Noisy Decent Graphics

Numbers and lights

At the weekend graphic designers do stuff like this. As we used to say at college, "you could hand that in".

Golden Anniversary Celebration McDonald's

Chicago is home to the Golden Anniversary Celebration McDonald's. Essentially a huge McDonald's built to celebrate their 50 year anniversary.

The angle of the photograph isn't quite right, but the building sits under two huge arches which, when viewed from the right angle, form one massive golden M.

I was told they had an exhibition upstairs of every toy they'd ever given out with a Happy Meal. This isn't correct, but they do a have an interesting display of memorabilia through the ages. I'm no McDonald's fan, but there's some fascinating stuff here.

There are some pretty funky arches on that cup.

I wonder how many they've sold now?

I bet that Rubik's Cube is worth a few coins now. More pictures, inevitably, on Flickr.

Things you should be reading

Morning.

Right, today you should read this by Iain. It's good and Iain knows what he's talking about. You should also read this (admittedly slightly fluffy) article on the Beeb about airport design. "Ten minutes in a horrible space can feel like half an hour but in a nice space can pass relatively fast."

You should then read this article tantalisingly called Secrets of UX Design Productivity from Google, it seems that "Google is in the process of getting great ideas produced quickly" which is no bad thing. Lastly read this article in the Harvard Business Review about a Japanese bank's new IT system which was developed using the path method. As you'd imagine it's a bit heavy going in parts, but it's interesting and there are the makings of some good lessons, "firms should not have to sell new systems to users; rather they should build systems that users willingly embrace".

"Centred type is bad enough, but centred images is taking the piss."

As said by Tom, the official hater of centred anything.

Your company's app

Or your products, your brand, your communications strategy... I love that. Via Etre.

Ten Again

Have you been working in design, advertising or planning for ten years? Exactly ten years?

Email me. I need you. You'll get to see your name in print.

Umbrellas. Rubbish. Fact.

Surely an umbrella is the worst designed thing there ever was?

Problem 1. They don't do what they are designed to do. If you've been out and about in the UK today and used an umbrella I bet you still got wet. And not just a little wet, quite a bit wet. Wear a hat and buy a waterproof coat. Much better.

Problem 2. They break, easily, all the time, Look at that picture above. Look at this Flickr set. How old is the oldest umbrella in your house? Over two years? Thought not.

Problem 3. They're aggressive little beggars. Nothing frightens me more than a narrow street packed with umbrella users. I raise my hands to protect my eyes and I quicken my pace...

Umbrellas. Dreadful things.

"CO2 neutrality is the biggest fucking scam ever"

Marcus Brown.

Typography of Heroes

More tales from Chicago.

We were lucky enough to have a visit to the Hillside Fire Dept. If this was a different blog I'd say how kind they were for showing us round and how brilliant the tour was. Hero is one of those tags that gets bandied about too easily, but people that run into burning building for a living qualify in my book.

Anyway. This is a graphic design blog so take a look at some of the gorgeous hand painted typography. A few more pictures over here.

"You can't move in London without someone giving you the news"

I was talking to someone the other day and they said, "The last thing the world needs is another news website. You can't move in London without someone giving you the news". I love that quote. It's really stuck with me because it's so true, isn't it?

So since he said that I've been taking pictures every time I see someone (or something) giving me the news. That picture above is your standard noughties office reception. The news on three big flat TV's.

Here's another one. But this huge big glass fronted building allows the news to spill out on the street.

As does this one. They've used four screens, so they can show four different news channels.

I know it's a bad photograph but this is just outside Waterloo station. More news.

This is inside Waterloo station, also taken on bad photograph day.

Continuing the station theme, this is Kings Cross. So, inside office receptions, visible through the window, outside stations, inside stations.

At the airport.

On the way back from the airport. I appreciate this is a promotional thing for Bloomberg, but it's still news being thrust at you.

Likewise this is some promotion for Reuters who are situated just across the street. But still. News. Everywhere. These are all razzy screen based things, but there's also the more traditional method of London news delivery.

And now we have this new menace. They literally thrust the news at you.

Look there's one dressed in purple and one in yellow. Remember, "You can't move in London without someone giving you the news."

Look at this one. Watching. Waiting. Ready to pounce and give you the news.

And if you manage to make it home without being given the news, it's waiting for you at the Tube station. It's there all around you. Unavoidable.

The news even creeps into the most two hallowed places of British life. Tesco's.

And the pub. Why do you need the news in the pub? Why do you need the news in Tesco's?

Why do you need the news in a cheeky little Belgravia bistro? "You can't move in London without someone giving you the news"

No cameras, no phones and definatley no iPhones

Adi

The visual feast that is Ghost School pointed me in the direction of this lovely stop motion film for Adidas. By lovely, I really mean that it's lovely looking. It's not especially clever or anything.

It tells a little tale about Mr Dassler and the shoes he made.

There's a nice mix of stop motion and live footage.

And an odd, but intriguing mix of old and new.

Jollyball

I was in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry last week. Beside the great Farm Tech exhibit there is is this wonderful thing in one of the halls called the Jollyball. The Chicago Reader describes it best as "a gigantic, self-starting pinball machine dedicated to promoting Swiss travel." How great is that?

"After the ritual ka-chunk, a silver ball emerges from a hotel and starts to roll energetically about the tour-bus-sized contraption, doing things a silver ball might do if it were a tourist in Switzerland; riding ski lifts, passing an outsize fondue bowl, being magnetically integrated into a loudly ticking clock. When the hustle and bustle gets to be too much, it slips into a bar, sets off some whistles, and eventually pops out again, wobbling noticeably."

All very exciting. I've got some more pictures on Flickr and I've borrowed a video to show you the glorious machine in action.

Applying Green

I went to the London College of Communication the other day. It's more famously known as the London College of Printing but they had a rebrand a few years ago. It's a great place and pretty famous amongst design colleges. Walking round there was that great feeling that 'stuff on the walls' gives you.

Anyway. If you're reading this and you're from the college here's a links to a few of things I talked about.

I basically regave (Tom, is that a word? I can't be bothered to look it up) my Applied Green talk. It was slightly different because things have moved on a bit and the audience was different, but here's a link to the talk pretty much word for word, videos and all.

Here's a link to a post called Green(ish) Printing which was written by Marcus Brown who is a printer. It's well worth a read. And remember I said you should get some printers in to talk to you. Do that. They know about this stuff and they like being asked.

Here's a link to Thomas Matthews website that I mentioned. Thomas Matthews are a design company that know a lot about sustainability issues. Sarah Thomas, one of the founders, also helped start Three Trees Don't Make A Forest which is a kind of resource for eco friendly designers. I must admit to having reservations about Three Trees. The picture of them all in the trees really makes me cringe. But it's a difficult and admirable thing they're doing and they deserve our support. (PS If you're reading this Sophie, Nat or Caroline I'd love you to come on here and talk about Three Trees.)

Here's a link to the Wikipedia entry about Ken Garland's First Things First Manifesto, which is a good thing.

Here's McDonald's Corporate Social Responsibilty blog and here's a blog post where Richard Reed from innocent Drinks says "I also sought the counsel of the MD of Greenpeace, who said that over the last five years mcdonalds have changed from being their number one enemy to their number one global partner in reducing deforstation in the amazonian rainforest".

And last and least here's a link to all my posts about being a design student and trying to get a job etc. Invaluable, obviously.

Car Park Usability / Graphics

I went to Tesco with a mate of mine the other day. He parked quite a way from the store. When I pointed out that there were many other spaces, closer to the shop, he said that he could never remember where he parked his car so he always parked in exactly the same space. That way it's easy to remember.

Don't park here unless you work for adidas.

People always struggle to remember where they parked their car. Remember all those stories of people tying flags to their aerials so could easily identify their car?

This is from the car park at the Camp Nou. I'd love to think that Barca's number 8 parks here, but that just isn't true.

My Dad always writes which level he's parked on on the back of his ticket and I went through a phase of photographing the sign which told you which level we were on.

This is from the San Diego Padre's car park.

Here's great idea from Tunbridge Wells. They've given each parking space a unique number and they've painted them all on the floor. This is Level 3, parking space 84.

Good eh? And isn't that the maddest 8 you've ever seen?

4 x 4 by going on 104

Russell's tagged me in one of those, those, things. I hate those things. I've been tagged before and I don't think I've ever done one (sorry if you've tagged me).

But you know what, perhaps it's time I started being a little less grumpy* and seeing as I enjoyed reading these ones I thought I'd have a go.

*These replies will of course make me sound extremely grumpy and like I'm about 104.

Four Jobs I've Had

Postman Only a summer job but, apart from being a designer, my favourite job ever. In fact I'd go back to being a postman tomorrow, I loved every minute of it. There are some caveats, firstly I did it in a very small town so no huge, heavy bags and no intimidating, stair wielding, tower blocks. Just friendly people who'd chat to you and get you a glass of orange juice. Secondly I like getting up early, if I didn't like getting up early (we used to start at 5.30am) then it would have been a different story.

The best bit about being a postman? The end of the day was the end of the day. Every day you were given some letters and you had to deliver them, once you'd done that that was that. No work to take home, no thinking about work on the way home, no To Do lists, no "I'll finish that tomorrow", no meetings. That was a nice feeling.

Freelance Designer For The Millennium Zones In the summer of 1997 I freelanced at a place called Work (yeah, I hated the name too). They were eventually behind four of the zones in the Millennium Dome. I helped out with signage and other stuff. Just hanging around in that just out of college way. I loved the Dome, my favourite Zone being the Work designed Living Island. That was the one that looked like a seaside pier. Sure it was badly managed, badly handled and badly PR'ed, but I tend to find the people that hated it were the people who did't bother going. Work were based on Charlotte Road, in the same building as Toy Hacking / Moving Brands and Shoreditch in '97 was a great place to hang out. Still wild and reckless and a little bit scary after dark, not yet on the radar of Lonely Planet and a lot of fun.

Funny to think the only places we went to back then were Shoreditch and The Strand.

Hotel Barman Most of my friends worked at University whilst I stubbornly refused. However one day one of my housemates persuaded me to try an evening behind a hotel bar. It was a disaster from start to finish. The highlight was when I was asked for a lemon merengue pie in a drunken Lincolnshire slur. I told the customer we didn't have any (it was a bar not a restaurant) but he insisted. After an increasingly less gentle discussion I went and asked one of the restaurant staff. They didn't have any lemon merengue pie either. More discussion and then my friend came along poured the man a Glenmorangie and everyone went away happy. They never asked me back.

Car Counter When I was at University a few of us took  job counting cars for a day. From 7-10 and then 3-6 we sat by the side of the road and counted cars. In the morning I sat on the side of the road, in the afternoon I borrowed a chair from the Uni canteen. It was cold, boring and rather than getting paid in cash at the end of the day (as we'd presumed) we got a cheque 6 weeks later. I seem to remember that we got paid £25 but we couldn't have done as that would have been a sodding fortune.

Funnily enough one of the reasons I did it was that I thought it would be cool to tell people that I used to have a job counting cars when I was rich and famous. I've never had the opportunity to tell anyone until now.

Four Shows I DVR

This is where I get really grumpy. I don't DVR anything. I don't own a DVR. My telly is less than 25 inches big and older than 5 years. In fact, I officially hate TV. I say officially because I've hated it for a long time, but I still used to watch it a bit. Now I hardly watch any.

I tried getting rid of it once, but they day after I unplugged it and put it to one side the 7/7 bombings happened. Therefore iIhad to get the TV out to watch the news etc. So it stays, forlorn in the corner.

I'll watch the news and Question Time and England if it's on the BBC (certainly no commercial TV dear boy). I'm enjoying Ashes to Ashes but I think I've watched every one on the fantastic iPlayer. I might watch Portillo on Thatcher later. But I wouldn't record any of those programmes. I might, maybe, possibly record The Sopranos but I'd rather watch it on i4+1 or whatever it's called. I gave up recording stuff a long, long time ago. To me recording TV is like stealing time, in a bad way. If you haven't got time to watch it now you won't have time to watch it later. You're just stealing time from yourself. Robbing the time Peter to pay the consumption Paul.

Four Places I've Been

I've never been "travelling" and I've never back packed anywhere. I've slept in a tent once and I'm never doing that again. Yet I've been lucky enough to visit all sorts of places all around the world. Here are four.

Chicago My Brother lives in Chicago and so I go there a lot. 17 times in the last 10 years in fact. Going to a place a lot is very different to visiting a place once or twice (fairly obviously). You get to know the best way to get there, which plane it's best to fly on, the quickest way to get out of the airport all those little things that only come over time. I really feel like I know Chicago. I can find my way around, I know where the good bars are, I know where you can watch Man U vs Arsenal, I know where to park, I constantly know where north is. That's a good feeling.

Chicago is a great city. Big and dirty and bold like New York, but friendly and clean and there's a beach. It snows in the winter and it's roasting hot in the summer.

Queenstown Queenstown in New Zealand is about as far away from London as you can get. A tiny, very friendly, beautiful place. It's famous for bungee jumping, white water rafting and snow boarding. As you've probably gathered by now I'm not into any of that stuff. At all. I spent my time there, sleeping, drinking and admiring the amazing scenery (it's where they filmed most of the mountains scenes for LotR). Strangely we now have some really good friends who were born in Queenstown and we met them in Charlton, South East London. Truly a very small world.

Las Vegas I've probably been here too many times. Three I think. Vegas is a mad, mad place but worth the trip to experience it for yourself. There's a lot of fun to be had and it's the only true 24 hour community I've ever experienced. Lots and lots of lovely signage. I'll go back.

Isle of Mull I thought I'd better get some UK places in. A friend of hours hired a castle for his fortieth and we all trekked up to Mull for a long weekend. (Paul, I mean trek metaphorically, don't get any ideas). It's an isolated place of immense rain, whiskey and beauty. It's also where they film Balamory and the picture of me stood on the multicoloured high street will impresses nieces and nephews for ever more.

Four Music Artists I'm Listening To Now

Ouch, this will be painful. My music taste is famously er odd. Just as my favourite type of restaurant is Revolving, my favourite type of music is Chart. And I'm a big fan of country music (it's the stories) and I don't like songs if I can't hear the words. I haven't heard of a single artist on Matt, Russell or Iain's lists apart from Nick Cave.

So, according to my iPod here are the top four most listened to artists. (Whilst writing this I'm listening to Dusty Springfield).

George Michael You can't beat a bit of George. Proper pop music as pop music should be. I've seen him live, very good.

George Michael doing an acoustic version of Stars Of The Lid's greatest hit.

Amy Winehouse I think she has an incredible voice. Watch her sing sitting down! Can't decide if I'd like to see her live. I'm certainly not going to a gig in Camden.

Jamie Callum Told you I was 104. Bit surprised this was in the most listened to, but there you go. Seen him live, very good also.

The Lemonheads Aren't they all dead or something?

That's it. Over. Any last chance I had of being cool vanished forever.

The End of All Request Thursday

There always seems to be good people needing ffffound invites. If you've got some spare leave your details in the comments and we can spread the love. Thanks.

Aside from that, Yoni spotted this cool thing and we discovered what it was all about. Marguerite thinks she's not a proper designer, but many people disagree. Someone desperately wants help convincing his boss to buy a Mac. AceJet thinks that "the don't have time to cook thing" is a load of balls and Martyn gets inspiration from all sorts of places. All this and we found transparent Post It Notes. Which has got to be a good thing.

A big thanks to everyone who took part. All Request Thursday is now over.

confusion of a planner

I live in Sydney.

I've just got in to work at 10am after two hours in the pub drinking guiness after guiness. (this is how they see people off who are leaving over here.) i'm drunk and looked at ndg and thought a bunch of crazed monkeys had taken over. i had no idea what had happened and it didnt help my delicate condition.
right. back to work.

Part of All Request Thursday

The prisoner

  prisoner.jpg 
  Originally uploaded by andrew kingham

I'm not sure (of all the possible variations) of the semiotics of this image, but I am sure it's not quite the visual message Maestro intended to convey to thousands of East Croydon commuters.

Part of All Request Thursday

random

I came across this lovely illuminating piece of type :

around here:

If anyone know what it is/means I'd love know.

Aprat from that, I'd like to point out that the 2012 pin looks gorgeous:

I wish I had one (the lady wouldn't tell me where she got it)

That's it from me www.yonialter.com, thanks Ben

Part of All Request Thursday