A lovely brew

Just a bit of nonsense. I was talking about branding today and I reckon I'm only loyal to two brands: Apple Computers and Yorkshire Tea. Everything else is a blur. I don't know what brand of toothpaste I have, or shower gel or whatever.
Although trying (with some success) to go organic I now use Ecover washing-up liquid and detergent so maybe that's another one to add to the list.

Anyway. I've been drinking LOTS of tea recently, I can't seem to get enough. I was wondering if Yorkshire Tea would be something I'd have to give up if I ever move to America (not that it's on the cards or anything) and what do you know, you can buy it over there.

So as an early Thanksgiving gift to the 95% of my readers who are American, and at risk of bringing up that whole Boston Tea Party nonsense again, here's a link to a little taste of heaven. It's not cheap but it's great. You need to brew it for a couple of minutes though with a good mashing you can get a decent cup made in the time it takes for the Law and Order titles to run.

Go to this site to get your fix. I promise you won't regret it.

Let me know what you think...

2004 U.S. Election controversies and irregularities

Mmmm...

2004 U.S. Election controversies and irregularities: "One website discusses Gahanna, Franklin Co. Ohio. The vote reported by the county in Gahanna 1-B was 4258 Bush, 260 Kerry, and the total votes cast in Gahanna overall were 20,736. However:


Gahanna has some 20,000 people elegible to vote and the reported turnout was around 70%. On a casual reckoning approximately 14,000 people voted, and yet nearly 21,000 votes were reported by voting machines.

4258 Republican votes were electronically reported for Bush in Gahanna 1-B. But there were only 638 votes cast in the precinct. Furthermore the 3893 extra individuals who are said to have queued to vote for Bush, and were therefore presumably Republican, did not appear to vote on any other matter bar the Presidency. (These other matters included the Senate race, County Commissioner, several County and State officials, and the imfamous Gay Unions vote, issues of great importance in the election)

Book progress and stuff

Work on the book has been sporadic recently. I've found that I've been able to discuss some of its key concepts with a lot of my students recently but I sometimes feel like I'm just plugging it rather than teaching...

It never ceases to amaze me how articulate these people are, but how they seem to be convinced they know nothing. I wonder how much more they would get out of things if they were challenged more often to think intellectually rather than purely visually? What would happen, do you think, to their visual work?
Critics at my last place of work were definite: the visual would suffer.

Bullshit.

The problem is we focus too much on the finished article - it has to look glossy and 'professional'. I remember one of my students in my first year of teaching. He was perhaps one of the most original thinkers I'd ever met, able to sketch down an idea off the top of his head that immediately answered the problem. He would have made a great advertising creative.

But his finishing skills were crap. On one occasion I saw him struggling to make an idea 'look good' in Illustrator so I sat down and showed him how it would be done. He sat and watched as I took his idea and made it 'look good' while trying to point out that the two sets of skills were often separate in the real world - the artworker (the role I was playing) is usually not the same person who comes up with the rough ideas. But I think he missed that, focussing purely on how I did what I did, the speed at which I did it, and the fact that he could 'never be as good'. I saw a lot of him in me - I'm an ideas man, good at copywriting and coming up with creative solutions off the top of my head. I'm also a good art director, but just not good at the bit in between (the actual 'design', I suppose)

It wasn't his fault that he had this self-defeating view - the education system expected him to be a jack of all trades, particularly specilised in the finishing-off area. Consequently he was always labelled as being poor. He needed to be on a course that deliberately never took students to the finished artwork stage, but I'm not sure one exists. I toyed with developing one but was quickly shouted down by my 'it's all about the visual' colleagues.
The end result is his confidence was knocked and he was unfairly dismissed by teachers who think graphic design is about sticking things on walls and cooing over them. Idiots. What a stupid bloody system.

Last I heard this student was a runner in an ad agency - halfway there; he should have been running the place.

Anyway, back to the book. I wrote about 3,000 words yesterday which is most of a chapter. When I went to bed I felt pleased with myself but this morning they don't read so well. I'm supposed to be writing about design and identity but I've written loads on consumption - important to cover but maybe not the main focus here. I need to avoid getting depressed about it as that'll only lead to procrastination. I may even (shock horror) tidy up later to avoid writing. If things get desperate there's always the ironing...

Design is an intellectual process

I've been thinking a lot about 'creativity' a lot recently, and why the design world defines it differently from everyone else, much to our own detriment and the eternal frustration and confusion of students.

This came home to me this week talking to some graphic design students from an unnamed institution about a 'live brief' they had undertaken for a local broadcaster which, by the sound of things left nobody (clients or students) any the wiser and probably left students a lot more cynical about the industry. I'm not criticising my colleagues, rather the system we operate nationally (maybe internationally?) whereby 'real' clients come in - possibly looking for cheap design - poorly brief a hundred students who then find it impossible to get to grips with what's needed and find any ideas they have dismissed as 'unoriginal' (Hello? Have you seen what real world graphic design is like?) and get inconsistent advice from different teachers. Then it becomes a beauty contest with potentially good ideas dismissed because they are sketches (or even just thoughts), and there's no ability to introduce an idea before it is revealed.

Finally the clients go away with far too many permutations when they really only needed one or two. But at least they got to act all powerful - never, ever put a client in a position where you ask them if they like something because they will always say 'no'. Tell them why they'll like the design first, make them feel ignorant if they can't 'get it' and then show them.

Not very realistic at all, really, this way of doing things - and I struggle to see the educational value.

I wrote a blog entry last night on the subject of creativity but I'm thinking of delaying posting it as I want to read a bit more on the subject to see if I'm just repeating what others have said. But maybe I will post it as a 'thinking out loud' exercise.

In the meantime, here's Erik Spiekermann:

Design is an intellectual process: Design is an intellectual process

My short answer to a frequent question:
“How do you define what you do?”

Design is first and foremost an intellectual process. Contrary to popular belief, designers are not artists. They employ artistic methods to visualize thinking and process, but, unlike artists, they work to solve a client’s problem, not present their own view of the world. If a design project, however, is to be considered successful – and that would be the true measure of quality – it will not only solve the problem at hand, but also add an aesthetic dimension beyond the pragmatic issues.

I consider design not to be a series of “creative” one-offs, but an integrated process, from planning the appropriate communications strategy to designing functional and beautiful objects as well as – for example – implementing electronic stationery on clients' systems.

What clients say and what designers hear are too often very different things. Design is a powerful tool to help clarify the problem. It is only when a common understanding has been established between client and designer that effective results can be achieved.

Design quality needs an integrated approach: look more closely than expected, ask many questions, think laterally, get involved in things you shouldn’t, do more than you are supposed to and have fun doing it. Problem solving is one thing, aesthetic pleasure another. Combine the two, make the engineer sketch like an artist and make the artist analyze like an engineer, and you are half-way there.

Star Wars Episode 3 Trailer

It's here...

Better USA election map

I love how design can be used to make quite complex matters easy to understand at a glance.

This map (a bigger and clearer version is over at the Princeton site) combines the idea of the two I mentioned earlier. It's interesting that there seem to be even clearer patterns: the Democrat vote isn't as concentrated as it appeared before - there's a definite vertical strip in the mid west, but nowhere near as deep red as the states down the centre, It's less of a whitewash than the earlier district map suggested and really highlights how close the final result was.

Dancing on platforms? Sooo 1970s

Surreal. But that's London for you...

iPod-crazed youths invade London station | The Register : "It's 6:45 pm on a drizzly Wednesday evening at Waterloo Station. The main concourse is crowded more than usual due to train delays. Anxious faces stare at blue screens hoping for their cue to sprint to a platform in the hope of a seat. The middle aged lady with handbag in one hand and mobile phone in the other looks down for a second and stares in bemusement at two young ladies who begin dancing to the sound of their personal stereos. She shakes herself to check her senses are not playing tricks as a Conga line streams past behind her with 20 or 30 people listening to their own personal stereos. Other commuters look on dumbfounded.

Welcome to the world of Mobile Clubbing. Simply, mobile clubbing is turning up at a pre-arranged public place on mass where you begin to dance to the sound of your own personal stereo. It is unclear where the concept of Mobile Clubbing originates but one thing is clear and that in the world of spontaneous mass public gatherings, it has replaced Flash Mobbing. Throughout the UK, events are organised on the Internet, informally among groups of friends and the word passes via chat rooms and news forums. But what is the point of meeting on mass and dancing to the sound of your own personal stereo?

'The point is that there is no point, we do it for fun, we do it because we can.' explains Ben Cummins, a musical artist who with his friend Emma Davis organised this and other Mobile Clubbing events in the UK.

Emma (28) wants to dispel the myth that this is about trendy metropolitan London twenty-somethings. 'We have had families turning up at events. We have had older people and we have had suits but everyone has fun and there is no trouble.' she explained.

The people who attend these events are diverse for sure but they are not sad, they have friends and are mainly intelligent and articulate people.

I bumped (literally) into Beth Parker, a trendy metropolitan twentysomething from West London, who told me: 'I enjoy dancing and had fun at a previous event at Liverpool Street Station.' She's listening to James Zabiela & Sasha's Breakbeat. She floats off with the rhythm, unfazed by the attention from the media and from frowning commuters.

I meet a pair of middle aged ladies who would not have been out of place on Strictly Come Dancing. Mary from Norwood and Penny, originally from Hong Kong but now of Streatham Hill met at a dance class. They have been dancing partners ever since and told me about their repertoire of Argentinean Tango, Charleston and Samba dancing. Mary whisks me away and before I know it she is leading me in a Tango. Aware of my rapidly increasing heart rate, I rapidly disengage and thank the two ladies for their time.

'We need more men,' she declares.

Editor's note: I'm on my way, ladies!

All around the main concourse there is a polychromatic array of multicultural mixed sex, mixed aged groups doing their own thing. The common denominator seems to be a sense of fun. Many of the stranded travellers are snapping pictures with their mobile camera phones, some even get into the spirit and join in. The majority look on in bewilderment.

The station staff and the police, who have clearly been tipped off, look on. They are prepared for the worst case scenario but the event passes without incident and with the minimum inconvenience to commuters. In the corner I see the British Transport Police interviewing Ben and Emma but even they have to admit that while there was a potential public safety issue, they could not fault the conduct of the hundred or so participants.

Ben was happy with the result.

'Everyone had a good time and there has been no trouble.' he said.

Asked about the next event Ben explains: 'It will just happen, we don't do this to seek publicity, the whole point is that anyone can come along and have fun.'

Check out http://www.mobile-clubbing.com for future events.

Democracy gives us the governments we deserve

Today's UK Daily Mirror (not my usual paper of choice):



Sums up the feeling over this side of the pond, really.

Incidentally, here's a map of the USA based on each state's vote - the colour reflects the share each party got rather than who won:



(Map by Jeff Culver)

And here's one that shows each district based on who won it.



(From USA Today)

I'm guessing the blue areas are largely urban? It's the only way you can explain the purpleness of the fisrt map, but the apparent redness of the second...

Can I just say - either the USA is conveniently laid out, or Americans like straight lines - you should see constituencies and electoral wards over here in the UK. Sometimes they double back on themselves so much you have to miss single houses out of a canvas because it is in one ward or constituency but its neighbours are in another. (Well I exaggerate, but not much!) Michigan's a bit odd though. Who thought that one up? What's so bad about the bit to the north of Wisconsin that the people there didn't want it?