Computer Arts Magazine June 2014

supercharge your

ISSUE

227

JUNE 2014 Digital edition printed in the UK

design PORTFOLIO Hone your presentation skills with pro advice from the Art Directors Club

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

2014 GRADUATE SHOW LISTINGS Where and when to check out the UK’s top design talent

The founders of Pictoplasma on why mascots are taking over the world

also Featuring... • Exclusive Experimental Jetset profile • How Kokoro & Moi branded a new café • We report from Offset • Pro workflow advice • Why you should care about wearable tech • Craig Ward launches a tirade against the pitching process • And much more

ME NGYINGWA NG design & illustration

WEL CO M E

JUNE 2014

editor’s letter Welcome to graduate show season. Throughout May, June and July design colleges across the UK will be throwing open their doors to showcase the cream of their new talent to the industry. We’ve put in the groundwork to bring you a comprehensive guide to what to see, when and why. Flip to page 75 for our special listings supplement – including group shows D&AD New Blood, Free Range and New Designers – and we hope to meet some of you there. With graduation and recruitment on the brain, there’s no better time to craft a more effective folio. We’ve distilled the wisdom from ADC’s Portfolio Nights into a handy feature format, starting on page 64 – valuable whatever level you’re at in the industry. And you can’t have missed the cheeky character gracing our cover: Craig Redman’s personal mascot, Darcel Disappoints. Mascots are the subject of our colourful Special Report, in which the co-founders of Pictoplasma explore character design’s evolution over the past decade. As ever, the team has been busy on the events circuit and you’ll find our reports from Offset and Cheltenham Design Festival in the Culture section – thought-provoking and insightful in equal measure. Next month, our run of special issues continues with the Innovation Issue, dedicated to the people and projects breaking new ground and driving the industry forward. It’s already looking like an incredible issue.

keep in touch with…

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Nick Carson Editor

[email protected]

featuring

Darcel Disappoints

The optimistically dour Darcel Disappoints is an autobiographical creation by Craig Redman. He has worked on projects with brands including Colette, Adidas, Vogue and Coke: read more in our Special Report on page 44. darceldisappoints.com

Jo Ratcliffe

London-based art director, illustrator and animator Jo heads up an in-house studio team working on projects for clients like Louis Vuitton, Lady Gaga and Kenzo. On page 93 find out how she brought her illustrations to life in an installation for the Pick Me Up exhibition. www.jocandraw.com

Hanyi Lee

Hanyi is chief creative officer at the Secret Little Agency, where she directs the creative output of brands including LG. She was part of Singapore’s ADC Portfolio Night, and shares her tips for supercharging your portfolio as part of our Industry Issues feature, starting on page 64. thesecretlittleagency.com

Craig Ward

Currently based in New York, designer and art director Craig has built a global reputation for his pioneering typographic works. On page 22, he reveals his manifesto to avoid creatives wasting time pitching for projects that will never see the light of day. wordsarepictures.co.uk

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Soofiya Chaudry Graphic designer Soofiya specialises in book design and typography. She spends her weekends admiring good baseline grids, setting metal type and cleaning her Adana Quarto Flat Bed. On page 106, we delve into the inspirations behind her Book For Two project. www.soofiya.com

ME E T TH E TE A M

JUNE 2014

Meet the team Future Publishing Ltd, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW Phone 01225 442 244 Fax 01225 732 275 Email [email protected] Web computerarts.creativebloq.com

Editorial

Nick Carson Editor [email protected] Julia Sagar Deputy editor [email protected] Jo Gulliver Art editor [email protected] Rich Carter Designer [email protected] Ruth Hamilton Production assistant [email protected] Jim McCauley & kerrie hughes creative bloq channel editors [email protected] [email protected]

Contributors

Zaneta Antosik, Jonathan Ball, Tom Dennis, David Doran, Elizabeth Elliott, FranklinTill, Daniel Gray, Lukas Jamroz, Nils Leonard, Michael Molfetas, Luke O’Neill, Pictoplasma, Alice Potter, Craig Redman, Johannes Schwartz, Louise Sloper, Craig Ward, Anne Wollenberg

Advertising 0207 042 4122

Charlie Said Ad sales director [email protected] JAS RAI Ad sales manager [email protected] SUZANNE SMITH Account manager [email protected] victoria sanders Senior sales exec [email protected]

Next issue on sale

29 May 2014

Nick Carson

editor Nick celebrated his birthday this month. The CA team gifted him a voucher for a sports shop, in the hopes that he will use it to purchase some shorts to wear over his borderline-offensively tight running leggings.

Marketing

Philippa Newman Group marketing manager [email protected] SAMantha BOOK Marketing manager [email protected]

Julia Sagar

Alexandra Geary Marketing executive [email protected]

Deputy editor When she wasn’t busy being horrified by how many of her friends were popping out babies, Julia was ambushing designers with her film crew at Offset and setting up cañas dates for next month’s OFFF.

Print & Production

Mark Constance Production manager Viv Turner Production co-ordinator Nola Cokely Ad production manager

Circulation

JAMES RYAN Direct marketing executive [email protected] Daniel Foley Trade marketing manager [email protected]

Jo Gulliver

Art editor Jo accidentally booked a holiday to Dublin at exactly the same time as Offset. She overdid it a little on the Guinness and spent “the best €20 of her life” paying not to have to have to vacate her room by midday.

Richard Jefferies International account manager [email protected]

Licensing

Regina Erak Licensing director [email protected]

Future publishing LTD

Declan Gough Head of Creative and Design DAN OLIVER Editor-in-chief Steve Gotobed Group art director Robin Abbott Creative director Jim Douglas Editorial director Nial Ferguson UK managing director

Ruth Hamilton

Production assistant Ruth almost didn’t make it to Dublin for Offset – she knows not to trust boarding passes in future. It’s thanks to her eagle-eyed subbing that CA didn’t go to press with its back page ad written entirely in German.

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Rich Carter Designer Rich has been trying not to get over-excited about something to do with football and Liverpool. He’s been suffering terribly from hayfever, and sadly his blanket remains a work in progress.

A member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations

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Print + digital (Jan-Dec 2013)

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production notes printers

text, cover CMYK + pantone teal 3262 pantone fluorescent Pink 806 William Gibbons Emboss, spot UV and soft-touch varnish by

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paper

cover Precision Special Gloss FSC 250gsm P3-82: Galerie Fine FSC 115gsm P83-106: GraphoInvent 75gsm

typefaces

Trump Gothic West, Neutraface Text & Display, Calluna

JUNE 2014

ISSUE 2 2 7 JUNE 20 14

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Culture

Trends: We ask if Dominique Pétrin’s intoxicating patterns herald the death of minimalism, and showcase a set of designer bowls inspired by totem poles

Showcase

14  People: Discover why Singapore-based Phunk has a birdcage-throne in the corner of its studio, plus read the story behind OFFF’s latest magazine

Our selection of the world’s best new graphic design, illustration and motion graphics work 30

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P  laces: An enlightening tour of Dubai’s many creative hotspots, courtesy of recent graphic design graduate Jiani Lu

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 vents: Inspiring themes and thought-provoking E opinions from Offset in Dublin, and the third annual Cheltenham Design Festival

Insight

22  A MANIFESTO FOR PITCHING: Having won zero pitches out of six last year, Craig Ward draws up a contract to save designers from unnecessary pitching 26

A DIGITAL CRAFT REVOLUTION: Fresh from judging at D&AD, Louise Sloper looks at how a decline in advertising craft skills is being met by a digital boom

28  CAN TYPE CHANGE THE WORLD? Making a difference is better than sex, say Nils Leonard – after commissioning the world’s most eco-friendly font

workflow

90  BUILD QUIRKY CHARACTERS IN ILLUSTRATOR: How Jonathan Ball transforms simple geometric shapes into colourful creatures 96

WORK WITH IMAGES IN INDESIGN: Save time on your daily tasks with Luke O’Neill’s essential advice

need to know

102  What’S THE FUTURE FOR WEARABLE TECH? R/GA London’s Anthony Baker gives an insider view on how the latest gadget revolution will affect designers

Project diaries

Behind the scenes on a rebrand for a Finnish food company, an ambitious 3D-printed zoetrope and a stylish monochrome music video 83

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C O N TE N TS

JUNE 2014

The designer series: jon burgerman We chat to the character artist about his fearless approach to sharing his work, and why comfort is a killer 70

Burgerman on why design is a performance

Audience becomes art in My Great Movie

S p eci a l R ep or t

CHARACTER DESIGN

Pictoplasma tells the story of character design through the ages, from the clunky pixels of Space Invaders to the dour Darcel Disappoints 44

Subscribe TO COMPUTER ARTS • UK READERS: Four issues free! 69 • US READERS: Five issues free! 89 More: computerarts.creativebloq.com

S tu di o Li fe

In dus tr y i ss ue s

Experimental Jetset PERFECT PORTFOLIOS We pinned down the ever-elusive Dutch trio for a chat about obscure references and the double-edged sword that is Helvetica 56

ADC’s Portfolio Nights have launched many a career. We spoke to the pros to find out what makes a killer portfolio 64

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try our award-winning iPad edition for free! page 43

T r e nds CULTURE Dominique Pétrin aims to induce a feeling of vertigo with her densely patterned installations

WE LOVE...

Maximalist pattern Visual artist Dominique Pétrin heralds the death of minimalism with her intoxicating floor-toceiling patterns n the wake of streamlined minimalism, vibrant maximalist aesthetics celebrate a mash-up of cultural semiotics. Ranging from African street culture to postmodern Memphis Group references, the upbeat clash of tradition and modernity results in a vibrant amalgamation of patterns, prints and materials. Artist Dominique Pétrin’s dizzying installations include a combination of silk-screened patterns and graphics. Loud, repeated motifs and highly saturated colours create a vibrant and hypnotic visual landscape. The explosion of pattern aims to put the spectator’s body in an unstable position, somewhere between pleasure and displeasure, giving them the feeling of vertigo – an effect similar to a state of light intoxication.

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Dominique Pétrin is a multidisciplinary artist whose works explore altered states of conscience and perception (www.dominiquepetrin.com). Each month, our Trends section is curated by experienced creative consultancy FranklinTill (www.franklintill.com).

CULTUR E T rend s

JUNE 2014

D E S I G N ED FOR LI FE

Stack ’em high Designer Ben Branagan collaborated with ceramicist Laura Carlin on these totem pole-style bowls fter a mismatched stack of bowls in his kitchen prompted a spark of inspiration, designer Ben Branagan called in ceramicist and illustrator Laura Carlin to help develop his budding idea into a beautiful, functional product. “As artists, we’re always collecting pleasing combinations of shapes and forms on paper,” says Carlin. “Our work in collage and ceramics lends itself to thinking about layering and building up a picture.” The result is a set of individual bowls that can be stacked into a totem pole-like form that bears a surprising resemblance

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to a face (a “happy accident” during the planning stage, according to Carlin). The pair launched the bowls with Up Side Up, a platform that enables creatives to transform their ideas into bona fide products. While aesthetics were important, they were conscious of not being too fussy about the designs. “The original inspiration was something neither precious nor delicate. Just a stack of very different pieces that made something interesting and functional,” says Carlin. “Nobody wants something in the kitchen that they’re too afraid to use!”

product:

Stacking bowls by Ben Branagan and Laura Carlin upsideup.co.uk

COST: £119

Stay one step ahead with our barometer of visual cool

CUTTING EDGE

Designers are layering up different coloured papers in harmonious shades to create subtle compositions.

S TILL FRESH

Taking inspiration from architectural façades, creatives are incorporating abstract patterning into their works.

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M ainstream

Photographs and icons depicting fluffy white clouds are being found on surfaces, products and packaging.

Illustration: Michael Molfetas www.michaelmolfetas.com

TRENDING

CULTUR E PEO PL E

June 2014

M y st y le I S ...

Blue, green, grey and black

OFFF founder and The Poool editor Héctor Ayuso

A shot from a Flaminguettes video for The Poool

Jack Hughes is a Londonbased illustrator, known for his contemporary take on mid-century design www.jack-hughes.com Junghans x Max Bill wristwatch I bought this for myself on my 24th birthday. I’d worked relentlessly hard for the year prior, and it now serves as a constant reminder to never stop.

Illustration : Rachel Alderson, alderson.prosite.com

Burberry London trench coat I’d never bought an item of clothing so expensive, but it has been worth it. With it I had to upgrade my entire persona, which certainly wasn’t cheap. Bromleys sock suspenders These were all I asked for at Christmas, and I’ve worn them almost every day since. I never realised how much I truly hated (unintentionally) bunching socks.

N E W VE NTURE S

Join the revolution The Poool magazine is back by popular demand – and this year it has its own website. Editor and OFFF founder Héctor Ayuso tells us more s this issue of Computer Arts goes to press, the team behind Barcelona’s annual three-day creative fiesta OFFF are frantically putting the final touches to the second issue of The Poool magazine. From format to content, a lot has changed in the 12 months since issue one was handed out to queueing OFFF delegates. The magazine has its own website now, which launched in April, and this year editor and OFFF founder Héctor Ayuso promises exclusives, innovation and inspiration all round…

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Tell us about The Poool – what’s the idea behind it and how does it relate to OFFF Barcelona? We wanted to go beyond the idea of being a magazine to being something treasurable that people could actually use, and that will always be there for them when they need a getaway. The interviews are different; the features are completely exclusive. OFFF attendees are given the chance to get their hands on the magazine for free as I believe everyone should have access to the talents we have out there. Can you give us any exclusive insights into what to expect inside the second issue? We have exclusive work especially done for The Poool by Conrad Roset, Pomme Chan, Bartholot, Sean Lotman… We have interviews with Casey Neistat with his brilliant ‘five rules of doing’, we dug deeper into Oliver Jeffer’s world and we are also revealing the magic behind Patrick Clair’s work. We’ll keep the rest as a surprise. How has the magazine changed this year? The concept of The Poool has always been based on innovation, which means that every year the magazine will have a new format, new concepts, a new touch and so on. What the attendees can expect this year is a whole, new, different magazine focusing more on the content. computerarts.creativeb loq.com - 14 -

Why do you like “pursuing the unexpected” and how does this approach inform the magazine? It’s natural for us, as human beings, to always look for something new and different – something unexpected that would make a change somehow. We use that in our process: we don’t have any pre-plans on who or on what we should feature inside The Poool every year. And that really shows when we give the artists the total freedom to create something for the magazine. You say that The Poool is a revolution. What are you revolting against and why should we join you? The Poool is a revolution against dullness. It’s a shout out and a wake-up call to anyone looking for a way out from anything that could drain their thoughts and imagination. Whether you are in this situation or not, The Poool will be there waiting for you to pick it up whenever you need it. The website launched in April – what can visitors expect from it? The contents on the website will be completely different from the actual magazine. What we want to do with the website is communicate with people through our posts and share any kind of inspiration from new projects by different artists, talks and videos done by us, words, music… It will be their morning, evening and their time out to explore! What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from putting together the magazine? No matter how soon you start or prepare yourself, even if it’s an annual project, you will always be doing changes at the last minute. Those last minute plans always turn out to be the best ones! OFFF Barcelona runs from 15–17 May. You’ll find full ticket and speaker information here: www.offf.ws/offf-barcelona-2014 www.thepooolmag.com

Founded in 1994 by Alvin Tan, Melvin Chee, Jackson Tan and William Chan, Phunk is a Singaporebased contemporary art and design collective with a global reputation

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PHOTOGRAPHY : Marc Tan, www.marctanphoto.com

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4 m y d e s ig n s pac e is . . .

Built for the dreamers

From the Love Bomb sculpture to a throne for dreamers, the work on show in Phunk’s studio is a tribute to the power of imagination he giant birdcage (1) sitting proud in the corner of Phunk’s studio is, in fact, not a birdcage. It’s actually a throne, created in collaboration with furniture designer Nathan Yong. Inscribed along the perch are the lyrics to the Aerosmith hit Dream On. Confused? “It celebrates the spirit of the dreamers and the power of imagination,” explains Alvin Tan, who co-founded Phunk in 1994. “The throne is a sanctuary in which the king can nest his dreams, then set them free to take flight across the universe.” The rest of the Singapore-based art and design collective’s work requires similar explanation. There’s a print of the word ‘faith’ (2), in which the collective has

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imbued traditional iconography with fresh meanings. “We referred to diverse sources to create a complicated flamboyance in our unique way,” says Tan, of the studio’s creative approach. “This also corresponds to Phunk’s ‘control chaos’ philosophy.” Hanging on another wall is a larger work, a painting entitled Crassh (3). Part of the

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studio’s Art! Slippery When Wet collection, it illustrates the idea that everything must crash before new things can form. Meanwhile, a golden bomb sculpture (4) is a metaphor for the power of love. “The atomic bomb is the ultimate symbol of mankind’s creative genius and destructive nature,” explains Tan. “We wanted to build a ‘love bomb’ to spread the message that the most powerful force in the world is actually love,” he adds. The original sculpture stood 1.8m tall, while this miniature version was created to enable Phunk to share its message on a wider scale. “We wanted to spread love into the homes of space-constrained Singapore inhabitants,” smiles Tan.

CULTUR E PL A C E S

June 2014

C R E AT I V E quarters

Dubai, UAE 1

Illustration: Dan Gray, www.danielhgray.com

From electronica gigs to warehouse exhibitions and Scrabble nights, Dubai isn’t short of a cultural event or two. Jiani Lu shares her favourite creative venues

The Archive

Safa Park, Gate 5 www.thearchive.ae In the heart of Dubai’s urban park is one of my favourite hang-out spots, The Archive: a creative hub that blends a library, eatery and community centre. It holds regular workshops, outdoor film screenings, music festivals and artist talks.

Magazine Shop 2 The Loft Office 2, Al Madaar St

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www.themagazineshop.me The Magazine Shop is a cozy café with a collection of independent magazines across a colourful spectrum of arty subjects. It’s known for quirky monthly events such as Scrabble Night, magazine swaps and Bring-Your-Own-Vinyl Night.

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Avenue 3 Alserkal Street 8, Al Quoz 1

www.alserkalavenue.ae Nestled in the industrial quarters of Al Quoz, Alserkal Avenue is a warehouse complex that has been revived by 20 new galleries and studios, and now supports a thriving art scene. There are lots of new exhibitions and art nights.

Room 4 Analog E11 Sheikh Zayed Road

www.analogroom.com A world away from the glossy venues Dubai is known for, this is an underground music gem. It’s great for hosting quality electronica acts. The performances are staged in an intimate space, which is always packed with a lively crowd.

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Beachfront 5 JBR Jumeirah Beach Residence

bit.ly/JBRbeachfront Recently expanded, the JBR Beachfront launched with a collection of charming contemporary cafés and restaurants. With grassy areas for morning yoga and afternoon picnics and a jogging track along the beach, it’s a great place to unwind.

J iani Lu recently graduated from the design course at York University in Toronto. Currently based in Dubai, she specialises in branding, print and information design. www.lujiani.com comput erarts.creat iveb loq.com - 16 -

CULTUR E E V E N TS

June 2014

KEY INFO Location Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin www.iloveoffset.com WhEN 21–23 March ATTENDEES 2,515 key speakers Milton Glaser, Neville Brody, Mother London, Jessica Walsh, Tom Hingston, ilovedust

E vent r ep or t: O ffset

Biting the hand that feeds you

At Dublin’s buzzing Offset conference, Julia Sagar discovers an exciting community of creatives who are are deliberately making trouble in the design world arly one blustery Friday morning in late March, the Computer Arts crew hopped onto an alarmingly small plane and took a short, bumpy flight across the Irish sea to Dublin: home of Guinness, the Book of Kells and, more recently, Offset. In the five years since its launch, Offset has rapidly evolved into one of Europe’s most exciting creative events, attracting attendees from as far afield as Australia with a rich programme of debate, discussion and inspiration, delivered by some of the world’s most forward-thinking designers and artists. This year was the biggest in the conference’s history. Some 2,000 delegates poured into the impressive glass-fronted Bord Gáis Energy Theatre to catch the likes of Neville Brody, Jessica Walsh, Jon Burgerman and Bloomberg Businessweek’s Richard Turley chew the creative fat alongside some of Ireland’s finest, including photographer Richard Mosse, illustrator Chris Judge and street artist Maser, among many others. An early theme to emerge during the three-day event was one of curiosity. As

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Pentagram partner Marina Willer pointed out during an entertaining talk on the first day, the ability to observe and ask questions is a fundamental quality of any designer. She credited her young twin sons and their unfiltered curiosity about the world (“What happens if you don’t have a skeleton?”) among her greatest inspirations, as well as the brilliant chaos of daily life: “The best things that happen in life aren’t planned,” she said, “and the same is true in design.” The theme quickly became more complex. Creative director Richard Turley twisted it intriguingly on Sunday, saying: “I try and bite the hand that feeds”. It’s a phrase that often comes back to him, he confided, and as he talked through

“It’s important that there’s a conspiracy behind the idea” Richard Turley, bloomberg businessweek

his work for Bloomberg Businessweek it soon became clear that Turley enjoys questioning convention. Some of his most innovative editorial concepts have seen him take an idea or design element and subvert its function to produce something different and unexpected. This suspicion was confirmed with a mock complaint from Turley about a highly detailed list of credits that had been supplied to be printed next to an image. “Why does every single person who was involved have to be mentioned here?” he deadpanned, standing in front of a slide showing the entire list unapologetically printed diagonally across the page. Good design, he said during a panel session on Saturday, makes people engage with it: “If I laugh at something, that feels like it could be a good idea,” he reflected. “For me, it’s important there’s some kind of conspiracy behind the idea – like you’re not meant to be doing what you’re doing.” Neville Brody echoed the thought: “We should be making trouble,” he urged, stating that designers need to take creative risks to produce meaningful work. “We’re stuck in a place of fear: fear that we’ll

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E V E n T S CULTURE

June 2014

Photography: Cian Brennan, www.cianbrennan.com

Clockwise from far left: Richard Turley talks through his time at the Guardian; Neville Brody speaks to a packed auditorium; one of M&E’s stunning speaker titles; and Illustrators Ireland’s depiction of artist Jon Burgerman

On the ground Three speakers on curiosity and the power of a new perspective

Marina Willer Pentagram

Photography: Lauren Pritchard

“Einstein said: ‘I’m not a genius, I’m just curious.’ That’s what makes you discover something else. You can apply that thinking to anything.”

lose our jobs; that we’ll lose our clients; that people won’t like our work. We’re in such a rush to get stuff out… But when we experiment and things go wrong you get new ideas and ways of thinking.” The auditorium was full for Brody’s Saturday afternoon talk, which became increasingly political as the internationally renowned designer traversed topics of wealth, scale and education. “I don’t think any government should ask its students to pay for education,” he stated, later suggesting in a one-on-one interview with design commentator Adrian Shaughnessy that the real responsibility to invest in education lies with the creative industries. Design legend Milton Glaser also picked up the political thread during an exclusive pre-recorded conversation with author Steven Heller screened later that evening. “Advertising and money have very effectively swept aside what it means to be a good practitioner,” Glaser commented. “Advertising, marketing and design are all mixed into this thick, noxious stew called branding.” Glaser, now 85, implored designers to question their function and work together

to help benefit society. “The sense of common purpose has diminished,” he reflected. “The role of people in design and art is to re-establish the communality.” Amid discussion of the industry’s deeper issues, a sense of celebration permeated the three-day event. From the engaging speaker portraits by Illustrators Ireland welcoming attendees through the doors each day, to M&E’s beautiful titles introducing each speaker onto the main stage, to the attitudes expressed by speakers and delegates alike, Offset 2014 cultivated a strong message of making and doing throughout. It was Tom Hingston who first referred to an “almost primal need to create”. In a rare appearance on the speaker circuit, he described some of his inspirations. “When I look at these things they instinctively make me want to react,” he said, showing work by Gerhard Richter and Miroslav Tichy. “You can’t always put your finger on why – but it makes you want to make stuff.” “The desire to make things is a profound commitment for life,” observed Glaser from his studio in New York. “It answers the question: ‘Why am I here?” compute ra rts.Creat iveblo q.com - 19 -

Johnny Winslade ilovedust

“We want nosiness in the studio. It’s a conscious decision for all of us to sit around one huge table. We want people to look at what each other is doing and get involved.”

Marian Bantjes ARTIST AND designer

“These things are around us and all we have to do is look and be inspired to make new things... I want people to go: ‘Why the fuck is that there?’”

CULTUR E E V E N TS

JUNE 2014

Photography: Lucy Wilmer, www.lucywilmerphotography.co.uk

Clockwise from left: Tatty Devine’s Harriet Vine discusses her craft with the BBC’s Fi Glover; Morag Myerscough sporting her trademark bright tights; Ken Garland entertains his audience

E V E NT R EP OR T: CH ELTENHAM DE SIGN FE STIVAL

CREATIVITY against all the odds At the third annual Cheltenham Design Festival, editor Nick Carson finds a diverse line-up of passionate designers who thrive in the face of adversity KEY INFO Location Cheltenham, UK www.cheltenham designfestival.com WhEN 4–5 April ATTENDEES Around 1,000 key speakers Ken Garland, Erik Kessels, Morag Myerscough, Laura JordanBambach

nited by the headline theme ‘Design Can’, this year’s Cheltenham Design Festival explored design as a powerful agent for change, and took place over two days at Cheltenham Ladies College’s intimate Parabola Arts Centre. The festival’s sessions were as varied as the designers delivering them. Speakers included design legend Ken Garland, renowned creative director Erik Kessels and designer Morag Myerscough, with talks touching on everything from spacecraft engineering to wheelchair design. One topic resonated throughout the festival: creativity in the face of seemingly unbeatable odds. Kessels, whose session was entitled ‘A good idea allows you to blur’, touched on not letting a lack of budget stand in your way. “Ideas don’t have to be limited by money,” he asserted. Indeed, financial adversity can often stimulate creativity. Tatty Devine cofounder Harriet Vine recalled how, as a student, the business began after she rescued a bag of leather off-cuts from the bin. “It’s the art school train of thought,” she smiled. “Nothing’s rubbish.”

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Hurdles simply encourage Vine to jump higher: “Things get hard; you get used to it; they get hard; you get used to it,” she said. “Unless things are challenging, it’s boring.” Two second-day speakers had everyone trumped when it came to overcoming tricky problems, however. First, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory’s Chris Bee gave a fascinating account of the design challenges of a space mission, from engineering a component to a tolerance of one micron, to developing a telescope that could assemble itself 1.5 million kilometres from Earth in minus 273 degrees Celsius.

“things get hard; you get used to it. unless things are challenging, it’s boring” harriet vine, tatty devine

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But easily the most inspirational talk of the whole festival came from David Constantine, co-founder of design consultancy Motivation. It began with the story of how, as a youth, he dived into a shallow pool while travelling in Australia and broke two vertebrae in his neck, permanently paralysing himself. He went on to reveal how a student brief at the RCA to design a wheelchair for the developing world set the cogs in motion for a decade of design innovation in the far-flung corners of the planet, from Bangladesh to Cambodia, where lack of materials and poor transport spurred him to create a wooden, flat-packed chair. Education was a recurring topic too, with D&AD’s Tim Lindsay lamenting the culture for unpaid placements as part of a panel debating UK design, and the challenges facing students arose again in a hugely entertaining closing session with Ken Garland and Sir Kenneth Grange. Garland frowned on how rising fees are restricting access. But he believes the future’s bright: “I’ve seen more potential in young people in the last 10 years than I have over the previous 40,” he declared.

E V E nT S CULTURE

JUNE 2014

W h at ’s on

dates for your diary June is grad show season – flick to our special supplement for details – but you’ll also find Cannes and its upstart rival Cannt, followed by our very own Photoshop Live in July

the MEAT

31 May 1 Justice Mill Lane, Aberdeen AB11 6EQ www.themeat.in This new conference in the north of Scotland celebrates the power of the side project, with speakers including Gav Strange of JamFactory and Aardman, and former Computer Arts staffer Al Wardle, the man behind artist-led streetwear brand AnyForty.

Barcelona Design Week

2-14 June Various venues www.barcelonadesignweek.es Throughout the first fortnight in June the Catalan capital will play host to conferences, exhibitions and networking sessions. This year’s guest country is Israel.

HERE LONDON

13 June Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London www.here-london.com Billed as a “symposium of inspirational talks exploring process and ideas across the art and design world,” It’s Nice That’s one-day creative festival has an impressive speaker line-up that includes Marion Deuchars, Marina Willer and Penny Martin.

Cannes Lions

15-21 June Palais des Festivals de Cannes www.canneslions.com The long-established “international festival of creativity” on the French Riviera is guaranteed to be bustling with the great and good of the agency world. As ever, the scale is enormous, with 12,000 people from over 90 countries converging on the south of France to celebrate the world’s very best advertising and design work.

CANNT FESTIVAL

17-21 June Various venues www.cannt.org Now in its third year, Cannt is pitched as London’s cheeky alternative to Cannes – a fun, inclusive and inspirational few days for the “busy little bees who make all the creative awesomeness happen” while their bosses are sunning themselves in France. This year has a ‘summer camp’ theme.

GENERATE NEW YORK

20 June New World Stages, New York www.generateconf.com Following a storming success in London last year, the inspiring web design conference from our sister magazine net makes its New York début this June.

Sheffield Design Week

23-28 June Various venues www.sheffielddesignweek.co.uk This inaugural celebration of all forms of design includes the Made North Conference, which will ask if design can save the world.

Daniel Weil on the art of design

25 June Design Museum, London www.designmuseum.org/talks See longstanding Pentagram partner Daniel Weil in conversation with Design

Museum director Deyan Sudjic as he discusses his thoughts on technology, education and culture.

FREE RANGE (ART & DESIGN)

27-30 JuNE (part one) 4-7 JULY (part two) Old Truman Brewery, London www.free-range.org.uk Free Range is the UK’s biggest platform for new creative talent: full listings start page 75.

D&AD NEW BLOOD

1-3 July Old Spitalfields Market, London www.dandad.org/new-blood If you only attend one grad show, make it this: see page 82 for why.

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PHOTOSHOP LIVE

18-19 JULY Brighton Dome, Brighton www.photoshopliveconf.com This exciting new event from Computer Arts and Creative Bloq is dedicated to all things Photoshop. Speakers include Justin Maller, James White, Radim Malinic and Casper Franken.

Quick Start Guide to Being a Creative Director

22 JuLY / 5 august / 15 august D&AD, London www.dandad.org/events A three-day course (£1,700) that helps you to analyse and improve your working methods, exploring different leadership techniques.

JUNE 2014

Strong opinion and analysis from across the global design industry THIS MONTH Craig Ward designer and art director www.wordsarepictures.co.uk

Louise Sloper Head of design, BETC London www.betc.co.uk

nils leonard executive creative director, grey london www.grey.co.uk

regular WRITERS LIZA ENEBEIS creative Director studio dumbar

laura jordan-bambach president, d&ad

HOSS GIFFORD digital strategist and animator

dawn hancock founder, firebelly design

craig ward designer and art director

louise sloper head of design, betc london

A manifesto for pitching Losing out on a dream pitch can be heartbreaking, but if the project never sees the light of day, agencies should take responsibility. Craig Ward draws up a contract to protect us from time-wasters

CR A I G WA R D Insight

JUNE 2014

about the writer Craig Ward is a British-born designer and art director currently based in New York. The 2008 ADC Young Gun is celebrated mainly for his pioneering typographic works, and he also contributes to various industry journals. www.wordsarepictures.co.uk

t’s been a weird year, work-wise. Not a bad year by any means, just a weird one. Looking at my ‘Completed Projects’ folder for 2014, I see eight projects that went live and six pitches. Six completely unsuccessful pitches, I hasten to add. Six for six. Not a great ratio, really.  I don’t take these things personally. Someone more self-conscious than myself might start to think that something was wrong with their work if they saw a 100 per cent failure-to-convert record, but when I look at what actually happened with those projects, things become a little clearer.  The level of mental involvement and the amount of work required for these pitches varied greatly. Some soaked up several weeks of my time and involved various rounds of revisions, while others needed just a moodboard accompanied by an estimate. Even when I’m simply asked to walk clients through a process and show them ideas, I feel like I’m having to mentally, preemptively do the work. My processes tend to be rather convoluted, which has always been a problem with my approach – the will is there, but not every client has the time or budget to create things for real. As it transpires, five out of the six projects I pitched for this year never actually saw the light of day. The other one I just wasn’t right for, or my ideas sucked or whatever. Who cares? I can let that go. But for five out of six projects not even to be awarded to anyone that was asked to pitch is a pretty shameful statistic – and it serves as further evidence that there are a lot of companies out there that are still using pitches as a form of idea-farming. Coupled with that is the sheer amount of wasted effort. Imagine that three other people pitched on each of those projects, and that each spent the same amount of time as me. Three weeks of my time spent on one pitch becomes twelve wasted weeks in total. The man-hours spent per year, industry-wide, pursuing projects like these must be staggering. So what’s the solution? It’s tricky, because having been on both sides of the fence, I understand why sometimes putting a project out to tender is necessary. For instance, if you’re trying to do something new and you need to see how someone responds to the brief. What it really comes down to is simply having a little respect for those being asked to pitch.

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Casting my mind back to a slightly drunken conversation with one Mario Hugo a year or so ago, I feel like we came up with some kind of a manifesto that could work. It would basically involve the client signing off on three things. Firstly, a small fee. Just a token amount of money for your time to show that they’re serious and that they value your time. It doesn’t have to be much, but giant agencies and companies asking individuals to work for free is shameful. Secondly, a list of who else was being asked to pitch on the project. The cloak-and-dagger approach to creative work in these scenarios is totally unnecessary. It can be illuminating – flattering even – to know who you’re up against, and can inspire better work, I think. And thirdly, a guarantee that the project will be awarded to someone. One of the larger projects I

“five out of the six projects I pitched for this year never saw the light of day. That’s a pretty shameful statistic”

pitched for this year, it turned out, had not been cleared by the client’s legal department. Awesome that they had me spend almost a month, on-and-off, working on my pitch before telling me this. Not so crazy, right? That’s all it needs to be. Nothing more convoluted than a PDF you ask clients to sign before you begin work. The only way these things can work, however, is if everyone gets on board. We’re an industry famed for undercutting one another and for jealously guarding our ideas. There’s no honour amongst designers it seems. But on this subject I feel that as an industry we could stand together. I’m happy to take the lead on it and draft this thing up. Who’s with me? Would you sign up to Craig’s manifesto? Tweet your thoughts to @ComputerArts using #DesignMatters

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Insight D ESI G N M AT TER S

JUNE 2014

“Copying: Flattery or theft? ” Six creatives share their views

Michael Johnson Founder, johnson banks www.johnsonbanks.co.uk “It’s often a shock when our work is copied – most recently Mandagrams (Chineasy) and our St David’s identity (Cancer Research). That’s swiftly followed by the realisation that ‘going legal’ will cost upwards of £30k. Then there’s the nagging doubt in your mind that even that project on your screen could itself be a copy. You just don’t know it’s a copy. Yet.”

Eve Duhamel c0-Founder, ValléeDuhamel www.valleeduhamel.com

“Plagiarism is a complete waste of time, and so boring. At the speed information and images travel nowadays, it will hardly go unnoticed. Inspiration, on the other hand, is filled with curiosity, taste for exploration and affinity with the beautiful. Getting inspired by everything around you, mixing it all together and spinning it in your head until you truly make it yours is not copying. It’s evolving.”

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Marian Bantjes Designer and illustrator www.bantjes.com “Where there is further exploration or distinct transformation, it’s relatively fine. But if the copying is direct – the overt recreation of the source – it falls somewhere on the spectrum between lazy and illegal. I constantly have people telling me that someone has ‘ripped me off’ and nearly every time I look, it’s perfectly fine. I have to explain that I don’t own certain aspects of style that have been associated with my work. That said, I’ve called the lawyers three times to deal with issues of plagarism and won a settlement each time.”

DESIG N M AT T E R S Insight

JUNE 2014

Shadow CHEN Illustrator and digital artist www.artofshadowchen.com

“Mostly I feel sorry for the person who’s doing the copying. It won’t really damage or affect the original author because his or her style will always be evolving. It’s more like cheating yourself, because being original is the first step and the most important part of any creative process.”

Becca Allen Designer and Illustrator www.beccaallen.co.uk

“One guy was copying a lot of my work a few years ago – it took a lot of stern emails for him to stop ripping me off, but in the end he turned out to be harmless. He was just an admirer, and thought by practicing exactly what I did he would get better at design. Now he emails me quite regularly for advice – he just wanted a bit of guidance.”

Your views Comment on Facebook, or tweet @ComputerArts with your thoughts using #DesignMatters

Richard Turley Creative director, Bloomburg Businessweek www.richardturley.tumblr.com “People are a bit angsty about always having to have the original idea, but I think it’s good to admit we’re a link in a chain. It’s good to admit where ideas come from.”

@capercail runner “I doubt any designer today or yesterday can say their design is completely unique. We all need inspiration.”

@GeorgeHTDent “Art is theft in itself. We take our ideas from everything we see, and replicate ideas with our own interpretation.”

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Scott Para “When your work is an exact or even close copy then you have learned nothing but how to trace.”

@julia_design “The ‘flattery’ thing is nonsense; you don’t feel flattered if someone steals your laptop because you have good taste!”

I n s i g h t L O U I SE SL O P ER

JUNE 2014

About the writer Louise Sloper is head of design at BETC London, last year picking up awards including a Campaign Outdoor Hall of Fame, an Epica and an ADC. She is a D&AD 2014 juror and a committee member of the Typographic Circle. www.betc.co.uk

A digital craft revolution Having witnessed a woeful lack of advertising craft skills in this year’s D&AD Awards entries, judge Louise Sloper argues that the digital world is increasingly the place for them to thrive

t was a great privilege to be foreman of the Crafts for Advertising jury at the D&AD Awards this year. We spent days in the vast beauty of London’s Olympia, fuelled by cups of coffee and bacon sandwiches, sifting through the huge amounts of entries; the good, the bad and, in some cases, the ugly. A select number of pieces shone out like beacons, exquisite in their crafting, making us exclaim D&AD’s very own mantra: “I wish I’d done that”. Many of the best were in the digital categories, which surprised me. It really shouldn’t have, but coming from a background of ‘traditional’ crafts, I was expecting to see a plethora of typography, intricate printing techniques and experimental illustration. With a great deal of sadness, I have to admit that typography was both shockingly under-represented and woefully poor in my category (both in print and digital). This is perhaps a reflection of, in my opinion, the lack of importance given at many an advertising agency in recent times to carefully crafting the final execution rather than just ‘Mac-ing up’ an idea. There were numerous mouthwatering, eyeball-popping typographical entries in the Graphic Design categories, which just goes to show that the appetite for type and craft is most definitely there. It’s often discussed that over the last few years advertising designers have less time and budget given to them to execute their work, compared with our graphic design counterparts. It most certainly is not

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for lack of talent in the field, as many of the most accomplished and creative typographers and designers I know are working in the design departments of advertising agencies. But I digress – rant over. In the digital categories, it was a great pleasure to see innovative technology that seamlessly intertwined with incredible visual and sound design. The coming together of these elements into one package is a huge step forward in this field and has resulted in some exceptional work of late. Good examples include the multi-award-winning Dumb Ways to Die campaign (John Mescall, the executive creative director at McCann Australia, was on the Crafts jury), and the Sound of Honda film and website by Dentsu, Japan. It is so refreshing to see a technical piece of programming also looking the part. The investment and development in skillsets to get this right has naturally been slow, but is now bursting into life with some serious talent working in the digital field. The front-runners in this area are merging the teachings of ‘traditional’ media with the excitement of the fast, ever-evolving multimedia sector. Exciting things lie ahead in digital. And I’m so pleased that craft is taking equal limelight, as great craft in any medium transforms a good idea into a truly exceptional one. I will watch with interest to see what happens in the next few years. Is craft in advertising dying? Tweet @ComputerArts using  #DesignMatters to let us know your thoughts

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I n s i g h t N i l s L eo n a rd

Ju n e 2014

About the writer Nils Leonard is the executive creative director at Grey London, and since being appointed has overseen the most profitable and creatively awarded years in the agency’s 52-year history. Nils is also on the jury for a number of awards schemes and has spoken at events including SXSW. www.grey.co.uk

Can type change the world? Making a difference is better than sex, says Grey London’s Nils Leonard – which is why he commissioned a typeface that uses 27 per cent less ink than its nearest eco rival

used to think about sex at work all the time. Now I think about how I can do some good in the world. Why? Because I found love? Or God? Nah – because using sex as a way to create cultural currency is over. Doing good is where it’s at. It’s relatively easy to identify trends and express a social conscience in marketing campaigns. It’s much trickier in design. But there is one weapon we have in our armoury with the power to save the world: the font. Quite apart from the words expressed, any design choice we make here has massive implications on how much ink is used (or, rather, misused). This may not sound like a big deal on the (type)face of it. But it is. That’s why the US government is all abuzz because of a 14-year-old boy, Suvir Mirchandani. He’s worked out that it could save millions just by switching fonts on official documents from Times New Roman to Garamond. To his fresh face – and to my not-so-fresh-face – it’s a no-brainer. I commend him for challenging the apathy. But why stop at Garamond? Let’s push creative boundaries harder and develop an entirely new font that is both sustainable and sexy. Every effort I’ve seen on the eco-font front has been lame, ugly and expensive. Like so many eco products, they’ve felt like one big, fat compromise. And that’s why we briefed Monotype to create something beautiful, sustainable and completely free. It’s one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever worked on, and it forces you to constantly balance the tension

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between these three objectives. Monotype’s response is incredible. I love that the font gets more elegant as it gets bigger. I love that, at more standard sizes, the ink bleeds into the white space between the dozens of thin lines and curves making up each letter. And I really love the ‘Q’ and ‘R’. Once we had the font, we needed a client home to take it global. We pitched it in a tweet, and in Ryman found a soul mate. A company that’s smart enough for an idea like this, and understands asking people to use less ink doesn’t undermine their business – it sets them apart by doing something good. Together we’re determined to change the world, one letter at a time. Now it’s over to you. We want it to be the world’s default font. If everyone used Ryman Eco when printing, we would save over 490 million ink cartridges and nearly 15 million barrels of oil. That’s equivalent to 6.5m tonnes of CO2 emissions a year. But I don’t want you to use Ryman Eco because you ‘should’ (although you definitely should). My dream is for the design world to embrace it and play with all the ideas tied up in the typeface. It’s not just about a font. It’s about creating a design for modern life that works. And it’s never been more urgent – just read the UN’s latest findings on global warming. This is our chance to put a design dent in the Universe. Are you up for the challenge? Can a new typeface help change the world? Tweet your thoughts to @ComputerArts using #DesignMatters

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Presents

Don’t miss our new series of practical handbooks bringing you everything you need to succeed as a professional creative

on sale now WHSmith Barnes & Noble Chapters www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/design

Computer Arts selects the hottest new design, illustration and motion work from the global design scene

Faster, Higher, Stronger Oslo 2022 Winter Olympic bid Identity by Snøhetta www.snohetta.com

Tasked with creating a visual identity for Oslo’s bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, architectural and design firm Snøhetta combined geometrical shapes formed from the key ‘O’, ‘S’, ‘2’ and ‘0’ characters in a cheerful nod to the rings of the Olympic logo. “We tried to convey a visual language that could communicate the inherent simplicity and openness in Nordic culture,” explains senior designer Henrik S. Haugan, adding that the firm combined two rather contradictory looks: “Bold and colourful meets the crisp dryness of a perfectly designed official document.”

S ho w c a s e

June 2014

Stunning aerial photography plays a key role in Snøhetta’s branding scheme for Oslo’s Winter Olympics bid. “Oslo is one of the very few capitals in the world able to host most of the Winter Olympic events only minutes from the city centre,” explains senior designer Henrik S. Haugan. ‘Nordic Simplicity’ was decided upon as the theme and Snøhetta used this concept as its guiding principle throughout the project. Snøhetta constructed a logo that played on the graphic shapes of the city’s name, and the curve of the ‘O’ in particular, and combined it with colours inspired by the Olympic rings. Motifs such as the circle appear throughout the wide range of print and digital collateral required, helping to tie the scheme together. “We see design from the 30s and 40s as very typical for Oslo, thus we wanted the identity to have some of the same flavour,” says Haugan. Given the sizeable audience for the work, it was important that the identity could appeal to groups as disparate as the International Olympic Committee and general sports-lovers.

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Th e very b e s t ne w de si g n

June 2014

the rest of the industry says… Julien Vallée

Vallée Duhamel www.valleeduhamel.com

“‘Oslo’ has the advantage of beautiful geometric characters. The ‘O’ can be simple but played in different ways (perfect circle, elongated, oval). They made it the key symbol, and I love the way they started from it to build all letters with curves in the logo.”

Nick Eagleton The Partners www.the-partners.com

“The logo, typeface and colour palette are lovely, as are the aerial pictures. They conjure a sense of place and occasion that suits the event beautifully. However, too many of the executions are corporate where they could be iconic. Lose the pictures in circles, set the logo free and amazing things can happen.”

Mattias Svensson Söderhavet www.soderhavet.com

“Snøhetta’s design is light, intelligent and very easy to like. I can see flexibility and I think the design will work great at larger sizes. On the other hand, it’s a bit too strict to touch me with that joyful, festival feeling. At small sizes the detail in the logotype transforms.”

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S ho w c a s e

June 2014

City brights London Live illustrations by Yoni Alter www.yoniishappy.com

When branding agency Kemistry was looking for a graphic artist to capture the essence of London as part of its work for new TV channel London Live, it knew Yoni Alter was the man for the job. Alter was asked to apply his signature style – bright, pared-back and impactful – to various iconic London scenes. “It was a matter of going through images, looking for something that will turn me on and will work well when simplified,” he explains. The campaign has already begun its takeover of the city, with designs being splashed across a wraparound cover for the Evening Standard newspaper. “It was fun seeing the tube stations getting boosts of colour,” Alter smiles.

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Th e very b e s t ne w de si g n

June 2014

By the book Manuals 1 by Unit Editions www.uniteditions.com

“Manuals are complete graphic design porn – lots of bold structure, information graphics and typography,” says Tony Brook. “They often map out the construction of an entire visual language. It doesn’t get much better for design nerds.” This was the thinking behind Unit Editions’ decision to create Manuals 1, a beautiful, comprehensive volume on corporate identity manuals. The book focuses on the ‘golden age’ of identity design, from the 1960s to the early 1980s. The studio called in examples from all over the world, covering everything from saddle-stitched booklets to giant ringbinders. Presenting such a range of material required some planning. “There’s no point showing all these fancy graphics if you can’t also read what the designer’s intentions were,” reasons editorial coordinator Sarah Schrauwen. “The key thought was the idea of scale contrasting with detail,” adds Brook. “The logos are often grand and monumental, and the supporting typography is often delicate and sophisticated.”

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easy as ABC Alphabet by Foreal www.weareforeal.com

Foreal’s alphabet all began, unsurprisingly, with the letter ‘A’. The studio designed the letter for a commercial project that never made it, and the project grew from there. “We saw it as a canvas for playing around with different tools,” explains Benjamin Simon, who co-founded the studio with Dirk Schuster. “Everyone was free to create whatever came to mind, just following one simple rule: use the new sculpting tools.” Although certain experiments – such as a phallic ‘G’ – didn’t make the cut, the final alphabet still manages to run the gamut from mouthwatering to kooky, taking in some satisfyingly disgusting creations along the way. “There is no favourite letter for us. We love some for their graphic effect, or how they work in terms of space and colour,” says Schuster. “Some for their weirdness. Others just look cool.”

Toucan tango Body Shop D&AD new Blood entry by Tom Anders Watkins www.tomanders.com

Many first-year design students would wait until they’d gained a little more experience before entering D&AD New Blood. Not Tom Anders Watkins, though. “I was advised to wait until my third year to enter, but with a chance to win a coveted D&AD Pencil it was really a no-brainer,” he recalls. The ballsiness paid off, with Watkins creating a visually striking campaign for the Body Shop brief that stands strong against professional work. “The Body Shop prides itself on beauty. What’s beautiful? Flowers,” says Watkins. “And that was my general thinking – to create these flower-inspired designs that didn’t just advertise, but would look good as works of art. Playing with colour was a large part of the process – I needed everything to pop.” His favourite bit? “It has to be my little toucan friend,” Watkins smiles. “That guy took far too long to make, but certainly adds something different.”

Th e very b e s t ne w de si g n

June 2014

diecut diamond Edition Scotland identity by Freytag Anderson www.freytaganderson.com

When luxury knitwear label Edition Scotland asked Glasgow-based design studio Freytag Anderson to create a visual identity for the company, the team crafted a slick diamond icon – influenced by the tradition argyle pattern – that could be applied to everything from product labelling and packaging to stationery. “It had to be simple enough to be easily applied to a variety of products and materials, yet recognisable enough to create strong brand recognition,” explains creative director Greig Anderson. “The pattern was extended to diecut swing tags and even a rubber stamp to indicate unique product edition numbers.”

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S ho w c a s e

June 2014

— MOTION HIGHLIGHT — Dog eat Dog Chella Ride music video by Golden Wolf www.goldenwolf.tv

“Oh man… It’s a little hard to explain in short,” chuckles creative director Ingi Erlingsson when called upon to explain the main premise behind Golden Wolf’s Chella Ride video. Originally tasked with creating a video based on the EP artwork for Dog Blood’s Chella Ride – which features two dogs biting each other’s heads off – the team felt it could do one better. “We liked the style and we liked the concept, but we wanted to do something a little more elaborate and interesting,” smiles Erlingsson. Cue a meandering back-story involving genetically modified dogs, a dystopian future and spaceships built from 60s junk. So extensive was the project that the whole team got involved – with some creatives inevitably getting the short straw. “The dogs’ faces were painstakingly drawn by hand, one hair at a time, by Marie [Ecarlat], one of our designers,” recalls Erlingsson. “It took her over a week to draw each face.”

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Th e very b e s t ne w de si g n

June 2014

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S ho w c a s e

June 2014

— FEATURED SHOWREEL —

Out of the woodwork Studio Showreel by Woodwork www.woodwork.nl

Woodwork is a creative film, animation and design studio, founded in 2011 and housed in a boutique in the centre of Amsterdam. “Woodwork was carved out of the idea that digital and analogue can work together harmoniously,” says creative director Marvin Koppejan. “When naming our company we wanted something that would express the human artistry that would go into creating our future projects.” This principle is perfectly encapsulated in the short animation that brings the studio’s name to life at the start of its 2014 showreel. “We wanted to tell the story of an unpolished rock transforming into a diamond, a journey that each of our projects goes through,” explains Koppejan. “Furthermore we wanted people to be curious about it. So, mission accomplished.”

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T h e Awa rd - winning

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Sp eci al R e p o r T

JUNE 2014

Special Report

From the Space Invaders aliens to Ronald McDonald, characters and mascots can define a concept and even take on a life of their own. Pictoplasma takes us on a trip through the history of character design

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A u t h o rs

r, Thale Peter d n a e ders e n ic k fou n Lars D a co m s a pl P ic t o ders of co-foun n that are the r a te is e n P n, a tio Lars and a, a unique org character desig ns. m itio ry s ib la ra h p o x p to e Pic and ntem , events ses in co speciali ross publishing toplasma has ic ac y working unch in 1999, P ect emotionall la nn sh Since its t images that co lobally and pu g ou te a d s ic te It n . n u s u h mit mm wers, co design to new li estival is with vie and F orphic e c m n o p re ro anth Confe is year. ersary th ed Berlin renown g its 10th anniv tin a.com celebra toplasm www.pic

Sp eci al R e p o r T

JUNE 2014

Left: Büro Destruct’s minimal characters typified character design at the turn of the millennium Below: Space Invaders, one of the first arcade games to introduce character visuals

R

emember the days when the internet was so slow that loading one picture took several minutes, you needed to know an hour in advance what song you wanted to listen to next on Napster, and video was completely out of the question? Only about a decade and a half ago, at the dawn of the digital age, we were excitedly listening to the dialling tones of our 56k modems tuning in to a new world, eagerly waiting to be greeted by a handful of pixels. The new breed of figurative design at the turn of the millennium was dominated by friendly, abstract and flat characters, so highly reduced they were almost bordering on typography. Characters were made up of bulky, rectangular pixels as if to celebrate the new medium of the computer screen. At the same time, they avoided all narrative, biographical or cultural context, functioning purely in terms of appeal. It was exactly this quality that set them up to be the main players in a new, minimal yet highly emotional aesthetic that has since spread across the visual world. Some of the most memorable characters of the time were designed by typographers such as Büro Destruct. The Swiss graphic design agency was among those at the forefront of reduced figurative design, releasing very minimal, geometric characters alongside new typefaces. It makes sense to understand the aesthetics of character design in terms of communication. Tellingly, the English word ‘character’ has multiple meanings. It describes a coded icon in a system of language, a figurative representation, as well as a persona. Fulfilling all three qualities was a distinctive feature of these early characters on the internet. The characters needed to function as a replacement of language – as if, with their universal appeal, they could transcend

cultural differences and language boundaries, creating a graphical Esperanto that would put us all in the same global village. The third meaning of the word, personification, was linked to the idea of the internet opening a new, virtual world in which these characters were supposedly at home. It is the most complex concept of character and brings us to the controversial question of whether humans can be graphically represented by avatars.

“ Befo r e the i n te rn et ga ve c harac ters a n ew te rritory to populate, t he ir natu ral hab itat was in the worlds of a ni mation or c omic s, a s commerc ial masc ots o r i n video g ames”

Non-Narrative mascots

Before the internet gave characters a new territory to populate, their natural habitat was mainly in the worlds of animation or comics, as commercial mascots or in video games. Space Invaders – one of the first and most iconic arcade games to introduce character visuals – was all about playfully taming our technological angst. The unknown was clearly represented as an archetypical, hostile, alien race approaching our world. The aliens’ design was focused on anthropomorphising a handful of pixels, which created an iconic logotype that continues to communicate with generations even today. In contrast, the graphical representation of the player was nothing more than a pixelated icon of a gun firing to the sky. The idea of representation was completely non-existent. Graphic novels, comics and the animation industry have created an endless stream of iconic characters that continuously

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Craig Redman Darcel Disappoints www.darceldisappoints.com Illustrator Craig Redman first introduced his ‘Darcel Disappoints’ character to help him deal with the frustration of living in New York, but being unable to participate in the city’s glamorous lifestyle. “I decided that I wanted to create an illustrated blog about my observations and adventures in my new city, so I developed a very simple character that could easily be manipulated into lots of different positions,” explains Redman. The character shape was inspired by a friend of the artist, who described New York residents as “eggs on stilts” – overweight bodies stuffed into too-tight skinny jeans. The daily comic illustrations on Redman’s blog soon gained him the fame he was longing for, and it opened the doors to a glorious, fashionable world for both him and Darcel.

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Rodrigo Aguilar

dominate popular culture. But these genres subject their characters to a strict narration and biography. Our understanding of them is guided by a knowledge of their behavioural patterns, aims, needs and their interaction with others. This is where the character iconology of the internet differed fundamentally – the characters here were solely dependent on making a visual connection, and had nothing more to tell us than ‘hello’.

Cutting through the white noise Indeed, the characters of the internet boom had much more in common with the idea of a commercial mascot. The history of this phenomenon started with the Michelin Man. In 1894, a stack of tires reminded the brothers who were running the business of a standing man, and the first mascot ever to be developed by a corporation as the face of a brand was born. What followed was an avalanche of new mascots. Characters on cereal boxes; Ronald McDonald, both in costume and graphics; the Esso Tiger, blown out of proportion on the roof of gas stations; and the chocolate drop-shaped creatures for M&Ms are just a few examples of the mascots still known globally today. The mascot is a phenomenon that can best be understood in terms of visual communication. Positioning Theory, predominant in marketing since the 1970s, uses the example of a ballooning masscommunication that makes it more and more difficult for any message to reach the recipient. In order for a brand to succeed, it needs a focused and simple position that differentiates it from any other, making it unique in the consumer’s mind. Only a clear, direct message can cut through the growing white noise of information overload in order to reach the consumer. And mascots have been conceived as essential partners in this process. Positioning Theory can also enhance our understanding of how characters communicate on the internet. The character visuals that emerged online reinforced a reduced and minimal facial pattern, an aesthetic that has been linked with the very origins of image culture. These patterns were the key to communication

El Grand Chamaco

Pictoplasma #CharacterSelfies www.characterselfies.tumblr.com In 2014, to celebrate its 10th anniversary, the Pictoplasma Berlin Festival goes back to basics with a thematic focus on portraiture. It saw its chance to inject the current narcissistic trend for ‘selfies’ with some true character. In an open call for #CharacterSelfies, Pictoplasma invited international designers, illustrators and artists to explore the current status of contemporary character exhibitionism by submitting snapshots that their characters have ‘taken’ of themselves. Over 2,000 selfies were submitted, a selection of which are exhibited from April 30 to May 4 at the Pictoplasma Berlin Conference.

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Eloy Krioka

Anna Hrachovec

T-Wei

Cecy Meade

Marvik Nunez

Itchy Soul

Luciana Lopez Diaz

Luke Ramsey

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Akapush

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Welsh artist Pete Fowler brought his characters off the screen by transforming them  into vinyl figurines

Photography: Achim Hatzius

Pictoplasma asked 30 different artists to create character costumes for its PictoOrphanage

with their minimal, geometrical shapes – saw their peak in popularity right at the beginning of the millennium. Growing out of a cultural phenomenon that originated in Hong Kong, renowned Western protagonists such as James Jarvis, Pete Fowler, Nathan Jurevicius and Kaws released a cast of characters that were immortalised in vinyl and became sought-after collectibles. As a counter to the often sterile, mass-produced feel of urban vinyl, a wave of cuddly, handmade designer plush dolls followed. Most notably, David Horvath and Sun-Min Kim’s Uglydolls, which started out as personal love-messengers during the pair’s long-distance relationship, but became a mainstream product. From there, the obvious next step was to grow in proportion, and soon character costumes from the hands of designers such as FriendsWithYou and Doma inspired many artists to translate their two-dimensional characters into the real world. Back in 2006, we created the PictoOrphanage, a family of 30 costumes based on character designs by various artists, lifted by personal donors from the two-dimensional world into our three-dimensional one. Together, all these strategies can be seen as ways of transmediating the virtual world of the internet (or, any flat image, generally) to our reality. Lately, more and more digital artists have started to explore analogue techniques, thus questioning the divide between digital and analogue and anticipating the movement towards post-digitalism. Nina Braun and Anna Hrachovec bring graphic structures and boldness to the meticulous craft of knitting. Roman Klonek translates his digitised sketches into woodcut prints, and Bakea has gained a following for his digital illustrations of sepia-toned, three-eyed monsters via social media, while his real passion lies in turning them into ‘taxidermies’. Numerous artists vectorise their sketches before painting them onto canvas. The list could be endless.

“ T he de s i r e to br eak free from the in ternet ca me early on i n its hi s t ory. Urb an desig ner toys saw their peek in p opula rity right at the b eg inn in g of the millenn ium”

without words, drawing our attention to websites. They acted not as a form of human representation, but the incarnation of beings living in a virtual world – they were friendly gatekeepers, functioning more like a mask or mascot does than the narrative characters in animations and comics. Of course, to conjure this mantra today seems anachronistic. By now we are used to instant photography and video, wherever and whenever we want it. We are uploading, sharing and multiplying a never-ending stream of photos, depicting our food, our pets, our faces. There seems to be no more need for reduced or abstract representation. So, where have all the characters gone?

The move to reality The desire to break free from the internet came early on in its history. Urban designer toys – direct translations of digital perfectionism,

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B o r i s H o pp e k Blackface www.borishoppek.de Controversial German artist Boris Hoppek has spread his Blackface character over Europe’s streets, trying to neutralise the hate sign and turn it into a meaningless symbol. Later on he re-introduced the same iconography with a political message, as a protest against oppression, exclusion and persecution of minorities. The character’s design has changed just once since its creation. “At the beginning I made the face happy or sad by changing the mouth, but then I decided to only use one expression, neutral. Now the mood of the character depends on the viewer or the situation I put the character in,” says Hoppek.

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Left: Bakea’s characters live mainly online, but some are brought into the real world and turned into ‘taxidermies’ Below: An adapted version of Ronald McDonald used by Doma to make a political statement in Argentina’s time of national bankruptcy

While all these works may be perceived as mere analogue objects, their links with a digital aesthetic or tool transform them into a comment on the impermanent state of any digital image, for which the rule is: when power is off, it will be gone. Making the transition to analogue media helps increase longevity.

Mascots and street art

“ An othe r s t r ateg y i s to bu i ld upon a c ommon visual voc abular y. . . charac ters res emble ma sc ots, with slight a lteratio ns freein g them f rom the pr oduc t t hey u sed to stand for”

Another strategy of many artists in their quest to establish a recognisable character is to build upon a common visual vocabulary they share with their audience. Often, characters resemble popular commerical mascots, with slight variations and alterations freeing them from the product they used to stand for. The playful quoting, remixing, deconstruction and echoing of established mascots can be seen in Juan Molinet’s fake Japanese product designs, or Osian Efnisien’s ‘tiny’ series. In 2003, Doma introduced a slightly altered version of Ronald McDonald as a presidential candidate in Argentina’s times of national bankruptcy. Its animated commercials and street campaigns criticised the reduction of the economy to beef production and not offering an aspiring generation other chances. Illustrator Jeremyville’s ongoing series of Community Service Announcements casts iconic mascots making reconciliatory gestures to try and heal the damage they’ve done as representatives of their parent brands. Back in 2013, Pictoplasma created its White Noise Serials installation; applying 500 different designers’ characters onto empty packages, selling nothing more than the characters themselves. All of these examples manipulated the original mascot, and by changing

slight details or putting them into new contexts, manged to evoke entirely different meanings and associations for viewers. Turning to the streets, urban artists have established their distinct characters as mascots, including The London Police, Flying Förtress, D*Face and Buff Monster. Street art stands in direct competition to branding – the practice started as a reappropriation of the public space that was so visually dominated by advertising. By applying the same method as branding – positioning a clear message with a mascot – street artists turned advertising’s means against its cause. The connection between the two can be seen in the Clean City law that São Paulo introduced in 2006, in which advertising was prohibited and removed from public space, and with it also all urban art. The artist mr clement presents his bunny character, Petit Lapin, as a generic rabbit shape, plain white and almost featureless. It’s as if it were an empty, white screen, offering itself to our projections and longings. Still, he uses it as a mascot throughout his work. With an output of paintings, comics, sculptures and toys, mr clement is creating a growing body of artwork that revolves around a character as an empty shell.

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Rilla Alexander Sozi www.byrilla.com Sozi is the alter-ego of designer and illustrator Rilla Alexander, whose book Her Idea – about Sozi’s procrastination problem – can also be read as Alexander’s story during the creation of Sozi, as it took her over a decade to complete the character project. Her Idea is now a whole series. “Sozi’s defining characteristic is her redness,” explains Alexander. “I come from a family of three girls, and we were colour coded: red, yellow and blue. I just never stopped being the red one. It’s fair to say that Sozi and I are inseparable, and it’s hard to say where I stop and she starts.”

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Right: Cherry was designed as an alter-ego for her creator, who has kept her identity a secret

A history of Image theory

Below: mr clement’s Petit Lapin is almost a blank page upon which the viewer can project their own characteristics

The Pictoplasma founders explain the theories around our response to characters – and how they’ve changed

From the deconstructive critique of the mascot, via the reclamation of the public space, mascots are starting to divorce from product associations and stand for themselves. This becomes most obvious in cases where the character clearly functions as an alter-ego to mask or replace the artist. For instance, Cherry – singer of virtual electro-pop band Studio Killers – has been circulating as a graphical visual identity on the web and in animated music videos for some time. Fans were kept in the dark as to her actual creator. When the artist behind Cherry revealed herself during a talk at the Pictoplasma Conference, she explained how the character was initially created as an alter-ego – her fantasy of a woman completely at ease with being different from the female stereotype. Perhaps the next stage of evolution for mascots will be a point at which creator and character have become completely indistinguishable.

The projection of personality onto imaginary beings is a recurring anthropological trait stretching right back into the history of humanity. In 77–79 AD, Pliny the Elder wrote of “savage and wild men” with “heads like dogs”. Parallel can be drawn between Plini’s monstrous races of the New World and the non-corporeal digital monsters that inhabited the internet 500 years later. Yet the smiling web icons found in the virtual worlds at the turn of the century were not intended to scare us. Instead they were shown as friendly gatekeepers – happy beings that told us not to be afraid of the unknown territories and helped us overcome our technological angst. In order to truly understand the communicational quality of characters, we need to look at wider genealogies of images in general. Image theories from recent years have defined the essence of an image as the peculiar quality that makes us feel like we are being looked at. At the same time, we are aware the character is not a living being. Images are interpreted as if they are ‘vital signs’; neither living nor inanimate nor dead, but rather ‘undead’, as W.J.T. Mitchell describes them. Other scholars, such as Hans Belting, have traced the origin of the ontological status of images back to the mummification of the dead, masks and talismans: abstract and schematic facial patterns that don’t depict creatures of our world, but instead reference the dead or beings imagined to exist beyond our senses. These theories argue that image culture is about projecting what is not present, and animating it to give the impression that an essence is present that goes beyond the picture in front of us. Abstract and reduced facial patterns are among the most powerful images to evoke this response. We can think of a facial representation operating at the border of any virtual world to suggest an animated creature, and thus imply another world. Following this genealogy of image theory, characters cannot be conceived as our avatars in the sense that they represent us. They rather bring into play the older connotation of the word avatar: ‘incarnation’.

Design’s leading innovators. As part of a special Innovation Issue dedicated to exciting new processes, emerging technologies and game-changing ways of thinking, our next Special Report gets under the skin of the world’s foremost creative pioneers and explores why they’re changing the face of design as we know it.

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Power of three Famously reclusive, proudly obsessive Dutch trio Experimental Jetset discuss influences, attitude and the neutral typeface that has paradoxically come to define them

Words: Nick Carson Photography: Johannes Schwartz www.johannesschwartz.com

At A gl ance: E xperimental Jetset D a t e f o u n d e d : 1997 N u m b e r o f s t a f f : Three  L o c a t i o n : Amsterdam, The Netherlands  D i s c i p l i n e s : Graphic design, exhibition design FEATURE D PRO J ECT s : Two Or Three Things I Know About Provo, Game Theory, Zang! Tumb Tumb UR L : www.experimentaljetset.nl

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Before we even start, Stolk ponders: “Would it not be easier to do this via email?” She’s concerned that they may come across as too abrupt: after all, the trio like to put almost as much thought into their responses as they do their work.

Pack mentalit y

T

he clean lines, monochrome colour palette and Helvetica-flavoured simplicity of Experimental Jetset’s body of graphic design work can be deceptive. For beneath every bold geometric shape and clever twist of wordplay you’ll find a rich layer of thought-provoking concepts and often obscure cultural touchpoints that reward further exploration. In some cases, these references are subtle enough to be missed by all but the most attentive of viewers, and require some level of explanation – and the studio often delves into these things in a great deal of depth through fascinating essay-like write-ups on its website. But these are always about the work, and all too rarely about the people behind it. Experimental Jetset comprises Danny van den Dungen, Marieke Stolk and Erwin Brinkers – but unless you’re fortunate enough to catch the trio face-to-face, it’s rare that an individual voice breaks from the collective. Emails are signed either with all three names, or simply ‘EJ’. Fortunately, Computer Arts had the chance to sit down with Van den Dungen, Stolk and Brinkers at the end of February, following an engaging talk at Design Indaba about their creative influences.

We’re sitting on a balcony outside the conference venue; Van den Dungen’s girlfriend joins us briefly, bringing a couple of plates of buffet salad. As the trio tuck in, they begin to relax and we begin by discussing how the three of them function as a unit. “We try to do everything collaboratively,” asserts Brinkers. “We tend to work on the same thing as much as possible, because we think we’re really a unit of graphic designers, rather than three separate ones.” Although not a football fan, unlike many of his compatriots, Van den Dungen reaches for a familiar Dutch sporting metaphor to continue Brinkers’ theme: “We sometimes compare it to Total Football,” he grins. “We once saw an interview with Johan Cruyff, where he was explaining this system where every player is able to play each other’s role. That’s something we aspire to.” Experimental Jetset’s Amsterdam-based studio is around 70 square metres; small enough to be intimate but large enough to avoid the trio – who have been working together for 17 years, since studying together at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie – from treading on each other’s toes. “If we were a studio in New York, we’d probably have 20 square metres,” Stolk points out. “It’s really all a question of context. For me, it’s not the amount of space we have but the amount of time we’ve been working together that’s more worrying.” Certainly it helps to explain how three independent minds can function with such a unified sense of purpose.

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Van den Dungen, Stolk and Brinkers as they move around the studio, consulting each other on ideas

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Project focus TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT PROVO One of many influences from the 60s, the Provo movement is particularly personal for Marieke Stolk – whose father was one of its founders

Curated, designed and installed entirely by Experimental Jetset, Two Or Three Things I Know About Provo was an exhibition in two parts – in Amsterdam from February to March 2011, and an extended version in Brno, in the Czech Republic, from June to October 2012. “Provo was an Amsterdam anarchist movement that existed for just two years (1965–1967), but its existence resonated for years to come, both in the Netherlands and abroad,” explain the trio on their website. Driven by a loose collective of artists and activists, Provo collated and published everything from activist agendas and political diatribes to artistic and utopian ideas. One of its founding fathers, Rob Stolk – also father to Marieke – became a printer, producing some of the subversive – at times even illegal – material, as mainstream printers refused to take it on. Experimental Jetset already had a sizable collection of Provo-related material, but more was acquired for the exhibition. It was carefully photographed, initially for financial reasons – there was no budget for frames or display cases – but the process also added another layer of perspective to the material. “The prints became still lifes, maybe even portraits,” the studio’s online essay continues. “Capturing every wrinkle in the paper, the act of photographing became an important part of the exhibition itself.” The studio also featured many variations of Provo’s ‘Gnot Apple’ logo, scanned from different sources to demonstrate a number of possible interpretations. Most similar artistic and political movements are relatively fluid, and have amorphous beginnings and ends, but Provo deliberately liquidated itself in 1967 in a self-declared act of ‘auto-provocation’. Through these exhibitions, Experimental Jetset provided a fitting homage to its enduring impact on Dutch design history.

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“Everybody does have different interests,” insists Van den Dungen. “It’s not that we’re three versions of the same designer, it’s more like we’re different aspects of the same designer maybe. Everybody brings something else to the table.” Perhaps the emails being signed ‘EJ’ acknowledge the studio almost as a fourth personality, greater than the sum of its parts? “Sometimes you look at work as if you were not the one that made it,” confirms Stolk. “Because we create it with all three of us, it’s like this other entity. Not that we don’t feel responsible, of course – we put our names on it, after all – but it’s still all three of our names,” she continues. “It’s quite abstract, and I think that’s quite pleasant.”

Obsession by design The three designers are influenced by the music of The Beatles and The Jam, as well as the films of Jean-Luc Godard and Stanley Kubrick – with whom Experimental Jetset shares an obsessive attention to detail. We move on to discuss how that perfectionism manifests itself. “During the [Design Indaba] lectures there was a lot of talk about mistakes, which is something that we’re also interested in,” considers Van den Dungen. “At the same time, we think that mistakes only exist if you try to achieve perfection.” Brinkers interjects: “If making mistakes is your goal, it’s not a mistake anymore,” he reasons. “That tragedy of failure is only beautiful if you strive for that idea of perfection. There’s something about that struggle of trying to achieve something, when you know you will never get there.” Besides Kubrick, there’s another cinematic reference point that can be found woven throughout the studio’s body of work – the 1966 film Blow Up, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. “It’s a film about art, memory, photography, music, film, design and life itself,” Van den

Dungen explains. “The movie also hints at the existential void, the terrifying nothingness.” Of course, compared to the likes of Kubrick or The Beatles, references to Antonioni could pass the average viewer by. Perhaps in some cases, these allusions are as much for the trio’s own personal satisfaction as anything else? “Yes,” confirms Stolk with a wry smile, leaving Van den Dungen to elaborate. “We like to compare it to a meal,” he explains. “Sometimes you don’t know the exact ingredients, but you can still taste them. Even if you don’t exactly get the reference, you can understand that it’s rooted in something.” Another obscure influence from the 1960s is the Brazilian artistic movement Tropicália. Anyone curious to know more about such things can indulge in some of the explanations on the Experimental Jetset website, or “long, winding, boring stories” as Van den Dungen mischievously calls them. But these layers of allusions aren’t about self-indulgence: “It’s not like we just add in those references. You need them to create the work,” he insists. “It’s not some kind of superfluous layer on top of it, we cannot get it out.” Indeed, in some cases the references are themselves the subject of the work – as was the case for the 2003 poster Zang! Tumb Tumb, which remixed John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s War Is Over poster using the onomatopoeic words of the Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, intended to evoke the sound of falling bombs.

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Top left: The studio’s graphic language for New York’s Whitney Museum changes shape to react to different proportions and surfaces Above: Experimental Jetset has an extensive reference library that covers one of the studio walls, accessible by ladder

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Project focus GAME THEORY Experimental Jetset’s latest exhibition design project brings together five diverse exhibitors using a strong graphic framework A group show curated by Philadelphia-born, Amsterdam-based artist Angela Jerardi, Game Theory formed part of the second Biennale at the CAFA Musuem in Beijing – and Experimental Jetset was tasked with tying it all together. It ran from 28 February to 20 April 2014, which unfortunately meant that opening night coincided neatly with the studio’s trip to Cape Town for Design Indaba. “It’s really unusual for us to conduct an exhibition from such a distance,” they admit. “We usually install everything ourselves – trying to perform, execute and ultimately suffer through our own designs. In this case, it was simply impossible.” Although thousands of miles away, the trio exerted full control over the design and layout of the exhibition by building a scale model of the floorplan out of cardboard. “It’s basically a deconstructed playground, or fragmented board game, with sloped panels for display,” they explain. The resulting exhibition had a graphic framework marked on the floor with black tape, with display boards propped at various angles to add layers of interest to the different exhibitors’ work. Besides Experimental Jetset, these included YKON, Constant Nieuwenhuys (New Babylon), Temporary Services and The Yes Men.

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Binding all of these layers together is the visual style of Dutch modernism, which surrounded all three designers during their formative years, and which colours everything their studio creates. Or, more accurately, removes colour from it, in favour of stark black sans-serif type on pure white. “It’s our language,” shrugs Brinkers. “It’s what you say with it that matters.” So rooted is Experimental Jetset’s signature style in the graphic language of the studio’s forebears, particularly the great Wim Crouwel, that some reactions have been negative. “Since the beginning of our career we’ve been criticised – ridiculed, even – by a lot of people who see us as a nostalgic, almost retro thing,” confesses Van den Dungen. “But we were brought up in this language, and we have a certain right to do our own thing with it.” Tasked in 2004 with creating a graphic identity for the Stedelijk Museum’s temporary location in Amsterdam, for instance, Experimental Jetset made reference to Crouwel’s ‘SM’ logo, but also used an Airmail pattern to allude to the venue’s former use as a Dutch Post distribution centre. “We wanted to refer explicitly to those two social democratic institutions – historically two of the most important commissioners of design in the Netherlands – and also react to the fact that both of them at the time were in the process of being privatised.”

Deceptive neutr alit y Ironically, one of the most distinctive features of the graphic palette with which the studio paints is a typeface famed for its neutrality, and that the trio selected because they wanted the conversation to be about the idea, not the font in which it’s set. Of course, being interviewed for a documentary about everyone’s favourite Swiss sans serif can’t have helped.

“Helvetica is our starting point; it’s like a blank piece of paper,” reflects Brinkers. Stolk goes on to explain how, when the three of them graduated in 1997, typefaces were beginning to proliferate and distract designers from the concept at hand, a phenomenon they were keen to avoid. “The paradox is really interesting,” muses Van den Dungen. “It’s like an architect using a really standardised, pre-fab element, and still trying to make it their own. If it’s your handwriting, but at the same time it’s used by millions of companies all over the world, then what exactly is it that’s your handwriting?” The potential social and political influence of design fascinates Experimental Jetset as much as its cultural value – although, this tends to translate into a particular aesthetic, packed with layers for viewers to unpack, rather than being more campaign-driven. “Some graphic designers want to provide answers, and some really want to ask questions,” muses Brinkers, setting up Stolk’s closing thoughts nicely. “Interpretation is very important,” she adds. “We try to leave things open for other people to fill in. We don’t want to tell people what to think, but we do want to encourage them to think.”

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Top left: Zang! Tumb Tumb, a homage to John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s War Is Over poster, pokes out from behind various other work Above: this Stedelijk Museum identity alludes to both Wim Crouwel’s SM logo and the Dutch Post

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Power-up your portfolio

What exactly is a modern portfolio, and what do prospective employers want to see? We teamed up with the ADC to find out Words: Tom Dennis Illustration: David Doran www.daviddoran.co.uk

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ith so much advice on what to pack into your portfolio, it’s sometimes hard to know what gives you the best chance in the creative marketplace. What exactly is a modern portfolio? What goes in it? And how do you get it in front of the right people? We spoke to the Art Directors Club and its Portfolio Night judges, alongside the young designers who’ve benefited from such events, to find out. Your portfolio – creatives are constantly told – is the key to unlocking industry doors. Nothing is more important or as potent for demonstrating your technical skills and creative attributes than a carefully selected body of work. So filling your portfolio with the right type of work, delivering it in the right format and getting it in front of the right people guarantees you success, right? Not quite. The creative industries are one of the most competitive employment sectors to enter. Each year almost 200,000 creatives graduate from design colleges across the UK alone. And getting on the career ladder is just the beginning; advancing up it can be an unmerciful challenge – there are fewer executive creative directors

Hanyi Lee Th e s e c r e t l i t t l e a g e ncy Hanyi is chief creative officer at The Secret Little Agency, where she directs the creative output of brands including LG and LinkedIn. She’s also a judge at ADC Portfolio Night. www.thesecretlittleagency.com

Pierre Odendaal M c C ann J ohann e sbu r g Pierre is now chief creative officer at McCann Johannesburg, after a decade spent at some of the world’s top agencies. He worked to bring Portfolio Nights to Johannesburg. www.mccann.co.za

than there are junior designers for a reason. Whether you’re a design graduate taking your first tender steps in the workplace, or a midweight designer looking to progress your career, ensuring your portfolio stands out from the crowd is vital.

Creative revolution Yet there remain questions on exactly what a modern portfolio is. So we cut to the chase and asked industry leaders what they want to see in a potential employee’s folio, what format it should take and the best ways to get it in front of them. “First and foremost [I want to see] great, original ideas that are executed well and hopefully screaming with simplicity from beginning to end,” says Pierre Odendaal, chief creative officer at McCann’s Johannesburg branch. “This is what creative employers seek. Young creatives’ portfolios should all be about creative revolution, and not creative evolution.” Odendaal is on a mission to develop the South African creative industries, and in doing so recognises

H e l ay n e Spivak VCU b r andc e n t e r Helayne is director at renowned creative school VCU Brandcenter, and has been chief creative officer at Y&R New York, Ammirati Puris Lintas and JWT New York. www.brandcenter.vcu.edu

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saurabh kejriwal BBDO After attending a Portfolio Night with little more than an iPhone full of images from his folio, Saurabh was selected as an ADC All Star. He now works at BBDO Proximity Dusseldorf. www.bbdo.de

industry issues

June 2014

supercharge your Folio Six ways to give the world’s most important creative directors what they want 1. Less is more Only select your best work for your folio. Potential employers want to see what you’re capable of now, not a history of technical progression from your college days. By showing a selection of your best work, you ensure you’re being judged on the quality of your output, not the amount of it. 2. Show where you’re going There’s little point packing a folio with work you’ve taken on but have no interest in repeating. Too many creatives fall into this trap. Only show the type of work you want to do – and if you don’t have any client-based examples, set yourself a brief and create some self-initiated projects. 3. Explain your creativity Make sure each piece you show off has a short back-story that – if called upon to do so – you can elaborate upon. That means captioning your work and saying what it was for, whom it was for, how it was used and what the brief asked you to achieve. 4. Be clear and concise Keep your digital folio free of clutter. Too-clever navigation, awkward contents pages and galleries, poor type choice – these are all barriers between your work and a potential job. Remove them by choosing clear and effective over clever. 5. Craft your bio Creative directors want to learn more about you – not just your work. So ensure you have a short bio that explains your creative skills and experience, passions and ideas, and mentions any contact points with credible industry figures or institutions. This is vital for injecting some personality into your folio and making yourself more memorable. 6. Keep it fresh Never let your folio become stale. Your time after a project deadline has passed is no better spent than in updating your portfolio. Global agencies do this routinely, providing detailed case studies on the day of launch. You need to get into the same mindset and keep your folio as fresh as it can be.

the importance of encouraging the flow of fresh talent into the sector. He helped to organise the first ADC Portfolio Night in Cape Town in 2013. An international networking, advice and recruitment event like no other, Portfolio Nights give young creatives the chance of a 15-minute direct feedback session with a global creative director. It isn’t just ‘speed dating for creatives’, though. Portfolio Night brings together thousands of young creatives and hundreds of creative directors across dozens of host agencies in cities worldwide. After 20 years served at a range of formidable agencies around the globe, Odendaal knows a strong folio when he sees one, and rule number one for him is ensuring the work is presented succinctly and simply. “Young creatives should spend more time thinking about what they can do to their portfolios to make them more presentable and insightful. I would take the ‘less is more’ approach,” he says. “When a creative sells him or herself as a jack-of-alltrades who can do anything, they come across as weak and without differentiation,” Odendaal continues. “Let your book speak to your strengths. Ideas, plus art direction, plus copy should be your voice.”

Size matters Format is becoming increasingly important, too. Young graduates are expected to have a digital showcase of some kind, which makes pointing quickly to your work on a phone or tablet possible – especially if you’re a web or digital designer. But for networking events, interviews and meet-ups, a physical folio is still very much necessary. As well as a considered approach to content, the size of your folio also matters. “For those who want to do the book thing, the best advice I can give is to make it A3. Don’t go bigger,” says Odendaal. He believes digital folios have their place – whether that’s a Behance page or a

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Pe r f e c t p or t f oli os

JUNE 2014

bespoke site – but the same rules of selection apply. “The most important aspects of a digital portfolio are cleanliness and synchronicity,” he continues. “Personally, I would make sure I’ve got both on hand, the digital version and the book. Some ideas come across better in one medium as opposed to others.”

Blood, sweat and tears You’ve carefully selected the pieces you think best demonstrate your creativity. You’ve added project information, case study notes and credits. You’ve made sure your portfolio is simple, considered and puts the work front-and-centre. So how do you get it in front of the right people? The days of hawking your folio around every local agency are long gone. Yet the industry always needs fresh talent and new recruits – and this is where events like ADC’s Portfolio Nights come in. “For the sake of our industry, we all have a responsibility to invest in the next generation of creative talent,” says Brendan Watson, director of education at ADC. “It’s a win-win situation. The creatives get much-needed feedback on their portfolios, which in turn makes them stronger. Therefore, the pipeline for incoming creative talent is filled with better candidates, which ultimately benefits the agencies themselves.” There are dozens of accredited portfolio nights organised all around the world. As well as ADC’s Portfolio Nights, AIGA, the UK’s Design Council, New Designers and D&AD New Blood, and in particular creative bodies like the Association of Illustrators and YCN, all organise and support creative portfolio events. Once you’re there in front of a globally renowned creative director, it’s time to grasp your opportunity. “This is the big show. Young creatives should pour their blood, sweat and tears into their portfolio. Careers are made at Portfolio Night,” says Watson.

What employers want... Hanyi Lee is chief creative officer at The Secret Little Agency. She was also involved with Singapore’s ADC Portfolio Night and knows what she wants to see in a portfolio… Why are portfolio-focused events like those hosted by ADC so important to the creative industry? Creatives can get a little insular at times. Portfolio nights offer young creatives a good opportunity to get out of their bubble and have a sense check. There aren’t that many industry-wide events that benefit their attendees on a multi-tiered level – for both the employers and potential hires. And honestly, I love the rapid-fire, speed dating-style system. It forces both parties to get to the point. Quickly. What do employers want to see in a young creative’s portfolio? Creative clarity. Imagine you are looking at your portfolio for the first time. In two seconds, do you get what the work is about? The explanation of the work is as important as the work itself. You want a creative that makes sense to you. Do you want to a see a mix of work, or do you prefer to see a distinct ‘style’ or ‘voice’? Integrated work based on a strong idea is absolutely key. Finesse is secondary at this stage. I worry when a portfolio is made up solely of print work, with no digital or video extensions. How should young creatives prepare to attend a portfolio event? What should they bring? They should practice a one-liner that sums up each piece of work. And definitely bring a simple name card for memorability. If you have a single piece of advice for young creatives attending a portfolio event, what would it be? Be yourself. A phoney can be sniffed out from a mile away. You want an employer who likes you for you. It tends to work out better for both parties.

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industry issues

June 2014

“Getting face-to-face with today’s creative leaders is invaluable,” adds Helayne Spivak, director at VCU Brandcenter, one of the most revered advertising and creative postgraduate schools in the US. Spivak has not only judged on Portfolio Nights, but also has experience helping VCU students compile their portfolios to take out into the world of business. “To get real-time feedback is a golden opportunity. And if the timing is right, it’s also a way to get your name out and nab your first job,” she explains. Spivak suggests opting for an element of surprise. “Imagine how many folios creative directors look through each week,” she reasons. “The creative’s thinking has to be so fresh, so strategically spot-on, that potential employers’ heads snap back in surprise and the realisation ‘I never thought of that before’ goes through their minds.” To achieve this, advises Spivak, your portfolio must demonstrate variety. “Is there humour? Are there well-told stories? Is there a unique point of view? Is there long and short format? Can they make ‘stuff’ come to life?” Spivak continues: “A portfolio also needs to be more interactive and personal than it’s been in years past – folios are now more about getting to know someone better.” One way to inject personality, she adds, might be through video: “I always like to see a short, relevant film about a student or something they believe in passionately – a documentary of a summer trip or a passion for cycling, for example. But video should be relevant and not just there for the sake of it,” she warns.

A level playing field For young creatives attending a portfolio event, the key is not to view it as a job interview – it isn’t. Yes, you should be confident in your work, clear in the explanation of your critical thinking and able to engage with whoever is

appraising your folio. Above all though, says Saurabh Kejriwal – an Indian designer who after attending a portfolio night in Paris was named an ADC All-Star and landed a job at BBDO Düsseldorf – it’s absolutely vital to make the most of the experience. “Opportunities in advertising and agency culture are not always a level playing field,” says Kejriwal. “Events like ADC Portfolio Nights opened doors for me where there were no doors. I got face-time with very talented and experienced people, very good feedback and a lot of validation,” he says. “You’re not at a Portfolio Night to win or to land a job. You’re there to see what the ECDs think of your work and what advice they have for you. Listen and you can gain a lot of fresh perspectives about your own ideas and creative process. And that way, you always win.” Singaporean designer Zara Kok agrees. She was working as a junior art director when she attended a local ADC portfolio night. “I walked away with helpful advice on how to continue to improve my craft – that definitely benefits your career in the long-run.” Kok suggests preparing a portfolio that showcases your ideas clearly and concisely. “You’ve only got a few minutes to make an impact,” she reflects, “so be very selective and brutal about what you want to include.” Differentiating yourself is as much a matter of what you say as how you say it. “Bring an opinion,” she urges. “I would like to think that my portfolio contained fresh ideas that made people react differently about something, and by doing so made my work memorable because it made an impact on an emotional level.” “I think the most important thing is to not worry about the outcome,” adds Kejriwal. “Relax, talk clearly and have fun. People who matter will see sparks of brilliance where they exist. Those who can’t, don’t matter.”

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Video Insight

June 2014

video content watch the videos at bit.ly/ca227-Burgerman or in our ipad edition See page 43

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Video insight

June 2014

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO

Jon Burgerman on why comfort is a killer He’s exhibited with the likes of Banksy and Vivienne Westwood, picked up a Cannes Lions award and travelled the world, but in an exclusive video interview the British artist tells us why he’s trying to ‘ruin’ his hard work

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lmost four years ago Jon Burgerman packed up his pens and swapped his native Nottingham for the bustling streets of New York, in search of new creative challenges. In that time, the award-winning artist has joined a band, eaten a lot of pizza and increasingly placed his charismatic, chaotic characters into the public sphere, inviting audiences to engage with his work and take it in new, unexpected directions. Armed with a film crew, we found a quiet corner inside Dublin’s buzzing Bord Gáis Energy Theatre during March’s Offset conference and took five with the man who made doodling famous.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Catalina Kulczar, www.catalinakulczar.com

For those who couldn’t make it to Offset, please could you tell us a bit about your talk in Dublin? I gave a little background history about who I am, what I do and what I’ve been up to all these years. Then I explained how I’ve tried to ruin all that hard work and make new things, and really mix up what my practice is and how it’ll progress in the future. How have you tried to mix up your practice? Can you give us an example? I decided I should take advantage of the luxury that I can make my work anywhere and so, for no reason, I moved to New York. I wanted to disrupt the comfortable life I’d built for myself in the UK. Off the back of that, a good friend in New York persuaded me to be in a band with him, so I started a whole new project of learning how to play an instrument; write a song; stand in front of people and not wet myself on stage. It was very different but I thought of it as a creative endeavour. I’m still learning new skills and applying stuff I already know, and it’s taken me out into the world, meeting different kinds of people. How has living in New York affected your work? I’ve been exposed to a lot of new things I wouldn’t ordinarily see. I often pinch myself: ‘Look! I’m going under a big bridge on a ferry, the sun’s coming down, Manhattan’s lining up and it’s all very cinematic and wow!’ I’m not really sure how that’s fed into my work but it must do because we’re all products of our surroundings. It’s about consuming all this creativity and culture and pizza – lots of pizza – and everything around, and then it’s filtered through into my work.

You talk a lot about taking yourself out of your comfort zone. Why is that so important? If you’re a creative person, comfort is a killer. If you pre-empt exactly what you’re going to make every time then where’s the excitement? Where’s the danger? We don’t want to fail, but the fact that there’s a very real chance that you might keeps you on your toes. But if it’s super easy every time you just get lazy and your work won’t grow or develop. It’s important to keep moving. There’s an analogy I read about a rock climber: when you slip, you refocus 100 per cent more because you know you might fall down. It’s like that. It’s good to have those little slips and bumps, and refocus our attention. Can you tell us about a recent creative project that involved taking a risk? What happened? I was invited to be in a group show in Cincinnati and I decided that I wouldn’t make any work for it – I would make props that the audience could play around with, and then what they make is the artwork. I was trying to encourage people to become creative. It’s not just a passive experience in viewing art or design or anything: the missing piece of the puzzle is the audience – they have to bring something to it to complete the circuit. This is what I mean about being comfortable. It’s about involving others, sharing the work, allowing other people to creatively engage with it and to see it in a whole new way. That’s amazing. You’ve said before that creating art can be like a performance, even if there’s no one there to watch it. Can you elaborate on this? The act of making, for me, in my head – which is how I describe it to myself while making it, probably as a means of distracting myself from the task at hand so as not to be overwhelmed and screw it up – is that it’s like a dance or something. You’re making these marks and making a sound, and when you get to that flow stage you forget what you’re doing. You’re making, thinking and anticipating what you’re going to do next – and reviewing what you’ve just done in the same instance – and you go into this weird little trance. I don’t know much about dance, but I’ve seen a few things and I feel there are some similarities with that – making, display, creating, analysing – and what must be going through their heads in the ballet.

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Video Insight

June 2014

video case study one:

Photography: Courtesy of ustwo, www.ustwo.com

UsTwo NYC Mural

STU D IO O F D REAMS

Briefed to “just draw and have fun”, Jon Burgerman incorporated a British Bulldog, an American Eagle and a Swedish Unicorn into a bespoke mural for the New York branch of eccentric digital design studio ustwo. “I’ve known the guys from ustwo from before they were ustwo and it was just themtwo,” recalls Burgerman. “Every time they get a new office, they invite me in to draw all over it.” The most challenging part of the project? “Not being distracted by everyone working there,” he laughs. However, interior murals aren’t a typical project for Burgerman these days. “I do love doing them,” he admits, “so if anyone out there wants one let know.” Watch the ustwo mural come to life now at: www.bit.ly/ca227-burgerman computerarts.creativeb loq.com - 72 -

Video insight

June 2014

video case study two:

My Great Movie

Au d i en c e en gag Em ent

My Great Movie is an interactive installation that Burgerman created as part of a group exhibition, On, commissioned by Contemporart Arts Centre in Cincinnati and OFFF Barcelona. Instead of making new work, he created a series of props from plywood and encouraged visitors to make their own movies – or artwork – using their cameras or smartphones. “There were some weapons, some scenery and some clichéd movie items. It was around the time Vine was becoming popular,” Burgerman recalls. “I find it fascinating. Sometimes on Facebook I’ll post a picture of a drawing just one second in – with pretty much nothing on the page – and invite people to do what they want to it. It’s fascinating how I only see the drawing one way, but everyone else sees it differently – the shapes become totally different things.” Watch more at: www.bit.ly/ca227-burgerman

Watch the videos now on our YouTube channel: www.bit.ly/ca227-burgerman com puterarts.creativeb loq.com - 73 -

BRANDING Annual 2014

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uK L ISTInG S GR AD U ATE SH O WC A S E

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2014

GRADUATE SHOWCASE LiSTinGS com puterarts.creativeb loq.co m - 75 -

GR A D U AT E S H OW C AS E uK LIS TInGS

M AY Camberwell College of Arts: Foundation Diploma in Art and Design www.camberwell.arts.ac.uk 45 Peckham Road, London, SE5 8UF 13–17 May

Aberystwyth School of Art www.aber.ac.uk Buarth Mawr, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 1NG 19–29 May

Canterbury Christ Church College: Visual Art and Design www.canterbury.ac.uk Sidney Cooper Gallery, Augustine House and the Augustine Art Centre 20–31 May

Leeds College of Art: Foundation Diploma in Art & Design www.leeds-art.ac.uk Vernon St, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS2 8PH 22–28 May the highest-ranked independent art college in the 2014 Guardian league table, leeds college of art spans graphic design, animation, fashion, textiles, illustration, photography and more. this first show is for its Foundation Diploma in art & Design, with another in June.

june 2014

Central Saint Martins: Degree Show One

www.arts.ac.uk/csm Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, London, N1C 4AA 23–27 May csm’s first show includes its prestigious ba and ma Fine art courses, as well as photography and moving image work. see page 79 for the more design-focused Degree show two.

university for the Creative Arts: Farnham www.ucreative.ac.uk Falkner Road, Farnham, GU9 7DS 23 May–6 June the university of the creative arts’ multi-part graduate show season kicks off at Farnham, the alma mater of computer arts’ very own art editor Jo Gulliver.

edinburgh College of Art

www.free-range.org.uk Loading Bay, F Block B3, Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London 29 May–2 June Free range is an entire season of free graduate art and design shows, occupying different units at the old truman brewery in shoreditch – spanning fashion, design, photography, interiors and architecture, all of which are listed here. the first of the two designfocused shows kicks off with a selection of work from Goldsmiths college, with the second taking place in early June.

nottingham Trent university ntu.ac.uk/degree_show_festival Burton Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BU 30 May–7 June

university for the Creative Arts: Rochester

www.degreeshow.eca.ed.ac.uk 74 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh 24 May–1 June

www.ucreative.ac.uk Fort Pitt Road, Rochester, ME1 1DZ 30 May–13 June

Liverpool School of Art and Design

university for the Creative Arts: Canterbury

www.ljmu.ac.uk The John Lennon Art and Design Building, Liverpool 29 May–13 June

Coventry university: Industrial Design

www.ucreative.ac.uk Dover Road, Canterbury, CT1 3AN 31 May–13 June

JUnE Canterbury College: Art and Graphic Design www.cant-col.ac.uk Atrium & Keynes Gallery, Keynes College, University of Kent 3–7 June

norwich university of the Arts: MA Degree Show www.nua.ac.uk/visit Francis House, Norwich NR2 4SN 5–10 June

Free Range: Design Part Two www.free-range.org.uk Loading Bay and F Block T1–5, Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane 6–9 June Design work from the universities of middlesex and Greenwich.

university of the West of england: The Creative Industries Degree Show www.uwe.ac.uk Bower Ashton campus, Kennel Lodge Road, Bristol, BS3 2JT 7–12 June

www.covdegreeshow.org.uk Priory Street, Coventry, CV1 5FB 29 May–5 June

Kingston university: Art, Design and Architecture

Cardiff School of Art and Design

Free Range: Design Part One

www.fada.kingston.ac.uk/events Knights Park campus, Grange Road, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, KT1 2QJ 31 May –6 June

www.cardiff-school-of-art-anddesign.org/summershow Howard Gardens campus and Llandaff campus, Cardiff 7–13 June

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GR A D U AT E S H OW C AS E uK LIS TInGS

JUnE COn T university of Brighton

june 2014

blood show in 2013, so we’ll be watching this year’s crop closely. spanning animation, illustration, graphic design and digital media, it’s a great excuse to visit cornwall in June, should you need one.

arts.brighton.ac.uk Grand Parade campus 7-15 June

De Montfort university: Festival of Creativity

university for the Creative Arts: epsom

www.dmu.ac.uk/degree-show DMU campus, Leicester, LE1 9BH 13–19 June

www.ucreative.ac.uk Ashley Road, Epsom, KT18 5BE 9–14 June

Leeds College of Art

university of Salford: Create Salford Festival www.salford.ac.uk MediaCityUK and Salford Quays 10–14 June

Brunel university www.brunel.ac.uk

Bargehouse, OXO Tower, London 12–15 June

Free Range: Photography Part One www.free-range.org.uk The Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London 13–16 June

Falmouth university: Art and Design shows www.falmouth.ac.uk Falmouth Campus, Woodlane and The Design Centre, Penryn campus, Treliever Road 13–17 June We were consistently impressed by the high quality of Falmouth graduates at the D&aD New

www.leeds-art.ac.uk Vernon St, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS2 8PH 13–19 June this second show is reserved for ba-level and extended Diploma graduates, with a separate one for the Foundation Diploma in may. With a strong calibre of talent coming out of leeds each year, it’s well worth a trip to West Yorkshire to check it out.

Wimbledon College of Art www.wimbledon.arts.ac.uk Merton Hall Road, London, SW19 3QA 13–21 June

Cambridge School of Art www.cambridgeschoolofart.com Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge Campus, East Road, Cambridge, CB1 1PT 13–21 June

Staffordshire university: Show and Tell www.staffs.ac.uk Staffordshire University, College Road, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, ST4 2DE 13–21 June

Loughborough university

Sheffield Hallam

www.lboro.ac.uk Design School, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU 14–18 June

www.shu.ac.uk/creativespark City Campus, Howard Street, Sheffield, S1 1WB 14–27 June

Glasgow School of Art www.gsa.ac.uk 167 Renfrew Street, Glasgow, G3 6RQ 14–21 June

Chelsea College of Art and Design: Summer Show www.chelsea.arts.ac.uk 16 John Islip Street, London, SW1P 4JU 14–21 June

Hereford College of Arts www.hca.ac.uk Folly Lane campus (college-level); College Road campus (uni-level) 14–21 June

Manchester School of Art (Manchester Met) www.degreeshow.mmu.ac.uk Benzie, Grosvenor and Chatham Buildings, MMU All Saints campus, Manchester 14–25 June the college that produced the city’s design darling peter saville is definitely worth keeping an eye on, and it also produced former ca collection art editor luke o’Neill.

Plymouth university: Hot ‘14 Show www.plymouth.ac.uk/arts/hot14 Mills Bakery, Royal William Yard 14–26 June

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Ravensbourne www.thedegreeshow.com 6 Penrose Way, London, SE10 0EW 16–20 June Winning the prize for grad show season’s most desirable domain name, ravensbourne promises a “degree show like no other” – and you can register for updates.

university of Leeds www.design.leeds.ac.uk School of Design, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT 16–20 June

university of Central Lancashire www.uclan.ac.uk Edward, Hanover, Harris, Media Factory and Victoria buildings, UCLan, Preston, PR1 2HE 16–21 June

Camberwell College of Arts: Summer Show www.camberwell.arts.ac.uk 45 Peckham Road, London, SE5 8UF 17–21 June proud of its “unique studio culture” that encourages students to really explore their creativity, camberwell spans graphic design, art, illustration, photography, 3D design and more at undergraduate level, with more focused craftfocused skills for ma students, such as printmaking and being a designer-maker. it makes for a fascinating show to visit.

GR A D U AT E S H OW C AS E uK LIS TInGS

JUnE COn T Central Saint Martins: Degree Show Two www.arts.ac.uk/csm Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, London, N1C 4AA 18–22 June this is definitely the main csm grad show to visit for designers and art directors, with graphic design, character animation, communication design and textile design exhibiting alongside more craft and product based disciplines like ceramics, jewellery, furniture and industrial design. it follows the more fine art-focused show one (late may).

june 2014

Royal College of Art

www.aub.ac.uk Wallisdown, Poole, Dorset BH12 5HH 19–26 June

www.free-range.org.uk The Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London 20–23 June

Goldsmiths

London College of Communication: School of Design show

www.rca.ac.uk/show2014 RCA Kensington: Kensington Gore, London, SW7 2EU RCA Battersea: Howie Street, London, SW11 4AY 18–29 June (closed 27 June) Four separate exhibitions are taking place across the rca’s two campuses in Kensington and battersea, with 575 art and design postgraduates exhibitingtheir work in the fields of animation, photography, communication design, printmaking and more, with graphic design work primarily shown at the Kensington campus. all shows are free (except fashion), and most work will also be for sale.

www.gold.ac.uk/art/exhibitions Ben Pimlott Building, St James, New Cross, London, SE14 6AD 20–24 June the final shows for fine art, media and communications at Goldsmiths will all take place at the end of June, but as we go to press the design dates are yet to be confirmed – check out the Free range Design show on 29 may for some highlights, however.

Arts university College, Bournemouth

Free Range: Photography Part Two

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www.lcc.arts.ac.uk LCC, Elephant & Castle, London, SE1 6SB 20–27 June there’s invariably a strong showing from this ual college, and lcc’s school of Design is headed up by long-term ca collaborator lawrence Zeegen. besides staple disciplines such as graphic design, branding, typography and moving image, there’s an entire course dedicated to spatial design.

GR A D U AT E S H OW C AS E uK LIS TInGS

JUnE COn T Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen www.rgu.ac.uk Garthdee Rd, Aberdeen, Aberdeen City, AB10 7QD 21–28 June

Belfast School of Art www.adbe.ulster.ac.uk The Market Place Theatre and Arts Centre, Co Armagh 25 June

Canterbury Christ Church: Digital Design www.canterbury.ac.uk Sidney Cooper Gallery, St Peter’s St, Canterbury, CT1 2BQ 25 June–2 July

new Designers: Part 0ne www.newdesigners.com Business Design Centre, London, N1 0QH 26–28 June in the 28 years since it began, New Designers has launched the careers of over 100,000 professional designers – and previous exhibitors have included global success stories such as thomas Heatherwick and Joe Ferry, head of design at mars and one of our brand impact awards judges. pegging itself as “the uK’s most important exhibition for emerging design”, it’s split into two shows: part one has a particularly strong showing of industrial design and craft skills – including textiles, fashion, applied arts, jewellery and precious metalwork.

june 2014

Free Range: Art & Design Part One

Francis House, Norwich, NR2 4SN 2–8 July

www.free-range.org.uk Shop 13, F Block T3 and G5, Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London 26–30 June the first of Free range’s art & Design shows features design and illustration from birmingham metropolitan college, university of the creative arts (maidstone) and the university of the West of england, with plenty of fine art courses on display too.

new Designers: Part Two

JULY D&AD new Blood www.dandad.org/talent/ new- blood Old Spitalfields Market, Shoreditch, London 1-3 July For many studios and agencies scouting for new talent, this is the big one: D&aD’s annual showcase of the cream of new talent from 70 courses from all across the uK, helpfully squeezed into one london-based venue to save on time, effort and travel for the time-pressed creative director. the exhibition spans illustration, advertising, digital, motion graphics and graphic design, but it’s just one small part of the New blood programme, which incorporates the awards (the ceremony for which takes place on 4 July at the old truman brewery), the New blood academy, and the New blood Festival too. put simply, if you only go to one graduate show in 2014, be sure to make it this one.

norwich university of the Arts

www.newdesigners.com Business Design Centre, London N1 0QH 3–5 July the second instalment of the New Designers exhibition will arguably have the most relevance to graphic designers, since it features the visual communications strand – which you’ll find displayed alongside disciplines as diverse as furniture and product design, motion arts and theatre design.

Free Range: Art & Design Part Two www.free-range.org.uk F Block T5 and G4, Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London 4–7 July the show is primarily fine artfocused this time around, with some photography thrown in courtesy of batley school of art and Northbrook college sussex.

Free Range: Interiors and Architecture www.free-range.org.uk The Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London 11–14 July

Shillington College www.shillingtoncollege.co.uk London and Manchester Every three months (next in late July, see website for details) a great source of fresh talent from a whole range of backgrounds, with a mixture of short full-time and longer part-time courses.

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I NT R O P RO J E C TS

June 2014

Computer Arts goes behind the scenes with world-leading designers as they reveal their working processes…

22-PAGE EXTENDED SECTION! Now with pro workflow advice, plus the latest creative tech

Fazer Café identity: the new deco

Kokoro & Moi gave art deco a contemporary twist in this branding project for a Finnish food company 84

Zoetrope Installation: Making light work

How Jo Ratcliffe used 3D printing to add an interactive element to 93 her illustrations

Phantogram video: Music in monochrome Behind the scenes with Timothy Saccenti and Joshua Davis as they join forces to create a 98 striking music video

WORKFLOW TIPS

Build characters in Illustrator

Work with images in InDesign

Jonathan Ball walks through how he creates colourful 90 characters quickly and easily in Illustrator

InDesign is great for layout, but it can also be used to 96 edit images on the fly, as Luke O’Neill explains

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PROJECTS

JUNE 2014

Fazer Café identity: the new deco How Kokoro & Moi married art deco inspiration with contemporary international flair to create an exciting new brand identity for Finnish food company Fazer

PROJECT FACTFILE Brief Kokoro & Moi created an identity for Finnish food company Fazer Café, including brand story, logo, custom typography and print materials. It worked with interior architects Koko3 on the spatial work and fashion label Samuji on staff uniforms. Client Fazer Café www.fazer.com StudioS Kokoro & Moi www.kokoromoi.com Koko3 www.koko3.fi Project duration Two years Live date March 2014

The Design Brief Teemu Suviala

Teemu Suviala Creative director Teemu is creative director and CEO at Kokoro & Moi, which he co-founded in 2001 with Antti Hinkula. Based in Helsinki, Amsterdam and New York, the agency’s clients include Nokia, Design Forum Finland, New York magazine, Muji, Toyota and Uniqlo.

We first got involved with this project when the team at interior design studio Koko3 asked us to join them in the pitch. We had worked with them before, for clients such as Nokia and the Helsinki Regional Transport Authority, and we had been looking out for more projects that we could work on together. This was the perfect opportunity. We developed everything from the brand story through to all of the individual applications. Koko3 was in charge of the spatial design while we looked after the branding side, with Fazer café as our joint client. The fact that we had worked together before made for a very natural process. This project was essentially about Fazer’s heritage and history being married together with contemporary international flair. The brand’s heritage is one of comput erarts .creati veb loq.co m - 84 -

its advantages within a competitive market – Fazer is over 100 years old. We needed to create something new and fresh within the brand, while still retaining that existing capital. We also had to consider the service context. There are different touchpoints for different customers, from those who come in for lunch or a glass of wine, to people buying bread or a cup of takeaway coffee. These multiple touchpoints needed to be taken care of within the service design, and the entire brand identity had to appeal to a wide audience. The brief was created in a very collaborative way, together with Fazer. We conducted a number of workshops with various people from the company, from business developers to restaurant chiefs and chefs, after which the final brief was created. We believe in working closely with the client and its end users to create something together. It’s a joint process and it’s key to ensure our decisions make sense to the client.

DiarY˚ 1 : KOKO R O & M O I

JUNE 2014

Project at a glance Kokoro & Moi’s art director Timo Ilola walks through the development process

1 City insights

Koko3 invited us to join the project during the pitch stage. We worked with the interior design studio and the client to lay the foundations for the project, doing insight studies and workshops in Helsinki and New York. We had regular meetings with Koko3 to update each other and the client.

2 Creating the brief

Establishing the brief was a collaborative process, which we worked on together with Fazer. We conducted workshops with various people from within the company, after which the final concept was created – and we moved towards one visual direction in a very dynamic and iterative way.

3 Sign of the times

We went on to develop the brand story, brand promise and tone of voice. Our research into Fazer’s history led us to identify the creative potential in the original art deco signage outside its first café in Kluuvikatu, Helsinki, which formed the basis for two new custom typefaces.

MARMELADI Aprikoosi-pinjansiemen raparperi-vanilja

6

90

4 Deco details

5 Visual identity

6 Custom typography

7 Daylight shades

8 Material world

9 Open for business

As well as the historic sign, the café at Fazer Kluuvikatu and its art deco design provided us with considerable inspiration and references for this project. The geometric floor patterns inspired the graphic element, and we used the marble and brass elements in the interior.

The colour palette combines existing Fazer brand colours – the gold and its trademarked Fazer Blue – with some lighter colours. We wanted the palette to have a ‘daylight’ feel, so we chose a yellow and a shade of reddish magenta, which we used sparingly but effectively.

We asked the client to approve the concept, and then went on to create the rest of the visual identity including the custom typefaces and other type choices, and the colour palette, patterns, layouts and materials. Koko3 took the lead in creating the spatial identity.

We then created all print materials from takeaway packaging and shopping bags to menus and posters, and designed the uniforms in collaboration with Finnish fashion label Samuji. We worked with Fazer’s in-house procurement team to identify the best materials and processes.

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We created a pair of custom typefaces, Fazer Grotesk and Fazer Chisel, taking inspiration from the art deco sign outside the Kluuvikato café. More and more people are using custom type for branding and taking the opportunity to create something the client owns.

Six cafés have opened so far, and Fazer is planning to launch lots more. The brand is looking to expand into different markets, so there’s plenty of work still ahead. It’s a huge company and lots of people were involved in the project, so we needed to keep everyone informed.

PROJECTS

JUNE 2014

Timo Ilola Art director Timo is Kokoro & Moi’s art director, and also art director and founder at SSAW Magazine. He studied at Aalto University School of Art and Design in Helsinki, has also worked in Madrid and counts magazines, branding and science among his interests.

Work in progress Timo Ilola

After the initial phase of workshops and insight studies, we agreed the brief for the branding and started work within our agency – putting together the brand story and visual identity including custom typography, and creating the individual design elements. Throughout the project, we put a lot of emphasis on being real with regards to our design inspiration, the materials we used and the brand we created. We looked for elements of Fazer’s heritage that we could take to another level and use to unleash the brand’s potential. Our typographic inspiration came from the original art deco signage outside the company’s first café, which opened in Kluuvikatu in 1891. Our aim was to combine this art deco reference with fresh, contemporary design aesthetics. We mainly worked in Illustrator and InDesign, using Photoshop for presentation purposes. We used paper and pencils a lot during the workshopping phase, when we drew and talked with the client and end users, then did a lot of conceptual sketching work in InDesign. The colour palette uses Fazer Blue, which needed to make an appearance as it’s the company’s trademarked brand colour. We also used gold, another Fazer brand colour. We wanted to accompany these colours with lighter tones that had a more ‘daylight’ feel, so we chose a yellow and a reddish magenta. We approached fashion label Samuji to take care of the clothing. We wanted to find a company that would be a good fit and bring a new angle to the brand. Samuji is a smaller, boutique fashion brand that shares a lot of Fazer’s core values, like good quality and craftsmanship, as well as being a recognisable name in Finland, so it was a good fit for this project. We showed them initial sketches to demonstrate how we were using the letters and patterns, and put them in touch with Fazer.

Kerning the new typography

Fazer Grotesk rendered in 3D

Prototype versions of price-marking elements

Kokoro & Moi combined Fazer’s blue and gold brand hues with ‘daylight’ shades to create the new palette

initial CONCEPTS Timo Ilola shares some insights into the development process

Some departments were thinking of bringing back the Fazer rooster, an old brand marque based on a sculpture. We briefly considered including this as a finishing touch, but decided against it.

Restaurants and cafés usually get their gear from big uniform providers. That was an option, but it made more sense to go to a small fashion brand with similar values, which is why we picked Samuji.

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We didn’t have any alternate visual directions on the table – this project was very much an iterative process. Internal marketing was really important to ensure everyone was on-board.

DiarY˚ 1 : KOKO R O & M O I

JUNE 2014

Type treatment Teemu Suviala takes us through the creation of Fazer’s custom typefaces Step 1 The original Fazer café sign is one of the nicest and oldest in Helsinki. We browsed through its old designs and these letterforms quickly jumped out as the perfect anchor for the new design aesthetic. They’re bold and unique, while at the same time representing a concrete element from Fazer’s history that’s easily recognisable to anyone who frequents the café. Step 2 Type design isn’t that well known to clients within the field of branding, so we needed to sell in the idea of creating something they would completely own rather than simply buying a license for an existing typeface. Once we had approval of our initial concept, the custom typography design was a very independent process.

Step 1

Step 3 One of our graphic designers, Niklas Ekholm, also does typography. He worked with designer Jungmyung Lee, who was with us at the time and was responsible for a lot of the type design. The typographic work began in FontLab and was continued in Glyphs. They started out by drawing the Chisel typeface, extrapolating from the reference of the Kluuvikatu sign. Step 4 We also drew a solid variant of these letterforms, adjusted for readability – this became Fazer Grotesk, the titling font for this project. The art deco patterns we used were also very much inspired by the Kluuvikatu space.

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

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PROJECTS

JUNE 2014

Conclusion

The designs feel fresh and restrained, with single inks, understated colours and plenty of white space

Teemu Suviala

We scouted materials and potential production partners for all print applications, and advised the department in charge of buying. We normally take care of production, but in this case Fazer had its own staff for that – we sourced the best materials and collaborated with the production department to make sure everything worked within the time and budget constraints. As well as the brand identity and all its applications, we created a marketing concept, ‘taste dreaming’, based on the idea of Fazer’s chefs and bakers creating taste sensations. This can potentially be used in local social media campaigns when new cafés open. Fazer is a huge company and many different people were involved in the venture, so we had meetings with lots of stakeholders and spent around a year on intense brand creation. The client also needed to find and secure the right locations for the new cafés. Its choices depended on everything from the neighbourhood and traffic outside the café to kitchen facilities and capacity – it was committed to finding perfect solutions rather than compromising. With this project, the most interesting challenge lay in trying to make something interesting and new while staying true to a very prestigious, established brand. Fazer knew it needed to redesign its cafés, and it wanted to bring back traditional service values and emphasise certain qualities in its products. The finished creative is effective because it stays true to the original story of Karl and Berta Fazer, who introduced something new and exciting to the people of Helsinki when they opened that first café back in 1891. The custom type really is a great asset because it’s instantly recognisable, makes the brand stronger and has so many potential applications.

PROJECT SOUNDTRACK Kokoro & Moi reveaLS the songs that kept the team going throughout the creative process

Iconic single letters feature on the packaging

Samuji helped create the clothing range

Six new cafés have opened so far, with many more planned in the coming months

 Shuggie Otis: Island Letter This was playing during an insight session at the Five Leaves restaurant in Brooklyn. The vinyl sounds and spinning record echoed the authenticity we wanted to achieve for Fazer. Digable Planets sampled it on its album For Corners.

 Duke Ellington: Cotton Club Stomp With a jazz feel, this song foreshadows the period that influenced the new typeface – swinging 20s jazz vibes inspired the sweeping geometric curves. The original Fazer sign is so art deco, it’s surprising to find it was created in the 1890s.

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 Blood Orange: Dinner Blood Orange cooks up a perfect mix of pure sounds from the not-so-distant past together with contemporary sensibilities – exactly what Fazer is about. His peculiar stage show translates this thinking perfectly to the live environment.

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PROJECTS

JUNE 2014

Il l u s t r at or C REATI V E SKILLS

Build quirky Characters in Illustrator Illustrator has always been an indispensable tool for character designers. Jonathan Ball explains how he uses it to transform basic geometric shapes into colourful creatures

Design Task When working in Illustrator it is possible to create brilliant, imaginative characters with comparative ease. One of the best ways to start is by taking a rough pencil sketch, transferring it into Illustrator and using simple geometric shapes to create a basic guide. Various tools and

techniques can then be used to add in quirky details, imperfections, highlights and shadows to build up the character. In this workflow guide I will take you through how to use Illustrator’s tools to create your own unique creatures and bring them to life on the page. l comput erarts.creat ive bloq.co m - 90 -

Jonathan ball Founder, Pokedstudio Jonathan runs Pokedstudio, an illustration and design studio based in Cardiff. He creates fantasy worlds and vibrant characters inspired by cartoons, retro video games and urban art, for clients including MTV, BBC and Disney. www.pokedstudio.com

Workfl ow: C HA R A C T E R DE SI G N

JUNE 2014

1 Get sketching

2 Build the character

3 Shrinking circles

4 Colouring in

5 Highlights

6 Shadows

6 Extra details

7 Building the body

9 Bring the environment to life

Start with a simple concept sketch of your main character. When you’re happy, scan it in, save it and place it in a new Illustrator document. Lock the layer your sketch is on and create a new layer. Change the opacity to 50% (Window>Transparency) to help you see the layer above more easily.

To add colour, bring the transparency of the head back up to 100%, and give it a radial gradient fill. You can alter the shape of the gradient fills by adjusting the angle and aspect ratio in the Gradient panel. You can also drag one of the colour sliders across, so the gradient fades quickly at the edges.

Now add the final facial details, such as the mouth and teeth. I’ve also given my character some craters on his face. Create an ellipse with a gradient fill – the same colour combination as the head, but make this a linear gradient. Reverse the direction of the gradient on the opposite side of the head.

Using your sketch as a guide, begin to create your character on the new layer. Start with the head, which is a circle with a solid fill and no stroke. Reduce the opacity so you can see your sketch behind. Build up your character using basic shapes. It’s a good idea to tweak the shapes so they’re not perfect.

Next, add some highlighted areas. Go into Isolation Mode (double-click the path using the Selection tool) and add a circle with a linear gradient fill at 90 degrees. Use an off-white at the top of the gradient. The bottom is yellow with a transparency of 0%, which blends with the colour of the head.

For the main part of the body use a simple square and distort it slightly. This has the same radial gradient fill as the head. Roughly copy the arms and legs from the sketch. These should just be basic shapes, without unnecessary details. Colour these to match the darker colours on the ears and face.

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I’ve given my character a hole in his head. Start with two circles, select both and choose the Divide tool in the Pathfinder panel. Use the Direct Selection tool (A) to delete the overlapping part. Select the head and the central ellipse and ‘divide’ them. Now delete the ‘hole’ across the different layers.

For shadows, create a circle over the left ear, distorting it downwards and giving it a gradient fill. In the Transparency panel, adjust the blending mode to Multiply. Send this backward (Cmd/Ctrl+[) so it sits under the ear. Add more shadows under the mouth and nose, tweaking the gradient and transparency.

An environment completes the scene – I’ve included planets and islands using the same shading style across the objects, and added a background colour fill. Finally, check your original sketch for any details you’ve forgotten – here, there was a mark on the character’s brow which made him look meaner.

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Diar Y˚ 2 : Jo R at c l if f e

June 2014

Zoetrope installation: making light work How Jo Ratcliffe used 3D printing and animation to bring her signature fashion illustrations to life for one day only, at the Pick Me Up graphic arts festival

PROJECT FACTFILE Brief Somerset House invited Jo Ratcliffe to create an installation for its Pick Me Up festival. The illustrator teamed up with engineer Sam Zealey, the waterMelon animators collective and 3D printer store iMakr to devise a 21st-century take on the zoetrope that enabled people to interact with her signature fashion-inspired illustration style. Exhibition venue Somerset House www.somersethouse.org.uk Creative Jo Ratcliffe www.jocandraw.com Project duration Two months Live date April 2014

Jo Ratcliffe Illustrator and animator Based in London, Jo is an art director, illustrator and animator known for her kaleidoscopic animations and hand-drawn characters. She heads up an in-house studio team working on projects for clients such as Louis Vuitton, Lady Gaga, Kenzo and Jimmy Choo.

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PROJECTS

June 2014

The Design Brief Jo Ratcliffe

Somerset House asked me to create a one-day installation for the Pick Me Up graphic arts festival. It’s not the kind of project we normally do, although I had set myself a challenge at the start of the year that I would do three personal projects. The brief was simply to make sure the public could interact with me and my work in some way. I’ve been working a lot in animation recently, and the loops are what seem to seduce me the most. I’m intrigued by the things you can do with a handful of drawings, and by the whole idea of a GIF – I was part of the GIF exhibition at Paddle8 in 2012. I felt a 3D zoetrope would be a sculptural version of what I’ve been working on recently, and I thought it was a bit of an ambitious thing to do. I had seen the Pixar zoetrope at the London Science Museum in 2006, which was in turn inspired by the one at the Ghibli Museum in Japan, and found it mind-blowing. We didn’t have an agenda – there was no strict vision from the outset. I simply wanted to make something that was animated and printed well, and nicely built and crafted.

STAGE ONE I created some sketches of my character ideas, drawing inspiration from reference images I’d collected.

STAGE Four Animator Klaas-Harm de Boer rendered the character as a 3D model.

 ,

PROJECT evolution Jo Ratcliffe walks through  her creative process in more detail

CHARACTER REFERENCES

I’d collected lots of reference images, so there were all sorts of little things I potentially wanted to include in my new character. I did some less stylised pencil drawings and imagined how she might look when we made her in 3D – thinking about what would work well in terms of the character and movement.

STAGE Five To have two sets of girls walking in opposite directions, we worked out we needed 15 on one tier, and 17 on the other.

CATWALK INSPIRATION

I’d been looking at catwalk pictures of girls in oversized jumpers with extra-long sleeves that reach almost to their knees, and I wanted to bring that in. It’s useful as it means she looks cool when she walks. We don’t see her hands, so it’s simpler to print and paint her, and it’s another part of her body that swings as she moves.

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ZOETROPE TEMPLATE

I took the drawings into Photoshop and cleaned them up. I then worked in Illustrator to create textures, copy the figure, and put her onto a plan of the zoetrope. This became instructions for engineer Sam Zealey, who helped us build the sculptures and put together the zoetrope’s drum, motors and bearings.

Diar Y˚ 2 : Jo R at c l if f e

June 2014

How we work Jo Ratcliffe on how she found a way to make her work interactive

sTAGE TWO I wanted to give her oversized sleeves, which make her look cool and add movement as she walks.

sTAGE tHREE I moved the sketches into Photoshop to clean them up, then switched to Illustrator to create a plan of the zoetrope.

STAGE Six The figures were printed in white resin. It worked really well the first time, and we were all really enthusiastic about it.

STAGE seven We exhibited the zoetrope at Pick Me Up for one day, and made one of the models available to download and print.

PRINT AND DESTROY

Animator Klaas-Harm de Boer from waterMelon rendered the character as a 3D model and had her printed. He then tried to break her. We found out that her neck was too thin, so we put a pin in it. We got a batch of test models in, then iMakr printed the full set of 32 models for us to colour and attach to the base.

MAKING THE NUMBERS WORK

In one second, the strobe flashes 16 times and the wheel spins round once – creating the illusion that the models are moving. We wanted two sets of girls to walk in opposite directions, which wouldn’t work with two lots of 16 models. Klaas figured out that we needed 15 on top going one way and 17 on the bottom.

3D PRINTING

The models are printed in white resin. Originally, we were going to stick lots of objects and shapes on the zoetrope, which is 3.5 feet in diameter, but once we had the models and saw an animation it seemed like there was enough going on already. We were wary of not just chucking everything at it.

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When I work on commercial jobs, there’s a scrapbook at the back of my mind with all the things I think about as I’m going through and never really get a chance to make. You’re always a little compromised with commercial work, because you’re presenting a brand and you need to abide by certain rules. However, I also like the challenge involved in putting myself in people’s shoes and trying to make them happy. I’m working towards having more of a gallery presence, but Pick Me Up is also about interaction. I found it quite difficult to find a way that people could interact with my work – my way of interacting is to entertain. It’s been a long time since I’ve worked on something like this. In a way it feels like being back in college and making something for my end of year show. The great thing about this project is that there weren’t loads of different people having their say about what it should look like, just me and the people helping me. I was tempted to paint the figure blue, just because there was no one to tell me I couldn’t.

FINAL FIGURINE

A zoetrope is a simple thing in many ways, but there are so many tiny adjustments you can make. Everything we used to make ours move was adjustable. We were at Somerset House for one day, and we also made one of the models available to download and print (www.bit.ly/ratcliffefigurine).

PROJECTS

JUNE 2014

Inde s ign C ORE SKIL L S

Smart ways to work with images in Indesign Luke O’Neill shares the wisdom of seven years creating beautiful magazines to bring you his top tips for managing images in InDesign

Design task InDesign is the trusty stalwart of the magazine and publishing industries: it’s the primary tool used to produce everything from Vogue to Computer Arts. Although layout and publication design lie at the core of InDesign, its versatility can be harnessed for any design project, and its file handling capabilities make it a powerful ally when working with complex, multi-layered layouts. In this guide I’ll run through some tips for working with layered PSDs and multi-page documents, and even how it’s possible to do some image editing on the fly directly within InDesign. comput era rts.creat iveb loq.com - 96 -

luke o’neill Art Editor, T3 Currently art editor at T3 magazine, Luke designed the first two volumes of Computer Arts Collection. His illustration work can be found gracing the covers of Computer Arts Presents. www.lukeoneill.co.uk

WORKFL OW: ima g e s i n IN DESIG N

JUNE 2014

1 Import options: Layers

2 Import options: Alpha Channels

3 Working with greyscale images

4 Gradients within images

5 Gradients with cut-outs

6 Place an image within multiple frames

7 Adjusting frame and image sizes

8 Make use of the Control bar

9 Scaling by percentage

In the Place dialog you’ll find the Show Import Options checkbox. Select this when placing an image to bring up a dialog where you’ll see a set of options that vary depending on the file type. With a PSD you can turn layers on and off, enabling you to easily get rid of the background of an image, for example.

Unfortunately you can’t apply a gradient directly to a greyscale image, but there is a workaround. Step and repeat the image on the spot or copy and paste it in place. Next, alter the colour of the image using the Swatches panel and use the Gradient Feather tool to fade out part of the image.

To quickly adjust the size of the image within a frame, select it using the Direct Selection tool and then use Opt/Alt+Cmd/Ctrl+. to increase the size and Opt/ Alt+Cmd/Ctrl+, to decrease. Use the Reference Point grid in the Control bar to increase the size from the top, bottom, side or centre.

Another advantage of using PSDs in InDesign is the ability to employ alpha channels created in Photoshop straight into your layouts. Simply navigate to the Image tab and select the relevant alpha channel. This is particularly useful for importing fine, overlapping details, such as hair.

You can’t colour greyscale PSDs in InDesign – to colourise a cut-out or masked image, use Duotone in Photoshop and then save as separate files. The above images consist of three files: the original and two duotone files – one with solid colour and the other feathered using the Gradient Feather tool.

For precise size increases, the Control bar comes in handy. Here, you can incrementally increase either the frame or image size within it by using the arrow keys or by entering a value. When adjusting image size, be sure to check Constrain Proportions For Scaling option so you don’t distort the image.

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If you’re using black-and-white images, save them as greyscale JPEGs. You can then colour them directly within your InDesign layouts. Use the Direct Selection tool to colour the foreground of the image and the selection tool for the background. This is useful for coloured details like headshots.

As an effect you may wish to place an image within a number of separate frames. To do this, simply select all of the frames holding Shift and go to Objects>Paths>Make Compound Paths. Now just place your image within the frame and adjust until you’re satisfied with the results.

In the Control bar there’s also the option to scale images by percentage size. This gives an indication of how big you can take your images on the page. As a rule of thumb, if your images are at 300dpi (for print) then you should try to avoid increasing the size any further then 120%.

PROJECTS

JUNE 2014

Phantogram video: Music in monochrome How Timothy Saccenti and Joshua Davis created a striking music video for Phantogram by projecting CG graphics onto the band and shooting in true black and white0

PROJECT FACTFILE Brief Timothy Saccenti and Joshua Davis teamed up to create the music video for Fall in Love by Phantogram. Davis wrote programs to produce computer-generated graphics that were projected onto the band during a one-day shoot, filmed using a Red Monochrome camera. Client Phantogram www.phantogram.com

The Design Brief Timothy Saccenti

Coming from a photography background, I often have more contact with bands than a traditional director might. For example, I might photograph a package for their press shots – so I get to hang out, talk to them and understand their aesthetic. I’d already done three shoots with Phantogram so I knew which angles worked, how dark or light to go and where to place the camera. This was the ninth or 10th project where I’ve worked with a coder using projections. Josh and I had done other projects for acts including Franz Ferdinand, and we spend a lot of time experimenting when we’re not shooting, so we had some interesting material. I did a test shoot on the spur of the moment while working

Creatives Timothy Saccenti www.timothysaccenti.com Joshua Davis www.joshuadavis.com Project Duration Two months lIve date February 2014

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Dia r Y˚ 3: P ha n tog r a m

JUNE 2014

Timothy Saccenti Director and photographer Tim lives in New York and works on print and music video projects for artists including Depeche Mode and Franz Ferdinand. He has shot portraits of numerous musicians from Erykah Badu to LCD Soundsystem and worked on commercial campaigns for companies such as PlayStation.

Joshua Davis Artist and web designer New York-based artist, designer and technologist Joshua uses computer coding to create patterns and is co-author of the Hype framework. His clients have included Nokia, Wired, Diesel and Kanye West, and he has exhibited interactive works at museums around the world.

on Phantogram’s album cover, using a technique that involves projecting coded designs, or projecting and rebuilding them in Flame. This became the album art. I shot a test video, converted it to black and white, ran those pieces through video synthesisers to give them an organic feel and had our post-production team run some layering and effects. The band has an industrial edge and we used a Red Monochrome Camera to shoot in black and white. We did think about incorporating gold, which is part of the band’s motif, but it’s notoriously difficult to get right if you’re not using actual gold. We worked out the basics in advance and I had the band sign off on the performance edit, with placeholders for graphics and other elements. We set some parameters such as only using dots for the drums and swirls for singer Sarah Barthel.

WORK IN PROGRESS

Joshua Davis The team had one day to shoot on-set with the band

Dots were used to represent the drums

Monochrome methodology Timothy Saccenti explains how he used the Red Monochrome camera to shoot in true black and white

A design frame from pre-production

The Red Epic-M Monochrome camera has no colour sensor, only black and white. Data doesn’t spread out between the RGB areas, so it has more information and greater resolution. I saw [Dutch photographer] Anton Corbijn use it while working with Depeche Mode – the image was phenomenal, so I knew it’d be ideal for future black-and-white projects. It shoots 4K images, and the chip’s functionality means you can use 20,000W projectors instead of 60,000W.

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Phantogram came into the studio and I showed them 56 programs I had written. From there, we narrowed it down to about 27 that they liked. These programs are random, so you can run them an infinite number of times and get a different animation each time. When it came to shooting the video, we had the band, a projector, my computer and all my programs on-set, so we could run my programs and randomly generate compositions until we got one that looked right. Then the band could come in and film the sequence. Everything I write is done in Processing, which sits on top of Java. I also use the Hype Framework, which I co-authored – it’s a library of blocks of code to help designers do things more quickly. For example, you can simulate wind or a swarm of bees with one line of code, without knowing the mathematics behind it. We spent one day shooting with the band. I was randomly creating aesthetics that changed whenever I ran each program. There were moments when we ran

PROJECTS

JUNE 2014

Black and white was used for an industrial, rather than nostalgic, feel

four different programs against the backdrop of the band spinning on a rotating stage. Then, after the shoot, I created and rendered other graphics for Tim to work in. By writing code that generated form, animation, shape and aesthetic, we ensured the video was unique.

CONCLUSION Timothy Saccenti

There was a huge post-production process using Flame, Nuke and After Effects. There were places where we needed to layer things more or do some sort of transition that couldn’t be achieved in-camera. We also spent a lot of time trying to distort the graphics so they weren’t too clean – you need to add some randomness and chaos. We needed to build things up, go through a breakthrough stage and come back more harshly towards the end. Storyboards can give an illusion of control, but really the most important thing is that you feel present for every aspect of the project and you’re listening and responding to the people you’re working with. With music videos, people often pitch ideas rather than thinking about how to frame the spirit of the artist. It’s not about showing off as a director or visual effects artist – the band and the emotions of their music should be the star. I feel in control because I have a team of people – stylists, hair, make-up, lighting – who understand that my job is to make the artists feel like the most iconic version of themselves, and to elevate rather than transforming them.

Lessons learned How the project benefited from Timothy Saccenti’s unique approach

“My job is to make the artists feel like the most iconic version of themselves”

A shot from the opening segment of the finished video

Most things were achieved in-camera – the Red Monochrome camera shot in 4K, only adding one step to the workflow

Know the Artists Living in New York, I can often meet with artists and see how they dress, what they’re into and what stickers they have on their road cases. You need to know what they’re about, even if they don’t, and turn it into something that works for video.

Break up the pace You can’t have a video where everything is exciting – your eyes will pop out of your head. We had to get rid of some things that looked great but were too emotionally manipulative, too over the top or just not quite right.

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Trust is everything Many music videos are shot in one day due to budget constraints. Trust is what makes those shoots happen. You need people around you who don’t just say: “Yes, sir”. I work with some great editors who tell me what I need to cut.

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N e ed t o k n ow

JUNE 2014

Misfit’s Shine devices are part of an increasingly innovative new wave of wearable tech

need to know

What’s the future for wearable tech? R/GA London’s Anthony Baker explores the exciting possibilities of wearable technology, as well as the design challenges that these devices pose

earable technology has rapidly evolved in the past couple of years. But since the start of 2014 in particular, there’s been more interest than ever before. CES, Mobile World Congress and SXSW Interactive have exposed vibrant innovations in smart, wearable devices that are quickly transforming the way we interact, build and design digital experiences. Just take a look at wearable devices from a couple of years ago and you will realise how incredibly fast they are evolving. Despite this fast-paced innovation, wearable devices are still in their infancy. Big brands as well as startups are still exploring possible usages, form factors and overall purpose – the last being key to success. In a world flooded with information and media channels, predictive, contextual and relevant information will supersede any fluffy functionality a device can offer. Designing experiences for wearable devices and

W

soft circuits brings an entirely new challenge to the table. A lot of this early work has begun at the wrist. Google has launched its new Android Wear platform – a framework targeting wearable devices – and Motorola has already announced the Moto 360, a circular smart watch powered by Android Wear. Samsung has also released its new generation of wrist wearables, including its Gear Fit. Designers will need to start thinking about the effect of curved screens and new screen form factors. But it can be difficult to formulate a compelling argument for the purpose of smart watches. Most wrist-worn devices capitalise on small benefits such as duplicating existing smartphone functions, but on a more accessible surface. However, wearable devices are starting to come in different forms, adapting to suit how and where we might wear them.

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During SXSWi 2014, a number of manufacturers presented the next wave of smart devices. Bionym’s Nymi is a new type of smart band that, besides the de facto activity tracking capabilities, measures the wearer’s heartbeat, and even uses this to authenticate the owner. Biometric verification on wearable devices poses some interesting possibilities when considering ways to control other devices, and even how your home interacts with you.  Mighty Cast’s Nex Band is a modular smart band device that enables users to customise modules based on their needs and interests. Misfit’s Shine is another smart device that can be worn in different ways. The owner can use it as a clasp, a band or even as a necklace. Thalmic Labs’ Myo armband measures electrical impulses in your forearm to detect your hand and arm movements. Interestingly, the interfaces on these kinds of devices are minimal. They

W E A R A B LE T E C H

JUNE 2014

Leading the way in the wrist-worn device sector are products such as Bionym’s Nymi (below) and Motorola’s Moto 360 (bottom)

Above and left: Misfit’s Shine devices can worn as a necklace, clasp or on a wristband

are based on simple visual feedback, generally using LED-based, minimalistic signals and a very straightforward method of communicating state and functions. Designers need to take a completely different approach in this case. Cutting down information to the vital pieces and communicating it though minimalistic interfaces is vital. More and more designers will be faced with devices where the form factor, screen type and visual capabilities change radically. They must embrace this in order to jump ahead and design the next generation of user interfaces, working even closer with the software and hardware engineers that build them. This year we have seen how smart devices are inspiring interesting developments in a variety of markets. The automotive industry is keen to leverage value through connected devices in cars. Linking your smartphone to the car dashboard was the first step,

“In a world flooded with media channels, predictive and relevant information supersedes any fluffy functionality a device can offer” but now wearables are seen as an intrinsic part of the story. We now have key holder that can authenticate users and start the engine, better remote devices to control music playback and hands-free calling. Also presented at SXSWi were the Skully Helmets – smart motorcycle helmets designed to enhance the user’s viewing capabilities through embedded sensors and cameras. Think of them as evolving variants of Google’s Glass device. On the other side there is the fashion industry; a truly disruptive force in the

wearable and soft-circuit space. Fashion has been experimenting with smart fabrics and high-tech clothing for some time now, but fashion designers are starting to work closely with technology to enhance and radicalise the purpose of pieces of clothing. Designer Pauline van Dongen presented high-tech clothing designs that made use of embedded solar panels capable of charging smartphones and potentially other wearables. This is a space where digital designers face a completely different surface for digital wearable experiences.

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N e ed t o k n ow

JUNE 2014

Skully is pioneering augmented reality technology to create intelligent motocycle helmets

With Myo – Thalmic Labs’ gesture control armband – wearers can use arm movements to control digital devices

The list goes on. Sensors are cheaper than ever, easier to connect and easier to put together. Frameworks are also consolidating communication protocols, making it much simpler to develop applications and connect them to smartphones, tablets and computers. From smart connected devices that help parents raise their kids, to smart wearables that track your pulse, sleep patterns and even posture, innovative wearables are all around. We see all types of form factors, from necklaces to smart glasses, helmets, key holders and even rings. The possibilities are endless – we could have smart, connected sensors in pretty much anything you can imagine. This is both a huge challenge and a huge opportunity for designers. Consider that some – if not most – devices won’t even have screens. They might rely on simple LED lights, gestures, touch and pressure, or even sound to give feedback to users. Even if we still rely

“The possibilities are endless – we could have smart, connected sensors in pretty much anything you can imagine” on smartphone and web applications to visualise and share data, personalise and authorise our devices, this will just be one part of the equation. Smart devices like those made by Nest tackle the engineering challenge as well as the design challenge. Designers have gone through disruptive changes with the evolution of the screen form factor. The explosion of the mobile industry and increase in tablets forced us to think in terms of fluid layouts and proportional arrangement: the ‘three screen’ approach. However, we are quickly realising that there aren’t just three different screen sizes. Nowadays, screens come in all

sizes and resolutions. Smartphones in particular come in myriad different sizes and pixel densities. The same goes for tablets, laptops, PCs and TVs. Adaptive and responsive layouts fall short when trying to overcome this reality. Designers need to embrace this idea and tackle user interfaces with a holistic approach, thinking outside of the screen box. Screens will always be there, but chances are they will be a small part of user interfaces in the next generation of wearable and connected devices. Next month: Our Innovation Issue reveals how to put emerging tech to good use

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NEXT MONTH

THE INNOVATION ISSUE SPECIAL REPORT

How the world’s most inspiring creative pioneers are changing the face of design INDUSTRY ISSUES

The five innovations that all designers should know about – and how to make use of them Plus: inspiring work, current issues and expert analysis from the global design scene

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CR E AT I V E I N S P I R AT I ONS

JUNE 2014

Soofiya Chaudry

How this designer took inspiration from Twitter to transform the way we experience printed books

nspired by the fast-paced sharing culture online, Soofiya Chaudry decided to create a new book that takes the solidarity out of reading, bringing the best aspects of 21st century communication to an age-old print product.

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How does A Book For Two work? It aims to take reading away from being a solitary experience. Stories are meant to be shared, now their format is too. The book has a double-spine, and it’s placed between two readers. The text is divided into two parts, so the readers alternate in reading paragraphs out aloud. When the text is set in colour, the readers say those parts together. Where did the inspiration come from? All things digital, really. Today, thanks to digital innovations, we’re talking, interacting and building in shared environments. There’s a constant data exchange – I can’t remember the last time I ate lunch without Instagramming it first, or a train delay I haven’t commemorated with a tweet. We’re taking in more information than ever before but in smaller bites: Twitter being a case in point. It’s these interactions in the digital world which inspired my updated approach to print, with the narrative bouncing back and forth between the readers.  How did you develop the design? When A Book for Two started its main focus was ‘sharing’, so I looked at everything from large coffee tables books which almost need two people to read them, to services like GitHub and how things are ‘forked’ and built upon. Later on, I collaborated with designer and illustrator Charlotte Jennings, who has some mad skills for book-binding and craft. Did you have a particular aim? The whole print versus digital debate is incredibly stale now. I want to see the work that is a product of the debate – that’s far more interesting. A Book for Two is one these products. The main aim was is to readdresses print; to take all the lessons we’ve learnt in the digital world back to printed matter. There’s so much potential for innovation through typography and book design: A Book for Two is just the tip of the iceberg. S o o f i ya C h a u d r y , G r a p h i c d e s i g n e r

London-based graphic designer Soofiya specialises in typography and book design. She also lectures at Ravensbourne and likes to spend her weekends admiring good baseline grids and setting metal type. www.soofiya.com computerarts.creativeb loq.com - 106 -

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