CERN Higgs Boson V Comic Sans

Watching the news from CERN via Twitter yesterday made for interesting viewing as one by one whispers of a design faux-pas echoed round the room and rash of Comic Sans hashtags broke out. The Higgs Boson, the suspected key ingredient in the composition of our universe and Comic Sans, a much maligned font designed by then Microsoft employee Vincent Connare in 1993, tussled for superiority on Twitter for the duration of the presentation. The reaction to the use of Comic Sans in such a prestigious announcement was akin to many as a social faux-pas on a scale of open flies or a small amount of faecal matter on ones cheek and threatened to overpower the statement on life at the very centre of our existence.

To give those who are unaware just how much this font is hated by some in the design community simply head to one of a number of sites that call from the outright banning of it, such as the deftly named Ban Comic Sans site, or the recent The Comic Sans Project.

Does usage of the Comic Sans font at CERN count as inappropriate use? Or, as the presentation was broadcast globally, did it fit the remit of widespread family friendly use?

I spoke to Vincent Connare, father of Comic Sans, and asked him what he thought of the furore. “Scientists and software engineers have skills and knowledge but often lack good design and dress sense” admits Connare. “I worked at Microsoft where it was not uncommon to see people in corporate t-shirts at the Christmas ball. I think it showed that Fabiola Gianotti [the particle physicist in charge of the ATLAS experiment] is an intelligent caring woman.”

What would Connare of selected from his list of font creations? “Courier for code and probably a Scotch Roman for normal text” he responds. Does yesterday's outrage at the use of Comic Sans say more about the design community or the science community? “It shows tunnel vision and not liberal thinking” he says, “not everyone in the world uses Syntax or has a Barcelona chair.” You get the feeling that he's in familiar territory here.

Back to Twitter and the vent for the man on the street yesterday lunchtime, I said hello to one of the dissenters, @jeeveswilliams, and asked them why they felt moved to tweet. “Partially because my follower base knows me as someone who has a passion for typography design and thus, they kind of expect me to tweet things on this subject, but also because the use of Comic Sans in such an environment genuinely struck me as quite out of place, quirky, and odd' says @jeeveswilliams, the human handle to which is a mightily erudite schoolboy by the name of Steve Williams. He then goes on to explain that “good typography is very much invisible. The fact that more people commented on the use of Comic Sans than the information the text was conveying shows a poor choice of typography.”

So what does the scientific community have to say? Speaking to Dr. Anais Rassat, Cosmologist at EPFL in Switzerland and regular columnist at the Huffington Post she responds with “sorry, but I don't really have any comments on the comic sans issue”. I ask her whether perhaps the scientific community sometimes has difficulties in relating to the wider world and asked her what actually happened whilst everyone was coughing and pointing to the typeface on the screen. “The results [of the experiment] also show a "glimpse" that something might be there. With today's data we cannot say if this glimpse is a glitch or an observation. We will have to wait for future data to find out. This may sound disappointing for the general public, but this is also what science is about.” Damn right.

Back to Mr Williams on Twitter to help clarify the Comic Sans, use of. “I think they went with Comic Sans because it's renowned for its readability and visual friendliness . It could also have been used merely because it's a default typeface bundled with Windows and thus, they spontaneously chose one of the first faces they found.”

Researching Connare I find that as well as a master of typography he's also an avid photographer. Guess who he's photographed and turns out he's good friends with? Drum roll please for the medium for the scientific community, and scientist working on the Higgs Boson project, Professor Brian Cox.

There is balance and harmony in the universe.

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Telling Tales: Brand Experience and the Thrill of the Overture

Once upon a time, not that long ago, there lived a great number of creative agencies that believed that the art of story telling could assist their clients...True story.

'By now you’ve surely gotten the memo: Storytelling is “it” in business and communication today' spun Tony LaPorte, Environmental Branding Director at Milwaukee based experience design firm Kahler Slater in an article last week in Forbes. Entitled Storytelling Is Overlooked in Workplace Design LaPorte extols the virtues of environmental branding programs that harvest the key stories from a companies history and incorporate them into the work space through re-designed décor. Interesting concept.

'Today, brands are competing with filmmakers, writers and entertainers, not other brands' announce Story Worldwide 'the world's first post-advertising agency' (that's not post in the letter delivery or billboard sense of the word, that's future talk). Partly true, but isn't that just brand sex boast for 'we're rollin with Tarantino here not Terry's Chocolate Orange'?

There's a nice slice of recent advertising history on the subject by Kirk Cheyfitz, CEO & Chief Editorial Officer in the New York City arm of Story Worldwide entitled Everyone's a Storyteller.Not. There is certainly a neurosis, as pointed out, more or less, by Cheyfitz, that this is perhaps because that no one really wants to admit to being a straight forward ad man these days, and of course, the world of advertising has changed beyond all recognition. After all, who can blame them, or indeed the pet store for wanting to befriend us on Facebook after a casual date to buy hamster food; we're living in an opt-in culture. We need to be entertained and wooed dammit.

Perhaps one of the most succinct pieces currently doing the rounds on the subject of story telling in brand experience comes from US /UK based Method with the latest in their series of 10x10 insights entitled 10x10 XII: Raiders of the Lost Overture by Paul Valerio. 

Now before anybody starts accusing me of shoddy journalistic bias, I want to tell you that I know Method, I worked for them this year. I know their story, because I'm in the process of (eventually) finishing it at this very moment in time. Yes they got me in to tell their story. I'm not quite in show business but Valerio is spot on when he says “to get it right we might as well borrow (i.e. steal) ideas from those who know best — our friends in show business. How do great plays and movies prepare their audience for their stories? How do they prime us all to be engaged regardless of what mood we are in? It’s simple: with an overture. Great brand experiences do exactly the same thing.” Valerio even gets in something that will please the story telling work space people by bringing up the recent re-design of terminal 2 at San Francisco airport as an excellent exercise in well-designed overture.

Method have summed up with the word overture what the others are already saying tangentially. An overture is the smell of freshly baked bread, slightly smudged lip stick, a sense of familiarity yet excitement for what may happen, a frisson.

One of Method's early admirers is Craig Mod, writer, (book) designer, publisher and developer, currently working with Flipboard. In his excellent Post– Artifact Books & Publishing essay of June this year asks us 'just where does the digital artifact begin and end? When is it ‘completed?’' Mod is talking about books but his observations on the change in publishing should ring true with those in branding. Perhaps creative agencies are heading towards creating overtures to a post artifact system of commerce — seamless and endless.The End.

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Bracket Foreword - Vol 3 Education

*This is a copy of the text I wrote for Bracket Vol. 3 (out December 2011) a Singapore based design journal. GO AND BUY IT

 

'We don't need no education' so sang Pink Floyd in 1979, one of the most well educated bands in pop history. Idiots. Education needs defending and protecting, it's a fragile state rather like love or democracy. If we are fortunate, we are educated to self-teach from a young age, a love affair with learning that continues throughout our lives. It's an investment in emotion.

The prevailing 'cool' of my youth was the Pink Floyd mentality of 'fight the system, don't believe the hype and fight for your freedom of expression'. All important ideas that still hold true, however what this simplistic mantra leaves out is the simple fact that education also is an accessory to aid critical thinking and creative collaboration, it provides access to, and analysis of, information and feeds curiosity and imagination. In short, knowledge is power.

Twelve years on from my graduation from art college in the U.K. And it's the economic, not the emotional, investment in education is being called to the fore by current students in art and design. I studied fine art, one of the most abstract degree courses possible. What was the point of it? Can you teach creativity? Can you teach love? No. But you can teach the ability to spot creativity or love when you stumble across it. You can inspire confidence in self belief. Sometimes the argument in education seems to go against free will and creative spirit, but increasingly it's the fact that education has become a business and a production line that destroys the innate power of education and it's ability for change. The students that demonstrate on the streets of London on behalf of education act like dissatisfied customers, for that is what they have become. Further education has become an ugly business ruled by statistics and the prevailing culture of professionalism.

It's therefore heartening to read the answers put forth by the creatives in this edition of Bracket who remind us that education isn't just a number crunching production line of worker bees but its also the route to self expression and happiness. The consensus is that education never stops, it's a lifelong adventure. Some of us had good experiences of education growing up, others bad, but again the prevailing shared piece of wisdom is to keep going, get stuck in and jump into the unknown. Have self belief. The other highly visual clue to the path of education revealed here is that self expression is a driving force in the quest for knowledge.

Education shouldn't just be about sliding into a job at the end of it. We will always need pioneers to overwhelm the status quo. We need more pioneers to assist thinking on creative education. The role of teacher or tutor is an extremely demanding position to take, it's almost a cliché to suggest that, it's a truism. Each of us knows from experience that we would not be doing what we do today if it were not for those that taught us. How many of us are putting our experience to use by teaching the next generation in whatever capacity we can? Different cultures adopt different approaches, the Dutch creative system allows many designers work a studio practice and put in a number of hours to teach students, it is almost a duty of honour. Sadly this progressive system is being eroded in many countries at present due to economic constraints, educators cannot access their students and engage in a productive manner.

It is assumed that creativity will blossom anywhere but it needs constant nurturing. We need to carry on tending the environment to allow it to grow. Education is one of the richest natural resources we have. We do need Education, that's something we've learnt.

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Designer Fund - Starting Up The Empowerment Of Designers

Designer Fund – Starting Up The Empowerment Of Designers This article first appeared in The Huffington Post UK site on 5/12/12

With the second round of applications underway from December 1st running until January 15th Silicon Valley based Designer Fund aims to put designers in front of investors and mentors to start up enterprises with a foundation in design. Design is a big word but it makes sense to give those that create the opportunity to dictate how their ideas develop into businesses and products.

London and Ahmedabad, India, based Superflux are one of ten start ups to assisted by Designer Fund having applied back in July. Why did they choose to apply to the fund? “Their website said they would give initial seed funding, mentorship, spaces to work and develop a prototype. We were in very early stages, so any funding and mentorship would be great, that's what we were looking for” explains Anab Jain, co-founder (with Jon Ardern) of Superflux.

Is there an attraction to Silicon Valley in that it's the home of start up? Is this a unique selling point for Designer Fund? “From our perspective that was the man attraction” continues Jain, “we had been looking at funds here in the UK too, for instance the Technology Strategy Board UK who also fund startups but it looked like we needed to produce match funding. What attracted us to Designer Fund was the word 'designer' and the fact that they wanted to help designers become entrepreneurs, one could immediately sense an empathy that was unique.” What does the word entrepreneur mean to Superflux? “I guess it means that we 'make our idea real' - as designers - we don't wait for clients or commissions, but go for it on our back, and get a product into the market, see what happens” says Jain.

Is there a mentality gap between the US and UK in risk taking and thinking of design, not as an add on? “We had heard about the openness of the valley folks, but really its been amazing, the response, the speed and just the attitude” notes Jain, “however things have changed a lot in the UK recently there is a lot more interest and enthusiasm. Nonetheless, just from experience, if the folks at Designers Fund put us in touch with a valley based potential investor or mentor they immediately get back to us, chat with us, and want to know where we are at and want to stay in touch, but on the other hand,from the introductions we had from them for UK based people? We haven't heard back from any of them.”

A pity, there is plenty to choose from in the form of government funded initiatives, loosely connected to government being seen 'to do the right thing'. Tech City a recent stamp of approval from Whitehall of the Old Street area of London being a creative 'hub' - how I hate that word, appears to be a top heavy civil service exercise in cool, band wagon jumping after the band has already played venture. We need to reach out further. Can Designer Fund help the globalisation of innovation economy or are we all still bound by national divide? “I really hope that would be possible, but perhaps we might not quite be there yet. Taxation laws are very different between UK and US for instance, US investors are hesitant to invest in UK companies unless we moved there” explains Jain, “our goal will be to attract UK investors, especially when the government seems so keen on helping entrepreneurs at home, and with the Tech City buzz, we really hope people at home will be the ones to call on.”

Should we rely on the government for change when it comes to imaginative solutions to technology and design? Perhaps we can help them, perhaps we don't need them. A difficult union for sure. Perhaps we just need a bit of Californian sunny disposition. The Designer Fund is accepting new applicants for investments until January 15th, visit The Designer Fund for more information Tweet

The Real Space to Create

The last three years have seen the Android operating system freeing us from the desktop and allowing constant, consistent, online connection at all times. This shift away from a ‘feet under the table’ office mentality in digital access has been aided and abetted by the invention of applications that bypass the usual data input required to switch on, log on and search for data.

Michael Wolff, contributing editor for Wired, in a provocative article co –written with editor in chief, Chris Anderson, entitled The Web Is Dead. Long live the Internet, in issue 18.02 of the magazine, stated "Since the dawn of the commercial Web, technology has eclipsed content. The new business model is to try to let the content — the product, as it were — eclipse the technology."

In turn, Anderson feels that the Internet is now developing beyond its ‘adolescent phase’ as he reasons "as it moved from your desktop to your pocket, the nature of the Net changed. The delirious chaos of the open Web was an adolescent phase subsidized by industrial giants groping their way in a new world. Now they’re doing what industrialists do best — finding choke points."

These choke points are the cash points for the financial interest in online transaction. Apps are the most controlled advance yet that allow for mass wealth acquisition through data exchange. It is unique in the fact that it provides content providers with the opportunity to finally cash in on unique data exchange. These content providers, in the creative sense (if we are to take the technology versus content approach of Wolff’s model) are now in a position to brand their content individually as a point of access away from the Google-centric web of SEO search.

Looking at how the digital revolution has affected the creative industry in the U.K. we can see that it’s blossomed in some likely respects, repeated everywhere that the Internet has touched, over the past five years, most notably in the creative tertiary sector: in areas of marketing, branding and advertising. There has of course been the rise of the creative agency or digital agency that has muddied the waters for traditional advertising agencies, the ‘360 degree’ one stop shop which has become the benchmark for this now tertiary business. The use of innovation in these areas is well documented and only too visible in the seemingly one-size fits all approach to art, culture and commerce that is now accepted as the norm.

Claudia Bernett, in the 10 x10 series for Method entitled Place, Space, and the Mobile Interface ends her review of the current situation by stating “Marshall McLuhan famously said, 'First we shape our tools, thereafter they shape us.' Our mobile devices are shaping us today. The convergence of location-awareness, mobility, and physicality is changing the way we live, and forever altering both the digital and physical landscapes. Mobile experiences are no longer afterthoughts or extensions–they are at the center of our lives. And, they must be at the center of brand experiences in the 21st century. Those brands that create meaningful mobile experiences that connect with consumers will be those that stay relevant in this rapidly changing world."

I would like to extend this train of thought by looking at the word ‘meaningful’ and deciphering it from a creative standpoint. This is the nub of the communication process we employ; our words, actions and output (product) must connect, whether it’s passage esoteric or exoteric. If brands cannot merely perform a market research test in the high street any longer, what standards does the creative sector now need to perform to, if it in fact does? For we are now presuming that the creative industry is a retail broker rather than an ideology are we not?


How are traditional cultural institutions responding to digital innovation?

What is the yardstick for ‘meaningful digital experience’ in the creative sector?
Approximately one year ago David Gilbert, chairman of the Contemporary Arts Society set up an initiative that aims to generate up to 30% extra revenue for UK museums and galleries. CultureLabel is a one-stop online shop that brings cultural institutions under one brand umbrella. Peter Tullin, Managing Partner at CultureLabel.com takes up the story, “there needs to be a strong central idea at the heart of any new platform that requires a partnership to make it work and they (the supplying institutions) recognised the value of supporting an aggregator so the customer could buy from multiple museums on a single website. We began with a portal model which sent customers direct to museum sites but we quickly realised that people wanted to not only view the products on a single website but buy them from multiple partners in a single transaction just like Amazon Marketplace so we responded to the market research and the museums were quick to recognise the logic”

It’s interesting to note that in the space of one year the mode of delivery has changed from a portal model to that more akin to an App. Other App friendly concepts that have blossomed over the past year or so include Wallpapers Milan App and The Museum of London’s Street Museum App that uses Augmented Reality to connect users with the past views of the streets of London when they hit locations. Tullin is quick to observe that “the way you can interact with content and the gallery through applications like Foursquare are also really interesting where the crowd is rating and interacting in the museum space without any real official connection which offers as much threat as opportunity if you are not in tune with where these techs are going.”

The perceived threat i.e. Ownership or crowd sourced opinion splitting carefully built up curatorial and editorial identity is something of an Achilles heal in media circles but has dealt the creative institutions and CultureLabel something of a backhander. Another project under the CultureLabel portfolio is The Digital Museum which is an agency aimed directly at the core digital foundations of cultural institutions. They offer ‘independent expertise to imagine and deliver your digital roadmap’ and are peerless in their timely offering to a sector of the creative industries that is financially pinched by government spending cuts and the recession. Tullin explains “the Digital Museum project was conceived as a way of helping museums, galleries and artists utilise new technologies with a specific focus on developing new commercial revenue streams. For example, we have just developed a digital ticketing platform that was used by the Courtauld Gallery for their Michelangelo's Dream exhibition to allow people to have tickets sent to their mobile phones, the first time this has been used in a UK exhibition. The pilot was really successful with thousands of people buying their tickets in this way and the gallery is now using it for all online ticket sales. It seems clear to me that people are used to benefiting from these technologies in other parts of their daily lives so museums and galleries need to be early adopters also especially given the collapsing costs of these sorts of technologies.”

These museums and galleries are playing catch up and CultureLabel is providing the force with which to bridge the gap.

The Tate Gallery is currently addressing the divide by asking what will the museum of the future be like? A talk at the Tate Modern on September 7th 2010 on Museums and Mobiles in the Age of Social Media will bring museum workers together for what they promise will be an opportunity to “get up to speed with the latest thinking in this area. Museum professionals from around the world with in-depth experience in mobile content design, development and evaluation lead the day's discussions.” Strange that CultureLabel, despite their involvement with the Tate in other areas are not on the panel, there still appears to be, on the very surface at least, some divide between the academic institutionalised view of technology and the real commercial angle.

Lee McCormack, founder of OCULAS group and designer of the Ovei - an immersion environment that has evolved alongside the digital growth and innovations of the past five years - is currently seeking to integrate his product into cultural institutions digital agenda.

“As a consumer, the idea of exploring a portal where all cultural institutions have a voice is a very compelling one” states McCormack. “When I originally conceived the idea of the Ovei as a place where you could control your own environment completely, the technology I was thinking of was basically experiential; movies, music, voice and video communications and productive technologies that meant you could write, create artwork or music, edit films or just simply meditate. What's changed since then is the Internet, specifically social networking. Social networking opens up the possibilities for what the Ovei can do, where it can be used and who can benefit from it. The idea that we can enter a physical environment, in the Ovei, where we control our own experience and through our social networks share that experience with the people we want to is very compelling, even more so when considering the depth and quality of the experience itself.”

To pick up on the ‘meaningful’ strand from earlier on, it appears that McCormack is attempting to make physical the relationship between technology and individual in a way that delves back into location based hubs but with a multi sensory physically immersive experience. It’s an interesting proposition, even if taken as purely academic one. Whether galleries and museums should tailor content and serve it up in a more sterile, functional delivery, or to develop more 'designed' phyiscal spaces then perhaps the current retail model for digital display and service gives rise to - to credit the content not the delivery, or to credit both, the quest for physical digital space could be an overarching goal that settles dispute over academic and creative versus commercial values.

Speaking of the value of creating physical spaces to conduct digital experiences McCormack observes “Ovei used to be a difficult idea to sell to people, the idea that we should have an environment where we can shut ourselves away and engage with the activities that interests us. To me it seemed obvious and inevitable that eventually the need for such a space would become more important.” What would these innovations look like if they were physically implemented in real space, beyond augmented reality into ‘real’ reality?

I hope that current debate begins to tackle the question, the future will not just be accessible in the palm of our hands; it lies in the walls, floors and deep into the physical fabric of our future, embracing all our senses, only then will it be totally meaningful.

Decode at the V&A: Interviews with Louise Shannon (Curator) & Francesco Draisci (Exhibition Designer)

Interview with Francesco Draisci about the design of Decode from Grafik Magazine on Vimeo.

Interview with Louise Shannon, co-curator of Decode at the V&A from Grafik Magazine on Vimeo.

David Pearson Profile

When I arrive at David Pearson’s studio in the romantic sounding Back Hill in Clerkenwell, London, he’s busy in the ladies toilets, washing up plates from last night’s fish and chip supper. He’s immediately likeable; self-effacing, irreverent, energetic and funny. Best known for his book design work with Penguin Books, but with a portfolio that spans several other publishing houses and a glorious spew of awards and countless nominations, at the age of thirty two, Pearson is by far the youngest designer I’ve ever interviewed for a profile article.

Born in Cleethorpes and raised in Grimsby, the son of a shoe shop owner, his first run in with graphic design was a man who came to make a sign for his father’s shop. “He wore brogues and that fact impressed me” recalls Pearson. The brogue wearing sign maker turned out to be the local art and design foundation teacher, a man called Mike Wilks and Pearson found that his love of history and art could become a career if he directed his passion towards graphic design. Later on his tutors at St Martins, Phil Baines and Susan Dixon would lead to a further enlightenment and collaboration.

We start the interview by talking about Penguin Books, the publishing house that jettisoned Pearson into the design establishment. Pearson’s fascination with the history of the company started early in life as he reminisces “I remember my parents had a box set of Penguin books with multicoloured spines, I used them like toy building blocks, taking them out and rearranging them, at the age of 3 or 4, it all started then.” Later on the rich design history of Penguin provided Pearson with plenty of scope to research and arrive at his own conclusions about his own working practices. “I was drawn to the modernist element” explains Pearson, “the early 1960’s period of book design by people like Alan Fletcher and Derek Birdsall. There was an interest twist in the very abstracted, sometimes sinister, imagery that they used. I like the fact that at times you have to decode the image to understand the context and subject of the book.”

Pearson’s personal interest in the company was soon picked up by the in house team at Penguin who were only too happy to let him loose on some of the more onerous design tasks “I rebranded all their reference books” explains Pearson, “I was a junior designer and working on reference books were seen as a bit of a bum deal for most people, but I’ve got that kind of brain, I really wanted to do it, it fascinated me.”

Pearson was in the right place at the right time. The company was gearing up to it’s 70th anniversary and having a willing and able designer interested in the companies archives meant that that Penguin was able to get far more out of the arrangement than if they’d hired someone less passionate about the history of the place.

It would be an exaggeration to say that Pearson exposed the archives single handed but he has certainly been an excellent design ambassador, a key player in the re-awakening of the brand to a point where it’s now impossible at the moment to think about Penguin without its associated design history. We talk about the current trend by Penguin to commercially milk their design ancestry with everything from mugs to tea towels and deckchairs “they are flogging it to death” muses Pearson “its got a little bit hideous hasn’t it?”.

We then move on to talk about Pearson’s design work within the organisation. When I ask him whether working for Penguin was an easy ride he astutely points out “It was an experiment from their point of view. I had a free hand, it made me look like a better designer. I got given more responsibility and in turn more freedom. It was a joy to work with a team that allowed you to do, within reason, whatever you wanted to do.”

One example of this was a logo redesign. “Back in 2002 Pentagram were given the job of tweaking the iconic Penguin logo, someone new arrived at head office and they wanted to make a statement” explains Pearson. I decided to create my own logo as originally there were two logos for the company” Pearson was even allowed to use his ‘unofficial’ logo on the books he designed, which reveals not only the trust and faith Penguin must have had in their junior but also, perhaps, a glimmer of what made Penguin the iconic publishing house in the first place; giving the designer the freedom to explore and exploit the brand.

By 2004 Pearson had started work on, what would become the backbone of his book design portfolio, The Great Ideas Series.



Each volume contains twenty titles; each title is a classic philosophical work. Pearson was keen to collaborate on the task and invited Alistair Hall and his ex tutors Phil Baines and Susan Dixon to join him. “When David first mentioned the series it sounded exciting” explains Baines, “his first roughs, although slightly inaccurate historically, clearly showed what he wanted to do: balance historical sensitivity with the particular communicative requirements of book covers. He asked Catherine Dixon and I to give historical pointers and asked if we’d like to contribute designs as well. We ended up doing designs for books whose writing pre-dated print, at that point David felt that we would be more comfortable with that area than he.” The series was a success and Penguin commissioned four more, a commission that is still being worked on by the same team today.

Further collaboration with Phil Baines was possible in 2005 when Pearson initiated Penguin by Design, a book charting 70 years of paperback design. He asked Baines to write the book and although Baines admits he wasn’t sure he knew enough about the subject he said yes. “The design had already been suggested and we talked about how much text, and of what kind, and went from there” states Baines, I made a couple of visits to the archive, I fed him shopping lists, and he’d make a shortlist from which we edited back to make the book. There was a lot of irreverent email banter, quite a lot of beer, late nights, and pushing the deadline.”

Talking to Pearson about archive research it’s clear that it’s the lynch pin to his success as a designer. “As you can see I’ve got an ‘archive tan’” laughs Pearson “I spend a lot of time in doors, probably too much for my own good, conducing research. It makes me feel like I’ve made the right design decisions, that confidence in history is important to me”.



I ask him whether or not this leads to innovation or retrospection? “I look for the things that went wrong with the print process that don’t happen any more” states Pearson, “misregistering for instance or images cropped in an unusual, slightly scary way. I like the back story. I try to move modern print back to that point, giving the reader something that challenges the eye a bit. But it is contrived, I don’t know where my work is going to sit in a few years time, is it going to fail to keep its place?”

My question, although basic, touched a nerve. Later, via email Pearson responds “I feel slightly uncomfortable with the retro label as it feels a little too simplistic perhaps. In the briefing processes we were keen to avoid producing pure pastiche; rather we tried to provide the work a modern – or even post-modern – twist. This is perhaps most apparent with Great Ideas where quite often you are seeing two visual worlds collide.”

Pearson, Baines, Dixon and Hall have certainly managed to keep the pace and variation and Pearson is satisfied with the work. “Generally speaking, I have liked the covers more as we have progressed: partly because I tend to feel embarrassed about my older work and partly because I feel I have taken more risks as I’ve become more senior” muses Pearson. “That said, I will always look most fondly at certain covers in the first series which helped me to realise the potential of the project. In particular, Phil Baines’s cover for Meditations showed me that I could push things much further than I had originally imagined, since it broke so many established rules” explains Pearson.

At the time of my visit, Pearson was due to finish the fifth and final series of Great Ideas. I got the feeling that this may be a turning point in his career and asked him whether he felt that ‘the penguin had become the albatross around his neck’.

His mood turns sanguine and nostalgic as he ponders on the series and the possibility of the end of his working relationship with the brand that he has loved since childhood. “I have loved working on a project that seems to compliment my own skill base” recalls Pearson, “that said, 100 covers is a lot, some might say too many, so it feels right to bring things to a close. I also worry about becoming typecast.”

A book designer worrying about being typecast, there is a joke in there somewhere. We move on to talk about the wider role of the book designer, is it, for instance the job of a designer to sell the book? Does the designer have a responsibility to the author? And what is it like to work for a contemporary author rather than one, like all bar one of the Great Ideas series, authors that died hundreds of years ago?

“Let’s face it,” explains Pearson “had many of the authors that I’ve worked on been around today they wouldn’t of liked what I’d done, they would of thought my designs as wholly inappropriate” Providing us with an example Pearson states “with Chinua Achebe, the only living author in the Great Ideas series, I had to get an approval and he rejected it straight off. The design was meant to be kitsch, tongue in cheek and he thought that people wouldn’t get that quick enough. I’m thinking ‘can we push it further - how cheeky can I be? I want to make it B movie. The book is based on An Image of Africa by Joseph Conrad, it has a safari lounge ascetic, it’s an interesting situation, maybe I should of spoken to Achebe before I started work on it”

Putting Penguin to one side we then look at the work that Pearson has created for Éditions Zulma, a French publishing house that he’s been working with since 2006. Clearly more relaxed and an ease with the workflow Pearson explains the process, “it’s more of a meditative process for these. The covers are a result of me experimenting with form, without the weight of the text on my shoulders, as I can’t read French, so it’s probably more closely aligned with knitting as a pastime.”

Apart from ‘knitting’ Pearson has been busy setting up his own publishing house called White’s Books with Jon Jackson, who is the ‘brains behind it’ according to Pearson.

Using classic literature which is copyright free they’ve been able to repackage the great works under the art direction of Pearson who has commissioned illustrators to produce cover designs. “These are illustrators that I greatly admire and for selfish reasons, have always wanted to work with,” explains Pearson. “It genuinely feels like we offer an attractive brief, under the auspice of a non-repeating, ‘narrative’ pattern” Pearson is keen to point out that he likes to work with illustrators who produce ‘things’ be it lino cut or rubber stamps. The project is an excellent vehicle for his interest in collaboration and book design and so far he’s worked with a wide group of illustrators including Petra Börner and Stanley Donwood. Aside from the design Pearson has been learning about the book business as a whole, “I want to get experience in the industry, I want to learn about books are made and sold” reveals Pearson, “it’s a murky business dealing with Amazon but I’ve got to learn”.

I ask what will fill the void left by Penguin and Pearson says that he’s going to paint some shelves and watch the World Cup. He shows me his guilty pleasure, some 1970’s Corgi books front covers with scantily clad ladies draped over the titles and we talk about our future and the future of publishing.

Pearson is arming himself, like many of our generation, with tools beyond his profession in order to survive. The irreverent humour and the self effacing nature are not superficial tactics, they are as necessary to him as his research, or as Pearson puts it…“I really don’t know where my future lies. This industry changes so quickly. I just hope I’m fleet footed enough to go with it. If not, I am quite a handy window cleaner.”

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Victor Moscoso interview in Grafik

Sitting by the pool after my arrival in San Fran, I call Victor. “How much is the fee for this interview?” he asks. “There is no fee, Victor, but it’s great publicity for you,” I say. “Jeez, man,” comes the reply, “you’re getting me to do all this work for nothing? Okay. Make sure you buy my book before you come and see me. I’m about an hour and a half out of town. I can give you a couple of hours, I guess.” Thank you, Victor.

A week later I’m sitting in a cab, clutching the book (Sex, Rock and Optical Illusions, published by Fantagraphics in 2005), heading over the bridge with a nervous taxi driver at the wheel. He’s wondering why he’s taking an Englishman into the remote hills beyond the bay. I’m wondering whether he knows where we’re going and what kind of reception I can expect when I arrive...

VICTOR MOSCOSO from Grafik Magazine on Vimeo.

Open publication - Free publishing - More typography

Interview with curator of Decode at V&A

I popped down to V&A at the weekend and got an interview with the curator and exhibition designer (which will be broadcast tomorrow). meanwhile have a look at this...

London Design Festival Film Part 1

London Design Festival: Sir Paul Smith

London Design Festival: Terence Conran

London Design Festival: Jaime Hayon

Grafik Movie on Karel Martens

Grafik Magazine. Karel Martens in his studio July 2009 from Grafik Magazine on Vimeo.

Designers are wankers: Agony Uncle

Dear DAW,
Just a quick couple of questions:
What would you say the percentage of graphic design graduates actually work in their chosen field – Is it down to luck, a blag or talent?
I'm not sure if I've come across any kind of topic that questions whether years in design education boils down to stacking shelves or the like, or even the dole. Are design degrees now obsolete?
Sorry about this, do you get similar e-mails to this, or is it a big grey area that nobody wants to mention?

Take care and kind regards,
Great magazine.
Jack

Dear Jack,

According to the Complete University Guide, the success rate for art & design graduates getting a job in their subject is 43% after 6 months.

Want to know how much you’ll be earning? Well unfortunately you are at the bottom of the pile, it’s you, actors and Celtic studies graduates that can expect to earn no more than £16718 a year to start with, and that’s about £3,000 below the average wage.

Why bother?

Because life isn’t just about statistics and money! If you are put off by these figures then drop out now and go and do some thing more ‘profitable’.

A career in any creative industry is one of hard graft with severe unrelenting competition for work. With the rare exception, it takes years before the rewards reveal themselves. It’s a long haul.

To answer the first question about the validity of design courses:

Are design courses relevant to employers? Yes. A good course will teach you technical skills, provide you with the latest equipment, learning resources, peer support, opportunities to test out various strands of your chosen field and further your thinking and approach to life. Do college courses do this? Some do, some don’t, the more investment colleges get the more they are likely to offer: the bigger the better. Does the college you go to affect the likelihood of getting a job? Not in my experience, although the geographical location and a prestige name normally attract more interest from employers.

Does going to college get you a job? Not necessarily. A degree is not a ticket to a job. The job seeking rationale applied by arts and media graduates is sometimes misguided, in that they do not realise the severe competition for work and that there are other skills that are just as important as their degree such as hands on expereince, motivated self propelled work and enthusiam for the industry and working practices.

Media courses have multiplied like rabbits in the last 10 years. For some professions, TV especially, you will always start at the bottom of the ladder – probably as a runner – whether you are a graduate or a school leaver.

Colleges build up the importance of degrees as it validates their existence, however I would argue that education for educations sake is an important life skill.

Thirst for knowledge about the things that interest you regardless of the diploma or peer recommendation that you receive will lead to a happier life.

Because we now pay, in the UK, for our further education, there is a growing trend for the student – academic relationship to be more of a client – service provider transaction: Students expect certain results from their chosen course: Rather than just an education focused on academic pursuit, we now expect a job at the end of it. Academic institutions have had to adapt and pursue students. The resulting competition to put bums on seats – the more students you have the more money you earn – has had to be balanced with what the students expect: good career prospects and a curriculum that deals with industry focused learning.

Is this a fair relationship? No matter how good the university course is, there are many other factors – global recession, market saturation etc. That are out of their control. They can only equip students to a certain level, after that it is the responsibility of the graduate to find work. Lee’s book ‘Designers are wankers’ aims to bridge the gap between college and ‘real life’. When he wrote the book there were little or no facilities for creative students to get an education in the business side of their work. Now colleges are picking up on this.

To answer your question about whether or not this subject is talked about, I’d say yes, it’s now a burning question for all higher educational institutions.

As for the luck, blag or talent question. Hopefully it’s a mixture of all three. That’s life!

Regards,

Robert

Portsmouth Lectures 16th / 17th March

I'm down in Portsmouth on the 16th & 17th March talking to creative students at Portsmouth University in revamped version of the Fear, Paranoia & Money lectures to fit in with their unit on 'creative platforms'.
Anyone else about down there, get in touch.

Pre lecture reading (I'll add as I find...)
Article on personal branding from Design Taxi
'The brand called you' by Tom Peters
' Young Adults Naive About Their Working Future'
'Money Spinners' taken from Guardian May 2008 by Joanne Christie

A great idea...A website that matches students to paid work experience: Student Gems

Interesting add on from Moving Brands interview about E.Tautz

I went to interview Moving Brands over in Old Street as part of the research into the E.Tautz brand. This interesting foray into technology and fashion back in 2007 popped out during the interview...


The Weare project...

They say...'We set ourselves the challenge of bringing together the worlds of fashion and technology by designing a fashion item based on co-creation and social networking. We created a website where anyone could create messages and drawings and send them to a display in the Moving Brands’ window. We collected all of the images – some thoughtful, some silly, some rude - and used them to make a scarf. The scarf was then made available to buy on our website and in selected independent retailers around London. The project inspired us to set up our own fashion brand - Weare - to launch other items created by the same process.'

Where's the harm in a little competition?

Some creative competitions are the result of a leftover media spend of incorporable campaigns aimed at you, others are straight forward businesses, some genuinely try to break through and raise standards. Exposure is the thrust and legitimising stamp of goodwill: By entering you will be guaranteed that X will judge your work, Y many will see your work and Z many will win fame , acclaim and a tasty cash prize.

What's so bad?

We often promote competitions on the Designers are wankers site, we've even held a couple. I just get a nagging feeling that competitions buy into a lazy thinking, get rich quick scheme. From the companies that dream them up, the companies that buy into the dream in order to promote their products and the punters that enter.




DISCUSS... What's your view?

Big Art Mob: Interview with Adam Gee, New Media Commissioner Of Channel 4

On the third anniversary of the death of Sir Eduardo Paolozzi I stood watching a pigeon eyeing up his 'Piscator' on the front concourse of Euston station. To the uninitiated, the ‘Piscator’ is the toothy cast iron lump created in homage to the long forgotten expressionist theatre director Edwin Piscator: A giant robo turd wedged between Starbucks, The Cornish Pasty Company and the homeless scots cadging for a return train fare in the squalid and unloved concrete station forecourt.



Paolozzi, a scot with Italian roots, was one of the godfathers of the Pop Art movement. A lecture given by him in 1952 at the ICA in London is widely credited as being the place where the Pop Art bubble was first floated. He was a man, whom, in his own words, enjoyed "Introducing strange fellows to each other in hostile landscapes". The front concourse at Euston is certainly a hostile landscape and I’ve definitely been called worse than a strange fellow…

Paolozzi was passionate about introducing the man on the street to art. Half monolith maker, half pop artist: An artist that illustrated Henry Ford’s bold assertion that ''History is more or less bunk.... We want to live in the present'' early on in his career and yet went on to create timeless hunks of iron.



Paolozzi was also an artist who perfectly encaptures all that was good and bad in 20th century British art: A world class innovator and yet a cosy ambassador of the state. A fine example of an artist as superstar, funded by beaurocrats for the public to stare passively at forever more.

I wondered, what is Paolozzi’s cultural legacy?

Whether or not you are a fan of Paolozzi, it is a compelling argument that the notion of Public Art is in both crisis and at a point of renaissance in Britain today. Perhaps it is the weariness of Brit Art and the arguments surrounding its worthiness, perhaps it’s the success of Anthony Gormely’s ubiquitous mini me’s popping up around Britain like Martello Towers, or his younger hipster brother in arms: Banksey; Dick Turpin meets Tony Hart; man of the people. I.e. Old fashioned showman, popping up on every street corner around the world.

I should be happy, after all, I’m an art lover, but I’m uneasy about Public Art.
I’m unsure of its relevance in an age where the notion of art as a summit of beauty and truth for all is long gone: Why do we feel the need to sponsor an artist’s work in a public domain? To me, it seems almost as if public and private institutions are defending themselves with Public Art in order to obtain certain kudos with their customers or to take the edge of the bitter taste of the reality of the situation: Sweetening the pill in Dead End Street.

It’s time to get off the train.



The fusty rabbit warren that calls its self Tottenham Court Road station holds another Paolozzi piece, a brilliantly colourful mosaic, more than 1000 sq metres in length. I loved this work as a child, I used to try and count the different colours on my way into town on school holidays. Later, in my late teens, on a suburban dosage of acid, the mural would fizz and swirl as the LSD took hold. This mural is a part of me, hard wired into my mind. Later still when I’d learnt about the man who created it, I’d wonder at his creative mind; his obsession with man and machine.

Perhaps it’s not about public versus private, it’s not about institutions or funding, it’s the simple fact: Art improves…

Since I decided to write this piece my senses have been heightened.
Like the LSD wonderland in Tottenham Court Road, suddenly public art has become even more…public, it’s beginning to jump out at me.

The writing is on the wall: Literally. A month almost to the day since I stood pondering the meaning of it all with the pigeons in Euston station, a whooping great contradiction of a show opens at the Tate Modern: Street Art. Its hippy wigs in Woolworths time; surely retrospective rather than celebration? The full turn of the wheel, where revolution becomes a loop. Cultural feedback; the current function of public art?

By now I’m stuck in a loop of my own, needing salvation but with no real prospect of finding any in the bumf churning from the printers of the Art Council publicity machine or any of the myriad of articles written either decrying (‘it’s a shocking waste of public money’) or celebrating (art as cultural / economic / environmental saviour) the current malaise.

It’s not until I stumble upon the Big Art Project that spirits begin to lift. I should have heard about this months ago… Paolozzi would be proud, it’s a mix of pop and grind. It’s a cunning blend of what Channel 4 Television does best; the educational makeover. Jamie’s Dinners, Grand Designs and now… A magic sprinkle of televisual star dust on public art.

I’d stumbled upon the Big Art Project through The Big Art Mob at the Tate Modern (not a troop of vaudevillian gangsters, but an attempt at a fully interactive, mobile phone based, living archive of public art across the British Isles, called rather predictably ‘The Big Art Map’) - You’d think one already existed but, no, (apart from The Wooster Collective, global street art documenters ) it’s taken some wonderfully lateral thinking by Adam Gee, New Media Commissioner, Factual, at Channel 4 Television to bring it all together.

Despite a fairly quiet launch and circumspect nature of the Channel,
Adam Gee and Commissioning Editor Jan Younghusband prove easy to access and are full of passion for the subject and eager to shed further light on the project which has been building for three years in collaboration with The Art Fund and, of course, the Arts Council and is yet to be broadcast as a series (Some point in November is the date given).

Speaking about the ‘Big Art Mob’ Gee relates that the project has allowed him to tie up the various strands of technology at his disposal…

“It’s very much about relaying the whole experience, closing the circle of television, web, mobile and real life. This gives all of us the opportunity to archive public art whilst observing and letting the project go beyond its usual remit in broadcasting”

It’s also allowed Gee to do something that sounds Orwellian ‘Disguise the learning experience’ which basically means to seed participation into the event so that viewers involve themselves in the action. – In the case of the Big Art Mob – taking pictures of art and helping to compile a database.

If Channel 4’s contribution were to stop there it would be an interesting diversion, but where the project really kicks into gear, and what will be the focus of the series, is the entire Big Art Project.

The Big Art project launched in October 2005, the public were asked where and what they’d like to see. Over 1,400 people responded and eventually seven locations were chosen: Burnley, Mull, Newham, North Belfast, Cardigan, St Helens and Sheffield. All are currently in development and when the series it will document the entire process behind the artworks as well as involving the communities that will benefit from the intervention

Younghusband espouses the socio – economic virtues of public art in such poetic terms that I can’t help but mellow.

Both Gee and Younghusband are keen to point out the very close working relationship that they have with The Arts Council and the Art Fund and are full of warmth and praise. I can’t help but feel that the Arts Council must feel a little in awe of the relative glamour that Channel 4 brings to the table and slightly envious of its ability to spice up and cut through, the in house politics of the civil service..

I now realise what my problem was, it was rarely the art that caused real offence, more that my defensive reaction is often caused by not understanding the process and motivations behind something that is supposed to engage me.

It’s not all peachy. Channel 4 has its own version of public art currently on display outside its HQ in Horseferry Road, in Victoria. The Big 4 – why is everything ‘Big’? There’s a whole bag of corporate worms… public art or advertising… it’s advertising. But that’s ok; it’s their cash, their turf.



However, Younghusband sites one inspiration for the Big Art project as being the Cow Parade, the eccentric Swiss public art project that went global. Trouble flared, when The Militant Graffiti Artists of Stockholm took offence at some of the cows which had been painted in corporate colours with advertising slogans.
They kidnapped a fibreglass cow, held power drills to its head and threatened to decapitate it unless the sculptures were declared "non-art."
They accused the exhibiters of fraud stating that advertisements could never be art, and that…

‘Freedom of expression doesn’t belong to the average person anymore, only to those who have the money to buy a billboard or in this case, a cow that serves the same purpose as a billboard.”



Could this be the real issue with public art? We’ll have to wait and see.
I look forward to seeing Channel 4 work its magic with the Big Art project. No doubt there will be detractors, the inevitable ‘dumbing down’ arguments. But,
I suspect had Paolozzi been around, he would be an advocate, and after all,
the world would be a lesser place without its robo-turds.

The Viral Factory:Samsung Blog Copy

This was where you'd be directed to for the Omnia 900 viral, produced by the Viral Factory. It's part of a transparent approach to virals: explaining 'why' to the viewer that's stumbled upon, or been directed to, the viral.