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02.01.10
Slightly Late Review of the Year, 2009
Apologies, a hectic end to ’09 and an equally hectic Xmas break mean this review is now SO last year. But, anyway, on with it, the third time we’ve done this and this year with multiple suggestions from our loyal readers, thank you. So, in no particular order.. The ‘wish we’d done that’ projects of the year
One of our personal favourites has to be this Japanese meat label packaging by To Genko. 
The white food labels are specially printed to detect ammonia and darken when meat begins to go off. This means that a dark blue label = ‘off meat’, but the really clever bit is that the bar code is also nullified so it can’t be sold. Genius. And genuinely useful too.
Everyone rightly loves these Dixons ads by M&C Saatchi, and what a great endline (Dixons – the last place you want to go). Brilliant. Will scoop every gong going. 
Several people have suggested Alan Clarke’s Olympic posters. It’s interesting that a student project on the Olympics has gathered more praise than the ‘real’ Olympics work on the logo and now its equally controversial symbols. 
Designer of the year
Well, we have to go with J Abott Miller in Pentagram’s New York Office. Here’s just a few of the projects he was involved in last year.
Brand success with possibly the world’s worst logo
Nominated by Stephen Taylor as a good logo, but we think he’s joking - Brawn GP. What looks like it was designed over a weekend ended up being plastered all over the Championship winning car for precisely one year. How anyone decided that the ‘BR’ should be roman and the ‘AWN’ italicised is beyond us.
Proof, perhaps, that a terrible logo will not slow your car down one little bit. One in the eye for design effectiveness, perhaps.
What’s happening in blogville?
Whilst the established blogs like the Creative Review blog and Designboom still deliver the goods, since its re-design Design Observer feels less and less like required reading. Why is that? Within the niche world of branding and re-branding, Brand New continues to showcase the most interesting developments and manages, just about, to keep its commentators under a degree of moderation. Design Assembly should be encouraged too (but maybe it needs to lighten up a bit this year?)
Several blogs we won’t name-check have virtually lapsed completely into constant self-promotion. In difficult times this is probably understandable but makes for pretty tedious reading. Perhaps happier times will fix this, or maybe the simple naivety of blogging is virtually over and just about everyone’s out to make a buck nowadays. Shame.
Weirdly, we’ve been having the most fun reading simple blogs dedicated to single issues. Here’s a great example: My Parents Were Awesome, dedicated to hideous (but hilarious) photos submitted by readers of their parents. 
In the words of the site itself, ‘before the fanny packs and Andrea Bocelli concerts, your parents (and grandparents) were once free-wheeling, fashion-forward, and super awesome’. 
And the new but fantastically written ‘I am the Client’ which tracks the relationship of its hero, marketing director Dave Knockles, with his advertising agencies, trashing all reputations along the way. It’s worth reading from the oldest post up, if that makes sense (but if you’re swear-word-phobic, watch out). If you’re short of time just start with this fantastic decimation of the whole concept of ‘the agency planner’. Genius.
Richard Heap wrote and suggested Letters of note, which is new to us, but looks great and will hastily go into our news readers. 
On a slightly weirder note, how about this, Post Secret, consisting of secrets sent anonymously on postcards. 
Back to design, a newcomer to this blogging malarky is Sean Adams’s ‘burning settlers cabin’ which, despite its odd title, turns out to be a hilarious ramble through the mind of one of California’s funniest designers and the seemingly endless 50s and 60s kitsch that turns him on. Great stuff. And he has already surely broken the record for the amount of times he’s featured a picture of himself and business partner Noreen.
The ’09 chutzpah award…
…goes again to Wolff Olins for continuing to push the boundaries of identity design and getting up the noses of most of the blog commentators at the same time. Ok, their Aol scheme might look like a scheme we’ve all presented without much hope at some point, but you know what? They got it through. 
It’s a strange commentary on current identity design that one of the biggest firms often tries something new, whilst the smaller (and in theory nimbler) ones often don’t. Odd.
Ad of the year
Even UK advertising’s most esteemed organ, Campaign, described 2009 as an ‘annus horriblis’ for advertising, by refusing to nominate an agency of the year which, for a creative sector especially skilled at congratulating itself, says quite a bit. It’s tough though, isn’t it, to think of great ads you’ve seen this year? We’ve already mentioned the Dixons campaign, and we’re going to go with those Meerkats again, slightly out of desperation.
Music of the year
Going on the simple rule of ‘most played in the office’ then the albums of the year would have to be Grizzly Bear (Veckatimest), The Animal Collective (Merriweather Post Pavilion), Bat for Lashes (Two Suns), Florence and the Machine (Lungs), Passion Pit (Manners) and the Dark was the Night compilation. And it’s only a month old but we’re already loving Them Crooked Vultures.
For the more niche music-heads, our doom-rock instrumental-post-rock band of the year has to be Russian Circles. Our metal album of the year was Mastodon’s Cracke the Skye. Blues album of the year? Matt Schofield. Are we getting too niche now? Maybe. The online music breakthrough of the year had to be Spotify. But you already knew that.
The ‘F**k you, I won’t do what you tell me’ award
Single of the year was looking tricky (Passion Pit’s Little Secrets?) then got very easy – Rage against the Machine’s victory over the Simon Cowell (s)hit factory. 
A carefully orchestrated internet campaign stopped the UK Christmas chart topper being the X-Factor winner (for potentially the fourth year). Never was a chorus so appropriate.
Book of the year
Well, we’ve had some hugely varying nominations, from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to the new compilation of Malcolm Gladwell’s writing, What the Dog Saw: and Other Adventures. In design we’ve enjoyed Graphic Design, Referenced by Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Unit Edition’s first foray, Studio Culture: The secret life of the graphic design studio (but gee, that type is small). An interesting nomination came from Jacob Pover for Massimo Vignelli's 'The Vignelli Canon', up until now only available as a pdf download (but a real version is on its way in 2010).
The trends of the year
Overall, everyone’s still talking about Barack Obama, Steven Fry’s tweets and MP’s expenses (here’s a picture submitted by Richard Holt). 
Oh, and Flashmobbing adverts. Christopher Skinner thinks the design trend of the year is hand drawn/scribbled fonts and suggests that our Save the Children work had something to do with it… maybe… Matthew Day suggests the 'Papercraft' trend as design trend of the year. ‘It’s annoyed the hell out of me because so many of the examples of it have been brilliant and I am insanely jealous’. Stephen Walker is looking forward to better web typography in 2010 thanks to Typekit, and if what it suggests takes off then yes, typographically things could get a whole lot better in web-ville.
Most over-hyped things...
Danny Elliott has suggested The Olympic Pictograms, and we can see why. ‘I can appreciate they are hard to do but come on, they are awful. But then again, I said that about the logo, but I like that now. It’s no easy task designing somethiing that needs to be 2,3 and even 4 years ahead of itself’. Ollie Winser is very bored of Florence and the Machine (already?).
Andrew Kingham wrote and asked that everyone stop using Rosewood (seems a bit harsh) and illustrated his point accordingly. OK, fair enough. 
A graduate whose been doing the placement rounds (might keep the name quiet for now) has suggested we have a new ‘Mad about Moodboards’ award and he wants us to give it to Interbrand London. Mind you he also wants to award Interbrand with the best in-house cafeteria award too. Evens itself out really, doesn't it?
Steal of the year
Ken Li has alerted us to this great story where Leo Burnett Hong Kong scooped a grand prix at an awards scheme for their ‘sweat’ campaign that had a, er, ‘striking resemblance’ to a series of images produced by UK photographer John Ross for the Manic Street Preachers' Lifeblood album in 2004. Those images were a collaboration with art director and designer Mark Farrow. 
What no-one seems to have noticed is that the John Ross photos already built on work by Giles Revell from a few more years previously. Ah well.
The ‘I really don’t need one but I’d really like one’ product of the year
We’re very excited by this product, which appears to be a miniature midi keyboard/synthesizer, we think. Very nice, can we have a beta copy please?
We’d also love one of these toasters that look like printers… 
The design prediction for ‘10
Well, our notes say ‘the year Augmented reality becomes everyday’, which may well be true. But if all the rumours are correct, this will be the year of the Apple tablet.
And after a decade of lugging around not-very-portable portables, we can’t wait. 
Happy New Year everyone. Here’s to a better ’10. PS We’re still thinking about the whole ‘design of the decade’ thing. Give us a bit longer to get our thoughts straight on that one…
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