A member of the johnson banks team has just returned from a break at a spa with a difference – there were no corners, no edges, nor straight lines…

Tucked away in the countryside an hour or so from Vienna, the Rogner Bad Blumau spa (or hot spring village) looks rather like you have walked into a fairytale land – all onion-domed turrets, mosaicked walls, undulating walkways, irregular-shaped windows (2400 varieties to be precise), grass-covered roofs topped with trees, and eleven different temperature pools scattered throughout.

The spa was designed by the late Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928–2000) and is wholly powered by the 3000 metre deep thermal spring.

Above, Aerobic Church, 1981

Stumbling upon Hundertwasser’s naive and oddly pleasing pictures during a German exchange trip at school, we then saw the designs and model (pictured below) for the unfinished spa, in a compendium of the artist’s work back in the late 90s. It only took us another 17 years to visit his work in person.

Although originally known for his paintings and prints, Hundertwasser became most famous for transforming buildings. (However he also created graphic work – from stamps to flags and even car license plates, the latter slightly contradicting his green credentials we would have thought).

Hundertwasser described himself as an ‘architecture doctor’ because he often revived drab grey ‘sick’ buildings to ‘live’ more in harmony with nature.

Most of his architectural work can be seen in Austria and Southern Germany – in fact we also visited a service station by the motorway on our way to the spa, as well as an art gallery (KunstHausWien) and a private apartment block in Vienna.

Hundertwasser’s environmental beliefs are at the core of his work, and he wrote many manifestos over the years explaining his ideas.

All his buildings are designed or transformed to sit more in union with the natural world. The urban buildings even house tree tenants – in addition to people – where they have their own rooms, branches reaching out of the open windows.

But back to our visit to the spa. We were slightly anxious that it wouldn’t live up to the architectural models we first saw all those years ago.

We needn’t have worried though, as it was immaculately kept by (presumably) an army of unseen gardeners and cleaners.

The level of detail in the assorted buildings was quite astounding too – Hundertwasser had even cast his spell over all of the bathrooms…

…oh, and the massages weren’t bad either.

Reporting by Julia Woollams

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Just a quick note to say that johnson banks’ creative director, Michael Johnson has been persuaded to bring his ‘Guitars and Graphics’ talk out of retirement for one, final time at TypoBerlin tomorrow. It’s only been performed three times before.

Here are a few random slides from the heavily remixed 2013 talk, and also the interesting news that the talk/performance will be streamed live at 18.00 Saturday, Berlin time (that’s 17.00 in the UK) and 12.00 EST.

Could be good. Could be a train wreck (the last one was a train wreck, if we’re brutally honest. It involved the guitarist from Yes, his wife, an overloading amp and some heckling. True).

Here’s a short clip of part of the performance at the D&AD Conference in 2009.

The After Hours show opened at the Jerwood Space last night, featuring work done by designers that is free from a client, a brief or a fee – a ‘window into the imagination of graphic designers through the personal work they create’.

It’s quite an eclectic mixture, from Anthony Burrill’s vast hand painted wall mantra (above) to moth-eaten clothes and collected driftwood.

Here’s a collection of images taken at last night’s opening. Stars of the show were Phil Carter’s wall of wooden people.

Really great to see them all together (and beautifully presented). Here are some more close-ups.

Jim Sutherland has been investigating chess and design for some time and had a whole section devoted to this.

We liked these ‘Grille’ explorations by Matthieu Salvaggio, inspired by anthropologist and sociologist Edward T.Hall.

There’s a wall devoted to our Arkitypo project, featuring 8 posters and 7 new 3d prints.

Some nicely made perspex boxes, courtesy of the exhibition team.

Steve Royle’s Antigraffiti project was a bit hidden away but it’s a really interesting thought about the graffiti shapes left when erased by a paint roller.

Here’s Jamie Ellul’s Time is Money in a bit more detail.

There’s a project that seems to involved robot-cars, magic markers and a huge sketchbook of paper but our notes fail us on this one (the white wine was kicking in).

This is part of a charming project by Jack Renwick where an over-exuberant journey through her wardrobe by a team of hungry moths is commemorated not by patches or stitches but by moth badges.

Here’s exhibition curator Nick Eagleton talking about the process and challenges of putting on a design exhibition in just four months.

Only a hop and a skip from Tate Modern, it’s definitely worth popping in to see the full effect.

The exhibition opens to the public today and runs to the 23rd June, 10-5pm Monday to Friday, 10-3pm Saturdays and Sundays. More information here.

We’ve been working on the applications for the Brighton Festival for most of this year, following on from our rebrand of both the Dome and Festival launched a few weeks ago. Last week we photographed the results for the festival so far.

The work varies hugely, from posters and banners to graffiti painted walls (see above). The core of it is a set of eleven posters for the key events in the three-week festival: here’s a selection.

The content changes dramatically from poster to poster – from classical music to contemporary circus, to children’s events and Berlin cabaret.

And there are a series of banners that now hang throughout the town.

Some unexpected applications have also turned up.

We hadn’t expected this branded control box. Or these station gates.

You can also get these extraordinary hand/headpieces, here carefully modelled by one of the team.

Good to see it nicely rolled-out. There’s more information on what’s on at the Festival here, and our case study on the main scheme is here.

Photography by johnson banks and Murray Scott

Mural (and street furniture) by REQ

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Obviously the world’s media is awash with tributes to Sir Alex Ferguson following his retirement announcement this week. We thought we’d share this, taken only a few weeks ago.

So ubiquitous had Sir Alex become, even a brief forage into a hotel closet reminded us of him and his legendary half-time talks.

Last week we took delivery of seven new prints of our Arkitypo project.

The reason why is that we’ve been asked to take part in After Hours, an exhibition that opens next week at the Jerwood Space in South East London. The exhibition has been curated by Nick Eagleton and looks at the work of a group of designers and collects ‘what designers make that is free from a client, a brief or a fee’.

Here’s a sneak preview of some of the work that will on show. At the top of this post, one of Phil Carter’s ‘Found Folk’, an ever-growing family of figures sculpted from flotsam and jetsam collected from years of obsessive beachcombing near Carter’s home by the Thames.

Anthony Burrill’s Work hard and be nice to people wood-type poster, has become a mantra for a generation of designers. The inspiration for this addition to the series came from a phrase often used by the artist’s wife. “I like its optimism and feeling of joy – the idea of an open and enquiring mind looking at the world.”

Jim Sutherland has several pieces in the show, including this typographic chess-set, merging two of his great interests.

There are several pieces on show from members of Magpie Studio, including this one by Jamie Ellul – Time is Money, finding similar inspiration in a proverb, with coins marking the passing of the hours: a reminder that every second costs, or pays.

There are many other exhibitors in what looks like a really interesting show. The exhibition opens to the public on the 15th May and runs to the 23rd June, 10-5pm Monday to Friday, 10-3pm Saturdays and Sundays. More information here.

Part of the Arkitypo series by johnson banks

Contributors include:

Robert Ball

Anthony Burrill

Phil Carter

Michael Johnson

Kingston University

Alan Kitching

Magpie Studio

Jack Renwick

Steve Royle

Jim Sutherland

Young Creatives Network

Nick Asbury

Curator: Nick Eagleton

We took delivery today of seven fresh 3d prints taken from our Arkitypo project. In case you missed it, the project expressed the story of 26 letters, each unique to each particular letter.

So the ‘B’ shows how Baskerville’s B influenced Bodoni’s design. And the ‘g’ is based on the lower case ‘g’ in Gill Sans that Eric Gill famously called a ‘spectacle g’ (and so on).

The first and original set of prints used different printing substrates and were often quite fragile. So this is the first time we’ve really been able to pick them up because we’ve used a new type of durable nylon. Kind of geeky, sorry.

The ‘H’ is made up of Helevetica logos, in case you’re interested. Thinking of printing a few of these and offering them for sale. Interested?

Anyway, the prints are for an up-and-coming exhibition, which starts installing next week. We’ll update when we have more information…

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It’s that time of the year again. Now, we didn’t have that many projects come out last year so we didn’t enter much, but the news so far is that our Great British Fashion Stamps have been nominated for a D&AD Yellow Pencil and shortlisted at the Design Week Awards.

Also at Design Week, our Power of Creativity poster has been shortlisted in the writing category.

And we forgot to talk about the Tokyo Type Directors, who shortlisted our Arkitypo project for their amazing annual review of the world’s most interesting typography.

So, for a quiet year, that’s OK. Obviously there’s a big jump between being nominated/shortlisted and actually winning (especially at D&AD), but you never know…

The Power of Creativity poster is on sale here.

After a flurry of activity, launches and press, the dust is settling after a week of Acumen activity following the public launch earlier this week.

Michael Johnson from johnson banks and Jacqueline Novogratz, Acumen CEO, at last week’s advisory meeting

At the end of last week we were in New York to help unveil and explain the new manifesto and visual approach to the Acumen advisory board.

We were in town long enough to see the new brand start to appear on walls and glass around head office (and to borrow some business cards).

Acumen CEO Jacqueline Novogratz has published a piece about the new manifesto on the Acumen site and also posted a video explaining it (see below).

Meanwhile one of their advisors, Seth Godin, has been thinking about manifestos in general on his widely followed blog.

We’ve also been able to see how the new website (by Briteweb) is settling down nicely into multiple responsive formats.

And on the design blogs there’s been various bits of coverage, on Design Week, Creative Review and Brand New. General response has been pretty good.

Busy, busy, busy. Now: back to work.

The view of downtown New York from mid-town, as of last week.

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For the last 17 months we’ve been working with Acumen Fund to help them clarify exactly what they stand for going forward, and to help improve their brand identity.

Acumen is one of the key pioneers of a new approach to investing in the developing world, founded and led by the respected author and thought leader Jacqueline Novogratz. Occupying a space somewhere between philanthropy, venture capital and traditional aid, Acumen’s approach has been much admired across the world.

Following her lead, there are now hundreds of funds in a competitive sector dubbed ‘impact investment’ at the end of the noughties.

For 12 years now, Novogratz and her team have searched for business ideas and innovation in India, Pakistan, West and East Africa that they can support with investment that puts social impact before financial return – what they have come to describe as ‘patient’ capital. Acumen has become an organisation committed to the success, happiness and dignity of some of the world’s poorest people.

For ten years, they were happy to trade as a ‘fund’, but as the organisation gears up for growth it will continue to search for companies that bring critical, affordable goods and services to the world’s poor. And with a growing worldwide network of fundraising ‘chapters’ and a global fellowship programme, it’s become about much more than just investing in companies.

Three things became clear as the project began. First of all, we felt their name should shorten to just Acumen, so we could strengthen the use of the word as both a name and a noun. The second was that this was an organisation full of brilliant writers and orators, and we should try and find a way to harness this. Thirdly, the organisation was widely admired and their brand reputation was great. But their brand identity did not match the strength of this reputation, and how they had evolved.

Eventually, after dozens of drafts, straightforward brand ‘narrative’ moved to an altogether higher level and together we produced a manifesto, which has become the key focus of the new brand:

Acumen: it starts by standing with the poor, listening to voices unheard, and recognizing potential where others see despair.

It demands investing as a means, not an end, daring to go where markets have failed and aid has fallen short. It makes capital work for us, not control us.

It thrives on moral imagination: the humility to see the world as it is, and the audacity to imagine the world as it could be. It’s having the ambition to learn at the edge, the wisdom to admit failure, and the courage to start again.

It requires patience and kindness, resilience and grit: a hard-edged hope. It’s leadership that rejects complacency, breaks through bureaucracy, challenges corruption, and does what’s right, not what’s easy.

Acumen: it’s the radical idea of creating hope in a cynical world. Changing the way the world tackles poverty and building a world based on dignity

It’s already being used as the cornerstone for speeches, and, broken up into shorter sentences, ‘mini’ manifestos (shown above) are embedded into Acumen’s eight different logos that can be swapped in and out at will.

Their ‘A’ is deliberately left unfinished, to communicate that their work is never complete, that they don’t have all the answers, and that they can’t change the way the world tackles poverty alone. The new brand colours, typefaces and angles are carried across a comprehensive rebrand: here are some early examples of the work done so far.

Acumen itself has an amazing list of advisors on its board, so we looked for ways to incorporate people like Seth Godin and Tim Brown (Ideo) into the scheme.

We’re also developing a brand toolkit that allows everything from quotes to statistics to be incorporated into the branding.

Electronically, we’ve been working on a series of animations too: shown below is a simple combination of the mini-manifestos and live action shot in the field on Acumen’s projects.

And there is a completely redesigned Acumen.org website, featuring long scrollable pages.

That’s just the home page for starters. There’s more here.

There will be more elements coming online in the next few weeks – we’ll update when we have more to show.

Credits:
Brand strategy and design: johnson banks
Designers: Michael Johnson, Miho Aishima
Manifesto writing: johnson banks and the Acumen team
Animations: johnson banks and Martin Shannon, original live action editing by Briteweb, Music by Steve Rio
Website by Briteweb

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A little over a week ago we were at Kingston University talking about jobs, portfolios and general stuff with the soon-to-be-graduating final year students from one of our favourite undergrad courses.

As ever, there was some interesting work in progress: here’s a few camera-phone snaps from the day.

Above are just a few lasercut bats from Andrew Barker and Matthew HIll’s Table Tennis project. It’s an ongoing project exploring the creative nature of table tennis / pingpong, which is very much in its formative stages (but aren’t those bats beautiful?)

It was nice to see this again: Sara Azmy, Sophie Both, Lulu Davey, Tasha Thomas and Lizzie Ireland’s preservation of the fruit bowl.

It was done for a ‘Future of Food’ project that imagined that years of human intervention had left bananas sterile and struggling for existence. The fruit bowl of the future may be the only way of preserving a memory.

Shown above and at the top of this post are two images from Get the right cut: Jack Mercer’s haircut project. They are physical representations of clipper lengths; each number is shaved in at the number it represents, allowing you to accurately choose the hair length you want. (Made us want to revive this project where we studied barber-shop photography).

Not quite as fully formed was this prototype for a ‘resolve seat’ by Rachel Singer. It seems to depend on you sitting with it under and above your knees, with someone else. Or something like that. See proof of it in action below.

Meanwhile Ollie Willis is investigating DIY clothes hangers for a themed retail environment (see below).

And on the day of our visit there seemed to be multiple visits by young men into a darkened room where loud noises emitted.

On closer investigation we were no wiser, but apparently this construction allows the team (Olly St John, Matthew Hill, Andrew Barker ) to spin a camera and visuals at various speeds from a fixed position, and the results are hypnotic. So there you go.

As ever, lots to do in two months. But, we’re looking forward to the final product…

Thanks to Marion Morrison for notes, captions and the invite to come in for the day.

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Tony Brook by the Dutch Telegraaf

This is number 12 in our Second Thoughts series, following on from our interviews with Andy Altmann, Simon Waterfall, Nicolas Roope, Michael Bierut, Dick Powell, Rosie Arnold, Michael Wolff, Mike Dempsey, Bruce Duckworth, Erik Spiekermann and Tina Roth Eisenberg. In case you missed why we’re doing this, the same series of questions are asked to well-known design and creative people. This week, Tony Brook.

Tony Brook co-founded London-based design studio Spin with Patricia Finegan in 1992. Born in Halifax, West Yorkshire Tony studied at Percival Whitley College of Further Education and then at Somerset College of Arts and Technology in Taunton. Spin has received national and international recognition winning awards in print, television and cinema graphics, digital design, poster design and typography. In 2009 Tony set up Unit Editions, a publishing company with the designer and author Adrian Shaughnessy. He lectures nationally and internationally and was guest curator of ‘Wim Crouwel – A graphic odyssey’ at the Design Museum in London in 2011 (shown below).

How old were you when you first suspected you could become a designer?
At the age of 15, my mother suggested a career in ‘Commercial Art’ might be a viable one (as opposed the starving artist route I may having been heading towards).

Did you see or experience something early in your life that was a significant influence?
I collected stamps. That was the first time I became aware of design as such.

Buzzcocks sleeve by Malcolm Garrett/Linder

Poster by Grapus

Who were your early heroes (and what do you think of them now, in retrospect)?
In no particular order David Gentleman, Peter Saville, Malcolm Garrett, Barney Bubbles, Grapus, Gert Dunbar, Andy Warhol – they all still cut it.

What’s your recurring dream (or nightmare?)
Being back at college and the tutor doesn’t get why my solution is great. It drives me insane.

Describe the worst boss or client you’ve ever had.
I had a client that would throw visuals over my head, they were mounted on foam board and, with a dismissive flick of the wrist, would sketch out a pleasing arc as they made their way to the back of his office.

What’s your worst Apple-z (‘undo’) moment?
I went to Shanghai for a lecture, warm applause, press the button. Techno meltdown. Silence. A very long silence.

Giacometti poster by Spin

What do most people cite as your best/most well known piece of work?
I haven’t the foggiest idea.

What do YOU think is your best piece of work? Why?
At the risk of making me and you throw up, whatever is coming next. I find it difficult to look backwards, it might be about time I did.

What font would you choose for your gravestone?
Gravur (see what I did there)

What wins, ideas or style?
Content, it tends to influence both.

People have different ways to stay enthused, excited and interested in what they do for a living? What’s yours?
I think about the alternative!

The only nice thing it said on my last college report was ‘Tony is very enthusiastic’. I still am. It’s never been a problem. Yet.

When and where do you have your best ideas?
When I’m distracted, I have to fully engage and then disengage.

Seeing, smelling, touching, hearing, tasting. You have to give up two. Which ones?
Seeing and hearing.

If you could travel back in time, just once, and give yourself a few words of advice, what would they be (and when would you say them?)
Everyone else is wrong and you are right.

Do you still draw or has the computer taken over?
I still draw initially – it’s quicker. After that I love computers even though I’m not the most gifted technologically.

What’s the worst design crime you’ve seen (or committed?)
100% Dance on Telstar. Thank you.

You can only watch one film, read one book, listen to one album and eat one type of biscuit. What would they be?

Movie: Kes.

Book: Tin Drum by Gunter Grass. Album: Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan. Biscuit: Chocolate Digestive.

Photo: James Bowe

Let’s say it all goes pear-shaped. What’s your back-up plan?
Beach bum on Bondi

Our thanks to Tony for taking part in Second Thoughts

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Just a quick note about various speaking engagements that johnson banks’ founder Michael Johnson is doing in the next few months.

On Thursday this week he’s part of a panel discussing education as part of the Cheltenham Design Festival, titled ‘Postcard from the Creative Industries’. The panel also features Mark Bonner, Spencer Buck and Craig Oldham.

In May he’s speaking for the second time at the legendary Typo Berlin. This time he’s giving the ‘my work’ slides a breather and reviving his ‘Guitars and Graphics’ talk which has been mothballed for a couple of years.

This time it’s in front of 800 type-geeks with a borrowed amp in the city best known musically for techno and Bowie’s stay in the seventies. Could be a tough crowd.

There’s a short clip of this talk above, if you’re interested.

In July it’s off to Stockholm to talk at the Communicating the Museum conference, dedicated to comms in the museum sector. Alongside a great list of speakers, Johnson will be delivering a keynote entitled ‘Brave, bold, or anonymous. You decide’.

After that, possibly Pasadena in August, but we’ll update when we know more.

Some design companies are lucky. Every single project they do is astounding and brilliant. Everyone is happy and their employees’ satisfaction levels are off the scale. They never work late and take decent holidays.

The rest of us are left balancing the great with the not so great. For some reason or the other – the client meddled so it became muddled, or you and your team were off your game – some projects end up compromised. So the breakthrough jobs are celebrated whilst the donkeys are led quietly off to the back paddock.

Elvis Costello poster by Paula Scher

But just how many great projects do you ‘need’ anyway? Many moons ago, I discussed this with Paula Scher and she said ‘do three great projects a year, make sure everyone sees them and you’ll be fine’. The implication of this, which I’ve since termed ‘The Paula Principle’, isn’t that the other 17 projects in any one year are dreadful. It’s just that there are always three stand-outs – concentrate your energy, PR, awards entries, whatever, on them.

Now, several times over the last decade I’ve tried to break ‘The Paula Principle’. We’ve had bumper years and we’ve talked to the press about five or six different things. But often a year’s output still gets boiled down to just a handful of things – Paula’s principle often holds true, whether you like it or not.

And what happens if for some reason the work dries up and you don’t even have three projects to talk about? Does the principle still apply in an ever rotating, constantly updating whirlwind of design blogs and websites?

For example, for various reasons, several of our major 2012 projects were delayed until very recently – launches postponed, problems with the signage, yada yada yada. Although we were busy, it didn’t seem it, outwardly. One major American website pointedly remarked ‘You guys have been quiet!’ And yes, until about a month ago, we seemed to be.

It doesn’t take long for the doubts to set in. When you’re surrounded by companies that seem to be launching new and wonderful projects on a weekly basis, it can gnaw away at you. If Paula’s principle still holds for her, that’s fine, but remember she has 20 or so worldwide partners in Pentagram. Even if they only each manage two or three great projects a year, that’s still 50-odd projects a year for their PR machine.

3i identity by Michael Wolff

I asked around about this. Unsurprisingly, legends like Michael Wolff were pretty resolute: ‘Whether you do one or twelve projects a year, never do anything that you don’t believe is good. But what I think matters the most is that you always stretch the quality of what you do to go beyond what you did before.’

MUSE identity by Harry Pearce

Established designers such as Harry Pearce (Pentagram London) and Sean Perkins (North) had different, but related views. ‘Come many or few projects, this way of life seems to be wonderfully immersed in the continuous stream of ideas, all of which I try to make my best, or most relevant to their moment,’ commented Pearce. ‘The judgement of their worth seems out of my hands. Many things I’ve made, which later I hold in low regard, others exult, and vice versa. I try to sidestep this waste of energy, and focus on the belief and responsibility to my work’.

Photographers’ Gallery identity by North

‘In our book you are only as good as your worst piece of work, no excuses’ said Perkins. ‘In our small world of mainly creating Corporate Identity, the projects span sometimes over a year or two. So we don’t think about a year of production in the same way’. North follows an almost zero publicity rule, which means they feel no pressure to perform, since they rely mainly on word of mouth and referrals.

As a contrast, I asked Someone’s spokesman Simon Manchipp for a view, since his company’s work has been heavily tracked in the design media recently. ‘It’s become far more dicey to send work off in the troll infested waters that surround the magazines and blogs’ he admits (Trolls’ being blog-speak for those who intentionally post inflammatory comments, light the blue touch paper then wait for the fireworks).

Fastjet identity by Someone

‘You’re damned if you are seen doing lots of work. People tire rapidly of seeing the same studio name behind every other project. And you are damned if you don’t. People assume it’s all gone wrong.’ Manchipp even asks ‘How many stinkers do you need until the phone stops ringing for good? After all even the most robust agency is only five phone calls away from handing the keys back.’

Underlying this brutal honesty is the realisation that this is an odd business – backlashes can start. Not with clients, who rarely pay any attention to the minutiae of the design press, but too many negative comments can make things awkward and even lead to companies losing accounts.

Weightwatchers logotype by Paula Scher

I asked Paula what she thought, decades later. Her reply was typically brusque: ‘One good project pretty much does it now, as long as it doesn’t have “twat” in the middle’ – referring to her 2012 project to rebrand WeightWatchers worldwide. (The new, lower case solution – weightwatchers – caused a stir in the UK because an unfortunate piece of British English slang was now much more apparent).

So what do we learn from all this? If you’re surrounded by the tumbleweed of nothing to show or delayed projects, then hang in there. Keep doing the best work you can and the tide will turn. Ignore the trolls. And keep your eye out for well-hidden profanities.

By Michael Johnson, originally written for issue 15 of Kyoorius magazine

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Last week saw the launch of our new branding scheme for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, and since then we’ve been collecting various examples of the new scheme in action.

There’s always a point on a largish project like this when the designs have to leave our computers and either be printed, coded or taken on by other design teams. And that moment can sometimes be a bit tricky – you’re never quite sure how something is going to turn out.

So it’s really encouraging to see how this new piece of work is already looking. Here are some examples…

The outside of their building now can’t be missed and is bright yellow.

The new ‘language’ for the organisation is everywhere across the building, from stairwells to office walls.

The new ‘boilerplate’ statement for the organisation is on a huge panel in reception.

The merchandise, from mugs to balloons, looks great. And the cup cakes are quite special too (at the top of this post).

Their boardroom now features large portraits of those with the condition, alongside appropriate ‘IS’ statements.

These are consistent bits of print, folders and stationery.

And even the parking spaces found time for a bit of humour. Good stuff and hats off to Tamsyn, Toby, Simon and the Trust’s design team.

The origins of this work and the ‘IS’ idea are explained in more detail in this post from last week.

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Johnson banks’ creative director Michael Johnson was at Somerset College in Taunton last week to talk briefly about his work then run a workshop looking at how to bring words and type alive with both traditional and modern technology. The workshop was organised by the Sorrell Foundation.

It was part of a series of weekend activities run for 30 weeks a year, known as the National Art&Design Saturday Club. The idea of Saturday club is that currently 26 design and art colleges across the UK, from Plymouth to Gateshead run Saturday classes in areas ranging from drawing and sculpture to printmaking and stop-frame animation.

It’s a great idea to supply art and design lessons to those often without access, especially as teaching creative arts is increasingly marginalised in schools. A bit like a mini-foundation for 14-16 year olds.

Club members visit London’s best museums and galleries and exhibit work in their own Summer Show at Somerset House, and various artists and designers do one-off masterclasses – these have included ones by Thomas Heatherwick, Peter Randall-Page, Daljit Singh and Betty Jackson.

Once the brief had been set (and suitable drawing implements chosen), each student was given a large piece of paper to do quick experiments.

Then some started work on the computers…

…whilst others made use of the letterpress printing room.

On the screens, various ideas started to take shape – like this idea for expressing ‘gangnam style’ in Korean and English.

‘Bite me’ is pretty self explanatory, and the above composition actually says ‘sheepish’.

Here’s some of the product from the letterpress team.

Some of the ideas might get developed for the final Show in London. Maybe.

But – not bad for 15 year-olds, we thought?

Here are the students with their one-off teacher for the day.

Out thanks to Frances and Sorrel for arranging a great day and Katherine Brown and the team at Somerset for their support. Photography by Magnus Andersson

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In discussions and research, it became apparent pretty quickly that the condition is widely misunderstood. Most people don’t understand what it is, or what it does, until someone close to them is affected by it. They soon discover it’s a life-shortening genetic condition – only half live to celebrate their fortieth birthday.

The faulty gene is carried by over two million people in the UK, most of whom have no idea. If two carriers have children, there’s a one in four chance their child will have the condition, which slowly destroys the lungs and digestive system. It kills thousands worldwide and is carried unknowingly in the genes of millions. It’s often invisible to the naked eye yet destroys lives, stopping them short, inflicting hardship and distress on those affected, their families and carers.

We discovered that supporters of the charity feel that the general awareness and understanding of cystic fibrosis among the general public is very low. People aren’t clear what cystic fibrosis is or does, how they can or can’t catch it and what it means on a day-to-day basis.

The Cystic Fibrosis Trust was also grappling with a an outdated and cumbersome house-style, shown above.

As the research stage progressed, we kept asking, but ‘what is it, exactly?’ and received a multitude of different responses. Mid-way through the research stage we had a breakthrough when we noticed the ‘is’ at the end of ‘fibrosis’.

We suggested the charity should activate the ‘is’ in their name with a series of statements, effectively forcing it to always explain what it is, does, and why they are here.

Some are simple: ‘cystic fibrosis why we’re here’, some uplifting – ‘cystic fibrosis a battle we must win’, some hard-hitting – ‘cystic fibrosis a life sentence’.

The Trust now has at least 40 sentences they can use, and we are adding to them continually.

Like many charities they are short of funds and can’t afford big marketing campaigns, so this effectively makes everything they do part of one big ‘is’ campaign.

A new set of images has been either shot or sourced, and we have created their own hand-writing font that is used throughout all elements to keep the design scheme friendly and informal.

The cystic fibrosis community is very active on behalf of the charity so several of the applications allow event posters and leaflets to be overwritten by hand.

We have retained one of their previous colours, yellow, but made it warmer and then the linking colour throughout the work. It even gently graduates up from the base of some photos – hinting at the presence of cystic fibrosis without actually showing or saying it.

In some circumstances, the messages will be quite hard-hitting, as shown above, but without being offensive to the cystic fibrosis community.

Here’s the new identity applied to their head office…

…and of course, to merchandise.

Above is an animated film that has been prepared for launch which simply asks those with the condition and employees of the trust what it ‘is’ for them. Below are grabs from the new site and facebook pages.

We’ll update with more images as they come on-line.

Credits:

Design: johnson banks
Designers: Michael Johnson, Kath Tudball
Copy: Michael Johnson, Kat Heaton, Nick Asbury and the whole client team
People and product photography: Christopher Ball
Typeface: Nick Cooke
Website: Reading Room
Animated launch film: Sebas and Clim

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Ads and appeals are rolling out across all media this and next week, all utilising the new toolkit that we revealed in a previous post.

We’ll keep updating as the appeal continues. You can donate here.

Today in the UK sees the launch of a project we’ve been working on for nearly two years: a comprehensive rebrand of the Disasters Emergency Committee, or DEC for short.

The DEC was set up over 45 years ago to fundraise collectively in times of significant crisis, and to enable the major broadcasters to make public televised appeals for a group of charities, rather than singling out one for special treatment. It consists of 14 UK aid agencies, ranging in size from Oxfam, The British Red Cross and Save the Children to small to medium sized agencies.

Close-up of advert in today’s UK Press

This is a unique branding project since the DEC is only in the public eye for short amounts of time. Today it launches its Syria Appeal, which will continue for 10-14 days, when it and the 14 members will all raise funds collectively. Then it will ‘disappear’ until the next crisis.

It needed to make much more impact during an appeal, whilst allowing member agencies to fundraise on their own behalf as part of one co-ordinated campaign.

The new branding approach is based on concentric, ‘seismic’ rings, imparting urgency to the DEC and also, crucially, making a powerful link to each individual appeal.

So the Syria appeal is shown in use above, and other hypothetical examples are below.

The branding approach is being rolled out across all media, including TV idents for on-screen appeals.

Within the appeals, each of the member agencies have their own endorsement logos, which are used to ‘flag’ the appeal on their own sites.

There’s more information on the Syria Appeal here, and you can make a donation here.

There’s also a longer and more detailed case study about the project within the main johnson banks site here.

Thanks to all the member agency design and marketing teams, Ogilvy for their above the line input and Martin Shannon for animation 

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An extensive interview with johnson banks’ creative director Michael Johnson has just been published on leading architecture and design website, designboom.

The interview covers a wide range of topics and includes a large cross-section of our work, new and old.

Here’s a sample question:

Q: what lessons have you learned from a project that has changed your outlook on life?

A: the last five or six years has seen us get really involved in the charity, NGO, not-for-profit and arts sectors. Now, for a long time, ‘charity’ projects were a bit of a no-no for graphic designers, seen as dowdy and uninteresting, but I’ve long been fascinated by them. Since many of them have quite clear figures on funds raised, and ‘before and after’ awareness research, you can see within 12 months of an identity change or rebrand if what you’ve 
proposed is working.

When you work with someone like Acumen Fund in new york (who are proposing and succeeding with entrepreneurial routes out of poverty), and really see how the brand process can help them at a fundamental level, it really changes the way you see branding and design. For years, the goal of course was to do ‘good’ design, but now I’m beginning to learn that design can be good, effective and might genuinely change peoples’ lives.
 
And I don’t mean that ‘selling more pizza with a re-designed pack’ type of effectiveness. or that ‘yet another noodle bar logo’ definition of ‘good’ design. I mean funds raised, lives changed, futures ensured. I’m beginning to see (and have the figures to prove) that design can be both good and make a genuine difference.

The full interview is here.

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Finally we’ve got the shop section of our website up and running and this Power of Creativity poster is now on sale.

Signed, numbered limited edition, carefully rolled in tissue-paper, you name it really.

More items to follow soon, but we’re going to start slow with just one product for now.

Should we call it a ‘mono-shop’? Maybe.

Photo by Julia Robbs (juliarobbs.com)

This is number 11 in our Second Thoughts series, following on from our interviews with Andy Altmann, Simon Waterfall, Nicolas Roope, Michael Bierut, Dick Powell, Rosie Arnold, Michael Wolff, Mike Dempsey, Bruce Duckworth and Erik Spiekermann. In case you missed why we’re doing this, the same series of questions are asked to well-known design and creative people. This week, Tina Roth Eisenberg.

Tina Roth Eisenberg is the creator of popular design blog ‘swissmiss’. Originally from Switzerland she studied design in Geneva and Munich, before moving to New York where she worked for several prominent design studios including Thinkmap, where she helped design the award-winning Visual Thesaurus. Her design studio, also called swissmiss, produced work for the Museum of Modern Art and the Food Network. Now, no longer taking on client work, she focuses on personal projects including running the swissmiss blog, organising the global monthly CreativeMornings breakfast lecture series, running an online temporary tattoo shop and being the brains behind a to-do app called TeuxDeux.

How old were you when you first suspected you could become a designer?
I was 7 or 8. I remember watching my aunt’s life partner draw. Hans-Ueli was a graphic designer, in the pre-computer era days. I watched him carefully draw type and asked what he was doing. He said: “Working!” I paused, looked at him and said “Working, as in making money? You are making money, drawing type?” He nodded. I nodded as well. And here I am today, a graphic designer myself.

Did you see or experience something early in your life that was a significant influence?
Growing up in Switzerland is one big giant, minimal design influcence. The Swiss live and breathe design. It’s part of our DNA. To the point where the Swiss Government put architects, artists and designers on our banknotes.

The famous ‘Brian Ferry’ article that Carson set in dingbats because he thought the writing was so dull

Who were your early heroes (and what do you think of them now, in retrospect)?
I remember visiting the David Carson exhibit about 25 times when I was living in Munich. I admired his work when I was at university. Now, not so much. I realized I am quite conservative when it comes to graphic design and respect the user more than I respect the love for artistic expression.

What’s your recurring dream (or nightmare?)
Nightmare: Not enough bacon.
Dream:  Bacon confetti.

Describe the worst boss or client you’ve ever had.
Memories like that go into my mental shredder.

What’s your worst Apple-z (‘undo’) moment?
I am coming up blank, which probably means I should live a little bit harder, a bit more on the edge.

What do most people cite as your best/most well known piece of work?
My blog. Swiss-miss.com.

What do YOU think is your best piece of work? Why?
My kids.

What font would you choose for your gravestone?
Trade Gothic Condensed. (NOT HELVETICA!!!)

What wins, ideas or style?
Neither. Execution wins.

People have different ways to stay enthused, excited and interested in what they do for a living? What’s yours?
All the things I have started and that got me excited came out of a problem I wanted to fix. Swissmiss was a way to create a visual archive for myself, (pre-tumblr and pre-pinterest), CreativeMornings was a response to the somewhat elitist and inaccessible conference world, Teuxdeux is my answer to stay organized and Tattly started out of my frustration of my daughter wearing badly designed temporary tattoos. Once I find a solution to a problem, it’s up and running, I move on to the next.

When and where do you have your best ideas?
When I least expect it!

Seeing, smelling, touching, hearing, tasting. You have to give up two. Which ones?
Ok, that’s a brutal question. Uhm.. Smelling and touching.

If you could travel back in time, just once, and give yourself a few words of advice, what would they be (and when would you say them?)
I would travel back to when I was at university in Munich, studying Graphic Design and my advice: “Pack your bags and move to NYC asap!” This city has allowed me to truly be myself: A person that talks as fast, walks as fast and explodes with energy, enthusiasm and ideas. New Yorkers welcome all of these qualities with open arms, and fuel them. I found my home.

Do you still draw or has the computer taken over?
I still draw, thanks to my daughter Ella, almost 7. She is my sketching partner.

What’s the worst design crime you’ve seen (or committed?)
My first website. The domain name was chillidesign.ch. Yes, that’s all you need to know.

Playtime by Jacques Tati

You can only watch one film, read one book, listen to one album and eat one type of biscuit. What would they be?
Film: Playtime by Jacques Tati
Book: Taking Things Seriously: 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance

Album: Keith Jarrett,  The Köln Concert
Biscuit: Whoopie pies from One Girl Cookies in Brooklyn

Let’s say it all goes pear-shaped. What’s your back-up plan?
Uhm, in some sense I am living my back up plan. I am no longer working as a graphic designer. Yay for side projects!

Whoopie pies from One girl cookies in Brooklyn. Photo: Cherrypatter

Many thanks to Tina for taking part in Second Thoughts.

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This week we made our annual pilgrimage to the Kinetica Art Fair, in London until the end of tomorrow.

It’s where high tech robotics meets low fi art, and some of the exhibits are an combination of the two. Definitely worth a visit if you’re in the mood for art that moves and surrounds, or you’re looking for inspiration for something immersive and interactive.

Here are our top five picks from the fair

Greg Barsamian’s mesmerising gigantic 3d zoetrope ‘Die Falle’. The pic doesn’t quite do it justice – try the video below as well.

David Ogle’s ‘08015’ – who knew fishing lines could be so beautiful?

Roseline De Thelin’s ‘seating child’ that eerily looks real across all angles.

Mark Rosen and Wendy Marvel’s mechanical flipbook horses chase each other across the pages.

Dan Dodds’ ‘Near Unison’. Definitely an interactive way to make scientific patterns in the sand.

The best thing by far was ‘Angel’ by Chris Levine. It’s a strip of green lights which show you an angelic surprise in your peripheral vision when you turn your head slightly away. Only visible first hand though, even the best photos or videos couldn’t capture that…

Reporting by Miho Aishima

Kinetica Art Fair 2013 (February 27th – March 3rd 2013)
Ambika P3
35 Marylebone Road
NW1 5LS

For the last 15 months we’ve been working on a complete re-design of the Brighton Dome and Brighton Festival brands.

Each entity faced particular issues unique to them. The Dome is a vast site on the Royal Pavilion estate that has always struggled to clearly identify itself, even to the local arts community. Each of its constituent parts and multiple venues tended to act independently of each other across 11 months of yearly programming. And it had no cohesive identity capable of dealing with a huge range of genres – anything from visiting hip hop artists to classical orchestras.

Brighton Festival, as a contrast, lasts for just 3 weeks, but is a vibrant smorgasbord veering from modern circus to cutting edge performance art, comedy, music, theatre and dance.

Our task was to give each a distinct, yet related identity – celebrate their differences yet hint at collaboration and crossover.

We began with the Dome itself, and took its extraordinary architecture as our starting point. From the entrances to the main building, and the concert hall’s ceiling itself, extravagant Regency era ‘scallopped’ shapes are a major feature. At first sight, the ‘D’ for the Dome is a simple seriffed design, then you realise that the architect’s (William Porden, 1804-8) careful curves are echoed in the outside serifs.

The big ‘D’ is then used within all materials, on walls and signage throughout the site, as shown here.

The palette is restrained – black, gold and white – allowing performers and productions to shine and dominate.

Any confusion about ‘which bit was part of the Dome’ is cleared up with a new and clarified structure – everything is now preceded by Brighton Dome.

For the Festival, echoing the ‘D’, we’ve used a big ‘F’.

But this time the serifs of the bold, almost brutal letterform symbolise different aspects: the steps up to the stage, the idea of a festival in a ‘city on the edge’, whilst retaining links back to the ‘D’s curves.

There are many variants on the theme, and multiple colourways.

For this year’s festival, launched last night, we’ve taken guest director Michael Rosen’s hands and eyes to create a homage to one of his favourite periods, the Bauhaus (specifically Herbert Bayer’s The Lonely Metropolitan).

The image also echoes an open book and the sensory experience of the festival itself.

Here are a few early applications, and images from last night’s launch.

We’re also putting the finishing touches to a complete signage scheme, (which will probably be the subject of another post)…

…and both the Dome and Festival websites are now up and running.

Just occasionally, the two brands appear together…

…and we’re hoping, that in time, the ‘D’ and the ‘F’ will take on a life of their own.

Project credits:

Design: johnson banks
Designers: Michael Johnson, Julia Woollams
Photography (Rosen hand/eyes): Philip Gatward
Signage consultant: Whybrow Signing Consultants
Website implementation: They.Create
Reference to Herbert Bayer kindly sanctioned by DACS

Thanks to Andrew, Catherine, Carole, Maxine, Georgina, Louise at the Brighton Dome | Brighton Festival project team for seeing this through with us, and to Polly Toynbee and the BDBF board.

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Recently the UK Design Education community suffered a shock with the sudden passing of Ian Noble – most recently course director of the Communications MA at Kingston University, preceded by a fifteen year stint at the London College of Communications (LCC). Michael Johnson remembers him below.

My first memories of Ian, if I’m honest, weren’t great. I was two years into a job as external examiner at Glasgow School of Art, which, until then, had been almost idyllic.

Then I started my third year and came to face-to-face with a new head of course, seemingly set on a new course much more about ART than design, a change of marking structure, a student cohort literally ‘on strike’ and calling protest meetings. A general air of chaos ensued. And there was a new co-examiner, theoretically in charge of the illustration students but seemingly keener to proffer his views on ‘my’ graphics ones. This, of course, was Ian.

Initially we struggled to find any common ground. He was keen for his students to have read widely, but seemed most concerned that they were reading Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. I wanted mine to understand the problem before they found a solution (and post-structuralism wasn’t usually part of either). Derrida just reminded me of Scritti Politti songs.

Things got rockier still, oddly with the first ever post on ‘thought for the week’, which briefly critiqued a new book on 8vo (or Octavo). Ian’s email defence of the publication was, of course, extremely robust, and in retrospect, extremely justified. It didn’t make for comfortable meetings over warm white wine at degree show openings.

But in between, he’d been part of an interesting panel with me, discussing Design Education (with Ken Garland and Peter Souter) for D&AD. And I’d begun to read his books, and ‘get’ his point of view a little more.

Then a slight switch in Ian’s teaching introduced me to a different side of his thinking with a new MA course on branding that began in 2008. I arrived at the first show in 2009 in a sceptical mood but left energised, with a couple of great students’ cards in my pocket. And at that point, I started to really ‘see’ what Ian did. He may have had a bull-in-a-china-shop way of making a point, but as an educator he was right up there.

As we both got a little older, and a little greyer, it became abundantly clear that our worlds weren’t so far apart after all – we just wanted our students (or employees) to think a little, to research a little, before putting pen to paper or mouse to mat. Perhaps, just perhaps, our definitions of ‘research’ weren’t that different after all.

Critically, I also began to see that Ian was really good at getting undergrad and grad students to switch their way of thinking and open up. We’ve had several of them here at Johnson banks, most notably Edouard Pecher (Kaai Theatre major project, above) and Dina Silanteva (above and below), the latter arriving in time to have a great time on our Arkitypo project. If the test of a great educator is the quality of their students, then Ian had passed with flying colours.

The last time I saw him was at a fascinating evening on the future of food. He seemed absorbed by the topic, in jovial humour, content to sit and talk.

It was great to see him. It might have taken us 13 years to see eye to eye, but we had got there. I can’t quite believe we can’t go any further.

There’s a tribute site to Ian Noble here if you want to read other people’s memories, leave a note or post a picture.

I’ve always had a thing about floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

I saw this only recently on the great website Spoon and Tamago – 20 feet, floor to ceiling. Fantastic (and in need of more books).

Even the more domestic stuff looks great, like this.

I even tried to build one myself recently, on a slightly smaller scale.

(Obviously when I say ‘build’ I didn’t actually build it myself. And I definitely didn’t do it on my own).

Anyway, all this library envy took a bit of a hit this week on a work trip to Qatar.

On the fifth floor of the already wonderful MIA (Museum of Islamic Art) there’s a new restaurant featuring food from chef Alain Ducasse, with interior design by Philippe Starck.

Everything looks fairly normal until you turn around and notice the bookshelves.

There’s no photoshopping involved here. There really are two of them, either side of a massive window. And they look like they could be 10 metres tall (that’s a guess).

That’s taking ‘floor to ceiling’ to a whole new level.

By Michael Johnson

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D&AD have just published an audio interview with ex-President Michael Johnson on Soundcloud, part of a series of President’s interviews that they are working on.

They’ve also just announced on Twitter a competition as a tie-in:

‘use #MJProblemSolved to tell us what ‘ism’ Michael is most interested in and 1 winner at random will win a signed copy of the second edition of Problem Solved’.

There you go, something to while away your Friday afternoon.

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This is the third in a new series featuring great ideas that never saw the light, the ‘ones that got away’. The first featured one from johnson banks, the second Hat-Trick Design and this week’s contribution is from The Partners.

This was a Royal Mint brief for celebrating Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh 
and London, dating from the end of 2008. It was an open brief given to five designers and artists for initial ideas.

The idea was to celebrate these capital cities, and to touch people’s hearts in the most universal way – through music. Each city is represented by a piece of music special to that place, stamped onto the coin just like in a musical box. Little coin players would be sent around the country to Post Offices, schools, train stations.

The Partners’ Creative Director Greg Quinton explains the background: ‘we have been on the list for several similar briefs over the last few years and its true to say that we love them.

Our Sound of the City idea was one of several we submitted but it was always the team’s fave because it wasn’t just an image, it challenged the convention of the coin and brought alive a unique detail about each capital city – by using another of the senses – musical coins’.

We asked why it didn’t win. ‘Heraldry won out in the end, with the traditionalists on the coins and medals committee at the Mint choosing a design using official badges that no one could hate, but that no one loves either.

Frustratingly, we were a bitingly close second and it hung on a single vote in the end’.

The full song list as suggested was:

Belfast:
‘My Lagan Love’
One of the most popular Irish folk songs, set beside the River Lagan that flows through Belfast

London:
‘Oranges and Lemons’
The English nursery rhyme about the bells of the churches around the City of London

Cardiff:
‘Cardiff Arms’
A patriotic Welsh marching band tune

Edinburgh:
‘Flowers of Edinburgh’
A traditional tune that is still one of the most popular standards for Scottish dancing

Thanks to Greg and his team for sharing the project.

Got ‘one that got away’ that you want to share and deserves its fifteen minutes of fame? Write to info (at) johnsonbanks (dot) co (dot) uk with a short bit of blurb and some pics.

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15 years ago if I’d told you that in 2013 the charity sector would be one of the most vibrant, challenging and competitive branding sectors, you’d have laughed in my face. Because any notion of ‘branding’ was virtually non-existent. Charities had logos, yes, but they sat meekly in corners. Occasionally ad agencies were crowbarred into doing a poster, but usually in that we’ll-do-you-a-great-ad-that-will-win-us-awards-and-you’ll-be-grateful type of arrangement.

Slowly the market began to change. Charities began to understand that if they were unclear about what they stood for, so were their ‘customers’. And who exactly were their customers anyway?

Shelter logo by johnson banks

The first rebrands were subtle rather than dramatic. Ten years ago we were asked to chip in on Shelter’s repositioning and our design route was only intended as a simple update of a thirty-year old logo (with the ‘h’ slipped in for good measure). Their name, of course, was never queried – after all, ‘Shelter’ for a housing and homelessness charity couldn’t be beaten.

But imagine if your name actually doesn’t convey what you do? Or can’t be remembered, or, worst still, confuses people. What do you do then?

YWCA redesign by Landor USA

In 2004, a project by Landor in the USA opened many eyes to a new way of communicating when the impossibly acronymed YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) adopted a new strapline: ‘eliminating racism, empowering women’. No big surprise there, but the breakthrough was its scale – three times the size of YWCA and above it, not below. Overnight, an organization was starting to tell people what they did and why, on every single thing they put into print or pixel.

Designed by Wolff Olins

The tipping point in the UK came when two large charities decided to ‘activate’ their names. Macmillan Cancer Relief amended their name to Macmillan Cancer Support, then incorporated it into a series of ‘we’ statements. Backed up by a relatively big adspend, we all soon saw ‘We are Macmillan’. Save the Children, faced with puzzling research where potential supporters asked ‘what do you do, exactly’ decided to activate their existing name with their ‘We Save the Children. Will you?’ campaign line.

‘We Save the Children’ campaign by johnson banks

In MacMillan’s case, the positioning and questioning language used by their consultants Wolff Olins as an internal clarification exercise (‘so what is it that you actually do, and what do you offer?’) had all of a sudden gone public. The idea was that the ‘We’ was all of us. And ‘we are all Macmillan’.

Now you can debate whether this thinking has genuinely permeated, but there’s no doubt that YWCA and Macmillan made people see how charity brands could become active, campaigning schemes in their own right and perhaps negate the need for ‘advertising’ in the traditional sense.

Just a quick skim across the sector reveals a vast amount of activity in the last decade. Many UK charities have looked at themselves, what they do, how they say it, and worked out how to say it better.

The previous Anthony Nolan Trust logo, symbol and strapline

Sometimes the verbal changes have been minor – The Anthony Nolan Trust has simply shortened to ‘Anthony Nolan’. But more importantly, they now explain what they do – match bone marrow donors and save lives – and illustrate it, across everything.

Anthony Nolan logo and applications, johnson banks

The difference is in the messages, not the name – before they only talked about leukaemia, which resonated with those who understood the disease, but few others.

Parkinson’s UK by The Team

Prostate Cancer UK rejig by Hat-Trick Design

Others have taken an easy – but increasingly generic – route of attaching the ‘UK’ suffix to a version of their old name. So the Parkinson’s Disease Society removed both ‘disease’ and ‘society’ (both difficult and sometimes ‘turn-off’ words) and shortened to Parkinson’s UK.

Look around and the ‘UK’s’ have taken over. National Kidney Research Fund? Kidney Research UK. The solution to the merger of Age Concern and Help the Aged? Age UK (promptly followed by Age International). And most recently The Prostate Cancer Charity has become Prostate Cancer UK.

Some of this activity is debatable, and it’s too early to tell if all these facelifts and all that ‘UK-ness’ will have a genuine effect. But the signs are that when combined with stronger messages and communications (such as Parkinson’s adoption of ‘change attitudes, find a cure, join us’ or Prostate Cancer’s ‘sledgehammer’ appeal) it can lead to awareness going up, and more money coming in.

Action for Children by Baby Creative

Another trend is ‘action’ and various ‘action’ prefixes. The London Association for the Blind became ‘Action for blind people’. Then National Children’s Homes finally became Action for Children in 2008 after trying ‘NCH’ for a while. You may not like the ‘action for…’ wording (and at the time, neither did the ‘Action for Kids’ charity who deemed it too close for comfort), but there’s no doubt it’s a much more active phrase.

Redesign by Spencer Dubois and Hat-Trick Design

Another organization saddled with a difficult name was the RNID, always confused with birds or the blind, but actually the hard of hearing (as in Royal National Institute for the Deaf). Their problem? Just 4% awareness amongst the general public. Their solution? ‘Action on Hearing Loss’. A bit clumsy, perhaps, but at least it’s less confusing.

Where this thinking will go next is hard to predict: for example there are only a few ‘beating’ charities at the moment (Beating Bowel Cancer, Beating Eating Disorders) but that list will probably grow. Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research should probably really just change their name to their strapline, ‘Beating Blood Cancers’, if they truly want people to understand what they do.

We’re putting the finishing touches now to a scheme for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, who, whilst well known in the cystic fibrosis community, suffers from low awareness amongst the general public. In early meetings we spotted the ‘is’ at the end of ‘fibrosis’, and suggested a scheme that always explained what it is. This ensures that the logo is always a statement of intent, allowing them to become a well defined, ‘active’ brand virtually overnight.

So we’re artworking nearly forty different ‘logos’, varying from campaigning (Cystic Fibrosis a fight we must win) to fundraising (Cystic Fibrosis counting on your support) to those explaining it in more detail (Cystic Fibrosis a sticky, painful, suffocating condition). Depending on the tone and message they require, they’ll swiftly be able to adjust each leaflet, poster, web page or banner accordingly.

Design by Interbrand Australia

Perhaps going forward we’ll also see more schemes like the recently developed Alzheimer’s Australia, which places words around the core words to activate them, such as ‘Fight Alzheimer’s, Save Australia’, and so on.

By kesselskramer

There are signs that this kind of thinking is creeping into the cultural and education sectors too. Kesselkramer’s ‘I Amsterdam’ campaign was a great, early example…

Brussels campaign by Base Design

…and now, after a shortish drive you can Be Brussels too.

New Museum branding by Wolff Olins

The New Museum’s ‘sandwich’ approach to their name, and what they do, activates in series of different ways, as does The University of Westminster’s (and now The University of Plymouth’s too).

By Jane Wentworth Associates and Hat-Trick Design

What is clear is that many of these examples are blurring the lines between identity, branding, advertising and communications – the core brands remain central and become the launch pad for entire schemes, never pushed back into the corner and back to anonymity. These changes cost money, but in many cases the funds and awareness raised quickly offset the outlay.

Perhaps soon, the blue chip sector will look at these ideas and follow suit. But that would mean loosening their ‘logo guidelines’ and allowing their brands to communicate…

Now wouldn’t that be something?

By Michael Johnson

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Early last year, in a meeting with a new client who I knew had a propensity to write slightly more than they needed to, I took an unusual step.

To highlight their love of new and unusual word combinations, I suggested that this headlong pursuit of what I decided to title ‘Phrase Leadership™’ was sometimes getting in the way of what needed to be said. I suggested that they should consider simpler, plainer English. (And yes, it was meant as a twist on thought leadership. I added the ™ for a joke).

It made an interesting discussion point, they sort of took my point. Sort of. We moved on. But I’ve been thinking about ‘phrase leadership’ and collecting examples ever since.

Whilst I coined the phrase to make a point, I’ve realised that ‘phrase leadership’ is a serious game that is being played every day by a wide and varied group of journalists, brand consultants, trend forecasters and copywriters. Often it’s a kind of Darwinian race to create the perfect phrase to sum up a situation, create a new word to add to an already groaning dictionary of English words, or carve out distinctive territory in a market stuffed with defaults and generics.

The Arab Spring, for example, has swiftly become shorthand for any type of uprising in any Arab country. It was first used to describe Egyptian, Syrian and Lebanese unrest in 2005 as an echo of the ‘Prague Spring’ – even 6 years later The Times were still using it to describe ‘the great awakening, 2011’s equivalent of the fall of communism in 1989…’

Before that the equally popular term seemed to be The Color Revolutions – a handy title for Eastern European uprisings which let each particular revolution adopt their own shade of protest.

It’s become clear that ‘phrase leadership’ is hardly a new phenomenon. For decades journalists have been throwing 2 or 3 word combinations at us then waiting to see which ones will stick. The Fab Four? The Winter of Discontent? Chick Lit? It’s hard to know exactly when or where these phrases started – when did the BBC become The Beeb, for example? They just arrive, they hover, waiting for approval, then sink or swim. Sometimes intentionally, often inadvertently, they claim that much vaunted leadership and all pretenders have to bow to the winner.

In the past year alone I’ve read about toffologues – used to describe soap operas involving some kind of aristocracy. This week I realised I was the last person in the universe who didn’t know what FOMO* meant. Last week I learned that an old classic, Nimby (as in ‘not in my backyard’) has been updated to Numby to take in to account the fracking phenomena. That’s not under my backyard, in case you’re wondering.

And of course 2012 was the year that a word invented for TV satire (Omnishambles, written by Tony Roche in 2009 for UK show the Thick of It) was co-opted for real life political point-scoring by the leader of the opposition, Ed Miliband, looking to score points during a particularly tricky period for the Conservative party.

It then received a second boost after Mitt Romney’s disastrous visit to the UK in July, where he managed to offend just about everyone (prompting the hashtag #romneyshambles). Little wonder that Omnishambles was officially dubbed ‘word of the year’ for 2012 **, apparently beating off Mobot and Mummy porn in the process.

It’s not just journalism that loves ‘phrase leadership’. The fashion industry is addicted to new ways to describe a season’s look. You may not have realised that Flatforms (a kind of brothel creeper) have been big recently, Meggings (male leggings) are the new top tip and that Fashionista has morphed into Dalstonista (as in vintage-wearing East London types of a certain age). And there’s the invention of flawsome for brands that are not quite right but still great, if you see what I mean.

Sometimes words aren’t technically new, they’re just dragged out of semi-retirement. Conservative party Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell caused a storm by allegedly choosing a particularly boarding-school-style-PPE contraction of a latin term to describe a policeman as a pleb, and hence plebgate followed. The Guardian last year examined the extensive vocabulary of Leveson barrister Robert Jay who, apparently, sprinkles his speech with the likes of propinquity, deleterious and nugatory. (Blimey – don’t get trapped in a Scrabble game with him).

I write about this area slightly self-consciously, of course, knowing that brand consultants are constantly off creating their own unique phrases to differentiate their approach to the mysterious black box of the design process. Just a quick ask around revealed classics such as Brand Clarity™ and the Six Dimensions of Innovation™, all followed by the obligatory ™ sign. I think I’ve read about Brand Worlds and Visual Planning recently too. Not sure if they’re ™’d or not.

‘Adding the ™ suggest there’s something of value worth protecting, but on closer inspection it’s usually not the case’ suggested writer Nick Asbury, when quizzed about this. Asbury also pointed out that there’s an almost sinister side to some of this, in the way that government departments become Ministries for Defence, not Departments of War.

This type of disinformation takes us back to the master, George Orwell – the man whose fictional language for 1984, Newspeak, included thoughtcrime, doublespeak and of course Big Brother. Many of his examples were promptly absorbed into everyday political language.

What Orwell would have made of the mountain of doublespeak we’re all surrounded by now isn’t clear, but given that he was appalled by the state of everyday English 60 years ago, the chances are he’d be apoplectic. He’d probably agree with Rick Poynor, when quizzed on this phenomenon: ‘the problem with anything endlessly repeated as useful shorthand is that the more we encounter the ready-made formulation, the less it encourages us to think’.

So, what became of my attempt to ridicule verbal thought leadership with my lovable but wordy client? Within an hour it had completely backfired. One by one they began to use the ‘joke’ phrase as their own. They’d already assimilated ‘phrase leadership’, then played it back to me as a useful two word summary of what they were trying to attain.

Oh no. What have I done?

By Michael Johnson

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*FOMO – fear of missing out

** ‘Not only have you got a fucking bent husband and a fucking daughter that gets taken to school in a fucking sedan chair, you’re also fucking mental. Jesus Christ, see you, you’re a fucking omnishambles, that’s what you are. You’re like that coffee machine, you know: from bean to cup, you fuck up’.
— Malcolm Tucker (Capaldi) to Nicola Murray (Front), Series 3, Episode 1, The Thick of It.

___________________________________________________________

Thanks to the many people who contributed thoughts and suggestions to this piece, including Nick Asbury, Michael Bierut, Rick Poynor, Mike Reed and Howard Fletcher.

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This is number 10 in our Second Thoughts series, following on from our interviews with Andy Altmann, Simon Waterfall, Nicolas Roope, Michael Bierut, Dick Powell, Rosie Arnold, Michael Wolff, Mike Dempsey and Bruce Duckworth. In case you missed why we’re doing this, the same series of questions are asked to well-known design and creative people. This week, Erik Spiekermann.

Erik Spiekermann, German typographer and designer, was the founder of Font Shop, the first mail-order distributor for digital fonts, in 1989. He designed numerous famous fonts such as FF Meta, ITC Officina and the award winning family of typefaces for Deutsche Bahn. Erik studied art history at Berlin’s Free University before founding MetaDesign in 1979. On leaving MetaDesign in 2001 he founded UDN | United Designers Networks, which has since been renamed Edenspiekermann.

How old were you when you first suspected you could become a designer?
Probably 12, because that is when I got my first little printing press and starting playing around with letters. I had no idea what a designer was at the time, so I didn’t suspect anything at the time. It still might have been the first seed. The second one was when my print shop burnt down in 1977, when I had just moved it into a railway arch near Ladbroke Grove from Berlin. As my means of production as a printer and typesetter had ceased to exist, graphic design was the only way out. At that time all you needed was a pen and a sketchpad. I had not studied design at university.

Did you see or experience something early in your life that was a significant influence?
Yes, see above.

Who were your early heroes (and what do you think of them now, in retrospect)?
Günter Gerhard Lange (shown above, photo © Marc Eckardt) was Berthold’s (the typefoundry) artistic director. I went to one of his evening classes where he made me cut out lines of 60pt Akzidenz Grotesk and stick them down at an angle. Shocking! Later he encouraged me to design my first typeface.

What’s your recurring dream (or nightmare?)
Never getting another project. Stochastically unlikely, I know, but still scary.

Describe the worst boss or client you’ve ever had.
A certain Korean car company. After we found out that they took all our presentations (which had to be in PowerPoint) and reassembled them to their own liking, we realized why we never found out what they thought of our work. Turns out that our actual client never saw our work, just what someone in the middle made up from our presentations. I did enjoy writing the email telling them that we weren’t going to work for them anymore. They have tried other designers since but nothing has changed. At least we know it wasn’t us.

What’s your worst Apple-z (‘undo’) moment?
Not exactly an undo-moment, but deleting three months’ worth of work once with no backup.

What do most people cite as your best/most well known piece of work?
Probably my typefaces, like FF Meta or ITC Officina. And me starting MetaDesign in 1979 and building it into Germany’s best design studio until I left in 2000.

What do YOU think is your best piece of work? Why?
The wayfinding for Berlin Transport because it has been working for 20 years now and still looks cheerful as well as functional.

What font would you choose for your gravestone?
You mean the letters on the biscuit tin with my ashes in? Rotis, my pet hate, would be a nice postmortal joke.

What wins, ideas or style?
How could you even expect me to choose style?

People have different ways to stay enthused, excited and interested in what they do for a living? What’s yours?
Curiosity. I just like stuff.

When and where do you have your best ideas?
When I am avoiding real work.

Seeing, smelling, touching, hearing, tasting. You have to give up two. Which ones?
Smelling and tasting.

If you could travel back in time, just once, and give yourself a few words of advice, what would they be (and when would you say them?)
Thinking twice before making important decisions. But how would I know which ones would turn out to be the important decisions?

Do you still draw or has the computer taken over?
I still draw a lot. And I spend a lot of time at the computer. No contradiction there.

Randhurst Mall, USA. Photo: Doc Searls

What’s the worst design crime you’ve seen (or committed?)
Shopping malls and giant parking lots.

You can only watch one film, read one book, listen to one album and eat one type of biscuit. What would they be?
Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch, with Roberto Benigni, John Lurie and Tom Waits, mostly for the music); Heinrich von Kleist: Gesammelte Werke (Collected Works, in German, of course); Nic Jones: Penguin Eggs; Lambertz Printen (weird German gingerbread from Aachen that we eat for christmas).

Let’s say it all goes pear-shaped. What’s your back-up plan?
Write stories and print them in the little print shop I’m setting up.

Aachener Printen (gingerbread biscuit from Aachen, Germany)

Many thanks to Erik for taking part in Second Thoughts.

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A week or so ago we started a new regular feature on the ‘ones that got away’. We’ve asked a few people for some of their ‘most painful’ and here’s the first contribution, from Hat-Trick Design, who were in the midst of producing a vast 3d hoarding for a client in Central London when the recession hit.

Hat-Trick’s Jim Sutherland  explains exactly what happened…

“We have been lucky enough to work with an extremely enlightened property client for over 10 years now. In 2008 we were asked to do a hoarding for a building in Fenchurch Street with an amazing garden roof terrace overlooking London.

We came up with the idea of a giant 3D hoarding. I remember presenting the client images from a kids’ 3D dinosaur book as this was the best reference we could find.

We found the man who had invented a lot of 3D imaging techniques (he had done my Dinosaur book in 1979) and worked with him to brief two photographers who had never done 3d images before. John Ross, who shot in his studio, and Paul Grundy, who went up scaffolds and shot views over London with two cameras 50 yards apart. The plan was to have panoramas and still life objects floating in space.

At the time, they would have been the largest 3D images ever produced, along a 1km hoarding, two metres high. The 3D glasses were going to be in small dispensers on the hoarding itself.

We had to then convince the City of London planners that this wouldn’t cause epileptic fits or be a traffic hazard. We had to test full size panels to make sure 3d worked on this printed scale. Their decision to approve it took 8 weeks. The delay in getting planning meant that just as we were about to go to print, the recession had begun and the hoarding project was put on hold, never to reappear.

We have the test panels in the studio and boxes and boxes of glasses (these had a long lead time and so were already printed)

You need to find some red/blue glasses to appreciate the images fully. They looked wonderful full scale, and it makes me rather sad every time I look at them”.

See more things (that got through) on the Hat-Trick site here. Thanks for Jim and his team for digging out pictures.

The first in this series is here, and there’ll be more ‘ones that got away’ soon…

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For decades there was a school of thought in the design business that there was only one true solution to each problem, and it was the designer’s task to analyse, research, think a bit, think some more, reach deep inside themselves then create and present the one, perfect, irrefutable idea.

And it’s an attractive proposition, when you compare what we do with other professions. A barrister will return with the single, ideal defence to keep you out of jail. Commission an architect, they’ll come back with their dream building. A surveyor tells you the best way to keep your house from falling down.

Little wonder that this ‘absolutist’ school of problem solving appeals to the ‘consultant’ in all of us – ‘they have come to me for what I do and now I will return to them with the one great solution’.

But what happens when it doesn’t pan out quite as planned? What happens when a client has his or her own view and thinks there may be another way? What happens if you’ve made too many assumptions, or your research has led you down the wrong alley? (Or, dare I say it, you were bit off your game and what was billed as the perfect solution was actually imperfect and deep inside you knew it all along?)

Well, then more ideas are necessary.

Immediately there are some major questions: if we’re being true absolutists, given that there was only one solution in the first place which has now been rejected, the only answer now is to resign the account. Now, that may have been fiscally viable decades ago, but with most designers across the world struggling to make ends meet and keep their accountants at bay, it may not make huge sense to just say sayonara to your shiny new project quite that hastily.

I’ll admit, the younger and more hot-headed version of myself would have flailed and flounced with the best of them when faced with outright rejection. In fact, having been kept waiting for a meeting for 8 hours once, only to be admitted at 5.45pm (having flown there for a 9.00 am meeting) and then had the designs torn to shreds, I eyed the door handle as I left the room and made an executive decision to SLAM it as hard as I could behind me. (Guess what: we lost the account. But boy did that SLAM feel fantastic).

So, breaking doors and resigning accounts apart, what do you do? Do you go back to the drawing board, chuck everything away and start again? Or take the kernel of an idea from one route, that bit the client liked from the other route, mash them together in an uncomfortably forced marriage, hope for the best and plough on?

I would argue that this is where a good designer earns their stripes. Of course, it’s a drag to have your favourite idea rejected. And there are occasions where some truly great ideas are canned, and NO it wasn’t fair and YES it happens to everyone.

But sulking in the corner doesn’t solve the problem. Because it happens to all of us, at least once a year. The ‘great idea’ gets bombed and we have to start again, all the time wondering if another ‘great’ idea will turn up. It happened to me just this week, as I sat in a café sketching an idea for some stamps that changed, just slightly, as you looked across the sheet, and created a kind of animated effect. I swear it was gold. Maybe a platinum. But just one phone call to the client the next day killed it dead (the idea for 6 stamps with 5 variants of each would count as 30 separate stamps. Not allowed. Game over.)

We’re back to square one a bit with the stamp project, but I’m hopeful. You see, often the road continually trodden, and re-trodden, can lead you to a better solution. I’m sure Bob Gill once made the same point – another great thought is just out there, waiting to be had, and as Linus Pauling once famously said, ‘the best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas’, and he was right.

It’s no co-incidence that some of our more interesting solutions of the last few years (such as the Pew Center) came on projects that didn’t, on paper, go that smoothly. They all had moments like that key point in most movies (about 80% of the way through) where everything seems insurmountable and our hero/heroine will never resolve his/her struggle. You know the moment.

Pushing yourself out of the comfort zone to look for other ways that move past the original thought can open up new approaches – it’s difficult at the time but sometimes the journey can be worth it. Sometimes we’ve had to do some extraordinary things, like redo design stages three or four times, or commence a design ‘blitzkrieg’ where our Führer (OK, the client) received something new via pdf every day for two weeks.

But all of this won’t stop all of us trying for the ‘one great idea’. And in twenty years in business it has happened. On about three occassions. The rest of the time? The struggle can be absolutely worth it.

Originally written by Michael Johnson for the new edition of Kyoorius magazine

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The reaction to the Second Thoughts series has been really good, so we’re kicking off another new series for the New Year. It’s called ‘the one that got away’ and is dedicated to those projects that for some reason never made the light of day.

Obviously, it’s painful when what seemed like ‘the best idea’ gets bombed. And there’s a temptation to keep that idea, stick it in the bottom drawer and wheel it out sometime in the future, perfectly formed, to the amazement of a grateful client.

Trouble is, it’s rare that a design brief is ever the same, those ideas just gather dust and their day in the sun never comes. Until now. We’re going to kick off the series with one of ours, then ask the great and the good if they have anything they’d like to share.

This idea was presented to Penguin Classics – we’d been asked for ideas to promote some of their ranges and were given ‘crime’ as a test case, and a box full of books. A summer was spent reading everything from Conan Doyle to Elroy.

After a few weeks the links between the key novels began to become apparent, so we started to draw maps and diagrams that illustrated this. For example, did you know a lot of crime novelists love Poe? Maybe not.

Anyway the strategic thought was something along the lines of this:

And from there we started these gun-shaped poster ideas – part mind map, part organagram, part ‘body drawn in chalk’.

These were the ‘main’ posters – not trying to claim Penguin Crime as the be-all and end-all, but just show their importance in the pantheon of crime writing.

Anyway, so the meeting went well, this and another route were liked. Then, it being 2008, everything went VERY quiet and the project became an early victim of the recession. Shame.

Looking back, we have to apologise for those not-very-well warped book covers. Sorry. But, details aside they’d have made a great set, we think. Never mind. Given that, in four years not one single client has rung for a poster campaign about crime fiction, we thought it was time to share.

(And the other route? Well, that’s still in the bottom drawer. You never know).

If you have a nomination for ‘The one that got away’, email with details and pics at info (at) johnsonbanks (dot) co (dot) uk

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This is number nine in our Second Thoughts series, following on from our interviews with Andy Altmann, Simon Waterfall, Nicolas Roope, Michael Bierut, Dick Powell, Rosie Arnold, Michael Wolff and Mike Dempsey. In case you missed why we’re doing this, the same series of questions are asked to well-known design and creative people. This week, Bruce Duckworth.

Bruce graduated from Kingston Polytechnic with an Honours Degree in Graphic Design in 1985. Worked as a designer at Michael Peters, Minale Tattersfield and Lewis Moberly before setting up Turner Duckworth. Bruce has won over 200 design awards including D&AD Yellow pencil, DBA Design Effectiveness, Design week, Cannes Lions Grand Prix, Clio, and a Grammy award amongst others, and has judged for most of the international design awards schemes including Foreman of judges at D&AD and President of the Cannes Lions design jury.  He has been on the executive committee for D&AD and is a fellow of the RSA.

How old were you when you first suspected you could become a designer?
About 16. I didn’t really have any choice in the matter. Art was about the only thing I was any good at.

Did you see or experience something early in your life that was a significant influence?
As a young teenager I collected football coupons each week from the houses in the neighbourhood. In one house lived the mother of the then Creative Director of Minale Tattersfied. She lent me a book of their work. BAA posters caught my imagination, still brilliant today.

Who were your early heroes (and what do you think of them now in retrospect)?
Hipgnosis (above), Bob Gill (immediately above), Pininfarina, Paul Weller. I think they all stand the test of time (maybe not Weller’s haircut!).

What’s your recurring dream (or nightmare)?
No idea, I can only remember dreams or nightmares for about two minutes after I wake up.

Describe the worst boss or client you’ve ever had?
Clients who insist on wanting my design recommendation and then do the opposite.

What’s you worst (Apple Z) undo moment?
Not preparing a speech for an important awards do because I didn’t think we’d win, then having to make it up on the spot, I still blush thinking about it.

What do most people cite as your best/most well known piece of work?
A Google search says, the redesign of the visual identity for Coca Cola in America.

What do you think is your best piece of work?
The Spitfire stamps still look OK for a 15 year old design.

What font would you choose for your gravestone?
It would say “Best before end…” – a packaging design joke!

What wins Ideas or Style?
Ideas, but done with style.

People have different ways to stay enthused, excited and interested in what they do for a living? What’s yours?
I’m not much use on my own, I need to be around people. When I see great work and meet passionate people I get enthused. Thomas Heatherwick’s exhibition was great. I recently met Chris Bangle. He’s an inspiring character. Because David Turner is over 5000 miles away when we meet up we definitely enthuse each other.

When and where do you have your best ideas?
When I’m fully immersed in the project. I find ideas happen when I’m half distracted by a mundane task, like walking to work.

Seeing, smelling, touching, hearing, tasting. You have to give up two. Which ones?
Smelling and tasting.

If you could travel back in time, just once, and give yourself a few words of advice what would they be (and when would you say them?)
Stretch yourself. When I tried out a 1970 Ferrari Dino a few years ago that I couldn’t quite afford it… I really can’t afford it now!

Do you still draw or has the computer taken over?
I still draw because it’s quicker for me, then I go to the computer.

What’s the worst design crime you’ve ever seen (or committed?)
When something we’ve designed gets redesigned and it comes out as bland mediocrity.

You can only watch one film, read one book, listen to one album and eat one type of biscuit. What would they be?
I love films the first time I see them but I almost never re-watch them. The Deer hunter if I was pushed, mainly because I took up playing the guitar as a result.

I like a good escapist thriller; Stig Larson books were great – better books than the film. Paul Weller – Wild Wood.

Biscuits – Ginger nuts.

Let’s say it all goes pear shaped. What’s you back up plan?
Start again.

Many thanks to Bruce for taking part in Second Thoughts.

Follow johnson banks on twitter @johnsonbanks, and feel free to suggest who we should ask next #2ndthoughts

The last thing we printed in December is now blocking the johnson banks reception: a short run of the Power of Creativity poster that we designed for the D&AD 50 Auction at the end of last year.

There was a lot of bloggage and tweetage and many, many requests for copies so we thought we’d run a few.

The first print run was of 2 huge giglée prints, which were very beautiful but super expensive. That run of precisely two is either sold or already spoken for, but this was a longer run at a slightly smaller size.

It’s a 3 colour litho print of 200 on very nice 200gsm paper, and measures precisely 1000mm by 666mm. We’re going to number and sign every one of them.

To recoup costs we’re going to have to charge about £50-£60 each plus p&p (which will be about £10 in the UK and obviously about double that for the rest of the world). Does that sound fair? Let us know in the comments below.

Update: it’s finally on sale here.

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The votes are in, the mails and tweets read and analysed, so it’s time for the johnson banks Review of the Year, 2012.

Designer of the year
Well, we reckon that’s a shoo-in for a Mr Thomas Heatherwick, with a really great show at the V&A of his life’s work, a hefty tome just out through The Monacelli Press and of course ‘that cauldron’ at the Olympics. Maybe, just maybe, at that moment, a whole generation of kids worldwide thought ‘cool’ and wondered if they too could design something like that.

Twerp of the year…
…has to go to Michael Gove, who in a classic ‘tory minister shows just how cut off he is from the real world’ moment decided that teaching design and technology (and the arts in general) wasn’t really terribly useful and proposed that it be cut out of his newly planned English Baccalaureate. Currently this seems designed to teach only Maths, more Maths, Science, Science then English and more English.

Not that we have anything against those subjects, of course, but as we write the UK’s much lauded creative industries sector is vying with finance as most important to the UK economy (depending on whose stats you believe). So those kids dreaming of being the next Heatherwick will somehow have to craft their skills in the margins of their Biology textbooks, or can the idea and go into the City instead. Strikes us as kind of short-sighted. (There’s more on this here).

The ‘phew’ we just about scraped through that award…
…goes to the graphics for the Oympics. On paper this was a disaster waiting to happen – a logo designed 5 years before an anticipated nu-rave boom that never came, a set of pictograms designed in a related yet different style by another firm, then implemented by yet another, using a typeface that was chosen years before then replaced by the London Underground font for the rest.

The general consensus seemed to be one of relief and ‘it didn’t look too bad’. Trouble is (and this is clearly a controversial view written from a country still living in a semi-delusional post-Olympics bubble), some of us dreamed of a scheme that aimed a little higher than ‘it didn’t look too bad’.

The ‘didn’t that go well’ prize…
…goes to most of the UK throughout the Olympics, where, after a day of no medals ‘our boys and girls came good!’ (or something like that). Perhaps it was just a good case-study in expectation management – having been lectured for four years about the perils of holding another ‘austerity olympics’ the fact that it was actually OK was just a huge relief to everyone involved.

Still, at least Mo and Mr Bolt gave us some interesting poses to practice and Danny Boyle has to get some kudos for pulling off the opening ceremony and keep in a longish sequence about the NHS which would have doubtless pissed off all the hard-right Tories sitting on all those committees (and in the audience).

To be fair, the swift segue into the Paralympics was neatly done (cue poster ad above), opened millions of eyes and hearts to the predicament of running or swimming or cycling without a full set of limbs and handily provided us with most people’s ad/promo of the year, Channel Four’s ‘meet the superhumans’, nicely directed by Tom Tagholm.

Amazingly, the ‘head in the sand’ prize still has to go to American TV whose coverage of the Paralympics ran to, er, a 90 minute round-up. And that was it.

And yes, it’s true that NBC commentator Meredith Viera really did say, as Tim Berners-Lee was featured in the opening ceremony “If you haven’t heard of him, we haven’t either”. She then suggested viewers Google him instead (without any sense of irony).

The trend that isn’t going away quickly…
…has to be 3d printing. Admittedly we got pretty engrossed in it ourselves when our Arkitypo project came out at the turn of the year, but it seems to be everywhere.

As the price of 3d printers such as the Maker-bot will drop and drop, who knows where this is all going to end up. One thing’s for sure, we’ll all need to know how to design in 3d pretty soon.

Best music of the year
Once again a pretty eclectic year in the johnson banks studio – but going on ‘number of plays’ our albums of the year would have to be Black Radio by the Robert Glasper Experiment, Radio Music Society by Esperenza Spalding, Fragments by the Submotion Orchestra and Until the quiet comes by Flying Lotus. The Lianne la Havas album got hammered earlier in the year, and on constant rotation has been Bat for Lashes and The Portico Quartet’s 2012 releases. And we agree with Maisie Benson: Call me maybe really was the single of the year.

On a folkier note we’d go for The Staves (Dead & Born & Grown) and The Unthanks’ bizarre sounding but great collaboration with the Brighouse and Rastrick band. Under the ‘really like but we need more time’ would go to Visions by Grimes, Plumb by Field Music and America by Dan Deacon.

Music discovery of the year…
…would have to be the Hidden Orchestra. An amazing swooping cinematic beat driven mash of classical and jazz, if that takes your fancy. And the ‘from the archive’ release of the year would be the Keith Jarrett ‘Sleeper’ album made with his excellent European quartet (that only actually made two studio albums).

Bet we won’t still be playing them in a year’s time
Well, that prize goes to Alt J and Django Django. Sorry. Someone had to say it.

Shocking music decision of the year…
…has to go to the Mercury Music Prize committee for NOT shortlisting Glass Swords by Rustie. Hard to believe.

Gig of the year…
…an eclectic list of nominations from jb towers, ranging from Rustie at Field Day, to Esperanza Spalding at the Festival Hall, to Philip Glass’s 75th birthday at the Barbican. All great.

Our favourite sites, blogs and twitterers
Most useful has to be the rise of Pinterest. Anyone grappling before with bookmaking sites like delicious and scrapbooking sites like FFFound finally has a way to save images and links quickly and easily. Really, really great (and really useful). And now it doesn’t all have to be in public either. Only complaint? Doesn’t seem to like animated gifs (yet). We’ll get over it.

We also really liked Pocket (great for saving links from Twitter without an internet connection) and Lifehacker – ‘tips, tricks and downloads for getting things done’.

In the design field, Brand New continued to supply almost daily rebrand entertainment, even in a year bereft of particularly interesting projects, and Mike Dempsey’s 6 part series on the demise of the design company where he made his name was almost painful to read, yet compelling. Adrian Shaughnessy and Erik Spiekermann continued to tweet like their lives depended on it, but often very usefully, it has to be said.

The Fast Company design site has also steadily provided a stream of great links, articles and tweets all year. Highly recommended.

Web design trend we’re going to see a lot more of…
…has to be parallax scrolling. See here and here. Awesome, really, especially after the enforced diet of HTML 5. It’ll look SO 2012 soon, but who cares. Yes it may well be the new flash, and all of that, but still, it’s fun.

Exhibitions of the year
Always a tough one to adjudicate, given that we all went to different things at different times throughout the year, but going on votes in the studio Hollywood Costume, running now at the V&A, has a lot of votes, as does the small but fascinating show of Thomas Heatherwick’s work.

From the international division there’s a strong hand for the amazing show earlier in the year of Maurizio Cattelan’s life’s work (smartly titled ‘All’) at the Guggenheim and an amazing show of Cai Guo-Qiang’s work on show at Mathaf in Qatar earlier in the year, as pictured above.

Worst ad of the year?

Lots of nominations here, but we’re going to go with Nick Asbury’s suggestions, the Colgate ‘focus group’ offering above, and the hilarious ‘chairs are like Facebook’ piece here.

Smartest ad/promotion link-up
Red Bull sponsoring Felix Baumgartner’s leap out of a spaceship. Love or loathe this kind of high-level branding, it’s not going away soon.

Wish we had one of those…
Well that seems to be a toss-up between at one end the Paul Smith Leica X2 shown above…

…and the tech innovation of the year down at the other end of the spectrum, the Raspberry Pi. This is essentially a computer board that doesn’t even have a casing, let alone a box to keep it in, but, critically retails at just $35 dollars and is designed to bring everyday computing to the fingertips of millions. All those ports allow you to connect the board to just about anything.

We’re all hoping this will be Gove-proof and will finally persuade schools worldwide that grappling with code is surely more useful than learning how to bash together horrendous Powerpoint slides in turgid IT classes. ‘Learning to code’ is on everyone’s New Year’s resolution list, surely?

That looks like a huge waste of money
This new award has to go to the Will.i.am ‘designed’ iPod camera clip-on, thingummy. Just your £199 pounds. Bargain, eh?

Whereas this looks just great.

Film of the Year
Always a bit odd writing these when the hot Oscar tips are just being released (and UK cinema releases lag slightly behind US ones), but our jury preferred Moonrise Kingdom, Argo and Beasts of the Southern Wild. Obviously Life of Pi for special effects. Can’t wait for Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln though.

TV of the year
This seemed to be dominated by Scandinavian doom-laden dramas featuring imperfect-yet-unmissable heroines, from commitment-phobic Lund in The Killing to aspergers suspect Saga Norén in The Bridge. Carrie in Homeland continued the imperfect theme, albeit without any obviously Scandy references apart from hair colour. Maybe Birgitte Nyborg’s character in Borgen will provide something altogether less stressful, but it seems unlikely.

Satire had a good year with the hilarious Twenty Twelve and, sadly, the last ever series of The Thick of It. Both managed to neatly mirror real life in an almost spooky way, especially with the use of ‘word of the year’, Omnishambles. (More on that soon).

Nearly forgot – a fantastic return to form for Aaron Sorkin with The Newsroom.

Weirdest mash-up of the year?
Arch borrower Shephard Fairey creates a mash-up with 70s arch borrower/situationist Jamie Reid. Then charges thousands. We visited his London show this year and couldn’t decide if he was a genius or just a genius rip-off artist.

Retrospective event of the year…
…had to be the D&AD 50th anniversary dinner. Yes, it looked backwards not forwards, yes the ‘results’ of most awarded this, that and the other were fatally skewed to a time when people actually won more than once, but despite all that it was a great evening and the collection of great names in one room was quite something. Cynicism was parked outside, at least for the evening.

Worst jury decision of the year…
…had to be whichever D&AD jury decided that creating and installing a massive pavement of comedians’ quotes in a Northern seaside town wasn’t even worthy of inclusion into the D&AD annual, let alone be worthy of an award.

Best branding projects of the year
Interbrand Sydney continued their hot streak with a lovely project for Quagoma, and we also loved this piece for Alzheimer Nederland by Studio Dumbar.

Closer to home we don’t think enough attention was paid to this nice piece by Bibliotheque for Ollo.

Secretly also really liked the Stedelijk’s new mark as well. Not sure why, but we do.

Rebrand trend of the year…
…seemed to be to smooth out the edges of established brands like ebay and Microsoft. Which, of course, made sense, but doesn’t really make for an interesting end-of-year round-up.

Oddest internet phenomenon of the year…
…had to be the Kony story. Somehow, a video for Invisible Children, a nonprofit dedicated to saving African children from Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony, gathered 70 million views in a week, then it’s creator had a moment of temporary insanity and was caught naked waving his tackle at passing cars.

In the meantime, only 80% of the millions raised seemed to be actively dedicated to finding the now world famous Kony, still hiding in the jungle and who hasn’t actually visited Uganda for years.

What’s most telling is the way that Invisible Children managed to leverage the world’s children to share the original film through social media and gain the ‘world’s most viral video’ status. NGOs and ad agencies across the world have watched, taken note and are presumably planning accordingly.

Great to finally hear speaking live
Perhaps as a reaction to the story above – talking about a problem but not doing much – Jacqueline Novogratz at TEDx Euston in November was a breath of fresh air. Ok, so she’s had a bit of practice (having done a few TEDs already) but the way the leader of Acumen Fund explained her organisation’s work to a rapt audience with use of charm, narrative and basic human interest was quite something.

Steal of the year
Given that it involved the wholesale lifting of one of our images for St Davids for the new Cancer Research identity in the UK, you’d think we’d nominate this. But we’re not going to.

Book of the year
The 100 ideas that changed… series from Laurence King was a genuinely useful and educational set. We enjoyed Herb Lubalin: American Graphic Designer by Adrian Shaughnessy and The Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design too. We missed the Graphic Design: Now in Production show at the Walker but enjoyed the scrapbook style of the book of the show.

There’s a great round-up of 2012 design books here on Designers and Books, another consistently interesting site.

Forgotten in all the Olympic hype
The, er, not so insignificant discovery that there really is an energy field all around us that gives mass to the fundamental particles that make up our world, sometimes known as the ‘God’ particle. Not a big deal really. Nor was landing a Rover on Mars. Nope.

Also lost in 2012
The Waterstones apostrophe, now featuring its own Twitter account.

Slightly slipping crown award…
…goes to, er, Apple (sorry) after a series of articles bashing its penchant for virtual surfaces more commonly known as skeuomorphism, you know – ‘calendars with faux leather-stitching, bookshelves with wood veneers, fake glass and paper and brushed chrome’. And then there was the Apple/Google maps issue that really did lead to suggestions that a map-app could be life-threatening.

Lucky 13?
Things to look out for in 2013? Will this finally be the year that the much trailed, much discussed Apple TV makes its debut? If anything like the rumours, it could either be a TV completely controllable from your iPhone/iPad, or involve gestures/movements. So either Sonos for the telly or Wii Watch. We’ll have to see.

Watch out for bits of Chinese software expanding out from China too. Tried WeChat yet? You should, it’s fun. Design-wise? Well, after years of battening-down-the-hatches, recession proof design, perhaps 2013 will be a little bolder in its outlook. We hope so.

Happy New Year and thanks to our readers for all their comments, johnson banks friends and family and congratulations to Nick Asbury for a set of answers worthy of a blog of its own. Signed book on its way.

Comments are on for this post so if there’s anything we’ve missed and you want to add, fire away

Follow johnson banks on twitter @johnsonbanks, on Facebook and sign-up for our up-and-coming newsletter here

There’s a small display of designer Christmas cards at London’s Design Museum this month featuring cards by various design studios and three of our designs are featured.

Here they are in situ.

They date from a particular period in the 90s when we seemed to do very little in November and December except design season’s greetings.

This one from way back in the mists of time involved filling out hundreds out £1 bets on a white xmas and then sending the slips to all our clients.

Then we started throwing money at the problem. This was a pack to fool your family at Christmas during interminable ‘board game’ sessions.

The kit of parts allowed you to cheat at Monopoly (fake cards, see image at the top of this post), blank domino tiles + ‘dot’ stickers, loaded dice, spare aces, even a handy book of allowable two-letter words in Scrabble and some spare blanks. And, yes, that is a bespoke vac-formed holder.

By this stage we’d created a monster. Whoever it was who decided that the next year would involve foil portraits of the team (plus dog), well we soon regretted that as we wrapped dodgy chocolate for months.

Designing the back label seemed to take another fortnight.

Luckily sense soon prevailed, a recession intervened and life returned to more manageable options.

Here’s this years, just a simple ram-punched “xmas’ postcard out of super thick card.

There’s an old blog post on the full list of shame here if you want to see more.

Thanks to Margaret and the team and the Design Museum for featuring our cards.

Thought for the week is now taking a week off for Xmas – we’ll be back early in the New Year with our review of the year. There’s still time to leave comments about 2012 on the blog, or tweet us with your thoughts.

It’s that time of the year again when we help out on the Science Museum’s christmas campaign.

This year we’ve developed an advent calendar out of the museum’s logo: this is the poster which is running at various sizes across the Underground network here in London.

Just as the idea was approved we had the chance to adapt the idea for animated poster sites and electronic poster sites in the escalators.

Shown above is the animated version (it’s for a long thin format in case you’re wondering, the black bars are courtesy of Vimeo).

Last year’s theme was robots: here’s the star of that campaign in case you missed him/it.

And we’re not sure if we ever posted this, the museum’s logo-bot doing the, er, robot (obviously).

A year later the robot theme has taken hold and you can now buy wooden Sci-bots in the shop. Marvellous.

Whether you can make them dance is up to you, of course. Our tip is Gif Shop.

If you truly want the complete Science Museum Xmas experience, you can now go to John Lewis and buy dedicated museum pyjamas too.

Go here to find out all the things that are on at the Science Museum this christmas.

Once again, it’s that time of the year when we gather our minds to the 11.5 months that have passed and try to make sense of what we’ve seen, heard, said and done.

For newcomers to this, there are samples here, here and here of previous years.

Essentially, it goes like this. We collect examples of stuff in the following categories then spend an unfeasibly long period of time over the xmas break making sense of it all. (Actually the categories tend to be pretty fluid and we’ll dump some if we can’t think of anything interesting).

So, at least for now, the categories are…

The design stories of the year

Design of the year / designer of the year

The ‘wish I’d done that’ project of the year

The year’s defining moment

Favourite blog (design or otherwise)

Favourite twitterer

Most over-hyped person/design/blog/tweeter whatever that you can’t wait to see the back of

Rebrand of the year (best/worst)

Steal of the year

The picture of the year

The kind of thing that gives graphic designers a bad name

The trend that just won’t go away

Film of the year

Best music of the year (album, CD, download, single, whatever)

Book of the year

Ad of the year

Phrase of the year

Best TV

Exhibition of the year

Gig of the year

Must have gadget/innovation/thing of the year

Your design/trend prediction for ‘13

Your design/trend prediction for the next decade

Your New Year’s resolution

(Feel free to add categories you think we’ve missed too)

And, just to add a little spice to this year’s Review, for the first time EVER (yes, true) in the nearly 8 year history of this blog, COMMENTS ARE OPEN. We will not sell your email address to Rupert Murdoch, we promise, unless by Wednesday there are 499 email contacts too valuable to ignore, that might change things slightly.

If responding in part or whole in public isn’t your thing, you can tweet us your response @johnsonbanks, or email us at info (at) johnsonbanks (dot) co (dot) uk or on Facebook.

And, to make it even more interesting, best/funniest/wittiest set of comments wins a signed copy of Problem Solved. True. How good is that.

Last year, johnson banks’ Michael Johnson was in Goa for the DesignYatra conference, and whilst there was interviewed by Lisa Enebeis and Donald Beekman (shown above), who were there with their online radio innovation, Typeradio.

In case you haven’t discovered it yet, Typeradio is an amazing resource, stuffed with 8 years of great interviews with graphic designers and typographers from all over the world. Want to spend 50 minutes with Uwe Loesch? No problem. Tobias Frere-Jones and Jonathan Hoefler? Easy.

We thought that it might be interesting to interview them, for a change, about their online idea.

Let’s start with both of your backgrounds, how you got to where you are and all that

Donald Beekman: I studied graphic and audiovisual design at the Rietveld Art Academy in Amsterdam. After graduating I started my studio DBXL.
 Having played in bands since 15 years old, still most of my clients are in or connected with the music business.

Liza Enebeis: I studied design at Parsons, followed by a masters at the Royal College of Art. After graduation I worked at Pentagram London for 7 years. Love and design led me to the Netherlands. And now Creative Director at Studio Dumbar.

When Typeradio started, what made you do it for the first time – were you inspired by or annoyed by something? What kicked it off?

Liza Enebeis, Donald Beekman and Underware (Akiem Helmling, Bas Jacobs and Sami Kortemaaki) initiated Typeradio in 2004, when we were invited by the TypoBerlin conference to do a project. We suggested to organise a conference radio station for three days. The concept was to put Typography and Design (purely visual expressions) on the Radio (a non-visual medium). A bit of an anomaly, but an interesting viewpoint, that has remained our main focus.

The main ingredient of the content were interviews with designers speaking at or attending the conference. Mixed with music brought by the guests and other related audio pieces and submissions from the audience.

We were streaming the signal over the internet and broadcasting it throughout the conference building. We sold small pocket radios with headphones for one euro, and we had old radios placed strategically all over the building. There were people hanging around listening to Typeradio. High point was when a crowd of 30 was gathering in one of the men’s loos to listen to the Matthew Carter interview.

Typeradio was meant to be a one off project, but already during the conference interviews were copied from our internet stream and distributed. This made us decide to put all the content online for free download. So it would be available for everybody as a reference. After that we got invited to come to New York for Typecon conference, and it just grew from there.

So, how many interviews have you made so far?

We had to check our website to calculate the exact number. There are over 200 interviews online at the moment, and 70 other audio pieces like music, small documentaries, workshop results and spoken columns.

In how many countries
?

We have no idea. On our previous website we used to have this world map with yellow dots for every designer we talked to. Now it’s hard to tell, but it should be at least 15 different countries.

What was the longest interview your ever did
?

Without a doubt, with Bruno Monguzzi in Sankt Gallen, Switzerland. It was recorded last year and is not yet published. He talked so much we stopped asking questions after an hour. Still he managed to fill over three and a half hours of non stop talking. Editing this will be an epic task.

Which, out of all of them, was the most interesting?

That’s 
impossible to name, as there really are many very interesting ones. In general you could say the ones that surprised us. We try to keep an open mind and not let our preconceptions guide us too much.

OK, least interesting?

Boringly diplomatic as it may be, we honestly couldn’t say without offending somebody. We will not be shooting ourselves in the foot.

Let’s try funniest glitch so far

Nothing shocking. The first Typeradio interview ever, happened to be with Stefan Sagmeister. The fun started with Donald introducing him with the wrong conference name. Next, after 15 minutes in the interview we found out we weren’t recording. Stefan graciously agreed on starting over.

Who’s left who you would still like to interview?

Too many to mention. We have a wish list that keeps getting longer and longer. On top of that there are thousands of designers graduating each year. Some of them we will want to interview some time in the future. There’s just no end to this.

Of the huge list of great but dead designers would you time-travel back to meet (and stick a microphone under their noses?)
Paul Rand, Jan Tschichold, Alan Fletcher, Herb Lubalin, Tibor Kalman, Eric Gill…

How you make it pay?

In 2009 we received a grant from the Mondriaan Foundation which allows us to keep the project going. We do not pay ourselves, we invest it in the project.

Thanks to Liza and Donald for answering our questions. The interview with Michael Johnson can be found here, and covers a broad range of topics, from setting up johnson banks, to the influence of global design, to religion – you name it really.

Follow johnson banks on twitter @johnsonbanks, or on Facebook 

Last night it was the D&AD Auction to celebrate the annual launch, view all 50 artworks and allow a roomful of slightly sozzled creatives to bid on precisely 11 of them.

Before the auction started there was a bit of time to examine the lots in more detail. Michael Wolff’s cover artwork had been scribbled on and signed by the man himself.

Here’s a close-up of Daniel Eatock’s. Lovely.

This piece on canvas (detail above) by Eine eventually sold for about £650. Bargain, given that a painted Eine can often go for 5k.

Another bargain on the night was the set of Nick Park cartoons (shown at the top of this post) which finally went for £700.

There was a fairly furious bidding war over this original Quentin Blake, eventually going for about £1100.

Here’s Tony Davidson of Wieden & Kennedy relaxing in front of his Paula Scher print after a flurry of offers. Eventually the deep pockets of ‘advertising’ won through and he snared the prize with precisely £2,002.

Mind you, considering that the actual paintings themselves cost about $90,000, perhaps the print will do, for now.

Here’s D&AD Chief Exec Tim Lindsay, now proud owner of Michael Johnson’s poster (and with a wallet £700 lighter).

There was a fair smattering of D&AD presidents old and new to be spotted in the crowd.

Above: incoming president Neville Brody and an outgoing Rosie Arnold.

Ex-president Simon Waterfall and newly appointed deputy president Laura Jordan Bambach from Dare.

And spotted throughout the evening…

Much photography…

…bizarre chat-up lines and business cards.

Earnest conversations…

…and some relieved ex-presidents.

Apparently about 15k was raised for the D&AD foundation, so all in all a good result.

If you want to see what the 50 annual covers look like wrapped around actual books, go here.

Follow johnson banks on twitter @johnsonbanks, or on Facebook 

A week ago we were in China for a 3 city lecture tour and then the final of the Dreamlab competition, courtesy of the British Council/Cultural and Education Section of the British Consulate.

Here’s a kind of photographic diary of the week, where medicine dummies strapped onto bicycles are almost commonplace.

First port of call was Guangzhou (formerly Canton), southern China’s largest city, just a hop and skip over the ‘border’ from Hong Kong.

Here are some images collected around the city between official duties.

A view of the lovely and attentive audience at out first talk, at Jinan University…

…and the second at the very cool (and vast) Fang Suo bookshop in the middle of the city. 100 people were expected, over 400 came.

After a brief stop in Shanghai, we were onto Beijing and the Dreamlab final.

Dreamlab is a project run and judged by a team from Kingston University, the RCA, the Science Museum, Design Museum and johnson banks, where 150 Chinese student teams entered a project on the future of food. (You may remember this post on the UK equivalent a few weeks ago, and those with very good memories, the first Dreamlab from 2009).

The six best entries were selected, gently nurtured over a 6 week period then each team presented at a the live final. There isn’t really space here to go into each entry, but this robot stuck in the memory…

Here are all of the finalists (and most of the judges) onstage at the final, and congratulations to the Dalian University team (expertly coached by Donna Loveday) who successfully offered an eco-tech kitchen of the future.

A nice surprise was this mini-exhibition of johnson banks work (we were expecting a panel, got a wall, result).

In a fairly hectic week there hadn’t been much time for sight-seeing but a car was very kindly laid on to whisk a couple of us off to the world-famous Panjiayuan flea-market – bitterly cold but brilliant to browse…

See above: bizarre colonial artefacts?

These Buddhist heads carved out of peach stones were all the rage this year.

And of course there was much historical stuff to be pored over and photographed.

Some of the judges stayed and went deep into the interior of the country. In search of idyllic countryside scenes, perhaps? We’ll try and get them to share their snaps soon…

Thanks very much to our travelling partners, Anthony Dunne from the RCA, Donna Loveday from the Design Museum, Tim Molloy from the Science Museum, Catherine McDermott and Pedro Barra from Kingston University and Rebecca Lynch, independent curator.

And special thanks to Ewan for his patience and culinary knowledge, Jazreel for her impressive MC’ing and ace choice of restaurant and Mandy and the rest of the team at the BC in China.

Monday night is the D&AD/50 Auction night where 11 of the 50 images chosen for this year’s annual covers will be auctioned off live, to the highest bidder.

Here’s a little reminder of the 11 pieces, in no particular order, that could soon be hanging on your wall.

Quentin Blake did this bespoke drawing, 390 x 564mm.

Following what seems like a theme, Rankin sent this print of an edition of 5, signed, which is 610 x 1520mm. (That’s big).

Dutch artists Parra sent a set of two Giclée print (one above) which are both 500 x 500mm.

Hopefully Paula Scher needs no introduction – her print is 570 x 870mm.

Nick Knight’s submission is this gloss print, 350 x 724mm.

Neville Brody’s print is 260 x 804mm.

Ben Flynn, a.k.a. Eine, is a street artist who has graduated from streets to galleries – his piece uses spray paint on canvas and is 500 x 870mm.

How about this – a set of four pencil drawings by Nick Park of some fairly well known animation characters. Each drawing is 296 x 420mm, one of them is shown above.

Living legend animator and film-maker Terry Gilliam sent this print on gloss paper titled ‘Piperambulator’.

Richard Seymour spent quite a few hours drawing this in pen and ink, on watercolour paper. It’s 580 x 790mm and rumour has it you’ll have to outbid a Branson to get it.

And this is Michael Johnson’s, from johnson banks – a vast Giclée print, signed print from an edition of two, 1524 x 1016mm. There’s more info on this on a previous post, here.

As well as Monday night’s auction, there’s an online auction of pieces (from some serious names including Storm Thorgerson, Bob Gill, Michael Wolff and Wim Crouwel). Get a move on, the online auction closes soon.

Proceeds raised through the auction will go to the D&AD Foundation, to help support the next generation of creative talent. The event on 3 December is invitation only, to attend please email sophie.moss@dandad.org. 

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Earlier this week we were at a bonkers yet highly enjoyable evening arranged by keechdesign and Yamaha Design Studio London.

Essentially the theme of the evening was to ask a group of friends and acquaintances to bring with them an object that was like a musical instrument, but not. If that makes any sense.

So, for example, James Johnson of GetMade brought this WWII morse code tapper that he’s had since he was four years old, or thereabouts.

Here’s James explaining (and demonstrating) his choice.

Alexandra Bell brought this rather lovely Bell Weston Euro-master light meter, with that rather musical dial and interface.

Sebastian Conran merrily took his Ducati apart to bring and nominate the carburetor (seems a bit extreme, but hey). Here’s Sebastian explaining his choice.

Jonathan Miller from Alembic suggested his very twangable school ruler, apparently an early introduction to vibration and pitch.

Here product designer Barbara Etter talked us through the musicality of a seed.

And James Milne pushed the brief a little further by somehow arguing that his favourite spirit level was a worthy part of the collection.

All the way from Japan, Akihiro Aoki, president of clothing company Aoki Holdings, sent this mechanical Ricoh wind-up camera which makes the oddest and nicest noises.

Johnson banks’ Michael Johnson brought a recently acquired old Olivetti Studio typewriter (see top of this post) that makes a beautiful chatter in the hands of a good typist.

Last but not least, host David Keech demonstrated his choice – a ‘pixie’ mute and plunger combination as pioneered by Joe ‘Tricky Sam’ Nanton of the Duke Ellington band. It makes the most extraordinary wailing and singing sound, when combined with a trombone (and a fair degree of skill).

A great evening, and a book is promised of the choices and the reasons why. Can’t wait. We’re also thinking that someone with a spare weekend should ‘record’ the orchestra of weird noises as well…

This is number eight in our Second Thoughts series, following on from our interviews with Andy Altmann, Simon Waterfall, Nicolas Roope, Michael Bierut, Dick Powell, Rosie Arnold and Michael Wolff. In case you missed why we’re doing this, the same series of questions are asked to well-known design and creative people. This week, Mike Dempsey.

Mike Dempsey has been has been around the block a bit. A graphic designer for over 40 years. He worked in publishing for 10 of those. Founded the design consultancy CDT in 1979 and has created everything from stamps to film title sequences and editorial design to visual identities. He is a writer, photographer, broadcaster, painter, blogger and studied acting at the Method Studio London. He has won 10 D&AD Silvers and a Gold. Elected a member of Alliance Graphic International, was President of D&AD and past Master of The Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry. He left CDT at the end of 2007 to form Studio Dempsey.

How old were you when you first suspected you could become a designer?
Around 7, although I didn’t know what a designer was. My mother used to buy me rolls of cheap liner wallpaper. This enabled me to produce kitchen table sized drawings. At the time spaceships were my big thing. I would draw an exploded style diagram – I was an Eagle comic fan – dividing the ship into different areas: bedrooms, kitchen, library, gym, control room etc, all in great detail, complete with annotation.

Did you see or experience something early in your life that was a significant influence?
The cinema has been a life long influence. Each week I would go to the ‘pictures’, as it was quaintly called then, with my mother. I also spent a lot of time in the local library, where I would look at books, rather than read them. And the Oldham’s Encyclopedia for Children, bought for me in the 1950’s has a very special place. I still have it. This is the spread that rally fascinated me…

Odhams’ Encyclopedia for Children

I became obsessed with the idea of being a film animation cartoonist. I wrote to Walt Disney in 1954 enclosing some of my drawings, along with a list of questions, mostly about how to work in film. A few weeks later I received a large envelope containing stills from their recent, and yet to be completed animated film, Lady and the Tramp along with a lovely encouraging letter about my drawings signed Walt Disney (I don’t suppose he really did, but I believed it as a 10 year old).

Who were your early heroes (and what do you think of them now, in retrospect)?
Predicable, as a fledgling designer of the 60s it was Josef Müller-Brockmann’s The Graphic Artist and His Design Problems’ Fletcher/Forbes/Gill. But actually it was a (now relatively unknown) designer/illustrator called Jack Larkin that I really loved. 50 years on I still love that early work.

Novel cover by Jack Larkin in 1964

What’s your recurring dream (or nightmare?)
Normally it’s about trying to get somewhere, but never managing it, only to wake up in a sweat.

Describe the worst boss or client you’ve ever had.
Over the years there have been difficult clients but I’ve always managed to negotiate them. I designed the identity for the Department for Culture Media and Sport back in 1997. A civil servant leaked the design I’d come up with, along with the fee being paid, to the Sun newspaper. It appeared on the front page next day, juxtaposed with a crude version of the logo drawn by a child with the fee of zero pounds. In the same week there were questions in the Houses of Parliament about public money being wasted. The fact was the civil servants hated the idea of being ‘branded’. They thought it an incredible waste of money, so they set about trying to sabotage the project. Luckily they didn’t manage it and six months on the graphic rationalisation saved them 20% of their stationery and print bills.

What’s your worst Apple-z (‘undo’) moment?
Too many to mention especially during my weaning from analogue to digital.

What do most people cite as your best/most well known piece of work?
Probably English National Opera or the London Chamber Orchestra.

What do YOU think is your best piece of work? Why?
I haven’t produced it yet. I have hopes.

What font would you choose for your gravestone?
I don’t even want to go there. I concur with Terence Stamp who said on Desert Island Discs, “Kirsty, I’m going to live forever”.

What wins, ideas or style?
Easy, ideas. But any idea has to be presented in the right way. And that is when an awareness of style and craft will make that idea shine.

People have different ways to stay enthused, excited and interested in what they do for a living? What’s yours?
Embrace distraction and lots of it. Look, listen, read, write, paint, photograph, sing, act, play the fool. Take in as much theatre, cinema, music, galleries and people. Keep learning and importantly always stay curious.

When and where do you have your best ideas?
Driving from my home in Dorset to London. Prior to that it used to be on the top deck of the 38 bus.

Seeing, smelling, touching, hearing, tasting. You have to give up two. Which ones?
Oh dear that’s a horrid one.  Taste and smell.

If you could travel back in time, just once, and give yourself a few words of advice, what would they be (and when would you say them?)
I’d zoom back to 1959 and would tell the school Youth Employment Officer that he was a complete shit for actively dissuading me from a creative path. Instead he said the perfect job for me was a fitter’s mate. I’d learn a useful trade. It was the most horrid job I’ve ever had.

Do you still draw or has the computer taken over?
I have always drawn and it’s a great way to communicate thinking.

What’s the worst design crime you’ve seen (or committed?)
Having been in the business for almost 50 years I’m sure I’ve committed a lot on the way. I would say that 90% of the graphic output in the UK is disappointing.

The best place to see a lot of it is the online incarnation of Design Week. Mostly packaging and naff identities that are so bad that it’s an embarrassment. I’ve never understood DW’s selection criteria?

You can only watch one film, read one book, listen to one album and eat one type of biscuit. What would they be?
Roald Dahl’s ‘Danny, Champion of the World’. Beautiful, economical and lyrical writing. Emile Zola’s Therese Raquin. Fantastically modern. On film, Peter Bogdanovich’s ‘The Last Picture Show’ and Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons. Blue Nile’s ‘A Walk Across the Rooftops’, perfection and Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs, sublime. Sorry I know that’s two of each, but indulge me a little. I don’t really eat biscuits. My big weakness is almond croissants. Having said that I have given them up for 12 months!

Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons.

Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons.

Photo:Renée S

Let’s say it all goes pear-shaped. What’s your back-up plan?
I think I’m a bit too old to have a back up plan. I’ve got away with it since the mid 60’s, so I think I’m safe.

Many thanks to Mike for taking part in Second Thoughts.

Follow johnson banks on twitter @johnsonbanks, and feel free to suggest who we should ask next #2ndthoughts

Over a series of posts, johnson banks’s Creative Director Michael Johnson goes into more detail about the new edition of Problem Solved, the background to the new edition, the bits that have been added and some of the things learned along the way.

Problem Solved originally came out late in 2002, looking to explain how designers, advertisers and communicators are often faced with recurring issues and problem’s, and grouped hundreds of good solutions into 18 chapters.

So: why a second edition?

When Phaidon approached me about a second edition of Problem Solved, I was initially trepidatious.

The first edition had originally been ‘pitched’ as a tome about the way that we (ie johnson banks) solved problems, and included just one example per chapter from another practitioner. That got promptly turned upside down as a structure and became a book about the world’s approach to problem solving, with just a smattering of our projects.

I’m sure this was the right thing to do, and immediately removed any of the whiff of vanity publishing from the project. It’s less prevalent now, but a decade ago the design bookshelves creaked with weighty tomes about companies who’d only been in existence for what seemed like half an hour. Maybe twenty minutes.

Trouble was, by re-working the original idea, it then meant scouring the world for hundreds of examples, and all the attendant sign-off and copyright issues.

From a light skip through a few recurring ‘problems’ and how to solve them, I found myself writing a ‘primer’ as my first ever book – not what I’d planned at all (coupled with all the attendant worries about whether I was even qualified to write do it). It took eons to finish, coincided with a D&AD Presidency, the Rewind project book and exhibition project, a recession…  …you name it.

So returning to the scene of Problem Solving about a decade later set a few alarm bells off. Was the original premise still valid? Would all the examples look hopelessly time-locked? Would I end up re-writing the entire book?

In discussions with Phaidon, the 2^nd edition project initially seemed fairly straightforward – update chapters where possible, fix any glaring errors, add pages when needed, write a  new chapter – adding, in total, 32 pages. Of course, it wasn’t as straightforward as that. When we thought hard about the cover and the dividers, it became pretty clear, pretty quick, they we had to effectively redesign much of it as well.

As regards getting images, things went fairly well, albeit the quagmire of copyright and approvals has got even stickier in the last ten years so some images weren’t simply possible to obtain permissions for. Even though many of the things we wanted to talk about were ‘on the web’, you’d be surprised how reticent people are about putting things into print for evermore, almost as though the web is still viewed as an impermanent record.

The next post in this series will look at some of the areas of the book we’ve updated, then go into more detail about the new chapter.

Some useful links

More information on the new edition on the Phaidon website.

A Phaidon Q&A with Michael Johnson.

Problem Solved on the Amazon website

We were at an extraordinary event last night investigating into The Future of Food.

The event invited various designers, illustrators and animators from Kingston University, the RCA, Hong-ik University in Seoul and the Science Museum to imagine what food means to us in the future – in 2050 to be precise. Facing with over-fished oceans, exhausted fossil fuels and exploding populations, what does that mean to the way we will eat?

The Dana Center (Research Wing of the Science Museum) was crammed last night with extraordinary goodies (and baddies). Here’s a quick tour.

The team above faced up to the inevitable – how to make us all see Bush Grub as tasty, not a trial. One of our team tried 3 (scorpions taste like nuts, if you’re interested). Haven’t tried the scorpion lollipop yet (see below).

This team faced up to the posible extinction of the banana and wondered if all we might have to remember it by is our fruit bowls.

Waste not want not offered us a nice, obvious idea – the ability to order our food from our seat. Yes. Very useful.

One of the oft-repeated clichés of ‘future food’ is the ‘meal in a pill’. Millimeals have found a much more attractive spin on this, a meal on a tearable strip that can be torn off at your leisure.

Continuing the edible insect theme, Ento offered us ‘Locally Grown Fresh Grasshoppers’ and ‘Honey Caterpillar Croquettes’. Healthy, tasty and a sustainable source of protein, says the blurb.

Feast & Famine opted to demonstrate to us the world food imbalance, with machine spitting out circles and lines, people on one hand dying from eating too much, and on the other dying from lack of access.

Then we went to Algae.

My notes have failed me but this team investigated the future of algea as a food, and offered it up as ‘slides’ to be examined (and then presumably licked clean?).

This team encouraged us to cast off our inhibitions about cockroaches as a food and to see it as a food to enjoy for it’s ‘textural properties’.

The Ultimate Selfish Banquet offered us a Paté of Illusion & Expectation, followed later by a Torte of Sweet Opulence.

This entry, Tactile food, (tough to show on a still, sorry) even moved and wiggled on the plate in front of us in a kind of synthetic biology project. Or something.

As if that weren’t enough, even the canapés weren’t, er, canapés…

…we were offered conversation nibbles instead of warm sausage rolls.

As an antidote to the theoretical, we caught a glimpse of a future food that’s almost here – ‘Le Whiff’. These are hand held aero-shots of ‘breathable energy’.

We tried the mint chocolate. Aside from the onset of sporadic coughing, and the sense of inhaling cocoa powder, they seemed pretty good. Available in the UK very soon, it seems.

Anyway, a great evening and hats off to all concerned – we’ve put credits below to all the projects where we knew who was who, apologies to anyone missed.

This event was a kind of prelude to a Dreamlab event that will be held in Beijing in a couple of weeks: representatives of Kingston University, the RCA, Design Museum, Science Museum and johnson banks will judge responses to a similar brief from 6 Chinese teams at a live final at the 751 Art Zone. Updates to come next week.

Credits:

Project team: Rebecca Davies, Mark Harris, Catherine McDermott, Rebecca Lynch, Dr Pedro Barra, Tony Dunne, Simone Carena

Individual teams

Bush Grub - Ekaterina Demina, Matthew Osborne, Claudia Thomas, Olivia Twaites and Hannah White

The Future of the Banana – Sara Azmy, Sophie Both, Lulu Davey, Lizzie Ireland & Tasha Thomas

Waste not Want Not – Fiona Casey, Bethany Harvey, Kat Rothery, Emily Voller & Olivia White

Millimeals – Jackie Dermawan, James Green, Laurie Mather, Mohammed Mustafa Miah & Irmak Osman

Ento – Julene Aguirre-Bielschowsky, Jacky Chung, Aran Dasan & Jonathan Fraser

Feast & Famine – Sophie Ambrose, Maria Athanasiadou, Meda Garliauskaite, Joe Phillips

Algae (Harvesting the Sea) - Daisy Hardman, Elizabeth Davies and Rebecca Wheele

The Cockroach – Tom Biddulph, Alix Holden, Peter Judson & Rachel Singer

The Ultimate Selfish Banquet – Giorgia Chiaron, Melissa Jarram, Elizabeth Mann & Rachel Shasha

Tactile food – Minsu Kim

Le Whiff - http://www.aeroshots.com/

Follow johnson banks on twitter @johnsonbanks, or on Facebook 

We’ve been working and advising on this year’s D&AD Annual: part of the project has been the co-ordination of 50 covers for the annual commissioned by current president, Rosie Arnold.

There’s going to be a live auction early in December of some of the artworks, and this post is about the piece we’ve been working on.

Rosie’s original brief was to explore ‘The Power of Creativity’. A pretty broad theme, that all 50 contributors interpreted in a myriad different ways.

We spent a lot of time over the summer thinking of great examples of creativity, and how that could come together in a design. Eventually we realised that describing great examples of creativity was, in a way, more interesting than merely showing them.

So Harry Beck’s famous London underground map is described, not shown.

The way that Jack Kerouac (allegedly) wrote On the Road is almost as interesting as the book itself.

By using multiple ideas, at different angles across the piece, we can illustrate over a century’s worth of different ideas across all types of creativity.

This is about Steve Jobs’ realisation that an early ‘mouse’ he had seen at a Xerox lab was a huge step forward for computer navigation.

That famous scene in ‘When Harry met Sally’, written by the late Norah Ephron (and a little bit of Ridley Scott).

Even the beginnings of the web.

The structure allows us to cross-link from related ideas or thoughts – so here we’re cross-linking from one Christopher Nolan to another…

And, just in case you’re not completely sure what idea is what, all 99 ideas are captioned down the side.

The final piece is shown below, unified by one big overprinted exclamation mark.

For the live auction, we’ve run a very limited edition (of precisely two), 60 inches tall by 40 inches wide, onto 300gsm giclée paper, and a signed one will be in the auction.

In the future (depending a bit on interest, perhaps) we might do a longer, litho run too.

There are ten other pieces in the live auction: we’ll write about them as soon as possible. The auction itself is on the 3rd December, more information here.

There’s also an online auction of the other 39 pieces, which is now open and waiting for your bids.

Follow johnson banks on twitter @johnsonbanks, or on Facebook 

Lost & Found is a new series of posts based on old writing and interviews which date back well into the nineties, but seemed irretrievably lost. A new bit of software has helped us open some of these old gems. First up: a piece from the late nineties on Peter Saville

So far, this really hasn’t been Peter Saville’s decade. In comparison to the eighties, which kicked off with a pencil-case full of D&AD silvers and countless groundbreaking projects, the nineties have been a bit stop-start, to say the least.

The decade started with a spell as a Pentagram partner, an ill-fated year in Los Angeles, followed by a year of doing very little, followed by a few months in the corner of Tomato’s office. Only recently has he established a secure London base and anything like the regularity of projects that we associate with his eighties reign.

But many designers and art directors who studied in the eighties will cite him as a seminal figure, the third prong of the Brody – Garrett – Saville triumvirate which dared to question all that was assumed about graphic design, and turn much of it on its head. If Saville felt that neon was the way to go, then off he went. If he felt it was time to appropriate De Chirico, then why not. If he felt that obscure sixties Dutch modernist typefaces were worthy of a come-back, come on down.

And his choice of influence or element always seemed just that one step ahead of the pack.
So it was with this in mind that I spent a couple of hours in his ‘homage to shag-pile and tinted glass’ Mayfair apartment a few weeks ago, trying to find out a bit more about what’s been going on.

You have to put this decade into context first by going back to the last. The demise of Peter Saville Associates (PSA) at the end of the eighties and the experience of running a company that runs out of financial steam has clearly left quite a mark. ‘You get on a wheel, like a hampster in a cage and it’s impractical to get off, unless you fall off like I did’, he comments, ruefully.

The lifeline out of debt and tax fines was a remarkable one – the offer of a partnership at Pentagram. The ‘establishment’ had finally called, and Saville was ready to talk. Whilst he, Neville Brody and Malcolm Garret had discussed a ‘Pentagram’ of their own not long previously (apparently vetoed by Brody), the offer of help, friendship and indeed an open cheque book from Notting Hill proved irresistible to him as his studio became one the recession’s first victims.

But Saville’s views on how the organisation could and should adapt to the changing world seemed to fall on deaf ears, and he found his clientelle unable to meet the fees that the ‘rules’ of the partnership applied at that time.

‘I thought I was there as an emmissary of change, but they chose to see me as reassurance that everything was OK’ says Saville, as if Pentagram were saying ‘if this guy was prepared to join us then we were right all along’. It wasn’t a huge surprise, but a disappointment to many when he and Brett Wickens (his long time associate at that time) found themselves looking for something new after two years.

They thought they had found the solution by going to Hollywood. Saville found a good listener in Aubrey Balkind at Frankfurt Balkind, who was willing to fund an adventure into Saville’s ‘Hollywood/multimedia dream’ which never really explained itself to anyone. After a year, this too became a dead end for all parties.

On his return to Europe in the mid-nineties, Saville spent a whole year doing practically nothing, which he now views as strangely cathartic. ‘There were some nice moments in that period, but it also meant having no studio, no equipment, no money, no home, no bank account, no anything really’.

Then in 1996, following the pattern of two and three year cycles that this decade has taken for him, he met one of the founders of Meiré and Meiré, the German based advertising agency who were willing to sponsor him to set up a studio in Mayfair in return for his help on some joint projects.

So that’s the whistle-stop history tour. The question is, what has he been up to for the last two years?

Well, his past continues to follow him around, and ring up for help. Work for old friends like New Order and Monaco has continued throughout the decade, and last year saw a boxed set of re-released work by Joy Division (it was his first sleeves for them that first put his name on the design map). And a new generation of stars like Brett Anderson of Suede, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp and Goldie have tracked him down and involved him in their projects.

Did he think he would still be doing record sleeves in his forties? ‘I said to myself when I was 28 that this is not a job to be doing in your thirties, and certainly not in your forties. They’re tricky, they’re very demanding and if you have a reputation you have absolutely nothing to gain by doing another one, unless you happen to do it really well’.

And what about Mark Farrow’s work (shown above), who has often cited Saville as a major influence and who in many people’s eyes has picked up with record sleeves where Saville left off? He is diplomatic with his response. ‘I admire the commitment and thoroughness with which he has continued a genre of work, channelled exterior influences and used them consistently’. But he cannot resist another jab at the whole process of design-for-music ‘…it is an activity which in itself is a waste of time, a pointless and inappropriate activity, which is why nobody is interested in doing it for more than ten years’.

As regards the rest at the ‘cutting edge’ (there’s an over-used phrase) of nineties design Saville obviously has strong feelings on this subject; ‘what I have seen going on in the field of communications is an awful lot of ‘play-art’ from people such as Tomato. My feeling is that if you’re going to make art, than make art. You can’t masquerade as a kind of part-time artist through the crutch of your commercial work. The whole point of art is that you’re going to do it anyway, you don’t need a client’s brief’.

Art of course is closer to Saville’s heart than most, ever since a series of American painters revealed ten years ago how much his New Order sleeves had influenced them. Indeed Robert  Longhi tried to persuade him to become a ‘proper’ artist full time and this thought has clearly gnawed away at him ever since.

Away from music, another source of income for Saville has been fashion, where his work with Yohji Yamamoto in the eighties and long time photographic collaborator Nick Knight has led to art direction commissions from Jil Sander and Christian Dior. Throw in occasional consultancy contracts from the likes of ABC television and Mandarina Duck and things do start to sound a lot rosier.

His increasing role as a project art director has helped him re-appraise his Pentagram experience, and he is the first to admit that he learned a great deal from the experience. ‘Almost every day my experiences at Pentagram are useful. Without it I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing now, I wouldn’t have any direction and I’m very grateful. I actually got an awful lot from it’.

Pentagram themselves seem to have learned from the ‘Saville experience’ by adjusting the financial commitments to younger partners.mUnsurprisingly Saville himself is quite critical of the more recent appointments as partner by the London office, feeling that a designer should have a clear approach, body of work and philosophy before become a Pentagram partner, not after.

As he involves himself more and more in consultancy and art direction and refuses to load himself up with the baggage of studios and employees and rent he is moving himself into a new type of design ‘consultant’ role altogether. One that doesn’t really need any of those commitments. Just someone who is there. Again he recalls Pentagram, ‘throughout my time there John McConnell was by far the most profitable partner there with just two designers and a secretary, billing a huge amount by building a portfolio of clients who just paid him to be him, and not necessarily designing anything’.

He has to get over the financial hurdle first – a few record sleeves, a spot of art direction and a couple of books just doesn’t seem to pay the bills, and by a mixture of unwillingness to pursue them and lack of historical contacts, Saville just doesn’t have many corporate contacts to provide him with any kind of bread and butter. And he needs some sort of filter for his work. ‘I haven’t published a book, I don’t have an agent, I don’t have a manager. I always need interfaces, I need somebody to say ‘you should speak to Peter about that’.

Clearly, after PSA’s insolvency, his departure from both Pentagram and Frankfurt Balkind and his admitted difficulty in keeping his currently venture in the black, something needs to change.

With the lease on his current studio up for review this year, we may see him moving on again, who knows. The sense I get is that he rather enjoys his newly found nomadic role.

Let’s just hope he can pay the bills on the next caravan.

By Michael Johnson, originally published in 1998. Above is a piece from Saville’s portfolio since the piece, done with Howard Wakefield and Paul Hetherington.

Since this interview was first published 14 years ago, Saville’s work grew in demand with clients ranging from Selfridges to EMI. Saville increasingly focused on fashion clients working for Jil Sander, John Galliano, Yohji Yamamoto, Christian Dior and Stella McCartney, amongst others, which led to the formation, with photographer Nick Knight, of influential SHOWstudio in 2000.

In 2003 London’s Design Museum held an exhibition of his work titled The Peter Saville Show, for which New Order recorded a soundtrack, and in 2005 he held his first exhibition in a contemporary art museum Zurich.

In a return to fashion (of sorts) in 2010 Saville designed the England football team home shirt, and just this year has been collaborating on a project with Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh on a tapestry reappropriation of Peter Saville’s appropriation of Sir Peter Blake’s appropriation of Sir Edwin Landseer’s 1851 painting Monarch of the Glen.