exciting. Three were used just on the end papers (this one, this one and this one) and two others were used, big, as section dividers. Like the one shown below.

The category below is Writing For Design which I helped judge. The picture was taken by Tom and involved me standing on the roof of the building next to our office and throwing the flag off. Tom stood on the roof and captured this shot. It's one of our favourites.

Next up, and much more exciting for the blogosphere, is the picture of Famous Rob Mortimer holding the flag for me on the stage at the end of the Future Marketing Summit. Famous Rob, in Campaign, in Creative Review, now in the D&AD Annual.

Enough about me. Seriously, enough. Let's look at some of the stuff inside. There doesn't seem to much inside and not a lot that stands out, although I've been reliably informed it was a good year (in terms of numbers) for graphics.

I really liked this moving card for the Manchester Evening News.  

Designed by Vicky Beswick and Lionel Hatch at The Chase - In Book.

Also Manchester related is this great ad for the Manchester adidas store. Nice and simple.

Designed by Richard Irving, Dave Price and Karen Matthews from McCann Erickson, Manchester - In Book.

These posters for Apple are fab. I've never seen them before and I've no idea what they're for (well, they're for the Shuffle, but I mean I don't know where they were used etc). I love 'em. Those great colours and a really nice use of graphic shapes and patterns, a trend, I think you'll agree, that is coming back.

Designed by the secret squirrels at Apple Inc - In Book.

This signage at the Barbican has been in development for a long time. I love the big numbers and if you visit the Barbican you'll see that the circular wayfinding thing works really well. I think the colour is a bit suspect but...

Designed by loads of bloody people at Cartlidge Levene, Studio Myerscough and Allford Hall Monaghan Morris - In Book.

Last but not least is this amazing project from Japan, the Fukutake House. I really loved this one. I think it's gorgeous. Do you like it?

Designed by Masayoshi Kodaira and Yukiharu Takayama from EPA and FLAME Inc - Yellow Pencil.

It looks like Masayoshi has done some similar work before. Lovely isn't it?

My Week @ TDC

I was one of the luck pups who was treated to a week's placement at TDC after exhibiting at New Blood. Being a big fan of Ben's blog previously I couldn't believe I was going to the studio I'd already become so familiar with!

It's been great to sample a real slice of London life in one of it's top agencies, TDC's got a fab atmosphere, the studio is definitely home from home, as they all made me feel so welcome (esp. Becks!).

The Monday morning meeting on my first day brought me up to speed on what everybody was working on and straight away I was getting involved in current projects.

It's been a real taster for me of industry life and I've got to say I love it, I can only hope wherever I end up, it's as welcoming and thriving as this place!

Honorary Blogger - Stephanie Holford from Staffordshire University.

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Stef is here on a placement and she's cleverly admitted to reading the blog so I asked her to write something. I'd better be careful as this is now my third guest post (Marcus and Tom's efforts can be found here).

Should you wish to employ Stef you can download a PDF of her work here and you can contact her here.

Design the copywriter's birthday card. They said.