Shame.
Oh well.
The entire NDG team are spending Christmas in a house without internet, so that's your lot for now. Thanks for listening, have a great break.
Dec 23, 2009
Dec 22, 2009
5. the difference between lousy and busy is just a matter of keming.
Some of my favourites tweets from 2009. You're a funny bunch.
london bridge was so packed I was like is that a t-mob advert or flash mob. Then saw the board all trains delayed.
Great stat - Spotify has spent less than £5,000 on marketing (advertising) in the past 3 years
Reading a classic design brief: "...a cross between Innocent Drinks and the Obama Campaign"
Nokia products say "Made in China" on the back. Chinese-made Nokia-knockoffs say "Made in Finland."
I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathesome and inhumane.
"Blew up the moon, and won the Nobel Peace Prize. On the same day, bitches."
"Oh daddy, I forgot to tell you. I left your harddrives outside on the patio last night. Is that ok ?"
About to go through Lockerbie. As in the place that got bombed..
One word pissed off
Tot up all you get for your licence then ask Sky how much they'd want for it
cv finished. depressed.
[insert grumpy emo tweet here]
Right now yoga is done it is time to get Mum pissed.
Digital Dudes rock. But hate being called Digital Dudes.
I'm doing some 'research' have just seen some great copywriting on their website: 'Click here to enter Girls Aloud'
Cycling behind Boris Johnson. He's on his fucking phone.
Getting the feeling The Economy is a big, mystery machine, & the Bank of England just goes, "Well that button didn't work. Try this one."
4. everyoneiknowisdoingawesomeshit
Back in January I noticed Mike Migurski had started using a tag on delicious called everyoneiknowisdoingawesomeshit.
Mike works for, IMHO, the best design company in the world right now, Stamen. Based in San Francisco they do all the work you all talk about in meetings. So it's it's interesting to see what Mike bookmarks. To save you the trouble of going to delicious, here's a list of his everyoneiknowisdoingawesomeshit bookmarks for 09.
The View from Above: Custom Aerial Imagery for OSM
Humanising data: Chernoff Schools
Immaterials: the ghost in the field
Analog Voronoi Grid Distortion with Magnets
Maps as service design: The Incidental
designswarm thoughts » Blog Archive » Traveltag or how we thought of mapping in 2005
Six Questions from Kicker: Jack Schulze
Oakland Fucking Rules (Blogs and Local Reporting)
Digging, Or The Importance of Creative Throughput
"You guys are moving on this stuff too fast!"
My first Cloudmade map style: "Lynchian_Mid"
24 Hours of Geotagged Photos on Flickr
This Happened, Really Interesting Group
Looking toward EveryBlock's future
All the ephemera that's fit to print
How to make a newspaper out of blog entries
The Renegades at the New York Times
the most fun Ben's had all year
Dec 21, 2009
3. "Good design is as little design as possible"
This year saw several new articles to back up my strategy of "Good design is as little design as possible". Dieter Rams said that, not me.
There's currently a Dieter Rams exhibition on at the Design Museum and accordingly there's a whole raft of interviews on the web, which is a good a time as any to review his 10 design principles. They're all great, but "Good design is as little design as possible" is the one that's closest to my own personal design philosophy.
Often, more design gets in the way. Often, more design doesn't help, it merely adds more problems. The trouble with this philosophy in a job where you get paid to design is that people think you're shirking the working. Or that you're trying to get away with doing very little.
This isn't the case.
As Rory Sutherland (again more eloquently than I) points out, "the problems arising from excessive intervention – because “we must be seen to do something” – outweigh the benefits." In July he wrote a brilliant article about the perils of intervening because you have to justify your existence. And in the way only Rory Sutherland can he cited the examples of the many people with personal physicians who die young.
"I can imagine what it must be like to be a personal physician. Every day you must feel you have to do something to justify your existence. Yet, in truth, most of the time people are better off being medically left alone most of the time. And most illnesses may be best treated with rest and a little warmth."
It's a brilliant article, well worth a read.
To further elaborate on my point eloquently read this article by Michael Bierut. As I pointed out earlier in the year he lists several pointers to being a successful designer. Here are the first three.
1. Keep it simple.
2. Don’t reinvent the wheel [Part 1].
3. Don’t reinvent the wheel [Part 2].
Can you see a pattern building?
Good design is as little design as possible. The problems arising from excessive intervention outweigh the benefits. Keep it simple. Don’t reinvent the wheel
Very eloquent.
Dec 15, 2009
2. Identity and branding
We've already mentioned the EU Organic logo competition, what else caught our eye in the murky world of identity and branding?
Early on Creative Review featured Mr Chicken. He's the chap who designs all the Fried Chicken logos in London. Amazing stuff.
Coke continued their branding resurgence with these great summer special edition cans. Big corporations listen up: THIS IS HOW YOU DO BRANDING.
Michael Bierut tweaked the Guitar Hero logo. There's an element of 'you couldn't make that up' isn't there? Looks great though.
Another example of 'how to do branding' from a designer at the top of his game. I could easily have mentioned The Oak Room or continued work for MAD.
London went a bit logo mad including the dreadful experience of trying to create a Brand for London. When will they learn, the city doesn't want or need a logo. Michael Johnson has a good round up here.
Of much more importance to London, the Olympic icons were launched. Just as I really like the 2012 logo (sorry David) I really like these icons. Actually, I don't really like the black and white ones, but I love the colour ones and I really like the way it links in with the tube lines thing. Colourful, interesting, different. Exciting. Well done Someone.
I designed the Newspaper Club logo which you all hated and the Noticings logo which you all loved. (Actually lots of people love that one, not just you lot.)
And then right at the end of the year, because we all know heavy metal bands have the best logos we asked Christophe Szpajdel to design the new logo for RIG.
12 Posts of Christmas - 1. The Funnies
I've been a bit slow with the 12 Posts of Christmas. I know, I know, please stop emailing in. All back on track now. First up, The Funnies.
Right at the start of the year were these Poster Hacks which made me smile.
Then the EU started a competition to create "a fresh new logo for organic products". The winner got €6,000. And now, a year later you can vote from a shortlist of three.
The Sun blocked Bob Crow's driveway with a bus so he could see how it felt not being able to get to work. TechCrunch wrote about Newspaper Club and called the blog "hilariously frank".
WW2 propaganda posters got reworked with a modern twist.
Pete Dungey's Alan Keys. Student project of the year.
Stephen Fry gave a speech at Lords and demonstrates how to be brilliant, funny, warm and touching about nothing much. Brilliant and hilarious.
“Now, many of you will be wondering by what right I presume to stand and speak in front of this assembly of all that is high and fine and grand and noble and talented in the world of cricket, and to speak too in this very temple of all that is historic, majestic and ever so slightly preposterous and silly in that world? I certainly can’t lay claim to any great cricketing achievements. I can’t bat, I can’t field, I bowl off the wrong foot. That sounds like a euphemism for something else, doesn’t it? “They say he bowls off the wrong foot, know what I mean? He enters stage left. Let me put it this way, he poles from the Cambridge end of the punt.”
Graeme and Paul in Romania, or rather, in Romanian. The Michael Jackson Pantone swatches.
Never got enough plug sockets? Make a whole wall of them.
Planner Russell Davies invents the term "gleeful emo collapsism" and Corporate Blogger of the Year, Neil Christie rates Campaign's digital efforts.
You must read this APG paper written by a monkey. And you must read CampbellLaceBeta discovering Skype. Both very funny for different reasons.
Boris wades into the missing Thames debacle via Twitter and Kraft launch a Vegemite product called iSnack2.0. Seriously.
Everyone's parents were awesome.
And Hey Jude, the info graphic.
Sorry for not crediting everyone, it would simply take too long. I have included full instead. Hope that's OK.
Dec 08, 2009
12 Posts of Christmas
On Wednesday there will be twelve working days left until Christmas Day. Therefore, without any regard for tradition, the Noisy Decent Graphics editorial team have put together a little blog series called 12 Posts of Christmas. There will be reviews of work from 2009, personal highlights, the best links, quotes, funny bits, free mince pies, Last Christmas on repeat and maybe a whole section on Rory Sutherland.
12 Posts of Christmas - starts Wednesday, finishes Christmas Eve.
Ben
Head of Design, GDS, Cabinet Office. Co-founder Newspaper Club, spare part at RIG. (Also ID8, San Francisco).
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