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29.04.09
Time Flies
We’ve just finished our submission for Blank Canvas. This is a nice variant on the ‘student auction’ theme, where Ravensbourne students have asked various designers to take an everyday, supplied object (sourced from charity shops and car boot sales) and customise it. We were sent a rather gorgeous ‘Pinehouse’ wooden clock, that after some thought we’ve revamped with a lot of white paint, a new clock mechanism and four flies. 
We’ve also customised the clock itself. By removing the hour hand, the time (in minutes and seconds) really does fly. Here’s how it looked when we got it. Lovely. 
Good luck to the Blank Canvas team for tomorrow's auction. There’s more information here, and you can see other partipants’ pieces and bid on items here.
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28.04.09
It’s great. But did it work?
One of the problems of ‘branding’ as a day job it that it’s an imprecise science. However many processes, diagrams and formulas we hide behind, even the projects that we hold up as ‘successes’ are rarely dependent on just a change of visual identity alone. For example, most would deem the Tate’s rebrand a positive change, but would it have seen that way without Herzog & de Meuron’s seminal makeover of that power station? Perhaps not. 
Away from the blue-chip’s who treat on-going tracking and awareness as givens, it gets very difficult to prove, definitively, that a designer’s part of a project was the critical element, rather than just one part of a bundle of changes. You can offer up examples and indicators, but hard, irrefutable facts are sometimes hard to come by.
I’m reminded of this by several painful and ultimately unsuccessful tender applications and Mark Sinclair’s thoughtful piece for May’s Creative Review. Whilst Sinclair’s emphasis is upon the Olympics (and rightly queries whether that is ever going to be a happy process) my thoughts have turned to more general tenders.
I’m quoted in Sinclair’s piece as not having received much feedback as to why our applications might have failed, but since giving that comment we did actually receive a longish email in return. It explained that a couple of the case studies we’d presented lacked enough provable, evidence of success.
The hard facts are sometimes there. Save the Children is big enough to employ ongoing tracking, so we now know that since our work on the UK brand, unprompted awareness has nearly doubled.
We also know that Royal and SunAlliance’s attempts at ‘direct’ insurance (ie phone and web) left them floundering at 13th in the charts until the change to More Th>n at the turn of the century. This led to a huge turn in fortunes (they’re now one of the UK’s biggest). 
But our work for the BFI and the Art Fund is trickier to measure. To us, and to the client, the introduction of their new identity for the BFI has helped re-establish them as the UK’s guardian of film, coupled with the opening of their BFI Southbank site.
It’s much clearer that they run the London Film Festival and the Imax at Waterloo. But they didn’t carry out extensive awareness research pre and post re-brand – it was simply obvious to everyone that something drastic was needed, and was done. But ‘obvious’ is a qualitative term, not quantitative. One’s man’s obvious is another’s subtle. 
Our Art Fund project has helped stem the decline in membership and now a revitalised organisation partners regularly with the Crafts Council and Tate, and has taken over The Museum Prize from the Gulbenkian.
Their increased self-confidence, and realisation that they truly can be an art charity, in every sense, has helped them lobby publicly for ideas they believe in (like Steve McQueen’s stamps series) or raise money for works like Turner’s Blue Rigi in a matter of days. Now, how much of this can be ascribed to identity change? It’s difficult to know. Did the new brand help them change or did the internal changes hasten the visual shift? Put that in a one-page case study and it sounds a little fluffy (whereas present it with 25 slides of applications and things are completely different). 
Both The Art Fund and BFI changed character and direction, and their brands needed to react accordingly. Significant corporate shifts often go hand in hand with identity change – Wally Olins once said, ‘identity is change made visible’ - and he’s right.
The vast majority of these projects, whether trackable or not, coincide with significant changes in the boardroom and market forces compelling organisations to act. In some ways discussing whether Tate’s re-brand ‘worked’ or not is irrelevant – the arrival of the new building forced Serota, his team and Wolff Olins to deal with the family of Tate galleries as a whole. Without the new building, Pentagram’s unassuming typographic predecessor might easily have continued. 
But this doesn’t solve the conundrum of proof. Every year effectiveness awards are stuffed with examples that many of us react to with horror – but they have the stats to prove that their new pack, that flash on their pizza box, that revamped beer can all had the desired effect in terms of sales. It’s simple really, all things remained the same EXCEPT the packs. If the sales go up, packs win prizes, however much they offend our design sensibilities.
Sometimes this is galling for those of us cradling an inbox full of notes of thanks and appreciation, but not many hard, physical stats. Luckily there are still clients around who will look at some of these projects and make reasoned and rounded decisions, without the need for KPI’s, effectiveness charts and hard-nosed ‘quant’.
But maybe, just maybe, we might start persuading a few of them to research how bad things are, before we start making good. Maybe. By Michael Johnson
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24.04.09
From the archive: Paper Advisory Service Posters
As a general rule, we’re not too concerned with looking backwards. Any design company that spends any time resting on their laurels (especially at the moment) is asking for trouble, after all.
But a few nice links from elsewhere, and the rise and rise of great sites dedicated to typography made us dig out the the slides for what is now a really old set of posters (mid-nineties, we think). They were done for a then substantial paper client. Mind you, didn’t everyone have substantial paper clients then?
We’d agreed that the best way to get the message out for their new paper advice service was a set of posters that spelled out what was on offer, all written ‘with’ their paper. Or using the machinery of bookbinding and sample-making. So here’s ‘dummies’, for example. 
Actually easier said than done. It was all very well doing a few quick visuals but getting them photographed nicely and working together was much trickier than we thought. And the shadows were very tricky (all pre-computer of course and involving countless hours of expensive repro). Here are a few edits. Always liked the corrugated letters. 
And some more of the posters themselves, ‘samples’ and ‘help’. 
Just looked it up: they date from 1994 and were done for James McNaughton Paper, photography by Martin Barraud.
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21.04.09
Let them eat Teacake
A few weeks ago at The Design Auction one of the oddest lots of the evening was that offered up by young design company Teacake, who as well as a goodie-bag of stuff offered their design services for free on a project of the bidder’s choice. This sparked a bidding war between two eagle-eyed clients, a war eventually won by Land Securities. To be fair to Land Securities, although they were probably tempted to just give them 47 email templates to format, they’ve given Teacake a very nice poster brief for an up-and-coming Land Securities Environment conference . And we’ve offered to show the development of said project on here. That way everyone’s happy (or something like that). Anyway, contract is drawn up, design has started. We wait to see. No pressure guys. There’s a piece about it here in Design Week
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20.04.09
OAB’s at St Brides
This week it’s the Friends of St Bride Library Conference, themed around ‘Revival’. There are talks from all manner of people over the two days (23rd and 24th), including Henrik Kubel unveiling his great project digitising New Rail Alphabet, in six weights, a revival of Margaret Calvert’s 1965 signing face for British Rail. 
Ben Terrett & Russell Davies of The Really Interesting Group will talk about the role of printing and paper in a post-digital world, and hopefully revealing what ‘post-digital’ actually means. And amongst many other speakers over two days there will be ongoing demonstrations by calligraphers, lettercutters and signwriters. Senior johnson banks’ designers, Kath Tudball and Julia Woollams will be talking about OABs (old-age brands) such as the BFI, Save the Children and the Pleasure Beach in Blackpool, and how we’ve been trying to turn them around. 
The full line-up is here if you want to find out more.
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16.04.09
‘Slapped together without much care or thought’
BBH’s crowspring experiment, as discussed this week, seems to perplexing them as well. Quoted here from their BBH Labs blog: First, many of the designs being presented seem to be slapped together without much care or thought. As a client, it is taking considerable time to filter through, which adds a cost to the bottom line of my company. Well, there’s a surprise. And this: The bigger issue I have is fair remuneration. The Crowdspring design process is fully transparent and this is great. When I comment on my likes and dislikes regarding a specific design, other designers take note and follow suit, sometimes, very literally, borrowing the basic typography of one designer and then building off it. Fantastic from the client’s perspective: I’m getting the best of the individual and the best of the crowd - all for one price! Now the problem is that I can only award one person the job and it isn’t fair for me to reward that person 100% for work that may have been built off another person’s work. Given that our ‘dollar per idea’ prediction has very nearly happened, it’s hard to feel sorry for the BBH Labs team having to sift through the entries, and decide on a winner. Hurry everyone, the ‘competition’ ends tomorrow. Only 1337 designs in the pot, as of today.
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14.04.09
When the world zigs, zig
We’re getting some mixed messages from the world-renowned ad agency, BBH (Bartle Bogle Hegarty). Only last week many were applauding their decision to offer a 3.5 percent pay cut to all their staff rather than make redundancies (a decision that was voted on by all their staff). Last year they were in the top-hundred ‘best companies to work for’. Their website proclaims their ethical stance: ‘business isn’t worth doing if you can’t do it in good conscience’. Trouble is, someone from within their now vast network that spans the globe across six offices, employing 928 people with a total billings of $1,500,000,000 has decided that the new logo for their BBH Labs offshoot should be designed via the Crowdspring website (which we blogged about a few weeks ago). Slightly less than $1.5billion is at stake, try, er $500. That’s if if they see a logo they like and then another $1,000 for stationery. Ah, ok then, that makes it better. 
To be fair, in their brief they do say ‘in exploring new approaches to creative collaboration, we post this brief well aware of the debate around the Crowdspring business model within the design community. Our interest lies in finding fresh, new creative talent efficiently. It is not in our interest to undercut existing market value design fees. Therefore we appeal to the Crowdspring community in the same way our prospective clients would approach ad agencies in an open pitch. We ask that designers submit only rough comps to this brief’. We’d imagine that they’re pretty pleased then with the 1086 (Update: 1749) entries so far, mainly riffing around their agency symbol, the black sheep. Give that there are still three days to go to the deadline, perhaps they’ll get 1,500 entries, which would be a simple equation of a dollar per idea. Wouldn’t that be nice and neat? Maybe their next move will be to ask for some ideas for their new client, eBAY Europe, just won, an account worth a rather hefty £22 million pounds? Perhaps not. It’s difficult to write an end-line for this. Suffice it to say it’s a ‘white sheep’ approach to commissioning design that we would never have expected from an agency of BBH’s stature. 
In case you’re wondering, the black sheep reference comes from this old BBH ad for one of their landmark clients, Levis. Thanks to Pierre for the tip. Feel free to send us your views on this.
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09.04.09
Dead Trees
Illustration magazine Varoom recently asked johnson banks’ creative director Michael Johnson to nominate a compelling image as part of a series chosen by designers and art directors. His choice is discussed below. Name of chosen work
‘Tote Bäume’ (Dead Trees) poster,
by Swiss designer Niklaus Troxler (shown above)
Name of Artist
Niklaus Troxler
Date of image
1992
Why did you choose this image?
There are two designers whose line-based work I've always loved, Shigeo Fukuda and Troxler. I could choose virtually anything by either of them, but these bloodied tree stumps have always got me. Fukuda himself said of this poster that it was ‘a requiem to our silent planet’.
What is its most important quality?
I've always loved the way that with just three colours, some wobbly-lined illustrations, and no type, Troxler created such a powerful way to illustrate the plight of the environment. Deeply minimal, deeply moving.
How would you describe your taste in imagery?
For years I’ve loved photography, perhaps less so now. But I’ve got no time for illustration that looks like illustration - the effect of all that ‘wine-bar-graphics’ from the 80s still fills me with horror.
Who are your favorite image makers?
It would have to be the classic photographers like Irving Penn... 
and Robert Frank... 
But Fletcher and Chermayeff's collages, Fukuda and Troxler? Perhaps I'm more drawn to illustration than I thought...
Photography or illustration?
20 years ago, photography. No contest. But now? Photoshop seems to have (paradoxically) removed photography's element of surprise. I think we’re now in a culture of anything goes, and a culture where the lines between illustrator, artist design and photographer are increasingly (and happily) blurred. Issue 9 of Varoom Magazine is out now and is dedicated to illustrative type 
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07.04.09
Me and my iPhone speak a different language
I have very few quibbles with the iPhone as a piece of communications kit. Its arrival into my life has ironed out many wrinkles, and life generally works a little more seamlessly, thanks to Mr Jobs, Mr Ive and that touch sensitive screen.
The only recurring problem is language. Now, I appreciate that I don’t write in a conventional way. If I want a short sentence, so be it. If ‘if’ or ‘see’ will do, do it, don’t fret. See? But it’s not syntax or sentence structure that my iPhone and I are at loggerheads over. It’s simple, boring old words.
Rightly, or wrongly, I reserve the right to talk in a strange amalgam of slang, business speak and Anglo-Saxon, because, er, well it’s my language and I’ll destroy it if I want to (or something like that). But the iPhone’s predictive typing just doesn’t ‘get’ the words that are in my head. My list of embarrassing moments is almost too long to repeat in public, but as examples only last week a crucial pdf of costings got forwarded as ‘coatings’, ‘Toby’s’ have become ‘Tony’s’, and ‘Armin’ becomes ‘Army’ or even ‘admin’. The emotional effect of writing a long howler ending with ‘til hell freezes over’ loses a bit of impact when my iPhone religiously changes it to ‘He’ll freezes over’, rendering me both cross and unintelligible (never a great combination).
Bizarrely a one word comment forwarded to a colleague about a particularly difficult client request met with ‘Fish?’ in reply. I was as confused as you until I realised that my email (that was meant to say ‘Eek!’) actually said ‘Eel!’ My northern prediliction for using ‘ta-ra’ (as in good-bye) has taken months to stop being changed to ‘take’ or even weirder, ‘tars’. Anything remotely rustic gets nixed or re-spelt, so ‘blimey’ become ‘blindly’ and ‘bollocks’ becomes ‘bollix!’ How?
Even my initials (‘MJ’) get routinely changed to ‘JK’. Rowling? The furry-hatted Stevie Wonder impersonator, Jay Kay? I have no idea.
Conversely anything vaguely Facebook-esque is converted almost immediately. ‘Lil’ becomes ‘LOL’ (and always in caps). Omg you might say? No ‘OMG!’ And of course every possible valley-girl-wayne’s-world-programmer-geek-speak you can think of works fine, so ‘dude’, ‘totally’, ‘awesome’ and even ‘schwing!!’ get through unharmed.
But the most predictable predictive of the whole thing? However badly you type it, ‘ipho’, ‘iphi’ or ‘ipon’, even ‘iPoo!’ all become ‘iPhone’ (with strategically placed capital) way before you can say blimey (sorry, blindly).
By JK. Not sent from an iPhone.
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02.04.09
So Very Fooled?
Well, perhaps not. Yes, we have to admit that yesterday’s wholesale re-brand of US Telecoms behemoth Verizon was indeed an April fool. In case you haven’t seen or read, there are 150+ hilarious comments on Brand New about the project, varying from ‘I knew it was a joke immediately, but I still allowed myself to hope for a little while’ to ‘It'll be interesting to see how something so aggressively European fares in the States. Pat on the back to Verizon for taking the risk’ to ‘With all the established brands changing up their logos (pepsi, kraft foods, walmart to name a few) I am unsure whether this is really an April 1st joke or not. I wouldn't put something like this past Verizon' to ‘I don't think any studio would go to such an effort for an April Fool's joke...’ Just to assure all our readers, no we didn’t spend weeks on this work, and yes we did borrow a few pics from The Sartorialist (thanks, hope no-one is offended, lovely pics by the way). And yes it would be great if a company like Verizon would do something like that, wouldn’t it? Anyway, back to work everyone.
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01.04.09
So Very Different
We’ve just been told we can talk about a huge project we’ve been working on in the States, for the huge telephony and communications company, Verizon. It’s not a name that’s well known in Europe but has 80 million customers over the pond in the States. (A Dow 30 company, Verizon employs a workforce of nearly 224,000 and last year generated consolidated operating revenues of more than $97 billion). After the recent purchase of Alltel’s 13.2 million customers in a deal valued at $28.1 billion, it was felt this was the perfect time to inject a bit of life into what was looking like a tired brand in a quickly moving sector. From the start we were keen to reposition Verizon and help it adapt for 21st century communications. Its old look still looked like first generation telecoms, didn’t match with Verizon’s future ambitions and lacked a distinctive tone of voice. Here’s the old logo, in case you hadn’t seen it. 
But customers no longer take heed of concepts of speed, or breadth of network - they just assume those as a given. The new idea stems from several directions, that everyone’s words, text and pictures let them share universal thoughts, together. In addition, we've been developing the crucial new concept of a ‘wireless cloud’ and that comes over most strongly in the new word-marque. In a radical move the main marque has been redesigned... 
...but just as importantly this will be regularly truncated to a shorter, campaign mark.
This allows us to quickly establish a versatile and unique tone of voice for the organisation. 
This is what Verizon themselves have to say. "We may have been considered out of the race when we were publicly mocked for having said no to Steve Jobs and Apple's iPhone, letting it go to AT&T," explains Kenley Mizrahi, Senior Vice President of Marketing worldwide, "but at the end of the day we still have the most costumers, and the ‘Very’ campaign is aimed at a million other potential customers by answering their most pressing concerns with a simple answer: Is Verizon a good value? The answer is yes, Very. Is Verizon easy to switch to? Very. Is it reliable? Very. And to sum it up, is Verizon awesome? Very." Here are some of the initial applications of the work. 
The new identity will begin to be phased in starting in July, to coordinate with the launch of the campaign. By that date, all hardware issued by Verizon Wireless will feature the Wireless Cloud logo and one of the brand's most visible icons, the sign emblazoned across its Manhattan headquarters, will feature the new logo prominently for all to see and beckon the very best wireless communications provider. There’s more information to be found at the pre-launch website, here. And, although we’re not sure how they got hold of it so quickly, there’s a already a piece on US-based branding blog, Brand New, here.
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