MY MY MY

Elmwood: Day Ten

2010-02-19T23:00:00.005Z

Ok, so this post is two weeks later than it should have been, but my excuse is that ever since I finished my work experience I've been incredibly busy trying to catch up on all the university work that I didn't get done whilst I was at Elmwood.

With two weeks gone since my final day there, I've had some time to reflect on the experience, and the main thought I keep coming back to, is the amount of pressure I felt I was under to have an enjoyable time. Not pressure from Elmwood, pressure from everybody else. What I mean is, for some reason, whenever I've done work experience, not just at Elmwood but anywhere, I've always felt like there's this immense pressure to have a really great time. Whenever people ask me, "oh, how did your work experience go?", I feel compelled to answer "Brilliantly! It was so unbelievably awesome, I just love the world of work!". And I can't help but feel that if I answered "Well, it was ok, but I don't think I really fit in very well, and to be honest I was bored a lot of the time", people would consider this, consider me, some kind of failure. Maybe it's normal to think this, or maybe I have some kind of complex? Who knows.

To be honest, if you'd asked me on day one, I would have said "yeah, pretty good, I like it so far". Ask me on day five, and I'd have said "eugh, it's a bit shit, no one really acknowledges that I'm even there, and I would happily not go back for my second week". Ask me again on day ten, and I'd say "actually, I almost don't want to leave, I'm actually starting to feel quite happy here". So, for want of a better metaphor, it was a bit of a rollercoaster.

Day ten was a good one. It wasn't a full day as I had to pop into uni for an hour in the morning for my weekly session with my tutor to discuss the progress, or lack thereof, of my work. So by the time I got to Elmwood it was about 11am, which meant I'd missed the Friday morning TED talk and bacon butties. Very disappointed about that. From what I remember (it's not quite so clear in my mind now that two weeks have passed), when I arrived I just sat down opposite Mr. Grumpy and got on with my work, and it all felt quite routine. I think I was finally starting to feel comfortable and relaxed and generally accepted there, and it was all starting to seem rather normal. Even the commute didn't seem quite as bad as it had done at first. Typical then, that this feeling only properly arrived on my final day.

At lunchtime, some of the staff from Elmwood went out to the local pub for a drink, as I believe is customary on a Friday afternoon. Feeling very courageous, I actually went with them, and I bought Alex a drink as a way of saying thank you for putting up with me for the last fortnight. Surely all the great work I produced for them for free is thanks enough, and should negate the need for a free pint as well. However, I believe it is the polite thing to do, and as my father would say, it might just increase my chances of being offered a job.

Now there's an interesting thought: being offered a job (which I wasn't, just for the record). Before I even began my work experience, literally everybody I spoke to said "ooh, if it goes well, maybe they'll offer you a job", or something to that effect. Now there's some pressure. I must have heard it so many times, I felt like if came away from my work experience with anything less than a guaranteed job offer, I would be failing in some way.

After all, I will be finishing university in May, and after that I actually need to do something with my life. Something other than being in education, which is what I've done, in one form or another, since the age of four. Some of my friends from back home have already secured jobs for themselves upon finishing university. One is going to become an investment banker, with a starting salary of £40,000 per year. Yes, I said starting. One is going to work for a big accountancy firm (or something like that) that I can't quite remember the name of. Another is going to be a primary school teacher. And then there's me, who is becoming increasingly confused about what he wants to do with his life.

If I'd have been offered a job by Elmwood on day one, I almost certainly would have taken it. If they offered me one now though, well, I'm not so sure. I did like it there in the end, and I think I could be happy working in that kind of environment once I'd made a few good friends there. However, it's not really what I want to do; a lot of the work that they produce seems to me to be very generic looking, safe, and generally a bit dull. In the entire time that I was there, I didn't once see any design work that made me think "wow, that's great". If I want a career in design, is this the kind of thing I have to sign up for? Right now, I'm so confused about what I want to do post-uni, the thought of a month or two doing nothing at all sounds most appealing.

Anyway, I haven't told you how Friday afternoon went. After the pub, which went surprisingly well, and didn't consistent of any awkward silences, it was back to the office for my final few hours of work. The time was spent tweaking my animation yet again, and trying to make it more 'blue' wherever I could, to fit in with the client's new colour scheme. By the end of the afternoon, version 14 of my animation was complete, and looked like the most suitable version yet. I showed it to Alex for the final time and he said it was great, and mentioned that he'd shown an earlier version of the animation to his design director, and that he thought it was great too. He even said that if the client liked it, then they would commission me to make a series of similar films for the website. However, I've got a feeling the client won't like it, as it doesn't quite look corporate enough for them. And that was it really, I shook hands with Alex, thanked him for the "experience", and left Elmwood for the final time.

So, as feared, I did leave without a job offer. Although, Alex did say that I was welcome to go back any time and do some more (un-paid!) work experience with them, so I can't have been too bad if they're willing to have me back. I suppose then, in theory, I did get a job offer, just not for a job that would earn me any money.

I know I keep going on about the money aspect, but in total, with all the petrol money (and the parking fine), my 'prize' for being the most memorable student on my course, ended up costing me about £200, plus two weeks of my time, which should have been dedicated to doing my dissertation and my independent project. Was the 'experience' worth it? Well… I can't decide.

Elmwood: Day Nine

2010-02-04T12:45:00.000Z

So, the penultimate day. And a pretty good one again.

Not a lot to talk about today. Alex was in London all day to present some work to the client, and so I just got on with my work as best I could. I said yesterday that I think they're not quite sure what to do with me now, as I've pretty much completed the animation I was making, and there's no point giving me anything new to do. So, admittedly, a portion of my morning was spent procrastinating, reading blogs, even catching up on a little bit of uni work, and so on.

One of the highlights of my day was at 12:06pm, when Mr. Grumpy, sat on the desk opposite me, muttered something under his breath, stood up quite violently, and stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind him. He clearly wasn't having a great day. Although he returned about 3 minutes later looking normal and calm again.

After lunch I had a bit of a breakthrough, and came up with a good way to link my animation with the potential new brand identity. So all afternoon was spent working on that, and 5pm seemed to come round rather quickly. It then took me about two and half hours to drive home, which means I had an average speed of about 17mph.

And that was it for day nine. Only one more to go!

Elmwood: Day Eight

2010-02-03T23:14:00.005Z

Good day today. I'm starting to enjoy myself at Elmwood a lot more now.

Today was another day of tweaking my animation and trying to get it just right. I think one of the reasons I'm enjoying myself more is because I'm actually pleased with, and proud of, the work that I'm producing. Thank God for that. This morning I was working on Version 7 of the animation I'm making, and by lunchtime it was complete. When I showed it to Alex I got a really good response. He seemed to really like it, and said it was looking exactly how he had wanted it to. It's a bit of a departure from my usual style of animation, particularly as it deals with a serious issue rather than a lighthearted, whimsical one, but I'm really pleased with the results.

The only significant problem with my animation, is that it doesn't fit in with the client's new brand identity, which as of yet, is still being decided upon, from a choice of three different concepts. I mentioned this to Alex, who agreed, but said there's not a lot we can do about it until the identity has been finalised. Apparently he's having the same problems with his own work; he's going down to London tomorrow to present to the client and show them the work he's been doing on their new website, but without a clear identity to work with, he's said he's finding it difficult to come up with anything interesting or particularly relevant to do with the site.

It really surprised me that they're working like this. Surely you have to come up with the new brand identity first, and then create the website and other promotional materials to fit in with and support the new identity? Alex said that normally that would be the case, but this project is a bit of an exception, as they've got very little time available. Apparently this would normally be a six month job, but instead they've only got two months to do it.

I get the impression that they don't quite know what to do with me now that I've finished the animation. There's not much point in giving me a new project to start working on, because I'm only there for another three days (or two and a half actually, as I need to go into uni again on Friday morning). There are still some things I'd like to tweak on the animation, so I can get with that, and Alex suggested that I try exploring ways of making my animation work with the new identity, or at least what we know about the new identity so far. As I've already mentioned, they're still throwing around three different concepts at the moment, but there are certain things I can work with, like the fact that the colour for the new brand will definitely be blue for example (blue, that's original). And also, there's one identity which the guys from Elmwood in London seem to be favouring more than the other two (although whether the client will is a different story), so I can try and take some of the visual elements from that and attempt to work them into my animation. The guys at the London office have even come up with an animation of their own, to demonstrate to the client how this identity could be implemented, and I can safely say that it's one of the worst things I have ever seen. Now, I should mention, that the animation wasn't actually created by Elmwood London, instead they commissioned a specialist animation/illustration agency to produce it, so I don't know who's actually to blame for the terrible end result. I can't figure out if it's a terrible concept that's been well executed, or a strong concept that's been poorly executed. Either way, it's not the kind of thing I would expect a company such as Elmwood to present to a big client. Perhaps if they cut the first half, and used only the last half of the animation, it would be alright, but as it is, I personally would be embarrassed to show it to a client.

Anyway, I suppose I've criticised it enough now. I'd absolutely love to put a copy of it on here to prove just how atrocious it is, but I'm not allowed to of course.

God, I hope no one from Elmwood stumbles across this blog.

So, yes, my afternoon was spent trying to make my animation tie in a bit more with the potential brand identity, and by the end of the day I thought I'd done quite a good job actually. I showed it to Alex before I left, and he seemed to think so too, so that's all good. Christ knows what I'm going to do tomorrow though. Try and make my animation more 'blue' I guess.

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P.S. I almost forgot to maintain my tradition of complaining about the commute. It took me two and a half hours to get home today! Bloody horrendous!

Elmwood: Day Seven

2010-02-02T14:04:00.000Z

So, day number seven. Today was "one of those days", where nothing seems to go according to plan. Everything I did before work went completely wrong, and as soon as I left work, everything started going completely wrong again, but remarkably, everything at work went fairly well.

I arrived at Elmwood about 10 minutes late this morning, which wasn't quite as bad as I had expected, as I had left the house about 25 minutes late. When I arrived I sat down opposite Mr. Grumpy again (who wasn't quite as grumpy with everyone else today, but still wouldn't say a word to me), and just got on with my work. And there's not a huge amount else I can talk about, as that's pretty much what I did all day: just got on with my work. I've been making alterations to my animation, tweaking the timings, finding appropriate pictures for the background (which I'm now liking), and correcting other slight imperfections and so on, and I'm actually feeling quite pleased with how it's all coming together.

I'm also starting to feel a bit more comfortable at Elmwood now; the people aren't as scary or daunting as they seemed at first, and one or two more people are acknowledging the fact that I actually exist. Typical, that I start to feel properly at ease there when I've only got a few days left. I suppose that's another of the big problems with work experience; unless it's a long term work placement, for a period of several months say, there's never enough time to really get to know anyone, or to fit properly into your surroundings.

I left work just after 5pm, and it was then that it started feeling like "one of those days" again. I won't go into detail about all the little things which went wrong, but to give you some idea of how 'not quite with it' I was, I discovered that I'd spent a significant portion of my day with two pairs of boxers under my jeans, rather than the more customary one. Worrying. Perhaps all this work is affecting my ability to get dressed properly.

Elmwood: Day Six

2010-02-01T20:32:00.008Z

Jesus Christ. That weekend disappeared quickly.

Monday did not get off to a good start. I woke up at half past five, did some work and jumped in the car at 7am. Only to find a funny looking thing stuck to my windscreen. Oh fantastic, a parking ticket! A parking ticket that was issued at 06:17 this morning. What kind of nocturnal parking attendant goes round at that time in the morning? The frustrating thing is, I was told when I moved into my apartment that I was allowed to use the car back at the back, as long as I didn't park there during office hours, which last I checked were usually 9-5. Even if the staff in the offices underneath our building work longer than 9-5 hours, my car is always gone by 7am, and doesn't return until about 7pm, and I'm almost always the only car there, so it's not like I'm taking up valuable parking spaces! Anyway, rant over. I'll have to ask my landlord about it, as it was them who told me I could park there.

So, feeling somewhat disgruntled, I made my way up the glorious M1 from junction 34 to junction 43. I'm so fed up of commuting now that it's gotten to that stage where I'm trying anything I can to make my journey more interesting. According to Wikipedia, there are seven 'notable sights' visible from the M1 on my way to work, so I thought I'd see how many of them I could spot:

Meadhowhall shopping centre - Yep, spotted that one, hard to miss really.

Former site of the Blackburn Meadows Power Station - Not too excited by that one personally, but I have indeed spotted it on my way out of Sheffield.

Wentworth Castle - Not found that one yet, will definitely be looking out for it tomorrow though.

Barnsley Town Hall - If the rest of Barnsley's architecture is anything to go by, they're really scrapping the bottom of the landmark barrel with that one.

Emley Moor mast - Yep, it's a big mast.

Ferrybridge Power Station - Can't say I've noticed that one, but then it's only visible Southbound apparently.

Bridgewater Place - Leeds tallest building, also known as 'The Dalek', definitely spotted that one.

So, I've spotted four out of the seven potentially 'interesting' sights on my way to work. I feel quite proud of myself. Anyway, enough of that. This is supposed to be a blog about my experiences at a big design company, not about how I keep myself amused on the M1.

Today was ok at Elmwood. When I arrived I found that Alex wasn't in, and wouldn't be until lunchtime, so I'd have to wait to show him my animation. In the mean time I thought I'd have to keep myself busy by getting on with some work. However, I wasn't entirely sure what to do, so I tried to just use my initiative as much as possible, and keep developing the animation in the direction I thought was best. I was sat at my usual desk in the corner, where I've been since day three, and all was going well, until someone came up to me and said "Hello, I think I'm sharing your desk today". Well, that came as a surprise. Turns out the guy talking to me was a freelance designer / art director who has been brought in to help Elmwood with the packaging for a BIG client that I'm obviously not allowed to name. Even though I'd been there first, I felt a bit awkward, like I'd stolen his space. Apparently the desk I'd been using was the desk typically reserved for freelancers to work at. So, we did indeed share the desk for a while, which was a bit weird, but he seemed like a nice guy and actually made conversation with me. However, there were only two plug sockets available at the desk, and he needed both of them to power his machine, so when my MacBook ran out of battery, I had to find somewhere else to sit.

Time for musical chairs again.

In the end I was positioned opposite Mr. Grumpy, in the grumpy corner of the office. That's not his real name of course, that would be unfortunate, he just looked thoroughly miserable. He definitely didn't take the least bit of interest in me. Didn't even look up when I came to sit on the desk opposite him, and didn't speak a word to me the entire time I was there. Wow, what a way to make me feel welcome. However, I soon discovered that it wasn't just me who got this treatment. Almost everyone who came and talked to him (although I should say, "came to ask him something", as no one really came over just to talk to him and have a nice chat), got the grumpy treatment. Lots of one word answers and other non-pleasantries. One woman who works there even had the coat stand fall on her, right next to his desk, but despite making a joke about it, he still didn't grant her a response. Needless to say, it wasn't exactly a conversation filled afternoon. (Disclaimer: Maybe I'm being overly critical of this guy. I suppose he could have just been having a really bad day. We all get those sometimes. If I'm sat opposite him again tomorrow I'll be able to tell whether it was a one off or whether he's stuck in permanent grumpy mode).

When Alex got in, I showed him the work I'd done so far, including the 1st draft of the animation that I'd thrown together on Friday. And, hurrah! He liked it! He said the animation was coming together nicely, and had some constructive criticism about some of the timings, saying it needed to be a bit faster, (but I was going to tweak that anyway). I also asked him about my concerns that the animation I'm making doesn't fit in with the new brand identity, for the primary reason that the new identity hasn't been decided on yet. However, Alex gave me a slightly reassuring answer, and made me feel a bit better about the whole thing. He basically pointed out that the work I'm doing is as much about creating a great concept as it is about a great execution, and so even if the typography or the style of illustration needs to be altered to fit in with the brand identity, it's not a major problem because they'll still be able to use the same concept, and the same narrative techniques that I've come up with.

This afternoon was spent working on the animation, and not talking to Mr. Grumpy in front of me. I tried experimenting again with putting photographs in the background, and it turns out I'm actually liking the look of it a lot more today. And that was pretty much it. The afternoon went really quickly, and before I knew it, it was time to pop back down the M1 past all those exciting landmarks again.

Elmwood: Day Five

2010-01-29T23:00:00.008Z

Friday today. That means I've survived my first week at Elmwood, and that I'm exactly half way through my work placement there.

Today was a good day; for starters the traffic wasn't as bad as it usually is, and I actually got to work for half past eight, and, on Friday mornings, the staff at Elmwood watch a "TED Talk" rather than getting straight on with work. For anyone outside the design community, a TED Talk might sound a bit odd. I know when I first heard of it I thought of giant teddy bears giving lectures. In reality, it is a series of lectures, but given by inspirational speakers from the design world, not the stuffed toy world (although to be honest, I still have no idea what 'TED' actually stands for). This morning's talk was given by possibly the most famous product designer in the world: the fascinatingly irritating, pompous, French lunatic that is Philippe Starck. I've blogged about Starck before when he had his own Apprentice-with-a-design-twist-esque reality TV show, and in the talk we watched this morning he was on top form, starting with the evolution of man, and eventually linking it to why he designs toilet brushes. I believe that he was trying to make a point about how important it is to consider the end user and how they will interact with the product, but he certainly went about it in his own very unique way.

I really like the idea of getting all the staff together every Friday morning to watch these talks. It's something a bit different, a nice break at the end of the week, and it gets everyone discussing it around the table afterwards. Apparently they usually have bacon sandwiches whilst watching too, but that didn't happen today for some reason. Very disappointing.

After the TED Talk, it was time to get on with some work again. This morning I got to see some of the development work that's been done on the logo, for the mystery client that I'm not allowed to mention. I think it's the guys at Elmwood in London who've been working on the identity, and they've narrowed it down to three possible ideas. All of which are pretty much exactly how I thought they would be - very corporate, slick, and still quite cold and faceless looking. However, having said that, I do really like two out of the three designs they've come up with, and I can definitely see them being used by the client.

The big problem however, is that the ideas that I've been working on for my animation now look a bit odd in comparison to the new identity that Elmwood are developing for the client. In my opinion, the animation ought to be in a similar style to the logo and the whole new identity, to give the brand some visual consistency, and so that the two are recognisable as different parts of the same whole. So why am I making an animation for a brand which hasn't even been decided on yet? In the real world, Elmwood would finish the logo and identity work first, and only then surely, would they start work on designing the new website, the animated content, and whatever else that goes with it. I'm guessing it's only because I'm in on work experience that they've even started considering the animation yet.

Well, I'd already drawn out all the different elements to my (very twee looking, hand rendered) animation, so I thought I might as well scan them and put the animation together just to show what it would look like. I didn't have a lot else I could do, and I thought it would be a shame not to actually make the animation now that I'd drawn everything I needed for it. Also, I thought that if I had a proper animation to show, I could then make a stronger argument about the fact that it doesn't work with the new identity.

So, I was shown how to use the scanner (it's very impressive actually, it scans up to A2 size paper, the scans only take about two seconds, and then it emails the scanned images straight to your inbox), and then spent the rest of the day putting my animation together in AfterEffects. By 5pm it was complete, and looking quite good in my opinion. I was eager to show Alex and get his thoughts on it, but for once Alex had left work on time (he usually stays quite late), and so I won't be able to get his opinion until Monday morning.

At the end of the day, Abi came over and started talking to me. Thank God! It was nice to have someone come over and take an interest in what I was doing. She graduated from the graphics course at Leeds two or three years ago, and it was her and Ben from Elmwood that I had to present my work to in order to win this work experience in the first place. She was really nice actually; she asked me how I was getting on and if I was enjoying it and so on, and I showed her the animation that I'd thrown together, and explained my concerns about it not fitting with the new brand identity. She even invited me to the pub later this evening, but unfortunately I had to decline the offer, as it takes me two hours to get home and I have a ridiculous amount of university work to catch up on. I can just imagine what my father would be saying at this point: "You must go for a drink with them, it's essential". Well, I'm sure it would have been a good opportunity, but seriously, I do not have the time!

I ended up staying until about 6pm talking to Abi and doing some extra bits of work, making sure I'm all prepared to show Alex my progress on Monday morning. As well as the animation, I've also made some examples in Photoshop of what the illustrations look like when layered over photographs, as that was an idea that he seemed to like a lot. I remember saying the other day that I thought it could either look great, or it could look horrendous, and having played around with it a bit, I now see it's swinging slightly towards the horrendous side unfortunately.

For some reason, Friday's seem so much more special when you've been working a 9-5 job all week. Despite the fact that I've got nothing but more work to do when I get home, the thought of the weekend was still quite an exciting one. And today, the drive home only took me an hour, which was pretty awesome.

Elmwood: Day Four

2010-01-28T21:22:00.003Z

Only a half day at Elmwood today, as I had to drop in to uni this morning for the first tutorial of my final semester, where I was supposed to show my tutor all the work I'd done over Christmas. Unsurprisingly, I hadn't really done any work over Christmas, but I managed to successfully blag my way through the session.

Anyway, after leaving uni early, I had to make my way to Elmwood, which was a bit trickier than usual, as I know how to get there from the M1, but not from the centre of the city. After a short detour, I arrived at Elmwood and got straight on with work, drawing up yet another storyboard. I've now drawn up a ridiculous number of storyboards over the last few days, and I felt that this latest one was the best yet. However, I haven't shown it to Alex, so we'll wait and see.

The animation that I'm making needs to work without any sound, which means no voiceover like usual, so I needed to find another way to tell the story. As a result, my proposed animation combines typography (hand rendered, of course) and simple illustrations to tell the story, and the idea is to place the type and line drawings over photographs in the background, similar to this image by Kyle Pierce. I'm still in two minds at the moment, I think overlaying photographs with my line drawings could either look great, or it could look absolutely horrendous. We'll just have to wait and see.

After completing my 152nd storyboard of the week, I decided to start properly drawing out some of the individual elements for the animation, which I would then scan in and tinker with on the computer. I drew a couple of pieces, and experimented with different styles of hand drawn typography and whatnot, and then I was ready to scan them in. However, I still didn't know how to use the scanner, and everyone looked very busy, so instead of asking someone to show me, I decided I'd pass the time by drawing a couple more items. And then a couple more. And then just another few. By the end of the afternoon I'd gotten a little bit carried away, and had drawn out every single part of the animation, except for one. Before I knew it, it was about 6pm and the majority of the staff had gone home, so I decided I'd do the same.

Elmwood: Day Three

2010-01-27T21:13:00.003Z

Definitely did not want to get out of bed this morning. The thought of driving for two hours just to sit at a desk all day was not appealing. I couldn't help thinking that if I stayed in Sheffield and worked at my own desk, I'd get a lot more work done, and maybe I could just email it to Elmwood? However, that would just be the 'work' without the 'experience', so it would defeat the whole point of the exercise really. So, reluctantly I got out of bed, and after a shower and some breakfast, I got in the car and set off on another exciting journey up the M1.

When I arrived at Elmwood, things got a bit better. I was moved to a new desk when I arrived today, as the people whose desks I had been using actually needed them today. So, I was sat in a different place, and surrounded by a slightly different set of people, (only one of whom actually made conversation with me, but it was a good conversation, so it helped me feel a bit more comfortable in my new corner of the office).

For most of the morning I worked on drawing up a proper, well illustrated (rather than roughly scribbled) storyboard for the animation that they've got me working on, and by lunchtime it was finished and I was semi-proud of it. However, I couldn't really go any further without Alex's feedback/approval, and Alex was busy, so whilst I waited for him I spent a good half hour procrastinating by reading blogs and writing this one.

That seems to be the biggest problem with work experience; you're constantly reporting back to whoever's overseeing you, and to get anywhere really you need to keep nagging them every five minutes. I certainly don't want to be the annoying, nagging, work experience boy, so I've been fighting the urge to say "I've done what you asked me to do, what would you like me to do next?", which surely must be one of the most annoying questions utterable. Now, you might be thinking at this point that I could perhaps use my initiative, and impress them by just getting on with it without having to ask. Perhaps I should just start making the animation? Well, it's a lovely idea, but we haven't got any of the images from the client yet, and I don't have access to a scanner or printer here (they do have scanners and printers of course, but they're not set up to work with my computer, so yet again I'd need to ask someone to help), so that makes it a tad more difficult. If I actually worked here, and had four or five projects on the go, whilst waiting on one, I could be getting on with one of the others, but as I'm only working on one small part of one project, there's only so much I can do before I hit a dead end and have to ask for my next set of instructions. It's frustrating.

This afternoon, I did eventually show my storyboard to Alex, and the feedback seems to be getting better each time, so it looks like I'm going in the right direction. He made a couple of suggestions, and the rest of the afternoon was spent ironing out some small problems with the design.

And that was it for day three.

Elmwood: Day Two

2010-01-26T22:43:00.003Z

So, two days down at Elmwood. How's it going? Well, the second day wasn't as interesting as the first to be honest, although at least I turned up on time (I left about 7am and got there just before 9am - I have a feeling I might be sick of commuting by the end of the two weeks).

Today I've been working on storyboards for my animation, but haven't quite come up with one that I'm happy with yet. The big problem is that the animation I'm working on tells a story about a very serious issue, and not one which can be joked about or taken too lightheartedly, so I'm having to try and adopt a very different tone of voice for this piece of work compared to all my previous animations. To make matters worse, the client wants to seem less "faceless" and "cold", and instead more "warm" and "personal" (which is a good decision if you ask me), but trying to seem personal and friendly whilst also trying to talk about a very serious issue is a bit of a challenge. So this is what it's like to work for a real client!

This morning I got my first taste of Jean the housekeeper's excellent home cooking. Midmorning there was an announcement which rang through the building: "Jean's cakes are now ready in the cafe", and suddenly everyone stood up from their desks, seemingly regardless of what they were doing, and gravitated towards the sponged-based baked goodness. And then at lunchtime, the same thing happened, but with pies instead of cakes! Jean had made individual pies for everyone, complete with mushy peas and/or baked beans. I'm not sure exactly why she does it, maybe she just really, really, likes Elmwood or something, but it certainly tasted good, and was very much appreciated. At lunch I was struck by that terrible "oh dear, I'm sat in a room full of people I don't know, but they all know each other" kind of moment, which made me feel very nervous and shy, and although I tried awkwardly to make conversation with a few of them, to be honest I didn't get very far.

After lunch, everyone at Elmwood had a big meeting, which I was allowed to sit in on and observe, although I'm certainly not allowed to discuss any of the details of it. What amazed me about it though was I realised just how many different projects Elmwood have going on at one time (I think I'm allowed to say that, I'm not giving away the names of any of the clients, merely saying that there's lots of them).

By the very end of the day I was finally feeling a bit happier with the work I was producing, as I had a decent chat with Alex, and he helped give me a bit more confidence. I'm thinking about using my typical hand drawn illustration style, but over the top of photographs or moving images, which is something I've never tried before. Could be interesting, or it might turn out to be rubbish, either way I'll no doubt ramble on about it on here.

Elmwood: Day One

2010-01-25T19:53:00.004Z

So, today, I finally started my work experience with Elmwood! Despite leaving two hours in advance, I still ended up six minutes late unfortunately, as there was a traffic jam of the most ridiculous proportions on the M1 just before hitting Leeds. I guess that's just the normal rush hour traffic though, so I'll need to be even more prepared for that tomorrow, and I'll try leaving even earlier! Obviously turning up late doesn't make a great first impression, but thankfully the guys at Elmwood were completely cool about it.

When I eventually did turn up, Alex Nelson came to greet me. He's Head of Digital, and the one who I'll be reporting to for the next fortnight. First of all he gave me a guided tour of the building, which I'm pleased to say is unbelievably nicer on the inside than the outside. And it feels a lot bigger on the inside than it looks outside too; the workforce is split across two floors, and there's a lot more of them than I expected. I'm not sure why, but I expected Elmwood to have around 15-20 staff, but it turns out they've probably got 40 plus. I was introduced to a lot of them, but I can count the names I actually remember on just one hand. Along with the guided tour, they were very quick to get me to sign a 'Confidentiality Agreement', which will sadly restrict the amount of interesting information I can put on this blog, as I'm not allowed to talk about any work in progress or clients and so on. However unlikely it is that the competition read my blog, Elmwood clearly don't want to take any chances. It was also made clear that whatever work I produce whilst I'm there, is officially theirs, although I might be able to include it in my portfolio if I get their permission first.

Anyway, after the formalities of scrawling my signature on the Confidentiality Agreement, Alex showed me where to get beverages (very important), and pens (also important), and then briefed me on the work I'll be doing. Now, I had hoped to talk about the work I'll be doing at Elmwood, but as I signed that confidentially agreement, I'll have to treat this as an exercise in vagueness. Basically, the client is a big global corporation, and they've given Elmwood the task of rebranding and updating their identity, however, that's not what I'm working on, that's being done by Elmwood in London. As head of digital, Alex has the task of redesigning their corporate website to fit in with the new identity, and that's where I come in. They want some animations or illustrations to be featured on the website, to help explain a bit about what the company do, and as it was my animation work which got me this work experience in the first place, Alex thought this would be the ideal job for me. And he would be right! Last time I did work experience I spent a week working on a logo, and it got quite dull to be honest, so I was glad to be plonked straight on to a motion graphics job. And very glad that they threw me straight into a live brief, rather than have me making cups of tea, sorting paperwork, or something equally mundane.

After briefing me, it was time for a video conference with the guys in London who've been working on the logo. However, someone else had booked the video conferencing facilities, and so it suddenly became a telephone conference instead. During the three way telephone conference, they basically talked through all their initial ideas for the logo development, and we were able to look at them as they'd sent over a pdf with all their examples in. Some of them looked questionable to be honest, but there were also some really good identity ideas amongst them too, and it helped give me a good idea of where they were going with the project, and got me thinking about what my animation could look like to fit in with the identity they're developing.

After lunch I got to work researching this mysterious client that I'm not allowed to mention, and started scribbling some initial ideas. By the end of the afternoon I had about one and a half basic storyboards to show Alex, although his response suggested that my ideas were 'ok' but not 'great' (yet). Hopefully they'll look a bit more impressive tomorrow if I can mock up some visuals.

And that was pretty much how my first day went. Elmwood seemed to have a very relaxed atmosphere, with music playing at all times, and decent music at that! They have a policy where they just put Spotify on, and anyone/everyone can choose what they want to listen to, so that everybody gets a chance to listen to something they like. They also have a library, full of design books and all sorts of other things, including a table football table, which I thought was a great idea. So overall it seems like a really nice place to work. The staff sitting on the desks opposite and surrounding mine were all quite friendly, and didn't just ignore me, which was nice of them. I even had several people saying that they were impressed with my animation which felt great. Little did I know, Alex had posted my animation on his blog, and it had garnered a little bit of attention online, with one girl even commenting: "I want to have his babies". Needless to say, she won't be getting my babies, but it was nice to get the praise anyway.

The Road To Elmwood

2010-01-24T19:46:00.010Z

Tomorrow I begin my work experience with Elmwood, one of the best (statistically perhaps the best) branding and communication agencies in the UK. I've brought my car 'up north' from my humble hometown of Lichfield, where it normally resides, and I'll be commuting from my house in Sheffield to the Elmwood office in Leeds every day for the next two weeks.

Following my mother's advice, I did a 'trial run' to Elmwood in the car this afternoon (with the girlfriend navigating), just to familiarise myself with the route, and to ensure I don't end up horrendously lost and turn up embarrassingly late on my first day. The journey to Elmwood took about an hour, although that was on a Sunday afternoon and the traffic was minimal, so I think I'll have to leave at least two hours in advance when I'm doing it in rush hour traffic. Elmwood's Leeds office doesn't actually seem to be in Leeds, rather it's in the small town of Guisley, just up a bit and to the left of Leeds, and once we got to Guisley it took us a while to figure out where abouts their office was hidden. Eventually it turned up down a little side lane, and we pulled up in the carpark and had a quick gander at the building. To be honest, it's a bit ugly on the outside. From what I can tell it's made almost entirely from concrete, and the main building looks a bit depressing, however, the entrance to the building did look quite nice as it had lots of greenery growing around it, and we peered through the windows, and what I could see of the inside looked a lot nicer.

Before I begin tomorrow, I thought I would recap how I got given the work experience in the first place. At university we were given a brief, sponsored by Elmwood, entitled "Remember my name". The objective of the brief was exactly that, I had to try and get the folks over at Elmwood to remember my name, the only difficulty being that there were 80-odd other students on my course also trying to get Elmwood to remember their names. It was an exercise in branding, but not for a typical client, I had to brand and advertise myself. Now I like to think that I know myself fairly well, having lived with myself for the past 21 years, four months and three days. However, it's inevitable that my own perception of myself will be slightly different from everyone else's perception of me. I might think I'm great, but I know there are numerous people that might think I'm a complete twat. Whether I'm a twat or not, I am who I am and it's unlikely to change, so all I wanted to do was to try and get my personality across to Elmwood, and hope to God that they like it. Anyway, I won't bore you by rambling on any further with the details of the project, instead I'll just show the end result. For the final presentation to Elmwood, I made an animation, which looked a bit like this:

Remember My Name from Matthew Young on Vimeo.

And amazingly, they liked it! According to the feedback I got, it "blew their socks off", which I assume is a good thing, although personally I prefer it when my socks stay on. I found out a few days after the presentation that I had been selected as one of three people to be awarded a two week work placement with Elmwood. Good times!

Then, last week, the week before I was due to commence my work experience, I realised there were a few things I ought to know before I turn up on Monday morning. I had questions like "what should I wear?" and I was really worried about "should I bring a packed lunch?" for some reason. Some of my concerns were more relevant than others. I was going to email Elmwood and ask them, but I wanted to send them something more exciting than a plain text email; they must receive loads of boring emails every day, and I wanted mine to stand out a little bit, to make an impression and perhaps get them talking about me again before I come in.

So, I picked out the most relevant questions, and made another short animation, in the same style as the one which grabbed their attention in the first place. It took about a day to make, whereas writing an email would have taken a few minutes, so I was just creating unnecessary work for myself really, but it was a lot more satisfying than sending an email. This, is what the finished thing looked like:

Questions for Elmwood from Matthew Young on Vimeo.

I was a bit worried that perhaps it would be overkill on the twee animation front, but thankfully I got a really good response from Alex Nelson, who's head of digital at Elmwood, and seemingly the one who'll be dealing with me for the next two weeks:

Dear Matthew,

Thanks for the non-email, lovely stuff.

In answer to your questions:

We don't have a dress code per se, however most of our placements seem to have a self initiated uniform of ultraskinny jeans and big hair. I don't think trouser tightness affects tea-making ability, so it's unlikely anyone here will mind either way.

I'd like to say that all you need to bring is your imagination, but that would be a lie. Please also bring your Mac and a memory stick. Oh, and your portfolio too. We have a WHSmiths-esque variety of pens and papers, so no need to worry there.

We'll do some proper briefing with you when you start, so don't worry about researching anything first. Apart from perhaps some scone-based compliments now that our housekeeper Jean is back. Perhaps some belly-stretching exercises too, as she likes you to have seconds.

See you next week,

Alex

The friendly, slightly humorous and down to earth tone of voice definitely put me at ease, and I think I like this Alex already, despite never having met him. However, that could all change tomorrow of course.

Long Time No See

2010-01-23T19:35:00.000Z

Spread the word, send forth the messengers! The MY MY MY Blog has been resurrected! Dormant since October, it will now be active and pumping out molten opinionated-ish lava for at least the next two weeks.

Resurrection metaphors? Volcano metaphors? That's enough of that. So, what made me want to re-enter the oh so exciting world of blogging?

I'd been meaning to start a blog for about the last four years, and it wasn't until this summer that I was eventually forced to do it as part of a university brief. And despite it being ridiculously time consuming (I would often spend my whole day writing, re-writing, tweaking and re-tweaking an article), it was hugely enjoyable. I used to write all the time when I was at school, but since coming to university I'd very much gotten out of the habit of doing so. Blogging throughout the summer, I found it really enjoyable to write on a regular basis again, and it was exciting to share my opinions on design with the rest of the internet world, and from what I can tell, I built up a regular audience of about four or five people. Impressive, I know.

However, since returning to university at the beginning of October, I've barely had time to get all my uni work done, let alone maintain a blog as well. And nothing has changed; uni will officially start again next week, and I've still got the bulk of my dissertation to write, and the whole of my independent project to complete, never mind my half completed D&AD submission and the birthday present which I'm spending far too many hours hand crafting for my best friend's 21st birthday. Oh, and trying to get a job too. So I still don't have time to maintain a blog, but I'm going to do so anyway, at least for the next two weeks (maybe I'll have to cut out a non-essential part of my day, like showering perhaps). Why? Because for the next two weeks, I'm going to be doing my work experience with Elmwood, and I wanted to keep a record of my experiences there. So the blog will be a bit different to how it was before; instead of rambling on about good design, bad design and anything interesting in between, for the next fortnight the blog will essentially become a diary, a personal account of my time spent at Elmwood. I've somehow convinced myself that writing about it will be a worthwhile exercise, although I'm still not entirely sure why. If nothing else, it will probably serve as a very entertaining diary for me to look back on in five or ten years time when I'm a successful designer, and I can have a great laugh about how pathetic I must have been as the little work experience boy.

Colin the Umbrella

2009-10-10T21:08:00.006+01:00

So, now that this blog is no longer confined to the strict rules of a university brief, I can use it for shameless self promotion! Hurrah! Thinking about it though, shameless self promotion could end up deterring the (very) tiny number of loyal followers this blog has accumulated thus far. So don't worry, I won't be bigging up my own work too regularly here, after all, I have my own website for that. Although that's in dire need of a redesign, so at the moment I'm actually more proud of the blog than I am of the portfolio site (oh dear!) but hopefully that will change if I ever find the time to make it happen.

A piece of work I did want to put up here though, was my response to our One Week Project. For anybody reading this who doesn't attend the University of Leeds Graphic & Communication Design course, or isn't a friend of family member (unlikely that's anybody then), the brief was as follows:

You are required to propose a creative solution for one of the following:

Celebrate the invention of … either, the drawing pin, the zip, barbed wire, cats eyes, the coat hanger, concrete, the credit card, elastic, the lawn mower, nylon, Phillips head screw, scissors, sliced bread, spark plugs, the umbrella, Velcro.

You can utilise any media or approach, you could treat it like an advertising campaign, or produce a magazine article or book, make a video or a series of photographs or illustrations which investigate a particular functional or aesthetic quality of this everyday object. It could be purely typographic or a piece of copywriting. Maybe it’s a Radio ad or utilises ambient media. You decide the best way to celebrate those things that we all take for granted. Create an element of surprise, shock us, make us laugh, allow us to contemplate beauty, inform us, intrigue us do whatever you can to make something that gets our attention and holds it. This is your opportunity, by utilising all your creative energies and abilities, to make the ordinary, extraordinary.

I chose the umbrella as my item, as a sort of gut instinct. I did loads of research into umbrellas (they're more interesting than you might think actually!) and then set to work trying to come up with good ways to celebrate such an ordinary object. I considered making a nice hand bound book, and I considered some sort of umbrella sculpture, even some sort of umbrella based twitter application crossed my mind, but in the end I decided to make an animation, as animation is something I really enjoy doing, and, as Alan Oliver once told me, animation/film has the potential to convey so much more than just one image on it's own.

Although we had seven days to do the whole project, as well as the finished 'celebration', we also had to produce a Creative Log, which took up a good half of my time, and I'd shot myself in the foot a bit by choosing to make an animation, which was by far the most time consuming of all the ideas I could have chosen. In the end the whole animation had to be created from start to finish in just three days. During those 72 hours, I got just 10 hours sleep, and I think the only things that kept me awake/alive were an indispensable girlfriend who helped wherever she could, and a small supply of 'Pro-Plus', although I hate taking those tablets, they really are a last resort. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make, is that I think I probably worked harder on this than I have on any other piece of work in my life.

Did it pay off? Well, I bloody hope so. If I don't get a good mark for this project I'll be devastated. However, when I showed my animation at the crit, it got a great response. I was really worried about it being shown on the big screen, and even more worried about the voiceover being heard at a loud volume ("nobody likes the sound of their own voice"). But thankfully everybody laughed (more heartily than I had expected!) in all the right places, and they even gave a round of applause at the end, which definitely made the sleep deprivation seem worthwhile.

Anyway, shameless self promotion over. The last few posts have been somewhat different to normal, what with the rationale/self-assessment and now this, but I'll get back to blogging as usual about good/bad design again from now on.

Also, last thing I promise. I feel obliged to give credits for the film, as not all footage was mine. Just incase you hadn't noticed, it was all my own work, except for:
- Footage from 'Singing in the Rain' (1964)
- Footage from 'Umbrella' by Rihanna (2007)
- Music from Collateral Damage by Muse (2009) (If you're wondering "where is that?" it's the music at the end when Colin dies)

Rationale / Self Assessment

2009-10-10T20:39:00.006+01:00

When asked to create a blog for this brief I was really pleased. I’d been meaning to start a blog ever since coming to university in 2007, as I knew it would be a good way to express myself and engage with and discuss matters of design, and perhaps even a useful tool to show potential employers. However, as with a lot of good intentions, my blog never really came to fruition. Once the university projects began I never seemed to have any time to actively write a blog as well, and it got pushed to the back of my mind. Which is why, when I received this brief, I was pleased to finally be forced to write one; without such motivation, my blog may never have began.

When writing my blog I found it hard to get started. Not just to start blogging in general, but to start each and every post; the first paragraph was always written and re-written several times over. Looking back over my posts now, I’m finding lots of elements that I’d like to re-write; certain phrases that seemed fine at the time but now seem somewhat cringeworthy, or arguments that could have been made stronger if I’d worded them a little differently. I never struggled to find topics to blog about, quite the opposite, I could never find enough time to blog about all the things I wanted to. The main problem I had was finding the right tone of voice. I wanted to write in a way that was interesting and entertaining, with some of my personality injected into my writing, but I also wanted it to sound professional. I took inspiration from newspapers such as The Times and The Guardian, in particular their weekday supplements, ‘Times 2’ and ‘G2’, which offer a more casual and entertaining style of journalism. I also took much inspiration from other blogs; since starting university I began reading numerous design blogs, and there are now around 30 which I actively follow. This is noticeable in many of my entries, where I have quoted from or referenced another blog or design website. In some cases, my posts have been a direct result of a post on someone else’s blog, where I have read something that I have found interesting, and wanted to investigate it for myself and add my own opinion on the subject. For example, my post ‘München 2018 and Other Olympic Logos’ was inspired by an article I read over at the ‘idsgn’ blog [http://www.idsgn.org], which I used as a basis for further discussion on Olympic logos.

As my blog is all about design, I felt it was important to make sure that my blog itself was nicely designed. I did not want to simply stick with one of the predetermined Blogger layouts that users can choose from, they’re overused and not at all interesting to look at. Surely it would be hypocritical to have a poorly designed design blog? Design is subjective of course, so what I consider a good piece of design, someone else may consider to be a bad design. I cannot therefore say for certain that my blog is well designed, but I’m pleased with it myself, and I hope that the design, as well as the writing, reflects some of my personality. I created the header for my blog using pen and paper for example, to reflect the fact that I like using traditional, craft based elements in my design work; I could easily have created the header on a computer, but I preferred to create it by hand and then photograph it.

The subjects that I have blogged about vary; if you look at the list of labels on the right hand side of my blog, you’ll notice there are 16 different categories. The categories with the most entries are graphic design which has 14, illustration which has eight, books with seven, advertising with five, and animation and film with four each. Most of these come as no surprise to me, as they reflect my interests and my passions within design, but the one that I didn’t expect to have written so much about was advertising. I think perhaps the reason for this is because advertising is all around us, and we see so much of it in our daily lives, that there’s always plenty of different campaigns, successful or otherwise, to blog about. The blog posts I enjoyed writing the most were the ones where I did a lot of research and really got stuck in to what I was investigating. The two which really stand out for me are ‘I Like Classical Music, Therefore I Hate Good Design’, and ‘Ikea Causes an Uproar’, and I think the reason they stick out is because I was discussing designs I considered to be bad rather than good. I found it somehow more satisfying and more worthwhile to discuss an element of design which is not working, and investigate how and why, rather than to simply point out a design that I do like. These posts follow a similar formula; I would investigate the topic thoroughly, synthesise my research, offer my own opinion, and then contrast this with the opinions of other designers. However, I found that I was so concerned with what I was writing that it often took me a whole day just to write one post, and it began taking up too much of my time. As a result, I had to intersperse my longer posts with some shorter ones, the formula for these being a little simpler; I would highlight a design, and then briefly discuss it’s good or bad points. However, these were less satisfying to write, and did not receive as much contribution and discussion from fellow students as my more investigative posts did.

Writing for my blog has thrown up many challenges, and made me stop and think about design in a way I would not have done before. Above all, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing every post, and I hope that my blog successfully informs, entertains and discusses different elements of design. In total, I have written 15,364 words on my blog, which makes for an average of 475 words per article. However, I still have countless things that I wish to blog about, so I will definitely be continuing my blog in the future for the sake of my own personal development and not just as part of a brief.

Architecture Worth Protecting?

2009-10-10T19:06:00.004+01:00

These are Park Hill flats in Sheffield.

It's a grade 2 listed building, which means it is protected, and cannot be demolished or even altered too much in any way. Does a building such as this deserve 'listed' status?

Spot the Title Sequence

2009-10-10T19:05:00.010+01:00

Some more motion graphics goodness today, following on from last weeks feast of animated wonders. Just like the video for 'DVNO' by Justice pays homage to vintage eighties logos, the video for Dan Black's 'Symphonies', acts as a tribute to classic title sequences from films.

The video sees Dan Black jumping, driving and falling through every classic style of title design since the 1930s, with clear references to iconic opening sequences from films such as Se7en and Goldfinger, and of course the legendary title designer Saul Bass, amongst many others.

The video was created by Parisian design duo Chic & Artistic, and I found an interesting interview with them over on The Art of the Title Sequence blog. It's clear that a lot of effort went in to recreating the look and feel of each era of design, and the attention to detail is superb.

"We viewed a large number of title sequences by genre and time period. We needed to reproduce the image and original graphic design through lighting, film grain, color grading, costume design, accessories, as well as typographical choices."

The typography in particular I feel is spot on, and adds a lot of credibility to these well executed parodies. The result is a captivating music video combined with a nice slice of nostalgia, which should make interesting viewing for film fans as well as music fans. It's good to see that some music videos still try to achieve something interesting and unique, rather than simply giving us three and a half minutes worth of scantily clad dancers.

Collectible Hardbacks

2009-10-10T19:05:00.006+01:00

What are these? Why, they're beautiful clothbound editions of some of Penguin's finest works of fiction, naturally. I think they're just absolutely beautiful. As Alan Trotter puts it on his excellent design blog: "Either you want them, or else, I guess you hate things that are nice?"

All designed by the wonderful Coralie Bickford-Smith

These books are actually the second installment of hardback editions of Penguin's Classics. If you've got a big enough bank balance, you can also purchase the first set, which are designed in the same style, and are just as beautiful.

Peter Callesen

2009-10-10T18:36:00.004+01:00

I've been an admirer of Peter Callesen's work for some time now. He creates each of these beautiful creations out of just one sheet of ordinary A4 paper, combined with a brilliant mind and bucket loads of patience.

Hola!

2009-10-07T09:21:00.006+01:00

The Hello Project is an online social collaboration giving people the chance to say hi, hello, or hola on one of today’s most common yet neglected canvases: the Post-it®.

How it works is simple. Take a regular 3×3 Post-it® and write/sketch/doodle your version of hello. Scan it, email it to hi [at] thehelloproject.com, and they’ll post it for everyone to see.

THP is a relatively new site run by friends of The Donut and doodle extraordinaires Kristen Caston & Joseph Delhommer. Go check out the creative solutions so far and contribute – it only takes a second. It’s a great creative exercise to break the monotony of your everyday design stuff. I have a few submissions on there myself :)

Clarendon Revitalised

2009-10-06T21:32:00.004+01:00

Remember Clarendon, the old slab-serif that (almost) everybody loves? Well, the unstoppable type designing duo that are Hoefler & Frere-Jones, have updated Clarendon a bit for the 21st Century, giving it more weight and styles, and making it look better than ever before.

The River Thames: A Diary

2009-10-06T09:13:00.006+01:00

Following the uproar surrounding the disappearance of the river Thames from the tube map, I found this article by Diamond Geezer particularly entertaining:

A week in the life of the River Thames

Friday 11th September
» The Thames flows though London, as normal. Everybody knows where it is.

Saturday 12th September
» As tube services close down for the night, TfL station staff start to replace the previous tube map with the new decluttered tube map. The Thames suddenly vanishes.
» Mayor Boris Johnson prepares to fly to New York on a drum-beating trip to promote London. He is not currently incandescent.
» Hundreds of thousands of Londoners flock to the banks of the Thames to enjoy the Mayor's Thames Festival. All of them know exactly where the Thames is.

Sunday 13th September
» The poster-sized tube map continues to be pasted up at stations, although it's still not commonplace (and card versions remain rare).
» A few geeky tube types have correctly spotted that the river is missing from the new map, and are also busy discussing the implications of zonelessness.
» Hundreds of thousands more Londoners flock to the banks of the Thames to enjoy the second day of the Mayor's Thames Festival. All of them know still exactly where the Thames is.

Monday 14th September
» A few bloggers are running with the "Thames-free tube map" story, but the mainstream media are as yet oblivious.
» The new tube map is not yet available on the TfL website.
» The working week commences. The Thames has vanished, but most Londoners haven't noticed. They still think it's that wet thing between the Victoria Embankment and the South Bank.

Tuesday 15th September
» The Daily Telegraph is the first newspaper to realise that draining the Thames is a newsworthy story. Also noted are the possible negative implications of removing zones from the map.
» TfL reassures Londoners that there are many other ways in which zones can be checked, for example using the maps on trains and on ticket machines. They keep quiet about the Thames, but promise to listen to feedback.
» Old man river, he just keeps rolling.

Wednesday 16th September
» All hell breaks loose as the national and regional press leap on the story.
» The river removal scandal makes it to the Daily Mail, to the front cover of an evening freesheet and to several minutes on the BBC London evening news (amongst many others).
» The sudden loss of this fluvial icon is an abhorrent disaster and a national disgrace. Public groundswell demands reinstatement.
» "Why fix something that's not broken? The tube map was excellent the way it was, and the Thames was an essential part of the design."
» "i often use the position of the rivers as a basis for which station i need to get off at, this is a really daft idea, going to have to start catching busses so I can see where i am going."
» "they'll have employed a firm of consultants to make this decision, then another one to assess the outcry, then another one to reverse the decision...all paid for by you the stupid taxpayers...to all those people who voted Blair into power all those years ago, I hope you feel an ounce of responsibility and remorse at the joke Britain has become..."
» "Further erosion of English History by the Lunatic Left!!".
» The new tube map is still not yet available on the TfL website (because it's safest not to let the public actually see it).
» Evil TfL operatives continue to roll out the tainted Thames-free tube map across all stations on the network, the bastards.

Thursday 17th September
» Boris Johnson returns from New York to discover that London has a PR disaster on its hands. He moves fast, via Twitter, to reassure everyone that all will be well again. "Can’t believe that the Thames disappeared off the tube map whilst I was out the country! It will be reinstated... (1:30PM Sep 17th)"
» This is the same Boris who was IN the country when the maps were first installed. [Just landed in New York. Grey skies but special. (7:23PM Sep 12th)]
» This is the same Boris who, back in August, knew enough about the new tube map to offer his Twitter followers a sneak peek at its new cover. [Sneak peek at the new cover of the pocket Tube map by Turner Prize winner Richard Long for #TfL (9:52AM Aug 25th)]
» This is the same Boris who's the Chairman of TfL, and therefore jolly well ought to know what his organisation is doing, especially when they're printing hundreds of thousands of maps to a radical new design which must surely have been discussed at a Board meeting at least once.
» This is the same Boris who's now successfully passed the buck and come up smelling of roses as the People's Champion. "I hope Londoners will imagine the Thames in place until it reappears on the maps, and will not forget their beautiful river."
» So, yes, the upshot of this mega-furore is that the Thames is definitely going back on the tube map in December. The map'll need redoing anyway because the Circle line's being tweaked. No unexpected additional costs will be incurred.
» TfL are also "looking again at the provision of zonal information to ensure that it is widely available to customers". Which could mean that the zones go back on the map, or might just mean that they go back in the index.
» And then TfL said this: "We will also see what more can be done to respond to the feedback that we have been receiving on the map becoming too cluttered to be useful." And this is actually the best news of the day, whatever the rest of the media thinks.

Friday 18th September
» The Thames flows though London, as normal. Everybody knows where it is.

Something Again

2009-10-06T00:00:00.011+01:00

Part of an interview with Leah Hayes, and illustrator whom i rather like.

What I enjoy about your ballpoint illustrations is the incredibly distinct feeling and tone they have. What prompted you to use a ballpoint, and can you talk about the advantages and limitations?

I started to use a Bic pen because it is so much like a pencil—the line quality varies greatly, and you can get a super soft fine line, good for cross-hatching. I suspect too that I enjoyed drawing with a tool that is un-erasable. I did it again later with scratchboard. I think I like the recklessness—and stupidity, maybe—of doing something once and not being able to change it.

Broadcasting Tower, Leeds

2009-10-05T23:59:00.008+01:00

Apparently,

''There is no better location for a Leeds student.'' Than Broadcasting Tower, the (atrociously designed) website touts.

It was designed by Sterling Prize-winning architects Feilden Clegg Bradley. By all accounts a talented bunch. However, whilst perusing articles online the nicest words used to describe their creation were ''distinctive, with comfortable and contemporary interiors and stylish decor."

From what I saw of the inside it's your standard student accommodation, much like any other, except pricier.

Ever since I first stepped in to Leeds, two years ago they've been building this disappointing excuse for architecture, and quite frankly it's an eyesore, even if it is ''smack bang outside Leeds Metropolitan University and a stone's throw from the University of Leeds and other academic institutions.''

Badly done, Feilden Clegg Bradley, badly done.

Vomit inducing trips to the supermarche

2009-10-04T22:42:00.022+01:00

Does anyone else walk in to a supermarket and want to vomit at the sight of some of the packaging on offer? I know I do. Why can't we have something more like Jamie Oliver's range of foodstuffs readily available?

I'm talking of course of the the Pearlfisher designed food products that, according to the website "develop a new lifestyle concept that elevates the Jamie Oliver experience from the kitchen to the home."

They were released in June '09.

They're rather awesome, non?

I like the glass jars they come in - they're reusable and add a touch of class.

Some tea, how lovely.

As opposed to the other Jamie Oliver pasta sauces and pestos I keep seeing round loads of supermarkets (below), these are certainly something I'd buy.

Apparently the above are designed by a Manchester-based shopping design specialist called 'The Market.'

The Market came up with a 'revitalised look for five pasta sauces, seven pesto sauces and three types of pasta.'
Pshaw. Whatever.

They released them Dec '08.

I can't quite work out whether The Market designed the old stuff, or if Jamie just has two different design companies working for him. All I know is whose packaging designs I prefer.

By all reports, the range is doing well, advertolog.com states; 'Jme launched online in December 2008 and since then it has received an average of 22,000 unique visitors a week. There was only minimal PR and no advertising spend on launch so traffic has come via the Jamie Oliver website and word of mouth. When Jme launched in a dedicated London retail space alongside Jamie Oliver's cookery class concept, Recipease, it outperformed predicted sales by 100%, being responsible for 40% of the shop's revenue in its first two weeks.'

Despite this, I have not seen one place that sells it in Sheffield, and that includes Waitrose and M&S. Now I can understand it not being in Somerfield or Tesco, You get what you pay for there, and that's quantity not quality. I can even understand it not being in M&S Simply Food, because more often than not, they only sell their own brand stuff. But Sainsburys, who are always using Mr Oliver in thier adverts, and Waitrose who always sell the kind of nicely packaged stuff I want to buy, have nothing but his crappy pestos and pasta sauces available which to be honest aren't that great design-wise. Despicable.

Bored

2009-10-04T22:42:00.021+01:00

God I am bored out of my mind. Much like this:

But without all that lovely overflowing creative juice that some have.

Procrastination...

2009-10-02T19:43:00.006+01:00

We are all guilty of it. I am especially. So far, during the time I dedicated to sitting down in a quiet room and getting on with writing my blog, all I have done is check my emails and re-organise my 'iCal'.

This general lack of productivity reminded me of one of my favourite ever pieces of animation work, the brilliant 'Procrastination' video by the ridiculously talented Johnny Kelly. I first saw the video featured in the September 2007 issue of Creative Review, and have come back to it countless times since, and each and every time i watch it, i get that 'I wish I'd thought of that first' feeling.

If you like this, you should also check out his latest animation, 'Seed', which was commissioned by none other than Adobe to promote their CS4 suite.

Students, Please Drink Sensibly

2009-09-30T17:18:00.011+01:00

Memories of my freshers week back in 2007 are somewhat blurry. The reason for this is no surprise, the volume of alcohol consumed in those seven short days was more than i'd ever consumed before. What with the freedom of living away from home, the need to bond with new flat mate, (which of course needs to be done whilst under the influence) having only a little preliminary work to do ( "it doesn't matter in the first year, anyway" was everyones favorite rhetoric) and lots of (seemingly) free cash injected into my bank account all contributed to freshers being spent in a gloriously hazy state. Thankfully, I have been able to piece together some 'memories' of those nights out thanks to the colossal number of photographs that were taken, and subsequently uploaded and tagged on Facebook. We went out almost every night that week, and the one night that I opted not to go 'clubbing' (my friends were going to a school uniform themed fancy dress disco for goodness sake) I got the impression that I was being quite anti-social. I remember as freshers we were encouraged to go out and get drunk as often as we possibly could; every bar and club was vying for our attention, and everywhere you went people were pushing leaflets in your face promoting some bangin' night out, with 'freshers deals' ie cheap drinks. There was almost a sense that you were expected to get paralytic, with brownie points going to those who could tell the most amusing/disgusting story about what happened last night at so-an-so's. It got to be a competition. I even recall some students who had never touched alcohol in their lives due to religious commitments, suddenly abandoning their faith in favour of peer pressure, and getting blindingly drunk in order to fit in and act like a 'proper fresher'.

Freshers week has now been dubbed 'freshers fortnight', which makes for some delightful alliteration, but also doubles the length of time that your liver and your bank balance take a pounding before university work begins, putting the brakes on the extensive socialising a little bit.

But with such so much encouragement from bars, clubs and fellow students to get drunk, promoting the common message that alcohol is a prerequisite for a good time, what is being done to encourage responsible drinking? Well there is always the tiny voice at the back of your mind that tells you you'll regret it later, but that voice rarely wins. So what else is there out there that gives students the idea that drinking doesn't necessarily equal fun? The government always seem to be commissioning new advertising campaigns to inform us about the amount of units we should consume or the consequences of too much alcohol, but this voice always seems to get drowned out by the barrage of other contradictory messages aimed at students. The latest such campaign, launched to coincide with freshers fortnight, is plastered on phoneboxes all over the place, and looks a little bit like this:

The latest Drink Aware campaign, encouraging us to choose soft drinks instead of alcohol

The adverts, which remind us of some tempting alternatives to alcohol, take a different approach to previous campaigns, such as the 'Too much alcohol makes you feel invincible' and 'You wouldn't start a night like this...' campaigns which show the consequences of having too much to drink, instead focusing on how to prevent getting excessively drunk in the first place. However, the second advert doesn't look like an anti-drink campaign at all, if you walk past this in the street it looks like just another generic Coca-Cola advert. There are a couple more adverts in the campaign, which can be viewed over at the Drink Aware website, but I can't help feel that such messages are too subtle; they're not attention grabbing or hard hitting like previous campaigns, and certainly don't think it'll be enough to convince this years batch of freshers to go steady on the alcohol.

Semilla

2009-09-29T19:58:00.005+01:00

Semilla is a great new font by type designer Ale Paul. Check out the typeface in full over at Veer.

Adventures in Motion

2009-09-28T20:25:00.011+01:00

When you go to a music festival, you don't usually expect to end up attending an award winning short-film festival as well. However, that's exactly what happened to me this summer when I went to The Big Chill festival, hidden away in the hills amongst the lovely Malvern countryside. It is common for music festivals to have a cinema tent of some sort, but they usually just show a selection of the latest blockbusters; the kind of films that will keep the masses entertained, just in case several hundred bands, a handful of top comedians and a fairground (not to mention gallons upon gallons of alcohol) isn't enough to keep them occupied for a whole weekend.

At The Big Chill however, I was surprised, (not to mention delighted), to see that Onedotzero's 'Adventures in Motion' film festival was on the lineup. For anyone who is not already aware of Onedotzero (pronounced '1 dot 0'), you should be. They showcase and celebrate the best contemporary moving image work and encourage innovation across all forms of film and animation. Their annual film festival now tours the world, and this summer they brought it to a couple of music festivals for the first time.

At The Big Chill they showcased about a dozen different films, most of them being innovative music videos of one sort or another. All of the films were interesting to watch, and they kept the audience captivated for a good 80 minutes, but I've picked out a few that really stood out for me:

This first film, by Chris Milk, tells the story of a broken heart, which yes, has indeed been done countless times before, but this music video offers a rather unconventional take on the scenario. The clichéd 'ripping ones heart out' visual has been taken as a starting point and turned into something completely unexpected, and darkly humorous too. I can't quite decide if I find the film brilliant or just a little bit disturbing - decide for yourselves.

This film is brilliant. It's been knocking around on numerous music and design blogs for a while now, but if you've not seen it yet, I recommend you check it out. If you like typography or logos, this video should tick all the boxes. It's an "Insane collage of (seemingly) vintage eighties logos" designed by So Me and Machine Molle. And for the hardcore typography geeks out there, over at FontFeed they have identified all the typefaces used in the video.

Next up is Bjork's animated video for Wanderlust which you can view in 3D if you've got the necessary red/blue spectacles, or just in plain old two dimensions, over at the Encyclopedia Pictura website. The music video took nine months from conception to completion, and uses a style of animation unlike anything I've ever seen before. There's an interesting 'Making of' video with director Damijan Saccio over at Vimeo if you're interested in finding out more.

Finally, one of the films I enjoyed the most was Albert's Speech, a short comedy produced in conjunction with Onedotzero and commissioned by the BBC Film Network. It tells the tale of Albert, a nervous introvert, who is desperately trying to avoid having to stand up in front of 100 people to deliver the best man's speech at his friends wedding. The acting is combined with short segments of animation which support the story and provide an insight into Albert's thoughts, and they showcase a range of different styles from talented animators such as Jan Urbanowski, Mark Hough, Trunk and Peepshow. The film is 15 minutes long, but if you've got some time to spare, you can watch Albert's Speech here.

These are just some of my favourite films shown by Onedotzero during their slot at The Big Chill festival, but there were many more. Other notable examples include Better than Prince by Jonas + Francois, and Myriad Harbour, created by Fluorescent Hill.

Onedotzero have also just launched their 2009/10 Adventures in Motion tour at the BFI Southbank in London. I haven't been able to catch any of the films yet, but one which looks particularly interesting is Logorama by French animation team h5. Apparently, "Logorama features spectacular car chases, an intense hostage crisis and wild rampaging animals: created exclusively from hundreds of infamous brand logos". Intriguing.

Restricted Article - For Humans Only

2009-09-24T17:15:00.007+01:00

Image from Tony Worrall Foto on Flickr

Movie adverts on phone boxes rarely, if ever at all, make me want to go and see the movie they're advertising. I'll usually choose what I watch at the cinema based on the film's trailer, and the reviews in the paper or on the radio. Although, to be honest, more often than not my film choice is simply dictated by what my friends want to go and see.

I suppose that these adverts on phone boxes are simply there to raise our awareness of the film, remind us that it's out there, and make us want to find out more about it. The approach just seems so formulaic though: action shot of the film's main character, whack a logo over the top, and finish it off with a release date and an ambiguous, out of context quote from a critic. I was pleasantly surprised then, when I saw this advert for District 9 adorning a local phone box last week:

The 'human only' phone box

At first first I didn't even realise it was advertising a film, as the eye is immediately drawn to the big red circle with a line through it, and it's not until you look down towards the bottom of the phone box that you see the logo. You'll also notice that there's a phone number too, a hotline which you can apparently use to report "non-humans". It's not often that you see a message like this on a phone box, so out of curiosity I rang the number.

"Thank you for calling the Multi National United hotline. Please listen carefully to the following options. Non-humans have escaped from District 9 and are deemed to be violent and unpredictable. Press 1 to report any non-human sightings in your area..."

There are various other options, and depending what button you press you get different outcomes, one of which results in your call being interrupted by a 'non-human' who informs you that it's actually the alien's that are being mistreated and encourages you to visit the MNU Spreads Lies blog. Visiting the blog in turn leads you to various other websites promoting the film in one way or another, and before you know it you've spent half an hour looking at propaganda for the latest Peter Jackson funded blockbuster, all because of an advert on a phone box.

The advertising is part of a wider campaign by London based agency Spinnaker, and ties in brilliantly with the issues raised in the film. Apparently the advertising isn't just limited to phone boxes either. In America they've been using similar tactics on benches, staircases and highways, all to drum up hype and curiosity about the film.

As for the film itself, I really enjoyed it, but I'm not a film critic, so I won't bore you with my clumsy description of what happens. If you want a proper review check out Edward R Burge's blog, it's quite good.

D&AD Annual

2009-09-23T14:41:00.007+01:00

The 2009 D&AD Annual was unveiled yesterday, and I have to say I think it looks rather good. The book is designed by recent graduate Luke Sanders, and art directed by the famous Peter Saville. The book is split into four categories: Advertising, Design, Crafts and Digital. Each section is separated by a fold out cover, which gives the the appearance of having four book spines within the pages of the book itself.

Images from Creative Review

But why no D&AD Student Annual? When I found out my work had received 'In-Book' status I couldn't wait to get my hands on the book, only to be hugely disappointed when I found out that for the first time ever, there is no Student Annual this year, with it being moved entirely online instead.

With D&AD putting so much emphasis on the importance of nuturing young talent (the Annual itself was designed by a recent graduate!) why do us successful students not deserve an Annual of our own? Bring it back D&AD!

For a full read-up on the new Annual, head over to the Creative Review blog.

'The Apprentice' for Designers

2009-09-18T22:32:00.010+01:00

Who is this man? Why, it's controversial product designer, Philippe Starck, of course.

He is, so the speak, the Alan Sugar of the product design world. Although he's a little bit more French than our Alan is. Famous for his bold and controversial designs, Starck has forged a name for himself over the last 30 years, designing the interior of the French president's house, countless bizarre chairs and a certain notable lemon squeezer along the way.

And now, sixty year old Philippe Starck, claimed by some to be the most famous product designer in the world, is at the center of his own reality TV show on BBC2. I've been saying for years that someone ought to make a program like The Apprentice, but featuring designers rather than business development magnates, senior retail managers, accounts consultants and the like. And at last, it seems that somebody else has had the same idea, and has turned the TV program it into a reality. The series started on Monday at 11:20pm on BBC2, and will run for six weeks.

The show sees twelve contestants, supposedly all talented designers, battle each other through a series of design tasks to earn... a six figure salary? No - a six month work placement with Starck.

I don't know how well the program will go down with the general public, but surely for us design students, and indeed everyone in the design world, this should be essential viewing. After watching the first episode on BBC iPlayer, I can't decide if I love it or hate it. Philippe Starck's sheer French-ness is very over the top and 'in your face', and he certainly fits all the stereotypes and pre-conceived notions that one might have concerning French designers. He takes the twelve British contestants to his School of Creativity in Paris, and their first assignment is to go to a French supermarket, and equipped with €100, pick out one product which is an example of good design, and another which is an example of bad design.

It makes for very interesting viewing. The contestants have one hour to pick their products, and then it's back to the studio for a critique from Starck and his two trusted sidekicks. Just like Alan Sugar has his Nick and Margaret, Starck is aided by Jasmine, his head of communications (although she also happens to be his wife), and Eugeni, who Starck describes as "the most talented designer in the world". Here they are look, like a giant three headed über-French design beast:

The main problem I have with the program is that Philippe Starck keeps stressing the importance of function before form, and expressing his vision for a more ecologically designed future where there are fewer pointless products, and instead, only useful products. It's a lovely vision, but it seems a wee bit hypocritical coming from the man who designed products such as these:

Philippe Starck's limited edition 'Teddy Bear Band', which retailed at £142

If you're wondering what that is, it's actually a stool. It could be yours for £3,052.

These chairs offer "a soft and comfortable polyurethane seat, without foregoing the glamour of transparency and colour!" They cost £476 each.

The 'Holly All Vase' stands at 7 feet tall, and costs £2,700

The Starck 'Gun Lamp' would be a beautiful addition to any home, for just £1,400

Despite my cynicism, I still think it's a brilliant idea for a reality TV show, and I'll definitely be watching the rest of the series to see how it pans out. I'd love to know what other's opinions are on the program...

Books + Anniversaries (Part III: Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

2009-09-16T10:36:00.009+01:00

So the two big publishers, Penguin and Faber, both celebrated their recent anniversaries (70th and 80th respectively) by producing special, limited edition sets of books. And following in their footsteps are the lesser known publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson. They're celebrating their 60th anniversary this year, and wanted to release a special set of books to mark the occasion.

Penguin and Faber each commissioned covers from a whole different range of contemporary designers, but Weidenfeld & Nicolson went down a somewhat different route, and commissioned the powerhouse of advertising that is Fallon, to design their special set of books.

Famous for throwing bouncy balls down hills and teaching gorillas to play the drums, Fallon are a very big name in the advertising world, but when it comes to designing books, well, they've never done it before. Despite their lack of experience in this field, Fallon were keen to show that they can do more than just advertising.

“This project was a great opportunity to showcase the department’s passion for craft and design above and beyond traditional advertising briefs.”

Mark Elwood, creative director of Fallon Design (from Creative Review, August 2009)

Apparently Fallon had the entire design department and all their art directors working on the brief, so they ended up with about 30-40 different concepts for the design of the books. From all these ideas, they settled on one, and the finished design looks a little bit like this:

The full set (image from CR)

Each cover is made from raw uncoated board which gives them a great tactile quality, and provides some visual consistency to the set, whilst still allowing each book to look individual thanks to a die-cut window in the center of each one. Through this cut out shape in the cover you can see the vibrant artwork of the front/end papers, each of which was created by a different artist.

Two of the covers with the end papers visible through the die-cut windows

The full end paper for 'The Siege of Krishnapur' created by Mikko Rantanen

The set isn't perfect, I think there are a couple of weak covers in there, such as Lolita and The Color Purple, but the rest I think are great, and as a whole the set looks brilliant. I think Fallon have done a really impressive job, with a design concept just as impressive as the ones shown by Penguin and Faber, and they have shown that they are capable of more than just advertising.

Looking at the works of Penguin, Faber, and Weidenfeld & Nicolson, I think the equation "Books + Anniversaries = Good Design" is fairly accurate. And I've only looked at publishers of prose and fiction. If we look further afield, specialist art and design publishers Thames and Hudson also turn 60 this year, and they too have done something special to celebrate. Not to mention Taschen, who have shamelessly been slapping the number 25 all over their books recently to mark their 25th anniversary.

I can't wait for the next set of publishing milestones to roll around and see what other great pieces of design crop up as a result.

--------------------------------------------------------

Books + Anniversaries = Good Design
Part I: Penguin
Part II: Faber & Faber
Part III: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Books + Anniversaries (Part II: Faber)

2009-09-15T09:45:00.027+01:00

It's not just Penguin who have been celebrating a milestone anniversary recently. Faber & Faber turned 80 this year, and they too have been busy making some lovely book sets to mark the occasion. Faber Firsts is a set of brilliant debut novels from ten of their most famous authors, which includes 'Lord of the Flies' by William Goldberg, and Paul Auster's celebrated 'New York Trilogy'.

Just like Penguin did for their 70th anniversary, Faber commissioned different designers/illustrators for each of the covers (plus a few of them were done in-house). However, unlike Penguin, the brief was a bit more strict; Faber wanted each cover to represent a classic design from their past. Over the last 80 years they have had a very rich design history, incorporating many different styles and trends, and they wanted these new covers to act as a tribute to their past. Faber describe the set as "Landmark debuts with classic designs".

Four of the ten Faber Firsts covers which hark back to designs of the past

Each cover represents a different era of Faber's design heritage, inspired by some of their most famous and prolific dust-jacket designers such as Berthold Wolpe and Hookway Cowles. Faber's 'Eighty Years of Book Cover Design' is a treasure trove of past designs (also published this year to mark their anniversary), and just flicking through the pages of the book you can see where much of the inspiration came from for these ten Faber Firsts covers.

For example, the rough brush style of Berthold Wolpe's original Faber jackets was clearly the influence for this cover of 'Lord of the Flies', designed by Darren Wall:

Wolpe's original cover design

Darren Wall's cover as part of the Faber Firsts series

And the confident hand rendered typographic approach for the cover of Peter Carey's 'Bliss' was clearly inspired by the original cover for 'Sibelius', a music book published by Faber in the 60s:

The original

The 2009 version

Admitedly, not every single cover stands out as a brilliant piece of graphic design, but as a set I think they work really well together, and they do a great job of representing the different design eras of Faber's past. Here are the rest of the covers in the set, and a couple of comments from the designers:

	I grew up around old Faber books. In particular Bernhard Wolpe's cover designs for the books of Lawrence Durrell or the poems of Sylvia Plath. It was therefore a great honour to be asked to pay homage to part of Faber's amazing design heritage. I was given the task of designing a cover that reflects some of the very graphic, 2 colour solutions that have been produced throughout the years, particularly from the 40s through to the early 60s. My cover is a simple graphic attempt to illustrate 3 stories with 2 colours. Jonathan Gray / gray318, designer (extract from Waterstone's Books Quarterly)

	I wanted to create a very classic 1950's look inspired by the illustrations of Hookway Cowles. The style is extremely flat and the drawing almost looks as if it has been screen printed. Interestingly to recreate this flat 50's quality I turned to modern digital techniques as I could layer one image evenly on top of another without adding dimension. The presence of a Carpathian style castle on top of a mountain is intended to convey an aura of mystery and drama. The full moon heightens the sense of atmosphere and also suggests that all things can be revealed even in the black of the night. Robert Venables, Illustrator (also from WBQ)

However, Faber & Faber aren't stopping there, they're doing a lot more to celebrate their 80th anniversary. As well as Faber Firsts, they have also released a poetry collection, consisting of six books, each one featuring a selection of works by a classic poet. The works featured have all been hand picked by contemporary poets and authors, and more importantly, the covers have each been created by contemporary print makers.

The six covers of the Faber 'Poetry Classics' set

As you can see, the monochrome covers each feature some great detailed illustrations, made using traditional methods such as woodcut and linocut design. The only one I don't like is the W. H. Auden cover which lacks the detail and the charm that the others have, but in general I think this is another very nicely designed set of books. They even come sporting matching end-papers:

The matching front/end papers of the Poetry books (images from Creative Review)

And it doesn't end there. Oh no. Faber are launching yet another set of books to celebrate their 80th anniversary. This time it's the complete works of Samuel Beckett, together for the first time in one collection. They've gone for the purely typographic approach (something I usually love), typeset in a bespoke face created specially for this set of books (sounds great so far), designed by London studio a2/sw/hk (oh dear, what a ridiculous name for a design studio).

Four of Faber's covers from the Samuel Beckett collection

Unfortunately, these books simply don't excite me nearly as much as the others; I don't particularly like the bespoke typeface, nor the way that the type runs off the edges of the pages. According to a2/sw/hk:

"[Each cover] uses a bespoke cover font that comes in four weights, while the book’s title runs vertically to allow for the use of large point sizes. Parts of the titles bleed off the edges to add “tension” to the design".

From Creative Review, May 2009

Hmm, not sure about that "tension" they're on about there. There are 20 titles in total, although only five have been published so far, with the rest to follow gradually between now and Spring 2011. To see the full set of covers, head over to RobAroundBooks.

Two more the typographic Beckett covers

So that's three different sets of books specially created to celebrate Faber & Faber's 80th anniversary, two featuring some very good design, and one with some OK design. For the final part of this series I'll look at how Weidenfeld & Nicolson used a different approach to design to help commemorate their 60th birthday.

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Books + Anniversaries = Good Design
Part I: Penguin
Part II: Faber & Faber
Part III: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Books + Anniversaries (Part I: Penguin)

2009-09-14T20:57:00.007+01:00

A small equation: Books + Anniversaries = Good Design

Everybody loves to celebrate their anniversary, and it seems that book publishers are no exception. Every Gregorian milestone is an excuse to put out a limited edition set of books to mark the occasion, and commission some great book design in the process.

For example, to mark Penguin's 70th Anniversary back in 2005, they released a limited edition set of 70 books, each book being a new text, specially selected for the occasion by one of Penguin's most popular and/or significant authors from their back catalogue spanning the last 70 years. The stories/texts themselves are interesting enough, some of them very much so, but in my opinion the best thing about the set is the design. As well as having 70 different famous authors to write the books, Penguin also asked 70 different illustrators and designers to create the front covers. The result is that almost every book has a great, and unique design.

Here are a few of my favourite covers:

The books come in a presentation box, (although it's a bit flimsy to be honest), and each spine is a different colour, so that when lined up on the bookshelf they form a rainbow gradient, something I usually despise, but I think in this case it works.

There were only a limited number of sets produced, and like so many books in Penguin's back catalogue, they have become quite a collectors item. Nowadays sets of the books occasionally pop up on eBay for around five times their original retail price.

So, Penguin marked their 70th anniversary with some great, not to mention highly collectable, book cover design, but then good design is something I have come to expect from Penguin, and I've blogged about their Great Ideas books on here before. For part two of my trio of articles on book cover design, I'll take a look at Faber & Faber and how they tackled the issue of designing a set of special books to mark their 80th anniversary.

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Books + Anniversaries = Good Design
Part I: Penguin
Part II: Faber & Faber
Part III: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Message on a Billboard

2009-09-09T20:04:00.006+01:00

It seems that everyone and everything is making a come back nowadays. Take That started off the craze, but recently we've seen comebacks from the likes of Blur, Spandau Ballet, The Verve, Spice Girls, and even a one off gig from Led Zeppelin. Apparently 90s boyband 5ive also made a comeback, although you'd be excused for not noticing. And it's not just in the world of music that we've seen a revival of the old; TV shows like Doctor Who and Gladiators have returned to our screens, and Wispa chocolate bars are back in the shops. The latest piece of 20th Century nostalgia to return is the Wispa Gold, riding on the huge success of the original Wispa comeback, the Wispa Gold is the same thing, but filled with caramel. It was discontinued in 2003, but after a petition on Facebook, Cadbury's have announced it's return this September.

So how will they go about marketing the return of yet another classic chocolate bar? After their successful For The Love of Wispa TV/viral campaign, this time round they've opted to harness the power of outdoor advertising. Cadbury's have bought advertising space around the country, and are letting the public decide what goes on it. In their own words:

"We’ve decided to give our advertising space to you guys as a thank you for all the love you’ve shown to Wispa. We've bought thousands of billboards all over the UK and Ireland so that you can share your special messages with the world. Yes that’s right, you let us know your special message and if it gets selected we will post it on a real billboard in the location of your choice."

So you simply upload your message to the Wispa Gold Messages website, and it could end up on a billboard somewhere. The idea seems very similar to some people's responses to our recent Third Space university brief, set as part of the ClearChannel Student Design Awards. I know several people on our course came up with the idea of opening up the advertising space to the public and letting them put their own pictures/messages on it.

It's a decent concept; if you include the public in the campaign itself and get them to interact with it, then they're much more likely to spread the word. There haven't been many entries on the Wispa Gold Messages website so far, but then the campaign was only launched a couple of days ago. Most of the entries so far appear to be messages declaring Person A's all-consuming never-ending love for Person B.

And there's no need to worry if you're not artistic, you can send in a plain, text-only message, and if selected to go on a billboard, Wispa's team of graphic designers will help spruce it up a bit for you by adding some lovely clip-art or some interesting typography, or maybe even both.

Lucky 'Jas' could be getting a message on a billboard from his beloved 'Harps'

Oh Glenn, you're a true romantic

An example of a message spruced up by Wispa. Look, they even added a lovely gold Wispa frame

Amongst the love messages there's also plenty of pictures of people's families and children, as well as an occasional nugget of wisdom or advice that somebody obviously felt ought to be shared with the world in the form of a 48 sheet by the side of a dual carriageway.

Someone's child dressed as young Clark Kent there

Yes, it's important when imparting wisdom to start every single word with a capital letter

Wispa have actually allocated hundreds of advertising spaces around the country for this campaign, including six 'Big Ones', presumably 96 sheet or above, and a large number at underground tube stations in London, as well as countless roadside billboards. You can see all the locations on their interactive map, and there really are quite a lot of them. Come October our streets will be flooded with messages from the public, courtesy of Wispa Gold, which could either be highly interesting, or highly annoying, although I'm sure either way it will generate plenty of publicity for the revived chocolate bar.

I just hope that between now and the beginning of October, Wispa receive some messages that are actually entertaining. After rummaging through all the clichéd love messages, and the occasional picture of someone's cat, I managed to find one message that almost put a smile on my face:

How Things Have Changed

2009-09-04T08:37:00.005+01:00

In an old antiques shop yesterday I happened to stumble across this old newspaper from 1948, and it's fascinating to see just how different newspaper advertising was 60 years ago. The newspaper, which I ended up buying, was a copy of the Illustrated London News from April 10th 1948, and the front page contains no headlines at all, instead it is full of advertisements. These advertisements rely almost entirely on text, so the typography plays a much more important role than it does in newspaper advertising today.

The Illustrated London News, 10th April 1948

A close up of the paper's illustrated masthead

My favourite advert is the one at the top for Bulmer's Cider, the very same Bulmer's which has in recent years seen a huge rise in popularity, helped by advertising campaigns both in print and on TV. It's interesting to see that 60 years ago, they were marketing it as "Champagne Cider" or "Pomagne", clearly trying to make it sound more sophisticated. This sophisticated/luxurious image is helped by the addition of the Royal Crest, a feature which I believe does still remain on Bulmer's bottles to this day, although now a lot less prominent. I cannot however, imagine "Champagne Cider de Luxe" adorning the bottles of Bulmer's I drink down at the pub.

This newspaper is also an fascinating example of how the art of copywriting has changed. The adverts shown here use very different language to entice the customer than would be used today. Describing the customer as "discriminating" seemed to be common amongst advertisers of the time, for example in these two adverts for Basildon Bond notepaper, "Always the choice of discriminating people", and Harden's Tea, "For the discriminating".

I also love the copywriting on this advert for King Six cigars, which states "The quantity available for distribution is still, unfortunately, insufficient to meet demands". It's a reminder of a bygone era of advertising, but I think it's a shame we don't see a little more like this in newspapers today.

Penguin Great Ideas IV: The Complete Set

2009-09-02T10:18:00.002+01:00

I previously blogged about the forthcoming release of Penguin's latest Great Ideas series. At the time, they were only giving us as preview of the first ten books, but Penguin have since unveiled all 20 covers in the set, and they look a little bit like this:

Once again, I'm hugely impressed by the work of David Pearson and his team at Penguin. The two colour printing allows each cover to be unique, whilst still allowing the books to form a cohesive and consistent visual identity across the whole set.

The only two covers I'm not sure about are these two:

Ikea Causes An Uproar

2009-08-31T12:16:00.016+01:00

Right, I'll start with the controversial bit: Ikea has bid farewell to it's iconic Futura typeface, which it has been using for over 50 years, and has replaced it with Verdana. Yes, that's right, Verdana. Here's a quick before and after for you:

Before and after from Please Copy Me

However, before we get in to why Ikea have seemingly lost the plot, typographically at least, let's take a look back in time at an old Ikea catalogue, and how Ikea has developed as a brand. Ikea have actually been around for over 60 years, and first introduced their iconic catalogue back in 1951, although the oldest examples I can find are of this catalogue from 1965:

1965 Ikea catalogue (from ikke tikke theo)

The catalogue clearly hasn't changed much over the years; if you compare this 1965 example to the 2009 catalogue, they still retain a similar style and layout, with large, full page images of rooms, or close-ups of products on a white background, accompanied by the bold geometric letterforms of Futura.

Spreads from the 2009 catalogue

Futura has been consistently used for years (image from mgonamission's flickr set)

Ikea has been using Futura, in one form or another, for over 50 years, and the two have become almost synonymous. Some years ago, Ikea actually commissioned it's own corporate typeface, "Ikea Sans", which is a unique version of Futura, with more weights and a few slightly altered characters. They also commissioned an "Ikea Serif", which was based on Century Schoolbook, and the two have been used together in Ikea catalogues ever since, and have helped to make Ikea one of the most recognisable brands in the world. However, the 2010 catalogue uses Verdana throughout:

So why have Ikea unexpectedly made the decision to break off their ties with Futura and replace it with the rather odd choice of Verdana? Well, they say it's all about keeping the typeface consistent, whether the catalogue is for England, Russia, Asia, or online. They want to use the same font in every country, and with recent expansion into a number of Asian countries, this has not been possible with Futura. The other advantage of Verdana is that it is highly legible on-screen, and Ikea say that with their catalogue now being online as well as in print, Verdana was better suited to the job. There's no denying that Verdana is a good font for use on the web; it's one of the core web fonts, so is cross-browser compatible and very legible at small sizes, it was in fact developed for Microsoft by Matthew Carter specifically for use on screen. However, it was never intended for use in print, and at large sizes it looks rather clumsy and unbalanced.

Verdana has wide letterforms to make it easier to read as body copy on a monitor screen, but when used as a display face it loses all elegance; the terminals begin to look odd, and the kerning goes completely wrong. It's true that Futura/Ikea-Sans doesn't support characters for non-western alphabets, but surely there would have been a better choice than Verdana to unify catalogues around the globe? Many designers are suggesting even that it would have been wiser to commission a fully extended version of Ikea Sans with additional characters to support other alphabets.

A foreign Ikea catalogue from 2009, not set in Futura like the Western editions

The 2010 catalogue, set in Verdana

When the new catalogue was unveiled last week, it caused an uproar amongst the design community, with many bloggers criticising the move, and so many people mentioning it on Twitter that it made its way into Twitter's list of top trending topics. There is even an online petition to bring Futura back, which at the time of writing had 3,519 signatures. On the Typophile site alone there are hundreds of comments that have been made criticising the move to Verdana:

"Verdana is wrong on so many levels. It's less readable, prone to more clotting on the press or looking clotted, and forget about elegance. Myriad, Avneir, even Lucida or Vera would look much better"

SuperUltraFabulous

"I just couldn’t imagine a serious catalog design employing a screen text face for printed display work. I really think that this is a nasty case of a business being cheap"

James Puckett

"This is a disastrous move by a company that's supposed to be design-led! The use of Verdana has the unfortunate effect of making any design look as if it's been quickly knocked out on a home computer with no thought or effort, just because it's (usually) the default typeface on any Windows machine"

Richard Welsh

"Rubbish. It’s a screen font, not graceful at display size, and lacking in subtlety"

Nick Shinn

"To me, Verdana just screams “default.” I love it at small sizes on screen (and maybe even in print), but if it’s any larger or used in other applications it just makes me think of terrible PowerPoint presentations"

DrDoc

It seems to me a great shame that such an iconic brand, which has remained consistent for decades has suddenly decided to get rid of one of the elements which made it so distinctive, and clearly lots of other designers feel the same way. However, it is yet to be seen whether people outside the design community will bat an eyelid. To the ordinary Ikea customer who doesn't care about the difference between a font and a typeface, and has never even heard of leading or kerning, it probably just looks like a load of letters.

(If anyone is interested, there's a similar article about Audi who had a typographic change recently, moving from Univers to a Verdana-esque face).

The Importance of Proof Reading

2009-08-30T16:07:00.003+01:00

I wouldn't usually blog about something like this, but it put a smile on my face, so I thought I'd share it. If you too were lucky enough to get your hands on a copy of the Daily Express yesterday, then on page 40 you would have seen this headline:

Well, can he? The Daily Express, asking the important questions, as ever.

I can only assume that it is supposed to read "finally", and that someone at the Daily Express either made a rather extreme spelling error, or someone is perhaps leaving their job at the paper and wanted to go out with a bang.

I was surprised though that nobody had proof read the article and noticed the mistake, is it common in journalism for something to go to print without being checked first?

E Stings

2009-08-29T14:39:00.009+01:00

It is my opinion that the people running E4 (the TV channel) are geniuses. They have the most original and exciting stings out of all the hundreds of TV channels that now flood our screens, and they didn't even have to empty out their wallets to get them. Instead of paying 'professionals' to come up with a series of stings, often with terrible end results (à la BBC2), E4 run an annual E-Stings competition, inviting their audience to create their own ten second sting and upload it to the E4 website. Of all the entries, the best 15 are chosen by a panel of judges, and are then broadcast on E4 on a regular basis (plus the overall winner gets a £5,000 commission). It works brilliantly, as no-one knows their audience better than the audience themselves, and the end result is that E4 end up with are set of stings that are all original and creative, and with a tone of voice which is spot on for their channel and brand.

I entered the competition myself this year, creating a stop-motion animated sting which I made in two days, using purple and white card and a selection of miniature people. This is my sting: (feedback appreciated!)

E-Trap - my entry to the E Stings competition 2009

The competition deadline is now closed, and E4 have had around 800 entrants in total this year, a selection of which can be viewed on the E Stings website. Some of the entries are very amateur, as is to be expected, but a number of them are very impressive indeed. I've picked out some of the best ones I've seen so far:

Monster VS Robot by johnny j

E4 Loco Land by AdamKellyMedia

Sheeps by nogunarmy

Mugs of Tea by us (design studio)

Invasion! by oliversin

French Books

2009-08-18T11:54:00.006+01:00

I have absolutely no idea what these books are all about, as they're all in French. All I do know is that they're great to look at. They've been designed by David Pearson, the clever man behind the Penguin Great Ideas series of books.

München 2018 and Other Olympic Logos

2009-08-15T11:05:00.010+01:00

It might seem a long time off, but already cities around the world are a planning bids to host the 2018 Winter Olympic Games. One of the cities that has already been confirmed as an applicant is Munich in Germany, and they're currently in the process of trying to find a decent logo to represent their bid. I'm sure we're all aware by now just how much controversy can be caused by a bad Olympic logo.

To find a logo for their 2018 bid, Munich ran a competition and asked people to send in their own logo ideas, and from all the entries a jury have now narrowed it down just to three potential logos.

"Munich snow crystal" by Buttgereit und Heidenreich

"Munich at foehn" by Zeichen & Wunder

"The tracks of the games" by Atelier & Friends

The decision is now down to a public vote. Residents of Germany can go to the München 2018 website and vote for their favourite logo until August 21st.

My money is on number one, although I thoroughly dislike the typography. The typeface in number two is based on Din, commonly regarded as the German typeface, which I think is far more appropriate for their bid. If number two just lost the snowflake in the top left I think it would be a big improvement, it looks as though the designers couldn't quite make their minds up - "Shall we go with the mountain symbol or the snowflake symbol? Hmm... Lets use both".

At this stage the only two other cities confirmed as applicants for the 2018 Olympics are Annecy in France, and Pyeongchang in South Korea who are bidding for the third time running, after failed attempts to host the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics. Their proposed logos are both, in my opinion, less interesting than the offerings from Munich, although admittedly I have no idea what the Korean logo says.

Annecy 2018 logo

Pyeongchang 2018 logo

Of course, there's no guarantee that any of these logos will still be in use by the time the 2018 Winter Olympics come around. It's been the trend in recent years for the host city to have one logo during the application process, and then commission a new logo once they win their bid. For example:

Looking at all of these logos, I think they all show an improvement from the candidate logo to the official logo. I believe the London 2012 Olympic logo is the only one to go the other way, being changed from a good logo to a bad one. Oh dear.

Penguin Great Ideas IV

2009-08-14T08:39:00.018+01:00

For anybody not familiar with the Penguin Great Ideas series, it's a series which brings together some of the most influential texts ever made, from the minds of the worlds greatest thinkers; from Confucius and Plato, to Darwin, Rousseau, Woolf and Orwell, to name just a few. They're the kind of books that you would read in a public place if you wanted to try and make yourself look 'oh-so-sophisticated' in front of everybody else.

However, the books could be full of anything, complete nonsense even, I think I would still want to buy them, because of their incredible covers. The idea originally started out as one set of 20 books, and they used the colour red to tie the set together and create a visual consistency for the covers. The books were all printed using only two colours, red being the spot colour, and black being the only other they could use, printed on to white stock. It's always a challenge designing for print in just two colours, but the end results were fantastic. The different illustrations and use of type on the covers help each book to remain interesting and unique, whilst the two colour treatment really ties the books together to create a set that is visually stunning. The covers are a very tactile experience, they are printed on smooth matte paper, and feature heavy embossing. They're the kind of books you want to run your fingers over, and jpgs really don't do them much justice.

Four covers from Penguin Great Ideas Volume I

Due to the success of the first set of 20 books, Penguin decided to release another set, again featuring black and white covers, but this time using blue as the spot colour.

Penguin Great Ideas Volume II

As well as the covers, the spot colour is also used on the spines of the books, volume one all having red spines, volume two with blue ones, which means they look fantastic when they're lined up on your bookshelf. Moreover, the spines are numbered, which is brilliant from a marketing point of view, because once you've got a few, you're no longer content with just seeing the numbers 2, 3, 7, 15 and 20 on your bookshelf, you want to buy the rest so you can have the full numbers 1-20 staring back at you.

The numbered spines which are a book collectors dream come true

In September last year they released volume three, choosing to feature green as the spot colour. David Pearson, the man behind the Great Ideas series, comments on the choice of colour:

"Green’s not a selling colour. It’s much harder than finding the right red or blue. Most reds sit nicely against black or white; green doesn’t have that presence. [...] I was getting more confident as a designer, so the decisions were getting bolder. This series is more image-led – getting rid of some of the white and flooding the cover with information. Predominantly white covers (with the green) would be a bit vague."

(Creative Review, August 2008)

Penguin Great Ideas Vol III

Close up of Orwell's Books vs. Cigarettes cover

Green spines from Vol III

And now of course it's time for volume number four. Having already used red, blue and green, this time they've gone for purple, and what a great shade of purple it is. So far they've only revealed the first ten covers, out of 20 in the set, but I think they're possibly the best yet.

Penguin Great Ideas Vol IV

Talking about the latest set of books, Pearson says:

"The formula is now so familiar to us that the main struggle is really an internal one and that’s for us to move the series somewhere new each time. Across this many titles each cover has to be distinct enough to maintain interest and – I hope – the boundaries we originally set ourselves have allowed enough flexibility to do this. There will always be a part of me that feels slightly sheepish at having produced so many of these things (80 so far) but much more so, I feel incredibly lucky to be working on a project that taps into the very specific skills I do have (and not the myriad that I do not)."

(Book Cover Archive, August 13th 2009)

Personally, I believe this cover would have to be my favourite out of the whole lot:

David Pearson has also announced that there will indeed be a fifth, and final, set, scheduled for release in 2010 to coincide with Penguin's 75th birthday. I cannot wait to see what colour they choose next.

For more information, and to view the full set, check out the ever wonderful Book Cover Archive.

I Like Classical Music, Therefore I Hate Good Design

2009-08-12T00:18:00.039+01:00

As far as I can tell, every classical music album comes with terrible packaging design as standard. A mix of horrendous typography, accompanied by generic photographs of instruments, composers, or in the worst cases, both. These are some of the most amazing, most celebrated pieces of music ever made, so why don't they deserve good design?

Four equally dire Mozart covers

Don't even get me started on the many problems I have with this album cover:

Mozart for your baby. Indeed.

Perhaps it's simply that the record companies want to keep the album art 'refined' and 'sophisticated' in order to differentiate it from the other music found on the shelves of record shops, or increasingly on the pages of internet shops like Amazon. Just glancing at the covers, you can instantly tell that these are classical albums; they're certainly not rock, dance, pop music, or anything else. However, album covers that are trying to look too sophisticated and pretentious run the risk of deterring new listeners. I don't know anybody my own age would even consider buying a classical album, yet I'm willing to bet that it's not because of the music itself, it's because the packaging makes it look like you're only supposed to purchase it if you're past retirement age.

Four Chopin album covers

Classical compilation albums are no better in terms of design

Upon seeing all these vexatious examples of bad design, I soon found myself eagerly trying to search out some examples of good classical album covers. I found a very interesting Flickr set full of classical music albums, all on vinyl, from the 1950s. The covers are full of bold colours and shapes, and some delightful illustrations which really sum up the style of design at the time. It's very far removed from the kind of illustrations we are used to seeing on album covers today.

Vinyl covers from the 50s

So if classical albums came with good design in the 50s, at what point did it all start to go wrong? I took Gustav Holst's 'The Planets' as an example, and started looking at how the album covers have changed over the last half a century.

1950s

1960s

1970s

1990s

2000s

In my opinion the 50s is still the best example, but the one that intrigues me the most is the one from the 70s. Even if it's not a great album cover, it's great to see at least one example that steers clear of the all too obvious pictures of planets, and instead tries to approach the subject of outer-space and otherworldliness from a different angle.

Finally, I did manage to find one example of a classical music album that I thought had a great design. Die Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods), part of Wagner's opera, which culminates with the apocalyptical ending of the earth by raging fires and then floods, which wipe out both human civilization and the Gods. It would have been all too easy for the designer to simply place a picture of fire, destruction, Gods, or similar imagery on the front, but instead they went for a clean layout with a good visual hierarchy, a clever image, and some good typography to match (the only negative aspect is the record company's insistence on putting their logo in the corner). I'd like to see more covers like this, and fewer pictures of dusty old composers and their violins.

Die Götterdämmerung

For further examples of good, bad, and some slightly ridiculous classical album art, see these articles on the allmusic blog and the Too Many Tristans blog.

A Little Too Similar?

2009-08-11T12:34:00.024+01:00

Illustration is an area of design that I have become particularly interested in over recent years, and one of the first illustrators that I really admired was Mr. Bingo, who became famous for his Hair Portraits, depicting people/characters by drawing nothing but their hair. The results are humorous, and I'd never seen anything quite like it before; I loved the way that the hair was drawn in such detail, and that nothing else was needed to recognise the people depicted in the portraits.

'A New Hope' featuring Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, Hans Solo, and Chewbacca from Star Wars.

And 'Thinkers', which features the hair of Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, and I'm not sure about the last two, but I believe them to be Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

However, since discovering the talents of Mr. Bingo, I've discovered a number of other illustrators who appear to have a very similar style. In some cases, a little too similar. For example, this poster from Christina Christoforou, which is a "tribute to bands and their hair" (for sake of comparison, see Mr. Bingo's Guns 'n' Roses print).

Christina Christoforou

And it seems I'm not the only one to have noticed this; Mr. Bingo himself is keen to point out plagiarisms of his work via his Twitter feed. He recently highlighted the similarities between his own work and that of Toby Triumph. Toby is another illustrator whose work I particularly like, but the comparisons between the two illustrators are inevitable, as they both create detailed line drawings with ever so slightly wobbly/wonky lines which give the work that delightful hand-drawn feel that you don't get from straight lines and smooth curves.

To compare, here's the two side by side:

Mr. Bingo

Toby Triumph

And another, even more undeniable similarity:

Mr. Bingo

Toby Triumph

Now so far it sounds like I'm siding with Mr. Bingo, however, that is only because I personally discovered his work before I found that of Toby Triumph. To be fair to them though, I have no idea who created their work and their style first, or if indeed there is any plagiarism taking place at all, or whether the similarities are simply a rather strange coincidence. But it doesn't stop there, I've stumbled across countless illustrators who produce very similar work, all with the same hand rendered, black line drawing style:

Mr. Bingo

Damien Weighill

Richard Hogg

Andrew Rae

Now if I didn't know better, I would no doubt assume that all four of the above images had been created by the same illustrator. But of course they're not, and I have to admit that when I'm drawing, I often find myself adopting this style of illustration myself.

So why is this style of drawing popular with so many different illustrators? Perhaps it's simply because it looks good, perhaps it's because it's relatively easy to draw this way, or perhaps it's because it's a natural progression from the cartoon style line drawings we all do as children. Personally, I love this style of drawing, but with so many illustrators adopting it, I wonder if it will be long before it starts to lose it's charm, and we see a new illustration trend emerging.

Give It The Typographic Treatment

2009-08-06T10:27:00.020+01:00

I love this idea from Cardon Copy. Taking hand made flyers/posters found on the street, attached to lamposts, etc, and giving them the proper typographic and design treatment. In his own words:

"Cardon Copy takes the vernacular of self-distributed fliers and tear-offs we have all seen in our neighbourhoods. It involves hijacking these unconsidered fliers and redesignings them, over powering their message with a new visual language. I then replace the original with the redesign in it's authentic environment."

This is the result; a hand scribbled sign for a lost cat is turned into an effective, eye-catching piece of design:

Before

After

There are loads of great examples on his website, but these are a few of my favourites:

Apartment for rent

Maths tutor available

No parking, Sunday February 15th, 8am-11am

At Your Convenience

2009-07-25T18:28:00.011+01:00

This advert for Channel 4's On Demand service really impresses me. The way that they have turned all of their main programmes into supermarket products makes the advert humorous, and really easy for everybody to relate to. For example, Gok Wan is represented by bright red fizzy pop, Skins is a cheap and dirty Pot Noodle, Come Dine With Me is a bag of flour, and quite obviously, How Clean Is Your House is a box of detergent.

Every time I see it on the television I find myself looking intently for new products or details that I might have missed before. I think my favourite is Cutting Edge, which is a roll of Cling-film, or possibly Brookside, which comes out of the freezer section and has to have the ice scraped off it.

From a design point of view, somebody must have had to design the packaging for each and every one of these fictional products, even though they're only on screen for a second or two. And every detail has been thought of, the colours and the typography used make each and every product seem so appropriate for the programme that it represents. Personally I think the advert would be just as good without the 'celebrities' thrown in as staff, but then you can't blame Channel 4 for wanting to include some of their 'talent'. Overall I think that the art direction and the production is spot on, not to mention the choice of music, which I think gives the advert exactly the right tone of voice.

It's interesting to compare this to the BBC's recent adverts for their iPlayer. I think the BBC have the best slogan, "Making the unmissable, unmissable", but their adverts simply show a generic, clichéd montage of clips from their biggest programmes, which isn't going to get people talking. Whereas Channel 4's attempt is the kind of thing that will get mentioned over a pint in the pub.

The Beginning

2009-06-09T21:50:00.000+01:00

This is my new blog for the DESN 3996 module of my Graphic and Communication Design degree course at the University of Leeds. I will use this blog to analyse and critically discuss all things related to design.