Threadbare

Benetton. Get another idea. You're not shocking us, you're boring us. Plus, it's not an idea anyway.

Designed to confuse

You want to be a good citizen, a diligent and considerate patron and a polite and responsible member of the public. You want to dispose of your rubbish.

Easy, isn’t it? You just find a bin, don’t you?

Should you find yourself at the Royal Festival Hall you’ll find the bins come in litters of two - only be prepared to loiter.

The following is what you’ll see. 

A dark grey bin and a light grey bin, each carrying the following type:

. food scraps                                                            

. fruit cores                                                              

. crisp bags and sweet wrappers                               

. anything contaminated with food                             

. tea bags and coffee grounds                                   

          

                                                                    

. paper (white, coloured, newspapers, magazines, books and hand towels)

. cardboard

. empty aluminium and steel cans

. empty plastic bottles

. empty plastic and cardboard cups

Makes your head spin, doesn’t it?

I’ve witnessed people studying this stuff for minutes at a time – 3 minutes being the current record. I kid you not.

Information design is design that’s designed to inform. Aid understanding. Make things accessible. It shouldn’t be design that confuses. It could be so much more direct and simple, since around 70% of the words are superfluous. No wonder some just give up and plonk their stuff on the nearest surface.

Compare and contrast with Pret’s economical, direct and user-friendly approach. Go to the bins and you’ll see this:

Bottles and Cans Only                    Liquids                   Everything else in here

Job done. Clear, simple and quick with no margin for error.

No need for any more wrapping.

Let's go round again...

According to The Independent (13/11/11), vinyl sales are at a 10-year high. No shit Sherlock! 

Everyone should have worked out by now that the minute something is decreed dead, defunct, past it, it springs back to life. For every action there is a counter action. Brands are built and revived on this principle.

Retro is big. Everyone knows that, don't they?

But they didn't back in 1998 when I created a raft of stuff to present to a former client with the intention of letting them ride the wave of what I knew was coming.

We arranged a meeting, but on the morning of the meeting his PA rang to say he wouldn't be arriving. No explanation was forthcoming and he didn't reschedule. More fool him. Why did he do it? Because it meant moving his ass out of his chair to meet an unestablished and fledgling company and he couldn't be arsed. What did he miss out on? Just about everything that has been lauded as new, innovative and fresh ever since. (Zip disks with dates available for the doubting Tommies and Pansy's out there.)

So what's the moral?

Well this is one for client's, innit.

Don't ever say no, because you have no idea what you're passing up on. 

And the client in question? They make beer in Anglia.

PC: Preferred Crap.

So, leading on from yesterday.
Today we discover that a poster entitled 'the London 2012 experience is coming your way' is minus one of the biggest tourist attractions and most meaningful landmarks for Londoners and all related to the forces and, well, just about everyone en route has been erased.
Yes, HMS Belfast has been photoshopped out.
Quote: "There has been an error in production." What a load of crap. It was taken out because someone thought that it would offend some of the participating countries. Boo, hoo. And what a cock-up especially at this time of year.
This all just gets worse. What are they doing over in Stratford? Are they thinking at all?


http://www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2011/11/09/hms-belfast-airbrushed-out-london-2012-campaign-poster


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-2059345/London-2012-Olympics-poster-HMS-Belfast-removed-image.html

Thank feck for the architects...

First we had the 2012 Olympic brand identity, which is really very, very bad - appalling in fact - and therefore a national disgrace not to mention an embarrassment given our collective creative credentials. And now we have the Olympic posters and I really want to write that their appearance has eased the embarrassment, but I can't.

I've swallowed another chunk of my tongue and I can't afford to lose anymore, so chocks away.

It's not an original concept - getting different designers and artists to 'do' a poster - Los Angeles did it in 1984...badly. Nor does its unoriginality make it a bad idea. We have world-famous artists - let’s underscore our creativity. I get it. But it becomes a bad idea when a) ideas are thin on the ground b) there is seemingly no direction c) the authorship is so subtle it's almost invisible d) when the images (or the art as must call it) is mostly piss-poor.

Some of the offerings are so lame (yes I'm talking about you Michael Craig-Martin and Anthea Hamilton and Martin Creed to name but three) that they wouldn't make it onto the wall of a GCSE art room.

What seems to have happened here is that the scared cows have been allowed to present any old tosh because of who they are. 'It's Tracey so it must be good.' Bullshit.

That the sporting activities are not the main feast is not the issue, since the spirit, aspirations and philosophy of the games is just as valid. But when one thinks of all the brilliant designers contained within this island and the wit they could have brought to this body of work it makes you want to reach for the Wilkinson Sword.

If they really wanted to use artists, then this work would have been so much better had they been paired with great designers. Double whammy.

Whoever briefed, directed and sanctioned this should have taken a look at the London Transport Museum poster collection before briefing and made 'them' look at it too. And if they did, they weren’t really paying attention, were they.

So it's down to the (already) award-winning Olympic architects, engineers, landscapers, construction workers and Danny Boyle and Co to save the creative day, because I’m afraid that the communications stuff would struggle to win the egg and spoon.

Links

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/11/04/london-2012-official-olympics-and-paralympics-posters-unveiled-which-is-your-favourite-115875-23537494/

http://olympic-museum.de/poster/poster1948.htm

http://www.ltmcollection.org/posters/index.html

"You wouldn't think there was anything wrong with him."

On the return leg of my morning run last week I stopped for a breather in the square at the west end of Gt.Ormond Street.

I saw a couple having a fag in the recess of the entrance of a building. They had a wheelie case with them. As I drew alongside I saw that they had a small boy of no more than two sitting in his buggy with his toy Grilla - both a responsible distance away further up the ramp. A smiley, cute, flaxen-haired mop-top.

I stopped to say hello.

One is used to seeing anxious parents in that part of London and so I asked if their son was going to be a patient at the hospital. They told me that he had kidney stones and would be going under the knife later that morning; that they were from, Thirsk, North Yorkshire; and that they had travelled down the previous evening - hence the case.

So there they were, far away from home, puffing away and occasionally betraying the depths of their anxiousness by dint of the looks they flashed at each other and the lip-biting looks they both directed at their son. He, of course, was totally unconcerned.

"You wouldn't think there was anything wrong with him," said mum. I said that he was in the best possible place and that he would be fine because of it. They agreed and the sharp intake of breath that accompanied dad's reply was very tangible indeed. So having blown a kiss to the little chap and having said goodbye to the parents, I went on my way.

How much trust can a brand inspire? Where else are perception and reality so well realized?

Few are unaware of the hospital, what it stands for and the groundbreaking and record-breaking GOSH appeal, with which I'm happy to say I have a connection. The late, great CDP created the brand identity and advertising campaign and we, The Fine White Line, worked with our then parent company on 'thank you' materials when the appeal reached its target of £42m within two years of its launch.

But as fantastic and successful as the 'crying child' logo has been, I've always felt that there was something wrong with him. Because it's never the children who cry. It's everyone else around them.