22 posts
Over the weekend I finally went along to the Design Museum in Shad Thames to have a look around the retrospective exhibition for Dutch typographer and graphic design icon Wim Crouwel.
Spanning a career over 60 years, the exhibition highlights Crouwel’s functional and rigorously modernist principles towards design across posters, corporate identities, typeface and exhibition design.
I was hunting on the web the other day for a comprehensive list of UK brands on Twitter, as part of some research. Some UK brands are included in Fluent Simplicity’s Social Brand Index, an extremely comprehensive list of brands on Twitter, but it is more US-focussed, with just a few UK brands.
It’ll be a while before the full impact of the coalition’s swingeing cuts in the Arts world are realised, but one thing is clear: it’s forcing artists’ hands. There will be little choice but to seek patronage from sources other than the Arts Council, NESTA or the British Film Institute.
Of course, brands have been supporting the arts for ages and there have been some great examples of this, although some backfire as seen recently with BP’s sponsorship of The Tate. And there are those in the arts community who feel that corporate sponsorship has no place, that it sullies the purity of art. But the harsh reality is that the arts need funds, and the most ready source is going to come from the private sector.
At Camp Bestival last weekend, in amongst the fun and wonder, I was struck by how much harder brands are going to have to work to engage with people, and how this has potential to benefit artists.
There’s nothing like a dose of Kevin Kelly to blast away any weak thoughts that might start creeping into one’s brain after reading something like this super-alarmist article in the NY Times.
Yesterday I listened to a very inspirational talk on TED by Steve Jobs ’How to live before you die‘. By telling 3 stories from his life Steve is urging people to pursue their dreams and trust their intuition.
Steve always followed his intuition. He never graduated from the university. He didn’t know what he wanted to do in his life and didn’t think that college would help him figure it out. He dropped out of Reed College just after 6 months. By dropping out he could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest him and join the ones that looked interesting. For example he took calligraphy class to learn about typefaces, about what makes great typography great. 10 years later when designing the first Macintosh computer he used his knowledge and skills to design the first computer with beautiful typography. Much of what he stumbled into by following his curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Key learning points:
Earlier this week, Stuart wrote about viewing our competition as allies. This probably feels a little uncomfortable for a lot of people — businesses want to succeed, and a big part of succeeding is making money, which comes from getting work, which normally happens at another business’s expense.
But who says it’s a zero-sum game? The Web is changing and the world is changing. The biggest gains — monetary and otherwise — are to come from being a part of that change, and influencing the direction of that change so that we — and our industry — become smarter, kinder, and just, well… better.
Last Tuesday night, I went to the preview for the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year exhibition (aka the Oscars of the design world) at the Design Museum in Shad Thames.
(Photo credit: Luke Hayes, from the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year blog)
It was a fluorescent evening, buoyed up by free-flowing champagne and ebullient design typeslarging it in hats, big hairdo’s, bright lipstick and serious specs.
This post is a sort of modified version of my ‘Stuff that’s floating around the office’ posts that I used to do earlier. With our increased use of Twitter, I realised that all of us at Made by Many were tweeting interesting links individually rather than sending them around the office. So I’ve turned to Twitter to aggregate some of the best links as fodder for this refreshed series of posts. They’ll probably reveal what a diverse bunch we are – and we like to think our diversity is reflected in our work!
For those who don’t follow my Twitter stream, I’ve been running a ‘bosewatch‘ hashtag campaign for the last couple of months. You see, my desk overlooks Regent Street and the Bose store is directly opposite. I tweet casual observations about what’s going on there, often passing comment on how empty it looks.
It’s all been a bit tongue-in-cheek. Casual brand stalking if you like. But everything changed at lunchtime today. I got a phone call which began…
Are you as tired as I am of these people who whinge on about the Web being too big and free and open and rich for their fragile little brains to cope with?
After centuries millenia of restricted access to knowledge being something every hipster should be heard moaning about, it’s now suddenly cool to complain that there’s just ‘too much information‘ out there and that you can’t cope. Yeah man, it’s just too heavy. It’s like you could spend all day every day online, but you still can’t take it all in and it’s completely ruining your life, and making you feel worthless.
