Noisy Decent Graphics

Pentagram D&AD Presidents Lecture

As promised I've written a fair and balanced review of last night's talk. As a little surprise I've written it over here.

British Railways Board Environment Identity Scheme

Do you remember this post where I tried, in vain, to find out more about "the British Rail train identification system that won loads of awards and they always used to go on about when I was at college"?

David, who is good at remembering these kinda things, thought that the identity system was designed by Roundel in the 80's.

Looking through an old D&AD annual at the weekend I have finally found out the truth about the mysterious scheme! David was correct that it was designed by Roundel in 1989. Here's the full list of actors.

Is Jane Priestman related to Paul Priestman?

And here's the D&AD Annual spread.

According to the splendid C58LG website I've found out that the individual symbols were based on the major commodity carried by that particular bit of the business. They also explain that the top left of the symbols were designed to look like an F, for freight. Although the F is easier to see in the first picture above.

 
Nice aren't they? I like them a lot.

C58LG go on to say:

"The Coal sector logo (black diamonds) represents coal.

The Construction logo (blue/yellow squares) represents building blocks.

The Metals logo (blue/yellow chevrons) represents corrugated iron.

The Petroleum logo (blue/yellow wavy lines) represents the fluid nature of the oil.

From what we understand, the Railfreight Distribution (RfD) logo (red diamonds/yellow) was supposed to show the four corners of the UK, but on the other hand, it might well simply be a design not based on anything…!"

Yes, the 'four corners of the UK' is a bit tenuous.

Apparently Roundel also designed a series of Depot Plaques for each of the major maintenance depots, some based on staff suggestions. They're interesting too, but I don't really have any strong affection for them.

Another great website called DepotPlaques.com has much more information on this. Bizarrely they claim that Roundel still own the copyright to the designs which means that replica plaques "are not currently legally produced". I wonder if that is (still) true?

The scheme didn't win a D&AD award, in fact it looks as though only the 'Environment Identity Guide' made it into the Book. 1989, page 217 should you fancy having a look yourself.

Thank you

"Thank you’s from clients can take all forms. Sometimes no news is a kind of thank you (it means nothing’s gone wrong)."

Great (and very true) quote from Michael Johnson.

Your Mum Rang

This is what the kids do now, instead of leaving a Post It note.

Fantastic Rem Koolhaas building

I've been to Chicago maybe 11 times since 1997, but took me until 2004 to finally get round to going on an architecture tour.

I'm just going through some old photos and uploading them to Flickr and I found these pictures of an amazing Rem Koolhass building I saw on that tour.

The pictures are from the McCormick Tribune Campus Center which is already pretty special because the original campus was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

There's no trickery in that photo above it really is that orange. On the right hand side are a series of  orange glass panels which producing that gorgeous effect. The whole building is exciting, colourful, playful and clever.

This picture is of some stairs that are designed to be easy to access by wheelchairs and prams. A simple, elegant way to solve the 'badly designed stuck on ramp after thought' problem.

From certain angles they look like 'normal' stairs. It's a nice visual trick. In this day and age we should be designing buildings with things like access ramps built in automatically. It shouldn't be an after thought or a problem.

The outside of the building has pictures of famous architects. When you get closer the pictures are made up of great little graphics like this.

Fantastic. A few more pictures in this Flickr set here.

More typographic advice

David Airey has written about my (or should that be our?) post on typographic advice for 3rd year design students. His listeners leave some helpful comments too.

The biggest waste

God, I hate telephone directories.

Surely telephone directories are one of the worst environmental crimes committed at the moment? The waste of paper is breathtaking. To make it all worse, most councils won't let you recycle them in your home recycling because they're too heavy. Although you can take them down to your local recycling centre.

Who the hell uses telephone directories anyway? People either use the internet or they get ripped off on one of those 118 numbers, don't they?

I'm aware that not everyone has the internet, but surely you should be able to request one of these things? Or at least you should be able to request that you don't get one. The way they are distributed to everyone is disgusting.

Next week

Next week is a busy week for the nice people at D&AD.

On Monday night there's a talk by Mr Wieden and Mr Kennedy, on Tuesday there's a talk by some/most of Pentagram and on Thursday night it's the awards ceremony.

Rest assured, beloved listeners, that the entire NDG team will bring you full reports from the Pentagram talk and the Awards night. I can't make it to the w+k one so if you are planning to attend and then blog perhaps you'd be so kind as to promote your impending review in the comments section below.

Thank you.

Offset, off key

Take a look at this. A 4x4 manufacturer is offering to offset the CO2 created by the first 45,000 miles of your brand new 4x4.

That's a load of bollocks isn't it?

I'm deliberately not mentioning the company because I don't want to get hung up on that.

We're going to see a lot more of this. Companies making a token effort towards placating the green questions customers are starting to ask. Let's call it paying green service.

I'll be keeping an eye out for it.

Captivate Him

Whilst we're talking about typography, take a look at this.

Ahhhh, the dangers of Forced Justification.

Design does not mean veneer

"In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design."

Steve Jobs.

Facebook

Right. I've just joined Facebook.

What the hell do I do now?

Send your bloody tshirts in

So far we've had 4 Interesting tshirts. Which is nice. Except that we need another 296 and there's only a month left.

We don't really want to be up the night before Interesting 2007 screen printing so please get a bloody move on and send your tshirts in.

Actually they don't have to be tshirts: blouses, tops, hoodies, polo necks are all fine.

interesting2007

The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings

The other day I went to the Monet exhibition at the Royal Academy.

It's good. Very good. Much better than the lame, predictable poster for the show.

I've had an affection for Monet and the Royal Academy ever since my Mum took me to see the famous Monet in the 90's exhibition in 1990. Interestingly, Mum now says it was my reaction at seeing that exhibition that convinced her I was serious about this 'art thing'.

This new exhibition shows never seen before sketches and pastels from Monet, including some really early stuff and some preliminary sketches of some of his really famous works. It's a great exhibition and well worth a visit. It's small, but worth a visit.

There are some great caricatures that I didn't know Monet had started his career with. Alone they're not that stunning, but seen as the beginning to Monet's career they're fascinating.

Two pictures particularly struck me. They struck me because of their graphic qualities.

Seascape:Storm 1866

 

Towing A Boat, Honfleur 1864

Look at the drama. Look at the drama those simple compositions and simple colours convey (although you really have to visit the show to see the full effect). They're almost duotone images yet they're so rich in colour. The compositions are so simple, there's almost nothing in the pictures, yet the stories are so vivid. Really powerful stuff.

I love visiting art galleries. For me they're a huge source of inspiration - after all if you're a graphic designer the chances are you started out loving art and wanting to be some sort of artist. Art can teach you so much, light and dark, shape, form, spatial relationships, layering ideas, communicating messages, story telling and of course chiaroscuro.

Ladies who've just lunched.

One other thing about the exhibition. They had loads of Monet's sketch books which were fantastic, but obviously you couldn't touch them. So instead there was an interactive display. Most art galleries interactive things are shite. Complete bollocks. But this one was brilliant. You could flick through the pages and you could rotate them and you could zoom in and look at pages in really close detail. Brilliant.

A bad photograph taken by a bad cameraphone of a brilliant interactive display of a brilliant sketchbook.

Go and see the exhibition.

New Chairs In The Studio

Fonts and Fells

Let me introduce to you a brand new Flickr set, Fonts and Fells. A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

Why everyone in the London Marathon was wearing red laces

I was watching the Marathon the other weekend and I noticed that everyone seemed to be wearing red laces.

Weird eh? It looked pretty spectacular. Turns out it's a fund raising thing. "Wearing your Red Laces on marathon day will help raise even more money for charity this year because FLORA will donate £1* to WellChild and HּEּAּRּT UK for every pair that cross the finishing line."

Typographic Advice

I was at Northampton University the other day with April, doing some portfolio surgeries and giving a teeny talk. We've hooked up with Cardiff, Glasgow and Northampton this year as part of the D&AD Clinic thing. A jolly good experience it's been too.

During the portfolio surgeries it was obvious that the thing the students struggled with most was typography. That's fair enough, typography is one of the hardest bits of graphic design. Good typography is rare, very good typography is very rare.

One of the students asked if there were any rules I could tell them to help their typography. Good question.

Whilst there are typographic rules, there aren't really any rules you can tell someone in a ten minute portfolio surgery, so I said; when in doubt keep it simple, remember that readability is the most important thing, obviously no more than seven words per line, stick to a simple typeface that you know and get a decent hierarchy sorted out on paper before you start.

All good advice, but I'm not sure that it was that helpful. So, my beloved listeners, what basic typographic advice would you give a third year graphic design student?

Wim Crouwel

I couldn't make it to the Wim Crouwel talk last night. But Beeker could and she's posted a review here.

What has Richard started?

Ace Jet 170 is one of the best graphic design blogs around and one of the first ones I turn to over my grilled kippers.

Richard AceJet seems to have started a 'photograph and upload your Penguins or Pelicans' craze. People are even copying his photographic style. The world is a better place.

In case you missed some of them, we've had Richard and his one, two, three sets of Pelicans. He also has loads of Penguins here. Dan Hill added some here (Do you guys read City of Sound? You ought too. Suffers from the Huntingdon disease - he don't post very often but when he does it's always brilliant.)

John Coulthart joined in the fun, there's the great Judge A Book and now We Made This have dived in.

Now I don't have any Penguins or Pelicans, but my Dad does have a collection of a hundred or so...