30.11.06
Look up, number 4

A bizarre Look up found by Richard Di Blasi, on Wavertree high street in Liverpool. That's one of the weirdest things we've ever seen. Keep them coming.

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24.11.06
Branded by Borat

Those of us involved in country and city branding have had quite a bit to think about recently. For years Kazakhstan was only famous with pub-quiz officianados who happened to know that it’s the largest country in the world without a sea border (true). Now, enquiries to Kazakh hotels are up 300 percent because of Borat and its President stood in No.10 this week admitting that ‘any publicity is good publicity’. (Apparently last year they were threatening to sue, so that’s a bit of an about turn).

A couple of weeks ago even The Economist was drawn into the debate, wheeling out Wally Olins and Simon Anholt to confirm what most of us knew already – yes, a canny bit of branding can raise the profile of a city or a country, but it only takes a war or a comedian (or both, in the case of Donald Rumsfeld) to send everything pear shaped again.

Often the 'canny bit of branding' leaves much to be desired as well. The much trumpeted welcome to estonia campaign a few years back was notable only for shifting a lot of t-shirts and now Slovenia has got in on the action with a rather strange looking heart/flame/mountain device which is meant to communicate a lot but leaves us muddled. They’ve even got their own Donna Summer inspired ‘I feel (s)love’ t-shirt. Have we found country-branding’s killer app?

Meanwhile Visit Britain has unveiled a rather claustrophobic campaign for London which asked David Mach to repeat his Millennium Dome portrait idea, this time of a London seemingly symbolised by the Hippodrome, Leicester Square and teenage boys on skateboards. And is it just us, but isn’t Totally Lond-on just a bit of a turn-off?

In the midst of this mediocrity some ideas still stand out. Amsterdam has had double success at both branding the city (by stripping away all the government/department logos and replacing them with a system based on their ‘XXX’ city flag) and creating a neat tourism campaign using the line ‘I amsterdam’.

So it is possible to do it well. Rumour has it that there are a series of projects aiming to look at the London Development Agency’s identity, building on the London Unlimited/Team London work unveiled a few years back. That might help.

But until someone looks at London’s brand across the board and puts all the politics to one side we’re not holding our breath.

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20.11.06
Out of the Archive

Prompted by a recent visit to the Alan Fletcher show at the Design Museum, we found this conversation between Michael Johnson and Alan Fletcher, dating from 1996. It took place at the time of the release of Beware Wet Paint.

MJ: I guess this book was a labour of love. Did you make any money out of it?
AF: Make money out of it? I should think I lost about a years’ income on it.
MJ: It’s not a marketing tool then, it’s just a book.
AF: No, I don’t know what I’d do with a marketing tool, I’m not running an organisation.
MJ: But all the books you’ve done before, either as Fletcher Forbes Gill or Pentagram, presumably they were done to get work?
AF: They were done because you wanted to do them and you hoped that a potential client would come to you because he liked the same thing.
MJ: When I first saw your design for the cover of The Art Book it was immediately obvious to me that it was Alan Fletcher.
AF: I’m quite surprised, because I would have thought it’s about as anonymous as you can get.
MJ: No, I remember now, I thought that it was either Alan Fletcher or a very good copy.
AF: You ought to see the real copies. There are about a dozen different copies in other countries in different languages and they’ve obviously given it to their secretaries to do.
MJ: Do you see the designer as the client’s problem solver or an artist who tailors what they do for that particular project?
AF: An artist or a painter solves his own problems. A designer solves his clients problems. I guess I’m solving my clients problems but there’s also an element in there of solving aesthetic problems for me.
MJ: You went to four separate art colleges in all. Why?
AF: Well it was the only way I could get any money - if you went to art college you got a grant, and I couldn’t get work.
MJ: In your book there are lots of references to the Swiss style. Do you think that modernist grounding was important to you?
AF: Oh yeah, that’s grammar. It’s very sound grammar. You can only muck around with language if you know what you’re mucking around with. Otherwise you’re just being sloppy.
MJ: A lot of designers don’t get schooled in any of the ‘isms’ anymore
AF: Perhaps they don’t care. They’ve never been curious enough to find out about them.
MJ: The early work at the back is very interesting, maybe because I’ve never seen it before. It looks very contemporary, quite American influenced.
AF: That was a period of greats. No other city had so many great designers, all at the same time, as New York did then.
MJ: So that period of late 50’s American work had quite an affect on you?
AF: Oh yes, that was magic. You just can’t imagine how England was then, how grey it was.
MJ: When you came back to England, did you think it was a stupid thing to do?
AF: Yeah, I did. But I came back because I thought things would move faster, there would be a common market, which just took the 25 years longer than I thought. But I came back just at the right time when it all started to take off.
MJ: Do you think the balance of graphic ‘power’ swings across the Atlantic at all?
AF: I do think it does swing back and forth. But I don’t think the power’s ever been here, actually. I think there was that very exciting period in the sixties which was also fired by the americans who were here, you know, Brownjohn and Bob Gill. We’ve never had the figures of American design.
MJ: Why is that do you think?
AF: Dorfsman, Lubalin, Glaser, Chwast, Geismar, Chermayeff; in London you can never raise more than three people on one hand. The London community only thinks about itself, they don’t have an international sense, it’s very parochial. The trouble is, there’s no graphic design association over here.
MJ: Do you think one is needed?
AF: Yes, I do, and I don’t think it has to be contrary to what D&AD does. The AIGA has different chapters in different cities. If you were going to have an exhibition of the state of the art of graphics in England at the moment, D&AD isn’t going to do that for you, and the CSD isn’t.
MJ: I remember hearing this once in the eighties: ‘clients who know nothing about design go to Wolff Olins, clients who know something about design go to Pentagram’. What do you think?
AF: True. Those who felt it was good for their turnover went to Wolff Olins, those who went for stature went to Pentagram.
MJ: There’s a prevailing view that the acquisition of the three more recent partners in the USA has been a masterstroke.
AF: I would tend to agree with you.
MJ: Who has been your greatest influence as a designer?
AF: I’ve been actually influenced by so many people, Maybe there is one person who was a real influence; a painter at Central called Roderick Barret. He was one of the first people who made me question myself and what I did. He said ‘why did you do that’ I said, ‘cause I like it’, he said ‘well that’s not good enough’. He made me analyse and justify what I was doing. At that age, 19, I really learnt something. And obviously other people; Rand, Muller Brockman, Froshaug.
MJ: There are a lot of words in this book. Generally speaking designers don’t like words.
AF: I do think words are very important. It’s the most common symbol there is. Any designer who isn’t interested in words has got a piece missing.
MJ: Do you think should people follow their instincts more?
AF: I think they should be happy and do what they want to do, if they can pull it off.
MJ: A lot of them are scared.
AF: Sure they are; people are afraid of losing things. It wouldn’t bother me if I lost everything.
MJ: It might irritate your wife.
AF: Well maybe, but we’re of a generation that thought we would never get anything anyway. Design is about courage. If you don’t have courage then you shouldn’t be a designer. You take as many risks as possible. It keeps you sharp. It’s like blunt razor blades, if you’re frightened to change the blade, well....
MJ: What are you driven by?
AF: Having a good time; I’m driven by enjoying myself. I’m quite good at it.
MJ: I’m kind of jealous that you can’t use the computer.
AF: I deliberately can’t use it. The truth is I don’t use it because I can’t even make long distance phone calls. There is a benefit in not using it; it’s a sort of self protection. And I intend to keep it that way.
MJ: Any great jobs you wished you’d done?
AF: Well, probably like you, at least 75% of what we do never actually happens, and in that 75% were some of the more interesting things. All that warmth generated by a project, leaking away because you weren’t smart enough to get a client to take it, that’s what really bugs me.
MJ: As regards a lot of modern design, if you flick through ‘Typography now’ it almost looks like the work of one designer.
AF: Yes. They’re all using the same kind of abacus. If you’re a client, how do you tell the difference between one and another? You wouldn’t have the faintest idea. I think it was Rodney Fitch who said that if in the marketplace all things look the same, only one can be the cheapest.

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08.11.06
Design awards. Discuss

There’s a famous quote much bandied in advertising circles that goes something like this: ‘I know that half of my advertising is wasted, but I don’t know which half’. It’s usually attributed to either Lord Leverhulme (soap) or Frank Woolworth (pick and mix). I’m starting to wonder if you could use it to describe design awards - ‘I know half the money I spend entering them is wasted, but I don’t know which half…’

Let’s face it, most of us haven’t really got a clue what to enter into what competition, and most of us are unwilling to enter 30 projects when we secretly know only 3 are any good. With many competitions receiving more and more entries, it just keeps getting tougher. D&AD, as befits the oldest and stingiest, remains the most controversial. It received 24,500 items from around the world this year, into 150-odd sub-categories. It awarded 52 yellow pencils (and 2 blacks). That leaves 24,448 art directors worldwide spluttering ‘fix’ and ‘clique’ into their lattes. It’s no wonder that other lesser schemes get increased attention because, let’s be honest, the odds of winning are substantially better.

If I had a magic formula I’d tell you (promise), but I haven’t found a better one yet than trying to produce original and unusual work, picking a few favourites then hoping for the best. That’s about as strategic as it gets. Designing things just to win awards strikes me as a bit desperate and juries can usually, but not always, smell that kind of stuff. Some years at shows I’ve walked through the short-listed items and mentally reckoned that 30-40% were self-initiated, or of dubious origin. You can understand people’s desire to win at any cost but those little die-cut mailers for the local start-up rarely impress proper clients, however creative an idea. Clients want to see real solutions for proper clients with genuine problems, not made-up ones for that friend of your girlfriend’s uncle.

One hears stories of the bigger groups assigning teams and budgets to ‘special’ projects, often virtually designing the idea first, then finding the client second. Imagine being the designers working on the ‘not-special’ projects. Fun.

Now you can win an award for anything that moves, some of the language of ‘award-winning’ seems fatally flawed. Perhaps the USP of awards may have gone? Marketing oneself as ‘the most creative’ is now a hostage to fortune - it only takes a few fallow years and those damning words ‘... oh yes, they used to be really good...’ begin to reverberate around town.

So is there a point to this (some might say gloomy) rant? Well, yes – be realistic. There’s no doubt that the thought of winning a notable bit of wood or metal can act as a spur to genuine creativity. For your peers to say ‘now that’s a great idea’ remains a great accolade, and to young designers takes some beating. But you can understand why some have opted out of the awards game (GTF, the Why Nots) or have ‘retired’ from the business of entering having once had serious success (Peter Saville, KesselsKramer). Some, like Mark Farrow, just enter D&AD and nothing else.

They are probably confident in the quality of their work guaranteeing enough column inches, the necessary referrals, the occasional monograph. Maybe they think they are ‘too good’ to enter? Perhaps. Maybe they just want to save on polyboard and the sometimes crippling entry fees. But to many the oxygen of publicity that awards offer, the sense of ‘we’ve arrived’, coupled with an ego-boost and that brief, warm, gooey feeling onstage remains undeniably compelling.

Whether awards get you work is much harder to prove - johnson banks can still only point to one award that led directly to a project. When people ask ‘what makes that phone ring’ I’m reminded of a lesson I learnt designing exhibition posters. I (of course) felt the poster was critical, but the marketeers I was working with explained that the public went to an exhibition for a mixture of reasons: they read a review; they see the poster; a friend goes and delivers a verdict; they see an ad in Time Out; they clip an article. If people tick three or more of these boxes, there was a good chance they’d go.

I’m starting to think the same applies in this business - people might read about you, see a piece of your work, get a good referral, spot you’ve won an award. That might push them to your website. They’ll have a think. They might call. So the ‘awards won’ button on your homepage may still have some relevance and whoever said ‘clients don’t care how many awards you’ve won, they just want to know you’ve won some’ may still be right. All I ask is please, please, don’t take them too seriously.

This is an adaptation of a piece written for Design Week by Michael Johnson

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02.11.06
Reading lists or Looking lists?

A few months ago, I was asked to contribute a list of the ten books that had helped me become a graphic designer, and that I thought other designers should read. A couple of weeks ago, Spin printed this and 49 others as a collection of 50 Reading Lists.

Seeing this many lists together makes bizarre reading. What’s interesting is the common themes, the ever-present influences, the notable omissions.

The first thing that struck me was that, even though Tony Brook (at Spin) had obviously asked for contributions from quite a few Helvetica-heads, the sheer hold that the Swiss style has over the bedside tables of prominent graphic designers is astonishing. Müller-Brockmann, Armin Hofmann, Max Bill, Emil Ruder, Weingart, they’re all here, with almost monotonous regularity. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge Hoffman fan and Der Film would be a desert-island poster for me (what a weird kind of desert island that would be) but whether I could actually sit down and read any of these tomes is highly debatable.

Several people have nominated Edward Tufte’s wonderful books, and at first I felt a slight pang of guilt as I wondered if I should have included The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. But, even as an avid reader of the design/art genre, I can’t honestly say I’ve actually read that series properly. There’s a big difference to me between a reading list and a looking list.

The books that, rightly or wrongly, made it onto my list were an honest selection of what had helped me on my journey, but importantly books that I still read now. It might seem strange to name-check a tome like Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, but the truth is when I was at college it was only one of two books on graphic design in my university library (the other was Pioneers of Modern Typography but I haven’t looked at that for at least 10 years). Hugely unfashionable though it might be, discovering Bob Gill’s Forget all the rules... opened my mind to ideas, however clunky they might seem 20 years later. Another great influence for me was George Lois: his Art of Advertising from the 70s is a massive ramble through bizarre and wonderful ideas that merrily straddle design and advertising and always makes me find the distinction between the two worlds almost entirely arbitrary (and slightly pointless).

I included Malcolm Gladwell and was pleased to see his influence on others. It’s great to see that others find Bruno Munari as interesting as I do. That great book on Tibor Kalman by Peter Hall and Michael Bierut gets deserved praise. I thought about Ways of Seeing but then asked myself when was the last time I’d really read it, and realised, rather sadly, that it no longer felt so relevant.

Looking at other people’s lists, there are obviously a few people messing about – choosing the Oxford English Dictionary or A Thesaurus or The Paper, or suchlike. Bill Cahan says he never reads books on design. Two designers even chose their own books (but at least one of those was only included because it included a more comprehensive reading list). It reminded me slightly of the opera singer who appeared once on desert island disks and chose eight of her own records...

Apart from me choosing Bob Gill’s book, I haven’t found one single list yet that includes any of the Pentagram books or anything from Minale Tattersfield. Wally Olins only crops up only briefly. It’s as though that whole genre of British design thinking has or is being systematically airbrushed from graphic design history. A weird kind of sans-serif Stalinism. Even the much-maligned but much referenced Smile in the Mind crops up on precisely no lists, even though it’s bound to be on the majority of student reading lists around the country. Interesting.

Obviously it’s not currently cool to admit to an interest in ideas. Why choose Bob Gill when you can have Laurence Weiner? Why indeed. Perhaps this is just a list of grid-niks feeling that they should reference other grid-niks? Even Rick Poynor gets very few name checks, an astonishing omission given that he remains one of the few lucid commentators we have on what we do.

I guess I’m left with a slightly sinking feeling that the Neo-Modernists have taken over the asylum. An asylum where everything will snap to a grid and resemble a Lufthansa timetable, and will almost certainly involve Akzidenz. Now that really will drive me mad.

By Michael Johnson

Spin/2 50 Reading Lists is available from www.spin.co.uk

Michael’s Johnson’s list reads as follows
(in no particular order)

The Circus in the Mist
Bruno Munari

Tibor
Peter Hall + Michael Bierut

A History of Graphic Design
Philip B Meggs

Forget all the rules...
Bob Gill

Obey the Giant
Rick Poynor

The Art of Advertising:
George Lois on Mass Communication
George Lois, Bill Pitts

Design, the problem comes first
Jens Bersen

Images of an era:
The American Poster 1945-75
National Collection of Fine Arts

The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell

Your Private Sky,
R Buckminster Fuller
Lars Müller