Noisy Decent Graphics

A nice simple logo, for a change

Shall we do a post about logos for old times sake?

Here is the first logo I've seen in years that made me stop. The first one I've thought it's actually worth commenting on.

It's for a company called Nix & Kix who make health drinks. (The whole brand looks nice FWIW.) Designed by Alec Tear who has a very nice portfolio. Stuff like this. I spotted this after Sagmeister posted it on his Instagram which came across my active daily eyeballs somehow.

Anyway, let's not overcomplicate matters, this is a just a nice logo. Just enough design to make you ponder, but simple enough that you don't have to wonder what it says. First logo I've seen in 3 years that wasn't algorithmically generated and designed to only work well at the IMAX.

Can't talk about ampersands in a logo without paying homage to the definitive example of the V&A logo by Alan Fletcher. Designed in 1989 and still wonderful. Still so good.

I've never been a huge fan of Sagmeister, as you may have guessed our styles of work are vastly different. But I saw him speak once and he was incredible. A real performer. And afterwards I spoke to him with some of the GDS design team and he was warm, fun and engaging.

Anyway. That's all I know.

Essential language

Remember in 1999 when everything got renamed to millennium something, Millennium Food & Wine, Millennium Pizza, Millennium Barbers and so on. I swear this shop was just called General Store a few weeks ago. I wonder if this is because the lockdown restrictions stipulate "essential" stores can stay open. Hardware stores can stay open anyway which probably covers this shop, but the term essential might just creep in and stick.

I often think the same about "key worker". There's no strict definition right now but there's some sort of understanding of what it means. How will it be used in 5 - 10 years time? Will staffing agencies be advertising for key worker jobs? Will politicians campaign for better conditions for key workers? Key worker tax relief? Remember when "hard working families" was a popular, misunderstood and overused term by politicians.

Will be it be weaponised by tech platforms and the gig economy?

Anyway.

The big boss shows us how it's done

Long time listeners will know that I've been doing a sketch every day 3 or 4 days for a while now.

During remote working finding interesting subject matter is hard. I like drawing buildings and people sat in meetings and I don't see any of those things any more. I've done a few views from my window and a few zooms but it's not the same.

 

Back in 2002 Michael Bierut started doing a pencil drawing every day and to relieve himself of "the chore of searching for a subject each morning" he drew a photo from the New York Times. Genius.

So I'm going to try that for a bit.

His drawings are of course all better than mine and it went on to be a brief set at Yale but that's another blog post.

 

 

RE: Stay at home, come on air

In reference to Russell's excellent post 'Stay at home, come on air' over on the Typepad platform. Yes, I completely agree and I would like to add that it has the additional benefit of seeing people in their homes, offices and home offices which is a million times more interesting than a tv studio. It also highlights how mad all those glass tabley things look. 

And once again reminds us that in certain parts of Britain there is more mock-Tudor than there ever was Tudor.

Recent Royal Designer talks and interviews

Video

Here's a video of a talk I did with Michael Marriott a few weeks back. You may not think our work is similar but we talked about the "boring magic" in designing every day things. I enjoyed it a lot. 

Boring Magic | In Conversation: Ben Terrett and Michael Marriott from RDInsights on Vimeo.

This is part of a series of conversations with the Royal Designers called RDInsights and you can see the others here. 

Audio

In the summer I was interviewed by Mike Dempsey on my life and career. It's by far the longest and most personal interview I've ever done. I talk about art and design at school and why I chose this particular path. The link is here and I believe you can get it as a podcast.

 

 

4 mins of Tony Hart brilliance

Two of my favourite things. Art and the subject of this picture. All in 4 minutes! 

Enjoy a few relaxing minutes of the great Tony Hart drawing with pastels, on Hartbeat #onthisday in 1987. pic.twitter.com/LrZRYrBqrC

— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) December 2, 2020

Drawing of a tree, next to a tree.

RDI Insights talk Tuesday night

I'm doing a talk with fellow RDI Michael Marriott on Tuesday night. It's free and virtual and you can sign up here. 

The evening is called Boring Magic and I think there is something of that in both our work. Michael is brilliant, look he made a lamp from a bucket!

We'll both do a really short presentation and then get into questions and a discussion. I think there's a rich overlap in our different disciplines and how we both approach functionality and the ordinary. I'm also hoping we can talk about reuse, something that's common in product and 3d design and not common enough in digital design and service design.

I'm really looking forward to it, so please sign up! It's literally free.

Thanks to Conor Delahunty and Steven Messer who both used the term Boring Magic before me.

 

 

 

Nice design for a pharmacist sign

Work news

In case you don't read Twitter or LinkedIn. Hi Phil.

Public Digital has joined the kyu Collective.