Noisy Decent Graphics

An answer to finish the week with

David's guess is amazingly accurate. Take a bow.

 

In found this in the 1985 version of the D&AD annual (the D&AD bit was a tad obvious). It's quite hard to ascertain exactly who wrote the judges review but I think it was Edward Booth-Clibborn.

One of those silver nominations was indeed for a Trickett and Webb calendar and they also got a mention for some stamps. I've met Brian Webb a few times, lovely man, great work. The other calendar was by Pentagram.

Booth-Clibborn also talks about the "new John Blackburn Partnership". Whatever happened to John Blackburn? Paul, you would have liked him. He always wore one black and one red sock (geddit?).

He came to give a talk at our college and I really liked his approach. I remember him saying if you can't sum it up in 5 words it's not a good idea. Anyone care to agree or disagree with that?

Design // is // might be // isn't // The New Management Consultancy

1. A World Without Design
As part of the London Design Festival, The Partners hosted a panel discussion on the theme of a world without design. This is the transcript.

2. Bad Design Is A Health Risk

"inappropriately designed hospitals, medical devices and healthcare systems can directly contribute to the accidental harm of patients, harm that may affect as many as 10% of all acute admissions."

"there is no doubt that confusing and poorly conceived medication packaging contributes to pharmacy selection errors and problems with patient compliance; that unnecessarily complicated medical devices contribute to user error"

Who said that? Colum Menzies Lowe, head of design and human factors at the NHS National Patient Safety Agency

3. Is Design The New Management Consultancy? Not Exactly.
"When I hear a designer say, 'We were doing the same kind of work McKinsey would do' I think 'You really have no fucking idea what McKinsey does.' "

4. A Whole Bunch Of Useful Articles from the Industrial Designers Society of America.

5. 5 Keys to Promoting Thoughtful Design Leadership in Education from the nice people at Core 77.

What should I do with these?

One of the things that struck me about Alan Fletcher was the fact that he actually did stuff. I'm sure millions of designers have collections of letters but very few would actually make them into something.

So, inspired by this I'm going to do more things with all the stuff I've collected over the years.

For example I've got all these photos.

They're all of typography, mainly signs. I've always wanted to turn them into a book or something. I haven't added to the collection for a few years, so when I look back now they were mainly taken between 1998 and 2003. Australia, Spain, France, UK, San Francisco, Vegas, Colorado, Chicago, New York, New Orleans, Memphis and Monaco are the locations.

So what should I do? A book? A series of posters? An exhibition?

What do you reckon listeners?

The Story Of A Blog Post 2

I was half watching CSI New York which is no way as good as the Vegas one and half checking Design Observer which is great at the moment to see if they had linked to my No10 post like Creative Review have when I read about the RCA Secret project which made me think that I must go to that and then I started looking at the RCA website absentmindedly thinking that I'd like to do an MA one day when I probably wouldn't and then I looked at the list of visiting lecturers and I Googled Daniel Eatock thinking his site would be a load of bollocks and his site is a bit wank but actually really interesting and there's loads of good work there which is what it's all about really when I saw this Pantone Pen Print which is brilliant and so I thought I'd share it with you.

All pictures from Daniel Eatock's site. Usual stuff applies.

The first Story Of A Blog Post is here.

The Times gets a new masthead and a new fount

The Times has given itself a new masthead and a new headline font, art directed by Neville Brody.

You can read about the history of their headline font here.

Strangely, in the article they don't use the word font once. They say 'fount' throughout the whole article.

To check I wasn't being ignorant I looked 'fount' up in the dictionary. Here's what it says, "The English spelling (c. 1980) of the once Americanized (1828) and now ubiquitous 'font'.". I never knew that. Did you?

They've used fount 8 times in the article. Are they being clever dicks? Are they correct? What's going on there?

By clicking here you can see a history of the masthead design. There are 20 in all, over 221 years. This post brought to you via Design Observer.

No. 10

In his book Picturing & Poeting Alan Fletcher says, "The 0 in the number 10 on the black door of the British prime minister's house at 10 Downing Street is wonky. Take a look when you next see a newsreel."

He's correct. And I know why.

It's supposed to be so that when you look down the street (from Whitehall) you see the door at an angle and the 0 looks straight. Like this.

Do you think it works?

A question to start the week with

Who said this? Where? When? Why etc?

Let's See What Happens

You probably don't know that I'm contributing to Paul's 'Let's See What Happens' blog. As part of this I've reviewed 3 other exhibitions this weekend. If you're interested you'll find them here.

The View From Lots of Windows

Remember this? Kirsty has just had 8,000 hits in one day. Nice work.

Have you sent in your window yet?

Inside 50 Years of Graphic Work (and Play)

(I'm never sure if you're allowed to take pictures in the Design Museum. Probably not. All I'm trying to do is get as many people to the show as possible. Usual stuff applies.)

Our letterheads

A while ago over on we're as disappointed as you are I promised I'd upload our letterheads as they're a in a similar vain to these lovely things. A teeny weeny bit similar.

So here we are.

When we needed some new letterheads we thought about how we use them. Obviously we don't send many letters any more. We're more likely to send a note with a CD or some samples or something. In the Old Days 1.0 that would be called a Compliment Slip but decided to do a letterhead that allows you to type or scribble something short and sweet.

(click to make bigger - the photos are pretty bad, sorry about that)

We use this one a lot and it's one of my favourites. Sometimes we have to send longer letters in which case we'd use this one.

Very rarely, but often enough to print a letterhead, we may have to write something sensible and formal. In that case we'd use this baby.

I don't think you can read the text, but basically it says that you won't find any bollocks like Brandrama or Brandscape here. Just vital information like the stuff found in this letter.

Lastly we have one especially for invoices. I'm very fond of this one too.

We were trying to have a little fun with these pieces of communication. To make the recipient smile. If you can make some lonely soul in a procurement office smile you must be doing something right, right? I hope they have the same playful nature as the ones Russell refers to.

The other thing you should know is that we have no logo. Everything we do has to say The Design Conspiracy on it and it has to be clear that the 'thing' could only have come from us.

What do you think?

Beautiful

I met up with Iain the other day. I wasn't going to blog about it but I was looking through my iPhoto and I found these pictures. I'd forgotten I'd taken them.

This was in the café where we met. Except it's actually backwards which explains the picture I posted yesterday. So you only see the above picture when you look in the mirror. Like this.

I really like that. I suspect it's by an artist but, right now, I'm too lazy to Google it. I suspect it's the same guy who did this.

Which is something I saw here about three years ago.

On the way back to the office I saw these.

This is probably really old news and it's probably been blogged about a trillion times but I saw it and I like it. It's just a nice thing to do. You could show it to your Gran and she would 'get it' and that's the kind of design I like, design your Gran 'gets'.

It's great to see Councils doing more stuff like this especially as it's around an important issue like recycling. It reminded me of something I'd seen in New Cross.

(Picture taken from Orhan with huge thanks, usual stuff applies.)

That's it.

Design Week awards

Just entered the Design Week Awards. Here's the little babies sat on the table before they whizz their way over to Poland Street.

Wish them luck.

Why you should read Creative Review's blog (more Alan Fletcher)

This is rapidly becoming Alan Fletcher week here on Noisy Decent Graphics. I make no apologies for that.

This morning I was thinking that I should write something about Creative Reviews blog (again). There's loads of good stuff on there and they don't get many comments. We all need comments.

Anyway, this morning there's a brilliant post about the new Alan Fletcher exhibition including the following reflections:

That Alan Fletcher had the model design career

That we may never see the like again

That it’s OK to be funny – no, make that witty

That being tidy helps

That he was bloody good

Well worth a read.

Neon

Alan Fletcher on TV

Channel 4 did a piece on Alan Fletcher on Sunday night. Click here to watch the video (I've no idea who did the bloody awful animations).

Student visits

A student came to see us today. She emailed a while ago and asked if she could come in and have a look round.

She's in her 2nd year at Colchester doing a course in Graphic Media. She turned up had a quick look around, took lots of pictures. Asked a few questions; what software do you use, how do you think up your ideas, the usual kind of stuff. We gave her whatever samples we could spare and off she went.

As I was showing her out I said, "Are you seeing any other agencies today?". "Er no" she said, "You're the only agency that agreed to see me. In fact you're the only agency that replied to me at all".

That made me feel really sad.

She probably got a load of addresses from somewhere like here and she probably sent the same email to everyone. That's OK, a lot of people do that. I'm sure she wasn't expecting to get that many visits, but one? And only one reply? That's really bad, isn't it?

I know the other argument. We get loads of requests, we get loads of students writing in etc etc. And I realise we're probably the perfect size to show people round at the moment; we're big enough so that there is something to see and we're small enough to have the time to see people. But still.

We get loads of requests from students, placements, visits, questionnaires that kind of thing. We also gets loads and loads of CV's. I always try and reply, although it is hard. We always send people who send their CV's in this and hope that it helps a little bit. We can't see all the students who write in, but we make a real effort to reply.

I felt really sad today. I think we could all reply to an email couldn't we?

A first review of half an Alan Fletcher Exhibition

Alan Fletcher - wake up at the back. Pay attention.

The Alan Fletcher exhibition started at the Design Museum yesterday. I've had a busy weekend, lots of functions to go to, you know the kind of thing. But this morning I had literally an hour to spare. So I thought I'd race down to the Design Museum, rush through the exhibition and race home again. It's OK, I'm planning on going a lot and I like visiting museums for a short amount of time. I like challenging them to interest me.

And it was fantastic.

You know how you get excited about stuff and then the actual experience doesn't quite live up to it? England's performance in the World Cup, a new Oasis album, Hollywood blockbusters, all spring to mind. The Alan Fletcher exhibition is the opposite of that. By God it's good. Short (this is the Design Museum) but brilliant.

Lots of stuff from the early days. Lots of stuff that isn't in Beware Wet Paint or Sideways. Lots of commercial stuff that I hadn't seen before. Lots of big stuff. A six foot Reuters logo with the holes cut out. Collages made for Paola.

(That's Alan on the left. I can't help thinking the world would be a better place if creatives dressed like this now, and not like thirteen year olds at a surfer themed fancy dress party.)



You're getting excited aren't you? Sadly after this photograph my camera died. So you'll have to wait for a full review. That's a big, big shame because there was loads of stuff I wanted to share with you, my beloved listeners. Sorry about that.

At the exhibition you get given this lovely thing all about Fletcher. You know those things you get at museums. This one is a little different.

It has all the text and info and stuff.

It also has ten wonderful pictures from inside his home/studio.

This reveals so much about the man. How the boundaries between work and home blur so completely if you're passionate about your job. It reveals the amazing magpie like brain he had and it makes you wish your house / studio looked like that.

I've decided that I'm going to make it my mission to get as many non-designers as I can down to the Design Museum. All you need is an hour to spare and seven of your English pounds. Russell, fancy having a coffee morning  there?

I will go back and I will take more pictures and write a fuller review soon.

7 things you could learn from a designer otherwise known as 5 1/2 things you could learn from a designer.

Someone from somewhere (I'm not saying who yet because I haven't asked them if I could post this and I think that's a little bit rude) has asked me to come in and talk to their company about graphic design. When I sat down to write them an email I found myself writing like I blog. I kept wanting to put links and pictures in, so in the spirit of 'this collaboration thing' I thought I'd post my stuff so far up here.

I'm trying to write '7 things you could learn from a designer' but I've only got 5 1/2 so far. Can anyone think of another 2?

1. How to make your presentations instantly look better.
Why people usually over complicate stuff just because Microsoft have given them the tools to do this. Just because you can make 3D type in PowerPoint doesn't mean that you have to. Good design should let the content be the 'hero' not your wizardry with PowerPoint transitions.

How to make your presentations better in one stroke? Select all, click the text formating palette and choose one font. There, that's better isn't it?

2. Why you should never, ever, ever use Comic Sans.
Ok, let me say this again. Comic Sans is designed to look like the typography found in old comics. So unless you work for DC Comics, please, please, please don't use Comic Sans. It doesn't look friendly, it doesn't look fun, it's doesn't look funky, it looks shit.

3. What usability means and why it's becoming more important.
Great usability is the ultimate in good design. This is so obvious, but we're only just starting to talk about it. There are so many examples around us everyday, the Underground map, the BBC News website, almost all Apple products. As David Ogilvy said, "You can't save souls in an empty church".

As communication gets so more complicated usability is becoming so much more important in getting through to people. Make it easy for people to get to your stuff.

4. How design is the new management consultancy.
How companies are starting to turn to designers to solve complex business problems, or at least provide a different perspective. Because true design thinking means that design is a verb and not a noun. It's a better way of thinking and not a production process that's applied at the end of a project.

"Design is habitually brought in too late, used simply to paint and decorate products for which the major decisions have already been made. Thus we have products that are easy to build, designed by technically minded people, but that are not desirable or usable."
Clive Grinyer (director of Orange's Design & Usability Innovation team

And other examples...

5. Some names for your contacts book and an exhibition you must go and see this month.
Who Alan Fletcher was and when his exhibition is on at the Design Museum.

And other names...

6. I want to write something about the designers process, but I'm not sure what yet. It'll probably be something about how you store up loads and loads of stimulus in your visual brain and then you release that stimulus when the brief requires it. In other words you're Never Not Working.

“Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”

Margaret Mead said that. I found it in something Tom Peters had written, which I found reading Graham's Owner Managed Business Wiki.