Noisy Decent Graphics

999

This is interesting. I spotted it over at Bogdana's blog, which really should be called Blogdana. I'm not really sure why it's interesting, so here's some randomish thoughts.

1. I thought they'd be more 999's. Don't you find that a little unusual? Many countries borrow stuff from Britain because of the Colonial legacy, so I thought there would be more 999's. Maybe that's because the telephone became ubiquitous after the Empire had ended?

2. There's a lot of 9's and 1's. Blogdana makes a good point that, thanks to Hollywood, almost everyone would know the emergency number in America.

3. I was always under the impression that in Britain the number is 999 because in the old days when phones looked like this

(Picture taken from Vintagephone.com with thanks, usual stuff applies.)

three 9's would have been really hard to dial by accident. That means that pesky kids couldn't call an ambulance by mistake. So how is that relevant in the mobile world?

4. Why isn't the emergency number the same all over the world?

Moo cards have arrived

hop off a bus onto a train

Very nice signage down at the ICA

"Projects don't fail from a lack of charts, graphs, or reports, they fail from a lack of communication and collaboration."

Misinterpretation

A friend of mine has just got back from a year in Japan. As a present he brought me back this mug.

Marvelous isn't? Look at Bermonds just above Regent's Road.

You never realised Covent Garden was so close to Knightsbridge did you? Oh look, there are two Covent Gardens!

I can't decide if they've done it this way to avoid copyright laws, if they did it from memory or if it's just crap. What do you think?

X in the sky

Looks like they're calling for a Superhero doesn't it?

Bountiful Cow

I saw this the other day and I liked it.

It's just a little different for a British pub sign.

VOGUE 90

It's Vogue's 90th birthday this month. One of there things they've done to celebrate is this brilliant, brilliant website which has pretty much every cover from the last 90 years. You can search by date, model or photographer.

I love Vogue. I've always loved Vogue, ever since I was way to young to be going into WHSmith and buying women's fashion magazines.

Vogue is a creative institution. Always worth buying. Get past the ads and the celeb stuff and you'll always find an article about some obscure British pottery maker. Or a French quilt person (not sure what the proper name is for that...). Or a new Italian furniture designer.

Vogue is a creative power house. Vogue is one of those things that leads not follows. Vogue is powerful. Very powerful, still, after all this time.

Sometimes the covers are Me2 like a lot of magazines, but often they're great. Often they're "event" covers. This is the cover from March 1952, the issue that covers King George's death.

Fantastic isn't it?

That's such a powerful piece of graphic design. It's not just the fact that it's blank either, the choice of colour is fantastic. Purple is an accepted religious colour for mourning, it's also regal and at the same time glamorous and stylish. That colour is working hard. It feels like mouring, it says Royal and it's still Vogue. That's a great piece of communication.

As always the inside of these old magazines is good fun too. Funny how people complain that all fashion ads look the same these days. They all looked the same 60 years ago too.

All those ladies have the same waist. Or is it all one model? There are a hell of a lot of ads in this issue, many, many more than in todays Vogue. When we do eventually get to the content, take a look at this spread.

Gorgeous isn't it? Again, really simple, powerful communication. Stunning photography, great headline.

We love Vogue in the office. It's inspirational and it looks great on our new shelves.

This blog is a broad church

Issac from iJournal has written about my Alex Ferguson / Michael Bierut post. Nothing that unusual in that, except that Issac is involved with the Twelve Oaks Community Church in Illinois and he asks how many pastors have the same passion as AF or MB.

"This morning waking, my wife was mighty-earnest with me to persuade me that she should prove with child since last night, which, if it be, let it come, and welcome."

At last, a blog worth reading.

pepysdiary.com is a blog that posts one entry a day from Samuel Pepys Diary, as if he were blogging in the 17th century. It started with 1st January 1660 on the 1st January 2003, so that means we're up to 6 November 1663.

SoftLightes typographic video

There is a band called the SoftLightes and together with Kris Moyes they have made a lovely, gorgeous, typographic video. Song's decent as well.





It's one of those things that you'll wish you made. Watch the video here.




Found via Design Observer which is peaking at the moment.

Myths about Account Planning

... and other interesting topics found on the Wikipedia Guide to Account Planning.

I found it via Claudiu's blog and I just thought I'd share it with my planner readers. Hell, it even references two of you.

Chairs. Yawn yawn.

I hate chairs.

Well obviously I don't hate chairs, they're good for sitting on etc etc. What I hate is how furniture designers, and normally new, young furniture designers, always seem to fall back on chairs. Every bloody furniture exhibition you go to has the latest chair designs. Do we really need any more fucking chair designs? Surely, somewhere, the perfect chair must have been designed already?

(The classic Ant Chair by Arne Jacobsen taken from the Jacobsen site, with thanks, usual stuff applies.)

The requirements stay the same. People don't change that much over the years, a little fatter, a little taller, maybe, but legs still bend in the middle. People still rest on their posteriors when seated. So the design of chairs gets worse, more complicated, more stuff being added - confusing the issue rather than solving the problem.

(Chair with concrete base by Konstantin Grcic, with seat in die cast aluminium, treated with sputtered fluorinated titanium and painted in polyester powder. With concrete base painted transparent clear. Taken from the Twenty Twenty One site with thanks, usual stuff applies.)

So when I saw this in the Design Museum tank thing, I let out a long sigh.

Poor stuff guys, try harder.

Design Friend

I joined up as a Design Friend at the Design Museum today.

I should have done it years ago but a few things have been putting me off. Firstly, it's actually quite difficult to get there and secondly the exhibitions have always been patchy to say the least.

Well, I now live very close the Design Museum so that's that one sorted. Since Rawsthorn joined a few years ago the exhibitions have been great. Spot on. And they look like being good in the future, even though Rawsthorn has left. So I've signed up.

Membership costs £50, so it means I'll only have to go to the Alan Fletcher exhibition eight times to get my money back. Shouldn't be a problem.

Good tshirt for bloggers

Buy it here.

Has anyone ever had their blog printed as a book? You know, using a service like blogprinting.com. What did it come out like? Do you have any pictures?

What do Alex Ferguson and Michael Bierut have in common?

(Pictures taken from inthenews.co.uk and Pentagram respectively. With great thanks, usual stuff applies.)

I was listening to Howard Wilkinson talking about Alex Ferguson on Football Focus this morning and something he said reminded me of something Paula Scher said about Michael Bierut recently. And what struck me was the common thread running through both the quotes below and how that's often missing in young design students I meet.

Let's look at the two quotes:

"You talk to him about a league, a club, a player in any country in the world and he'll know about it. He's a walking football encyclopedia."
Howard Wilkinson on Alex Ferguson

"Michael Bierut knows every one of you, no matter what your age is. He knows your names, where you’re from, where you work, what you’ve designed, and whether it’s better or worse than the last thing you did. If he liked something you designed along the way, he probably sent you a little note telling you so. He may have even saved a design of yours that he came across, and it’s downstairs in his basement with the million other things he’s saved.

If he runs into you, he might reference something that influenced you, or he may know one of your clients, or he read an article that had direct bearing on something that involved you somehow, or he knew who you competed against on a project you just won. Maybe it was even him, and if it was, he’ll tell you so.

He seems to know all this stuff very naturally, like a guy who just coincidentally, has exactly the same interests that you do.

At Pentagram, he is an indispensible resource. Every partner relies on him for information, no matter how trivial. Mention a book to him and he’s read it and he’ll recommend two others like it that you will also enjoy. Bring up a song, he knows all the words and might entertain you with a stanza or two, and he manages to carry a tune. Reference a movie to him and he’s always seen it and can quote some relevant piece of dialog VERBATIM as if he had spent his entire life rehearsing for that moment when you’d bring it up. Mention a potential new project to him and he’ll know more than a bit about it and recommend the two three things he’s read in The Times on that subject, and then he’ll forward the articles to you.

Michael’s brain is a massive compendium that’s been carefully edited to contain the world’s most interesting stuff. Political stuff, cultural stuff, humanistic stuff, things all about you and me. Stuff that makes up the American experience."
Paula Scher on Michael Bierut (read the full speech here).

OK, there's several things here. Remember this? Look at point number one - find inspiration in everything. Both Fergie and Michael are demonstrating that above. Let's take Ferguson, do you think, at the level he's at, he really needs to know about every league in every country in the world? Probably not. Firstly he's probably got people to do that for him and secondly I imagine (like most professions) potential Man U players are selected from a fairly small pool. The same pool Arsenal, Chelsea, Madrid, Barcelona, etc are fishing from. But yet he's still following the minutiae of global football. Why? Because he has a real passion for the sport. And I'll bet he's inspired by some kid in an obscure league in Corsica.

The Michael Bierut example is more obvious. Books, songs, blogs, news articles, all this stuff is essential to a designer. It's one of the things I like about blogging. You can store stuff in your personal online archive and then come back to it whenever you like. It's easier to search than your brain. I don't really know Michael Bierut but we have shared the odd email conversation. And, like Paula says, he has sent me the odd note when I've written something that strikes a chord.

We get lots of students coming to see us. Portfolio surgeries, placements, friends of friends coming for a look around. One question we always ask is, what designers to you like at the moment? I'd say probably 60-70 percent can't name a single designer. Of the 30 odd percent that can name a designer or a design firm, it's always something really, really obvious or slightly off key like, 'Saatchis' or 'Phillipe Stark' or 'Richard Rogers' or something. Nothing wrong with those, but I want to hear NB Studios or Made Thought or GTF or Mark Farrow or even Peter bloody Saville would do.

Do you see what I'm getting at? Being interested in stuff matters. And it keeps on mattering even when you're as successful as Ferguson. Knowing your industry, being really, genuinely passionate about your industry matters. It really matters.

Both these men are senior in their fields. Both of them have achieved enough to sit back and take the plaudits. Both don't do that. Both of them have a passion for their work. Do you think it's a coincidence they're both still successful?

Great job available

Poke are looking for a Creative Director, which strikes me as a pretty bloody good job. Read more here.

Cocktails & Dreams

Coffee was a resounding success. Apart from the fact we didn't make the girls target. We had four females, which is admirable, but not good enough. Anyway.

The benefit of having one at 8am is that The Breakfast Club do fantastic bacon sandwiches. Just look at that. Obviously they do bacon sandwiches throughout the day, but they taste better at 8am.

Here's Paul and Rebecca. Rebecca is from The Design Conspiracy, Paul is that Paul.



Paul, Simon. Although the picture looks threatening, Paul is using the knife to butter his toast. Simon mentioned a fantastic sounding blog he writes called something like 'You Pissed Me Off You Bastard' but I don't know the url. Simon, send it through.

Here's Henry from the infamous www.henrylambert.com and Claire from the equally well known D&AD.

Helen, who's off on holiday tomorrow.

Patrick and Yusuf (hope I've spelt that right).

Patrick. signing the bill, and April from The Design Conspiracy.

As usual topics ranged from running to Google analytics via knobs, banks, finding a flat, office space, cartoon strips and James Jarvis. From various emails I've had I get the feeling people think these are high level brand meetings and you'll be quizzed on your knowledge polyphonic brands. You won't. As Russell has said many times before it's just a nice coffee and a chat. Everyone welcome.

Iain, Dan, Simon, all noticeable by your absence. Tut tut.

Right then, who's 'organising' next Friday's London coffee?

The decent money / nice work salary axis of evil.

A designer friend of mine has just taken a job with a crap agency.

Really crap. He knows they're crap and they probably know it too. Doesn't everyone know when they're crap? He's quite happy, even excited about the prospect. Sure the money's good and it's a slightly different version of crap than before, but it's still crap. I was just looking at said firm's website and some of the stuff looks about 10 years old. And that's the decent stuff.

So why does he work there? He's not crap, in fact he's really talented. Bursting with ideas, great personality, the confidence to make things happen. Presentable enough to take to client meetings. But the problem is he's caught in the trap I've seen so many friends get caught in. Essentially their pay demands restrict where they can work and in the long term hold them back. So let's talk about salaries.

If you want to make money, money like this, then quit design. Go and sell your soul to a hedge fund. For most designers remuneration is a 'decent money / nice work' axis. Pay me just enough to live and throw me just enough nice projects and I'll be happy. Alternatively, pay me loads and I'll churn out rubbish all day long, or pay me nothing and I'll be grateful I'm in Creative Review each month. Yes, there are exceptions but they are the ones that get off their arses and do something different. The one percenters you get in any walk of life.

Certain types of design (some publishing, some pharmaceutical stuff and all porn for example) deliberately pay you a little bit too much. Why? It makes it really hard to leave. Sure, you could go and work for that trendy hot shop in Shoreditch but you've got to take a 25% pay cut. Sounds OK on a blog, but when you've got two kids, a divorce and the caterers for your fortieth birthday want paying - things look a little different. Consequentially you get stuck with the crap work at the crap firm for the good money.

Sound familiar?