Noisy Decent Graphics

15%

"Already, one major UK advertiser is making the sustainability score worth 15% of the 'marks' available for a pitch. That's enough to determine the outcome."

Advertising Practitioner

"always better to have two planes, because however well one plans ahead one always finds one is on the wrong continent."

Barbara Amiel-Black

Chicago Coffee?

I'll be in Chicago next weekend and I wondered if there was still a coffee morning out there?

If not does anyone fancy meeting up? Probably Friday morning around 10ish, somewhere South Loop.

Anyone interested?

Picture of kids playing in The Crowne Fountain.

Shop Window

Here's the front of our studio that's just been finished.

That lovely illustration was done by the wonderful Inky Mole who's done lots of work with us before.

We wanted something exciting, conspiratorial and that would give us some privacy on the ground floor. We also wanted something that would let people know we were open for business!

Here's some more pictures of Inky at work.

"I took a stand, paid half a grand and got an iiiiiiiiiiPhone"

The brilliant David Pogue sings a musical ode to the iPhone. 'I Want An iPhone' to the tune of 'I Did It My Way'. Fantastic. Make sure you watch it here.

Directions

The other week (as I mentioned) we toured the D&AD New Blood show. We signed up 9 people to our placement scheme. The first one started Monday, 9.30am sharp.

As usual there was a lot of good work, some great work and some terrible work on display.

I always feel so sorry for the students at these shows. It's just a really shit way of displaying work. You can never see all the work, you can never see the work properly and you don't get a feel for what a student is really like.

Everyone puts loads and loads of work into these shows, D&AD, students, tutors, everyone. It's no one's fault they're so bad, I've thought long and hard (in the past) and I don't think there's a better solution. By that I mean, there must be, but I can't think of one.

You see some odd things at student shows.

Where do you find the time?

Sometimes I have that rather embarrassing experience of meeting people who only know me through this blog. I say embarrassing because there isn't really official Crown approved etiquette for  "Ahhh yes, you write that blog don't you?". Especially as, for the most part, people don't know what I look like.

When meeting readers of this esteemed tome very quickly they ask me, "Where do you find the time to write all those posts?". (As a general rule the older they are the quicker they ask that question, which is probably a generational digital continuous partial attention thing, but I'm not a planner so I have no idea about that kind of stuff.) I normally answer, "I have no idea" or "it doesn't take that much time" or "you sort of get into a rhythm" but to be honest none of those answers is 100% correct.

Today I think I've found a proper answer.

Here's Alistair Campbell talking about the famous diaries he wrote whilst working at Number 10. "I kept a diary every day I worked for TB, and the total word count runs to well over two million words. In common with every other person who has seen them, I occasionally wonder how on earth I found the time. Perhaps it is true that the busier you are, the more time you find to get things done. I had a very busy, very demanding job, and a young family. Yet somehow I found time, sometimes just a few minutes, other days a lot longer, to record something of the day just gone."

That's exactly how blogging feels to me.

I especially love this bit, "the busier you are, the more time you find to get things done". I completely agree with this and it fits in with loads of other theories I've got stored up in my beautifully shaped head. Like successful people always get up earlier than unsuccessful people and when you're not winning the first thing you need to do is get winning again.

But the thing I love most about that quote is that it dovetails beautifully with another one of my favourite quotes which was written by someone who is the complete opposite of Alistair Campbell and thus we have that lovely circle thing that journalists and writers and bloggers crave for so much.

The quote is, "Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it." and it was said by Margaret Thatcher.

We are 1,000

Today the Design Disease Flickr pool had it's thousandth photo added to it. The Design Disease Flickr pool is a strange and wonderful thing. When I started it I really didn't know what was going to get uploaded, and I still don't.

I subscribe to the RSS feed (you can too here) and every day new pictures get added. Some things I would expect to see there, some things I would never ever post there. All of them absolutely perfect.

It's one of my favourite pieces of inspiration.

So, if you've ever posted - thanks.

In celebration here are some of my favourite, weird and wonderful, pictures from the pool.

"Just trying to get some work done between meetings"

Rory Sutherland

"But the tricky thing about advertising is that you can’t just set it up and let it run on rails – it needs constant and senior attention if it is to deliver for you."

Richard Huntingdon Esq.

Applied Green

More details here.

Tube Ticket Fun

Lovely stuff over at Serif.

(The one above by Elliot. Found via AceJet and April.)

Coming Soon

Global Cities: Tate Modern

I went to the Global Cities exhibition at the Tate Modern t'other day. On the recommendation of Lauren.

It's great, really good.

Scale, scale, scale. It has this really good scale thing going on. It's tall and narrow and crowded, y'know, like a city. (It's also free which is not at all like a city but bloody brilliant all the same.)

Graphics (by Pentagram) are really part of the exhibition. Integral to it, as you can see below.

It opens with this brilliant film which I think you can also see on the website, scroll down. There are some fascinating and useful facts. Dan and Matt would love it.

But the real star of the show are these 3D visualisations of city density. They're amazing. Dynamic, representative, appropriate. Worth the trip alone.

The other thing that struck me was how quickly these satellite style of images have entered the graphic language of 'city'. How familiar they seem now, when, visually, they're actually very unreal. You never actually see a city like that.

It's hard to explain what the exhibition is about. This Flickr set should help. Just go.

Noisy Decent Graphics iPhone Exclusive

SimLondon

Blackbeltjones accomplishes something I've been trying to do since I was 14.

All pictures copyright Matt Jones. Usual stuff applies.

He's got some brilliant pictures of London from a plane.

The importance of grids online

Via AceJet170 I found this brilliant article on Khoi Vinh's blog about the importance of designing online with a grid.

It's a really simple, powerful way of explaining a few differences that print based designers usually struggle with, like;

"in digital media we must make some compromises for the added factor of the way elements behave. Which is to say that, unlike the printed page, the components of a design — photos, illustrations, shapes, flourishes and type — can transform, change state, move, transform etc.".

Not only is it an important article, it's well written and it's easy to understand. Plus, Khoi is the Design Director of the wonderful New York Times online, so he knows a thing or two about grids.

If you're a designer who has designed mainly print all your life and you find websites a little bit, well, hard, then this is the article for you.

I'd like to know what you think about it.

Magically produced books

"people ask me from time to time if I’ve thought about writing a book. Well, as a matter of fact, I have… but thinking about it hasn’t magically produced a manuscript, as it turns out."

The brilliant Khoi Vinh (whose name I can never spell without checking at least twice).

The silver TV steel and glass stand

This is probably the piece of design I hate most in the world, right now. There's a high chance that you've got one of these at home.

There's a higher than high chance that if I came round your house and saw that TV I'd take an instant dislike to you. Instantly.

Don't worry, I'm sure there would be mitigating factors and I'd get over it. You read this, which is a start. And you've invited me round your house, which was very kind.

This design kind of sums up everything I hate about bad design in the naughties.

1. It's totally meaningless, devoid of any added value.
2. It's essentially a style that's been ripped off. Hugely derivative of something (probably from Ive) that was once good and then expanded and bastardised to death.
3. It triggers more poor imitations, and leads design buyers to say things like "I want it like they did it".
4. Everyone blindly buys one because everyone else has bought one. No one actually stops to think, do I like this?
5. It's so damn ugly and intrusive. Sat in the corner of your lounge looking shit.

It's changing now, as more and more people are buying "plasma" TV's. But still. You know what I mean.

Cards for tonight

For more info see here.