Another week, another report on how much the creative industries are worth...

Here's news of (yet another) report on how, surprise surprise, the creative sectors contribute a jolly big amount of money to the economy.

Presumably running a close second to the 'we've heard it all before' report writing industry. Seriously, this has to be the fourth or fifth such report in the last twelve months. Stop reporting already - can we just move on? It's nearly ten years since then Government Minister Chris Smith wrote a book about this, and nothing seems to have changed as a result, other than free entry to museums and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Personally I worry about the phrase 'the flow of creativity worth commercialising' here, as though creativity needs to be assessed in economic rather than cultural terms, and ignoring the way that creativity (beyond the carefully planned demographically-targetted TV shows and films) actually percolates throughout society.

It also worries me that reports like this tend to be used as amunition to regulate the creative sector and gain control over academia - the argument that if we're to benefit from creative industries the industries should take over courses just doesn't make any sense. The two sectors are entirely different, despite their shared focus. It's like Borders telling JK Rowling how to write.

Anyway...

The Guardian article on the report is below. For an alternative take on this see Mike Press's review of 'Fantasy Island', a book that The Guardian seems to have forgotten it has published an extract on its site.

The value of Britain's creative industries to the economy is now broadly comparable to that of the financial services sector, according to a report published today.
Commissioned by the department for culture, media and sport, the report calls Britain's creative economy - including publishing, broadcasting and advertising - the country's 'great unsung success story', generating £4bn of exports annually.

This, the report by the Work Foundation concludes, represents around 7.3% of the annual revenue generated by the entire UK economy.

Entitled Staying Ahead: The Economic Performance of the UK's Creative Industries, the 266-page report estimates that 13 creative industry sectors - which include advertising, publishing, radio and TV, computer services and computer games - employ 1.8 million people and generate more 'cultural goods' for export than any other nation in the world.

The report, which took six months to compile, cites findings from the United Nations educational and cultural organisation, Unesco, that the UK exported $8.5bn (£4.25bn) of cultural goods in the 13 creative sectors in 2002 compared with $7.6bn (£3.8bn) billion by the US and $5.2 billion (£2.6bn) from China.

The other sectors in the creative industries list are architecture, design, film, music, software, designer fashion, crafts, performing arts and the arts and antiques market.

This value of exports is thought to be in line with amount generated by the UK's financial services sector, according to Unesco analysis from 2004.

However, a Work Foundation spokesman admitted that 'hard data' is 'difficult to come by' due to the nature of the various creative sectors analysed in the report.

Today's report also warns that 'without careful policy-making, targeted public investment and a supportive institutional architecture, the flow of creativity worth commercialising may begin to slow'.

Will Hutton, the Observer columnist and chief executive of the Work Foundation, said: 'There is no doubt that Britain's creative knack is something to celebrate. The stuff that creates new insights, delights and experiences, that stirs our senses and enriches our lives, is also the stuff that is propelling a larger slice of our economic output.

'The question is can we continue to supply this growing demand? How we create the architecture that will incubate rather than stunt creative industry growth is a major policy question.'

The culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, welcomed the report, adding: 'This analysis shows just how vibrant - and how economically important - our creative industries are.

'The report is a key part of our work towards publishing a green paper on the creative industries later this year, and we will consider its findings carefully.'"

(Via The Guardian.)

Chickens versus rabbits

I don't want to tourn this blog in to a 'look what I found on YouTube' thing, and so far I've resisted the whole 'spend my day watching people being stupid' habit. But I mean, this is funny:

What have I been doing for the last twenty years?

Lawrence Miles (an excellent writer) sums up exactly my own take on the recent 40th anniversary of Sgt Pepper. I wasn't so much celebrating the album as remembering watching a documentary on it in 1987:

in 1987, ITV broadcast a documentary called It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, marking the twentieth anniversary of Sergeant Pepper. In those days, 1967 seemed to exist in the same “times that never really happened” bracket as Jason and the Argonauts or films about dinosaurs fighting cavemen, and probably featured stop-motion hippies courtesy of Ray Harryhausen. But a few months from now, it’ll be twenty years since the documentary, forty years since the album, and – logically – sixty years since Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play. It wouldn’t be so bad, if I’d actually done anything useful in those twenty years. I turned thirty-five last month, for Christ’s sake, I’m entitled to a midlife crisis.

I feel the same when I watch old episodes of Doctor Who (which is the link between me and Lawrence - who I just realised is a year younger than me but in many ways seems to have had the life I was supposed to, the bastard). Take Robot, Tom Baker's first story, which I saw on DVD the other day. I remember watching that when it was first on, about 8 weeks after my fourth birthday. Do you know how sad (in an emotional, not, you know, 'sad' way) this made me feel?
Not long ago I saw Logopolis, Baker's last story and again it made me sad, both in an 'end of an era' way and in a more complex mathematical way.

Let me see if I can explain. A few months after they first showed Logopolis, the BBC did something we Doctor Who fans could only dream of in those days: they showed a season of old stories beginning with the very first, An Unearthly Child from November 23 1963.
Now to someone born in 1970 (hello) 1963 is, as Lawrence puts it: 'in the same “times that never really happened” bracket as Jason and the Argonauts or films about dinosaurs fighting cavemen'. In 1981, 1963 was nearly 20 years ago (you see, I can do maths!) which was pre-history as far as I was concerned. So last year, when I watched An Unearthly Child again (on DVD - you get the impression I was lying about the 'sad' don't you?) I couldn't help working out that (and stick with me here) the gap between my first viewing it and seeing it now was actually longer than the gap between it first being shown and my seeing it in 1981...

That's mind-bending.

I remember when my dad turned 40 and we thought he was old. Apparently, 60 is the new 40 which is just as well - this is one goal post I don't mind them moving. But like Lawrence I reckon I had my midlife crisis far too early (unless it's God's way of telling you you've only got another 30 years to live in which case I may cash in my pension now). Why do we seem to have our mid-life crises earlier than ever, despite the fact our life expectancy is longer? Simple. It's down to cheap TV channels showing programmes you dimly remember from your childhood, and it's down to the BBC releasing its entire archive (the stuff it didn't wipe to record new episodes of Hetty Wainthrop Investigates) on DVD.
I'm looking at a video of the entire series of Willow The Wisp that a friend bought me one Christmas because they presumably thought I was of the age that I would find it amusingly nostalgic, when in fact it made me want to go and bury my head in a pillow and cry like a baby.

People ask me why I teach, or what I like about it. They rarely ask me what I don't like about it. It's the fact that every year, the people I teach become 12 months more detached from my own experience. I used to use the rescue of Princess Leia from the Death Star to introduce the concpet of project management (try it: produce a Gantt Chart of the rescue plan) but I stopped doing that when the number of people who'd never seen Star Wars came dangerously close to making me faint.

I was on the phone to a friend yesterday reporting on a recent visit to the doctor. 'It was frightening' I told her, 'suddenly all the leaflets I used to ignore now seem to be aimed at me'. The day you reach 35 the list of things you have to be worried about, check and stare at before flushing away increases dramatically.

So maybe this is why I haven't played Sgt Pepper in homage to its creation. Not because I don't like it (I do) but because I can't stomach the fact that the first line 'It was twenty years ago today' might be a temporal jolt too far.

A tour round Stanford d.school

A tour of Stanford's d.school:



Via The Graphic Student

Visualisation Methods

An interesting collection of visualisation techniques - well worth visiting to look around. When you get there, just hover your mouse over the tiles to see an example of each technique.

Chinese letter finds right character

A letter sent from China to Britain's oldest driver reached her despite featuring the wrong name and address on the envelope.

The mail, thought to be from a Chinese journalist, was intended for 105-year-old Sheila Thomson, who was recently named as Britain's oldest driver.

But the inscription on the front of the envelope identified the intended recipient only as 'Sherry Thomson, 105-year-old driver'. It gave her address as 'Angus County, Scotland, England'.

The letter was mailed by Ding Hanning from Zhen Jiang, Jingsu, China.

Despite the wrong name and address, a Royal Mail postman managed to fulfil the task by asking around if anyone knew Britain's oldest driver.

After many inquiries, the postie managed to slip the letter through the correct door and has now been praised by his bosses.

Yesterday at her home in Broughty Ferry, Dundee, Mrs Thomson, who has been driving since 1936, paid tribute to the postman.

The centenarian said: 'That's about three weeks they've been trying. It's really very funny. The postman has done a fine job.

'The letter doesn't have a word of English in it. I was thinking I will have to get someone from the university to translate it.'

A spokeswoman for the Royal Mail said the account proved how postmen often go 'beyond the call of duty' to deliver all mail.

She said: 'They do everything in their power to deliver items correctly, even when the address that is given appears more like a cryptic puzzle. In cases such as this, they succeed due to their dedication, pride in their work and their unique local knowledge of the communities they serve.'

Mrs Thomson hit the headlines earlier this year when she emerged as a candidate for Britain's oldest driver.

She still drives her Peugeot 106 to church in a 15-mile round trip that she has repeated every Sunday for more than six decades.

Before Mrs Thomson's case attracted attention, it was believed that Britain's oldest driver was Charlie Howarth, of West Yorkshire, who renewed his licence in March at the age of 101.

In May, Mrs Thomson lost the no-claims bonus she had built up for 71 years after she had a bump on the way to church."

(Via The Scotsman.)

Meanwhile I had to fight Dundee council tooth and nail against a £16 fine for not paying the final installment of my council tax because the letter they sent me revising my original bill never arrived. Their office is about two miles away.

A case of bad, bad design

Quick question:

What would be the simplest design solution to stop things like this happening again?

Annoyed, hospitalized teen unplugs neighbor's life support: "It should probably go without saying that anything connected to a power source within the confines of a hospital has a fair shot at being pertinent to the livelihood of at least one individual, but obviously a 17-year old teenager in Germany needed the memo. After the perpetual noise of what would prove to be his neighbor's life support machine 'got on his nerves,' he proceeded to simply unplug the device without precaution in order to ensure that 'he got his peace and quiet.' Of course, we can only assume that the sirens and squeals that were emitted due to his misreckoning were immensely louder than the prior hum, but some folks just love to learn the hard way. Thankfully, medical personnel stepped in and saved the man from perishing, but the teen at fault lost a lot more sleep after that whilst being questioned by police."

[Via The Register]

(Via Engadget.)

Suggested answers: Hard wiring (i.e. no plugs), a big sign, not putting teenagers in the bed next to anyone...

Big Ass Table

New design blog

I've set up a new blog for the course I teach at the University of Dundee, which those of you interested in design might want to subscribe to and, if so inclined, comment on.

Design Cultures is a place to post articles I find around the interweb about design that I think students might be interested in, that might spark debate, controversy or even ridicule...

It's quiet at the moment as the students are away, so not many comments. Hopefully that will change come September.

Greece bans sexy roadside ads to prevent deaths

From The Guardian (18 June 2007)

Greece is mounting a nationwide effort to remove "eye candy" billboards from roadsides, amid growing evidence that images of women wearing not very much contribute to Europe's worst road accident figures.
With 15,000 hoardings in the capital alone, drivers are distracted by "unacceptable levels of eye candy", say campaigners who have convinced the courts to rule that all roadside adverts be dismantled.

Billboards invariably depict svelte females in outre poses. "Many of them not only hide traffic lights and road signs, they are put up illegally," said an Athens traffic police official.

"We believe they are the cause of 10% of all accidents in the city."
Driving in Greece is not for the faint-hearted. More than 2,000 people die on the roads annually; another 4,000 are seriously injured in 22,000 car accidents a year - one every 24 minutes.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London even highlights the issue in its travel advice for Greece.

This month, drivers faced a new highway code, with fines of up to €700 (£490) for ignoring a stop sign or running through a red light.

The adverse effects of billboards have been highlighted due to the efforts of an Athenian lawyer, Athanasios Tsiokos, who killed his son when he crashed into a billboard on a busy avenue in the capital. He has since campaigned to punish advertising companies, and this year his complaint was upheld by the State Council, which ordered the billboards removed.

Municipalities have begun dismantling them. "This is an issue of public safety and it only happens in our country," said Aris Stathakis, MP for the ruling New Democracy party. "All the dangerous advertising billboards have to be removed."

The campaign has not been easy. Corrupt local government officials have long ensured that billboards have flourished. Recently, campaigners have woken up to find that those removed frequently have been re-erected overnight.

What children do when allowed to design their own schools

Mike Baker, the BBC's former education correspondent, writes in The Guardian (19 June 2007)

My favourite broadcast news report was compiled not by a well-funded TV crew, but by a group of middle-school pupils from Bedfordshire. I suspect it caused more embarrassment at the Department for Education than most stories. The government had just produced an expensive, computer-generated design for the latest school buildings. The DfES released it as a video. It looked fantastic: acres of plate-glass, banks of laptops and vast plant-filled atriums. And virtually no pupils.
I, then at the BBC, ran the story on the breakfast television news, using the DfES footage. I tried to balance it with commentary about the more mundane reality of most school buildings but, inevitably, pictures were more powerful than words.

Later that day, a videotape arrived. It was a counter-blast video made, without any adult prompting, by a group of irate pupils.

It was brilliantly done. Pupils pointed out the ivy growing through the science lab ceiling and the piles of disconnected computers in a storage cupboard. That was the power of the pupil voice. We should listen to it more often.

I must confess that, in the past, I have been sceptical about the concept of pupil voice. Why listen to those with so little experience?

But I was wrong. Pupils are the real consumers of schooling. They know what is going on and they recognise what works for them. This was brought home to me on a recent visit to Alder Grange community and technology college in Lancashire. As I toured the school, I was struck by the bareness of the walls. Was this evidence of a school that lacked the vitality to provide interesting wall displays?

No. It turned out there had been a deliberate decision to clear clutter. Why? Because in the classrooms it distracted the pupils from learning and in the corridors it made the space feel narrower. And who said so? The pupils.

The wisdom of consulting pupils is spreading. The Sorrell Foundation Young Design Centre has just opened an exhibition that invites pupils' views on school design. Their ideas tend to be practical and sensible. Their most common concerns relate to issues such as unsafe toilets, unwelcoming canteen facilities and lack of social space. At Alder Grange, pupils asked why meeting areas could not have sofas and tables - "grown-up" furniture.

Nor is the pupil voice relevant only to buildings. If we are serious about wanting to teach young people about citizenship, they should be able to see it in action in schools. That means more than just asking their opinions. It also means giving pupils responsibility to implement them.

At Alder Grange, I sat in on a meeting between the school management and pupil leadership teams as they discussed how the pupil council was working. To my surprise, it has responsibility for disciplinary matters; it decides, and imposes, the scale of punishments. Surely, I asked the staff, miscreants must resent being disciplined by their peers? Apparently not - not least because the council is elected by all pupils.

There is plenty more scope for pupil voice. Take personalised learning, for example. According to a government-commissioned report last week, many schools still do not know what the phrase means. Yet I have seen pupils in Bristol helping to design a curriculum and learning style that suits them.

Of course, like adults, pupils don't always do what they know is best for them. But would we deny adults a say in the way they work because they occasionally spend too long chatting at the water-cooler? After all, how often have you thought that you could tell management how to improve your workplace?

It is time to turn up the volume on pupil voice.

Memories as jewellery

We had our degree show a few weeks ago - my first up here. I always find degree shows a mixed affair for various reasons: you can never get to see everything, they're sad (especially if you know the students well), they're happy, they're packed, they look depressing when the crowds go, and finally they tend to reduce students' learning to 'look at me' - seeing all that work with no context is problematic. I've been to some shows where the work looks great, but you wonder what the student learnt in the process. Similarly I've seen some shows that on the surface look a bit rough but you know the students have been too busy learning to polish the work. I think that's fine, but I know others think the show is everything.
As we come up to New Blood (D&AD's student show), New Designers and Free Range, where hundreds of design students will show off their work in London, I think anyone visiting with the idea of recruiting needs to make sure they look beyond the work on the wall - it's the ideas that count and the thinking behind them.

Since moving up to Scotland I've had to learn an awful lot about fields of design outside my own experience. Teaching jewellery and textiles students isn't so different from, say, graphic design students, and the concepts I cover are equally - if not more - applicable to them. But the examples I show to make points tend to come from graphics and advertising (often because those fields are the most 'obvious' examples we encounter day to day). This causes problems though as some students will reject ideas if they think it only applies to graphics.

Wandering around the jewellery show the other week I was struck by a few students' work in particular, and by how they (maybe without knowing it) knocked on the head the idea that theory and practice have nothing to do with one another, or that teaching design students stuff from other disciplines isn't worthwhile (something Paul Rand rather bizarrely claimed in 'Design, Form, Chaos').
One student had been inspired by images of bacteria and germs, another had created shapes that were straight out of omnidimensional mathematics, while another, Kate Pickering, had examined the idea of memory to create a range of pieces.
The two images above show some of these. The vials contain (I'm told) her blood, sweat and tears (don't ask! The 'blood' one was missing when I saw the exhibit but a red stain on the floor suggested what had happened to it...).

The idea behind the second piece, 'Heart to Heart', escapes me for the moment (my own memory being a bit temperamental at the moment) but I do remember being intrigued by it. In a way, it's the fact that I can't quite remember the meaning, but I can remember the feeling, that I like.

There were some other pieces, not shown, that took me back a bit. Kate had some items that looked like vials combined with a censer, one of those incense holders they swing in church, and they contained items linked to people (lovers, friends etc). They reminded me of the relicry in my old school, a convent in York, that contained items like the bloodstained robes of martyred saints and, most chillingly, the actual hand of St Margaret Clitherow (below) who was executed in a particularly nasty way on the banks of the River Ouse in York.



Kate had, perhaps unconsciously, produced modern pieces that have a long tradition and that mix memory, emotion and (to me) a little bit of a chill factor.

I'm going to show these images to new students next year because they are great examples of how 'contextual studies', far from being irrelevant to design practice, can be a source of ideas and depth. If Kate decides to take this idea further there is a wealth of literature from fiction to cutting edge research that could inform her ideas.

Kate is showing at New Designers in London from 5-8 July, along with her classmates and others from here and around the UK. Worth a visit if you're nearby. (Week 2, 12-15 July, includes graphics, illustration, product design and more.)
Kate's email address: kate-pickering at hotmail dot co dot uk

Survey: Most youngsters 'hate' 2012 logo

See the list of links on the left side of this page for some of The Guardian's coverage of the London Olympics logo.
Here's the latest - a report on a survey suggesting the logo hasn't hit home with the group it was supposedly aimed at:

Almost 70% of 11- to 20-year-olds dislike the youth-targeted London 2012 logo, according to a study.
The logo, which aims to tap into the youth market with a multimedia design, has come in for heavy criticism since being unveiled last week.

Now, a Q Research survey focusing on the core market London 2012 is hoping to attract - 11- to 20-year-olds - has found that 68% of respondents said they 'hate' the design, with more than half saying it was because it did not say anything about the capital city or the UK.

While 75% of the 431 respondents said they were 'excited' about the Olympics coming to London, just 30% of 11- to 16-year-olds and 35% of 16- to 20-year-olds said they 'loved' the new design.

The survey group was asked why they thought so many people do not like the new logo, supplying a response from a list of four answers.

In responding to these options, 30% said it was because the design 'doesn't say anything about the UK'; 24% said it 'doesn't say anything about London'; 32% simply said it 'wasn't a very good logo'; and 14% thought it was because adults do not understand it.

A second question asked if the logo - designed to be usable online - actually looked better in print or on the internet.

In reply to this question, 30% agreed that it looks better online, with just 11% saying it looks better printed in magazines, newspapers and posters.

'We were pleased to see more than three-quarters of the young people we surveyed were excited about the Olympics in London,' said the Q Research executive chairman, Dr Liz Nelson.

'Our survey respondents had clearly given the matter of the logo itself a lot of thought, and their comments showed quite a sophisticated level of understanding design and marketing and its purpose.

'For instance, more than half of respondents said they didn't like the logo because it didn't say anything about London or the UK.'

The survey asked a range of questions of 11- to 16-year-olds and 16- to 20-year-olds between Friday and Sunday.

Views were largely negative in an 'open-ended' response part of the survey, where respondents said what they thought about the logo.

One respondent, Lee, 15, said that it looks 'like a kid made it' and that while the 'designers thought it would attract MTV viewers it doesn't'.

This contrasts with supporter Tamsyn, 15, who said: 'I think it's a brilliant way of introducing the newer generations to the Olympics because it's quite a modern design.'

Several respondents were also concerned with the fact that it cost £400,000 to develop.

Seventeen-year-old Matt said it 'makes London look like it has no design talent to do the promoting'.

However, Caron, 17, took a much wider long-term view of the whole logo issue: 'It doesn't make a difference, the Olympics in London is an amazing thing.'"

(Via The Guardian.)

Incidentally, I saw the logo printed in The Guardian yesterday and found myself thinking 'meh, it looks okay', but then I looked again and realised that I was mistaking familiarity with enthusiasm. I suspect this is what supporters of the logo are doing too. Saying we'll 'get used' to it is hardly a ringing endorsement. I might get used to a boil on the back of my neck, doesn't mean I want it there.

Photosynth

Wait til you get to around five minutes in...




Photosynth website

Two designers talk about the Olympics 2012 logo

Click to listen to Adrian Shaughnessy and Jessica Helfland talk about the 2012 logo

(Via Design Observer.)

Not joined up thinking

As part of the Dundee Literary Festival, top children's authors Philip Pullman and Jacqueline Wilson (Britain's Children's Laureate) are appearing later this month.

I told a friend of mine whose ten-year-old daughter recently did a talk at school on Wilson, and whose slightly younger son is a huge Doctor Who fan and would undoubtedly enjoy Pullman's 'Dark Trilogy' books in a couple of years.

Unfortunately (and rather oddly) the talks are during school hours, so my friend asked the kids' school if they could be excused for a few hours to go and attend the talks. Given that it's the end of term and nothing new is being covered in the curriculum as everyone winds down, it would appear to be a reasonable request, notwithstanding the status of the speakers.

The answer? "No". Apparently listening to two of our foremost authors isn't viewed as being educational enough.

Your place or mine?

You can't make this stuff up: Epilepsy fears over 2012 footage

A segment of animated footage promoting the 2012 Olympic Games has been removed from the organisers' website after fears it could trigger epileptic fits.
Prof Graham Harding, who developed the test used to measure photo-sensitivity levels in TV material, said it should not be broadcast again.

Charity Epilepsy Action said it had received calls from people who had suffered fits after seeing it.

Organisers London 2012 said it will re-edit the film.

The new logo for the event, which is a jagged emblem based on the date 2012, was unveiled on Monday.

A London 2012 spokeswoman said the health concerns surrounded a piece of animation shown at the launch, which was recorded by broadcasters and put on the official website.

Emphasising that it was not the logo itself which was the focus of worries, she said: 'This concerns a short piece of animation which we used as part of the logo launch event and not the actual logo.'

She said the section of footage concerned showed a 'diver diving into a pool which had a multi-colour ripple effect'.

The spokeswoman said: 'We are taking it very seriously and are looking into it as a matter of urgency.'

'Suffered seizure'

Prof Harding is an expert in clinical neuro-physiology and he designed a test which all moving adverts need to undergo to check they will not trigger a reaction in people with epilepsy.

He told BBC London 94.9FM: 'It fails the Harding FPA machine test which is the machine the television industry uses to test images.

'And so it does not comply with Ofcom guidelines and is in contravention of them.'

Christopher Filmer rang BBC London 94.9FM to say he suffered a seizure while watching the footage on television and his girlfriend also suffered a fit and needed hospital treatment.

'The logo came up on TV and I was thinking about the 2012 Games and then I was out,' he said.

Epilepsy Action said the images could affect the 23,000 people in the UK who have photosensitive epilepsy.

It said it had even triggered breakthrough seizures where people have a relapse after being seizure-free for a long time.

A spokesman for the charity said: 'The brand incorporates both the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which is ironic as the latter is a showcase for athletes with disabilities.

'People can strive for years to gain seizure control and it is important that nothing puts this at risk.'

(Via BBC News.)

2012 Olympics Logo Revealed...

So this is the logo for the London 2012 Olympics. And this is the explanation.

I'm saying nothing.*

You can, however, read what 'the great British public' are saying on the BBC's 'Have Your Say' page.





*That's cos it's shite.