18 Day Tasks
Seamus Brady
Task 1: 18 New Ideas Project Brief Ideas Spread
Task 2: Evaluating Designers A Practice For Everyday Life Pentagram Please Do Not Bend Daniel Eatock
Task 1:
18 New Ideas
This task was very simple: come up with 18 new ideas, on 18 separate days. A theme wasn’t specified, telling that these didn’t have to necessarily be designoriented. I decided to focus mostly on concepts of self-improvement. The ideas I came up with revolved around my design work, business, and improving my productivity in these areas.
I should use money to make money.
Design is about context – time and location.
Childhood memories are great sources of creative inspiration.
Try to look at everything from a design perspective.
Use a specific style as an identity to help create a brand.
Marketing is a huge part of business, and makes all the difference.
Look for inspiration in everything. Waking up earlier will help my productivity.
DIY clothes to make them unique.
I want to be making a living from my businesses by the end of the year.
Read more books for creative ideas.
Experiment with collage art.
Buy more designfocused books.
Make a reward system for study / work. “Dress for the job you want.”
Keep a “late night ideas” journal.
Make notes of things I do and how I feel afterwards.
Getting started is often the hardest part.
Task 2:
Evaluating Designers
For this task, we were given a list of personal websites from a range of designers, and asked to research the work of 18 of them, and write an evaluation about each one.
A Practice For Everyday Life This London-based design studio has mastered the art of catching the eye as effortlessly as possible. Although their designs are often very sparse, using muted colour palettes and slim, simple typography to complement their clients’ work rather than distracting from it. Their list of clients is as extensive as it is impressive. Many of their projects are with renowned galleries such as the Tate and Barbican, and documenting the work of artists such as Vincent Van Gogh and David Hockney.
I think the appeal of APFEL’s styling is the details they add which give all their projects an organic, human-made feel. Whether it’s textured materials, purposeful pen marks, or the often striking use of empty space, their work certainly manages to distinguish itself from the homogeny of minimalist design that’s become increasingly popular over the past decade. Pictured are my two personal favourites from APFEL: Humans and Other Animals, a sign language A-Z; and Linder, a compilation of work from Linder Sterling, best known for her surreal photomontages used by the Sex Pistols.
Linder, 2015
You may recognise Linder’s collage style from her surreal work with the Buzzcocks on their album Orgasm Addict. She was one of the most influential artists on the British punk movement, also working alongside the Sex Pistols and The Smiths.
From Sotheby's: “Her photomontage aesthetic lent itself to the DIY philosophy of Punk: layering images, body politics, feminist discourse and the referencing of historical events.”
Humans and Other Animals, 2015
The accompanying images in this book are from the Getty archive.
Pentagram
Pentagram, the “world’s largest design consultancy”, was founded in 1972 by a group of designers. Although it may not seem relevant, this fact is one of the biggest reason for the studio’s success, as they say themselves on Pentagram’s “About” page:
“Our structure is unique. We are the only major design studio where the owners of the business are the creators of the work and serve as the primary contact for every client.”
One of the most outstanding features of the studio’s body of work is their ability to create brand identity using solely unique typography. Here’s an example of one of Pentagram’s beautifully uniformed rebrands:
The New Republic
High Yield Future Tense
As well as bold text, Pentagram don’t shy away from bold colour palettes. From the pages of this book, nobody would guess that it’s a financial publication, but the design studio found a brilliant way of reinventing the look of one of the stuffiest forms of literature and make it look fun and inviting. In accordance with their concept of utilising fonts for branding, in this book, Pentagram applied 4 unique fonts to the 4 sections of the book, as demonstrated on the front cover.
Please Do Not Bend Please Do Not Bend is a heavily type-focused design studio. Although they don’t have a signature that ties together their portfolio of work, a lot of their projects feature garish colours and purposely jarring typography. Additionally, they seem to select clients which best complement this style of design – one of the most blatant examples being a project for the gallery Modern Art Oxford designing a range of kaleidoscopic posters:
I personally enjoy how PDNB use what most would consider “ugly” design as references to create posters and projects which actually manage to be visually appealing. This is most apparent in their prevalent use of rainbow colours and vibrant patterns, as well as unusual combinations of typefaces. The majority of the studio’s portfolio consists of posters and invitations, which seem to be the ideal mediums for their bright and bold designs. Working within such simple formats is what allows PDNB to operate even further outside of the box, catching eyes with designs that appear to be from a bygone era of DIY creativity.
Daniel Eatock
eatock.com looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2005. Down the side menu there is, fittingly, an archive of Daniel’s work from 1991 to present day. A lot of his work puts concept above all else, with the actual execution of the idea often being crude and amateurish. Recently, Daniel has focused more and more on collaborative projects – not with other artists or even clients, but with the general public. The background of this page is a project of his that has been ongoing since 2007. Inspired by a fellow student from his graphic design class at college, Daniel’s website asks the public: “Using an ink pad make a print of your thumb in the centre of a white page. Enlarge this thumb print on a photocopier to match the approximate size of your face. Place a thin sheet of copy paper over the photocopied enlargement of your thumb print and secure it in place with tape or paperclips. Starting anywhere you wish and using a black ink pen and your natural/everyday handwriting, compose a text about yourself following the contour lines of your thumb print as a guide.”
eatock.com
Projects from Daniel’s Website
Closed Loops (scissors that need scissors to open)
Picture of the Week (ongoing project)
I think in the case of designers like Daniel Eatock, it’s easier to show their work than tell. Vandalized Trees Reoriented
Mainstudio Based in Amsterdam, Mainstudio describes itself as a studio which “creates projects deriving from the intersection of art and architecture”. Their designs are type-heavy, with a lot of strong geometry which definitely gives their portfolio an architectural feel. Much like each project they work on, Mainstudio’s website is extremely functional: full-screen images of each commission, with text in a very clear sans serif font. Very few frills and unnecessary details are added.
I think that Mainstudio’s Instagram page is a great display of their stylistic approach to design. Personally, I often find their transformations of words and letters to be distracting. However, I do appreciate how they stick to the themes that work for them as designers. Structure is clearly very important to them, with their Instagram account even featuring a lot of photos of buildings scattered throughout.
Ed Ruscha Edward Ruscha is an artist known for his contribution to the pop art movement. A lot of his artworks feature single words in distinctive typography, sometimes created using experimental materials such as beetroot juice or gunpowder. His body of work is heavily inspired by Los Angeles, where he resides. Many of his word-based pieces are written in a font very similar to that of the Hollywood sign, and Ed has also made several works featuring the sign itself. In an interview with the Tate Gallery, he said that the sign has always been a “potent symbol”, and I think a key concept of pop art is the subversion of cultural landmarks like the sign. In all his Hollywood paintings, the sign appears to be far away or being enveloped by the background. The most interesting thing to me about Ruscha’s typography paintings is the way he uses backgrounds to elevate the text and steer the audience’s perception of the text in a certain direction. I think the clearest example of this is two complementary pieces he made, Artists Who Make “Pieces” and Artists Who Do Books (both pictured).
I knew I wanted to be some kind of artist from about 12. I met a neighbour who drew cartoons, and I had an idea I wanted to be a cartoonist or something that involved Indian ink, at any rate.
David Shrigley Although many people might not know his name, David Shrigley’s work is everywhere, and has become especially popular in recent years due to sharing via social media (Shrigley has over 600k followers on Instagram). His work spans everything from paintings to prints to music to animation, but is best known for his drawing style, which is as distinctive as it is simple. I would say that – along with artist Daniel Johnston – Shrigley has mastered the art of the doodle.
His style appears to be quite childlike, with lots of line drawings and paintings in bold primary colours, but in practice it’s a lot harder to create works like this than it may appear. Shrigley’s style is not one born from naivety either: he graduated from Glasgow School of Art with a degree in Fine Art. I think the genius of his work is how he captures people’s attention and imagination with simple, to-the-point imagery which draws people in to the themes and deeper meanings underlying much of his body of work. One of my favourite examples of this is his collection of 2018 pieces all stylised as text-only newspaper headlines, highlighting the mundanity and repetition of modern “news” outlets.
EMMI London-based design studio EMMI is very future-focused. Their designs are contemporary yet timeless. I personally find it inspiring to see a studio which curates its clients to fit its ethics and ideology, and as they say themselves on their website, they aid businesses by:
“championing messages for a better society, positive participation, sustainable design, heirloom quality and charitable causes”.
The studio’s portfolio does cover a range of concepts including exhibition design and publications, but I think their best work comes from their logo design and brand identity. Their redesign for CAA (pictured left) for example, is one of my personal favourites. I love how the simple swirling circles with the chasm of empty space encompasses both aspects of the brand: contemporary art and archipelago (with the circles being reminiscent of a cluster of islands in the ocean).
The idea of promoting eco-friendly projects is shown best in their collaboration with Wonderwater, an initiative which “aims to raise awareness of global water issues and design for a sustainable future”. As well as being a great project with eye-catching posters, I think that EMMI’s logo design here is their very best:
The flowing line that feels like ripples or waves also forming the two Ws of the name is everything I love about modern minimalist design. This concept was taken even further into the initiative’s aesthetic, using the logo as a graph of an average “water footprint”:
Bibliography Designers’ Websites: apracticeforeverydaylife.com pentagram.com
pleasedonotbend.co.uk eatock.com mainstudio.com edruscha.com davidshrigley.com
Additional Research: sothebys.com modernartoxford.org.uk tate.org.uk