I don’t think I really understand it and I certainly can’t get it to work properly.
I’ve tried using it to “find out what’s happening now” but it always seems out of date. You know, it lists posts as being 30 days old.
I’ve tried using it to search blogs, but Google is always better.
I’ve tried using it to put a search box on here, but that doesn’t work either.
Those tags are just annoying.
So what is it good for? Does anyone else use it? Am I doing something wrong?
I like pink. I've got a few pink shirts and even a pink jumper.
To me it's just a colour. Being a graphic designer all colours are equal. There are millions of them (an infinite number?) and we love them all the same.
But it seems increasingly that pink means something different to brand owners. More and more often pink = female.
You know what I mean, a mobile phone manufacturer wants to increase sales among young women, what do they do? They make a pink phone.
It's worse for kids. I've lost count of the friends who've had daughters and sworn blind that they won't dress them in pink. Only to find pink is all they can buy.
We were in a shoe shop buying some shoes for the little one the other weekend. Here's some pictures of the girls shoes.
So this pink obsession starts from an early age. But does that mean that everything for women has to be pink? I understand that some women genuinely like pink, and obviously that's fine, but it can't be every woman's favourite colour.
It would be all too easy for me to sit here and pontificate about pink. And it would be very, very easy for me to approach that mobile phone manufacturer and say, "Hey, making mobile phones pink is a huge generalisation. That's so clichéd. Let's make yellow and green and red phones for women".
I once made such a comment to which the reply was, "You might say cliché, I might say crystal clear communication." And this brings me to my point.
It's very easy for designers to harp on about clichés, but clichés (like stereotypes) have often become thus because their meaning is absolutely crystal clear. And surely clarity is a large part of what design is all about?
Consider this. How many times have you been in a trendy bar and been unable to work out which toilet door was the Gents and which was the Ladies? The trendy graphic can be the enemy of clear communication.
Here's a picture of some toilet signs I saw in Bucharest.
It's absolutely clear what this means, yet I saw it in a country where I understand none of the language. That's a triumph for design, isn't it?
I used to think these were the best toilet signs I'd ever seen.
The design has been honed and simplified so much you're just left with the essential elements. And then they've added a little twist by using the same symbol in two different ways.
Except that if you saw this symbol on it's own. Would you really know whether this was the Gents or the Ladies?
I don't think you would.
Back to pink. Imagine you were in that trendy bar, heading for the toilets. One door is painted blue, one door is painted pink. Cliché or crystal clear communication?
The other day I said that Jeffre had some great slides about how to sell creative work.
Here's a slide I thought had particular resonance.
Separate the idea from the execution.
We try and do this with the Post It Note thing, and it also references the 'Present Passion Not Perfection' idea. It's too easy for clients to reject work because of details, you know, the "I hate his green jumper" comment. Try and get the client to buy into the idea before you get into the details.
Tell them, again and again.
This is so important. Take a look at any great political speech. In fact, take a look at any political speech. Next time Bush talks about the 'War On Terror' count how many times he says 'freedom'.
Next time Gordon Brown makes a budget speech count how many times he says 'lowest interest rates for 40 years' or whatever his key theme is...
They're telling you again and again and again. It works (and they have difficult things to sell like tax rises and wars, not wacky print finishes).
Give them the tools to sell internally
Again, this is vital. Make things easy for your clients. Remember that most clients just want to get promoted. Help them achieve this and you'll be suitably rewarded.
Design your proposal so that it's easy for them to forward to their boss. Make it clear what the next steps are. Make it easy to sell your ideas.
(I hope you don't mind me putting these up here Jeffre?)
I was given a free Independent this morning and I was delighted to see this when i opened it.
Claire is not referring to my post but commenting on the BBH/Sony thing. I don't really have any strong feeling on that, so we'll skip neatly over it.
Let's have a look at some of the things Claire says in her article.
"the management consultant is rapidly being replaced by the design consultant as the industry bête noire." I'm not 100% sure on this, but I do think design consultancies are gaining more respect and kudos. Especially the good ones. Obviously. In fact it's probably because there are so many bad ones that the good ones are starting to rise up.
"There are plenty of good design agencies that inevitably have a view on how a brand could communicate with its customers." Yes. But there are probably plenty of market research agencies, printers and photographers who have a view too.
"there are plenty of examples of design agencies all but writing the advertising scripts themselves." Really? Like who?
"The fact that design agencies often have the ear of the client CEO while ad agencies have generally been frustrated in their attempts to get into the boardroom" OK now I'm getting interested. I would probably think the opposite, but now that she mentions it, I bet the CEO's at companies like Nokia, Phillips, Sony (haha) and Apple listen to designers more than they listen to ad agencies. Interesting.
So, nothing major going on here, but perhaps another step towards world wide acceptance of my Design is the New Management Consultancy theory.
So, I was in Romania last week.
I was privileged to be invited out there with Russell, Jeffre and Neil. Russell went out a few years ago and when they asked him back he suggested that he bring along some friends. The whole thing was brilliantly organised by Bogdana at Headvertising.
I seemed to work really well. We all enjoyed it and I'm pretty sure the audience enjoyed it to.
Russell spoke brilliantly about most of the stuff you'd expect him to talk about. Complexity, brands, Nike, Honda etc.
Let's be honest he was the big draw of the event and the reception he received was testament to that. I'm pretty sure he was interviewed 7 times.
I'd never met Jeffre before, he had a really nice dry humour and is expert in the killer conference punch line. His story about running through walls will be retold many times, I feel.
Jeffre did a great presentation on how to sell creative work to clients. Really good stuff and some valuable lessons for everyone.
I spoke on the history of where I work and the Future of Graphic Design, communication and everything (which you guys helped write, so you can feel proud about that). Rather than me just spout on about the 'Future' we went through each point and the others added their thoughts. That seemed to work well.
I also had a bunch of 'stuff' and some heat sensitive business cards with me. The 'stuff' was popular which was reassuring as everyone else had videos of great ads.
Neil spoke about Wieden, how they work and showed lots of great ads including some new stuff for Nike.
We did several Q&A sessions, which provided some illuminating questions. My personal favourite being, "Have you met Eric Cantona?". I haven't. We were all interviewed, round table style, by Campaign Romania, which was a little bizarre (Campaign UK is bizarre enough). It will be interesting to see how that comes out.
Russell has written about it here, Neil has done the same here and we're still waiting for Jeffre. Russell is keen to do more of these, so if you live somewhere that wouldn't normally be classed as 'Ad Land' and you're happy to pay accommodation and travel (but no fees) and you'd like a handful of interesting people to come and speak (not necessarily the same four that went to Bucharest) then pop over to Russell's blog and drop him a line.
To complete the blogging loop, here's the same picture of the Palace that everyone has
(I thought Merchandise Mart in Chicago was the world's second largest building?)
followed by the same picture of the venue everyone has
followed by a picture I like to call 'What Bloggers Do When The World Is Asleep'.
I'm very pleased with this shot. It looks suitably The Fall Guy-ish.
Is anyone reading this who was at the event?
Big thanks to Bogdana and everyone at Headvertising.
Checking my inbound links (as you do) I found the Celsius website. They've kindly linked to me.
They're a design firm. The work is good, better than average, but what really struck me was the website. It's blissfully simple. Most (like 99%) of design company websites are fucking awful. Really. They almost always start with a flash intro, they are almost always difficult to navigate and they're almost always full of bullshit. Celsius isn't like that, it's user friendly, simple and refreshingly bullshit free. Not sure about the recipe though.
This reminds me that I keep meaning to post a list of design firms I admire. Must do that soon.
There's a great post over at Design Observer (which I'm liking more and more, especially the stuff Michael Beirut writes) about the creative process.
Michael admits to living a lie for the past 20 years.
In proposals he describes the creative process as working in four stages, Orientation and Analysis, Conceptual Design, Design Development, and Implementation". But it doesn't work like that does it? As he correctly points out it's more likely to be , "Somewhere along the way an idea for the design pops into my head from out of the blue. I can’t really explain that part; it’s like magic. Sometimes it even happens before you have a chance to tell me that much about your problem!" and so on.
He goes on to describe an AIGA program he attended in the summer that made him rethink how he describes the creative process to clients. He makes interesting comparisons between the flow charts of the industrial age and how designers today describe their working processes.
Well worth a read on a Saturday morning.
We always struggle to describe what happens after we've taken a brief. Sure, we can try but most of the time it's slightly different every time. And there is an element of magic, however cheesy that sounds. How can I say to a client that I might sit by the river with a notebook on Saturday morning? How can you put into a flow chart, "There's some stuff I've been thinking about for a while now and I think it fits perfectly with your stuff". Or, "Actually, yeah, it just came to me".
I suppose we presume that clients want a formalised process, charts and stuff. And most clients do want that. Even if they claim they don't, they do. So the natural answer is to make a point of saying there is no process, everything is different, it's all a bit mad, sometimes. But then the inevitable feedback is stuff like 'we didn't really feel we knew what you were going to do'.
We're trying to approach this by actually letting clients see some of the 'process', things like the Post It Note presentations. That's working, but we need to do more.
Anyway. Read Michael's article.
Or ‘stuff I take for granted that you probably don’t know unless you’re a designer’.
You've seen this logo a million times. But can you see an arrow?
What about now.
That’s pure genius isn’t it? Point that out next time you see a FedEx van and all your friends will worship you forever. Works particularly well in America. A word of warning, now I’ve pointed this out, you’ll never see anything but the arrow.
I remember being on holiday (in America) with Mum and Dad and pointing this out to them. We stood by the side of the road looking at FedEx vans go past for hours. You see, brilliant design = hours of fun.
This logo was even described as one of the best identities in the last 25 years by Rolling Stone magazine. Yep, Rolling Stone magazine.
Designed by Lindon Leader when he was at Landor.
Picture taken from mandatorythinking with huge thanks, usual stuff applies
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