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25.09.08
Masters of Design
This week sees the publication of a useful new book by Rockport on identity design, by Sean Adams of LA-based design agency Adams Morioka. Albeit rather grandly titled ‘Masters of design, Logos and Identity’, Adams has succesfully selected about 30 designers from across the world, and devotes a series of spreads to each designer, showcasing recent work and analysing the way they work. Some of the designers included with in-depth studies are Philipppe Apeloig, Margo Chase and Steff Geissbuhler, with useful shorter sections devoted to designers such as Michael Bierut and Vince Frost. There’s also a good logo round-up at the back. Johnson banks’s creative director Michael Johnson is featured as one of the thirty, and we’ve reprinted below excerpts from an interview that formed the basis of the text.
What is your overall philosophy about logos and identity? Every time I think that I’ve fixed my view about how an identity should look, feel or communicate, a new project will come along and I’ll realize that having no fixed modus operandi makes life so much more interesting.
What do you think is more successful, wordmarks or symbols? I think it was Bob Gill who said that ‘boring words need interesting graphics’, and vice versa. So, whilst, my default setting is probably drawn towards wordmarks, I know deep down that sometimes a symbol can be fantastically useful (usually when the words of an organization don’t quite communicate what they should).
I do think that as identities have to communicate so quickly, taking up valuable ‘real estate’ of an identity with a symbol has to be carefully considered – ie only a certain amount of space can be allocated to logos in line-ups or on websites, so taking up half the space with a symbol sometimes feels wrong.
Should a logo be simple or complex, monochromatic or polychromatic, 3 dimensional or flat, moveable or static? Personally, I’ve been fascinated for years in identities that can change, and adapt to their surroundings. I’m thoroughly bored of the ‘logo that goes in the corner’ syndrome and will do almost anything in my power to avoid this.
Based on your philosophy, what are the characteristics of identities that fail? Well logos that immediately date a company are wrong, unless they’re happy to be immediately dated. As I’ve hinted, identities that are overly static and rigid strike me as inappropriate in the multi-media environment we now live in. The schemes that are overly policed by in-house logo-cops are such a drag to work on for other design consultants – before we became logo designers we had to earn our spurs applying other people’s schemes and that was quite a salutary experience. The trick is to make people want to get involved in a project, not just grin and bear it to pay the mortgage.
Multiple technologies and media have changed the venues we use to talk with the audience. Has that affected the way you design identities? The simple answer is yes – the advent of tele-visual needs, animation and the web has meant we’re constantly thinking about how an idea will work in a moving or animated form (our BFI work started as an animation, then became a logo). The more complex answer is that the changing technology has supplied the irrefutable reasons for flexibility that we’ve always desired – before, flexible, changeable identity schemes were just limited to TV companies. Now, everyone’s interested in schemes that can adapt to their surroundings and appear less monolithic than before. I’m much happier now than I was – before people just seemed to think I was nuts when I argued for logos that could change. What are the top 5 rules for you on logo design? I’m really, really tempted to say there are none. We don’t walk around the studio saying ‘ah yes, nice idea but what about the small-use black and white version’. We don’t say ‘the one colour version is paramount’. We don’t limit our work to vector programs. For a while there I think there was an implicit rule that our solutions should be reductionist, simple ideas (and many of them are, it’s true). Trouble is as soon as I say ‘that’s a rule’ I know we’ll go off and do something really complicated, almost to prove that the rule was a waste of time. Our Think London logo should have been a simple mark but ended up being made up of 44 separate symbols…
 What advice would you give to young designers about making successful logo and id systems?
To be honest, in England at least, very few students seem to be interested. This strikes me as a huge mistake. Their folios are crammed with ambient advertising, or viral on-line clips, or posters for film seasons, or personal projects. But they spend practically no time art college thinking about identity, designing them, practicing them… So they get to me and I virtually have to teach identity from the ground up. But whilst the brochures or websites or whatever all change, the one thing that remains constant is organisations’ need to identify themselves in unique and interesting ways. In other words, identity design isn’t going away. If anything, if our experience is anything to go by, it’s getting more and more important. So I’d study all of it, all of the time, then you’re in a position to practice it sooner or later.
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22.09.08
Making art from barrels, number three
Since the last time we posted about this project, we’ve been looking harder at the brief, looking harder at what others have done with barrels, and questioning the client a bit about why they came to us. It turns out that Glenfiddich were really interested in our fascination with time, and the fact that we have a whole whole section of our website devoted to it. 
Also, the fact that we’d done some installation/ wooden/timepiece based work (like this project) was useful. (Phew, knew that clock project would come in handy one day). 
The reason why time is such a big thing to them is that Glenfiddich are really trying hard to explain to people just how long their whisky spends in the barrels (up to 30 years), as opposed to dodgier whiskys and bourbons that can barreled for as little as 3 years. Their recent advertising campaign (below) is picking up on this with an ‘every year counts’ theme. Not mind-blowing, but we can see what they’re getting at. 
Meanwhile. our travels on the interweb continue to dig up some great stuff as regards ‘901 things you can do with a barrel’. Staircases and furniture anyone? 
Or just generally chopping them up to make interesting shapes and sculptures. 
There’s a great tradition of painted barrels in Japan as well, which we’ve only just discovered. 
The next task is to work out how to take this ‘time’ theme and apply it onto (or into) the barrels, somehow. This is part of a running series tracking the progress of a live project for Glenfiddich where we've been asked to design some barrel art for the whisky manufacturer, and we’ve agreed to ‘log’ the project’s progress on Thought for the week. The first piece was here, the second piece was here.
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19.09.08
The pick of the presidents
When D&AD rang and explained their idea for a little exhibition to celebrate 45 years of D&AD, our first reaction was ‘well, that's going to look awful’. The idea was to have two copies of each annual in a case, and ask the president from each year to write about their favourite project of the year with one of the annuals open at that page. As it turns out we were completely wrong and it’s actually a fascinating run through four and half decades of advertising and design. We’ve reproduced a few of them below, with their captions, but it’s definitely worth going to see it for yourselves. 
Larry Barker 2000 I wasn’t going to pick this.
I was going to be a bit more ‘street’ - see if there wasn’t something we’d all forgotten in the ‘Interactive’ section.
Possibly something obscure from ‘Packaging’.
But this isn’t about the obscure and forgettable, is it?
I remember ‘Surfer’.
I remember when it arrived, hot from the editors.
I remember the unholy scramble to get a look.
I remember how long it took to get my jaw off the floor.
How the soundtrack made your speakers rattle.
The astonishing casting.
I remember the ungracious pooh-pooh-ing it received from some quarters.
Mainly from people who couldn’t hope to do anything half as good.
I also remember the story about the account man who said,
‘Do we really need the horses?’
So, here’s to talent, here’s to bravura, here’s to sheer bloody-mindedness. Here’s to waiting. 
Mike Dempsey 1997
A decade or so is just about the right time to reassess work. One can see it in the context of the period and the prevailing influences. For me Mark Farrow’s music packaging for Deconstruction stands up beautifully. I haven’t got a clue as to what is behind the idea, but the design is a delight to behold. 
Martin Lambie-Nairn 1991
The first twenty five percent of the 1991 annual features page after page of red rectangles surrounding white type. Having said just that, I expect you’ve already guessed which campaign I am referring to. Yep, The Economist. 1991 seems to have been the year when this wonderfully elegant and powerful campaign swept the board, and rightly so. Not only that, but seventeen years later the same format continues to entertain, inspire and no doubt sell countless copies of The Economist. This one campaign has had more influence on me, and the way I try to solve design problems, than any other piece of work. For me it contains all the virtues of great design and advertising; one simple idea continually refreshed and expressed in dozens of ways, consistently holding to the basic idea with dogged confidence, and demonstrating the very highest standard of wit, writing and art direction. May this campaign run forever. 
Allen Thomas 1985 My favourite item in the annual didn’t actually win a prize. It was for Volvo and showed David Abbot lying under a car suspended from on high. The headline read, ‘If the welding isn’t strong enough, the car will fall on the writer’. This was followed by some long copy which was a pleasure to read. It was part of an outstanding campaign which made this somewhat worthy brand almost sexy. No mean feat.
Tony Brignull 1983 My choice for the outstanding item in the 1983 D&AD annual is easy: it's the one all juries voted for that year, the Araldite poster, ‘It also sticks handles to teapots’. You probably know it as the one where they glued a car to a super site in the Cromwell Road. Some days a man sat nonchalantly reading beneath it. News programmes discussed it. Magazines showed it. People actually went to see it. It rightly won the only Black pencil awarded that year. Its triumph lay not merely in a sudden, phenomenal and dangerous creative leap (will it stay up?) but in the fact that it took demonstration, until then the exclusive property of television, and moved it outdoors. It added a new dimension both physically and aesthetically to a medium, which was considered static and peripheral. In a single stroke it enlivened a brand, the poster industry and all who saw it. 
Alan Parker 1976
It was pleasantly surprising to revisit the work of over thirty years ago since much in this annual looks modern and has dated little (well, apart from my picture at the front, which makes me look about eleven years of age.) I avoided opening a page at one of my own commercials and avoided even more those of Ridley Scott. I then came upon a spread of work by the late John Gorham. John was one of the great graphic artists of the time, working alone; he was a humble genius whose purist quintessentially English eye and immaculate craftsmanship influenced his peers and a generation of designers that followed. 
David Abbott 1975 It wasn’t exactly a boom year; the economy was flat and the 1975 annual reflected the general lack of confidence.The Hovis campaign, however, raised our spirits with its beauty and calm assurance. It is still remembered to this day and is included in all those ‘Favourite Ads’compilations. The image of the young lad pushing his bike up the cobbled hill is unforgettable. In the 1975 annual it won a Yellow Pencil for the most outstanding film photography. It should have been a Black.
The Pencil Exhibition (45 years of creativity from the D&AD Annuals) is on until the 23rd September at the Royal College of Art, London
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17.09.08
Dreaming about designer monographs
Architects dream of their first building going up. Product designers: their first range going on-sale in the Apple store. Graphic designers? Well, perhaps designing a famous symbol, or pack, or poster. Or winning their most treasured award. But another recurring dream is the one where someone writes a bestselling book about their work.
It’s understandable, in a way – if you’ve spent 20 years honing your skills that often appear in print, a book to record it all seems fairly logical. And for decades now there’s been quite a bit of precedent; Paul Rand produced several books on his design approach and theories in his own lifetime; Fletcher Forbes Gill started their publishing lives with a small book on the things they loved (Graphic Design: Visual Comparisons) before moving on (as Pentagram) to a long series of self-penned publications, produced at roughly five year intervals as new partners pressured for their inclusion. 
Minale Tattersfield became experts at the self-penned book that expounded their theories on everything from packaging to, er, how to design a successful petrol station.
And some of these books actually sold in significant amounts. Brody and Carson proved that designers can sell books by the bucket-load - Carson’s End of Print has sold in the region of 200,000 copies, Brody’s two tomes around 120,000. 
Stefan Sagmeister’s latest is already on its third print run, having sold 40,000 and counting. Now by comparison with the bestseller lists, they aren’t huge numbers, but in ‘arts’ publishing those are very respectable numbers indeed. Sagmeister isn’t without his critics though, such as Atelier Works’ Quentin Newark: ‘He is prolific, and I know his testicles better than my own, but has he really managed to encapsulate a way of making design as cleverly and as influentially as Bob Gill has? I can tell you right know how Bob Gill thinks, he managed to condense his approach into a powerfully effective mantra, but I have no clear sense of Sagmeister’s thinking process, other than it being a funny mangled mixture of self-disgust, bodily-processes, garbage and kitsch’.
Recently, graphic design monographs have moved from being the publisher’s must-have to must-avoid. From the height of the trend, when the almost unknown collective Neasden Control Centre produced a book of their work only a short time out of college, the market has changed and several significant and perhaps expected tomes have never appeared. As Adrian Shaughnessy pointed out to us, ‘Now we have the situation where established designers, people like Mark Farrow, and North, have no monograph to their name’.
Whilst Saville’s work was finally recorded in the companion piece to his Design Museum exhibition, the other key figure in 80s design’s holy trinity, Malcolm Garrett, still waits. Garrett himself comments that ‘I have a physical aversion to shops like Magma, stocked to the gills with what can easily be perceived as glorified business cards, although I can’t quite put my finger on what is my actual ‘problem’ with that. Consequently I tend to just turn my back on the whole issue, especially when the question of a Malcolm Garrett monograph is raised. I think the title of the Garrett monograph would be ‘An Indefinite Article’, should it ever materialise’.
Garrett’s comment about the glorified business card of course tackles the real issue here, that these monographs have become effectively studio catalogues, funded in the knowledge that the design company itself will buy 500 copies, provide all the text and artwork, all at no charge. Most publishers would simply describe this as vanity publishing.
Quentin Newark certainly seems to think so, and longs to be amazed. ‘Most are no more than big brochures with a barcode. They are puff. They are put together by the designer, with an essay by a friend at the front. Not one speck of self-criticism, historic or artistic contextualisation, nothing too deep, too ambitious, nothing that might inhibit new commissions’.
‘Now it is so easy and cheap to produce books, and the market for design books is obviously huge, I suppose not every design monograph needs to be profoundly carefully thought about and worked at – but almost NONE of them are! They are ALL so slight, so ungenerous, like an episode, like the designer is deliberately holding back for the next book’.
Shaughnessy admits that, in a previous life, an attempt at a monograph failed. ‘We did one at Intro, and it did nothing for our business. In the eyes of most clients, it makes studios look far too snooty. I remember offering a copy to a potential client and he declined saying it “looked like something you’d get in Magma.” He took a salesy-leaflet we’d produced instead’.
It seems that the books that are more likely to succeed work more as ‘how-to’ guidebooks (like Shaughnessy’s How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul, which has sold a hugely impressive 60,000 copies). This continues a tradition started by the likes of David Ogilvy and Wally Olins, who wrote books about their disciplines that had enough examples of their work to function as useful leave-behinds, but still kept an air of objectivity that the ‘me, me, me’ books can never attain. Derek Birdsall managed to document his life’s work, but within the context of book design, producing an invaluable document for print designers everywhere. Even Alan Fletcher’s magnum opus, The Art of Looking Sideways, was much more about his thinking than just a showcase for his work.
Publishers still take a punt on a subject, but with varying results. You’d think that the long-awaited record of Robert Brownjohn’s life (Sex and Typography) that accompanied his posthumous retrospective would have been a big seller but sources within the industry admitted that sales had been ‘tiny’. Once the few thousand hardened BJ fans in the world had bought their copy, there didn’t seem to be enough extra support to get it anywhere near a softback reprint (the true sign of a book’s popularity).
When you hear of relative failures like this, the news that the much-mooted book on John Gorham, (a hugely influential but perhaps slightly forgotten designer throughout the 70s and 80s), still searches for a publisher, come as no surprise.
Sometimes the monograph is produced more for strategic reasons. Vince Frost self published a collection of work just as he re-located to Sydney, to act as a catalogue for an exhibition, and marking a transition from one country to another. In an intriguing departure, the most recent Pentagram book, already nicknamed The Bible, is entirely self-published, not on-sale and makes no pretence to be anything other than a thick catalogue of work, on very thin paper. Frost himself is working on a much more up-to-date website to showcase his newer work, and this is of course where future ‘vanity’ projects comes rather unstuck – when a designer’s work is well catalogued on-line, the need for a printed record becomes that much less pressing. But still there are those prepared to punt, especially on whoever is dubbed the current bright new thing. So Non-format received the ‘early monograph’ treatment earlier this year, and Daniel Eatock’s Imprint is just arriving in the shops as we write.
 Eatock has been a very influential figure on the last decade’s design students, so for that reason alone certainly deserves a printed record, or ‘first chapter’, to borrow Quentin Newark’s phrase. It’s true that his work is extensively, almost obsessively, presented on his own website. So his Imprint is really for true fans, or those without an internet connection, or visitors to his up-and-coming exhibition in the states.
Some designers accept the irony, but just plough straight on. Chip Kidd blogged about his first book of work with these words: ‘It’s been said that most graphic design monographs are adventures in narcissism and self-absorption. That is certainly the case here, but I’m hoping it’s as much about the books and the authors as it is about me. (I know nice try).’
Most will probably continue to view them as the kind of project to be considered in the ‘autumn’ of a career, not the spring, since there’s a certain finality about the arrival of ‘your life’s work’, especially if it comes halfway through a career. As Tibor Kalman faded away, Peter Hall and Michael Bierut managed to produce a genuinely insightful book of his work that still stands as a classic in the fledgling ‘designer monograph’ canon. 
But many people have heard the tale of Neville Brody, who only 6 months after a career retrospective and book of work, found that work in the UK had dried up. Which suggests that, on balance, designers should wait just a bit longer to publish their magnum opuses (or magnum opera, if we’re being pedantic). Then wait a bit longer. Then wait a bit longer still….
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12.09.08
£600 for an ad campaign?
A few weeks back we highlighted an ad-campaign that’s been running in the UK based on the ‘sleeve-facing’ idea that you see all over the web. When we wrote about it, we were told by the ad agency concerned (Dye Holloway Murray) that the project was ‘done in association with the Sleeveface website’. But as the campaign rolled out on buses and TV and posters and taxis, and was written about in the trade press, we never saw any actual credits for Sleeveface.
In the end we decided to write to Sleeveface and get their take on this. This is the reply from chief Sleevefacer, John Rostron:
‘Yes, DHM came to us and told us what they were doing. It was already a done deal – there was nothing we could do about it (nor, to be honest, would we want to do anything about it). Sleeveface is, after all, kind of ‘open source’ – it’s only the name ‘Sleeveface’ that we’ve trademarked. We’d be horrible people if we tried to stop other people sleevefacing without coming to us first. Anyway, we didn’t invent the concept – we’ve since had emails from people who had done it way before us, and it’s probably been done since the first days of vinyl – we just gave it a name’.
‘We know that we haven’t had any credit for the Smooth FM campaign, nor received any money (DHM did offer to put £600 towards one of our Sleeveface parties) and that does hurt when we’re doing this in our spare time and other people are securing jobs on the back of it. They suggested we help with the clearance in return for a commission, but we didn’t have the resources or the time (we were trying to hold down day jobs too) But we also know that most people have recognized the lift. We’ve been swamped with emails about it from people who saw that we came first, and that’s pretty sweet I guess. And, you know, WE know where it came from and so do you too’.
Rostron continued in a pretty generous frame of mind. ‘I’ll add this too. I would never be unhappy that a creative has taken on a campaign that’s so fun and positive. It’s nice to see something joyful out there that people can respond too. It’s one of the things we love most about Sleeveface – nothing offensive, nothing negative, something people can easily get into… It looks to me like a really nice fit’.
So, there you go. Now, as they say, you are in full possession of the facts.
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11.09.08
Making art from barrels, number two
Last week we posted about a new project that we’ve just started, where we’ve been asked to create some ‘Barrel Art’ for Glenfiddich Whisky. Since our visit to the distillery we’ve been doing quite a bit of research into what has been done before – the most notable being the project they ran last year where they asked various creative types to take a barrel each and do something about the year that barrel dated from.
So David Pearson (he of Penguin books fame) based his design on 1989, the year that particular year of 18-year-old whisky was barrelled up (if that’s a word). He took Schiller's ‘Ode to Joy’, the Berlin Wall, 1989, Subbuteo players and enamelled type (ok it’s kind of complicated, you can read up on it here) and came up with the barrel at the top of this post.
Glaswegian designers Timorous Beasties based their barrel on 1992… 
…and tailor Nick Hart based his on 1977. 
The most interesting, structurally, was record sleeve designer Storm Thorgerson’s, which is based on a lotus flower of barrel parts and is a kind of metaphor for the maturing of the whisky. 
Since then Glenfiddich in Russia gave another eight to Russian artists, here are some of the results. 
We think that some of these are quite nice – the only problem for us is that the barrels end up looking very solid and heavy. We’re hoping to find a way to use them in a more interesting way than just applying pictures or paint to them, we think.
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08.09.08
Payback time?
Last week’s brouhaha about the purchase by the V&A of John Pasches ‘lips’ logo for the Stones was probably fuelled by the truly vast gulf between the value of Pasche’s design 38 years ago (£50) and the tidy auction price of $92,500 last week (about £46,000).
Even the revelation that he got another couple of hundred later in the 70s from the band and the knowledge that the design kick-started his music design career can’t mask the fact that Jagger did a pretty nifty deal – a supremely merchandisable piece of identity design, the lips that launched a million t-shirts, bought for what in today’s terms was about £500 (or $1,000).
When we see examples of how little ideas can be sold for, then watch how valuable they can become, it’s gratifying that the artists can at least occasionally, cash in. Most designers can cite examples of ‘a great idea that was worth a lot more’, often through slightly gritted teeth. The all-time classic is probably the example of Portland University student Carolyn Davidson being paid the princely sum of $35 dollars in 1971 (about $180 dollars today) for her design of the ‘swoosh’ logo for the then fledgling Nike brand. 
Just before you cry ‘what a rip-off’ it’s worth noting that in 1983 Phil Knight pressed an envelope full of Nike stock into her hands at a lunch held in her honour, the value of which has never been revealed. It would be interesting to speculate what the ‘value’ of her design is now to the company that turned over more than $16 billion in 2007. But these high-level examples of ‘payback’ are fairly rare. Only last week John McConnell, ex-Pentagram partner, admitted to us that he can’t remember charging ‘more than about ten quid’ for his now immortal Biba logo, whilst citing that back in those days (the early seventies) designing album sleeves were a good gig because ‘you were paid £1 per inch of vinyl’, so a twelve-inch sleeve meant a princely budget of £12. 
The news, therefore, that Peter Blake managed to charge (along with photographer Michael Cooper) £2,868 for the Sergeant Pepper cover in 1967 (about £37k in today’s money, or $74k in dollars) is pretty impressive. But for years Blake has been in dispute with The Beatles’ management company, Apple, over its copyright, and about receiving any further fiscal ‘appreciation’ of his role in probably the best known album cover of all time. Only last year did the company relent and allow him to exhibit the cover with his other music industry projects.
Design company Carter Wong designed the Formula 1 (F1) logo, but are unable to display it even on their own company website because the client hasn’t granted them copyright usage to do so. We of course run the risk of being sued ourselves for displaying the logo here (but hang on a sec, if we grabbed it off the F1 website, ie the public domain, and we declare it here to be copyright of Bernie Eccleston, Max Mosely et al, well that’s surely enough, isn’t it?)
Sometimes people give away an image for years, whether they want to or not – Milton Glaser’s I (heart) NY has been ripped off the world over because there was insufficient copyright control laid down at the time of its design. Sometimes they start off laissez faire but eventually crack - Alberto Korda’s iconic Che Guevara image has been reproduced almost constantly since 1960, but he never bothered to claim royalties for his image.
Until, that is, the year 2000 when the use of the image in a vodka commercial (something he knew Guevara would disapprove of) pushed him to sue Lowe Lintas and Rex features and receive $50,000 as a settlement. Which he immediately donated to the Cuban healthcare system. (As you do). 
Of course the true payback for most designers is recognition – McConnell knows that his Biba logo is a classic symbol of late sixties design, Glaser knows his New York symbol is immortal. Korda probably loves seeing his Che image turn up in increasingly odd applications.
Only now, after recent events, some of us might stop ourselves throwing away those presentation roughs quite so quickly (‘might be able to flog that to Sotheby’s in 40 years time’). And, as an interesting aside, now that the V&A owns Pasche’s orginal design, can we look forward to a juicy copyright battle when the V&A’s merchandise department starts rolling out those ‘lips’ mugs, t-shirts and tea-towels?
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04.09.08
Making art from barrels, number one
We’ve recently been contacted by the makers of Glenfiddich whisky, William Grant and Sons, about doing a project for them using some of the barrels they use. It’ll be an extension of a project they started last year, called ‘Barrel Art’, where they asked various artists, designers etc to take a barrel each and decorate it in some way. We’ve agreed with William Grant’s that it would be interesting, unusual and a bit different to record the project as we go along on Thought for the week, rather than just reveal a fait accompli in a few months time. The first step took place just recently where we visited the distillery deep in the Scottish Highlands. 
Not being experts in whisky production they gave us a tour, which began with things like underbacks, which look great but we’ve forgotten what they do (sorry).
This bizarre looking copper out-take from a Jules Verne movie is one of two Mashtuns, where the malted barley is mixed and, er, mashed, for few days. 
Then it goes into these vast wooden Washbacks. 
Things get pretty impressive when the raw liquid is then put through these amazing looking copper stills. It’s a bit like that scene in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the Toot Sweets factory. Without the sweets (or the dog).
Then the process slows down somewhat, because (at this point) the incredibly strong raw liquor is stored into wooden barrels for a long, long time. Here’s a fairly pretty warehouse... 
...here’s a more normal warehouse. 
Every now and again the barrels are opened to make some actual whisky - the youngest version being 12 years old. This is an open vat of the 15 year-old stuff, which of course had to be tasted. 
As you wander around, there’s quite a bit of weird designer vernacular to keep your mind occupied... 
...but eventually you get to the Cooperage, where the barrels are re-furbished after their 12, 15, 18, 21 or 30 year stints as the liquid’s gatekeepers. The Glenfiddich distillery is pretty unusual in having a team of coopers on site - as you might imagine the barrels in their various states of repair and disrepair are fascinating. 
Before they receive new liquid, the insides are charred, or re-charred by an extraordinary flame-throwing-type machine, which leaves the insides looking like this. 
The coopers have to be able to re-furbish dozens of barrels a day, because outside there’s a huge yard, with barrels as far as the eye can see. Extraordinary. 
Our attempts to rebuild one were pretty hopeless, it must be said. 
Our next task is to start to work out what the heck to do with all this. We’re going to go and re-read the brief now. Hopefully more cogent thoughts will follow next week.
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03.09.08
Chocolate mail
Recent Central Saint Martins graduate Toby Ng sent us a nice project recently, where he designed some chocolate flavoured stamps. His brief asked us him to find something that needs improvement. ‘I thought about postage stamps and how people lick the back of the stamps. The act of licking stamps, is loved by some and disgusts others. Even though nowadays there are sticker stamps, those old-fashioned lickable stamps will never die. So if we have to lick it anyway why not make it tasty so we can all be happier. I designed a set of stamps called Chocolate Mail, which comes in 3 flavours - dark, milk and white chocolate. They are a set of 24 1st class stamps that are designed to look like a bar of chocolate, packaged as an envelope’. 
You’ll find more of Toby’s work here.
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01.09.08
Can one piece of luggage turn you into a cliché?
I started to notice the signs in earnest after a recent burst of short-hop travelling.
In truth, the signs were visible years ago with the earliest version of the ‘Discman’, with its vast, attachable battery pack and the apparent need to bulk buy AA batteries every twenty minutes. Then affordable laptops meant the purchase of multiple computer batteries, and days spent prior to any trip charging these blinking, heavy, silver beasts.
Another tell-tale sign was justifying the purchase of noiseless earphones (bought at astronomic cost but ‘they really cut down on ambient noise you know’). Downloading movies hasn’t started yet, but I can see it’s only a matter of time before a newer iPod is justified for just this purpose.
Post 9-11 airport restrictions have resulted in another sign – the obsessive measuring of on-board baggage and reading of terms and conditions (‘so when they say ‘carry-on baggage’ does that mean a bag and a computer case, or…’).
The ‘on-board liquid’ rule means hoarding smaller plastic bottles to transfer gooey liquids into thus avoiding the embarrassment of one’s ‘plastic bag’ being examined throughout passport control. ‘I’m sorry sir you can’t take that amount of hair gel on a plane - you’ll have to apply it all now, or offer some to all the other male passengers’.
Another sign: spending too much time in luggage shops assessing options, that’s after the obligatory graze of the tech shop and slightly too geeky conversations with assistants over the relative amount of mega-pixellage on offer. Or whether that particular high-def digital camcorder is actually mac-compatible or not. (NOT, can you believe it? The reviews were right).
Signs of WHAT, you might be asking. Well, and I hesitate to admit this, but signs that I am turning into Monocle Man.
In case you’ve been off on a two-year long paragliding course you may not know that Monocle magazine is the recent publishing sensation that regularly sells over 100,000 copies a month with its heady mix of articles on the world’s best ice-hotels to visit, assessments of the political situation in Maui, interspersed with hilarious men’s fragrance ads or slightly less than subtle dps ads for its founder, Tyler Brulé’s, branding concern Winkcreative.
Now, up until quite recently, I would occasionally buy it since it was in theory designed for someone like me, only to be in practice bored brain-dead within minutes (possibly due to lack of interest in that month’s analysis of best vodka bars in outer Vladivostok, or the accompanying piece on the must-have Tibetan wool cardigans this season).
But only last month, I sat there, early for breakfast in a hotel in the Scottish Highlands, and unwilling to read the Angling Times I plumped for Monocle and, amazingly, proceeded to read it. This may of course be merely a symptom of impending middle age and a doomed attempt to ‘keep up’. (I remember decades ago, living in Australia, actively seeking out copies of The Face and Arena and actually reading them in a desperate attempt to stay in touch with European culture).
But I read it, I enjoyed it. But then, as I say, my life is now intertwined with the minutiae of life-or-death struggles its readers endure on a daily basis.
M-man really needs someone to program his iPhone for him, but has to struggle with the settings himself (‘for god’s sake where’s technical support when you need them’). He moans about the quality of the 3g on offer wherever he may be (‘can you believe France Telecom’s network went down for almost a week? Unbelievable’). M-man stocks up on after-shave in airports (he knows it’s tacky, but heck, it’s cheaper). M-man has every latest digital camera, but will quickly transfer his affections to a new one (he has his eye on the high end Leica but even he thinks 3k is a bit steep). M-man’s become adept at getting guitars on-and-off planes without getting their necks snapped, even learning that it’s best to buy second-hand guitars in far-way places then get them back duty-free by pointing out the dings. (‘Yah, I flew out for a small gig in Tokyo’). M-man asks for foreign currency in small bills then keeps a few bundles of major currencies in his desk so he’s got a taxi fare in any world city (he could get called away at any time, you see).
But the final confirmation that I have turned in to Monocle man, came when I bought, with inevitable ‘get-on-and-off-a-plane-quick with-no-baggage-hassle’ logic, one of those little suitcases for the overhead locker. You know, the ones with wheels and extendable handles. That make you look like a complete plonker. Yep, that’s me. SO ashamed am I of this recent purchase that I’ll wheel it through the airport but quickly collapse the handle and carry it normally when I get back to Blighty, just in case anyone sees me.
But Monocle man wouldn’t stress about the small-wheeled appendage, he’d read through his catalogued back issues and try to spend at least £500 on the most expensive one he could find. Now, I didn’t do that. I bought the cheapest one I could find at the key shop down the road, for £35. Perhaps there’s hope for me yet? Trouble is, I can’t help thinking there’s a much more stylish one I could get. I’m sure I read an article about this recently…
By Michael Johnson
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