Noisy Decent Graphics

Gotcha FM

You may not have noticed, but The Sun have just launched a radio station.

I think it's interesting for several reasons. Lots of non-radio media owners have launched radio stations, or at least tried to. Or stretched podcasts into sort of radio stations. Channel 4 tried and The Telegraph do lots of this sort of thing, but this feels different.

For a start, it's by The Sun which have the largest readership of any UK newspaper. They're also (I think) the second biggest UK newspaper website outside of the UK. So that gives them big numbers to play with.

They've made the very wise decision to have John Gaunt host the main programme. John Gaunt is a Sun columnist, but more importantly he's an actual proper Disc Jockey. A radio person. So that already makes more sense than a journalist doing it.

And it's backed by Murdoch. Who has great experience of different media channels and of broadcast media, including radio.

So when you add that little lot up, it's a no brainer. As people say.

If you read Alistair Campbell's Diaries, you'll see that Blair does a lot of cosying up to Murdoch in the few years before Labour get elected. That's verification of how important Murdoch (and the associated media channels) are. So it was even more interesting to see that the first ever guest on Sun Talk was David Cameron. That's a big deal, in a litte way. I bet a lot of radio stations would love to have an hour long interview with Cameron.

Of course, a big set piece interview with the (possible) next Prime Minister yeilds a few stories for the paper the next day.

They start with a big, global audience, they have proper DJ's presenting, it's funded by someone who already runs radio stations and they can attract big guests. I think it might work.

WE NEED AN ARMY OF:

blogs.com

A few weeks ago I was honoured to be asked by Blogs.com to write a Top 10 for their popular site. I chose to write Top 10 Blogs Important To Designers (That Aren't Necessarily About Design).

Take a look, you might be on the list.

A bit of housekeeping

I thought it was about time I explained some of the categories around here.

I love the idea of categories and I use them liberally. Surely the more tags, the more useful the stuff becomes? I use categories so that you could, should you wish, pursue all my thoughts on one particular topic.

By way of explanation, some of the less obvious categories roughly relate to these topics:

Complaints Dept - Fairly obvious, stuff which I feel the need to complain about.

Conferences / Speaking - Reports from conferences I've been to, or details of things I'm speaking at.

Design Is The New Management Consultancy - Is Design the new Management Consultancy? Does design have a bigger role to play? All is revealed here. Really.

Examples Of Bad Communication - This is different to Complaints Dept as it's specifically about bad communication. So no posts about my hatred of saucers.

Exhibition Reviews - Does what it says on the tin.

Graphic Design Consultancies / Creative Companies - Stuff about Design agencies. Might  be reviews, news, gossip or interviews.

Graphic Design Industry Stuff - Stuff that concerns the design industry, more generally. Not the place for in depth explanations of kerning.

Graphic Design Reviews - Straight forward reviews of bits of graphic design I've seen.

How To Get A Job In Graphic Design (Kind Of) - This is where you should go if you're a student. It's got all the stuff about colleges and education and trying to get a job afterwards. Warning: might not be terribly helpful.

How To Start Up A Graphic Design Consultancy (Sort_Of) - Something I have some experience of. Contains thoughts on the day to day business stuff. Warning: might not be terribly helpful.

New Thinking And Ideas - Lofty theories so new and innovative they don't fit into another category. Yet.

Quotes - Quotes. See also my quotes delicious tag.

Seen And Heard - The most generic of all the categories.

Sustainability In Design - Way back in January 2007 the late great Lebowski asked me to write more about sustainability. All that stuff is grouped here.

The Design Disease - The best explanation of this is to read this post.

Things I've Learnt About Design - Warning: might not be terribly helpful.

That's about it I think. All the other categories are pretty self explanatory.

"In the last 20 years I have drawn more than 7,000 logos, mostly for black- and death-metal bands from all over the world"

"I am 37 years old, I come from Belgium but I live in Exeter, Devon, in the UK. In the last 20 years I have drawn more than 7,000 logos, mostly for black- and death-metal bands from all over the world, including Emperor, Moonspell, Nachtmystium, and Enthroned."

Meet Mr Death Metal, brilliantly spotted by Mike.

(Picture borrowed from Vice magazine, usual stuff applies.)

Chicken Graphics

Ages ago I saw a brilliant interview with Mr Chicken. A designer who has created 90% of the Fried Chicken logos in London. Ninety fucking percent.

That interview was over on the CR Blog and is an exert from Siâron Hughes' excellent new book 'Chicken: Low Art, High Calorie'. You should read the interview and then you should buy the book. The blurb says it's an "Honest and charming look at fast food establishments from a design perspective – eatery aesthetic, logos, signage, menus, etc" You don't get that every day.

 

I'm sorry that the best title I could thinking up was Chicken Graphics. Surely you can do better?

Does this logo work in black and white?

Busy x 3

Today I wrote a list of things To Do. Then I went to save it on my desktop as a file called TO DO. The computer said, 'there is already a file called TO DO would you like to erase it?' So I opted to call it TO DO 2. 'There is already a file called TO DO 2 would you like to erase it?'

So now I have 3 TO DO lists.

We were talking today about how we're pretty busy right now. There are some great projects coming up which I'll be able to tell you about soon. Including one very exciting announcement.

All of which is good, very good. And bad, you know, in that lots of To Do lists way. But as I said here, just over two years ago, always remember when you're busy, that it's infinitely preferable to not being busy. Infinitely preferable.

There. A whole post without saying "current climate" once.

Black and white update

The "Is it time to retire the black and white logo?" post continues to receive much traffic and many comments. You should read them all.

Robert has just argued in favour of keeping the black and white logo and in doing so has included the best and the worst points of the debate.

Best point: "TELEVISION - Yes, TV logos are mostly in color. However, they are requested by the station in black and white. The TV studio then generates the color from the submitted bw art and Pantone® match chips."

That's a valid point and I bet there are many forms of media we don't know about yet that will operate in the same way.

Worst point: FAXING - Necessary for rapid faxing of info. The company does have its logo on the fax sheet doesn't it.

No comment.

 

Best Credit Crunch Graphics So Far

As spotted by Mike of Surrey.

A while ago I spotted (but failed to blog) that the FT appeared to have commissioned a series of photographs of bank logos. Essentially the signs of Barclays, RBS and the others photographed in many different ways. At night, in the rain, on wooden signs, on illuminated signs and so on.

This, as we've discussed before, is because of a dearth of decent images concerning the Credit Crunch.

This would be a good one though, wouldn't it? Especially for Mandy's comments asking people to stop "bashing" the bankers.

Seriously if you're from the FT or something, give Mike a call, buy this photo off him and win front page of the year at the Press Awards.

We might as well admit we're addicted

From the Keep Calm and Carry On: Design Variations Flickr Pool. My favourite so far is probably FLAG IT AND MOVE ON.

Stop Motion Sunday

Went for a few superb coffees with Beeker and Colmatics this morning. Took a few stop motionesque pictures of the many runners who went past.

The song is called Run On and was borrowed for a bit from Moby who is a very nice man. You can buy Run On via the links on here.

What Brands Can Learn from Euronews

I always assume you lot read all the same blogs as me. Which is very wrong, I shouldn't do that.

The fabulous debate about retiring the black and white logo is fascinating and ongoing. Following on from that Michael Johnson has highlighted this truly awful single colour rebrand.

At first, I thought that was a printing error and something had been left out of the circle. But no, that white circle is their logo. Really.

That's shockingly bad, isn't it?

You should go and look at Michael's post and then look at the hilarious comments on Brand New's review of the logo and then wonder what brands can learn from all of this.

GET EXCITED AND MAKE THINGS

Have you bought one of Matt's lovely tshirts yet? You should. And you should buy one quick becuase they'll be gone soon. Buy one from Howies.

Graphic Design Joke

If only all print dialogue boxes were like this

Is it time to retire the black and white logo?

I'm working on a couple of identities at the moment where their primary usage is online. You could call them digital identities.

Sure, they will be used offline at some point, people still have business cards, but the over riding majority of times they will be seen online. At least 95% of the time.

A couple of times whist working on these identities we've discussed a black and white version, that's a normal thing to do. And every time someone has asked, why?. Every time it's been a struggle to answer that question.

Lots of you will be horrified by that, but most of the time, I think I'm a pretty traditional designer. Function before form, ideas will always win, etc etc. And I can put together a decent case for a black and white version of a logo. But if you start to look at the evidence it becomes harder and harder to defend. We need to be clear that in the example above I'm specifically talking about digital companies that operate in the digital world. They don't have shops or vans. I don't know if you've noticed, but there's some pretty big money in this arena these days, Amazon, Facebook, Skype, Yahoo! et al. Do they need b+w versions of their logo?

Let's have a look at both sides of the argument.

The case for having a black and white version of your logo

1. It's good discipline.
If your logo can work in b+w it can work in any situation, ever. It's the mark of a good mark that it can be stripped of colour and still work. Think of the classic logos, V&A, Shell, Apple, Kelloggs, VW, IBM, whatever - they all work just as well in b+w.

2. It's practical.
At some time in your companies life you will need a b+w, or single colour, version of your logo. Whether it's to send to the company that makes polo shirts or for the sides of the vans or for the NCR invoices, one day you'll need a b+w logo.

3. It's cheaper.
Put very simply one colour is the cheapest form of production. If you need to produce a full colour logo on every single piece of collateral costs are going to rise. Considerably if you're a large firm.

4. It's a mark of quality.
Often, if a logo can't be produced in B+w that's becuase it's some hideous 3D spinning globe of a thing. And we want to avoid all that, don't we?

The case against having a black and white version of your logo

1. Everything is full colour now.
Almost all printing these days is full colour. With the exception of till receipts it's rare to see a big brand using black and white printing. Do you ever see single colour vans? Do you ever see single colour logos on polo shirts? Come to think of it, does your company have any vans? Would you ever produce polo shirts? And in any case all that media can be full colour, at not much extra cost.

2. You're online almost all of the time
If you're an online firm, like say Google, then you hardly ever exist offline. You don't have shops, or vans or carrier bags. So why do you need a black and white logo? Have you ever seen a single colour version of the Google logo?

Full colour Google logo on stickers, bags and err, a tin of mints? Picture borrowed from Mex Beady Eyes, usual rules apply.

3. It doesn't affect quality.
I've never seen a single colour version of the Google logo. Or the eBay logo. The Tate have a single colour logo, but it's always used in glorious full colour. It doesn't seem to affect them.

Sure, there are some companies who will always need single colour versions of their logo, a brick making company for example. But more and more we're going to see firms who simply have no need for a black and white version.

So, what do you think? Should we retire the black and white logo in 2009?

Decision Paths

We live by the Thames Path. Our bit of it is closed at the moment for some building works. It's pretty well sign posted (as well as you'd expect) and the diversions are clearly marked. The diversion would be obvious to locals but the Thames Path gets much traffic from walkers and cyclists.

I've noticed something about peoples decision process when faced with this sign.

Everyone walks up to the sign, and the barriers, and peers round to see if it's true. Is the path really closed? Could I make it through? Whether they are a single walker, some elderly ramblers, a group of cyclists, American tourists or mums and buggies, everyone goes up to the sign to see if it's true.

Once they've established it is correct, they look around for an alternative route. If there is more than one person, some discussion ensues. Even though there is only one possible route round. It's sign posted and it's obvious, ie it's either follow the signs or go back the way you came.

So far everyone has done the same thing. But here's where something changes. The more people there are in the group the longer that decision takes. Every time. Direct correlation between people in group and time taken to discover the new route (even though it's sign posted).

A lovely thing I saw today

I saw this too, which is lovely. By the nice people at Love.

An ugly thing I saw today

I saw this s'morning. Awful isn't it.

 

I can see what they're trying to do with the whole orange and passionfruit and water in the middle thing. But, seriously, the execution is shocking.

And it the graphic device is so fucking big. It's like the opposite of when the account people make the logo bigger and the device smaller. Awful.

Which is a shame, because I always liked that Brains ad...