Noisy Decent Graphics

How to paint anything the colour of the Golden Gate Bridge

Picture from Telstar Logistics. Usual stuff applies.

Following along the 'Pantones in my life' theme, here's an explanation of how to paint anything the color of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Tom, I think you ought to do that.

Interesting Mini CEO Half Thoughts

Ask anyone why they blog and inevitably the expression "it's a good place for sharing half thoughts" will come up.

So here's a half thought.

Someone asked me the other day what percentage of my day was spent doing what. Yesterday it was approximately one third general admin type stuff, one third client liaison type stuff and one third designing type stuff. If we ignore the fact that there isn't really such a thing as a typical day - that is a pretty much a typical day.

The same person then asked me what advice I would give a graduate today and the one thought I can't get rid of is that I think today graduates should be aware that if they want to get anywhere in this industry they'll have to start up on their own. Write a list of all the designers you admire; I'll bet all of them either run their own consultancy or used to, like Jonathan Ive. From Glaser and Fletcher through Ive and Saville all the way through to Eatock.

I don't mean you have to have a business degree or read the FT everyday, but just bear in the back of your mind that one day, probably, you'll have to run your own show.

Which reminds me of Iain's post about Mini CEO's. You see if we have a bunch of people who are thinking about starting up on their own, we'll then have an industry (and a pool of people) who have other skills than just designing. People who can read a balance sheet and who can present and string a sentence together and write and handle difficult clients and handle difficult staff and design stuff. And that will be a good thing.

Half thought over.

Should I sign up to this? You decide.

Hello,

I am contacting you regarding the new site that the Nouveau Jour agency is launching directed at bloggers.

The site is called Buzzbox and offers to send you little surprises specially and carefully prepared that will let you exclusively learn about offbeat marketing campaigns and new products. After that, it is up to you whether or not to relay the campaign; what’s important is that it entertains you as much as us.

All our clients, like MySpace, Foot Locker, Diesel, Calvin Klein and Disney, are already excited about this project. In short, the only thing missing is you!

So sign up now by clicking on the following link:
http://www.buzzbox.fr/uk/register.html

Happy buzzing,

Etc, etc

"The problem advertising agencies have got at the moment is that they keep getting asked to do things advertising agencies can't do."

Put that as a slide in your next presentation. That'll be a crowd pleaser.

Said by a good friend of mine this morning.

Ethical Policy

Thoughtful have an ethical policy.

It's on the website where everyone can look at it. We bank with the Co-op and so when asked we use their ethical policy as a guide to these issues. But we don't talk about it on our website.

Does anyone know of any graphic design companies (small or large) with an ethical policy?

Pantones in real life

Brilliant. I might play that game.

Pictures by RIVET sf, link via infosthetics.

Whizz Mail Here

Whilst we're on the subject of WMH. They have some nice stationery.

Churnmore

How many of us have sat in meetings that started like this.

I've just finished reading this excellent book by Richard Murray from Williams Murray Hamm. It's a hilarious little tale of the rebrand of a leading 'yellow fat' Churnmore. It's cute and clever and doesn't take itself seriously. It even looks like a tub of 'yellow fat'.

No one escapes the satire; designers, ad agencies, brand experts, brand managers, innovation companies.

It's one of those books that's a little too close to the truth for comfort, 'Play Angel's Advocate' is brilliant and reminded me of an agency that I heard mention 'Crazytivity' last week.

It's well worth a read. You can buy it here. You can't borrow mine I'm afraid, I want to keep it handy in the office.

Stratego

Another one for all you planners.

Busy, nooks, crannies, students, 80's guitar bands and laser cutting by hand.

We're busy at the moment. Which is nice. The picture below is Kingsley and Guy (who was on a placement) working on a nice brief for a nice client.

Busy is good for all sorts of reasons, but one of the reasons it's good is that everyone spreads out across our little big studio. Little teams working in all the nooks and crannies. Stuff happening everywhere.

I've probably bored you to death about this before, but one of the reasons for the big studio move was to have the space to do stuff. Before we only had 5 desks. Like just five desks and some room to walk around them. In the new gaff we've got 10 desks and a meeting room and a whole floor with a few Expedits, some great chairs, a stuffed sparrow hawk and stuff like that.

It means we can take on placements, invite people round to stuff bags, have more than one meeting simultaneously, good stuff like that.

Speaking of placements, our first ever official placement scheme is going really well. They don't drink any hot drinks, they love 80's guitar bands, they can come up with loads of ideas very quickly, they don't say a lot and the ones that do say a lot get on better. We're really enjoying having some new people around.

So far Jen, Marie, Nina, Rob, Luke, Katherine, Freya, Luke and Alan have all paid us a visit. We're hoping to extend the scheme and invite some of them back for a longer stint later on.

Freya even made us this incredible sign. Nice isn't it?

 

Interview

Yoni came in yesterday to interview Tom and I about our lives as designers.

That's Yoni and Tom and our lovely studio.

It was quite MA-ey if you know what I mean. Lots of questions about process and methodology. But it was all good fun and I enjoyed it.

It's weird, but we always try and go out of our way to help students out with projects like this. I get lots of emails saying, "thanks for replying to my email - no one else has!". We don't do this out of any great philanthropy, it just seems like the right thing to do. I guess the fact that four of the founders went to university together helps the benevolent feelings towards the students.

Whatever.

If you'd like to help Yoni with his research project, contact him here.

Original Design Grouch

You've probably seen this, but I hadn't so here we go.

Original Design Gangsta is a pretty funny video which you watch on YouTube. Found via Armin at Speak Up who doesn't like it. He's got a point.

Armin, for what it's worth I think it's OK. Funny. Ephemeral. But has design got too serious? Hell yeah. Have you turned into the ultimate design grouch? Erm... yeah. Probably.

Discuss. Please.

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.

Batman Onomatopoeias

Wonderful stuff. Many, many more here. Found via Poke's Nik.

The Internet

Ever wondered what the Internet looks like? It looks like this; just swilling around, looping through the air whilst you go about your daily business.

Blue bits: .net, .ca, .us (America)
Green bits: .com, .org (Global)
Yellow bits: .jp, .cn, .tw, .au (Asia-pacific)
Magenta bits: .de, .uk, .it, .pl, .fr (Europe)
Cyan bits: .br, .kr, .nl (Others)
White: Unknown

With thanks to Julian. Bigger version here.

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.

Advice: Cropping the waste around images

I'm not sure if everyone already knows this. You may not even want to know, but someone told me recently and I wished I'd been told sooner. So now I'm telling you.

Let's say you're working on one PSD. You've got several other images in PSD's that you need to bring into the main PSD. Portraits into a web page design, for example.

For this design all portraits have to be 100px x 100px, but your image is, say, 120px x 180px. So you've change the canvas size in Photoshop and you're ready to go.


Here's the portrait you want to bring into Photoshop. It was an oblong but you've changed the canvas size and now you're ready to drag it across.

When you drag the layer into the main PSD it comes across like this.

Ahh. That's the wrong proportion.

Why? Because changing the canvas size doesn't automatically crop the image. So you're still left the 'waste' bits of image around the side.

Here's a better way of doing it.

Resize the canvas as before - especially if we know our image has to be a predefined size like 100px x 100px and we've got several of them to do.

Then select all.

Then crop. This will get rid of all the 'waste' around the edges.

When you bring the image in this time, it's free of all that crap around the edges.

There you go.

I didn't know that, and now I do. I thought it was useful. I'm sure there will be an element of me teaching you Grannies to suck eggs, but did anyone find that useful?

In case you're wondering, the screen grabs were taken from this minisite we designed and built for the wonderful Carmen Jones show at the Southbank Centre.

John Sorrell

Can anyone put me in touch with John Sorrell?

Drop me an email, thanks.

Apple Share

Apple want you to share your iPhone stories with them.

I will be intrigued to see if they do anything interesting with this.

Similar Diversity

Some fantastic info graphics over here at Similar Diversity.

Info graphics? Or are they just graphics?

Anyway... characters from the main religions are aligned alphabetically, Then their name and arc size is calculated from their total word count in all the books and loads of other stats...

What's even more surprising is that my old friend 'Scratch' Sagmeister was involved. All this found via the excellent infosthetics.com