April 26th, 2010

product, Paolozzi & Prima: David Keech on design & music

Multidisciplinary designer, musician and teacher David Keech was an Associate with architects Foster and Partners, the first non-Japanese designer at Yamaha Design in Japan, and now runs his own product and interior design practise, Keechdesign.

Kumu chair by David Keech with James Johnson. A Japanese word meaning to join together or assemble, Kumu has only five components, no screws or mechanical fixings and is cut from a single sheet of plywood.

What inspires you? Everything.  That’s a serious answer – not just design.  Only a small percentage of my inspiration comes from that world, a very congested one, everyone following each other – I think it’s good not to be too involved in that.  I probably get more of my inspiration from sculpture, fine art, music, popular culture, than design per se. I spend a lot of time and energy pursuing inspiration, it’s a big part of what I do.  In teaching I kick off with slides about inspiration to surprise students a bit, not work by Phillippe Starck or Arne Jacobsen (much as I love them both)… I was at the National Gallery yesterday looking mainly at pre-17th century religious paintings, and I just thought to myself ‘this is fuel’.  It’s profound, the human energy involved – let alone the skill.  If you could get to half that level, you’d be going some…

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April 19th, 2010

what’s in a name?

British Airways in a proposed merger with Iberia is to list on the London Stock Exchange as International Airlines Group. Boring! When I communicate with power utility E.on, the name always gives pause for thought (am I writing it/saying it correctly? what does it mean?).  The two airline companies will continue to trade publicly under their existing well-established brands (volcanic ash permitting) and E.on is probably considered a ‘successful’ brand, but new brand names now seem to come in just two flavours: underwhelming or overwrought. When was the last time a big brand name was launched to anything other than universal derision?  What’s up with brand names?

Naming strategies have evolved from simple ownership (Campbell’s), to acronym (BBC), description (Slimfast) and evocation (Breeze).  Now ‘no-names’ like Muji (tr.:‘no-label’) and neologisms (or ‘stupid made up names’ as they are more commonly known) like Wii represent newer strategies that are a harder sell and demand a little more – sometimes too much – of the consumer.

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April 14th, 2010

a conversation with Cathie Felstead

Award-winning illustrator and creator of book covers for novels by William Golding, Iris Murdoch, Isabel Allende and Alice Walker, Cathie Felstead has illustrated numerous childrens’ books and worked for big-name clients like British Airways, Channel 4, Ballet Rambert and Oxfam.  An RCA graduate, she also teaches final year Illustration at University of Hertfordshire.  She talks here about inspiration, deadlines, Angela Carter, Industrial design, Cheryl Cole and Arsenal Football Club…

Do you think you have a particular approach to illustration? There is a difference between the work I do for clients and my own work.  My approach to work for clients is quite businesslike: I get a script, look through it and see if there is something interesting about it… (a good fee can make the dullest script more interesting!).  The starting point of an advertising job can be less engaging, and more of a challenge.  Books and editorial work are generally more inspirational and better suited to my approach…

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April 7th, 2010

bottling decoration?

Functionality, clarity and rationality reign supreme in contemporary design.  The Bauhaus casts a long shadow and analysis of function, distillation of meaning and removal of the inessential gives us the calm spaces, ordered structures and clear interfaces that we need to navigate our complex modern lives.  It could be argued that decoration is anti-design.  Style is inevitable, but ‘decoration’ is just for cakes and wallpaper, no?

There are areas of design where indulgent visual richness remains desirable and appropriate, a signifier of value and/or emotion. Decoration blooms sporadically now – our rapid cultural turnover often rendering it ‘tired’ before it can establish itself.  It may not be a dirty word any more but beyond the confines of fashion and interior design, decoration often coexists uneasily with cool minimalism and rational typography.  Are we are in danger of losing the art of decoration?

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March 17th, 2010

plugged

© DC Thompson

Hats off to RCA graduate Min-kyu Choi, who has won the Brit Insurance Design of the Year Award.

The award – a slightly weird exercise in comparing apples with oranges (if not bananas, guava, macadamia nuts and kiwi fruit) – last year favoured Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster and this year pitted the late great Alexander McQueen’s spring/summer collection, a light aircraft and a social housing project against Mr Choi’s clever folding plug design.  Anyone travelling any distance with a thin laptop will appreciate the value of his elegant solution to the problem of the ugly bulk of the UK plug when travelling. The new plug, which folds to 1cm or less, may not save lives but solves a daily irritation for potentially millions of people.  Amazing a) that no-one did this sooner and b) that it is not in production already.  We may now have to put up with endless ‘plugging the market gap’ headlines, but Min-kyu Choi deserves the success that will surely result from his clarity of thought and keen eye for a missed opportunity. Demos here and here.

March 11th, 2010

ghost typography

Over the past year or two one side effect of the Global Banking Brouhaha has been a lot of high street retail refitting, briefly uncovering glimpses of signage and typography hidden for many years.  If not quite as revelatory as Tutenkhamun’s tomb, these archaeological micro-events on the high street nonetheless show fascinating traces of old graphic design, rendered more intriguing by incompleteness.

Without nightvision cameras, bogus paranormal experts, or suggestible members of the public these glimpses reveal eerie traces of the past lives of type. In most cases the letters’ physical presence is long departed, their spirit inferred by shadows, fixing holes and accumulated detritus. Like some new kind of Kirlian photography the remaining traces hint at life and energy absent from the image.

Such marks are usually revealed fleetingly and soon cleaned up or built over. The above delicately shaded façade of a former Sketchleys branch is now sadly as pristine as its former customers’ shirts and suits.  So keep your eyes peeled. The truth is out there, but not for long. Further evidence may be revealed from time to time here.

February 18th, 2010

we want… information

I put up a shed last weekend (yes, the designer lifestyle is that glamorous):  two days of stressful toil lengthened in no small part by the appalling quality of the ‘instructions’ provided: 14 pages of verbal and visual redundancy, irrelevance and confusion.  Well what did I expect for £99?

Most products arrive with scant, inaccurate or misleading information for assembly and use.  Many well-designed consumer products neglect information as part of the product experience, leading to returns, safety issues, customer dissatisfaction and erosion of brand loyalty.   This seems overwhelmingly the norm and we are accustomed to sucking up all the wasted time, the frustration and stress, and moving on with our lives.  Why are ‘instructions’ such a design-free zone? > more

February 18th, 2010

simple

apple

An explosion of communication and choice in recent decades has created the global climate of information overload that we are only now beginning to find ways to properly navigate.  The rise of the iPhone app and the price comparison website shows the information economy at work and there is growing recognition of the value of designing access to information.  But what took us so long?

In our personal areas of interest choice can seem miraculous: I can get my favourite version of my favourite song in less than 60 seconds; we can have customised trainers designed in-store; you can get your flat white-half-caff-soy-frappe-latte-cino just the way you like it in a coffee shop anywhere in the world (a distant time it was when coffee was purchased in only one of two states: black or white).  But in general, relentless second-by-second decision-making is required to navigate a deep sea of visual noise. Negotiating our choices can lead to unprecedented fatigue, confusion, stress – and disinterest.  As expectations rise, consumers are increasingly losing their patience. How do we solve this problem?

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February 15th, 2010

Comic Sans apocalypse

Well that’s it then. The End of Days. Armageddon. Civilization? all over. I have seen a sign: Someone with sufficient cash for a brand new Bentley has seen fit to customize it not only with a personalised license plate (tacky, but unsurprising) – but one set in design’s least favourite typeface: Comic Sans.

Momentarily traumatised whilst driving I failed to whip out the phone camera to record this portent of doom or to note particulars for the design police, but trust me – its out there somewhere… > more

February 12th, 2010

brief encounter

The brief is the key to a good design outcome. Einstein said if he had an hour to solve a problem he would use the first 55 minutes to formulate the right question and the last five to solve the problem. A good design brief is the definition of that right question. In design practice a good brief is extremely rare (I recall only one genuinely complete brief – thank you Nancy Bobrowitz/Reuters!) and its importance is easily overlooked in the rush to results.

Most design briefs are only a production specification, possibly including some vague musings on the brand, but with short-term specifics favoured over direction. The missing element is usually strategy – giving direction, focus and clarity of intent to what is otherwise just a shopping list.  A common reluctance to examine fundamentals makes clarifying design strategy about as easy as nailing jelly to a wall…

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