Noisy Decent Graphics

This Isn't England

About two years ago I was looking at a map of the world and noticed that Britain seemed disproportionately large.

My companion remarked that this was because in days of yore whoever was drawing the map always made their country look bigger and more important. This nugget of information sticks in the brain.

So for the last two years I've been taking pictures of Britain on world maps. Not accurate maps, but drawings or illustrations of maps. The differences are amazing. You might assume that all maps were accurate, or at least accurate-ish. But no, designers play fast and loose with the truth making the host country bigger, more important or more central.

Look at Britain in these photos. Look at the size of it compared to Europe. It's the same, but different.

Americans will be used to seeing this map of the world.

Whereas Europeans will be used to seeing this map of the world.

In this instance one isn't more accurate than the other, but the perception is very different and the power designers wield in shaping that perception is huge.

New Zealanders can often play Spot Our Country. Next time you see a map of the world on the BBC News or in the paper, look for New Zealand. Odds are it will have been left out in the name of aesthetics. If it's not left out then it's cropped to within an inch of it's life.

Most New Zealanders would probably prefer their maps to look like this.

The answer to most of these problems is to look at the world via Buckminster Fuller's amazing Dymaxion Map.

OK, OK, we're drifting off the point a little bit. Map projection is a huge topic and this Wikipedia page is a good place to start. There's also a good article called The Map Gap on BBC News.

Back to where we started. Over the last few months I took lots of photos of maps, you can see them on Flickr.

Today I traced over England, Scotland and Wales. Please note these tracings were done quickly and aren't massively detailed. The results are quite odd.

They all look pretty different don't they? You know it's Great Britain, but some of them are wild approximations.

Next I dropped them all on top of each other (here I left off Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland because I wanted to compare just one shape).

That's a bit higgledy piggledy so I filled them all in.

Viola! The mean shape of England , Scotland and Wales by 14 graphic designers. Not very accurate, is it?

This isn't a cartography blog and I know some of these maps are over stylised for a reason but I want to make a wider point about graphic designers and the assumptions we make and how easily they are accepted. If you look at all the maps on Flickr they all look kind of OK. When I put them all together it looks like madness. Like people having been taking liberties with the truth.

Think of other times you do this.

Hierarchies are a good example. The point of bold and italic and underline is to make one piece of text more important than the other. But how many times do you see a poster where the text is bold, italic and underlined? I bet I could get a load of notices like that and achieve the same effect as the 14 shapes above. Everything would be bold.

Premiumisation - there's a word that really fucks me off. I once heard the MD of a famous packing company droning on about how his firm's USP was that they could design premiumisation into any old piece of packaging. In case you're wondering, that means lots of over elaborate folds, some foil blocking and a healthy does of script and moody photography. Problem is, take a look at the chocolate cakes in Tescos, I bet you'll find 10 'premiumised' brands, 4 value brands and nothing inbetween.

What I'm saying is that graphic designers have a certain amount of power, people tend to trust what they see without much questioning. We should use that power carefully.

Not really. Honestly.

I've just scanned down my blog and noticed that it reads, in big clear letters, "Please visit. But not really."

I don't mean that of course, you are welcome any time.

Talking the walk

I got sent this in the post the other day. Actually a few of us got sent this in the office.

I'm about to slag it off pretty heavily. Part of me feels bad about that because I imagine that every time any printer/paper company sends designers a mailer they get nothing but grief and gripes and turned up noses.

But, you know, fuck it.

You can talk the talk but can you walk the walk. This 'talk' is about green printing. Using environmentally friendly papers and stuff. The cover is printed on Greyboard which is basically all the dregs from the recycled mush. Designers always think it looks great. Good start.

Then it takes you through all the different terminology PEFC means, what FSC means. What carbon footprint means. Obviously it uses all their different environmentally friendly papers throughout.

But there's so much of it. It's 32 pages long.

Right at the end it says, "James McNaughton Group now offer a range of carbon neutral paper products". That winds me up. Don't just offer a range of carbon neutral paper products, make the whole bloody business carbon neutral and be done with it. You're either carbon neutral or you're not. It's not an upgrade option.

32 pages of big, over produced, over designed, printed thing to tell me about environment friendly options. That's just not good, is it? I'm picking on McNaughton's (they can take it) but we get sent loads of these all the time and it's really starting to get on my nerves. Another big convoluted bit of print sent to several people at the same address is not the way forward people.

And before someone asks; no, we're not perfect. We're not entirely carbon neutral and we don't use 100% waterless printing. But we don't send people 32 page mailers.

Button ideas

Take a look at these buttons.

The tick explicitly means 'yes', and the cross 'no' which is good because that's crystal clear. But then green and red mean exactly the same thing thus rendering the tick and cross entirely unnecessary. Right?

So here's the question; are the tick and cross a good idea or a bad idea?

Signal Failure?

At first glance I love these.

Picture taken from Laughing In The Face, usual rules apply.

It seems like a good idea and the graphic designer in me loves the arrows on the floor. Arrows on every floor I reckon. But anyway, this is the new attempt by TfL to get people to stand nicely to one side and let the passengers off. The Creative Review Blog has a good post and some great pictures here.

What I like most is that they're trying out four different designs and seeing which one works. This is a great idea. It's very rare for graphic design to measured and even rarer for it to be measured properly. But it's not just that, isn't trying out four designs just a good idea? A focus group would have been terrible, complicated and expensive. Someone at the top could have just made a decision but then you'd be relying on one person's opinion. Trying out four solutions is cheap, quick, practical and sensible.

I'm all for sensible design solutions.

Picture taken from the Creative Review Blog, usual rules apply. I can't seem to find out who took the picture. Sorry.

The CR Blog raised some interesting points in the comments. Our own Alex said, "I think this is a great idea and well needed here in London". But then Alistair pointed out, "Since people seem unable to use even the most basic levels of common sense (and manners) to realise that standing clear of the doors and letting the passengers off first is the best way to do things, are they really going to pay any attention at all to some floor graphics?" Which is a very valid point. Maybe us designers are just getting carried away?

Patrick then pointed out, "Myself, Mark and Eliza from CR got on the Jubilee Line at Waterloo last night. Most people were obediently standing outside the white lines."

Which made me wonder just how they're going to be measured? Surely the only way to do it is with an old fashioned human being. And that's got to be more than a bit subjectve? "Only one person was standing on the yellow lines, so I considered this to be a success". And how long do you measure it for? And how often do you measure?

When I did some measurement earlier today at Waterloo, it didn't seem to be working. Not at all.

Maybe we should all measure it? Every time you use the Jubilee line take a picture and then we can start to see if we can see any patterns? Would anyone be up for that?

The internet is not your friend (for a moment)

I was forced to get a bus earlier today (normally I'm a black cab man, but you know...) and I saw this lady furiously working her Blackberry.

Being rude and inquisitive I peered over her shoulder where I could just make out she had received an email that detailed "nine points for the way forward". This email had been sent to at least nine people and maybe more.

She began her reply with, "What an exciting and informative way to spend the xxx bus route. Totally agree with points 1 and 7..." Jesus Christ. I imagined all the other eight people sat on buses compiling their replies and I thought what an awful way to communicate / conduct a relationship. What a dreadful, miserable, connected world we live in.

But don't worry. I was just having a moment.

One day or four days?

You decide.

Strike Zone

I don't understand. Can someone explain this to me?

Which is X and which is Y?

Is this the X button or the Y button?

A brilliant, useful and very true post from History of the Button.

Say enough, more. Or how to design the perfect shave.

A while ago I read an interesting article about wet shaving. I was particularly struck by this bit,

"A dull disposable razor dragged across a layer of foam or gel on your cheeks is a step backward from the past, not an improvement."

Isn't that sad? Seriously.

I say sad because think of the hundred's of millions of pounds worth of R&D technology invested into shaving by huge global corporations. Think of all those MBA's and all those sharp brains. Think of all those meeting rooms and flip charts and PowerPoints. All that - and we're going backwards.

Isn't that sad?

The article goes on to say that all you need for a good shave is water, a blade and some cream. That's right, just one blade. Not five.

"Millions of men have been shocked to discover that the “old fashioned” method of shaving they thought went out with the Hula Hoop is actually the best quality shave you can get."

You see, according to the article, a "cheap shaving gel" that "smells just like your deodorant" actually dries the skin. And all those fancy blades don't work because they're designed for "the knucklehead who thinks the harder he rakes the razor across his cheeks the closer his shave will be" when actually the less blades and the lighter the touch, the better the shave.

Isn't it sad that we've actually designed a considerably worse experience than we started with hundreds of years ago?

Lastly, the article says,

"somewhere along the line, when shaving became more about cheap, disposable razors than a nice, precision-made metal tool in your hand, it became a brainless routine to rush through in the morning without even thinking about it".

How does this relate to design?

I think this example is a metaphor for how marketing departments and brands and designers have managed to make stuff worse using design. And not just worse, but we've actually come full circle and designed a solution that's the complete opposite of the answer. You can see a lot of that in modern design. You see it in websites, in products, in basic information, in wrapping swedes in polythene.

In The Hidden Persuaders there's a great story about a guy who was asked to double shampoo sales. He came back and said that they should add the words "repeat if necessary" to the text on the back of the bottle. Sales doubled almost immediately. OK, I'm paraphrasing that, but you all know the story and you get my point.

Yet again we've taken something that was perfectly good at its job and we've added another layer that actually makes the experience worse not better. Not only that we've made it "cheap" and "disposable", the complete opposite of valued.

If we are to take the environment and Reduce, Reuse, Recycle seriously then we've got to stop adding layers of badly designed, badly thought ought extra stuff into everything. We've got to make the best use of the materials available to us. We've got to really think about what we're designing and not just keeping adding blades.

We've got to say enough, more. One blade is enough. One rinse with the shampoo is enough. Nature's natural packaging is enough.

This is why good designers should be CEO's and Head's of R&D departments and FD's and why Design Is A New Management Trend.

No Smoking In Bomb Bay

Everyday bad usability from the fantastic Flickr Group, the Bad Sign Brigade.

All pictures are obviously from the Flickr group. Usual stuff applies.

Don't Loose Your Valuables

Don't spell check your notices either.

Common Sense from Coca Cola or Even More Proof Of How Designers Are (Still) Wankers

Last week I was in America. I thought I saw a lovely, simple, classic, 'back to basics' can of Coke. Turns out I was right.

Gorgeous, isn't it?

Someone at The Coca Cola Company came to their senses (probably Coke's new North American design director Moira Cullen) and they've changed the can back to this classic, iconic design. Coke has a rich design heritage and should be a brand that's as revered as Volkswagen or Knoll. Should be, expect until last week it churned out this shit.

All Coke can images from Coke Can Gallery.

This is part of what Richard Williams brilliantly calls the "add more steam school of design". You know the type of thing, when they redesign a frozen meal and they make the carrots a bit more orange and they add a bit more steam to the photo.

 
Picture taken from Chris Hester. Usual stuff applies.

Coke has gotten rid of all this. This month's Creative Review carries an article on the redesign and they say, "No more bubbles, no more drop shadows, no more extraneous detail". Well, thank fuck for that.

Except there's more to it than this. The can now features only trademarked elements and the decision to go with this design was influenced by "modern print techniques that can produce very strong solid colours on the cans". In the age of the design remix and with IP being rightly heralded as the future revenue model for designers Coke has found that the original design still achieves stand out and clarity.

Designed by Turner Duckworth, Coca-Cola believed "by over complicating its visual identity and packaging, it had diluted its brand and come to look more like a generic soft drink". No shit, Sherlock.

The previous designs were awful, diluting all that heritage into an also run of mediocrity that you see so often. So often.

And this is why designers are (still) wankers.

If you Google Ben Terrett, one of the top results is a Podcast I recorded with Paul where I state that designers are wankers. Well, most of the ones I've met...

You see, designers are so often their own worse enemy (for the record I agree with pretty much everything Bruce says there). Bowing to clients worst requests, endlessly free pitching and constantly slagging each other off.

How did the Coke can ever get so far down this terrible design road? Who's at fault for those previous designs? The consumer? The brand manager? A bit, sure, but a lot of that blame lays with the designers. The guys that added more steam. More bubbles. More "extraneous detail".

Too often designers get tied up in the client forest unable to see the wood for the invoices and producing shit like the previous Coke cans. That's why every other soft fizzy drink looks the same. That's why WHSmith is a "haze of tit and bum and bright colours". That's why (most) designers are wankers.

(And by the way, this blog is two years old today.)

Some of the worst usability I've seen in a long time

The other week, I had a little trouble logging onto the Design Week website. Odd, I thought, I must have forgotten my password. So I clicked onto the 'Forgot Password?' link and awaited an email.

When the email arrived it said click on this link and reset your password. Here's the screen that greeted me when I clicked on the link.

Can you stop the obvious mistake there? I thought it was a joke, so I entered my new password. This is what happened next.

Yes, my current password is incorrect because I've forgotten it.

To be fair, it turns out I couldn't log in because we'd forgotten to renew our subscription, but that's not
the point. A 'Forgot Password?' link that takes you to a page that asks you to enter your current password is insane.

Still, mustn't crumble, recently Design Week very kindly wrote about my Flickr page .

On a similar note, the last issue of Digit featured some stunning insights from me about pitching and presenting. You'll be able to read the article here.

What simple piece of graphic design would improve this sign no end?

 

Bad for so many reasons

Why The Guardian didn't go tabloid

yIt's a well known fact that I don't like the Guardian redesign.

I still don't like it and in fact I like it less and less. There aren't enough columns and David Hillman doesn't like it either.

Still, as people keep pointing out to me, it won a D&AD Black Pencil - so what do I know?

Last year I met someone who used to work at The Guardian and this post the other day reminded me of a little tale.

One of the things that annoys me most about The Guardian is the size. It's neither tabloid like The Independent or The Times or a full broadsheet like The Telegraph. Apparently when they were working on the redesign, the editor used to have a presentation where he explained why they didn't go tabloid.

He took the front page of the tabloid Indy and the tabloid Daily Mail and swapped them around. Then he asked people which one was which.

So, let's play a little game.

Question A: Is this an Independent front page or a Daily Mail front page?

You see, he's got a point hasn't he?

Question B: Which one of these is a Daily Mail front page?

Question C: Which one is the real Independent front page?

Makes you think doesn't it? There you go - why The Guardian didn't go tabloid.

Apologies if you live outside of the UK and that post doesn't make any sense.

Did Bill copy Jonathan?

Is Vista a copy of OSX? Errr, yes.

You've probably already seen this, but if you haven't then you must watch this hilarious video by David Pogue of the New York Times.

Stop The Music

"Excuse me mate, can I speak to Dali?"

Popped down to the Dali museum the other day. Don't bother it's rubbish.

I saw this sign which made me laugh quite a bit.

"Doors with ambiguous hinges and handles that necessitate "push" or "pull" instructions."

Brilliant post (via Design Observer) about the worst designed everyday objects. Including:

1. "I always wondered why umbrellas have sharp metal points right at eye-level."

2. "The standard headphones that come with IPods."

3. "Pretty much everything ever marketed as storage for spices."

4. "The design of URLs, a pet peeve of mine. Almost all of them contain redundancies or dependencies that cause them to be way too long, or likely to become broken within a matter of months."

5. "I think many would say that the rulers of the US right now are poorly designed." (Do they mean Rulers or rulers?)

Fantastic stuff.
 

 

999

This is interesting. I spotted it over at Bogdana's blog, which really should be called Blogdana. I'm not really sure why it's interesting, so here's some randomish thoughts.

1. I thought they'd be more 999's. Don't you find that a little unusual? Many countries borrow stuff from Britain because of the Colonial legacy, so I thought there would be more 999's. Maybe that's because the telephone became ubiquitous after the Empire had ended?

2. There's a lot of 9's and 1's. Blogdana makes a good point that, thanks to Hollywood, almost everyone would know the emergency number in America.

3. I was always under the impression that in Britain the number is 999 because in the old days when phones looked like this

(Picture taken from Vintagephone.com with thanks, usual stuff applies.)

three 9's would have been really hard to dial by accident. That means that pesky kids couldn't call an ambulance by mistake. So how is that relevant in the mobile world?

4. Why isn't the emergency number the same all over the world?

Misinterpretation

A friend of mine has just got back from a year in Japan. As a present he brought me back this mug.

Marvelous isn't? Look at Bermonds just above Regent's Road.

You never realised Covent Garden was so close to Knightsbridge did you? Oh look, there are two Covent Gardens!

I can't decide if they've done it this way to avoid copyright laws, if they did it from memory or if it's just crap. What do you think?

Chairs. Yawn yawn.

I hate chairs.

Well obviously I don't hate chairs, they're good for sitting on etc etc. What I hate is how furniture designers, and normally new, young furniture designers, always seem to fall back on chairs. Every bloody furniture exhibition you go to has the latest chair designs. Do we really need any more fucking chair designs? Surely, somewhere, the perfect chair must have been designed already?

(The classic Ant Chair by Arne Jacobsen taken from the Jacobsen site, with thanks, usual stuff applies.)

The requirements stay the same. People don't change that much over the years, a little fatter, a little taller, maybe, but legs still bend in the middle. People still rest on their posteriors when seated. So the design of chairs gets worse, more complicated, more stuff being added - confusing the issue rather than solving the problem.

(Chair with concrete base by Konstantin Grcic, with seat in die cast aluminium, treated with sputtered fluorinated titanium and painted in polyester powder. With concrete base painted transparent clear. Taken from the Twenty Twenty One site with thanks, usual stuff applies.)

So when I saw this in the Design Museum tank thing, I let out a long sigh.

Poor stuff guys, try harder.

Visual Insensitivity.

Back when it was Design Questions Week Russell asked, 'what are the 5 worst bits of graphic design you can think of?'.

At the time I could only think of four. Now, here's the fifth. I'm not sure whether to call this typographic insensitivity, graphic insensitivity or design insensitivity so let's settle for visual insensitivity.

Take a look at this ordinary high street.

Take a closer look at the signage. Forget the fact that they've done that thing where they're too posh to admit they have to have shops and they've made all the signs out of bronze and look a little closer at the typographic insensitivity.

(might be worth clicking on this to make it bigger)

Now I know all these signs were put up by different people on different days from different companies, but this sort of visual insensitivity really annoys me.

I was planning to put this right using the power of Photoshop but unfortunately I took the photo at a funny angle so we'll revert back to theory. I've recreated the street signage in plan form. Obviously the fonts and logos aren't correct, but as an exercise it gives you an idea.

Currently everything is a different font, a different weight, a different size and on a different baseline. See?

Nothing anyone can do can make that eye Clinic logo look OK. In the ideal world everything would be the same height. Like this.

But that's not going to happen, is it? Probably the easiest and simplest thing to do would be to put all the type on the same baseline. Same size as they are now, same mix of fonts etc, one common baseline.

That looks a little better doesn't it? This would be easy to achieve, the council or the street could manage this. You see this insensitivity all the time and it annoys me. You see how this isn't really centred? It's not justified one way or the other. It's just sloppy. And annoying.

Carlsberg Cane

The Latest Management Trend

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

Bad, bad, bad logo

Good Lord this is bad.

You can see the thinking, "AVS. There's a V in advanced. Then the S... A. V. S."

It doesn't work on any level. It's not clever, the acronym doesn't work. It doesn't read well, it doesn't read at all. The type unit is too big. It's clumsy. It's bad.

Unforgivable spelling error

How on earth can you make a mistake like this?

Portugal vs France

Can anyone spot what's wrong with these posters I saw in William Hill this afternoon?

The language of design education

Obviously, I've been thinking a lot this week about the future of graphic design and graphic design courses. And something is troubling me - the language of these graphic design courses.

Before I start I'd like to set some terms of reference.

I have a BA (Hons) degree in Graphic Design. I graduated in the 90's with a 2:1.

Generally, I think a university education is a good thing. I believe 10% of what you learn in about your chosen subject, the other 90% is about life. The emotional highs and lows, the freedom from being away from home, the loneliness from being away from home. Having to handle difficult situations on your own, meeting people outside your comfort zone. That kinda thing.

I fully believe that a design education should concentrate on the possible not the probable. You should be encouraged to explore, experiment, excite, enjoy.

The vocational stuff can, and will, come later.

And lastly, I am in no way being critical of any particular college. Any comments I make are general. Any links are usually the first result in Google.

OK. It seems to me that the language of design education is far removed from the profession of design. For example, who on earth works in Lens Based Media? Who classes themselves as a Visual Communicator? What's a Live Brief? Who describes work as Professional Practice? What era is Computer Studies from?

Do you see what I mean?

Sure, I know what they're getting at, and  I understand that the world of communication is so fluid that nailing down a name for a module (don't get me started on modules) is difficult. But some of these would be really easy to change.

1. Lens Based Media - OK, so we mean stuff that uses a lens, right? From a camera obscura to a Canon DM-XL.

And nowadays I suppose every student has access to a digital camera and probably a decent video camera. So how about Photography? Film? Film making? Too restrictive? Image making? Too illustrationy? How about Camera Work? Or just Images? Shots? Clips? Shots and Clips? Vignettes?

I like Shots and Clips.

2. Visual Communication - I suppose this is the hardest area. I can fully appreciate that Graphic Design is dying as a specific term, whilst Design is growing in stature. So how about just Design? BA Design course and you can branch out in to any area. Surely the basic principles are the same? Too broad? How about Communication Design?

I prefer just Design.

3. Live Brief - this one irks me the most. It's a dated, patronising term, although I know how important Live Briefs are. I sometimes set them. But no-one in the industry says Live Brief, we just say brief. Or Project or Job. So how about we have Briefs set by the college and Job's set by outside agencies, or clients? Maybe if each college gave it a job number (like we do) it would be obvious that it was a brief from an external client.

Or while we're at it, how about just Internal and External Briefs?

4. Professional Practice - Simple = Industry.

5. Computer Studies - this should just be banished. I imagine it is totally impossible to complete any degree in Europe or the US without using a computer, so do we really have to make it a separate module? If anything you'll be studying the programs, the tools of your future trade. So how about Photoshop studies or InDesign lessons?

So, I've just finished a Design degree where I specialised in Brand Communication. One of my favourite modules was Shots and Clips as I hope to work as a director in the future. I'll probably end up being self employed so I found the Industry module really useful. I got to work on some great projects and I won a few External Briefs which won great reviews. I have a thorough understanding of Photoshop which has given me the confidence to go straight in to the big wide world of employment. Wish me luck.

As usual I don't have all the answers. I'm not an education guru but I've seem something that's broken and I'm hoping to start a debate on how to fix it.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?