Retro(per)spective
Introduction Throughout my design education there has been a broad range of influences within a vast range of sectors. This book is a focus on what inspires me, and what has inspired my practice specifically with regards to my final major project. It encompasses interviews and articles from artists such as Damien Hirst to designers such as Bruce Mau and Simon Manchipp. I wanted this publication to not only display what inspires me and my design but also what inspires other creatives. I have asked a variety of photographers, designers, illustrators to send me a photo of what inspires them. Their images are presented throughout the book, breaking up my own influences. This was a really interesting process, and showed me how others are also being inspired by a vast array of areas. I think the key to success is to take inspiration from anything and everything. My approach and understanding to graphic design has changed tremendously throughout my studies but my practice has become driven by branding and identity within commercial design and so I think its important to be aware of the power of design and what it can achieve.
fantastic expectations amazing revelations 3
A manifesto We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, photographers and students who have been brought up in a world in which the tecniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable means of using our talents. We have been bombarded with publications devoted to this belief, applauding the work of those who have flogged their skill and imagination to sell such things as: cat food, stomach powders, detergent, hair restorer, striped toothpaste, aftershave lotion, beforeshave lotion, slimming diets, fattening diets, deodorants, fizzy water, cigarettes, roll-ons, pull-ons and slip-ons. By far the greatest time and effort of those working in the advertising industry are wasted on these trivial purposes, which contribute little or nothing to our national prosperity. In common with an increasing number of the general public, we have reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than sheer noise. We think that there are other things more worth using our skills and experience on. There are signs for streets and buildings, books and periodicals, catalogues, instructional manuals, industrial publications and all the other media through which we promote our trade, our education, our culture and our greater awareness of the world.
We do not advocate the abolition of high pressure consumer advertising: this is not feasible. Nor do we want to take any of the fun our of life. But we are proposing a reversal of priorities in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication. We hope society will tire of gimmick merchants, status salesmen and hidden persuaders, and that the prior call on our skills will be for worthwhile purposes. With this in mind we propose to share our experience and opinions, and to make them available to colleagues, students and others who may be interested. Edward Wright Geoffrey White William Slack Caroline Rawlence Ian McLaren Sam Lambert Ivor Kamlish Gerald Jones Bernard Higton Brian Grimbly John Garner Ken Garland Anthony Froshaug Robin Fior Germano Facetti Ivan Dodd Harriet Crowder Anthony Clift Gerry Cinamon Robert Chapman Ray Carpenter Ken Briggs
Published by Ken Garland 5
You Are Not Designers Terminology of job roles is a surprisingly potent thing. For years we at SomeOne shunned them, refusing to enter into the argy bargy of ‘my job is bigger than your job’. But it soon became clear that it was important for clients to know who they were talking to. It was a bit like being at your degree show private view, spending a good hour doing your best to impress a person you were sure could be a potential employer — only to realise they were David’s Dad who was actually an actuary. So actually useless to your quest to become the world’s greatest graphic designer. So we changed. But we didn’t want to do the Junior Designer, Middleweight Designer, Senior Designer routine — no one wanted to be a middle weight. Just as no one wants to be Mr. Pink — they all want to be Mr. Black. So… we used terminology to describe the seniority of designer that was taken from the legal profession. Partners for the top, Design Associates for the senior, Design Counsel for the middleweight, Designers for the juniors. It was a nightmare. No on understood who was doing what — unless you had studied to be a lawyer. There’s a similar thing going on in Branding. There are all sorts of titles and descriptions surrounding the practice of launching, relaunching and managing brands. Thing is — Branding as a term just doesn’t really do it anymore, as anyone touching all manner of things
from Social Media to Strategy affect how people experience products, services and organisations. So we’re all in it together. I trained as a designer — I’ve always described myself as a designer and it’s what it says on my passport (alongside ‘Giant’ under distinguishing features). But even this fails me in polite conversation. ‘A designer of what?’ they’ll ask… I’m left wondering, is there a better way of describing what we creative people do? Should we be creating a better way of not only describing our role, but using the opportunity as a rally call for the sector? It seems to me that the work that clients pay us for — and that D&AD recognises as great is that which makes an artistic leap. Great creative work is a lateral not literal interpretation of a business problem. It’s commercially minded, but artistically led.
dropped the commercial part of the title and prefers to exhibit his work in the Mall Galleries & The Royal Academy. But the fact he has both parts of the picture, his commercial sensibilities and artistic abilities have enabled him to lend his hand to all manner of brand challenges. And so the same is true for today’s creative talent. As a visiting external assessor of the Advertising & Design sides of Central St Martins I’m seeing some amazing students creating radical and progressive solutions for brands. They are fearlessly developing new ways for old brands to re-connect and re-invent with customers. In a single presentation I saw copywriting, strategy, animation, graphic design, typography and sound design. The new breed are not designers. They are commercial artists.
interesting. And what’s interesting is the way we work with those brands. It’s unconventional, compelling, exciting and rewarding. It involves music, paint, ink and cutting edge technology. It’s artistic. We have a Studio not an office. Interestingly the number of entries last year to D&AD in Branding were up on the previous year. I think this reflects a new energy in the Branding practices around the world. There’s a new recognition that working in Branding these days isn’t like creating Corporate Identities of old. We now have an embarrassment of riches at our disposal. There are no limits to what we can conjure to create ownable branded moments for clients worldwide. So this year — believe in yourself that little bit more. Delve deeper into your creative minds — remember what the chaos was like in Art lessons at school and later at university. Channel the clients commercial KPI’s, needs, wants and desires through your artistic abilities to create something that changes fortunes for all those involved.
Be it graphic design, typographic design, digital design, user experience design — all great design marries business imperatives with leaps of inspired lateral connections. Design is both commercial and artistic.
‘Creatives‘ are many things to many people. It doesn’t really matter what is written on your business card. It’s what you believe in that counts, how you act. Brands are not what they say but what they do — and people are no different. However the best people in creative positions today are not designers. Be a Commercial Artist. Not a They are Commercial Artists. It’s this designer. It’s so much more rewarding mentality that changes everything. for all involved.
My father trained as a designer and when he started working professionally he was described as a Commercial Artist. Being a Commercial Artist gave him enormous flex — In fact he later worked in advertising, design, illustration, publishing and teaching. He’s now
It’s not a new term. But it’s the right term to describe what we are and what we should be aiming for. I work to launch, relaunch and manage brands. That‘s what my company is designed to do. Thats’s the truth. But it’s important not to confuse what is true with what is Simon Manchipp
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“I saw this sign in a hospital. I think you can find inspiration in anything, and this is the kind of thing I photograph as I go around. I never use the images directly, but I think they do have influence somewhere in the work I do. it’s beautifully simple and very modern looking. If I had designed it, I would be really pleased with it�.
Jason Beard Director Other Criteria
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“I’ve recently been inspired by some polaroid photos that were taken on the set of Ridley Scotts Blade Runner. I love the quality of polaroid photos, the way they are a little soft and the way they handle colour, but I also like seeing the cast of the film being themselves. The saying ‘the camera never lies’ is really untrue. Cameras lie all the time, we can use them to show what we want to show.”
Mark Howe Illustrator
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“My inspiration is typography found in the urban or industrial environment – purely functional typography there to instruct or label, applied in a crude manner, but which in my eyes is quite beautiful. It’s often the scale which is interesting – like these numbers scaling the side of the building. This particular site peeks above most buildings around the Old Street area and the numbers on the top stories can be seen from quite a distance. The other aspect I find rather poetic, is the timeframe these things exist for – once the building is clad and the gloss goes on, they will be hidden forever.”
Laura Fearnside Designer Sherry Design
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Incomplete Manifesto for Growth Bruce Mau continued
Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential. ____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.” 19
Incomplete Manifesto for Growth Bruce Mau continued Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’
Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.
Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.
Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
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The steamroller of branding Nick Bell various designers Brand madness part 1 / essay Art and culture are open to interpretation. Why must we give them fixed identities? One of the great attractions of graphic design is how it can bring you into contact with so many other fields of practice, areas of expertise and interesting subjects. As it is a staple ingredient in most forms of visual communication – whether for global superpower government, corporate multinational, campaigning NGO, art gallery, orchestra or travelling salesperson – it’s not unusual for studios of only four or five designers to be wrestling with at least twenty different subjects spread across half as many projects at any one time. Art, architecture, film, theatre, music, history, science, politics and literature, are just some of the subjects a culturally orientated design practice might be immersed in for clients such as museums, galleries and publishers. While in the corporate sector, designers become familiar with business practice in fields such as banking, insurance, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, retail, the automotive industry, sport and government – to name but a few. Rising to the challenge of doing justice to the materials piled up in front of you is another reason why graphic design is so interesting – to design in a way appropriate to the specifics and particularities of the unique context that every project confronts you with. Not that every task is completely new, but the aim
of a designer is to develop a repeatable way of working that is recognisable and lasting, whilst being versatile and of-itstime for as long as possible. The balance between repeatable method and specific response, between style and content, is hard to maintain. The desire for notoriety tips us in favour of repeatable methods as we tend to spend more time honing the formal attributes of our style than we do learning about what our work says and means. The pressure for economic efficiency leads us to devising ingenious systems that organise and simplify our work because it takes less time to fit content into pre-ordained arrangements than it does to redefine a system under new conditions. The danger in going the other way, of making all our responses specific, is that no-one will recognise that we did it and that it will take us so long that no client will foot the bill. The power of a simple image That point leads us to another great thing about graphic design. It is very satisfying to reduce a pile of pictures and text (or a complex knot of issues, say) down to a singularly simple piece of design without rendering it simplistic. How good it feels to make something accessible without making it stupid: this is perhaps the greatest challenge. Yet most of us are not in control of how low we should go (more about that later). The best pieces of graphic design manage to present the big picture while keeping the detail sharp, acknowledging peculiarities while recognising the need for immediacy. The very best manages to elevate mere words and images to a level where the ensemble becomes emblematic, inextricably linked to a
thing, a place, person, event or idea. Sometimes a good piece becomes literally iconic: a powerfully simple image that carries a set of (sometimes) quite complex ideas and associations. Unfortunately, such images sometimes elicit quite different responses from different people and cultures. By their very nature, images are open to interpretation. At a time when organisations are told that the secret of success is to take full control of their visual messaging, this can be inconvenient. Out of the desire within organisations and companies to fix or control their message came the principle of corporate identity. Some corporate identities help to promote or sell what a company or organisation produces by accurately reflecting what it does. Other corporate identities exist in spite of what a company or organisation produces, and in direct contradiction to the way it behaves. Debates within design about ‘service’ are often polarised between ‘the agents of neutrality’ 1 in one corner and ‘the aesthetes of style’ 2 in the other. There is, however, a third faction whose voice tends not to be heard amid the clamour of modern communication business: namely ‘the champions of diversity’. In other words, those graphic designers who are prepared to defend the rough terrain of content from the steamroller of branding and corporate identity. The designers in this third faction tend to be more involved in editorial, curatorial and information design. This includes the making of things (magazines, books
and exhibitions, etc) rather than the selling of things (through marketing collateral design, packaging design, corporate identity and branding, etc). However, there is a distinction that has become muddled over the past 40 years (since the emergence of modern graphic design as we know it today) and thoroughly confused over the past ten – since graphic design embraced branding. And that is the difference between the principles of graphic design used for making and those used for selling. Of course graphic design is a commercial activity, whether selling or making. Yet most of the makers (apart from information designers working on annual reports, instruction manuals and signage, for example), practice in areas that are not principally defined by their commerciality, such as design for the arts. Also, to the serious concern of editorial and curatorial designers who feel protective of content, the tactics of selling have now infiltrated areas that are traditionally less commercial, such as the cultural sector. Apart from the obvious reason – that such tactics have been seen to make lots of money for the corporate sector – another contributing factor to this concern is the way graphic designers view their own discipline. Designers tend not to have a specialism in the way a journalist might concentrate on politics, arts or business, for example. We prefer to view our discipline as one that equips us for action in all fields: this is one of the great attractions of graphic design mentioned at the beginning of this article. If there is any specialism, it tends to go no further than packaging designer, 23
information designer, book designer or corporate identity designer and is practised (apart from a few exceptions) in a generalist way, irrespective of sectors of industry. Corporate identity and branding, conceived and reared in the corporate sector, is now being welcomed into the cultural field by arts institutions that now share similar commercial ambitions to their corporate sponsors. Corporate identity designers are more than happy to help. However, conflicts of interest emerge when these corporate identities and brand strategies are implemented by the editorial and curatorial designers, whether out-sourced or in-house. This article aims to present the contradictions that surface in graphic design as a result of a clash of values between the cultural and the corporate, between diversity and fixity. Selling culture There is a widespread misunderstanding within our national cultural institutions about what corporate identity is. Its effects can be seen at Tate, Camden Arts Centre, the Whitechapel Art Gallery, the Barbican Art Gallery and the National Theatre. Similar concerns affect educational institutions, too, such as the Laban dance centre and the Royal College of Art where there have been internal discussions about the extent to which their brand identity is applied. Through the dogma of branding, graphic designers are learning to commodify all forms of information. Just as what goods signify matters more these days than their basic utility, so it goes that first, information must signify ownership and only secondly does it inform. Even in this
cultural arena, not only has knowledge been demoted but it is being sold to you. In the process of showing the corporate world how better to present itself, graphic design has become immersed in enterprise culture and accepted the commercial imperatives that underpin it. Graphic designers have proven themselves to be the obedient and loyal subjects of industry and have established design as a powerful, versatile and reliable tool that no self-respecting, go-ahead company can be without. It is no longer unusual for a graphic design consultant to have the ear of the company chairman. As a natural response to an increasingly image-centric world, the business community came to fully appreciate the importance of design some time ago. The increasing number of positions created by companies in-house for highlevel design managers is an indication that private enterprise intends to build on its own understanding by commissioning design more on its own terms. History shows that new developments in graphic design have been set in motion by designers, by conscious and unconscious accordance with social / cultural / political mood swings, by embracing new technology, by sampling academic theories and by adopting models of business thinking. But perhaps now more than ever before, a competing influence will be from clients in the way they shape assignments and define goals in ever more knowledgeable ways. This will worry the graphic designers who cringe at the thought of their carefully crafted identities being implemented by in-house designers. It’s fair to say that recently,
on the whole, the best designers tend not to be found working in-house but prefer the greater authority that running their own practice gives them. (The difficulty Apple Computer had in recruiting a ‘cutting-edge’ graphic designer to head their design department two years ago shows the poor regard in which in-house departments are held by most graphic designers. Yet the spectacular success achieved by Jonathan Ive in industrial design at the same company may be indication that this situation may be changing. Companies are always looking for ways in which they can take greater control of the communication they send out into the world.) Designers are continuously confronted with the issue of appropriateness: ‘Is it right to do this here?’ While the better designers are capable of undertaking commissions that are diverse in scope, and open to working with clients active within many different sectors, this doesn’t necessarily turn them impartial or dispassionate. Design practices with strong beliefs and tendencies will seek out like-minded clients with whom long-term relationships can be built. Designers who collaborate with cultural institutions such as museums, art galleries, educational establishments and publishers, are being surprised to find that the low-flying activities of such clients have begun to show up on the radar screens of the branding experts. The science of appearances is drawing converts from some of the least commercially fraught of organisations because, in an increasingly competitive environment, they can’t afford to ignore it. An attitude has emerged that values the projection of the image of
the institution over and above communicating the peculiarities of its particular activities, from which its essence was drawn in the first place. The danger is that a colour, a typeface and a logo are expected to stand for what reality fails to convey. Simmering content – rich in variety and riddled with idiosyncrasies – is obscured by the catchy one-liner coined by brand consultants. Such superficiality is understandable in a world of corporate hospitality, where museums and galleries depend on flaunting their most appealing side to the sponsors looking for the perfect non-stick association, but is irrelevant when dealing with the wider public. Or is it? Isn’t it better not to bother with the subject matter of an event at all when promoting it? Instead why not just chant the values of the organisation that brings it to people? Surely we all engage with a subject because we are familiar and trusting of the organisation that brings it to us? But why are we so trusting of a company, organisation or product, merely as a result of being a continual repository of its monosyllabic messages, streaming afternoon after morning, morning after night? McDonald’s sales figures suggest that repetition of its yellow arches and ‘I’m lovin’ it’ microjingle is more powerful than going into too much detail about the products it sells. Why bother referring to content at all when people respond much better to the branded message? Why not, for example, dominate your art gallery posters with a logo and fixed typestyle and let the art take a back seat? Or why not take the content off completely? You might risk diminishing your exhibition, impoverishing the discourse, or risk 25
encouraging a monoculture, but you don’t want to worry about that. Go on – you know ‘We love it!’3 We like to speak with the same voice. We look back fondly, nostalgically, to the time we all used to watch the same TV programmes in the days before the proliferation of digital niche narrowcasting. We like having all the same riffs in our heads. It’s an infection we welcome. Marketing managers love it too. We should question the use of corporate design values and methods for shaping identity when designing for cultural institutions. The question is: are there values in identity design other than corporate values? Is the experience of an art gallery fundamentally different to the experience of a supermarket? The tactics of a new breed of management-schooled gallery directors would have you believe there is not. Since the 1980s, art galleries and museums have chosen to employ the same methods of persuasion that business uses because they see themselves more as businesses. In the grip of a new spirit of openness, they believe their customers need to be lured to look at art with a mode of address they understand from spending time in the supermarket – an approach that can easily become patronising. Problems emerge when the visual language and agenda of marketing, branding and promotion is employed at a curatorial, editorial level. I have no problem with, say, Tate making powerful use of its new branding in aggressive promotional campaigns, but I take issue with the heavy use
of branding inside the exhibitions themselves. When I am already there, I don’t need to be reminded of the fact all the time. The new Barbican Art Gallery house style, for example, does not allow the particular visual qualities of the subject to be communicated with sufficient resonance. North’s newly minted identity for the Barbican is typographically bold and strong, but perhaps more appropriate for a commercial product of the type where rival manufacturers produce virtually identical products: washing powders such as Persil or Daz, for instance. These products signal as much difference on the surface as possible, because when you look closer at them, or read their ingredients, you realise that they are identical. So all the effort to distinguish them from one another goes into the packaging and how that visual identity is transferred to its advertising. With an art gallery, the experience of the exhibited subject, on closer inspection, unlike washing powder reveals profuse variety in both content and its interpretation. The difference here is striking and very easy to spot. Time will tell whether North’s new gallery identity will need to be more flexible than its inaugural incarnations suggest. Of course it is necessary to give an art gallery an identity, but what distinguishes the Barbican Art Gallery from other art galleries is its programming, so it is important that the distinctiveness of its programming is communicated. At the Barbican this is made more difficult to achieve when the imagery, the art that is the programming, is relegated to the status of backdrop for North’s typographic virtuosity.
Graphic designers are educated at art schools where self-expression is highly prized – no wonder that graphic design is so much in love with its own artistic value. As a result, graphic design is brimming with virtuoso talent. But dexterity – surface trickery – can become an end in itself. And we can worship formal innovation to an extent that it becomes detached from the content it serves. When typography dominates in identity, like it does on the posters at the Barbican and the Whitechapel art galleries, does communication become more about projecting a mood and less about delivering messages? Is it more about the repetition of riffs through the shorthand of a typeface, a colour and a logo? Are graphic designers losing the ability to tell stories in images when the briefs written by marketing directors focus our attentions on core values enshrined in a font distressed in a particular way? A story is an event. Its peculiarities are what makes it interesting, but to tell it may well require a wider vocabulary than guidelines from an identity manual will allow. But graphic designers have never had much patience with stories. Most of us are more comfortable with seeing our work in terms of the atmosphere it creates. Editorial designers may concern themselves with hierarchy, sequence and pace but not necessarily narrative. In fact some of the most reproducable, striking and memorable graphic work takes as long to digest it as switching a light on. Those that have time for stories look to illustrators and comic artists, where some of the most accomplished and ground-breaking graphic design is being
done at the moment. The quirkiness of Chris Ware’s doleful characters (Eye no. 45), Joe Sacco’s painstakingly drawn accounts of war zones (Eye no. 31) and the dark humour of Marjane Satrapi’s depictions of growing up in Iran (Eye no. 50) offer a much needed contrast to other visual communication constricted by guidelines and rules. Does the print matter rolled out by an arts organisation really have to be so dominated by the desire to be visually consistent? Is consistency really so important? This is something that graphic designers have always been insistent about and we are now reaping the ‘reward’ – with mixed results. A catchphrase is indispensable for a comedian and repetition of it is crucial, but its use is for punctuation – it’s not the whole story. Within the cultural field, corporate identities are being stewarded with such fanaticism that the leitmotifs are stifling the sense of particularity that individual events (such as exhibitions) are offering. A good example of contrast between the two approaches – heavily branded or not – can be found in the music industry. In classical music the same compositions are performed by different orchestras with different conductors, and recorded in different venues by different labels. The label has a reputation for its roster of artists, ensembles and conductors, and a recording quality that not all of us have the ear to detect. This, then, is where the brand identity steps in to distinguish between the labels. Whereas in pop music (is this the best term?), the difference between 27
performers and repertoire is easy to spot. Label branding is therefore low-key, virtually non-existent, and as a result, despite the commercial emphasis on genres, is all about a seething variety of material. Its no coincidence that pop music continues to be the most fertile ground for fabulously inventive graphic design, whatever the threat from the internet. The work of one visual artist tends to be easy to separate from that of another, more so than classical recording artists, for example, because the market does not dictate that they produce versions of classic works done by other artists. However, the communications managers of our arts institutions have taken it upon themselves to market their collections like classical music. By thinking of art as highbrow, assuming we can’t detect the difference between a sculptor and a painter, and can’t appreciate the nuances in their programming, the branding is meant to console our supposed sense of inadequacy. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know much about art, you know us, you trust us, we are ‘Tate’, you’ve seen our friendly little foggy logo. In fact London’s Victoria & Albert Museum was one of the first institutions to recognise this when in 1988 it used the strapline: ‘An ace caff with quite a nice museum attached.’ Earlier this year the Tate Britain show ‘In-A-Gadda-DaVida’ (featuring the work of ‘Young British Artists’ [YBAS] Angus Fairhurst, Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas) was proof, if it was needed, that modern art is no longer highbrow and is just as much about entertainment as creativity. In fact,
a little more like the marketing of pop music, the star status of Fairhurst, Hirst and Lucas afforded them the curatorial freedom to break free of Tate design guidelines, as the use of Cooper Black on their poster indicates. It is right that art and art galleries should be more welcoming. It’s great that you can buy books, t-shirts and mugs, drink coffee and eat pizza there. Many of us who wouldn’t normally look at modern art are being drawn to it. Access and education are now taken much more seriously, with all of the national galleries employing full time access and education officers who produce teacher’s help packs, lay down exhibition design guidelines and involve themselves heavily in the design process. Nevertheless in 2000, Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota said ‘I have no delusions. People may be attracted by the spectacle of new buildings, they may enjoy the social experience of visiting a museum, taking in the view, an espresso or glass of wine, purchasing a book or an artist designed t-shirt. Many are delighted to praise the museum, but remain deeply suspicious of the contents.’ Then isn’t our understanding of art being detrimentally affected if it is conducted as some kind of shopping trip? But art is big business, so why not? Artists might appear to be looking at the world from a privileged position, but they’re immersed in it like the rest of us. They’re human beings too, so why shouldn’t gawping at the stuff they produce be treated as a day out, no different from a trip to say, Selfridges? After all, you can now buy art there.
Tate has become the purveyor of a new kind of product. A corporate/ cultural amalgam where the differences between art gallery and retail outlet have been blurred. Wolff Olins’s foggy Tate branding embodies this extremely well, pulsing on the building itself and printed on the posters pasted up on the Underground. I take issue, not with the visual language that persuades me to visit Bankside or Millbank or Liverpool or St Ives, but that this very particular mode of address persists when I am deep inside the building, when my eyes flick from artwork to caption to artwork. As I stare, I am being continually told that every moment of contemplation, every thought, question, doubt, speculation and idea is being triggered by Tate. And in a style of delivery where the telling is indistinguishable from the selling. But most of us experience Tate not as something we buy but as something we visit. Tate’s reputation is founded upon its collection, and its curation of that collection. Artists have a voice through their inclusion as Serota makes clear: ‘My task, and that of other curators, is to build the confidence that will allow visitors to accept that an understanding of contemporary values and ideas will often be provoked by new forms of art . . . ‘, but ‘ . . . much modern art is, at first sight, unnerving. Personally, I rather welcome this. In the contemporary world we have come to expect instant response and immediate understanding.’ Cultural critic Thomas Frank warned us about this in 1997 in Adbusters when he wrote: ‘If we continue to allow business to replace civil society, advertising will replace cultural functions normally ascribed to writers, musicians and artists.’
Graphic designers practice corporate identity. It is a kind of science, a method, a theory, a particular kind of way in which a group (a company, an organisation) is given the appearance, character and behaviour of an individual. Branding is where the same thing happens to products. It works very well in the corporate sector. Why don’t graphic designers, as part of their armoury of approaches, have something called ‘cultural identity’? Whereas corporate identity can be re-invented, cultural identity is the way you are whether you like it or not. And the challenge to the communication managers of the art galleries, and the graphic designers with whom they consult, is how to build identities while telling the stories of their collections (including what might initially appear ‘unnerving’), instead of proffering arbitrary atmospheres. One might think that an organ such as The New York Times, which is re-invented every day, would depend on strict guidelines to formularise design if it is to meet production deadlines whilst retaining a distinctive voice. According to assistant managing editor and design director Tom Bodkin, this is not the case. He says they don’t have a design stylebook but have guidelines for typography and colour palette, and even then little on paper in any organised form. Bodkin says this is deliberate because it encourages individual interpretation and creativity to be exercised in order to meet the ever-changing demands of a newspaper page. What he doesn’t want is the blind application of rules. 29
Bodkin thinks branding is a backward approach to design – ‘one that tackles the outer appearance without addressing the larger goals from which the newspaper design should evolve. It promotes the use of inappropriate graphic devices to attract attention, cosmetic remedies for more significant problems. The result is a package that has little connection to content. That may work for soap, it can create a short-lived buzz for a publication.’ Most crucially Bodkin says that design ‘should not be the primary means of establishing identity . . . It can help define and convey identity, but should not be relied on to originate it. Identity is the natural outgrowth of a complex set of standards and traditions, not something that can be applied to the outside, like a brand.’ Homogenising identity The job of graphic design is to make messages and identities distinct from one another. A quick look around you, however, might set you wondering why the mediated world we are living in delivers increasingly homogenised forms. With the best of intentions (and it is not just design; television and music are prone, too) graphic design finds itself dancing to a tune composed by marketing officers, pr agents, fashion forecasters and brand policemen. It has assimilated their risk-reducing formulas, warmed to that which is familiar, simple, digestible and accessible, witnessed the instantaneous appropriation of new forms and watched them congeal into a fashion that makes everything look the same.
The arbitrary adoption of styles breaks the specific ties between content and its representation. In fact increasingly so, representation claims to be content. The phrase ‘you are what you are seen to be’ is a mantra that graphic designers love because it underlines the importance of appearances in a succinct way that clients understand. The frightening proposition is this; whatever an organisation does is immaterial, since its visual image, its corporate identity, is that which really controls its public persona. Graphic design believes that problems can be solved through communication. Then a terrifying thing happened... suddenly, everyone agreed with us. (No! We didn’t mean it). First it was the corporate giants followed by the rest of the business community, then cultural institutions and now even governments! In 2002 the White House chose to combat ‘rising tides of anti-Americanism around the world’ by hiring former JWT and O&M brand manager Charlotte Beers. As Naomi Klein describes in Fences and Windows, us Secretary of State Colin Powell dismissed criticism of the appointment: ‘There is nothing wrong with getting somebody who knows how to sell something . . . We need someone who can re-brand American foreign policy . . . She got me to buy Uncle Ben’s Rice.’ Klein writes: ‘Beers views the United States’ tattered international image as little more than a communications problem’. As Klein defines it, ‘brand consistency and true human diversity are antithetical – one seeks sameness, the other celebrates difference; one fears all unscripted messages, the other embraces debate and dissent.’
Content is the issue In On Brand (see page 38), Wally Olins writes that ‘branding techniques are now entering the non-commercial world and we can expect them to spread like wildfire – because branding works..the time is coming when seduction skills will become as important for these organisations as technical or craft skills... over the next decade or so, as techniques of fund-raising and presentation become increasingly significant, branding will take another huge leap’. It’s surprising that such an unapologetic evangelist of branding should make an issue of it entering the non-commercial sector at all. Olins describes branding as if it is an external entity that is grafted on, like a face transplant. This seems to be the root of the problem – that however hard communication managers with graphic designers try to draft branding design briefs that talk of responding to the internal characteristics of the organisation, the visual solutions always appear arbitrary. A completely different mindset is needed if cultural organisations are to be branded without diminishing them. It’s quite simple, it’s been said before and so many times that it has become a cliché. And that is to design from the inside outwards. Why do we repeatably fail to do that? The practice of corporate identity design must be inextricably tied to the content it is supposedly serving; make content the issue and resist making design the issue. The visual identity of a cultural organisation can’t be invented. It can’t be what you would like it to be. It can only be an enhancement of what it is. The trouble with corporate
identity is that the way it is usually practised makes no distinction between inventiveness and invention. This is because in more commercial fields where it is normally practised, identity is a made-up thing. It is made up because corporate identity was invented to distinguish identical products from one another, or at least products that are perceived to be the same as your competitor produces. Branding and corporate identity are defined by competition. A bar of soap, to use Tom Bodkin’s example, is not open to interpretation. Its meaning is fixed and therefore the branding of it crystallises its meaning for us and, with a little bit of imagination, is given an invented identity that distinguishes it from other bars of soap. A work of art on the other hand, is open to interpretation. Its meaning is not fixed. Unfortunately most designers practising corporate identity up to now have been honing their skills on bars of soap, so to speak. What we have to accept is that a work of art distinguishes itself, as do programmes of performances we watch in theatres and collections that we visit in galleries. They build their own reputations. They have managed this until recently without branding or corporate identity. All designers need to do is to listen, watch, look and respond inventively but resist making it all up. First published in Eye no. 53 vol 14, the ‘Brand madness’ special issue. An earlier version of this text was presented as a talk given by Nick Bell at Profile Intermedia 5 in Bremen, Germany, December 2002. 31
“Something I find inspirational, actually it’s all food, but sushi in particular because of its presentation. It’s always like a work of art on a plate and tastes amazing. “
Celeste McNamara Designer Sherry Design
“People Watching. Observing people in certain everyday situations often makes me connect with the reality of society.”
Rhianne Withers Beautiful Meme
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The Logo is Dead? www.someone.com
When you look at brands like O2, you’ll discover its success lies in the richness and depth of its ‘brand world’, which features bubbles, colour, photography and typography. This forms a flexible branded platform that is instantly recognisable — you could remove the logo and still know the brand. The logo in itself is not the hero here. I know, I know — it’s an emotive subject, and one that has got the Design industry up in arms — but increasingly I think we are flogging a dead horse when it comes to just creating yet another witty symbol for yet another company, product or service. Yes, logos have been around for forever and, yes, I, too, like the story of hieroglyphics. Sure, the Nike swoosh has, through hundreds of millions of pounds of investment, established itself as an elegant shorthand for sportswear. But who has that kind of budget now? What company knows it is not going to be bought/sold/merged/bankrupt in three years? The truth is that logos are now a red herring. The ones that survive are the exception, not the rule.
from, de-focused. Here are four reasons why: First, public desire. No member of the public thinks that spending £70 000 on a new logo is a good idea. In fact, they think companies that spend more than £500 on one are fools. Everyone thinks they are a designer now – after all, they have all chosen their curtains, their shoe colour, their haircut – and how hard can it be to design a logo, anyway? Companies are making people redundant, then coughing up for pricey doodles. It doesn’t make sense. Newspapers hate new logos – when was the last time you saw a broadsheet or tabloid sing the praises of a new logo? Logos are seen as a waste of money.
Just so we are all clear, when I say logo, I mean the squiggles, animals, lines and swishy bits designers like to revel in. For example, take the MSN butterfly – really, exactly what is going on in the odd picture below?
Second, public need. A million people have never marched in support of ’ more branding’. Pubs used to rely on logos, on pictures to ensure the illiterate could find the right boozer. Illiteracy is not really a major factor now, and so the logo isn’t as necessary or as useful as it once was. New logos are not useful, they are confusing. Why does the Argos brand think that a ’smile’ added to its name will make it more relevant? The smile doesn’t help the public – the store isn’t better, and the goods are not cheaper because of it. Nothing has changed, yet Argos has a new logo. Why? What’s going on? Logos are just seen as decoration.
Logos are a hangover from another time. They need to be shaken off, moved away
Third, commercial need. A new logo for any company scares its staff. They
ask, ’What’s wrong? Why the change? New management? Is my job safe?’ It’s not good. Sure, brands and their branding exist where competition arises. They aim to create a monopoly, to eliminate their rivals. Yet brands need to connect with people – emotionally, culturally, economically and clearly. But a logo alone fails nearly every time, because it needs an explanation. I’m an MSN customer, not a lepidopterist, so why is a butterfly relevant to me? You’re a tour operator called Thomson, with a wink as a logo – a wink, as in ’We’re dodgy’? That can’t be good. So new logos confuse staff and their customers, too. Fourth, new digital needs. Nothing but the simplest shapes work at the new, digitally prescribed sizes. Twibbons, favicons, mobile screens, PDAs – small screen-based branding is a nightmare for anything more complex than a heart or a cross. Digital is the new fax, the acid test of visual branding. When you look at brands like O2, you’ll discover its success lies in the richness and depth of its ’brand world’, which features bubbles, colour, photography and typography. This forms a flexible branded platform that is instantly recognisable – you could remove the logo and still know the brand. The logo in itself is not the ’hero’ here. So while we acknowledge that the logo is not about to disappear – and that it is still an important part of any brand toolkit – there is a case for applying more emphasis on brand worlds (see below).
New thinking Word marks work – type it out, give it a colour and a good typeface. Perfect. Perfect because we are increasingly search-led consumers. Perfect because it works internationally – no matter what the multilingual barriers are, retailers will always accept Visa to pay for Sony products Brand worlds are where the smart money is going – they add depth to the brand name. They are the Adidas stripes down the side of the shoe or the leg of the tracksuit, at the entrance to the store and on the endframe of the TV ad. They are the O2 bubbles rising from the press ad, the decor inside the stadium, the animation on the mobile phone Brand worlds are coherent – they’re coherent (not just consistent) universal branding systems. They cannot be missed in the clutter of 20 million (and growing) cheap logos. They distinguish a product or service more completely, more deeply than any one-dimensional clip-art could ever hope to do. They are varied, rechargeable, developing tools for brands *** Patrick Burgoyne writes some of the best design critique out there for Creative Review. Here he discusses the Logo gig. Even mentions SomeOne’s Simon Manchipp the lovely chap.
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The marriage of a logo with a bank of ‘corporate’ imagery has been a weapon in the identity designer’s armoury for many years – I remember a Newell and Sorrell presentation for Barclays in the late 90s in which a group of photojournalists had been commissioned to shoot a suite of images to be used in literature and bank interiors, for example. But with receptacle logos the link is much more explicit. The method achieves the flexibility that has become a fashionable prerequisite while retaining control. It is endlessly adaptable and ‘campaignable’. But for some designers, the receptacle logo is a form of cheating. A logo, they maintain, should be an inviolable synthesis of everything an organisation is about. It must stand alone, an island in a sea of communications noise held at bay by the non-negotiable ‘exclusion zones’ that are a fixture in brand guide lines books. If your logo relies on imagery to make it work, the argument goes, it’s not a very good logo. Others take a more extreme and contrary view. Someone’s Simon Manchipp was recently quoted on the D&AD blog claiming that “logos are dead”. It’s hard to claim that any logo can ever properly explain what a company has to offer, he argues. “There is no desire for them from the public anymore,” he says, claiming they are an old-fashioned approach to differentiating products and services. Instead, he suggests we look at what Brandia Central has done for the 2012
The MTV logo has had a ‘refresh’ – designer code for a change not big enough to warrant the label ‘redesign’ but big enough, usually, to warrant a large bill and a jargon-packed press release. For MTV this is something of an event as it is the first time that the logo has been changed since Manhattan Design created the original in 1981. The words ‘Music Television’, perhaps as a reflection of the changed nature of the network’s content, have been dropped. More importantly, the new logo is the perfect shape to act as a reservoir for widescreen TV images. MTV has joined the ranks of the logoas-receptacle-for-imagery trend. It’s a trend that appears to be gaining more and more traction with identity designers and their clients but possibly the earliest incarnation was in a system developed for Belgian supermarket chain, Priba, by Allied International Designers way back in 1973. Images of the products available in-store filled out the logo’s letters. More recently, Wolff Olins has led the way, with identity projects for the London Olympics, New York’s tourism and marketing body, NYC & Company and AOL (sorry, Aol.) all involving outline marks waiting to be filled with imagery – although, in Aol’s case, the mark sits on top. But we have also seen it used by Pentagram for the Museum of Art and Design in New York and given a graphic, rather than photographic, application by Landor Sydney for the City of Melbourne.
UEFA European football championships, using an array of patterns and images based on a form of papercutting popular in the host nations of Poland and Ukraine. There is a logo but, Manchipp says, “These illustrations are so interesting, culturally relevant and wildly original that if they were a little braver, they could do away with the ‘logo bit’ altogether and be left with a brilliant, exciting, ownable and authentic visual identity.” In this way, he says, designers can create richer, more interesting ‘brand worlds’ which “excite and offer flexibility. They are a campaign; useful and engaging,” he claims. “They are everything a logo is not. Which is why, the logo is dead.” Fur, ice, blood and paint MTV, however, can claim to have championed the whole ‘flexible identity’ thing long ago, creating a ‘brand world’ of its own in the process. Manhattan Design’s original mark came with no corporate colour guidelines. Instead (as one of the designers Frank Olinsky explains on his site, frankolinsky. com) both the colour and the materials in which the logo was rendered would be changed with each application, making it as eclectic as the music played on the channel.
Doherty in London this resulted in an array of witty and irreverent stings for the channel, clearly articulating its challenger status and creating, yes, a ‘brand world’. The difference today, reflecting the new realities of the channel, is that the space in the new logo will be used more to push its programming and its endless procession of reality TV micro-celebrities than as a canvas for artists and animators as it once was. I may not be the target audience, but MTV’s brand world is not one I would wish to spend much time in. From: http://www.creativereview. co.uk/back-issues/creative-review/2010/ may-2010/crit-logos
As a result, the MTV logo appeared in a myriad of forms – everything from fur to ice, dripping paint to dripping blood. In addition, MTV invited young animators to have fun with it. Under the creative directorship of Peter 39
Social Coding:A word I have fashioned to represent the ideology behind my photography. It in co-operates the means of 3 different genre’s fashion as the output and is aesthetically presented like that of street or documentary photography. Since a young age I have been fascinated with how we work, how are ancestral backgrounds shape us to what we will become, I believe that this is a code that defines us and is a formed by the nature of are youth, influenced by are elders in guiding us to your predicted place amongst society. It is your past that shapes your future.
Joshua Davidson Photographer
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Bruce Mau Design collaborated with MDC Partners A partnership of world-class marketing communications companies – to produce The Secret of Success, a book of quotations celebrating human creativity. The project commemorated MDC Partners’ 25th anniversary, and honored its Chairman and CEO, Miles Nadal, whose passion for the subtle and profound truths to be found in the wisdom of the ages is unsurpassed.
BMD organized the book around nine overarching themes, including Creativity, Change, Destruction, Money, Life, and Success. We developed a distinct design approach for each section, drawing on common typographic conventions, from film script, to timeline, to family tree. BMD joined the MDC Partners network in 2004. The partnership has allowed us to thrive and grow strategically by focusing on our core strengths, creativity and innovation.
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Morality Vs Business As businesses and brands wake up to changes in consumer behaviour and strive to play an active role in delivering positive social change, creativity has a more critical role than ever. Hampering this, however, is the fact that ‘sustainability’ has historically had a hard time in the boardroom. Well, not any longer. It’s easy to fall into the traditional trap of thinking that any call for the creative industry to be more responsible or sustainable is based on a moral argument. Whilst worthy and true, forget morality. Acting sustainably as a business is now a hard and fast survival imperative. We have thrown our lot in with the free market, and the future of a business is dependent on its success as a global competitor. This success is bound, as it always has been, to the behaviour of consumers. And consumers are changing. They are becoming increasingly aware of the role that businesses and brands have played in creating many of the social, economic and environmental challenges we face.
They are frustrated with business-asusual responses – the ones that Steve is advocating – and demanding more from brands: more responsibility, more transparency, more humanity. Those brands progressive enough to respond to these trends are moving sustainability and social change issues from the periphery of their communications plan to the beating heart of their business model. Unilever’s staggeringly ambitious Plan for Sustainable Living is not a costly CSR initiative, it is a growth strategy. Paul Polman wants – and is on target to deliver – 100% growth in ten years. Likewise Walmart will now reject suppliers that don’t meet rigorous sustainability standards. These businesses are far beyond saving paper in their printers. Agencies must do the same. We could respond to the challenge, reluctantly dragging ourselves up the agenda, ticking boxes as we go. Or we could do what we do best… and get creative. We can embrace this opportunity, use these emerging trends as a springboard for innovation, and create new forms of value for clients and new revenue streams for agencies. Tim Lindsay is the CEO of D&AD 45
Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far
Author: Stefan Sagmeister Publisher: Harry N Abrams ISBN: 9780810995291 Price: £19.99 Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far is a format that surprises: 15 individual pamphlets showcasing the design work to date of the seminal Sagmeister Inc. Once you get past the novelty of swapping the pamphlets around inside the die-cut, portrait-led cover, you’ll find some inspiring and touching maxims. A brilliant approach, incredibly well executed.
Non-Format - Love Song
Authors: Kjell Ekhorn and Jon Forss Publisher: DGV ISBN: 9783899551853 Price: £35 The design duo behind CA 163’s cover have a truly brilliant body of work. We guarantee that on every page you’ll find something that amazes, delights or inspires. From Non-Format’s stunning type work for Nike to the slick art direction for The Wire magazine, this is a collection of work you need to have near you at all times. Our only complaint: where’s the next part? This book only covers the duo’s work from 1999 to 2003.
Tangible: High Touch Visuals
Author: Uleshka Editors: R Klanten, S Ehmann and M Hubner Publisher: DGV ISBN: 9783899552324 Price: £40 We love the cover, the content! in fact, we love the whole idea behind Tangible. Although some of the work featured is bordering on bizarre, for the most part you’ll find a glorious exploration of a contemporary art form that’s as technically brilliant as it is thought provoking.
The Little Know-It-All: Common Sense for Designers
Author: Silja Bilz Editors: R Klanten, M Mischler, S Bilz Publisher: DGV ISBN: 9783899551679 Price: £23.99 Don’t judge this by its cover or size - it’s possibly the most useful book you’ll own as a designer. Everything from light, colour and perspective to law and marketing are covered in succinct, beautifully carved chapters. It’s the kind of book that you never
stop reading once you start; the kind you’ll always refer back to, making it a winner on pretty much every level.
imagery, and rounded-off with an examination of audience understanding, Left to Right is a valuable assessment of academic yet essential design theory.
intelligent and fascinating tome.
Illustration - Play
Graphics Alive
Author: Christopher Perfect and Gordon Rookledge Publisher: Lawrence King ISBN: 9781856694063 Price: £17.95 The web makes it easy to find new and exciting faces, so it’s refreshing to get your head stuck in a book full of classic type. That’s what Rookledge’s definitive tome is: a reference guide to faces that you’re always going to want to use, with some clever cross-referencing so you can choose a font based on a special earmark, serif or other detail.
How to be a Graphic Designer, Without Losing Your Soul
The End of Print: The Grafik Design of David Carson
Author: viction:workshop ltd Publisher: Viction:ary ISBN: 9789889822934 Price: £25 First up, Illustration - Play has one of the most beautiful, special and intriguing covers you’ll see, each one being individually stickered by hand. This is to echo the explorative approach taken by all of the illustrators featured in the book - looking at new ideas and ways to realise concepts within contemporary illustration. A lovely object.
Author: Adrian Shaughnessy Publisher: Lawrence King ISBN: 9781856694100 Price: £17.95 Sound advice from Shaughnessy on gaining employment, setting up as a freelancer, forming a company, dealing with clients, pitching and loads more. It’s insightful, intelligent, accessible and simply full of great advice, with the author calling on such luminaries as Neville Brody, Natalie Hunter, John Warwicker and Andy Cruz to help pull together his ideas. A book you’ll come back to again and again.
The Art of Looking Sideways
Author: Alan Fletcher Publisher: Phaidon ISBN: 9780714834498 Price: £24.95 By exploring how we think and how we understand things, the late Alan Fletcher created a tome that ultimately challenges how you think as a designer. Colour, proportion, style and aesthetic are covered in witty, entertaining nuggets that constantly whirr in the mind. You should also check out Beware Wet Paint, one of Fletcher’s other remarkable titles.
Left to Right
Author: David Crow Publisher: AVA Academia ISBN: 9782940373369 Price: £24.95 Visual communication rests on the power of semiotics, a concept that Crow examines in expert detail within this seminal text. Dealing with the principles of written communication and its relationship to
Author: viction:workshop ltd Publisher: Viction:ary ISBN: 9789889822828 Price: £24 Exploring the omnipresent power of graphic design and illustration in today’s society, Graphics Alive is not only beautifully designed in itself, but also packed full of highly inspirational T-shirt graphics, shoes, signs, wallpaper and other everyday objects and ephemera that top designers have lent their eye to. An intense, head-hurting experience.
Authors: Lewis Blackwell and David Carson Publisher: Chronicle Books/Lawrence King ISBN: 9781856692168 Price: £25 How could you not have this book in your collection? Carson’s exploration of type and visuals may feel a little dated, but there’s no denying his revolutionary approach to page design. In terms of pure eye candy and insight into the work of a groundbreaking designer, it’s one book you simply must have.
Designed by Peter Saville
Editor: Emily King Publisher: Frieze ISBN: 9780952741428 Price: £19.95 Peter Saville is about as iconic as they come. This book, originally published in 2003, was the first to document his incredible career, with a significant focus on his Factory Records work. It’s an inspiring, nostalgic and personal discussion of Saville’s body of work.
Stereo Graphics: Graphics in New Dimensions
Author: viction:workshop ltd Publisher: Viction:ary ISBN: 9789889822903 Price: £25 With work from the likes of Chrissie Macdonald, Hort, Jean Jullien and Mejdej, Stereo Graphics is a stunning showcase of illustrators using construction methods in their work. From paper to wool to warehouse installations, it’s a highly organised,
Rookledge’s Classic International Typefinder
Neubau Welt
Authors: Stefan Gandl, Neubau Publisher: DGV ISBN: 9783899550726 Price: £35 Just how many designers have used Neubau’s collection of royalty-free vectors? We don’t know exactly, but we suspect it’s a lot. Crammed full of cars, planes, lamps, people and all sorts of other stuff, it acts as a great resource - particularly for mock-ups and the like when time and budget are tight. At £35, it’s something of a bargain.
Perverse Optimist
Author: Tibor Kalman Editors: Peter Hall and Michael Bierut Publisher: Booth-Clibborn Editions ISBN: 9781861540928 Price: Out of print If you can get your hands on a copy of this for a reasonable price, do. Colors magazine editor-in-chief and creative director of Interview, Kalman was a true visionary. In this heavy (both in form and content) book, his genius is realised. A collection of hard-hitting, powerful, awe-inspiring imagery.
Kelvin: Colour Today
Editors: R Klanten, S Ehmann and B Brumnjak Publisher: DGV ISBN: 9783899551969 Price: £45 Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best, and Kelvin is the perfect example. What do you do when you create a book looking at how colour is used in contemporary design and illustration? You section it by colours, of course. It’s a wonderfully executed idea, with the large format perfectly showcasing the 47
colour-coded work. At £45 it’s expensive, but worth every penny.
Design, Form and Chaos
Author: Paul Rand Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 9780300055535 Price: Out of print Like Perverse Optimist, you may have a few problems finding this, but if you can, it’s worth the spend. Rand was the master of simplicity, and for the main part this is an insightful, often funny investigation of some big brand identities (this was published in the early 1990s, though) that rams his point home. Eye Bee M is an example of his work you may be familiar with.
is a collection that continues to inspire and teach, with some of the captions giving great insight into Brody’s thought process.
Designing Pornotopia
Author: Rick Poynor Publisher: Lawrence King ISBN: 9781856694896 Price: £17.95 Eye founder Rick Poyner always has a lot to say on design, and Designing Pornotopia is no exception. Within this collection of essays - some short, some long - there are a few real gems. ‘Taste-Free Zone’ and ‘Baring It All’ are wonderfully frank, opinionated views on the mediocrity of modern design.
It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be
Author: Paul Arden Publisher: Phaidon ISBN: 9780714843377 Price: £4.95 Okay, it’s not strictly a design book, but we just couldn’t ignore it. Ad man Paul Arden was, frankly, a genius, and this is his finest tome: a bite-sized book of advice offering simple yet inspirational ways to trigger ideas and thought processes. A classic and essential for any creative professional in any field.
Sizes May Vary
Author: Mark Boyce Publisher: Lawrence King ISBN: 9781856695435 Price: £14.95 This book and CD (full of templates for designing stationery) isn’t as plain as it sounds. There are thumbnail illustrations for composing and visualising layouts, plain and graph paper for sketching, plus notepaper and a poster of international paper sizes. The idea is that you use it as a kind of templated sketchbook. For under £15, it’s a lovely book to have.
The Graphic Language of Neville Brody
Author: Neville Brody/Jon Wozencroft Publisher: Thames and Hudson ISBN: 9780500274965 Price: £24.95 Like Carson’s End of Print, The Graphic Language of Neville Brody is one of those books that you’re bound to be familiar with. Documenting his work for The Face and his output during the 1980s, this
“Go outside. Make time to leave your desk”
Aaron Skipper Graphic Designer
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Retro(per)spective Published at Leeds College of Art Blenheim Walk Leeds, West Yorkshire LS2 9AQ Designed by Chloe Wilkinson 53