Noisy Decent Graphics

In praise of inconsistency

One of the occupational hazards of being a designer is that you want everything to be designed.

And worse than that you normally want everything to be well laid out, structured and with a good hierarchy of information.

I saw this the other day and whilst the typography leaves a lot to be desired it's a very useful piece of communication. Building number, street name and postcode. Brilliant. Common sense. Useful.

Because you see this a lot. It's a building number. This one happens to be 87A.

But what street is it on? Sometimes it's easy to work that out, but often it isn't. Especially if it's a big long street.

If you're one of those designers that's been a postman or a delivery boy you'll prefer street numbers to look like this.

Or, fuck it, let's go the whole hog. Name, number, rank, street, post code, inside leg. Yeah, that's better.

Let's pass legislation to make all buildings display their full address outside on metal plate. In the same colour, the same font. That would make life easier and it would look better. That's good communication, right?

But here's the problem. Scroll back up the page - all those signs are from the same street. Look at the difference. The inconsistency. The accidental. The unintentional. Looks great, doesn't it?

Sometimes it's better when things aren't designed. It took me a while to learn that.

Design and Maths

Many years ago I very nearly did a Maths A level.

I used to love Maths. I was even in the A stream at school. Then late one night in a dark bedroom (I had black ash furniture) I was doing some GCSE maths homework. I had a bit of a moment and I promised myself as soon as I'd finished the compulsory curriculum maths I'd never do any more. That was the A level out the window.

I loved maths because the idea of it was so easy. I don't mean that I'm some Beautiful Mind style genius, what I mean is that it's all just variations of 1+1=2, right? Each and every sum has a definite answer and all you've got to do is find it. Actually, you don't even have to do that, all you have to do is construct the answer using the tools you've been given, + and - and x etc. That easy.

Easy compared to staring at a blank piece of paper every day.

In the design industry you have to come up with totally new concepts, sometimes every day, sometimes three or four a day. Inventing new things - that's hard.

My ex boss had a husband who was Head of Maths at Kings College. Every couple of years he flew out to some conference somewhere and a load of mathematicians worked on solving the world's hardest sum. They had been working on this sum for years. The hardest sum in the world? It can't be that hard, surely? A whole clutch of very clever mathematicians are a lot better at maths than me. So if they think it was a hard sum, then it was obviously a hard sum.

The other day Matt informed me that each sum doesn't have a definite answer, they discovered that in the 30's. So I've accepted that maths is harder than I first thought and now I'll get to the point of this post.

It surprises me how often you use maths in design.

I was hanging some picture frames. So naturally I did a layout in InDesign first. I used maths to work out the spacing for those pictures.

I'm sure there are loads of big heavy books on Design and Maths, but I don't really mean that. I just mean the simple stuff. Working out 6 columns, making 12 indentations in a path and so on. You use maths all the time.

All these pictures are of little scribbles or notes that I've made when I've been designing this week. Loads of maths. Maybe I should have done that Maths A level after all.

Why graphic designers are like hairdressers.

More and more I'm convinced that graphic designers are like hairdressers. Graphic design agencies are like hairdressing salons.

I believe you could open a hairdressing salon in any town in Britain and you would make money. If you were sensible and kept on top of things you could make a nice living. Nice house, nice car, two holidays a year. All that.

I also believe there could be three hairdressers in this same town and they would all make money. All have nice cars. Two holidays. That's all perfectly possible.

I also believe you could open a graphic design agency in any town in Britain and you would make money. If you were sensible and kept on top of things you could make a nice living. Nice house, nice car, two holidays a year. All that.

I also believe there could be three graphic design agencies in this same town and they would all make money. All have nice cars. Two holidays. That's all perfectly possible.

You could repeat this formula up and down the country and it would still work. Just because there's already a hairdresser in town, it's no barrier to setting up another one.

Essentially all of these hairdressers will be of roughly the same quality. You could walk into to any of them, anywhere in the country, and get roughly the same haircut for roughly the same price. From time to time some of them will win awards and some of them will have good patches, but essentially, they're all just as competent.

Every once in a while one of these salons will become very well known. Famous, even. That's because approximately a couple of percent of everything will always be very good. The rest will be average. It's the same with graphic design.

From time to time some of these salons, or agencies, will go bust. Such is life. The staff move on, the good ones start up on their own, taking the good customers with them.

With the right financing and the right management a few of these salons could expand and go nationwide, maybe even international. But this will be rare, because essentially the business model isn't scalable.

According to the Design Council, 95% of design consultancies have less than 5 staff and a turnover of less than £250k a year. I wonder if The Hairdressing Council have similar stats?

Imagine a hairdressing salon pitching for your custom, how would they differentiate themselves? Could they differentiate themselves? If Bob cut your hair at British Hairways, would you change supplier when he moved to Curl Up And Dye? If The Cutting Corner was busy one Saturday and you needed a haircut quick would you chance it and get it done at Head Masters? Apply that thinking to your agency and your clients. Ever wonder why they find pitches so confusing? Worth thinking about that.

I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. It's just something I've noticed. What do you think?

Ten Again

Have you been working in design, advertising or planning for ten years? Exactly ten years?

Email me. I need you. You'll get to see your name in print.

Good Design

Picture from UPPERCASE found via Russell's FFFFound! Usual stuff applies.

Is this the definitive description of good design?

Discuss.

Unacceptable

I've just read this in some brand guidelines, "A drop shadow effect is acceptable as long as it's not so strong that it impairs legibility."

Let me make this clear; a drop shadow effect is never acceptable. Especially when added to a logo.

OK?

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.)

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.

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.

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful

In my first job they used to take me to a lot of meetings. This was a novelty as they'd never taken an art director to meetings before, it was always the CD or the deputy CD.

They took me for two reasons; firstly I can pronounce most words properly and secondly they had a bit of an image problem and wanted to show off the youngest member of staff. My role in these meetings was to sit there and say nothing.

Time after time I found myself listening to utter rubbish and wanting to blurt out, "but why don't you" or "you ought to do it like" but never saying anything. Almost every time someone would say what I was thinking and the assembled marketing brains would nod in approval. How I wished I'd spoken up.

So, if you're thinking something in a meeting - say it. Chances are everyone else is thinking it too.

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.

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?

Things I / we have done that haven't worked.

I think the title is fairly self explanatory, but to clarify; it means stuff I've done as a graphic designer or stuff we've done at work that just hasn't worked. Here goes.

1. Asked a potential client to choose what we look at in a creds meeting.
I had this brilliant idea that to stop the boredom of a standard creds / portfolio meeting we'd lay all our work out on the table and ask the potential client to choose a piece of work they liked. So we did this at a meeting with Burberry.

Yes, Burberry.

Cue very puzzled brand manager, "Errr, oh I don't know, erm you choose one".
Me, "No, no, no, you pick something that looks interesting".
Brand Manager, "Erm. Errr. Oh. Umm. No, you choose something..."
Me, "No, no, no, you pick something that looks interesting".
Brand Manager, "Errrr....".

We never worked with Burberry.

2. Cut a straight line.
I absolutely can not cut a straight line. Nowhere even near. At college the head of our course cut the stuff out for my college show. Now Tom or April do it.

3. Ice Cream Van.
A few years ago we were thinking about buying an ice cream van. We were going to paint it all up, all get dressed up and drive it round to clients and potential clients offices. Redo the inside so it could show all our work. And so.

That was until we had a meeting with our business advisor who said things like, "where are you going to park it?" "you're gonna turn up at my office in this smelly, dirty old diesel van..." "who's going to drive it?" "what if it's raining?" "how often are you going to use it?" and so on. It probably sounds like a half decent idea written on here, but it isn't. Trust me it isn't.

4. Mispronounced a name.
In any industry it's a good idea to have a decent relationship with journalists from the trade press. It isn't a good idea to mispronounce their name (a different way) every single time you meet them. That's one publication and one person who will never have a good, correctly pronounced word to say about me.

5. Scan.
I used to be able to scan stuff, not very well, but I could do it. Now I wouldn't know where to start. Does Twain Acquire still exist?

6. Sage.
Have you ever used Sage? Do you know what a nominal code is? Do you know what nominal code 5002 is? Have you ever tried putting one and a half years of accounts into Sage? Are you an accountant?

7. Shouted at someone for being late when actually I was late.
Do I need to explain that? And I mean really shouted.

8. Tried to make centred type look good.
But then no one can do that.

Advice: Sit at the front

Here's something that really annoys me.

If you've spent good money (or if your company has spent good money) on a conference or a lecture the least you can do is sit at the bloody front.

If you look closely at the picture above (bottom left, in a bit) you can see me and Beeker sat right at the front. I'm in the gold corduroy jacket, Beeker is the one looking slightly pissed off because I made her sit at the front.

What's wrong with sitting at the front? It's not bloody school.

You're probably going to hear some really interesting people so you want to be as close as you can, don't you? It's not like a fucking Derren Brown show where they're going to drag you out of the audience and make you give a stuffed donkey a blow job. So sit at the front. Ta.

A little work for a Friday

Seeing as it's Friday. Seeing as we've just uploaded this. Seeing as this blog is about graphic design. Seeing as it features a bit of Dolly.

Here's some work. Enjoy.

The Design Disease

Big post coming up.

I've been meaning to write this for a while. I first mentioned it here and I've been thinking about it ever since.

I love my job. Absolutely love it. Not many people can say that, but then not many people get to do their hobby for a living. Ever since I was 13 I wanted to be a graphic designer (technically my school library careers guidebook called it an advertising artist, but hey) and ever since I was 13 I pretty much knew what I had to do to get there. It's not just me, I have friends who thought like that too.

It seems to me that if you're a designer, a proper designer not someone who learnt Photoshop in between phone calls, then design runs through your veins like Pantone 7418. But more than that, it's there in every aspect of life. You can't stop looking at things through your designer eyes. Everything you do is clouded by this thing that lives inside you.

Now, this is no bad thing. But I'm becoming fascinated by how this thing takes hold of us all and I'd like to share it with you lovely people.

So what's it like, living with this disease? What does it make you do that other people don't do? How does it affect you?

Let's say you took a trip in to town one day. First off, you'd be incredibly upset by the shocking kerning on this roadsign.

And if you parked your car in a multi storey car park the thing you'd be most struck by are these

And of course this.

We all love arrows and we all love collecting things, more about that later.

As you left the car park you'd see this

and it would annoy you, really annoy you, that it wasn't quite centred and it wasn't quite justified and it wasn't left aligned and it wasn't right aligned. You see sometimes the disease will stop you enjoying things. I know designers who will walk out of a room because the colour upsets them.

Or you might see this on the way to a gig

and spend the rest of the concert wondering why they distorted the type like that?

Back on your journey into town. You'd step outside and see this and wonder how on earth that can be allowed to happened. Who would space type like that?

Then you'd spot this and be puzzled by the logotype. Do Ferrari really have an estate agency?

On the drive home you'd take photos like this.

Just because.

People with the disease will always choose books by their covers. Probably these covers.

Probably these covers and these colours, becuase you love colours, you worship colours which is why you collect things (you see, collecting again) like this

and why this website was so spot on.

But it's not just books, it's everything. You'll choose wine by the design of the label,

you'd stay here because of the sign

and you'd photograph the sign and a million others like it.

If you were good, really good, you'd collect all these photos of signs and store them alphabetically

because they may come in handy one day. Just like you collected these pencils

and they came in handy.

You'd also be obsessed with letters, or type as you've been taught to call it. Letters of any shape, size or description.

Like

or

or even

which means you start collecting things like this

and like this

as that magpie like bit of the disease seeps out through your keyboard into the finer reaches of eBay.

Again, if you were good, you'd pick up on this obsession and turn it into a project like this

which is Michael Johnson's brilliant Send A Letter thing. Or you'd have gates made like this (Alan understood).

It's not just letters, it's numbers too. You'd photograph and collect things like this

(thanks Russell, this goes without saying)

in fact, that inner magpie would make you arrange everything like this

and on the biggest day in modern history it would make you wander the streets looking for postcards. And then you'd do this.

(Told you Alan understood).

You see, it affects every aspect of your life. How you think, how you buy, what you see. If you're lucky you're friends and family will pick up on this and if you're lucky you'll get things like this for Christmas

which will be the best thing you receive all year because it gives you a quick fix.

Designers, does that sound familiar?

The Times gets a new masthead and a new fount

The Times has given itself a new masthead and a new headline font, art directed by Neville Brody.

You can read about the history of their headline font here.

Strangely, in the article they don't use the word font once. They say 'fount' throughout the whole article.

To check I wasn't being ignorant I looked 'fount' up in the dictionary. Here's what it says, "The English spelling (c. 1980) of the once Americanized (1828) and now ubiquitous 'font'.". I never knew that. Did you?

They've used fount 8 times in the article. Are they being clever dicks? Are they correct? What's going on there?

By clicking here you can see a history of the masthead design. There are 20 in all, over 221 years. This post brought to you via Design Observer.

7 things you could learn from a designer otherwise known as 5 1/2 things you could learn from a designer.

Someone from somewhere (I'm not saying who yet because I haven't asked them if I could post this and I think that's a little bit rude) has asked me to come in and talk to their company about graphic design. When I sat down to write them an email I found myself writing like I blog. I kept wanting to put links and pictures in, so in the spirit of 'this collaboration thing' I thought I'd post my stuff so far up here.

I'm trying to write '7 things you could learn from a designer' but I've only got 5 1/2 so far. Can anyone think of another 2?

1. How to make your presentations instantly look better.
Why people usually over complicate stuff just because Microsoft have given them the tools to do this. Just because you can make 3D type in PowerPoint doesn't mean that you have to. Good design should let the content be the 'hero' not your wizardry with PowerPoint transitions.

How to make your presentations better in one stroke? Select all, click the text formating palette and choose one font. There, that's better isn't it?

2. Why you should never, ever, ever use Comic Sans.
Ok, let me say this again. Comic Sans is designed to look like the typography found in old comics. So unless you work for DC Comics, please, please, please don't use Comic Sans. It doesn't look friendly, it doesn't look fun, it's doesn't look funky, it looks shit.

3. What usability means and why it's becoming more important.
Great usability is the ultimate in good design. This is so obvious, but we're only just starting to talk about it. There are so many examples around us everyday, the Underground map, the BBC News website, almost all Apple products. As David Ogilvy said, "You can't save souls in an empty church".

As communication gets so more complicated usability is becoming so much more important in getting through to people. Make it easy for people to get to your stuff.

4. How design is the new management consultancy.
How companies are starting to turn to designers to solve complex business problems, or at least provide a different perspective. Because true design thinking means that design is a verb and not a noun. It's a better way of thinking and not a production process that's applied at the end of a project.

"Design is habitually brought in too late, used simply to paint and decorate products for which the major decisions have already been made. Thus we have products that are easy to build, designed by technically minded people, but that are not desirable or usable."
Clive Grinyer (director of Orange's Design & Usability Innovation team

And other examples...

5. Some names for your contacts book and an exhibition you must go and see this month.
Who Alan Fletcher was and when his exhibition is on at the Design Museum.

And other names...

6. I want to write something about the designers process, but I'm not sure what yet. It'll probably be something about how you store up loads and loads of stimulus in your visual brain and then you release that stimulus when the brief requires it. In other words you're Never Not Working.

What do Alex Ferguson and Michael Bierut have in common?

(Pictures taken from inthenews.co.uk and Pentagram respectively. With great thanks, usual stuff applies.)

I was listening to Howard Wilkinson talking about Alex Ferguson on Football Focus this morning and something he said reminded me of something Paula Scher said about Michael Bierut recently. And what struck me was the common thread running through both the quotes below and how that's often missing in young design students I meet.

Let's look at the two quotes:

"You talk to him about a league, a club, a player in any country in the world and he'll know about it. He's a walking football encyclopedia."
Howard Wilkinson on Alex Ferguson

"Michael Bierut knows every one of you, no matter what your age is. He knows your names, where you’re from, where you work, what you’ve designed, and whether it’s better or worse than the last thing you did. If he liked something you designed along the way, he probably sent you a little note telling you so. He may have even saved a design of yours that he came across, and it’s downstairs in his basement with the million other things he’s saved.

If he runs into you, he might reference something that influenced you, or he may know one of your clients, or he read an article that had direct bearing on something that involved you somehow, or he knew who you competed against on a project you just won. Maybe it was even him, and if it was, he’ll tell you so.

He seems to know all this stuff very naturally, like a guy who just coincidentally, has exactly the same interests that you do.

At Pentagram, he is an indispensible resource. Every partner relies on him for information, no matter how trivial. Mention a book to him and he’s read it and he’ll recommend two others like it that you will also enjoy. Bring up a song, he knows all the words and might entertain you with a stanza or two, and he manages to carry a tune. Reference a movie to him and he’s always seen it and can quote some relevant piece of dialog VERBATIM as if he had spent his entire life rehearsing for that moment when you’d bring it up. Mention a potential new project to him and he’ll know more than a bit about it and recommend the two three things he’s read in The Times on that subject, and then he’ll forward the articles to you.

Michael’s brain is a massive compendium that’s been carefully edited to contain the world’s most interesting stuff. Political stuff, cultural stuff, humanistic stuff, things all about you and me. Stuff that makes up the American experience."
Paula Scher on Michael Bierut (read the full speech here).

OK, there's several things here. Remember this? Look at point number one - find inspiration in everything. Both Fergie and Michael are demonstrating that above. Let's take Ferguson, do you think, at the level he's at, he really needs to know about every league in every country in the world? Probably not. Firstly he's probably got people to do that for him and secondly I imagine (like most professions) potential Man U players are selected from a fairly small pool. The same pool Arsenal, Chelsea, Madrid, Barcelona, etc are fishing from. But yet he's still following the minutiae of global football. Why? Because he has a real passion for the sport. And I'll bet he's inspired by some kid in an obscure league in Corsica.

The Michael Bierut example is more obvious. Books, songs, blogs, news articles, all this stuff is essential to a designer. It's one of the things I like about blogging. You can store stuff in your personal online archive and then come back to it whenever you like. It's easier to search than your brain. I don't really know Michael Bierut but we have shared the odd email conversation. And, like Paula says, he has sent me the odd note when I've written something that strikes a chord.

We get lots of students coming to see us. Portfolio surgeries, placements, friends of friends coming for a look around. One question we always ask is, what designers to you like at the moment? I'd say probably 60-70 percent can't name a single designer. Of the 30 odd percent that can name a designer or a design firm, it's always something really, really obvious or slightly off key like, 'Saatchis' or 'Phillipe Stark' or 'Richard Rogers' or something. Nothing wrong with those, but I want to hear NB Studios or Made Thought or GTF or Mark Farrow or even Peter bloody Saville would do.

Do you see what I'm getting at? Being interested in stuff matters. And it keeps on mattering even when you're as successful as Ferguson. Knowing your industry, being really, genuinely passionate about your industry matters. It really matters.

Both these men are senior in their fields. Both of them have achieved enough to sit back and take the plaudits. Both don't do that. Both of them have a passion for their work. Do you think it's a coincidence they're both still successful?

Doing it for real.

I often mention doing it for real and I'm a big fan of practicing what you preach.

We're moving office at the moment (more about that later I promise) and I was digging through some old stuff when I found these.

All of these have been used as images on our homepage and all of them were created for real. No special effects or Photoshop filters were harmed in the making of these images.

I thought I'd post them as proof that I practice what I blog.

These ones are my favourite. We used them at Easter this year. It would have been so easy to do this in Photoshop, but it would have looked shit. So instead we popped down to Thorntons and a few raised eyebrows and ten quid later we ended up with this.

And a bit later on, this.

Turn off those computers kids. Do it for real.