Noisy Decent Graphics

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.

Warhol at Tate Modern

Russell, don't bother. You neither Phil.

Went to see Warhol at Tate Modern on Saturday, err, night. It was ok. Not enough famous stuff for me, but maybe I'm too mainstream. Anyway 15yo liked it very much which was a bonus. 

The Tate was virtually empty. Late on only the Warhol was open but it was very eerie. Strange times.

D&AD Presidency - why I'm making space for others

I love D&AD and I've always been a passionate supporter. I wanted to win the coveted Black Pencil from when I was young and I've wanted to be D&AD President for as long as I can remember. Today I should have been announced as the latest President.

I've been the Deputy President for a year and every other year the Deputy becomes the President. But I look around at the world and I see too many people who look like me, middle-aged white men, in positions like this. So I've decided to stand aside and make space for others.

I hope this small act encourages other people who look like me to do the same. It may achieve nothing, but it at least gives everyone an example to point at.

I want to make one thing very clear. This is not a criticism of D&AD. This statement is not really about D&AD, it's just that when I look back at previous Presidents in all organisations, there has not been enough diversity. That's an indisputable fact. 

Naresh Ramchandani will now become President, followed by Rebecca Wright. Kate Stanners has done a brilliant job through a very difficult time and she's just launched the first ever fully digital annual. In Naresh and then Rebecca there will be a focus on sustainability followed by the first ever President from education. What a brilliant position for D&AD to be in. I will remain a Trustee and look forward to continuing to support D&AD.

Huge congratulations to Naresh on becoming President and Rebecca on becoming Deputy. D&AD is a fantastic organisation, doing great work in education, it’s still the very hardest award to win and we should all support them. 

Thanks to Tim, Dara and all the D&AD Trustees who have supported me in this decision. Thanks to all those who have enabled me to be in a position to make this decision.

For completeness the statement from D&AD is here and there's a good interview with Naresh about next year for D&AD in Campaign here (paywall).

 

Me holding up a D&AD flag in Bucharest in 2007.

 

Judging D&AD Awards in 2010.

 

Winning a Black Pencil for GOV.UK in 2013.

 

Revisiting Adaptive Design by @genmon

Great post by one of the Matts summarising "Adaptive Design". A concept many years old but one that gained a digital prominence in the early 2000s. Well worth reading the full post here. Screws not glue etc.

Might have a go at this "I’d love to for designers to share their ideas for future adaptable iPhones and adaptable apps, expand the discourse, and pushing back on the status quo."

The UX of Lego Interface Panels - I wish I'd written this

This blog post by George Cave is so good. Best proper blog post I've read in years. I wish I'd written it.

It's not just about Lego, it's about design and interface more broadly. Take this point and the links off to the contrasting Dyson and Audi approach to car interfaces. Dyson - all on one screen. Audi - controls on individual parts.

It's a rabbit warren of wonderfulness like that. Glorious. Read it all The UX of Lego Interface Panels by George Cave.

 

 

Architecture by AirBnb

We rented an AirBnb by the sea the other day. This was the bathroom. 

This is not a bathroom designed for someone who uses it every day. This is a bathroom designed to catch your eye in the photos on AirBnb. I expect there's loads of this. 

Presumably whole houses are being designed purely for people scrolling through AirBnb.

Anyway.

YouTubers Corner

I don't have the appropriate close up photograph to illustrate this point so you'll have to look at the picture above, take my word for it and use your imagination.

Expectations successfully lowered let's get to the point.

I went for a run the other day and ended up at Speakers Corner. At first I thought it was very quiet. There were quite a few 'speakers' but they only had an audience of 3 or 4. No huge crowds gathered around one brilliant orator like I've seen before and you've seen in the movies.

Speakers Corner in the 70s. Taken from Leonard Bentley's Flickr account.

As I got closer I saw that there were lots of speakers and they all had crowds 3 or 4 but they also all had microphones and cameras on tripod. The tripod was the give away - a proper semi-pro recording set up.

Presumably what they're doing making these speeches for YouTube and just using Speakers Corner as the location. The physical back drop but also for the YouTube title and the SEO. All that. Turn up at the weekend with a few mates, set up the AV kit and make your speech. Why reach hundreds at the real Speakers Corner when you can reach millions at the virtual one. A quick search on YouTube reveals that to be the case. I'm not linking to anything here, you can Google for yourself.

Of course. It's always so obvious isn't it?

A few screengrabs purely to illustrate the point. I'm not endorsing any of the speakers in any way. 

 

Arrows blogging

In the glory days of Peak Graphic Design Blogging (circa 2009) everyone would have gone crazy for all the arrows you see everywhere these days. Fat ones, thin ones, Mexico 68 ones, ones they did in Word ones. Keyboards burning with all the posting. Oh how incensed everyone would have been!

I guess there's still time. Or maybe they're all on Insta now.

Shop windows do not accept pedants

Saw this in a shop window in East the other day. Feels like the language is wrong.

On the one hand it's just a sort of malapropism, where the PayPoint and British Gas should be swapped. But that doesn't work because they're not trying to explain British Gas's payment policies in 6 words. What they're trying to say is if you are a customer of British Gas you can't pay for that at the PayPoint till. But they're also trying to use as few words as possible so it can be a Big Red Sign.

If you tried to pay at the PayPoint til it would be rejected, so in that way PayPoint does not accept British Gas.

But it reads like a protest sign from a march where British Gas has done something terrible. Or maybe British Gas have lost an election to PayPoint and are refusing to leave office.

Or as Russell says in the much better, much longer blog post from 8 years ago in reference to this sign, "on one level it's just a stupid typo, on another it's a brilliant seed for a short story about a sentient restaurant that's trying to stay close to you, and the mystery of the inconvenience it caused. But - most interestingly - it's a story about the meaning created in collaboration, presumably between someone who didn't have English as a first language and Microsoft Word."

Picture taken by Russell, borrowed from his Flickr.

And either way, in both cases, it does not matter. Because you know exactly what they mean.

Haven't blogged for a while, so hello. 

Another terrible chart (we've been here before)

After this one the other day, here's another bad chart. Or as Michael puts it, "This is one of the stupidest charts I've ever seen and I can't believe that adult human beings were involved in its creation". His tweet here.

We've been here before, in November 2008 during the "credit crunch". In fact I wrote A LOT of blog posts about it at the time. I even did a whole series of guest posts with advice for designers to help them get through a recession. Included posts from an accountant and an agency CEO. 

Yeah, I know. Different times.

Anyway the best thing to read is probably this blog post by Phil - Graphs that lie.

Down and to the right

There are lots of charts like this at the moment. I really don't understand the point of the chart.

I mean, yeah, obviously. And yeah, good. Well not good, but appropriate and so good. It's exactly what you'd expect to see, isn't it?

I guess the stark lines are very attractive to editors and, yes, to graphic designers.

Anyway. Not helpful, sorry.

On message

Out for daily exercise I was struck by all the dystopian, Orwellian screens. STAY HOME.

If this had happened 20 years ago, 15 years ago, we didn't have all these screens. I guess there were press ads and posters, but they don't feel as scary. More static, obviously.

The phrase has stuck. STAY HOME. It's simple and fits onto these funny screens well. Same message every time. Very on message we would have said in the old days.

I'm not complaining - it's good. It's necessary. I'm just recording it here for posterity. Timehop.

You've come to expect this sort of behaviour from the BT Tower but it's odd to see this from a theatre and a cinema. Presumably it's not bought media - the National definitely isn't. Will they be used this way in the future? Register to vote? Get out and vote? Queen's birthday? Where's the bar now?

And there's this too. A clever YouTube montage of all the coronavirus ads. It makes its point well. Every brand is saying the same thing. The same message.

I mean, I agree. But what else are they supposed to say? They could say nothing, that's a solid idea. But if they have the media booked anyway and if they sell online then saying 'thank you' and 'hang in there' and 'stay home' is not a bad idea.

Anyway. Stay home.