Design Debate

When planning our annual end of year project, we decided to focus on twelve influential aspects of the creative team's lives. We chose four items each to illustrate and print on badges. (They will be available for the beginning of January, feel free to request one). One of the four I selected was comic book art, a passion of mine since my teens, but I struggled to convince the other two designers in the team, Marie and Emma. There is undoubtedly prejudice against comic books from some demographic groups, and easy to see why. When trying to engender the same enthusiasm in the rest of the team, I was hard pressed to show good examples of the stunning art form without picking out blood spattered scenes in the more credible volumes, or stupidly revealing spandex outfits on female characters. There is a real need for graphic novels that bridge the gap between superhero books, full of characters that follow American foreign policy and resemble the Aryan ideal, and the direct antithesis i...

Fallon's recent advert for the Sony Bravia, Play Doh, has just won the British Television Advertising Craft Awards. In fact, they have been awarded a lot of well deserved awards for their television work this year. It just seems a shame that it was this advert that won them the award. Their previous two campaigns were outstanding, and altered way television advertising was formulated dramatically. The bouncing balls and exploding paint fireworks flowed seamlessly into the public consciousness, even spawning spoof campaigns by other companies such as this particularly well thought out homage: Those advertisements worked through their understated audacity and exceptional use of soundtrack, and their Play Doh piece started with as much promise, hinting that the initial concepts were being reworked with imagination. But then the Rolling Stones kicks in and lets everything following down. I happen to really like the track they chose, and it is very clear why "She's a Rainbow...

This week we put together an advertising campaign for a financial advisers, and purchased some stock photography as time was short and a deadline loomed. This has reminded me of all my concerns about using this service, yet again. The online image banks such as iStockphoto, are a useful resource, and when used selectively can produce excellent results. But the general standard of image is just shocking, take this shot for example: To find the shots we needed for the campaign, we had to trawl through countless poorly posed, generically composed shots such as this, and although we were able to find the image we were looking for, it was a depressing task. What compounded my irritation was the cost of the shots we wanted from such sites as Getty Images and Image Source. Both would have cost us around a thousand pounds for a single image, for the use we required. While the photograph in question was certainly of a high standard, and fitted the bill well, the cost made it unfeasible for the ...

Pickle Design have recently completed work on the Space & Graphics website. Working closely with Joseph Bouzaglo, they created the brand and carried it through onto stationery options. Joe chose to work with Pickle Design as the style of their creative team matched his vision. He wanted to take advantage of the illustrative approach of Emma Julian and they minimalist layout of Marie Lawley. The result is a very tight website that hints at freedom of scope in its detail.

As the downturn in the financial markets continues, and the media eagerly prophecies worse to come, we may see a worrying trend in graphic design. A few weeks ago, I saw an advert for Discount Brands at Tesco . What was significant was the packaging and style of direction, clearly aimed at rivals such as Lidl and Aldi . These two companies have branding that reflects their roots, distinctly German. After having visited my wife's family in what was East Germany, I was surprised to see the dramatic differences in marketing. We would consider them outdated, as is often the case when looking at such brands as Lidl. This is not to say these businesses are not valuable assets, not only are they well priced, but they offer products not available in many other stores. My concern is the style of package design. As I said, I was certain I was not watching a UK based supermarket's advert, especially not Tesco. This implies that they feel the British public associate cheap products with a...

The new edition of the Creative Review features their annual photography awards, and is an excellent collection of work. the current trend of photography to be merely "challenging" has left me cold for a number of years, and so I was excited to look through the shots in this edition. Pieces that really captured my attention included Ernst Fisher 's Datong Train forms, Janie Airey 's shot for CEF and Tunnel by Nadege Meriau . The Tunnel is easily my favourite in the book, with such wonderful use of colour and shadow. Its composition faultless, as your eye is drawn in succession to each focal point. But I was still disappointed by some of the work displayed, such as the conceptual series by Diego Diaz, Redefining Fast Food - deemed worthy of one of the limited edition covers of the annual by Creative Review. I am very aware that appreciation of such pieces are matters of taste, but the contrived shots, intentionally didactic, felt drained of life. They are comprised of...

When companies have to resort to knocking the opposition you tend to worry about the quality of their own products. That was my initial thought when I saw Apple's "I'm Mac, I'm a PC" adverts, and it has been re-enforced by the latest from both Microsoft and Apple. This post though is to analyse the current Microsoft advertisement. Is there an unwritten law that says, the larger the company, the more banal their advertising? I am certain someone has already made the connection between the " I'm a PC " slogan, and the hopelessly PC approach to its make up. We are presented with a series of testimonials from "quirky" individuals, conveniently made up of photogenic "characters" from all races, backgrounds and age groups. All with a musical bed stolen from Seinfeld, to emphasise the zany nature of the advert. There has been some money spent on this campaign, with high production levels and impressive software on the accompanying websit...

So Bollo's a graphic designer!? And by all accounts, not a bad one. Dave Brown, who plays the ancient gorilla in The Mighty Boosh television and stage show, has designed and art directed their new book, The Mighty Book of Boosh. It is good to see that the design has come from within the core of the show, and not farmed out to a publishers looking merely to cash in on the success of The Boosh. The book features work from a lot of the creatives that the writing team studied with, notably John Chandler , who created the excellent illustrations for the Dixon Bainbridge story. Much of the book's style (as with the show, which I feel can be hit and miss) is not to my taste. I find that surreal art works better when subtly subverting reality, instead of leaping into the purely fantastic. But the cover design of the books within the book - such as Vince Noir’s Childhood Tales From The Jungle and Howard Moon’s A Trumpet Full of Memories - are expertly parodied by Brown. I would be keen...

I think that most people who have seen the Burn After Reading poster will inevitably make comparisons to the great Saul Bass , and one of his pieces immediately jumps into my mind, the poster above from One, Two Three, a Billy Wilder comedy set in Berlin during the cold war. While there are a lot of his other poster designs that have been more readily compared to Burn After Reading's: The design for One, Two, Three seems closer to the theme of the film - a dark, spy comedy. While Billy Wilder's picture was more than likely more light-hearted, it did touch on some sinister issues, such as Soviet torture and the West's overlooking of Nazi atrocities when it suited them. Bass' approach has often wrong footed me when watching the films he worked on. His style seems out of sync with the subject matter of The Man With The Golden Arm and Anatomy of a Murderer. Both were pictures that I expected to be quirky, and instead were surprisingly hard hitting. This is not to say that I...

Think of some of the most stunningly shot films of the last few decades, and there is a very good chance you will be including some of Roger Deakins ' work. Let me run a few names past you: The Shawshank Redemption, The Man Who Wasn't There, No Country for Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James - it is no accident that these are all considered classics. The last two of these films have really stamped his name in the consciousness of the Western hemisphere, and bring me to my point; will the fact that his stock is so high at the moment take him away from his long standing relationship with the Cohen brothers? Since Barton Fink the names Cohen and Deakins have been practically synonymous, his distinctive style employed on the more comedic pictures such as The Hudsucker Proxy and O Brother Where Art Thou? as well as the broader canvas of Fargo. Now we have an Ethan and Joel film, Burn After Reading, without his direction of photography, Emmanuel Lubezki takes up the roll. He...

The latest sample pack from GF Smith was handed to us by our postman last week, Naturalis x 1-5, featuring Daniel Gustav Cramer , Lee Funnell , Sir Peter Blake, Wim Crouwel and Peter Saville . I have been very impressed with GF Smith's presentation since I first came across them, it is rare to find good design showing off good paper stock. For example, sample packs from some printers are often very lacklustre, when a little attention to detail would sell their work far more effectively. This new pack has a lot to recommend it - branding, packaging, foil blocking, even the smell - but the A3 prints inside are outstanding. I have seen both Lee Funnell and Daniel Gustav Cramer's work previously in the books sent out by GF Smith, but this format showed them off in an unexpectedly good way. Cramer's photography is exquisite, and shows off the Naturalis stock admirably. After endless corporate mail shots, oozing blandness, it is a pleasure to be given some credit. GF Smith show ...

First post on my new blog, might as well start with a moan! I have a feeling that most of my thoughts on design will be a rant... Anyone who knows me will probably be aware that I am not a fan of Orange's television advertising campaigns, so this will hardly be a surprise, but I just cannot let my thoughts on their latest be left in my head - I fear for my already feeble grip on reality. The title is so pretentious for a start, " I am who I am because of everyone "? My word, that is so trite. The implications from their latest advert - the one I have included a screen shot from, where a cartoon-ish ball of activity sweeps through an inner city estate tidying things up, and leaving some very media friendly graffiti in its wake - are certainly admirable, giving something back to the environment we live in, but just so far removed from real life it's embarrassing. There does seem to be some effort to move away from the preened models that have been used for the last few ...