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Wet Paint Management - do you think this is what Alan Fletcher was wary of?

W

Right, then 3

The next few posts are gonna be about cool stuff that you may or may not know about.

I've mentioned Swissmiss before but none of you were paying attention.

So, one more time... Swissmiss is a brilliant website. Mainly a collection of stuff found on the web, but don't let that but you off.

Tina finds great stuff everywhere like these great Lego ice bricks. By the way, do Lego have a blog? Surely they would be the perfect brand for blogging?

This hilarious palette of web 2.0 colours.

This post about a forthcoming Sticker Safari in Hamburg, which is sort of like some stenciling we saw in Romania.

(Pictures all taken from Swissmiss but she's grabbed them from elsewhere,  usual stuff applies.)

Right, then 2

The next few posts are gonna be about cool stuff that you may or may not know about.


(Picture taken from Design Boom with huge thanks, usual stuff applies.)

The man above is called Milton. Everyone say 'Hello Milton'.

Milton Glaser is a genius. He designed this, for example.

Design Boom have a brilliant interview with him which includes this advice for young designers:

"it's a tough business,
you have to be amazingly consistent and persistent.
you have to work like hell.
you cannot become an excellent practioneer without constantly
working hard all your life. it is not an easy way to earn your money.
and... you have to be well trained and you have not to be narrow to
references, because everybody else is doing that at the same time."

Which, in my humble opinion, is invaluable.
 

Right, then 1

The next few posts are gonna be about cool stuff that you may or may not know about.

On the Creative Review Blog they have a very interesting interview with the chaps from Design Project. The first ever non-London firm to design the D&AD book. I don't actually believe that they are the first non-London firm to design the D&AD book, but there you go.

It's a facinating interview and testimony to the success of the CR Blog. it's also proof that publishing can exist on the web and in print etc etc blah blah blah. Creative Review is very good, the blog is even better.

(Picture taken from CR Blog with huge thanks, usual stuff applies.)

Oh, and they have better photography than me.

The Story Of A Blog Post

I've spent the last couple of hours trying to collate the information I need to finish a post I'd like to write.

Except that I haven't found what I was looking for, instead I've found a whole bunch of really interesting stuff that only hangs together by the fact that I stumbled across it all one autumnal evening.

So to share all this with you, I'm going to bundle it all up in a little package called 'The Story Of A Blog Post'.

On Saturday we went to see Thomas.

It was brilliant, of course, really good fun and exactly the kind of thing you should be doing at the weekend.

And because I have the graphic design disease (more about that later) I kept spotting things like this:

Which reminded me of several things. How brilliant British information design is and was.

How nice it is when people bother to lovingly paint type and how nice some of the British Rail graphics used to be. This got me thinking 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. It looked like this:

I remember that it came in a big, big corporate identity manual in the days when big, big corporate identity manuals were de rigour. And because I've also got the blogging disease I instantly thought, 'ah ha blog post!' Hence my quest to find more information about this graphic information system.

First off I found this:

Which was designed by Design Research Unit who started trading in 1943 and in 2004 merged with Scott Brownrigg. That's a hell of a long time for a design company to be around. Most of them go to the wall within 3 years. DRU also designed a generic wayfinding signage manual for train stations in 2000, which in turn is remarkable as they were also asked to do one in the 60's.

I've always really liked this symbol. It's graphic, simple, elegant. It's got movement, it has two arrows, it looks like train tracks. It does the job of a logo well. No complaints.

Which of these is the correct version?

It's the first one. The top arrow points left because trains always keep to the left.

On the logo for Sealink the symbol is reversed because it looks like an S. Interesting eh?

Next up I stumbled across this:

Did you know that in the 1970's British Rail actually designed and patented a design for a flying saucer?

The flying saucer originally started as a proposal for a raiseable platform. However, the project was revised and edited, and by the time the patent was filed had become a large passenger craft for interplanetary travel. It was to be nuclear fusion powered, utilising laser beams to produce pulses of nuclear energy in a generator in the centre of the craft. Pardon my language, but how fucking brilliant is that? You don't get that under privatisation.

Then I rediscovered Jock Kinneir & Margaret Calvert. Two brilliant designers who designed the current signage on Britain's roads in the mid 60s.

At the start of the 60s, determined to illustrate the haphazard state of British road signage a chap called Herbert Spencer drove from central London to the recently opened Heathrow London Airport and photographed each of the road signs that he came across along the way.

He then published the result in two photographic essays in a magazine called Typographica. This provoked the government to redesign the system. It ain't that simple these days.

(Picture taken from Gaetan Lee with huge thanks, usual stuff applies.)

The British system is now copied round the world as was pointed out to me the other week by a colleague who's just returned from Dubai.

(Picture taken from Greg Valiquette with huge thanks, usual stuff applies. Greg isn't my colleague by the way.)

Next up this random list of links about design.

Just hundreds of interesting design links.

Then the web took me on a visit to the National Rail Museum in York. I've been there in real life to talk about a project that sadly never happened. It's an absolute treasure of graphics, posters and signs. They even have a real sign for Platform 9 3/4.

(Picture taken from Neil T with huge thanks, usual stuff applies.)

It's better than this one.

(Picture taken from Steve and Brooke with huge thanks, usual stuff applies.)

Although that one is brilliant too.

Look at this stuff.

Isn't it brilliant? Even this is good.

Last and by no means least I found this.

A typographic walk through London by Phil Baines.

I must do one of those myself, one day.

Still no info 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, but isn't the web the best thing ever?

"are there many more like me out there?"

Dan asks a good question here. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Beck?

Has anyone bought the new Beck album yet?

(Picture taken from Design Observer  with huge thanks, usual stuff applies.)

Forget the music, is the cover design thingy as good as people say it is?

There are three articles worth reading in Design Week this week.

I don't think I've ever said that in my life before.

Like most trade mags Design Week isn't normally the most exciting read, but this week is different. I even took it home to read.

There's a decent tribute to Alan Fletcher. I sort of feel that you non designers out there aren't understanding why we graphic designers loved Fletcher so much. This collection of his drawings might go some way to solving that.

There's a good piece about The Sun's front pages. I don't think there's enough said about newspapers and graphic design, although I've mentioned it here and here. There's currently an exhibition of The Sun front pages on at the Proud Galleries. That looks worth a visit.

Last but not least, 'The benefits of going global'. Ahh China. You all thought I'd forgotten about that didn't you?

Long Overdue Post on Computational Creativity

Last Thursday I was speaking at Imperial College's Tanaka Business School.

We were debating this, "Computers have become indispensable tools to designers of all kinds and have transformed the practice of design. With advances in computing power and artificial intelligence theory, we can begin to envisage computers taking on some of the creative act of design. What potential advantages or drawbacks would this have for designers? Should we fear that creative software is a threat to the design craft or industry?"

The lecture room (is that what they're called?) was fantastic. Tanaka is brand new and designed by Foster (click on project and then Imperial College to see more pics).

(Picture taken from Foster & Partners with huge thanks, usual stuff applies.)

From the reception it looks like a huge slinky or a baked bean tin with the label taken off. This houses a lecture room for each floor. Inside it's all cool blacks and greys. What really impressed me is that the lecture room had WiFi. And each chair has a broadband point and a power point. At the front there was a PC all hooked up and ready to go with the sound all wired up to the speaker system. In short everything a speaker could want.

There were three speakers before me, Geraint who's Professor of Computational Creativity at Goldsmiths, Simon who's written his PhD about this stuff and an architect whose name I can't remember (which is bad, sorry about that). They were all pro computational creativity, I was the anti view. I won't go through their presentations mainly because I'll forget something and secondly because I won't do them justice.

Simon and Geraint both had examples of where computers had been creative. Geraint had some music that had been generated by computer, Simon showed us work from this exhibition and showed some phrases a computer had generated too.

So far so good.

The architect showed model (after model, after model) of structures the computer had helped construct. Or something, I didn't really get his presentation to be honest.

And then it was me.

I had 10 minutes and I had to say why I thought computers couldn't be creative.

I started the same way Russell started his presentation here. The same black slide, the same music (it's OK, I asked him first).

I started like that for two reasons. Firstly, because it's a bloody good way to start a presentation and secondly because I believe a computer couldn't generate a piece of music that could generate the feeling of expectation, of excitement that that piece of music gives. That was my statement of intent, if you like. The audience seemed to like it.

Then I moved on to some fairly obvious stuff, Michaelangelo, Shakespeare etc

and then this:

(Heads nodding in the audience) you can guess what people are thinking, "but that's a computer generated film".

Yes, a computer can help, but that's all it can do. It can't actually create. The computer is not Walt Disney.

It couldn't come up with a story like this.

 

Why? I think the main reason is that creativity isn't linear. As Michael points out here, creativity does not happen like this:

Computers do think in a linear fashion (we can argue what linear means another time) and therefore they can only produce versions of things. You'll never get that spark of genius.

And talking of geniuses. These people are all considered creative geniuses.

Round pegs in square holes. What concerns me is that if we tell a computer to think like Einstein we'll get this:

 

Which isn't creative at all. What was creative will now be the norm and something new will have to emerge. With computers we would never have gotten from Glenn Miller to The Beatles. If you see what I mean.

In the week Alan Fletcher passed away it seemed appropriate to hold this up as a great example of creativity.

Then I showed this

and asked who could see the arrow. Most of them couldn't. When I pointed it out, someone actually gasped (I was pleased with that). You see, whilst we could probably get to the stage where a computer could produce a logo, there is no way it could create the added value you get when you see that arrow.

And I finished with this.

Next up there was a panel session and a lot of the questions were for me. We kind of agreed that a computer may be able to produce something that we could apply the word creative to, it's just that it wouldn't be very good. It's a question of scale.

Considering I had two days to put that presentation together I was quite happy with it. I wasn't as familiar with the slides as I would have liked, but I think I did OK. The Chair called my argument 'powerful' so it can't have been that bad.

Afterwards I bumped into Nico, who is very interested in the Design is the New Management Consultancy stuff. So we had a good chat about that.

So, what do you think of computational creativity? Did what I said make sense?

Was anyone in the audience?

Concerned

Creative Review have a blog.

http://www.e-cr.co.uk/crblog/

That's old news I know, sorry. I've been meaning to post on this for a while, but some slippage occurred, sorry. That's enough sorrys.

It's good. It's really good. It's rare that magazines do these things right, but Creative Review have done just that. It's interesting, makes good use of the media and is sufficiently different (and yet on brand) from the magazine.

They also have much better photography than me.

Oh, and they've linked to me.

Ace Jet 170

Thanks to Charles for sending me this blog. I'd seen it before, I think because Richard had linked to me. Anyway, enough blogantry.

This site is gorgeous. Manna for designers.

It's a blog about found type, print and stuff. To quote the author, "Found on holiday, at boot sales, in book shops or junk shops, littering the pavement, dropped into a waste bin.".

The nice thing is, it really gets across that lovely tactile feeling of ephemera, which is tricky on a screen. Ace Jet 170 succeeds because it's well designed and lovingly looked after.

All the images are obviously taken from Ace Jet 170. Hope you don't mind.

Independent Front Pages

I've been a big fan of The Independent's smaller design.

I think they've taken to the small size better than their rivals. The Guardian is still too big and The Times, to quote David Hillman, is "a total and utter fucking disaster".

One of the things I like the most is their graphic front pages. I've long thought that a broadsheet newspaper could take the same approach graphically as a tabloid does and do well. Use that front page is a dramatic way.

Problem is, again to quote David Hillman, "The problem with the front page being an idea is that some are good and some are bad. It's like saying you got to have six ideas a week — that's quite difficult." Whatever you think about The Independent it's hard not to agree with Felix Dennis , "At least they're bloody trying".

So, let's take a look at some front pages.

(Kate Moss) It would be easy to scoff at this one, but I think it's mature and elegant. It reminds of the covers The Face used to do when they produced good covers. Remember that this is a broadsheet newspaper doing this.

(9/11) They do this a lot. Some interesting facts nicely laid out. Impactful and easy to read. Good communication.

(Immigrant nation) A good way to make a point and stand out in a crowded marketplace.

(Nuclear) OK, I don't really like this one, but it's brilliant to see a national newspaper finally putting those full colour presses to good use.

(Middle East) Again, this was a crowded news morning with everyone covering the same story. This makes the point in a simple, elegant way. A classic case of a picture saying a thousand words. If you can't make the picture out, it has the British, American and Israeli flags in the right hand box.

(3,023) Big numbers are always good. Wouldn't it be great if all news could be distilled down to simple facts like this?

(Rebuild trust) You used to see this a lot in the 70's when they had all those long copy ads, big words with smaller text inbetween. You can still have a dirty big headline but you can put detail between. A useful typographic tool used well.

(10/8) Just another example of a good, graphic page showing great sensitivity to the propensity to use dates to name terrorist attacks.

"Design represents a powerful alternative to the dominant management approaches of the last few decades and is an important perspective for leadership to embrace."

Another interesting tale over on Bruce's blog.

"Many firms that have experienced dramatic gains in shareholder value over the last few years (e.g., Google, Apple, Motorola) register innovation as a central driver of their progress. One can argue that innovation, and a culture that inspires and supports innovation, is the only sustainable competitive advantage. A frequent manifestation of recent innovation has been breakthrough design. Design represents a powerful alternative to the dominant management approaches of the last few decades and is an important perspective for leadership to embrace."

Rock Star Blogger

This is a pretty lame post, I realise that. But I was clearing out some files on my Mac and I saw this. Made me smile.

Thought To Start The Week With

Still raining. Still reading.

5. Iain has already mentioned this, and now Design Observer has picked up a good article on the current trend for reflections on the Signals vs Noise blog - which is always worth a look anyway.