There’s a bit of buzz about this week being the 30 year anniversary of the release of Baz Luhrmann’s film William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, and the film is also getting a re-release in cinemas.

Although – shouldn’t it be next year? The film was originally released in the US in November 1996, and in the UK in March 1997 – so by my maths that means the 30th anniversary is later this year in the US, and next March over here in the UK? Weird.

When I saw the film back in ’97, I remember loving it, and being utterly wowed by the art direction. It was stylish and cool – a modernised tale of Shakespeare’s star-cross’d lovers – and the art direction was exquisite. Seeing some of the recent publicity reminded me of a fantastic article about the making of film, in the April 1997 issue of The Face, which featured imagery from the film with captions by Baz Luhrmann.

So I picked up a copy on ebay, and have reproduced the spreads here (if you click them they should open up as larger versions), and I’ve copied the text below. 

The film was nominated for Best Art Direction Oscar at the 69th Academy Awards (March 1997), but lost out to The English Patient – another great film, to be fair. The Production Designer was Catherine Martin (who as well as being a multi-award winning costume, production and set designer, is also Luhrmann’s wife), with Set Decoration by Brigitte Broch.

“GUNS AND ROSES

Gang violence, drugs and teenage lust have always been at the heart of Romeo & Juliet, Shakespeare’s greatest romantic melodrama. The new film version won’t let you forget it.

All pictures captioned by the film’s director Baz Luhrmann

“These are the essential elements of the film. You’ve got religion and power mixed together (i). You’ve got a love story – Romeo and Juliet (ii). And this identity bracelet hints at the world of learned hate in which the two warring clans exist.”

“Film director Baz Luhrmann has a favourite analogy to describe the creative tussle of movie-making: “You’re the court jester who is fighting to get the king, instead of putting on a tits and feathers show, to let you make something you want to do.” In this case, the king is Hollywood’s Twentieth Century Fox, and what court jester Luhrmann wanted it to sign up for was a hyper-stylised, modern-set take on Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. Is this, the studio must have wondered, why they’d signed the Strictly Ballroom director to a two-year production deal? What was worse, he was plaguing them with books and video footage showing in intricate detail what the film would look like: Hawaiian shirts, gas-guzzling limousines, palm trees, ripped-up cityscapes, guns and neon. Eventually though, with boy wonder Leonardo DiCaprio on board as tormented lover Romeo, the studio caved: ‘They were like: Yeah, I get it, it’s kind of like gangs,’ says Luhrmann. ‘Look, it’s crazy, but give him $15 million and get him out of here and when it stiffs he’ll do Strictly Ballroom 2 for us.’ It didn’t stiff. In fact, when it opened in the US last November, it took $11 million in three days, powered by stellar performances from DiCaprio and fellow rising star Claire Danes, by an awesome soundtrack, and by a promotional campaign showcasing the film’s relentless eye-candy. Baz hotly denies that the film is ‘MTV Romeo & Juliet’, and he’s right to, but it is a movie thoroughly informed by the form, energy and marketing savvy of pop culture. In other words: you won’t be bored. The film opens here on March 28, by which time we’ll know if its Academy Award nomination for Art Direction has translated into Oscar gold – it will be a travesty if it doesn’t.”
Charles Gant

“These are the pages from one of the books we created to evolve the look of the film (iv). They’re collages of our visual ideas. We started with images of our imagined world, and then as we began to cast the actors we scanned them into the computer and started adding them in. This image of Verona Beach (top right) was created before the movie was made. Leonardo was shot in Sydney. The arch is a 3D drawing. We dropped in the palm trees on Photoshop. But it you see the actual film, it’s all there. We created the beach from scratch, replicating our original conception. There’s not a telegraph pole, not a palm tree that was originally there. It was a desert – in fact, a very crappy piece of beach, in Vera Cruz, Mexico.”

ROMEO
“Romeo (vi and ix) is your first rebel without a cause, he is your first Byron-esque character. He’s in love with the idea of being in love, he’s rebelling but he doesn’t know why. We went for a James Dean meets Kurt Cobain imagery. All of the Montagues wear Hawaiian shirts. They’re defined by what we call the From Here To Eternity look, the Gl Joe look. The story of casting Leonardo is I saw a picture of this beautiful boy and thought, ‘My God, he looks like Romeo, I wonder if he can act!‘ So I rang him up, and I had a meeting with him and his fantastic hippy dad, George. We showed them our book of how we wanted the film to look, and it turned out that George was a book distributor and collector and a lover of comics. I said to Leonardo: ‘Don’t decide, come and stay with us in Sydney: we can go diving’. The second time he came down, we did video footage of key scenes shot hand-held by our cinematographer Don McAlpine, with quite sophisticated post-production. And it was after the screening of that material that the studio greenlighted the film. The shirt ended up in the movie – in fact, on the CD and poster – but this photo was shot two years earlier by our local guy in in the back streets of Surrey Hills, Sydney.”

RELIGIOUS ICONOGRAPHY
“Religion is a plot point. you’ve got to understand that the whole world believes in religion, very big time. Romeo comes up to Father Laurence and says, ‘I met this girl, I want you to marry us’. And Laurence (xi) goes, ‘Hang on, if I marry these warring families, they’re married in the eyes of God, nothing can pull them asunder.’ That’s why he does it. And when Romeo falls for Juliet, he doesn’t say, ‘I don’t really believe in marriage or God. We can have sex. It’s no big deal.’ Everyone believes in God, so religious iconography everywhere is really important. The crosses, the giant Jesus statue, the waistcoat worn by [Capulet gang member] Tybalt (x) – it’s all about saying this is a world of religion”

MERCUTIO AND THE PARTY SCENE
“Everything has come from the text of the play. Whichever way you chop it it’s clear from the text that Mercutio (xii, centre) is in love with Romeo. There’s no question. Every time a girl turns up it’s, ‘Why is he with this wench Rosaline that will sure send him mad?’ Our reading is that they’re young and they haven’t really resolved their sexuality anyway, so he’s kinda like the guy that is always turning up being camp, and when it comes to the Capulets’ costume party is the first one to say ‘I wanna go in a dress!’ And years later when he turns out to be gay everyone goes ‘Of course, he’s gay’, but at the time everyone is saying ‘Oh, isn’t he funny!’. Mercutio’s savage electricity comes from his not being clear of his sexuality or his relationship to Romeo. That’s what makes him run a million miles an hour and what finally kills him. In this scene, of course, when you see Mercutio sing ‘Young Hearts Run Free’, it’s through the eyes of a drugged Romeo. It’s pretty clear that it’s an abstracted, unreal scene.”

DRUGS
“Can you believe that this film has been all over the world, it’s a huge hit in the US, and apart from in Australia hardly anyone has mentioned the fact that they take drugs in the middle of it? Queen Mab (xiv) is that pill they take. Mab is the famous Mercutio speech: ‘I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairy’s midwife, and she comes in a shape no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman’. Mab is actually a fairy that gets into your head and makes you believe in love, and Mercutio is saying to Romeo: ‘Beware Queen Mab because she’s going to fuck you up!’ So our notion of it was, the Elizabethan world was very drug fucked; there are many references to drugs throughout the text. Father Laurence just to begin with, grows rather strange plants and does weird things with them. There are also the potions and poisons (xiii). Mercutio is saying: ‘Here dude, take this pill because you can drop a love pill and have this experience but it’s not real!’ Now the pill is not Ecstasy and it’s not acid, it’s Queen Mab. In Australia there was a huge controversy. One camp was saying: ‘Luhrmann is absolutely correct to have drugs mentioned; the Elizabethan world was full of drugs’. Others were going: ‘Surely we are living in the time of Sodom and Gomorrah when an innocent Shakespeare play is turned into as debauched a production as this one’.”

WEAPONS
“We built an Elizabethan world in twentieth-century images. But dealing with weapons was a big worry for us: how to represent the idea of an armed society when the text talks explicitly about swords and daggers and rapiers. So we said, right up front, let’s not change the names of them: a gun is a sword, tell the audience in a witty way with close-ups showing the weapons’ brand names. The idea of an armed society also fed into how we conceived the Montagues and Capulets. We thought of the Capulets as Hispanics who came out to Miami; they were basically gangsters, they got very very successful. Capulet wants to become legitimate, takes over legitimate businesses, runs for mayor, marries Lady Capulet, the Southern Belle – but he’s still a gangster. Montague is more white bread, a bit like Donald Trump.”

THE GAS STATION
“This is the scene where the rival gangs clash. In the Elizabethan Verona, you had a centre of town where boys paraded. In a modern American city, a gas station is the one place where enemies are forced to cross, so this diagram (xvii) is an early investigation of how the scene might work. It was the most difficult shooting day. If you can imagine millions of cars driving by, the fumes were suffocating. Mexico is the most polluted city in the world. I’d been ill so I was directing from a wheelchair with this breathing mask. This is [Montague gang member] Benvolio, played by Dash Mhok (xvi). When we came to this shot, he ran down the wrong street. So he’s running down a real street and he jumps up on a real car with real people a family, and starts shooting back at us and all the cops jump out, people are screaming and I’m going ‘Cut cut cut cut!’ We kept the shot in the film.”

PUNS
“How do you deal in a modern context with the idea that a letter doesn’t get there or a communication doesn’t arrive? Why don’t they just get out the mobile and phone Romeo? But of course we eternally suffer from the late overnight delivery package. Romeo’s in exile out in the outback in the caravan park, they have to FedEx the note out there that Juliet isn’t really dead, and the guy leaves the thing on the step. In the text, they send the message ‘post haste’, so hence we have the Post Post Haste Despatch company (xix). Everyone who’s ever suffered at the hands of overnight delivery services laughs at that moment – they’re ‘Yes! Finally, revenge!’ But there are thousands of other secret gags and devices like Out Damn Spot dry cleaners, the Shylock Bank, the Globe is the pool hall. It’s layered in there in great detail. There’s even a picture of me on the Verona Beach money (xviii).”

THE AQUARIUM
“This is Romeo’s first glimpse of Juliet. He’s in the bathroom at the Capulets’ costume party, he throws up, and he looks up and sees this beautiful face through the fish tank (xx). He still thinks he’s having an illusion. I got the idea when I was writing in Miami: we went to this nightclub called The Dome, and while I was in the bathroom I was thinking about how Romeo could meet Juliet in a surprising and interesting way. And I’m looking at this fish tank that was there and next thing I know I see this girl combing her hair. The foyer parts of the bathrooms where you wash your hands are connected by a giant fish tank – you could see the girls in their side through the tank. I thought, ‘I’ll take that.’ The look of Juliet – and of Romeo – is oddly reminiscent of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film version. This is the image of what people think Romeo and Juliet should be, sort of like a Sixties romantic couple. Because the rest of their world is so mad and aggressive and out-of-control, we wanted there to be a visual comfort with the two main characters, a familiarity – you’re not also trying to work them out.”

MEXICO
“This was a real building (xxi) being built next to the gas station that we shot. In Mexico you can get anyone to do any-thing, you just have to pay people. So we just put a big sign up: ‘Montague Constructions’. We were also able to get choppers and fly them through the centre of town. We settled on Mexico as our location for several reasons: one is it’s cheap, second we needed big sound stages to build in, but most importantly it is Verona Beach. You go to a restaurant and they have shotguns outside; we hire our own police force; the hair and make-up people get kidnapped and get their legs broken and we buy them back for $360. Luckily, I had this great assistant whose father is the Minister of the Interior.”

THE CITY
“Verona Beach is like a fusion of Miami (where we wrote the screenplay), Mexico City and Los Angeles. It’s all of those cities but it’s none of them. It’s got a sense of the Third World: the Montagues and Capulets are busy ripping the earth up and building things. We couldn’t place it in a totally contemporary-imaged world – for example, a concern about the environment does not fit into this avaristic, sexy, violent world we wanted to create. We didn’t want to have little bubble cars suggesting a society concerned about burning too much gas, so we had the opposite (xxiii). It’s got a Seventies / Fifties feel about it, clashed together. We also wanted to work in the idea of the LA riots – ‘When civil blood makes civil hands unclean’ – so this is a page from our book (xxii). In a town like Verona in Elizabethan times they were really comfortable with the idea that warring gangs might cause the whole city to erupt. That might seem a bit far-fetched in a modern-image city – not so in LA, so we borrow that imagery. These are TV screen grabs.”

THE SOUNDTRACK (text Kevin Maher)
“I think I have a little psychic gift. If ever there was a talent that I have, it’s picking these projects, or these projects picking me, or just having hunches about what will work!” 

When Karyn Rachtman, kick-ass Capitol Records exec, Reservoir Dogs / Pulp Fiction music supervisor supremo, and now Romeo + Juliet’s key power-broking soundtrack orchestrator, has a “hunch” about what will work on a soundtrack – it works. The woman responsible for turning “Stuck In The Middle With You” into the ear-slicing tune of the decade has yet to back a loser. This one – an empathetic meld of otherwise disparate talents like Radiohead, Des’ree, The Cardigans, Everclear and Butthole Surfers that has gone triple platinum in America – is no exception.

“I met Baz Luhrmann when Romeo + Juliet hadn’t even been shot,” recalls Rachtman, “and he had books about what the film was going to look like – he spoke about how this film was in this world and how the music fits into this world, and immediately I said, ‘I want this record: get Capitol to pay the advance – I’ll do whatever you want to get this record.’”

“The film began with the question, ‘If Shakespeare was making a movie, what kind of movie would he make?’“ Luhrmann says. “If you look at the Elizabethan stage they knew their audience was like 3,000 drunken punters, they had stand-up comedy one moment, then pop song, and then tragedy, all cut within the same piece. The notion of sticking popular music into the piece was written into the text.” 

Rachtman, Luhrmann, and their chosen musical artists have shaken together a liberating, innovative and utterly visceral cocktail that denies there ever existed a hierarchy of image, dialogue and soundtrack. But it’s a style that balances on a knife-edge between stunning and specious. As Rachtman says: “I hate that so often there’ll be a so-so movie – like The Crow II – and the audience for the movie will be an MTV audience, so they just throw music in there and make it like an MTV soundtrack, and show videos on MTV to advertise it. That’s just bogus.”

For Romeo + Juliet each track was commissioned and positioned with absolute attention to detail. “Take Radiohead’s ‘Talk Show Host’,” offers Luhrmann. “Thom Yorke is a brilliant writer, and we heard that track and immediately said ‘that is thematically Romeo’. Your placement of the tracks does tell a story and therefore you have an emotional experience – when you hear that song you relive that emotional moment.

“We’re working on a second soundtrack album now. That will be dialogue scenes, original score courtesy of Nellee Hooper and Craig Armstrong, and ‘When Doves Cry’ [as sung by a church choir]. But really Romeo + Juliet is in a sense a musical. The language is musical, it’s rhythm with metaphor and simile. It’s essentially rap…”

You can stream Romeo + Juliet on Netflix and Disney+, and rent it on Prime Video, Apple TV, Sky and YouTube. It’s also screening at various Vue, Everyman and Picturehouse cinemas – check locally for information.

Oh, and while digging up old stuff related to the film, I also found this R+J cross I had lying around, which I guess must have been some sort of promotional piece for the film.

FURTHER READING
Pauline Adamek interview with Baz Luhrmann from November 1996
Guardian review, November 2016 (on the film’s 20th anniversary)
Time magazine review, October 2021 (on the film’s 25th anniversary)

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It’s cake time!

This month marks the 20 year anniversary of the We Made This blog, which I began writing on 6 March 2006. 

The blog originally lived on the Typepad blogging platform (which existed from 2003 to 2025) at wemadethis.typepad.com. Then in June 2010 I migrated it across to my new website, wemadethis.co.uk/blog, where it’s lived ever since.

The first seven months of posts got lost somewhere in the move, but can be seen thanks to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. The first instance of the blog captured on there is from 6 May 2006, and reveals my first nervous little blog post.

Having a look back at those carefree days, when we were all younger and more beautiful, here’s some the stuff that I was yammering on about in my early posts: the Sultan’s Elephant had just visited London; the second set of Penguin’s Great Ideas had just been nominated for a D&AD award; We Made This was featured in MacUser magazine (which was published until 2015); the Ephemera Society was having a fair, I published a passport of a trip to Hong Kong, New Zealand and Tokyo; and Gorillaz videos were being projected onto the concrete walls of the National Theatre.

Twenty years later, the next Ephemera Society Summer Fair is on 31 May this year, and Gorillaz have a rather good new album out. As Chrissie Hynde sang, some things change, some stay the same.

Having had a long browse through my old blog posts, it’s noticeable that they were generally much shorter than the stuff I write now, and way more frequent. I guess that’s mainly because I started using Twitter / X from around 2010, and stuff that would have been a blog post became a tweet – Twitter was so much more immediate, and easy to have conversations on. For a while it was a wonderful community of like-minded folk. But it became a cesspool of far-right propaganda once Elon Musk got his hands on it. Instagram was fun for a while too, but the advent of TikTok meant it morphed into a video-content site, so that using it now feels dirty – like wading through a boxset of rejected You’ve Been Framed clips while being force-fed advertising. That’s the enshittification of the internet for you.

Nowadays I use Bluesky for what I would have used Twitter for, and occasionally Instagram, but mainly I follow the POSSE model that Luis Mendo advocates: Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.

Back in 2021, on the 15th birthday of the blog, I did a little run down of the most popular posts on the site: 15 Years of Blogging. There’s some pretty good stuff there.

Following up on that, I think I’d add these more recent posts:

Everything you wanted to know about QR codes but were afraid to ask

British Graphic Design

Sustainable Graphic Design

Street Name Fonts

Graphic Design History Resources

In the early days of blogging, folks generally linked out to other blogs they liked – on a list that was called a blogroll. So here’s a huge hearty hug to a few friends from over the years who are still (mostly) posting:

BrandNew
Design Observer
Daniel Benneworth-Gray (newsletter)
Johnson Banks Thoughts
Justin’s Amazing World at Fenner Paper
Kottke
Noisy Decent Graphics (now archived)
Spitalfields Life
SwissMiss
The Casual Optimist

It’s been a wonderful twenty years. Thanks for stopping by.

Here’s some cake.

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The world is in a pretty dire state at the moment.

The rise of the far right; Trump; AI (and its associated job losses); the cost of living crisis; Ukraine, Gaza and now Iran; and generally ridiculous levels of bullshit and misinformation, particularly as weaponised against immigrants and the trans community.

It’s a lot, right?

I’ve found myself veering between either obsessing over it, or instead just burying my head in the sand. Neither are particularly helpful.

And all this while the most important and challenging issue, climate breakdown, becomes ever more significant, and demands immediate action.

I do a lot of work for London Cycling Campaign, and I’m a co-founder and Art Director of Hoxton Street Monster Supplies, and that certainly helps make me feel like I’m doing something good in the world. And I’ve signed up to Design Declares, which seems like a positive, if small, step. But I’ve been eager to put my skills to other things that make an active difference.

So I was really excited when my friend Ben Peers got in touch last October about an online platform and social network he was setting up – Good Eye – which asks the question: “What if we could use our creativity for good?”

Ben is a designer and art director, and together with copywriter / creative director Michael de Piano, and strategist Kevin Karaca, set up Good Eye as a side project.

Here’s how they describe what they’re doing:

“Good Eye is an idea. An idea that shamelessly idealistic creativity is key to building a kinder, fairer and greener future for us all. We are slowly and intentionally building something (alongside our day jobs) that brings together all who believe in the power of creativity and want to use their powers for good. Our mission is to allow creatives the space to create things they truly believe in, with others who believe it too. To encourage creatives to bring shamelessly idealistic creativity into their professional practice. And to generate more hope for the community, people and planet.

Whether you’re a creator, designer, copywriter, creative, producer, project manager, filmmaker, artist, musician, writer, or none of the above! If you have a creative mind and feel a burning need to put it to positive use, we are for you.”

The website is a hub for bringing people together online, with the aim of bringing them together in real life through the Good Eyedeas sessions, the first of which took place this January.

I went along to the second session earlier this week, Climate and Storytelling for Hope, at Treo House in Oval.

The crowd was made up of people working in creativity, sustainability, or a mix of both. We began with a bit of milling about meeting each other, and an introduction from the founders. Then Lucy Stone, the founder of Climate Spring, gave us a fascinating talk about how her organisation is helping to transform how the climate crisis is represented in film, television and popular culture.

Following on from that we did a short workshop where we divided into small groups and tried to come up with creative ideas to challenge climate skepticism, or to tell a more hopeful climate story.

Our group focused on hope, and discussed a new form of (paid) national community service* that you could do for a year at the beginning and end of your working life, called A Year of Being Fabulous, where younger and older people would work together on a variety of community projects like planting orchards and forests. The idea being that you improve the environment whilst also encouraging cross-generational learning, the passing on of skills and knowledge, as well as combating social segregation and loneliness. The fabulous part included fantastic outfits, inspired by the feelings of pride people had in the shoes they got when they volunteered at the 2012 Olympics.

*Inspired by the fantastic Youth Environmental Service programme, of which David Fell (one of our group) is Chair.

We also discussed the need for spaces for people to come together in an increasingly divided world, and thought about beautifully designed launderettes, that are also cafes and play great music, which could help fill some of the empty shop units across our high streets. (A post-workshop Google search shows that these already exist in various forms: Celsious in Brooklyn, the Laundromat Café in Copenhagen, and Café Laundromat in Oslo.)

Obviously we weren’t necessarily going to come up with anything fully formed and entirely innovative in an hour long session, but it was a great way to get everyone chatting and pushing ideas around. I think the real benefit of things like this are the connections you make and the conversations you start, which then might lead on somewhere fascinating and productive in the subsequent weeks, months and years. And it felt truly wonderful to be amongst a group of like minded people who all wanted to do something, to take action, and to use their skills for good.

The founders of Good Eye have also launched a networking site (still in beta testing), which should prove invaluable for extending those connections made at events:

“The idea is that it becomes a place where anyone interested in the Good Eye mission can:

• Connect with likeminded people

• Keep abreast of the latest Good Eye events

• Put in requests to the network to help solve problems or find talent

• And, last but not least, share good ideas and collaborate on them

Our vision is that it becomes a platform for creativity for good to flourish.”

If you work in a creative field and you’d like to get involved, either online or in person, head over to the Good Eye website. Hopefully see you at the next event.

Thanks to the Good Eye team for letting me use their event photographs for this post.

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At the end of last week I nipped over to Senate House Library (the central library for the University of London) for their latest exhibition, The English Print Revolution: Caxton and Beyond. It’s a great little show with a fine selection of books printed in England (and abroad) from the 15th century onwards.

Here’s the intro blurb:

“Books were normally written by hand until the mid 15th century. Then in Germany Johann Gutenberg developed a process of printing books using movable type. The revolutionary new technique spread quickly throughout continental Europe. Book production increased and prices dropped.

An English merchant named William Caxton learned and practised printing in Cologne and Bruges. In 1476 he brought the art to England. Caxton printed about 90 books, 74 of them in English.

Printing transformed the way people read, learned and exchanged ideas. It helped to standardise the English language. This exhibition demonstrates how Caxton paved the way for new typefaces, clearer page design, new methods of illustration and new genres. He is honoured today as the father of English printing.”

Here’s The Game and Play of Chess by Jacobus de Cessolis, printed by Caxton in 1483:

As a member of the Wynkyn de Worde Society, it was great to see a copy of Catho cum Commento (below), printed in 1512 by Wynkyn de Worde, who took over Caxton’s press after his death, setting up the first commercial press on Fleet Street. (This spread features de Worde’s printer’s device – based on William Caxton’s – which you can read more about here.)

Check out this amazing title page from The Byble in Englyshe (The Great Bible) – the first authorised English bible, printed in 1539 by Richard Grafton and Edward Whitchurch – depicting a bethroned Henry VIII dolling out bibles.

(Not my greatest photograph – but you can see a detailed version on this edition on archive.org.)

Also on display is one of the first printed histories of England, Scotland and Ireland: Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, printed by Henry Bynneman for John Harrison in 1577, and widely believed to have provided the inspiration for many of Shakespeare’s plays:

There’s also a section looking at how Caxton’s reputation took off in the 18th century, with Joseph Ames’s Typographical Antiquities, published in 1749.

This free exhibition is open from now until 1 July 2026, open 9am–7pm during the week, and 9:45am–5pm on Saturdays.

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I’m so happy to have received my beautiful copy of Mundo Mendo, Book One. by the wonderful Luis Mendo. It’s a fantastic collection of stories, illustration and wisdom from his subscriber-funded website mundomendo.com

Based in Japan, Spanish designer and illustrator Mendo’s book is a collection of visual musings – ranging from the importance of personal projects to a book festival in Tokyo, from lunch with author Craig Mod to avoiding doom scrolling.

The 272 page book, published in a limited edition of 1,000 and signed by Mendo, is in the Japanese bunkobon size (more or less A6) – dead easy to carry around. And as he says on his website, you don’t buy the book, you support the artist.

It’s a really beautiful thing, and quietly inspirational. Mendo’s illustrations have a timeless quality about them, and he captures light exquisitely (check out the stunning prints available on his luismendo.com website, and his Home Stayer series of faux magazine covers.)

It’s illuminating to ponder how the book format differs from the experience of reading Mendo’s posts on his Mundo Mendo site. I came to them fresh, having not yet subscribed to the site. They don’t enjoy the benefit of size that they do online, but they do have a permanence in book form that no website can match, and the format of the book has a friendly presence that can’t be replicated by the agnostic screen of a mobile device or computer. And although I’m sharing the book here digitally, I’ll feel far happier sharing the book with people in person.

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As we trundle / trudge / twirl (delete as appropriate) towards the end of 2025, I thought I’d take a look at some of the very best bits of art, design and photography coming our way in 2026.

First up though, a few bits that I mentioned in last year’s list which you can still catch in the New Year.

V&A East Storehouse
Ongoing | V&A East, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London

I made it along to the V&A’s glorious new hybrid storage / gallery space in East London just a few weeks ago, and it’s stunning, and a timely reminder that we can still do very good things in this country. Objects, furniture, fashion, even part of a brutalist housing block are stacked around a vast atrium, and you’re invited to wander around, with very subtle bits of signage that encourage you to explore and investigate, essentially doing your own research as you explore. There are temporary exhibitions – there’s a David Bowie one on at the time of writing – but really it’s the building and the collection that are the heroes here.

Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke: This is What You Get
Until 18 January 2026 | Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

I’m really looking forward to visiting this in the next couple of weeks, as a Christmas treat – the exhibition of album artwork by Thom Yorke from Radiohead, and his longtime collaborator, Stanley Donwood (Donwood’s book There Will Be No Quiet is a corker). The Guardian gave the show a bashing, but the Independent loved it, and as a Radiohead fan I’m all in.

Secret Maps
Until 18 January | British Library

This will be another Christmas trip for me, the British Library’s major new exhibition revealing the stories hidden in some of history’s most mysterious maps.

Wes Anderson: The Archives
Until 26 July | Design Museum, London

This only opened last month, so there’s plenty of time to get along to see props, costumes and models from all of Wes Anderson’s films.

That’s a great selection to take us through into the New Year. Here’s what’s coming up in 2026 – exhibitions first, and at the end, a few talks and events.

I’ve Got It Covered – Lisa Sheehan
Monday 9 – Saturday 14 February 2026 | Coningsbury Gallery, London

“This exhibition celebrates the creative work of internationally renowned illustrator Lisa Sheehan, showcasing a curated selection of her editorial magazine covers. Sheehan has brought her distinctive artistic voice to more than 60 magazine titles worldwide, establishing a reputation for imaginative visual storytelling and finely crafted design. Her cover illustrations, known for their evocative detail and ability to capture the essence of contemporary editorial themes, highlight the important role of illustration in shaping the identity and cultural impact of magazines. This exhibition offers audiences a rare opportunity to experience the breadth of Sheehan’s contribution to global publishing and the artistry behind the covers that inform and inspire.”

Tracey Emin
27 February to 31 August 2026 | Tate Modern, London

“This landmark exhibition traces 40 years of Emin’s groundbreaking practice, showcasing career-defining sensations alongside works never exhibited before. Through painting, video, textiles, neons, writing, sculpture, and installation, Emin continues to challenge boundaries, using the female body as a powerful tool to explore passion, pain, and healing.”

David Hockney
12 March to 31 August 2026 | Serpentine Gallery, London

I visited Hockney’s vast show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris this year, and it was a real stunner, and I’m sure this will be fantastic too.

“One of the most influential artists of our time, David Hockney invites viewers to slow down and notice the extraordinary within the everyday in his first exhibition at Serpentine. Created specifically for this presentation, Hockney’s new paintings extend his lifelong fascination with the act of looking, affirming his belief that simple beauty is worth celebrating. The exhibition is conceived in close collaboration with the artist and brings Hockney’s celebrated ninety-metre-long frieze A Year in Normandy to London for the first time. Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, which will be on display at the British Museum in 2026, this monumental work captures the changing seasons at the artist’s former studio in Normandy.“ In the context of the exhibition at Serpentine, it opens a dialogue with the surrounding nature of Kensington Gardens.”

Murugiah: Ever Feel Like…
Opens May 2026 | Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, London

The inaugural show for the brand new Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration couldn’t come at a more important time, with AI posing a tangible threat to the livelihoods of illustrators around the world.

“In his first solo exhibition, illustrator, artist and designer Murugiah brings together his eclectic love of Hollywood film, sci-fi, Japanese anime and 2000s era pop-punk to create a distinct display of his work. Murugiah: Ever Feel Like… will explore identity and mental health through vibrant prints, paintings and sketches that retain a surreal, sombre undertone.”

Holy Pop
21 May – 9 August | Somerset House, London

Somerset House shows can be a bit of a mixed bag, and there’s not much detail here on what will actually be on show, but it could be worth a punt.

“An interactive exploration of devotion, fandom and our fascination with pop culture. Step inside a colourful realm where devotion takes unexpected forms, as everyday objects reveal how admiration grows into shared identity. Personal treasures appear alongside inventive installations that chart the rituals through which fans express connection and care. Each piece hints at the values people project onto the figures who shape their lives, inviting visitors to consider how cultural icons influence belonging. Holy Pop! offers an energetic study of devotion in a fast-changing world, encouraging reflection on why these emotional attachments continue to matter for so many audiences today.”

Anish Kapoor
16 June – 18 October 2026 | Hayward Gallery, London

Okay, sure, Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal Orbit is a hideous carbuncle, and his purchasing of the exclusive art material rights for Vantablack was fairly douchey, but his 2009 show at the Royal Academy was pretty good, and his 2002 Marsyas installation in the Tate Modern turbine hall was utterly breathtaking. And the Hayward suits his work beautifully (he had a great show there in 1998). So I’m guessing this will be more than worth a visit.

“Bringing together the essential languages of Kapoor’s practice, this landmark exhibition focuses on the artist’s recent work alongside early seminal artworks.“

Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography
28 July – 4 October 2026 | Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

“Step into a century of American city life through photographs that capture the people who built, inhabited, and transformed urban spaces into living, breathing communities. The exhibition explores one hundred years of American urban life through the people who lived, worked, and moved through its streets. Featuring works by 34 influential photographers from 1907 to 2012, the exhibition traces how photography evolved alongside the modern city, capturing individuals and communities shaped by and shaping their environments.”

The 90s
1 October 2026 – 14 February 2027 | Tate Britain

How excited you are about this depends on how old you are. As a 20-something in the 90s, I’m hoping for a solid nostalgia hit, and a reminder of a time when everything wasn’t quite so relentlessly grim.

“Curated by former British Vogue editor Edward Enninful OBE, an image maker who has played a pivotal role in shaping fashion’s history, The 90s examines a seminal decade in which a groundswell of creativity changed the face of British culture. As the Cold War ended and Britain began to emerge from recession, a new dawn of optimism, freedom, and rebellion was ushered in, epitomised by a new generation of diverse creative talent. This sense of boundless opportunity resulted in art, design, fashion and music fusing into one potent cultural force, signalling an audacious renewal of British spirit. The exhibition explores how long-held hierarchies were dismantled, with high art and pop culture feeding into one another, and looks at the enduring influence of key figures who emerged from this time. The 90s brings together iconic images by photographers including Juergen Teller, Nick Knight, David Sims and Corrine Day. They will be shown alongside the work of artists like Damien Hirst, Gillian Wearing, and Yinka Shonibare, as well as fashion collections by decade defining designers including Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, and Hussein Chalayan.”

Tim Walker’s Fairyland: Love and Legends
8 October 2026 – 31 January 2027 | National Portrait Gallery

“Tim Walker’s Fairyland is an exploration of queer identity, community, and love through the lens of one of Britain’s foremost photographers. Walker rose to prominence in the 1990s with his unique style of whimsical photography inspired by fairytales and adventures. He has photographed famous faces including Chappell Roan, Lady Gaga, Pet Shop Boys, Hunter Schafer, Miriam Margolyes and Frank Ocean, with his work featured in international magazines including Vogue, Vanity Fair, W, LOVE, Another Man and i-D. In preparation for this exhibition, he has spent the past five years photographing dozens of activists, performers, artists, and writers in his inimitable style. These new pictures are the result of Walker’s quest to connect with queer trailblazers in Britain and beyond. This exhibition will take visitors on a journey into Walker’s inner world – a vivid tapestry woven from his many inspirations and influences. Exuberant portraits and fantastical landscapes combine to create an unforgettable celebration. Walker’s creativity runs free, and his Fairyland is a place where everyone has the freedom to be themselves.”

Hokusai: Thirty-six views of Mt. Fuji from the Iuchi Collection
20 October 2026 – 17 January 2027

“See the complete series of one of the most celebrated image cycles in art history, inviting visitors to experience Mount Fuji as Hokusai saw it nearly two centuries ago. The exhibition brings one of the world’s most iconic print series to London. Created between 1830 and 1833, the exhibition presents, for the first time in the UK, the complete set of Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Katsushika Hokusai, Japan’s most celebrated printmaker.”

A pretty fine selection of exhibitions for 2026 then.

And here are a few talks and events that are coming up in the first half of the year too.

Collective Power: Exploring the art and allure of collecting with David Pearson, Hugh Miller, Indiana Lawrence, Liz Mosley and The Local Type
Thursday 15 January, 7pm | St Bride Foundation, London

“From stickers and found lettering to ephemera and stories – Collective Power celebrates the creative energy behind collecting. This evening explores how collections shape our ways of seeing, making, and understanding the world. Each speaker will share their own unique approach to collecting and what these personal archives reveal about design, culture, and creativity. Across short 15-minute talks, our speakers will uncover what drives their collecting habits. Expect insights into how collections evolve, what they teach us, and the unexpected connections that emerge between objects, people, and stories. Whether you’re a designer, collector, or simply someone fascinated by what others notice and keep, Collective Power invites you to reflect on the things – and ideas – that we hold onto, and why.”

Multiplicity London
Thursday 5 February 2026, 5:30pm to 10pm | St James’s Church, Clerkenwell, London

I last went along to a Multiplicity evening back in 2019, and it was a fun, energetic evening of talks, curated by foil suppliers Foilco. It’s back in 2026 for its tenth birthday.

“A gathering for designers, studios and anyone working with visual ideas. It brings together people from across the creative community for an evening of talks, discussion and connection. The speakers are:
• Nils Leonard & Lisa Smith | Uncommon Creative Studio
• Kirsty Carter & Emma Thomas | A Practice for Everyday Life
• Joseph Lebus | Porto Rocha”

Creative Encounters: The Londoners’ Printing Press
Wednesday 4 March, 6pm | Southbank Centre, London

“Creative Encounters is delighted to welcome back Theo Hersey for an evening of collaboration, inks and prints as together we create The Londoner’s Printing Press, a one-time experiment in communal print-making. Draw and carve your own letterpress blocks to contribute to the printing tray, before using your blocks and those of others to create beautiful, text-based prints.”

Ged Palmer
Wednesday 15 April 2026 | Letter Exchange, The Art Workers’ Guild

Letter Exchange brings together practitioners in all forms of lettering arts – calligraphy, lettercutting, typography and design – and hosts monthly lectures at The Art Workers’ Guild. The talks are always interesting, and the venue is just around the corner from The Queen’s Larder, where conversation generally continues over a pint or two.

“Join award-winning lettering artist Ged Palmer as he discusses his journey from lettering artist, signwriter to visual artist and designer.”

Jane Parker – The Signmakers of Old London
Wednesday 17 June 2026 | Letter Exchange, The Art Workers’ Guild

“Jane is an independent tour guide, a Londonphile, graphic designer and typographer, who is especially interested in signage for bygone brands and businesses – today often known as ghostsigns. These old ads can appear in many forms, whether as carved and gilded shop fascias, hand-painted advertisements applied directly onto brick walls, or logos forged within metal. For this presentation Jane will focus on the sign makers themselves, the multi-skilled artisans whose handiwork still overlooks and enhances our busy modern streets.”

The post Really great things to look forward to in 2026 appeared first on We Made This.

London is a city of constant change. It evolves, grows, morphs and adapts. But within that change, some things stay more or less fixed. One thing that has stayed just so for almost four decades is the use of the adapted version of the Albertus typeface on the City of London’s street nameplates. Along with Westminster’s iconic nameplates, the City’s signs have become emblematic of London.

However, despite appearances, that Albertus lettering has itself been morphing and changing.

George Wright, Project Manager, Major Projects & Programmes, City Transportation at the City of London Corporation, got in touch at the beginning of April, about the fact that the recent street nameplates in the City of London weren’t looking quite right. He had noticed that the font was a lighter weight than on the original signs, and wondered if I had come across the original design guidelines anywhere during my research for my book, London Street Signs.

It’s rare for someone in George’s position to have such a refined eye for type, but he has form, having commissioned, in a previous role at the London Borough of Lambeth, beautiful sets of signage right across that borough, as well as heritage revival signs in Norwood. Both projects, as well as the City of London street nameplates, are featured in my book.

During the course of my research, the late great Phil Baines had mentioned that the original Corporation of London Corporate Identity Sign System Manual (1988) could be found at St Bride Library. The manual was created by Chris Sharville and David Laker of Laker Sharville Design, as part of the wider corporate identity for the City of London overseen by John Ward at Charles Barker City. It specified the lettering for use on all the City’s nameplates – an amended version of Berthold Wolpe’s Albertus, referred to only as the ‘Special Alphabet’.

“To respond to the particular needs of the Sign System a special typeface was designed for the Corporation. It is based on Albertus No. 4 but the letterform was modified and refined to improve its legibility and method of reproduction at the large sizes demanded by the project. Directional arrows matching the letterform were also added to the standard characters.”

Intriguingly, I’m yet to find any other reference to Albertus No. 4, so I wonder if that was a typo? Or perhaps No. 4 was a Photo-Lettering version? All of Monotype’s typefaces were given numbers, in order of production, and the original version of Albertus was Albertus Titling No. 324, released in 1935 and featuring titling capitals only.

That was followed by Albertus No. 481, with both upper and lower case letters, as well as Albertus Light No. 534, and Albertus Bold Titling No. 538.

The manual also includes a very specific spacing system, which set the all caps street names and postal districts with pleasingly tight letter spacing – close, but not touching.

“When looking at a group of characters – words or lines of text – as a single coherent image, the spacing between the individual characters and words plays a crucial part in establishing the typographical style. This is all the more important in the case of large size characters such as those used on signs. It is therefore vital that the spacing is constant and strictly controlled, and to this end, the standard system of accurately controlling the letter spacing must always be used.”

I sent George copies of the Sign System Manual pages, helping clarify the specifics of the original lettering design. 

Significantly, the manual states that a “Master Artwork has been produced which includes a standard spacing system from which a film for photographic setting has been made.” Unfortunately, that photographic film of the Special Alphabet, if still around, couldn’t be found in the Corporation’s archives. A digitised version of the Special Alphabet, from 2004, was found a bit later, but without any kerning information (the space between individual pairs of letters).

The existing street nameplates around the city are quite a mix of weights and styles, having been produced by various companies over the years since the original signs and manual were first introduced. (Nameplates are expected to last about 30 years, but of course only if they’re not stolen, defaced or damaged.) Here are just a few, showing how much variation there has been in lettering, setting and even punctuation.

The sign above is set well, though one might prefer to keep ‘King William Street’ on a single line.

The weight of the lettering is too light on the signs above, and the letters too widely spaced.

Note the variations between two ostensibly identical signs here: single line to two line setting, size of the bracketed name, the shape of the brackets, and the position of the apostrophe.

And here in a rare adhesive sign, affixed to a window on the side of 101 Queen Victoria Street, the wrong character is used for the apostrophes (flat and vertical where they should be angled and curved), in the wrong place on ‘St. Pauls’’ (the vista is of St Paul’s Cathedral). These adhesive signs have a slightly shorter life span than the enamel ones, so this can be fixed relatively easily (this photograph is from 2016, and the sign is looking much worse for wear now).

It looks like the nameplates in use around the City use a mix of the correct lettering and at least four other versions of Albertus and similar typefaces, including Flareserif 821 (Bitstream’s version of Albertus), and a free version, AO28 by URW++.

A modern version of Albertus, Albertus Medium, was most recently being used by the current manufacturer AJ Wells (the wonderful folks on the Isle of Wight who, as well as making the City of London’s nameplates, make all the London Underground signs). This was notably lighter than the Special Alphabet, and without the tight spacing specified in the manual – which AJ Wells hadn’t had sight of. 

George asked if there was any way of getting a new version of the Special Alphabet digitised. I knew just the person – type designer Toshi Omagari. We’d first met when we were both speakers on a panel at the launch event for the Wolpe Collection – an updated set of five of Berthold Wolpe’s typefaces, including Albertus, all digitised and updated by Toshi. (I’d been invited to be on the panel because of a piece I’d written about the use of Albertus in the TV show The Prisoner.)

Toshi set about creating a newly digitised font for the City of London, matching the shapes of the original Special Alphabet, but with subtle tweaks to make it work perfectly, and with tailored kerning.

Toshi completed the new font, COL Sign, over the summer, and has written in depth about it. As well as the kerning, it has slightly thickened round strokes, the C and G are more balanced, the W is slightly wider, and some of the flared strokes emphasised just a tad. The joints on strokes of the lowercase have also been beefed up a bit, the ear on the g styled to match the rest of the font, and the @ symbol has been crafted to be more stylistically appropriate.

Berthold Wolpe, who designed Albertus originally, was a Jewish German émigré who left Germany soon after the Nazis took power, and he became a British citizen in 1947. As Toshi self-effacingly notes on his site, it’s highly appropriate that two immigrants have helped define part of the look of the city:

“I think it is a testament to London’s diversity that its iconic typeface was originally designed by an immigrant, and updated by another (twice: Albertus Nova and this typeface), which I am extremely proud of, regardless of how small my contribution may be.”

It’s a small but wonderful thing to see a design like this restored and revived with such care and attention. And hopefully it can now become a fixed point within our ever evolving city.

The post Updating Albertus for the City of London appeared first on We Made This.

Giovanna Faso recently got in touch to flag up her Casa Museo Olivettiana – a ‘house museum’ in Ivrea:

“Set within the Unità Residenziale Ovest – a remarkable horizontal skyscraper carved into a hillside just a 15-minute walk from the historic center of Ivrea – Casa Museo Olivettiana is a domestic archive dedicated to Italy’s visionary, yet often overlooked, computer culture of the 1970s and ’80s.”

(The house also has the rather lovely Olivetti poster (shown above) designed by Belgian artsist Jean-Michel Folon on its walls.)

Check out this short film about the place.

Giovanna got in touch because of a post I wrote back in July 2016 about an Olivetti exhibition at the ICA “showcasing the spatial and graphic design of typewriter manufacturer Olivetti during the post-war era”.

I had a look back at that post, and it’s got some great links in it (like this Typographica post about typewriter typefaces).

Reading it reminded me about Marcin Wichary’s fantastic book Shift Happens, from which he recently posted an entire chapter on his Aresluna website, all about the QWERTY keyboard. (I’ve linked to these over on Bluesky, but hadn’t posted here yet.)

I hugely recommend having a look if you haven’t already.

And while you’re on the site, check out his utterly fantastic piece about Gorton lettering, The hardest working font in Manhattan. (I messaged Marcin when he posted this, to say “I just finished reading your glorious piece. It made me very happy – wonderful writing, brilliant research, and fantastically well designed. If I could hug an article, I would hug it repeatedly.“)

And heck, if you’re still not sated, maybe get lost in Marcin’s extensive Flickr albums for a while, including this wonderful piece by Jenny Holzer.

The post Keyboard diversions appeared first on We Made This.

I nipped along to the wonderful Spineless Wonders* exhibition yesterday at the Senate Library (the central library for the University of London). It’s a fantastic (and free) little show that celebrates the library’s collection of pamphlets and other unbound / ephemeral publications. The sort of things that are stapled, sewn, folded or published as a broadside.

*That’s the perfect name for the exhibition.

(The piece above caught my eye as it features Caslon Rounded Open (for the name ‘Corn Exchange’), as revived relatively recently by Commercial Type.)

“These works have value for social history, political movements and cultural and creative expression. They present another view of history and have survived thanks to people who have recognised their importance. From political pamphlets and manifestos to popular prints and limited-edition artists’ works, the physical appearance and methods of production are as varied as the subject matter.”

I was particularly taken with Fishpaste, a ‘review of arts and letters’ by Leicester based artist / designer / teacher Rigby Graham, printer Toni Savage and writer Peter Hoy, hand-printed on postcards and published on a two year monthly schedule. The first series of cards ran from January 1967 to August 1968. Each postcard featured a poem on one side and an illustration on the reverse, and included issue numbers Four and a Half, Six A, and Umpteen.

You can pick up a full first edition set for £1,123 via Abebooks.

Rigby Graham’s archive is held at Manchester Metropolitan University, and includes the Fishpaste archive.

The Spineless Wonders exhibition runs until 15 November 2025, and there are curator-led tours on 18 July, 12 August, 17 September and 12 November.

(Thanks to Ian Visits for spotting the exhibition.)

The post Spineless Wonders appeared first on We Made This.

You’ve seen them on ketchup bottles, lampposts, vaccine cards, pizza boxes, and museum walls. They can even be found on the occasional gravestone. Most frequently we use them to quickly go to a web link without having to type out a URL – but also for a stack of other uses, from sharing a WiFi password to paying for a meal, or getting in to see a film at the local cinema.

Quick Response codes – those busy little pixelated squares – have been around for decades, but it took a global pandemic to really launch them into the mainstream. So where did they come from? How do they actually work? And what’s the best way to make them?

A LITTLE HISTORY

The QR code was invented in 1994 by Masahiro Hara, an engineer at Denso Wave, a subsidiary of the Toyota Motor Corporation, as a way of tracking automotive components. The goal? Speed. At the time, Japanese car manufacturers were struggling with the limitations of traditional barcodes, which could only hold about 20 alphanumeric characters, had to be scanned one by one, and if scratched became unreadable.

A more robust device was needed that could store more data, and be scanned more quickly from any angle.

Here’s how a couple of beers and a train ride helped Hara come up with the idea:

“At the time, I was told that ideas were more likely to come to mind when the brain was relaxed and producing alpha waves, so a colleague of mine lent me an alpha wave measuring device. I took it home and researched under what circumstances alpha waves are produced. When I took a bath, when I drank two glasses of beer, and when I saw greenery outdoors… The one that produced the most was when I drank the right amount of beer. In my case, two glasses of beer!

Then I had some beer on my day off, and as I was on the train looking out the window, I saw a building. I noticed that the upper floors of the building had a different arrangement of windows than the lower floors. That’s when I got the idea that if there was a unique mark that said, ‘This is a QR Code’, it could be read quickly.”

That led to the development of the small squares that are in the three corners of a QR code.

Hara was also inspired by the Go board game:

“I was looking at the board and thought the way the stones were lined up along the grids… could be a good way of conveying lots of information at the same time.”

Hara seems like quite an inspirational chap:

“First of all, I would like you to cherish curiosity and inspiration in your daily life. Curiosity leads to new knowledge, inspiration leads to various experiences, and the fusion of these drives the creation of imagination. I believe that ideas are born more from daily life and hobbies than from working at a desk. When the brain is relaxed, good ideas are probably generated from past experiences.”

The result was the Quick Response (QR) code – capable of holding around 4,000 alphanumeric characters, and readable from multiple directions. Crucially, Denso Wave decided not to patent the code – an act of generosity that allowed QR codes to spread far and wide, from industrial parts to packaging design, gravestones and beyond.

But it took a while…

As recently as 2012, there were industry jokes about how infrequently QR codes placed on posters or adverts were actually used, which culminated in a Tumblr account called Pictures of People Scanning QR-codes, which never had any posts.

QR codes mostly languished in the realm of packaging, logistics, and the occasional marketing stunt. Scanning the codes meant opening a clunky app, so most people simply didn’t bother. In fact QR codes were even having obituaries written about them.

Things changed massively thanks to two developments.

Firstly, in 2017 phones started to feature integrated QR code scanning in their camera apps (iOS11 and Android 8.0). Phone cameras could now automatically detect a QR code, and put a link on screen to take you to an app or webpage.

Secondly, COVID-19 came along.

Suddenly everyone needed a touch-free way to access information: menus, test results, track-and-trace systems. The humble QR code became the interface of the moment – part signage, part hyperlink, part public service.

HOW DO QR CODES WORK?

A QR code might look like a drunk crossword puzzle, but there’s an elegant structure behind the chaos. Here are the key parts of a QR code:

• Position markers: The three big squares in the corners – these help the scanner locate and orient the code.

• Alignment markers: Smaller squares, for adjusting distortion.

• Timing pattern: A series of alternating modules that help the scanner figure out the grid’s size and spacing.

• Version information: Details on which QR code version is being used – 40 different ones exist, each capable of holding different amounts of data.

• Data: The actual content. The more information in that bit of data, the more complex, and larger, the resultant code. (I used the URL of this blog post to generate the QR codes – since the URL of the post is quite long, the codes are quite complex.)

• Error correction: Built-in redundancy using a system called Reed–Solomon coding, so the code still works even if it’s partially damaged or obscured.

• Quiet zone: an area of clear space around the code

It’s a clever system: part math, part geometry, part magic.

There are two main types: static codes or dynamic ones. The difference between the two is editability and trackability.

Static QR codes are hard-coded and permanent. Essentially they’re a translation of a URL into a scannable code. They don’t allow tracking, and the destination URL can’t be updated once the code’s been created. So if you’re printing one onto hundreds of thousands of leaflets, postcards or business cards, you’ll want to make sure it’s the right one, and that the destination URL will be in place for as long as you need it. Otherwise you’ll just be sending people to a 404 page.

Dynamic QR codes are much more flexible. Normally set up through a third party, they contain a short redirect link that takes users to whatever destination you choose. Crucially, that destination can be updated later. So if your campaign changes, your code doesn’t need to.

They also let you track:

• How many times the code’s been scanned

• When and where it was scanned (roughly)

• What device or browser was used

So they’re more functional, but you generally have to keep paying the company which created and manages them.

WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO GENERATE A QR CODE?

Focusing on creating direct URL-based static QR codes, here are some options:

Chrome
Perhaps the most simple, and simplistic, way of creating one is in Google’s Chrome browser. Navigate to the page you want to link to, click the three dots in the top left of your browser window, select ‘Cast, save and share’ > Create QR Code > Copy or Download. That gives you a black and white dot-based code, in png format, and just 450px square. It also has a dinosaur icon in the centre – a call back to Google’s simple and addictive Dinosaur game that appears in Chrome if you lose internet access.

If you’re using Chrome on a mobile, click on the share icon in the address bar of the browser and scroll down to ‘Create a QR code’, and Chrome will create a code – with the name of the page and the name of the website below it. You can then share that in the usual ways from a mobile – the resulting jpg is 1290 x 891px, with a lot of white space around the code. (Note that it uses a different, shorter URL structure than on desktop – hence the simpler code).

Adobe InDesign
If you’re running Adobe’s InDesign layout programme, you can easily create static QR codes from within it. Create a new document, and then in the top menu bar, select Object > Generate QR Code > Type: Web Hyperlink. You can’t customise the style, but you can choose any colour from your palette. It creates a vector-based code, so you can output it at any size you want.

Adobe Express
Sticking with Adobe, but in Adobe Express, their web-based Canva competitor, you can create static QR codes in one of five colours, which you can output in svg, png or jpg formats, with squared or rounded or dots. The svg format isn’t great though, with small gaps between some squares, and an odd clipping mask. The png and jpg are both 500px square.

Canva
Over on the bloated beast that is Canva, if you go to Apps, search for ‘QR code’ to find Canva’s inbuilt generator. Drop in your URL and it will generate a code. Use the Customise drop down to change the background and foreground colours, and the margin width around the edge. When you’re done, click Share > Download and choose the pdf format – it’s vector-based and can be opened in Illustrator and scaled to any size. (Or you can always take a screenshot from within the app for a pixel-based version.)

QR Planet
With loads of customisation options, including colours, style of code, logos, frames, and the text attached to the code, QR Planet seems to be the most flexible option for creating a static code, which you can download in png, svg and pdf formats. The code directs straight to your URL.

Remember, all the above are static codes: fixed links, which can’t be changed after printing. Essentially they’re just machine-readable URLs, which save users having to type out a web address into their phones.

If you want to create dynamic codes, updatable ones, then you could try the following – but remember that you’re reliant on the company that provides the codes going forwards, and you’ll usually have to pay for them.

(Better practice, if possible, would perhaps be to set up a redirect on your own site if you change the URL.)

Bitly
Bitly, historically used mainly to shorten long URLs, lets you create a QR code where you can set a destination URL and title, as well as a shortlink if you want that too, and UTM parameters to track web traffic in analytic tools. You can choose from various square or circular designs, and 8 preset colours, or your own Hex value (or gradient), and you can add a logo or centred text, and an automated frame. You can download the code as jpg, png or svg, sized at 2000px square. You get 2 free (static) QR codes per month, or for $10 a month you can get their Core plan, from which you can create 5 dynamic QR codes a month.

QR Planet
As well as the free static codes mentioned above, QR Planet lets you create dynamic codes, with the same extensive customisation options, with various pricing plans.

Uniqode
Similar to QR Planet, Uniqode has lots of customisation options on style and colour. With a pro account you can set a custom domain which scanners will see – the default is to go via qrcodes.pro and then on to the URL you’ve specified. Download options are jpg, png, svg, pdf and eps. The company seems to be used by a lot of large corporations. Watch out for using the free ones from that site, as they expire after 14 days.

WHAT SHOULD YOU THINK ABOUT WHEN DESIGNING WITH QR CODES?

• Avoid tiny sizes – guidance varies, but try not to go smaller than 20mm square on printed materials.

• Keep high contrast – dark against a light background works best, some scanners can’t read the codes if they’re reversed out of a dark background colour.

• Use vector formats if you can – they scale to any size, and avoid the risk of blurry pixelated codes.

• Honour the quiet zone – leave the margin space around the code, it helps users’ cameras identify the codes.

• Customise with care – don’t cover the key position markers. Some folks suggest always sticking with the squared format (rather than circles), and not adding a logo (which always blocks part of the original code).

• Test, test and test again – print out your materials, and check that the codes work when scanned on a range of devices, at a sensible distance, and in a mix of lighting conditions.

• Add context – make sure to tell people what scanning the code will do. Add a written URL if you can too.

• Make sure your code leads to a mobile-friendly site – the vast majority of users will be scanning the code on a mobile.

Check out more usability guidelines and some useful tips on accessibility.

WHAT ABOUT SAFETY?

When QR codes are used on signs, there is a risk of decoy codes being stuck over the top of the real ones, linking to fake websites with browser exploits. It’s a scam known (clumsily) as ‘quishing’ – here’s a BBC story about it. It’s always a good idea to add the URL (of the site the code leads to) just next to the code, so that people know the site they should be taken to. If you want to double check where any code is sending you, use QR Code Raptor to examine a link before following it.

IN SHORT?

Whether you’re tracking car parts or linking to web page, QR codes are a brilliant blend of simplicity and sophistication. Just remember: design smart, test well, and never underestimate the power of a couple of beers and a train ride.

Oh, and if you’d like to know a lot more about QR codes, and other 2D barcodes, check out this detailed Medium post, What are those other QR codes?

Source photograph for fly poster image

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