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 Gyford's infographic

Ignite is part of the LSx2010 Leeds Web Festival, which has loads of interesting events happening.

It’s a free event, so book a place for Ignite now!

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)

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)

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)

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.

Dean Vipond was appointed by the smart folk at Six To Start, to provide visual and interaction design for an online game to accompany the new BBC TV show ‘The Seven Ages of Britain‘.

Commissioned by The Open University, the game features a series of ‘quests’, in which players must piece together a famous artefact by answering a series of questions. The questions are much tougher than your average online quiz, and research and collaboration is encouraged, with players being able to ask for help via Twitter and Facebook.

The visual style aims to echo the feeling of discovery and research prevalent in the show, with a rich, layered and textured approach.

Why not embark on The Seven Ages Quest right now?

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

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.

I can very rarely point out a single thing to be my absolute favourite ‘anything’. Ususally, there are too many shifting factors and circumstances which stop me being able to claim anything to be the best ‘thing’ ever, in any given field. Music, film, books, places… how can anyone unequivocally say that one ‘thing’ is better than all other ‘things’, especially when such statements are highly subjective?

Yet, when it comes to logo design, for me, there is an absolute winner: The Open University. But why?

Perhaps it’s partly nostalgic. This logo has been in my consciousness for as long as I can remember. Long before dedicated TV channels broadcasting non-stop kids’ shows, there would be precious little for a 5-year-old to watch on a Sunday morning before Mom and Dad got up, save a few dull advanced mathematics shows. The Open University logo would feature on the end credits of such shows, and while I paid no mind to what it really represented, it was always there. I’m also pretty certain it was on the spine of a couple of books on the family bookcase.

It’s certainly more than mere nostalgia, though. The Internet has allowed everyone to become gorged on nostalgia, rediscovering long-forgotten TV shows on Youtube, reminiscing about old sweets on Facebook, or stalking old flames on Friends Reunited. Nostalgia is now a regular and easily accessible pastime, and we all know that some things really weren’t as good as we remember them to be, yet The Open University’s logo still appeals.

I love its form. The ‘O’ and ‘U’ combined, puts me in mind of the work of Barbara Hepworth or Henry Moore, while at the same time resembling a coat of arms, more in keeping with that of an educational institution. It’s extremely simple, but you can see how much care has been put into its proportions.

The history of the logo

The original logo was designed in 1969. Walter Perry, the University’s Vice-Chancellor had the original idea for the form, and Douglas Clark, Director of Design produced it. Over 40 iterations were produced, before it was complete! Various proportions between the two shapes were explored, along with the position of the ‘O’ (or ’roundel’) within the ‘U’. Perry and Clark had to argue quite strongly for the roundel not to be centred, which was requested by some members of the approval committee. I’m really glad they succeeded!

Amazingly, the design met some opposition from the BBC, who wanted to design the logo themselves, due to their involvement with the University. Of course, they ultimately acquiesced. I can’t imagine them wanting to pass on such an iconic design now! It’s as much a part of the BBC’s heritage as the Blue Peter logo.

Purely on a visual level, it’s a great piece of work. Alongside the armorial leanings, the roundel cut out of the ‘U’ suggests a portal – new opportunities, which is something the institution obviously provides. It doesn’t look dated, and is as simple and striking now as ever. Indeed, it’s a bold enough symbol to be adapted to any prevailing design trends (such as its current glassy look). The combination of great design, the power of its heritage and at least some nostalgia, makes it my favourite logo. What’s yours?

Information on the history of the logo was taken from ‘Armorial Bearings of The Open University’ by N. Woods (1992). Sincere thanks to Stuart Brown at The Open University for his help with this article.

Follow The Open University on Twitter.

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

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

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

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

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!

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

It’s been a fantastic first year; I couldn’t have asked for more. The business was set up with the intention of working with ambitious businesses, to help develop their brands on platforms that are often misunderstood and misused. I’ve worked with some fantastic clients, ranging from SMEs to international brands, helped them achieve more, while learning a huge amount myself at the same time.

I’ve also been lucky enough to work with some very smart and successful design/production agencies both in the North and in ‘that’ London, and it’s been a privilege to help service their clients.

A huge thanks to everyone who I’ve met and worked with over the past 12 months, whether it’s been in person, or simply via Twitter!

My second year in business is already shaping up to be hugely interesting and fulfilling. Can’t wait!

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)

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

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.

Misfits

Dean Vipond was appointed by entertainment production company Six To Start to provide visual design for the experience, which allows users to explore scenes from the show and gaining a deeper understanding of the characters and storyline.

In the show, a gang of teenagers on community service gain super powers following a mysterious thunderstorm. An edgy, grafitti-influenced graphic approach was developed to complement the style of the show, while retaining a sense of fun and humour. Players can also post their progress and scores to Facebook.

Misfits is also gaining press for being the first TV show where characters will be Tweeting during each episode’s transmission - follow @Simon and @Kelly.

A new scene will be added to the online experience ahead of each episode’s transmission. Take a look at Misfits now!