Shoulder pads were trendy, once. So were leg warmers. For decades they’ve been an absolute fashion no-go. But what’s almost certain is that they will be back. (In fact it’s pretty certain that some ‘edgy’ fashion student is sketching something that looked like it dropped off the set of Dynasty as we speak).
In music we’ve had nearly two decades of guitar driven grunge/indie rock, even a revival of metal. So it’s no surprise that the newest bands have turned their dials back to eighties synthesisers for something that sounds different.
20 years ago I joined a design company who had just done three huge corporate schemes with the same colour scheme – yellow and grey. It seems ridiculous now (it seemed faintly ridiculous then) but the odds are that within a decade those colours will be an acceptable combination again. Not long afterwards I was wedded to an eighties English trend for beautifully letter-spaced capitals, but only a few weeks ago presented a scheme based on lightly leaded, tightly tracked caps. I think we used to call it ‘close not touching’ (as in the instructions to the typesetter on how to set the letters). It’s been a while.
Many graphic designers will try to somehow ‘insure’ their work against the vagaries of fashion and the wavering of art directors such as me. But the truth is that certain graphic approaches, especially those deemed shocking and revolutionary, will always have a brief and fabulous burst in the limelight. Then 3 years later they seem normal. 3 years after that, overly familiar, then finally, they fall hopelessly out of fashion. David Carson’s work began the nineties at the cutting edges of layout design and ended it in ads for Coca Cola – an agency art director had selected a ‘look’ from what was out there and put it to temporary use to make a brand look groovier just as Carson’s signature style began to wane. And it in many respects it was inevitable.
You can study this most easily by flicking through design books and journals from 10 years ago. Often the approaches look pretty tired. Do the same for twenty years ago - things usually look awful. Oddly though, look at something from thirty years ago (like the U&LC layouts below) and layouts can start to look a little more interesting. They look terrible, sometimes, but somehow plausible, all at the same time.
Don’t believe me? Give it a try. The default typography of the mid to late seventies: Lubalin-esque typestyles, ITC fonts and, of course, American Typewriter. The hippest typefaces of the last few years, having lain dormant in between: our typewriter-based friend, and several of Lubalin’s faces such as Avant Garde and Lubalin Graph (see image at the top of this post).
Wolff Olins developed VAG Rounded for the Volkswagen/Audi Group (hence the name) decades ago, but no-one touched rounded typefaces until (paradoxically) a swathe of music graphics, club flyers and eventually their own Tate scheme caught the wind of a revival of rounded letterforms at the turn of the century. When Jonathan Hoefler recently released a rounded version of his noughties classic, Gotham, it seemed entirely logical.
Blocky, shadowed lettering? It’s coming back. Look at this gem from a Graphis magazine of the late seventies.
The last time counterless or deco inspired geometric typefaces were in? At least thirty years ago. Dig out some Mervyn Kurlansky layouts from the seventies and they look pretty up to date. This Ikko Tananka piece for Hanae Mori looks completely up to date (although it’s from 1972).
Seventies designers were themselves revivalists of deco-style typefaces like Cassandre’s Bifur, and look, there it is again in the recent ‘fashion’ issue of Wallpaper magazine. Could be the 30s, or the 70s. Oh no, it's the noughties...
This may of course suggest that, for anyone creating something ‘cutting edge’ and ‘new’ it may well be best to start looking at stuff which is thirty to forty years ‘old’, then plunder at will. Just look how strong this Nagai layout looks, 37 years later.
This seemingly endless cycle poses a few issues for anyone trying to create anything that lasts any amount of time. Trying to pick, choose or draw a font for a ‘corporate’ is fraught with hurdles - you can gamble and pick a typeface on the rise but if it was a false dawn your client is left trying to produce designs with an absolute turkey and muttering sotto voce about ‘restrictive and out-of-date guidelines’ (this is assuming that you’re trying to find something that will last at least five years or more).
You can play safe and pick an acceptably classic neutral, a typeface that has proved its mettle, like Akzidenz. Or the ‘Almond white’ of the typographers palette, Baskerville. You could gamble a little and bring back an old favourite (such as the recent revival of Plantin). Conversely you could suggest whichever font is currently in vogue, but this has its own drawbacks – when Rotis arrived fully formed at the turn of the nineties it was enthusiastically adopted in the boardrooms of the world, until they realised they’d all adopted the same face, at the same time. There’s a great story that the British Design Council asked 3 firms to advise them on a new house style in the nineties and each one suggested Meta (the ultimate 90s typeface).
Perhaps you could limit yourself entirely to Helvetica, as whole generations of firstly Swiss, then American, now British designers have done. Or ‘do a Vignelli’ (see above) and choose from only Univers, Futura, Century, Bodoni (and of course Helvetica). But these can feel pretty limiting sometimes, especially to younger designers. They may have heard adages about the ‘most neutral typefaces being the most useful’ but in inexperienced hands the classics can feel dull, not delightful. I once spent an unhappy 2 months at an Australian design firm whose principal was then perhaps a little too influenced by ‘Massimo’s motto for font finding’ and insisted that everything be done only in Univers Condensed or Century Schoolbook - at first, incomprehensible, then a challenge, but quickly a chore. I complained. I went off-piste. I got fired.
Certainly drawing a bespoke font can work well – they can take a while for people to adjust to but they can project a unique ‘voice’ that can be very powerful, and by definition hard to adopt and copy by others. Again, it has its risks – when johnson banks and The Foundry developed a rounded version of Renner/Futura for More Th>n at the beginning of the decade, we didn’t know how it would date, and we had the obligatory arguments with agencies who felt it ‘wasn’t right for their layout/ad/direct mail/door drop/whatever’. But now it’s accepted as ‘property of More Th>n’. It’s bedded in. None of the agencies even bother to protest any more.
For years, the only people that could afford the cost of a unique font were the big corporates. Ironically many British corporations over the last decade seem to have shot themselves in the foot by simply copying one another. BT, British Gas, Yell.Com and others have all adopted their own versions of the humanist sans-serif approach that Meta offered up in spades, but all within a few years of each other. So any perceived cut-through is completely lost. (The only people that benefit are those who drew the typefaces). Having spent definitely tens and possibly hundreds of thousands on their own fonts to look different and stand out, they all end up looking the same.
But, are there any rules we can glean from the fine art of picking or creating a font, or looking backwards to go forwards?
My first simple rule is this: any revival will take at least a generation, if not more (ie over 18 years). For the first ten years, everyone can remember what came before, and will react accordingly. St Martins graduates from the noughties hate the idea of doing any deconstructed, layered work (like the college’s nineties alumni) because they feel they would be repeating themselves.
The second rule? After a significant amount of time has past (at least two decades, probably three), all bets are off and anything is fair game. One generation’s pet hate can be just as easily adopted by the next, who aren’t carrying any emotional baggage.
The third rule: examine your own prejudices. My earliest and most embarrassing teenage type layouts involved the likes of Eurostile and American Typewriter, but does that really make them terrible typefaces? (I just replay crumbling letraset sheets and school-disco-poster-horrors through my mind. Eurgh). New graduates never had to re-create headlines by photocopying old ITC catalogues, and might look at them more kindly, with fresh eyes. (I personally vowed decades ago that I’d never use an ITC cut of anything or anyone ever again. I’m sure that will eventually change).
Fourth rule? There are certain fonts that are beyond revival. Souvenir, for example.
The fifth? Someone is proving me wrong, even as I type.
This is an adaptation of a recent article for the ISTD’s magazine, by Michael Johnson
Last weekend at the V&A fete we had a stall selling our handmade, recycled ‘Designer Notebooks’.
The blank covers of the books were made from old cardboard boxes and could be individually customised at the stall with a variety of rubber stamped messages.
The insides were made from a couple of years worth of old design print-outs and random waste paper.
Here are some pictures from the event.
They went like hot cakes, we ran out completely before closing on Saturday and reckon we sold about 600 notebooks in total.
We plan to keep making these in the future and may even sell them from our website. Watch this space for more news.
It’s in the garden at the Victoria and Albert museum in London, costs £3 to get in (50p for kids) and is open tomorrow (Friday) night from 6.30pm to 10pm, and again on Saturday 25th July from 1pm until 5pm.
Tickets will go on sale half an hour before opening and places are limited so to avoid disappointment get there early.
This year it’s a Jubilee celebration with a Blitz spirit, credit-crunch, make do and mend theme. We’ve saved a couple of years worth of colour print-outs, cardboard boxes and general waste paper to create hundreds of unique, handmade, recycled notebooks.
Our ‘Designer Notebooks’ have plain cardboard covers…
…and inside you get to see random bits of our old work, faxes, sketches or whatever, with blank facing pages for your own scribbles.
We’ve also created a set of 12 rubber stamps with specially designed messages…
…so that people can customise their notebooks at the stall.
Come and buy one. They’re cheap and any profit made will be split between two of our charity clients, Christian Aid and Save the Children.
See you there!
We’ll be back with pictures from the fete next week.
Thousands of pieces of polyboard have been carefully trimmed, run-outs have been run (and re-run). Plastic sleeves have been bought, by the thousand. Scalpel blades have snapped and shattered, panics have been had, plasters have been found. It is, of course, degree show season and tens of thousands of arts, design and media students have just gone through the stresses and strains of preparing for their spell in the spotlight.
Sticking one’s best pieces of work on a wall and inviting all-comers to come, see (and crit) is a time-honoured ritual. For decades, if an employer wanted to ‘see what was out there’, the only real way to do that was to clear a week of their June diary and tour the shows, scouring for that key addition to the team or influx of raw creativity, either to slot in as an assistant or to put a creative rocket under slightly-too-settled senior designers.
But the ‘old way’ has been under pressure from all sides with the advent of multi-college shows like D&AD’s New Blood (in the UK), the rise of the digital degree show, or on-line portfolios of students’ work. Bit by bit the whole idea of an analogue show at all is being called into question.
Add in the seemingly insatiable growth of courses across all aspects of communications, all frantically direct mailing all the same creative directors across town, and you begin to see how potential employers can become confused and jaded, in equal measure.
There’s no doubt that a carefully curated wall or space at an exhibition can make a huge impact (like Glasgow student Elanor Stewart’s books at the top of this post did on me). And now that the world’s visual bookmarking sites image-crawl constantly for the new and notable, a stand out student project can become an internet meme in a matter of hours. For example, Falmouth student Alan Clarke’s set of Olympic posters got the cyber-Hoffman-Brockmanns all bookmarking furiously in double quick time. It satisfied all the requirements – it was quasi-modernist, looked great 400 pixels across and needed no explanation. (Is that the current definition of ‘great design’, we wonder?).
Students at the recent RCA show had the benefits of a world class gallery space in London to show their wares, and some careers could have been kick-started accordingly, as magazines such as Creative Review have gradually featured theirs and other student shows on their blogs. It’s interesting, cheap content, after all, no-one complains about the publicity and copyright clearance is no huge hurdle – what student could possibly turn down the PR?
But those Olympic posters were picked up via an online degree show site, not via a personal visit to Falmouth itself (that’s a long way to go to check some polyboard,). Other colleges like Brighton have continued to show their work digitally as well as physically and were joined online this year by an interesting presentation by Ravensbourne students. As more and more graduates present their work online, the pressure to present digitally will grow – private views have long been more of an excuse for alumni to return ‘home’, check peer group progress and drink the free beer (whilst agreeing with tutors that ‘their year was actually the best year’) than for any actual genuine talent spotting.
The digital degree shows present a different spin on a traditional conundrum - how to sift the wheat from the chaff? In a ‘real’ show you can make an instant assessment, in theory. Interesting work on wall = quick look at folio. Good folio = ferret about for sketchbooks or other stuff. Still enthused = leaving of card or sending of email.
But in a physical, ‘greatest hits’ type of show like D&AD’s New Blood, there isn’t space to show everyone’s work, whereas online each of 50 students can have a scrolling page all to themselves. Try clicking through dozens of pages of a degree show site and you’ll soon realise that 4 images each is a very arbitrary way to come even close to making a judgement about a designer. After 50 clicks you’re glazing over. After 100 you’ll never want to see any graphic design ever again.
The emphasis in the future may be towards curated digital shows, in the way that colleges have sneakily done for years. It’s no accident that the best students will often get prime position near entrances and exits, where the light is good and you’re well away from the bar. The selection gets even more savage when you get to the shows like New Blood, when over 130 colleges vie for the attention of thousands of visitors and each tries something a little different, trying to stand out in the semi trade-show environment of units, cubicles and ever present lounging students. The brave ones put sofas on their stalls and let the students lounge in public, but that’s always a recipe for disaster.
Here were a couple of bravely different approaches this year - Kingston’s product designers coated their stand in recycled wood, whilst Ravensbourne used huge graphics and tiny screens.
You can distil your best 70 students down to a dozen images, and risk the wrath of the 58 ignored and disenfranchised ones. Or give each student half a square metre of space and collectively merge into mediocrity. Perhaps you could create an environment all of your own and genuinely try to ‘own’ the space. The only guarantee? The final show is going to annoy someone, and visitors to ‘greatest hits’ shows can only really benchmark the level of a college as a whole – finding or selecting one single student from the thousands on offer is virtually impossible.
Perhaps we should turn back to the old way of doing it. Put a line through that week in the diary, go to the shows, enjoy it. But when you get there, find the course tutor and get a list of the 8 best students and er, ignore the rest (sorry). Do that for three days and you’ll get a result. It’s guaranteed.
This is an adaptation of recent article for Creative Review by Michael Johnson
At the end of next week, it’s this year’s V&A village fete. In previous years we’ve produced some variable stuff for our stall, from letter-shaped postcards to ‘air-mail’ airmail.
We’re deep in production of this year’s product. We’re giving the ‘post office’ idea a year off, and opening a stationery store that will hopefully tie-in with this year’s overall fete theme of Jubilee, credit-crunch, austerity living (or something like that).
We’ll reveal in more detail next week, but the idea stemmed from a side project we began last year where we started collecting all the spare run-outs on projects. We documented this for a while until it got too out of hand, but this is how it began.
Having sorted and sifted all the usable paper (there’s a lot of it) we then roped in a friendly paper merchant* with a good guillotine...
...and now it’s all hands on deck making the final product.
This week sees the launch of a major new initiative by one of our long-standing clients, Christian Aid.
They’ve decided to focus their energies around one key message, to eradicate poverty. We’ve been working with their new above the line agency, BMB, on a revised graphic style for the organisation under the rallying flag of ‘Poverty Over’.
The new style features a new masthead/logotype which will be ever-present on Christian Aid’s forthcoming communications, and forms the centrepiece of an advertising campaign launching this week. It’s designed to work in multiple formats...
...and features prominently in these examples for their forthcoming ‘Harvest’ campaign.
The other main design change for the organisation is the introduction of the colour orange into their palette, to give them a more recognisable livery in the UK charity sector.
We’ve been working for a couple of years on a project that will transform the centre of the Welsh capital, Cardiff. Right in the middle of the city, Land Securities and CSC have been transforming the old St David’s centre, and we’ve been working on an unusual new visual identity for the scheme.
The overall identity is based on the thought that hundreds of thousands of people will gather and use the new centre as their meeting-place, and our ‘people’ diagrams swiftly became the beginnings of the entire scheme.
The people, simplified down to dots, become the linking element in a scheme that applies across a vast array of items, from fonts to symbols and images.
Here are some more of the planned applications.
We’ve been collaborating with the project architects Benoy and signage consultants Air design on the three dimensional aspects of the scheme, some of which are shown below.
When we reviewed Kingston University’s graduate show a few weeks back we promised to show the video of this short film for HP by Tom Wrigglesworth and Matt Robinson.
Here it is, fresh from some pencil-winning exploits at the D&AD student awards. Starts slow but gathers pace, hang in there.
A colleague send us this link to this story about Russian energy giant Gazprom’s latest venture in Nigeria.
We’re continually creating names ourselves for projects, and one of the great paranoia’s is that that the name that you’ve dreamed up, and the client loves, falls over ‘in legal’ or translation because it means something ridiculous in another language. The classic of course is the Vauxhall Nova, which didn’t really work in Spain, given that ‘no va’ translates as ‘doesn’t go’. Ooops.
But we’re wondering if Gazprom were really concentrating that hard when they decided to call their Nigerian venture Nigaz?
