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Is data visualisation getting a bad name?

I was pleased to see graphic design in the news this week, for reasons other than the usual public and tabloid outrage over massive fees for ‘just a logo’. Data visualisation was the subject of a small report and studio discussion on BBC2’s Newsnight show, featuring ‘infographic’ advocate David McCandless, and design heavyweight Neville Brody duking it out.

The general argument on the part of McCandless is that we are saturated with data these days, and that his work and that of others is exploring new ways of presenting it, in order to give abstract subjects some context or relevance. That such projects can also be beautiful is a serendipitous by-product of this exercise.

Brody took the opposing view, largely consistent with my own, that superfluous artistry serves to cloud the very facts the graphics are trying to represent, and that this is potentially dangerous.

 

Ganging up on the new guy

The studio debate felt fairly one-sided to me – McCandless is clearly less experienced in discussing design at a deep level than Brody, and presenter Kirsty Wark seemed to treat McCandless as some kind of nefarious, truth-concealing politician, rather than the jobbing designer/author that he is. You could see Brody trying to get some decent responses from McCandless, but none were really forthcoming, which is a shame, as he had some valid points, which just weren’t asserted hard enough.

What I think McCandless was trying to say was that with the massive and constant streams of data to which we now have access, their meaning can be lost, and that representing information visually can help people better digest it. Wark suggested that such methods could also be used by political parties, to ‘spin’ stories. Her tone angered me, as it felt as though she had exposed McCandless as having invented a new tool for politicians to hoodwink us with. No Kirsty, you’ve just realised what graphic design is about.

 

Truth

Graphic design is all about communication, and for the most part, this is to influence people’s behaviour. Whether you’re designing a gas bill, a poster for a concert, a leaflet about diabetes, or a website for a chartered accountant, you’re spinning something. Sure, most designers have a level of integrity in their work, but to suggest that design is about presenting pure facts, with absolutely no subjectivity, is complete rubbish.

The thing is, the need for good data visualisation is probably greater than ever. It’s just that there’s a hell of a lot of rubbish ‘infographics’ out there which makes one think the discipline is a waste of time. Much of what I see definitely clouds the facts therein, drenched as they are in lovely shapes, colours and typefaces which distract, rather than inform. Even the term ‘infographic’ makes it sound like a throwaway, consumable item, to be Tweeted to your friends, along with a link to a blog post entitled ‘67 awesome shopping cart icons’, and then forgotten.

 

The message

Designers have a responsibility, either to their client, to their client’s audience, or to the information itself, to ensure that a message is communicated, and received. If it’s necessary to influence people’s reactions, for whatever your reasons, then that’s fine; it’s your job to do that. If you’re just playing the narcissist on your Macbook Pro, under the auspices of being a force for truth, then you’re not a designer.

As is often the case, Paul Rand said it best: ‘When form predominates, meaning is blunted. But when content predominates, interest lags.’ It is the job of the designer to find this balance, if information, and its meaning, is to be understood.

To finish, here’s a great pastiche infographic, which sums up my concerns very nicely. Thanks to Phil Gyford for the permission to use it.

Phil Gyfords infographic

Phil Gyford's infographic

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Posted on August 10th, 2010 in Ideas | 1 Comment »

Can we ruin it? Yes we can!

The new, CG series of ‘Bob The Builder’ is a triumph of expense-saving over art and craft.

As a father to a young family, I see more than my fair share of TV shows aimed at the under-fives. As has always been the case with kids’ TV, there’s a real mix of good stuff and awful dross. However, the long-running series usually have something going for them, which is why they continue to be commissioned. Bob The Builder was one such show, which has clearly struck a chord with lots of kids over the years. While not my son’s favourite show, it usually holds his interest, and I didn’t mind watching it, as the stop-motion animation was smooth, and the models nicely made. This is now no longer the case.

The original Bob The Builder (© BBC)

The original Bob The Builder (© BBC)

 

Stop-motion stopping

Last year, I had the pleasure of meeting the animator Barry Purves, behind such legendary shows as Wind In The Willows and Chorlton & The Wheelies. He told me how the demand for costly stop-motion is dropping at an alarming rate, and that even the next series of Bob The Builder was to be made in CG. This was disappointing, if not exactly surprising news.

The new, terrible, CG Bob The Builder. (© HiT Entertainment)

The new, terrible, CG Bob The Builder. (© HiT Entertainment)

 

However, what was surprising was how shockingly awful the show is. Considering its legacy, I was expecting some tastefully and carefully produced animation, the kind where you’re not sure if it’s CG or not. However, it’s the worst kind of pile-’em-high, sell-’em-cheap programme making, with absolutely none of the charm of its stop-motion predecessor. Colours are garish (as opposed to the bright, but balanced palette of yore), the animation of the characters is robotic and springy, and the re-use of assets inexcusable (I saw Bob making a brick wall, where every brick had the exact same shading and texture). This, combined with textures that would look shoddy on a Playstation 2 game, makes for a stultifyingly depressing watch. Of course, my son hasn’t noticed the difference – he’s two years old – and this will have been precisely the justification made in the board room when the decision was made to switch.

But children aren’t stupid, and as my son gets older, he’ll be able to tell the difference between good and bad, which is when he’ll tire of rubbish like this.

 

Craft, heart and charm

Yes, stop-motion animation is expensive and time consuming, but it also affords the creator the opportunity to imbue real character and emotional expression into a film. Just look at the utterly delightful Timmy Time, made by Aardman. There are little details throughout that make this great fun to watch. The model making is exceptional, and it’s at times genuinely funny.

The delightful, stop-motion Timmy Time (© Aardman Animations Ltd)

The delightful, stop-motion Timmy Time (© Aardman Animations Ltd)

 

This isn’t an anti-CG article. Apart from the obvious people like Pixar, there’s loads of great CG animation out there. Just look at the beautiful and spellbinding adaption of the Oliver Jeffers book Lost and Found. It’s been created with great care and charm. It also does things that would have been nigh on impossible to do with traditional techniques, such as the quite brilliant storm sequence.

 

The animated adaption of The Gruffalo was also an excellent example of CG animation that takes its cues from traditional stop-motion animation, but builds on it with the capabilities of CG. Bob The Builder does none of this.

 

Lowering expectations

What irks me the most is that technology should be showing children that anything is possible, and that you just need imagination to make things happen. What Bob The Builder does is show kids that using computers allows you to be lazy, uninspired, cheap and artless.

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Posted on April 27th, 2010 in Film & Animation | No Comments »

Can a brand have as many voices as customers?

Could technology drive a bespoke brand experience? I touched on this notion during my talk at Future of Web Design, but didn’t have the time to explore it further. There seems to be a shift towards very specific personalisation when it comes to our experience of many products and services. Spotify playlists, iGoogle, Ensembli, etc. all provide a framework for us to experience and consume things hand-picked by ourselves. It’s something we’re getting very used to. Indeed, there was a lot of grumbling when Twitter introduced its new ‘retweet’ feature, as people were all-of-a-sudden seeing comments in their news feed from users they hadn’t specifically chosen to view. So how could a brand possibly support this continued drive towards personalisation, while retaining some semblance of identity itself?

Your M&S isnt really yours. Its still theirs.

Your M&S isn't really 'yours'. It's still 'theirs'.

 

Consistently inconsistent

Just because a brand is a unique entity does not mean it can’t shift its personality to suit whomever it may be addressing. We all have distinct personalities, but we all alter our behaviour depending on to whom we are talking. Personally, I talk and act slightly differently depending on whether I’m with friends, business clients, or my children. Despite my changing behaviour, all these people recognise me as ‘Dean’. By the same token, I always know I’m ‘me’. Could a brand do this?

Of course, many brands have employed differing voices to communicate with different sections of their audience, but it’s still a relatively blanket approach, based on a combination of research and best guesses. Yet no research, however specific, could hope to facilitate communication on an individual level. Technology could facilitate this.

 

What technology?

There is a project that’s been developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called Personas which aggregates your online activity, to create a visual represenation of your time on the Web. You are presented with a graph, which categorises the subjects you have spent time being involved with. It’s an interesting little project, but it got me thinking: could we not also track and analyse the language people use online?

 

Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, comments… regular web users have a huge wealth of thoughts and opinions in the public domain. If we had the technology, we could see what people think on myriad subjects, and what language they use to express themselves. Could a brand not harness this information and use it to deliver the ultimate personalised experience, one which not only provides the content, products and services a customer is interested in, but delivers it in a voice specific to them?

While it can take years for an audience to develop a sense of trust in a brand, why can’t a brand harness a voice each customer already trusts – their own?

 

How could it work?

Let’s look at Amazon.com as a possible case study. For years, Amazon has utilised a customer’s browsing and purchasing habits, as well as those of others, to deliver a powerful recommendation service – one which continues to impress me. However, look and feel of the site aside, there’s no real personality to accompany this, and it feels something of a missed opportunity.

What if Amazon could not only access a customer’s activity on its own site, but that person’s entire online activity? It would have a much deeper understanding of someone’s likes, dislikes, motivations, not to mention the kind of language they use. If a user was comfortable with colloquialisms, text speak, longer words, even bad language, Amazon could recognise this and alter its voice to suit, while still providing the level of service people associate with the brand.

Examples of how Amazon could shift its personality

Examples of how Amazon could shift its personality

 

Everyone would have a unique experience of, and relationship with Amazon, and Amazon’s brand would be strengthened by this. Yet through its other brand touchpoints (service, visual communication, etc.) it would assert a distinct brand personality. As with myself and how people see me, everyone would have a distinct view of Amazon, yet it would still be instantly and consistently recognised.

 

Technology driving brand development

This kind of ultra-personalised experience would only be possible with emerging technology, that not only recognises and matches words, data and so on, but can also understand meaning, context and subtlety. This is what is so interesting and exciting right now. Technology isn’t just offering new touchpoints for customer contact. It is allowing brands to do things they’ve never done before. Those brands which can recognise and exploit such possibilities stand to make massive progress in the coming years.

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Posted on January 22nd, 2010 in Ideas | 2 Comments »

Decode at the V&A

I headed down to London to see the Decode exhibition at the V&A. Based around the notions of data visualisation, technology and interactivity, it was a small yet flab-free exhibition that was impressive and fun.

The entrance to the exhibition was strewn with fabricated foliage, which responded to sound and movement, responding with light and sound, prompting entrants to stamp their feet a lot!

 

Generative

Following this, there were a number of pieces of generative art – works which run procedurally, either by preset programming, or responding to data. Perennial Flash hero Joshua Davis had a nice looking piece, while a work by Universal Everything felt a lot less ‘techy’, almost painterly, as it built, shifted and reinvented itself.

Swarm Draw by Joshua Davis

Swarm Draw by Joshua Davis

 

Sound and vision

Radiohead’s mind-boggling interactive video for House of Cards, by James Frost, was there, looking great on a hi-def touchscreen, allowing users to move it around as it played. Have a go of it yourself here (note, it takes a while to load, but it’s worth it).

House of Cards by James Frost

House of Cards by James Frost

 

There was a nice piece by Flight 404 (who coded one of iTunes’ music visualisers, fact fans) which reacted to sound, although I felt a bit of a fool shouting and coughing at the screen to make the imagery react. It’s a really interesting piece, especially as the relationship between sound and visuals is a minor obsession of mine.

Solar by Flight404

Solar by Flight404

 

Fun and games

Many of the more overt interactive pieces are clearly influenced by video games. Sennep’s piece ‘Dandelion’, where the user holds a ‘real’ hairdryer, and uses it to blow away seeds on a digital dandelion clock, was a combination of Nintendogs (a DS game where you pamper virtual puppies), and outstanding Playstation 3 game Flower. Another piece was very reminiscent of groundbreaking music toy Electroplankton.

Dandelion by Sennep

Dandelion by Sennep

 

What was nice about the exhibition was that not everything was screen-based, with a few more tactile, mechanical pieces too. By far the most impressive piece for me was Daniel Rozin’s ‘Weave Mirror’, comprising hundreds of wheels, coloured from white, gradating to black, which rotated to form a greyscale image of the viewer as they stood in front of it. While the programming and planning behind it was incredibly complex, what was most satisfying was the sound it made as it changed, reminiscent of pre-digital train departure boards (clickety clickety click).

Weave Mirror by Daniel Rozin, taking a picture of me taking a picture of it!

Weave Mirror by Daniel Rozin, taking a picture of me taking a picture of it!

 

Just the beginning

It was a very satisfying exhibition to experience, and I applaud the permission of photography and video, which obviously allows people to record specific instances of works which by their nature are fleeting. What I do feel though is that the ideas and execution on show here is only scratching the surface of what could be possible, both in terms of how data could be presented and used, and in real-world applications that could enrich and improve peoples’ lives. It’s certainly gotten me thinking.

Decode runs until 11th April 2010. Find out more about Decode here

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Posted on December 16th, 2009 in Events | No Comments »

Perfection is hard to love

Is it the imperfections we see in things which endear us to them?

My very first post on this blog was on the notion of ‘perfection’ in design, and how if you look at certain, often mundane things objectively, it is easy to see that they do their job perfectly. There is nothing one could add or remove from its design to make it do its job any better.

However, upon thinking about it further, I think this is also what stops things that fall into this category reaching greater awareness through emotional attachment. People don’t ‘love’ door handles; they just notice when they’re a bit stiff, or positioned too high or too low.

 

Good design doesn’t have to be invisible

It’s often said that ‘good design is invisible’. This isn’t necessarily true, as it is often the small, needless details which heighten one’s experience of something. Remember when CD players in the early ’90s said ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ on their LCDs when you turned them on and off? I loved that. Or the tactile clicking noise when you use an ipod’s scroll wheel? Unnecessary, yet delightful.

It is when design takes a step away from just doing its job, and begins engaging us on a sensory or emotional level, that things become less ‘perfect’ and universally accepted, but also heightens the chance of standing out and being loved by some.

It all depends on how far the creator goes. Obviously the more one develops a design in a certain direction, the greater chance it will appeal more to a certain group of people, and less so others.

 

Shadow of the Colossus (©Sony Computer Entertainment)

Shadow of the Colossus (©Sony Computer Entertainment)

Look at the video game Shadow of the Colossus. It’s a unique game, with an odd, lonely atmosphere like no other I’ve played. It encourages a distinct level of emotional involvement in the player, both in their relationship with the in-game character’s horse (that sounds a lot weirder than it actually is!), and also in the guilt the player feels in defeating the huge (stunningly designed) beasts you have been charged to kill. It’s just this kind of atmosphere, and conflicting feelings the game invokes, that has driven many to proclaim it a masterpiece (myself included), while at the same time drawing derision from those who don’t wish to experience these things when they play games. Of course, the game could have been made more immediate, and the beasts in the game could have been made more clearly ‘evil’, but that would have eliminated just the elements that have made it so revered in some circles.

 

London 2012 logo

London 2012 logo

From a branding point of view, Wolff-Olins’ London 2012 Olympics brand identity has been highly criticised — by both the mainstream press and by many people from within the design industry. I saw a talk given by Neville Brody not long after it was unveiled, and he had quite a rant about it! For me, the jury is currently still out on whether the branding succeeds, and I don’t think we’ll really find out until after the closing ceremony.

I know the branding doesn’t appeal to me personally, but then perhaps Wolff-Olins was taking it in a different direction — one that will appeal more to young people, and encourage them to take up sport, and become more aware of the importance of global competition. But perhaps something like the Olympic Games shouldn’t be so narrow in its scope. It is, after all, intended to unify people from across the world; not just to inspire the UK’s disaffected youth. Would a more universally acceptable design solution be remembered in years to come? Does it need to be? Considering the reactions it has garnered so far, it’s safe to say that this design isn’t ‘perfect’ either, but it’s getting a lot of press, and I’m sure some people really will grow to love the identity. Indeed, I’m quite partial to the recently unveiled pictograms, even though I don’t care for the main logo, or the typography employed.

 

Take a chance

Of course, ensuring your creation appeals to a specific group of people is one of the chief aims of many design projects. Engendering deep emotional involvement in the end user is probably something that cannot be truly gauged until after it is in use, but taking that extra step could mark the difference between a successful, yet unremarkable piece of work, and a flawed, but loved one. Whether that is right for your project, or your client, is of course a different matter altogether.

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Posted on December 2nd, 2009 in Ideas | No Comments »

We are the virtual preservation society…

Should we try and preserve web sites as part of our cultural history, or should they be left to rot, like a ruined building?

Thoughts on this subject have been blowing around my head recently, mainly because of two things.

The first was my recent and fascinating tour around the Temple Works site in Leeds. I was lucky enough to be able to see this amazing building ahead of its refurbishment and transformation into a cutting-edge cultural and co-working space in Holbeck. Its unique Egyptian-themed facade hides a varied history. It’s a groundbreaking building, both in terms of its engineering and the respect with which its employees were treated, and I’m delighted that it’s getting the attention it sorely needs to preserve and renew it.

 

Facade of Temple Works in Leeds

Facade of Temple Works in Leeds

However, the most interesting part of the trip was through the areas which were most recently used by Kays’ Catalogue in the mid-’90s. This part of the building was very ‘Marie Celeste’ in its feel, with much of the paraphernalia of day-to-day working life left behind – plates in the canteen, filing cabinets full of old documents, and so on. The detritus of relatively recent human inhabitance gave it a strange atmosphere - partly ghostly, partly mundane.

 

Ghostly photo of an old netball team, inside Temple Works

Ghostly photo of an old netball team, inside Temple Works

As Temple Works stood on the day of my visit, it was at times creepy, funny and sad. I often think it’s a shame that places like this have to be renovated. Of course, it would be criminal to leave something like this to rot, but by the same token, sweeping away such an atmospheric place is also a shame. As such, I was glad I had the opportunity to see it.

 

Web site ruins

The second thing which happened recently was my realisation that after The Designers Republic folded, its online shop, thepeoplesbureau.com would also cease to be a going concern. I was always a fan of the site – it was a bold and characterful embodiment of the personality with which tDR carried themselves, and one of the few web sites with sound which didn’t have me lurching for the ‘mute’ button.

 

All that remains of thepeoplesbureau.com on archive.org

All that remains of thepeoplesbureau.com on archive.org

 

Thepeoplesbureau.com is no longer online, as there is no company to run it. A quick trip to the Wayback Machine (the internet archive project) reveals precious little. The site’s reliance on a product stock database means that there is nothing more than a background graphic remaining. Even searching online reveals no screen grabs – there is barely any evidence that this vibrant and fun site ever existed.

 

A call-to-action from thepeoplesbureau.com

A call-to-action from thepeoplesbureau.com

 

Unlike buildings, which slowly rot over time, web sites can completely disappear instantly, and without warning. This is a huge shame. Unless designers hand over the contents of their hard drives to the Design Museum, how are we to be able to look back over the development of this medium?

I love looking at things from the past – old books, objects, posters, etc. This all adds to my mental library, and gives me a broader well of inspiration to draw from when I work on my own projects, but how will designers of the future be able to look back on things which aren’t being preserved?

Or am I being too precious here? Part of me wonders if classifying web sites in the same way as we would classify other areas of design is missing the point. Our experience of the internet is hugely reliant on context – where we are, what we are doing and who we are connected to. Would looking at a web site out of context be nothing more than staring at some meaningless images?

Should we then, look upon web sites in the same way as other transient cultural creations, such as theatre performances, rock concerts or art installations? Things which make an impression on people at the time, part of which is the knowledge that the experience will never be repeated? I’m not entirely sure, but I would have loved the opportunity to browse around Thepeoplesbureau, whether it had any stock or not, one more time, before it was virtually demolished.

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Posted on September 7th, 2009 in Ideas | 2 Comments »

Designing and building for the future

I have always been a fan of post-war architecture, and its attempts at doing things differently. I admit this is partly due to being a child of the 1970s. I grew up surrounded by these kinds of buildings in Birmingham - many of which are no longer there (most notably Birmingham’s Bull Ring).

However, looking at things objectively, as maligned as a lot of it is, I admire those who pushed it forwards, even though much of it ultimately failed in its goals.

The whole idea was to build a brave new world, and to try and wipe away memories of a Britain ravaged by war and bombings. What better way than to create buildings that looked like nothing that had come before? Concrete allowed for huge structures - towering monuments to the future. New shopping centres and social housing projects were designed to encourage community relationships and revitalise the economy.

 

Birmingham Central Library, photo by Martin Hartland

Birmingham Central Library, photo by Martin Hartland

Look at Birmingham’s Central Library. I don’t care what Prince Charles thinks of it - there’s a strength and power to its form that puts learning at the centre of the city. I haven’t been inside it since the late ’90s, but it’s equally interesting inside, where you can look down from upper floors to those below. I do hope they’ve changed the yellowy lighting since then, though!

 

Park Hill in Sheffield, photo by Paolo Margari

Park Hill in Sheffield, photo by Paolo Margari

The Park Hill development in Sheffield is staggering. Built between 1957 and 1961, it is the largest listed building in Europe. The original concept was to create ’streets in the sky’ - a noble and exciting sentiment indeed! It’s currently undergoing renovation.

Of course, it is easy for me to praise something like Park Hill - I’ve never had to live there. As a project, it inevitably failed, and the council more recently found difficulty finding tenants, due the crime rate and poor state of repair of the building.

 

Ambition + research

It is my job to ensure that the work I do is fit for its target audience, through research, testing and iterative development. Maybe that was what was lacking from the development of buildings in the ’60s. Perhaps someone might have pointed out that Park Hill could be abused by muggers due to its structure and layout.

However, what fills me with admiration for all of this is how its creators were really striving for something more - to make a better world for its inhabitants, which is something everyone working in the creative industries should be encouraged to do.

 

A New (Design) World Order?

Right now feels like a good time to think about things like this. America has a new, more liberal president, who espoused to the world the importance of making the world a better place. Miscommunication and misunderstanding are still causing wars, yet the internet allows for unparalleled global communication between people who have never even met. The global economy has put bankers and politicians to shame, but also maybe made many of us realise we really don’t need to replace our year-old iPods just yet.

Will this new-found solemnity arising from the events of the last decade drive new styles and standards in the world of design? Hard to tell right now, but it will be interesting to see where things go over the next five years.

 

Many thanks to Martin Hartland and Paolo Margari for the use of their photos in this article.

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Posted on August 4th, 2009 in Ideas, Inspiration | 4 Comments »

Creative Networks - Patrick Burgoyne from Creative Review

It was a full house in the lecture theatre at Leeds College of Art & Design last night, for June’s Creative Networks get-together. There was a nice pre-talk vibe due to it coinciding with the end-of-year shows for the various creative courses at the college. A jazz band was playing, and I didn’t hear any complaints about the prevalence of free food and wine! Unfortunately time restraints meant I only got to the venue 20 minutes before the main event, and only the Visual Communications exhibit was still open afterwards. However, that show was very inspiring, and I picked up a good few business cards to check out later.

Creative Networks has a reputation for bagging noteworthy speakers, with this evening’s being no less distinguished. Creative Review editor Patrick Burgoyne was here to give a talk entitled ‘Labels and where to stick them’.

Covers

Burgoyne opened with a brief history of the visual style of Creative Review’s covers. We saw a number of covers spanning the magazine’s 29 year life span, from its distinctly ’80s-looking early designs, through to the present day. It’s easy to laugh at the earlier covers, but obviously it’s the job of a title like Creative Review to reflect the visual styles that help shape culture at that time. It was interesting that Burgoyne admitted they have always struggled with doing something interesting with the magazine’s masthead, seeing as it’s a relatively unwieldy title. The current, pared-down ‘CR’ marque is a good solution, especially as it’s easily adaptable to multiple platforms.

It was also quite alarming to learn that the whole magazine is seemngly put together by about five people, with one person designing and laying out the entire publication! Very impressive.

Focus on craft

We were then shown some examples of the magazine’s recent trend of using the cover to summarise its main articles in a single design. Brazilian woodblock printers, Spanish sign makers and Indian vinyl sticker producers have all been employed in recent issues, and it’s heartening to see this kind of dedication to physical craft, at a time when so much focus is placed on digital media. To underline this, we then saw a short film on the aforementioned Indian graphic style known as ‘radium’, used to decorate Mumbai taxis. It was a fascinating little film (once the technical issues had been sorted out - mental note: NEVER embed a video into Powerpoint!), made more poignant with the knowledge that the local government are trying to ban this striking visual art form, supposedly for reasons of taste!

One person: many hats

Moving on from the ‘real world’, Burgoyne then spoke about Creative Review’s online presence. The creative industries are in a state of flux right now, and Patrick stated that this was both exciting and terrifying, as no one really knows how things will pan out. This is where the title of the talk began to make more sense, as where there were once very distinct boundaries within the creative industries (design, advertising, production, print, etc.), these can now all be undertaken by an individual, due to technology. As a prime example, he cited Sheffield agency Universal Everything, which is essentially one guy and an assistant working from home, but with an international network of suppliers. Being so small hasn’t stopped them working on impressive projects for the likes of Nokia.

Next, we saw a video of the quite staggering kinetic sculpture at the BMW museum, made from 714 individually programmable suspended metal spheres, used to form patterns and shapes. Is it art? Advertising? Engineering? Hard to say. Along with a couple of other projects, Burgoyne mused on whether we need labels anymore, in such a fluid environment. To my mind, this isn’t a recent thing. You only need to look at the work of people like Saul Bass or Paul Rand - work with a distinct commercial focus, but created with a beauty and heart that elicits emotional responses more akin to art than marketing.

The state of advertising

Although the design scene is thriving (creatively, if not necessarily commercially) at the moment, Patrick suggested that advertising is having real problems. Gone are the days when agencies could just throw money at a campaign, and buy their way into people’s awareness. Few agencies are making true progress with things like social media. However, Burger King’s “Whopper Sacrifice” was a deft piece of marketing, which proved so successful Facebook pulled it down.

The future

Patrick closed his talk by urging the exhibiting soon-to-be graduates in the audiences to be excited about entering the creative industries, even in a recession. He reminded us that 50-year-old creative directors can often be out of touch, and are turning to the juniors for direction on how to run things. This was good to hear, especially at a time when jobs in design are at a particular low.

There was a short Q&A, which focussed a lot on the future of print media in the face of the digital onslaught. Patrick felt that there will always be a place for tactile product, even if this ends up being marginalised. Personally, I never plan on keeping a laptop in the bathroom for a read!

It was an interesting and thought-provoking talk. The numerous technical glitches did halt momentum a little, but I was certainly glad to have attended. The creative industries are definitely more fluid now, and it’s hard to pigeonhole exactly what people do. However, we all still need to be able to sum up what we do, so I think there will always be need for labels.

And if you don’t already, I highly recommend you follow Creative Review on Twitter.

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Posted on June 26th, 2009 in Events | No Comments »

Are Facebook’s vanity URLs in vain?

There’s been quite a buzz over the last few days around Facebook introducing vanity URLs, but is it really what users need? Of course, the word ‘vanity’ denotes that it doesn’t meet a user ‘need’ and is an added bonus, but is this going to satisfy those who were unhappy with the recent redesign, or who have migrated to newer, shinier services such as Twitter?

Every time Facebook has been redesigned, there has been an outcry from certain groups of users, resistant to change, and calling for their previous comfort zone to be returned to them forthwith. As someone who has worked on a number of site redesign projects, this is always par for the course, and while it is important to gauge users’ initial responses and thoughts, it’s how they feel after a month, or six months that is the real measure for the success of a redesign.

This is why I’ve waited a good while to comment on the newest iteration of the Facebook experience, so my own views on it can ‘bed in’ for a while. I’m sad to say that for once the angry mob are right. The latest Facebook just isn’t as good as the previous one. Its main downfall has been its faddish emulation of Twitter. The main page view now is a constantly-updated feed of all your friends’ activity, but with none of the brevity or elegance that makes Twitter such an engaging experience. Were it just a view of status updates, this would be more interesting, but now it seems to be a cavalcade of drivel, mostly relating to the endless quizzes which now seem to be the site’s main currency.

There’s no sense of relevance, of surfacing content you specifically may find interesting. Considering the amount of personal information the average user contributes to Facebook, it should be pretty easy to figure out what makes them tick. As Imran Ali questions: “Why can’t… Facebook [help] users make relevancy rather than recency based choices…”

A missed opportunity?

However, the introduction of vanity URLs has been a rather successful tactic for getting people talking about Facebook again, and this is where I feel they missed a trick. Quite a few posts on Twitter from people I follow went along the lines of “Just logged into Facebook for the first time in months to get my URL.” This would have been the perfect opportunity to test a refined design, or showcase some useful new features on a sub-set of users who had become jaded with the service. It would be interesting to know how this initiative has affected user numbers, and if it will encourage returning users to stick around.

Either way, it’s definitely time for Facebook to re-evaluate its offering to users, and think about what its brand stands for. It will never be able to effectively replace Twitter without sacrificing the richer content experience it currently offers. It’s time to hunker down, cut away the chaff and focus on what it does best – connecting friends and allowing them to have fun without drowning them in information.

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Posted on June 16th, 2009 in Social Media | 1 Comment »

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