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You beauty!

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

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 Gyford's infographic

Tags: data, Design, Information Design, Journalism, politics
Posted in Ideas | 1 Comment »

My favourite logo

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

I have finally decided upon my all-time favourite logo.

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.

Tags: branding, Design, Inspiration, logo
Posted in Inspiration | 3 Comments »

Perfection is hard to love

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

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)

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.

Tags: branding, Design, games, Perfection
Posted in Ideas | No Comments »

Designing and building for the future

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

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

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

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.

Tags: Architecture, Design, Inspiration
Posted in Ideas, Inspiration | 4 Comments »

Creative Networks - Patrick Burgoyne from Creative Review

Friday, June 26th, 2009

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.

Tags: Design, Journalism, Leeds, Print, Social Media
Posted in Events | No Comments »

BarCamp Leeds 2009 report

Friday, June 5th, 2009

BarCamp Leeds 09 was another important example of the vibrant creative scene in the North. I attended on Saturday, and while the idyllic weather probably didn’t do a great deal for attendance figures (despite being a sell-out, there were numerous absences), it turned out to be a case of quality over quantity, with a full board of talks, covering a diverse range of subjects.

“Cakes and Culture” - Emma Bearham and Michelle Duxbury-Townsley

Cakes & Culture

The first session I attended was held by Emma and Michelle, the founders of blog and cultural hub The Culture Vulture. The talk ensured a great attendance, by promising cakes to all who came. What followed was an interesting discussion on scale and ambition put into practice. Legal issues, censorship, viral marketing and scope were all discussed, with many experienced web professionals contributing ideas and advice.

“History of Leeds - what every geek should know” - Matt Edgar

Slide from Matt's presentation

The next session was held by France Telecom’s Matt Edgar, on the history of Leeds, revealing that invention and experimentation have long been a part of Leodian life, citing the ‘discovery’ of oxygen, Le Prinze’s pioneering film camera, and the standardisation of the size of pins, amongst many other things! See the slides from the event

“Can we create a tactile experience of digital music?” - Dean Vipond

Slide from my presentation

I then had to dash, to give my own talk on creating ‘A tactile experience of digital music’. This was based on my earlier blog post about music visualisers. I have since explored possibilities further, and put forth a number of ideas - abstract, tangible, passive and interactive. I was very heartened by the enthusiastic response it sparked, with many additional ideas being discussed during the questions session at the end, and a number of people approaching me afterwards. I now have much more food for thought, and am very grateful to all who contributed.

“The Ukepedia” - John Leach

John Leach eased us into the post-lunch chunk of the afternoon, with an amusing demonstration of his Ukepedia project, including a musical slight against Microsoft, one of the event’s sponsors!

“The Art of Conversation” - Matt Seward

Following this, Matt Seward of Leeds digital agency Kilo 75 sparked an interesting discussion on the nature of branding, and the importance of creating a dialogue with customers. Branding is a nebulous subject, with no single right approach. Matt Edgar raised an interesting point of whether customers truly want dialogues with every brand they encounter? I chipped in with the assertion that brands are only as strong as the deeds of the business behind them - which is why so many banks are scrabbling to reposition themselves as either your best friend, or big and reliable. It’s a subject which deserves much more debate than there was time for on the day, and has given me much food for thought.

“Kurt Schwitters and the Inverted Web” - Dave Mee

"Das Undbild", Kurt Schwitters, 1919

The last session of the day I attended was Dave Mee of Tandot, and definitely had the most intriguing title. Kurt Schwitters was a much overlooked German artist, who worked in the first half of the 20th Century. Dave gave us a fascinating potted history of his life and work, arguing that Schwitters’ self-styled art form ‘Merz’, which incorporated any materials at his disposal, to create works which were never truly finished, was a precursor to how the web now works. Conversations never truly end, through the likes of Twitter, and all people have the ability to contribute many different media to something, in order to continue its evolution (e.g. Facebook). Transience was also discussed, as much of Schwitters’ work does not survive to this day. By the same token, web sites do not last forever either, and it’s harder to take a ’snapshot’ of a given time, in the same way that having an old newspaper does. Dave’s was an original and extremely interesting talk, and it’s testament to its relevance that consumer trend watching body Trendwatching.com has just published observations on just the same theme. If you’re interested in more, and to see slides from the talk, visit http://tinyurl.com/merzweb

The talks I attended were just a snapshot of the breadth of ideas and discussions prevalent over the weekend. I was very disappointed to have missed a couple of talks around local social history projects, which sounded extremely interesting. Despite this, I came away from the event much enlightened on a number of subjects (not least inner ear infections, thanks to the Ukepedia project!). Barcamp Leeds, and the LSx09 festival as a whole, demonstrated the great wealth of talent, creativity and enthusiasm in the region. I understand LSx10 will be a much grander affair, and I’m looking forward to it greatly.

Many thanks to Caz Mockett for the use of the cakes picture at the top of this post!

Tags: Barcamp, branding, Design, Leeds, LSx, technology
Posted in Events | 1 Comment »

Future of Web Apps Tour - Leeds report

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

There has been a huge amount of creative activity in Leeds this last week. The LSx09 Leeds Web Festival, curated by local technology/design advocate Imran Ali was underway and I managed to get myself to a couple of events. This one was undoubtedly my most anticipated.

Future of Web Apps tour

Bagging Carsonified’s Future of Web Apps tour was quite a coup for Leeds, and I was very excited at the prospect of hearing some notable industry figures pointing towards uncharted territory.

This expectation was initially dampened in the three morning sessions, which essentially comprised three sales pitches, from different companies offering their approaches to cloud computing solutions (Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Salesforce). All three sessions were geared towards the technically-minded, and I’m sure I’m not the only one whose attention drifted towards their laptop. From talking with others afterwards, even those who understood every word felt a little short-changed by the use of the morning session.

“Knowing Your Audience” - Simon Collison

Simon Collison

Still, the afternoon was the ‘paid-for’ part of the event, and things kicked off well with a very engaging presentation from Simon Collison of Erskine Design. The basis of his talk was to take the audience through a project Erskine undertook a couple of years ago, which was an unmitigated disaster. This was an entertaining approach to a cautionary tale of letting the client dictate and pre-empt the customer experience of a service while avoiding customer research. This was a valuable warning to attendees that “if you build it, they won’t necessarily come”.

Simon then took us through Erskine’s ideal project approach which, like all agencies worth their salt, isn’t set in stone. Essentially a fluid combination of research, collaborative brainstorming, agile development and prototyping, this probably gave much food for thought to those in attendance who are either bedroom coders, furiously plugging away at their pet project, or people from large organisations, mostly accustomed to the ‘waterfall’ project approach. As someone already taking this kind of approach to projects, it was heartening to hear it espoused by someone else.

Going back over my notes, Simon packed a huge amount of information and insight into 30 minutes. However, I was left with the nagging feeling that there was nothing actually ‘futuristic’ about the presentation.

“Making Your Interface Invisible” - Dan Rubin

Dan Rubin

The audience was much more enthused by this point, following Simon’s talk, and Dan Rubin from Sidebar Creative in the U.S. maintained this momentum. His assertion that a good web interface is invisible (i.e., people don’t notice something when it just works), struck a real chord with the attendees. Citing the likes of Jared Spool (”The better the design, the more invisible it becomes”), Dan encouraged people to strip away as much as possible from their interfaces, to make as streamlined and ‘invisible’ a user experience as possible. He urged people to take inspiration from the real world in order to harness people’s existing knowledge of how to interact with things.

It was a very successful and enjoyable talk, even though I don’t necessarily agree with his points 100%. Sometimes it’s important to imbue a series of interactions with the personality or brand you are representing, which may affect how an interface will turn out. Sometimes, making things more ‘visible’ can engender an emotional involvement, which wouldn’t necessarily occur if a purely ‘invisible’ interface were employed. I’ll be explaining my thoughts in this further in a future blog post; stay tuned!

“Architecting Web Services” - Lorna Mitchell

Lorna Mitchell

Next up was local coding guru Lorna Mitchell. I honestly cannot comment on the content of her presentation, as it very much covered the ‘back end’ of things, which goes over my head completely. Despite this, her delivery was confident and the talk well received. It was good to see someone hold their own, having to follow Dan Rubin’s hugely successful talk, and preceding Ryan Carson’s headlining slot. An unenviable position, certainly, but Lorna was unphased.

“Lessons Learned from selling Dropsend” - Ryan Carson

Ryan Carson

Of course, it was down to Ryan Carson himself to bring the talks to a close. Like Simon Collison, he wasn’t afraid to point out where things hadn’t gone so well. He opined that marketing has changed, and while it used to be all about branding and careful control of a product’s perception, it was now about conversation and empowerment. This is important information, but I had the feeling Ryan was preaching to the converted in this context. His emphasis on the importance of honesty and openness had lots of heads nodding, and I would have been interested to see how well such a talk would have gone down in a room full of staunch marketing directors.

His ‘The Basics’ list of things to do to measure the success of your site (Google analytics, A/B testing, using less pushy language, etc) was all completely valid, but nothing anyone who has attended a usability testing session in the last five or six years wouldn’t have already heard.

Again, it was a confident rallying cry to listen to one’s audiences and harness the gargantuan power of the social web in order to market your business successfully. But, like the rest of the sessions, where was the FUTURE in all of this? To my mind, this felt more like the Current State of Web Apps, rather than the future. I came away from the event, having enjoyed the afternoon session, but without knowing a great deal that I hadn’t already considered. There were no exciting or controversial predictions of where the industry is headed; no demonstrations of cool new apps or APIs which we could all begin experimenting with, which the title of the event seems to suggest.

If the overall theme of the afternoon was to listen to your customers and meet their expectations, then this is certainly something Carsonified need to do before putting together the programme for next year’s event.

Tags: Design, FOWA, LSx09, Usability
Posted in Events | 1 Comment »

How Super Heroes can make you a better designer

Friday, May 8th, 2009

I’ve been a fan of comics for as long as I can remember, and they have been a huge influence on my visual vocabulary. I’m sure comics have played no small part in my decision to pursue graphic design as a career, too.

I’m not a comics geek by any means - I have no real in-depth knowledge of them. I was raised on a steady diet of Beano/Dandy/Beezer/Topper as a child, with most of my exposure to American comics coming via TV shows.

However, a few American comics were in my posession as a young boy - presumably random purchases from parents or relatives. I certainly didn’t buy them myself.

American comics were supremely exciting. Full colour throughout (as opposed to the one- or two-colour print jobs the majority of British comics were at the time), they were a different shape, they were often violent, scary or sad, and were filled with ads for mythical toys, sweets and other products unavailable in the U.K. (I would have given anything as a five-year-old for a cream-filled Twinkie and a pack of Space Monkeys).

Of the assorted copies of Batman, X-Men and the like I had at my disposal, one particular edition of Green Lantern was to make an indelible imprint on me. Indeed, it was the only Green Lantern comic I owned, but I was obsessed with it.

Cover of Green Lantern comic

This comic wasn’t about a superhero. It was about a whole army of superheroes, from across space! Look at the dramatic layout of the cover, with hordes of odd-looking good guys disappearing into the distance. I would pore over this cover and the contents within again and again.

This comic was an early lesson in thinking beyond what I understood something could or should be. The artist must have had a whale of a time coming up with crazy alien designs - giant crystals with haircuts! Tentacled eyeballs! Amorphous blobs! Something that looks like a stick of celery! As a child who grew up with ‘Star Wars’, I was accustomed to most aliens being basically humans in masks (until Jabba The Hutt turned up, but that wouldn’t be for a couple of years). Hence, when I drew aliens, they would tend to be humanoid, but with funny heads, or costumes. This comic taught me that I could do whatever I liked.

An inside frame from the Green LAntern comic

It’s something I was reminded of recently, while trying to think of the last time I saw a piece of design, or a way of interacting that made me rethink the way I approach projects myself. Of course, as we get older, and our knowledge of things widens, it’s harder and harder to find something that truly knocks one’s socks off, in the way my Green Lantern comic opened my five-year-old mind. And of course, designing (for example) a web site that is usable will have to conform to certain rules of thumb, if it is to be successful. I’m always on the look out though, and I’d be interested in knowing what has opened other people’s doors of perception.

Tags: Comics, Design, Illustration, Inspiration, Print
Posted in Inspiration | 4 Comments »

A new way of seeing music?

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Having been letting iTunes’ most recent music visualisers caress my eyeballs and synapses recently, I’ve been thinking about how visual representations of music could be taken forward. Sure, Apple’s latest visualisers are absolutely beautiful - graceful, colourful, and very slick. But essentially they still behave much like the visualisers of ten years ago. They still just act as animated wallpaper, regardless of how gorgeous they are.

Screen grab of iTunes' "Jelly" music visualiser

It’s something that really interests me. As music continues to migrate to digital platforms, the visual and tactile aspect of it is lost. Bad enough was the scaling down from gatefold vinyl record sleeves to CD cases (although there are some wonderful CD packaging designs out there), but from CD to digital, we lose nearly everything. Perhaps visualisers which reflected the tone of the music could bring an element of the visual back into music appreciation.

For example, what I would love to see (or even work on) would be real-time music visualisation which had a true link with the music, rather than just pulsing in time with the beats, etc.

Screen grab of the "Star Guitar" Chemical Brothers video, by Michel Gondry

I love Michel Gondry’s video for the Chemical Brothers track Star Guitar. I first saw this from about halfway through, and didn’t realise what was going on, and thought it was just an ironically dully video for a dance track. However, when I saw it again, and realised that every element in the video represented a different sound in the track, I was hugely impressed.

Of course, Gondry’s video is painstakingly built, based on prior knowledge of the music, but surely once the idea has been established, some clever individuals should be able to, say, build a library of landscape elements, and have software scan audio tracks to detect commonly-occuring sounds, and attribute an appropriate visual asset?

I would love to design a visualiser based around architecture. How exciting it would be to see a randomly-built structure form before your eyes, to the soundtrack to one of your favourite songs! Structures could form, and deform, depending on the pace/volume/whatever of the track. Perhaps the style of music could inform the style of architecture. A Philip Glass symphony would generate a huge, but uniform housing complex. A three minute pop song would build a small but perfectly-formed cottage. A Black Sabbath track could build a huge, ominous gothic tower.

It wouldn’t need to be limited to architecture - anything could be generated. Plants, faces, maps of imaginary places. On discussing this subject with my good friend Imran, he pointed me to some experimental algorithmic work - check it out.

Looks like the result of a town planning meeting chaired by the Cubists! But you can see that there’s huge potential to be tapped by linking digital music to something more than pretty, but ultimately empty, pictures.

If anyone has the technical capability to develop something like this, it would be lovely to hear from you.

Tags: Design, Motion, Music
Posted in Ideas | 1 Comment »

Is anything perfect?

Monday, March 30th, 2009

What better way to kick off the DVB&ID blog, than to discuss the notion of ‘perfection’ in design?

This is a subject I discussed when I gave a talk at this year’s Ignite UK North event, run by O’Reilly. The format for the talk is simple: 5 minutes, with 20 slides auto-timed to 15 seconds each, to keep things snappy. Take a look.

I spoke about how there are hundreds of things in the world many people describe as a ‘design classic’ - the London tube map, the Eames chair, and the ipod are just three items which fall into this category. Groundbreaking, hugely influential, often desirable they may all be, but could any one of them really be described as ‘perfect’?

How do you define perfection? Well, for the purposes of my talk, I defined it as being when there was nothing I could add or remove from something, to make it do its job any better. And as an example of such a thing, I showed Boots’ own-brand paracetamol packaging.

Beautiful, isn’t it?

OK, maybe not, but if you take a moment to really look at it, hopefully you will see what I mean. In terms of telling a customer all the top-line information they need about a product, it’s here, with no fuss at all. It tells you:

- who makes it
- the substance
- the form and dosage
- what it’s for
- quantity
- and an actual-size image of what you will be swallowing.

I think why this design works so well is that it’s not trying to put any marketing spin on the product. So many painkillers show cross-sections of people’s heads or brains with terrifying red flashpoints, or glowing, super-stylised renders of the tablets themselves, offering super-charged, faster-than-the-speed-of-light relief.

But for Boots’ paracetamol, the designer has relied on the power of the Boots brand, and taken an approach more akin to information design. Most people know what paracetamol is for, and often buy it when not actually in pain (ie, purchasing for future use), so there is no real need to ’sell’ it. Of course, this kind of approach would never work if all packaging design adopted it, but for me, its very understatement makes it stand out.

Even the blue background of the lower portion isn’t extraneous, as it is a backdrop for the illustration of the tablet (which, I might add, doesn’t have so much as a drop-shadow behind it). Marvellous.

This is an exercise in design economy, and something that I find an inspiration. In the same way as many new web applications and widgets do a single thing very well, so does this.

Tags: Design, Information Design, Packaging, Perfection
Posted in Inspiration | 1 Comment »