April cover featuring a character drawn byJim Stoten in The Layzell Brothers’ Livin’ in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight video for Adam Buxton
Our April issue presents the work of three young animators and animation teams to watch. Plus, we go in search of illustrator John Hanna, test out the claims of a new app to have uncovered the secrets of viral ad success and see how visual communications can both help keep us safe and help us recover in hospital
In the new issue we pick out three animators and animation teams to watch: the Layzell Brothers, who regular readers might remember are the (warped) minds behind Adam Buxton’s Livin in the Moonlight video. With characters by illustrator Jim Stoten.
Becky & Joe, creators of Tame Impala promo Feels Like We Only Go Backwards
And Julia Pott,whose disturbing tale Belly has been a hit on the festival circuit
Elsewhere in the issue, NIck Asbury goes in search of the elusive Australian commercial artist John Hanna, illustrator of a series of beautiful covers for Country Fair magazine
Mark Sinclair looks at the transformative power of art and design when used in hospital environments.
Anna Richardson Taylor explores the claims of a new app to have discovered a formula that guarantees viral advertising success.
And Paul Rennie delves into the archives of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, and discovers a rich design history
In Crit, James Pallister reviews Anna Saccani’s new tome on typographic installations, Letterscapes
In his regular column This Designer’s Life, Daniel Benneworth-Gray writes on the perils of working with academics and Gordon Comstock discusses the perils of creating YouTube-friendly advertising
Jeremy Leslie asks what makes a superior – and successful – independent magazine?
And Paul Belford argues strongly that the craft of writing and art directing long copy advertising must be preserved while Patrick Burgoyne reports from the Design Indaba conference, where the scope for designers to make a difference to society was vividly illustrated
Plus, in our subscriber-only Monograph supplement, we celebrate the work of art director and designer Gerald Cinamon
The Design Museum’s Designs of the Year show is its usual eclectic self, marrying the gigantic (The Shard) with projects of more modest ambition. We pick out some highlights from the exhibition
The curatorial methodology of Designs of the Year, where various ‘experts’ in the field are asked to nominate projects for final selection by committee, is guaranteed to produce diverse, if not quirky results. The criteria for selection are very loose, trusting in those submitting nominations (including me) to come up with content that genuinely reflects the industry. The overtly commercial tends to get overlooked (not withstanding the likes of Apple’s iPad having featured in previous years). So you won’t find many corporate identities for big companies or much mainstream packaging design. This is, by and large, design as the profession would like us to think of it rather than the bits that really bring in the revenue.
But the role of an exhibition such as this is to inspire and to showcase – to reflect the ambitions of the profession perhaps rather than the day-to-day. As such, in most categories, it does that very well.
There are a lot of projects, for example, which illustrate design’s ablity to tackle ‘needs’ rather than ‘desires’.
ESource by Hal Watts for example is a bicycle-powered waste recycling system that separates the materials within electrical wiring so that they can be more effectively processed with fewer harmful fumes.
And the 3D Printed Exoskeleton ‘Magic Arms’, designed by Nemours/Alfred I du Pont Hospital for Children in Delaware US, allows parts to be individually 3D printed and tailored to children suffering form musculoskeletal disabilities who need upper body support.
In the Child ViSion glasses designed by The Centre for Vision in the Developing World and Goodwin Hartsom, the prescription can be adjusted by injecting a fluid into the lenses, thus extending the life of the glasses significantly as a child can keep the same pair as he or she grows and their eyes change.
Other projects reflected efforts to ‘democratise’ design, such as the Free Universal Construction Kit by Free Art and Technology Lab and Sy-Lab
While the Gov.uk website was a welcome nod to design’s role in public service provision (see our article here)
Its inclusion also helps address a perennial problem with the show, that visual communications can be overshadowed. Talking to some graphic designers after the show opening, many felt that their particular sphere suffered in comparison to some of the ideas above or to a project on the scale of, say The Shard
This has consistently been a concern with the Designs of the Year show, not always helped by the curatorial process which, as mentioned above, tends to veer in the case of graphics toward what we might call the ‘arty’.
But there are some strong graphic and digital projects included this year. Gov.uk will probably have more of a direct impact on British people’s lives than anything else in the show and who can deny that the Olympics Wayfaring by TfL /JEDCO / LOCOG was an important, major work?
I was also pleased to see that the Occupied Times Of London by Tzortzis Rallis and Lazaros Kakoulidis made it in to the show (see our interview with them here)
And as for ‘commercial’ projects, you can’t get much more so than the Wiindows Phone 8 interface
And there’s still room for great projects which, while they may not change the world, are brilliantly done examples of their genre. In such category I would place The Gentlewoman by Veronica Ditting and Jop van Bennekom
APFEL’s Bauhaus book and exhibition design
Identities for the Strelka Institute by OK-RM
And for the Venice Architecture Biennale Identity by John Morgan
Plus Serviceplan’s light-sensitive Austria Solar Annual Report
It was also good to see Uniform’s Digital Postcard and Player in there which uses printed circuitry to combine print and digital (slot the cards into a player to hear music ‘printed’ on them)
And Indian design publication Dekho: Conversations on Design in India by CoDesign
As mentioned, I was a nominator this year, so in the interests of disclosure, here’s what I put forward and the texts I wrote for the catalogue putting forward my reasoning. I also nominated Occupied Times but wasn’t needed to contribute text for that as others had also nominated it
Windows Phone 8 Skeuomorphism in interface design is the digital equivalent of a Mock Tudor house. Why is the database of contacts on a smart phone rendered in faux leather with a tiny ringbinder down its spine? Because it makes us feel comfortable and, in the early days of GUIs, linking digital functions to their real-world counterparts was a very useful means of introducing users to their screen-based future. But it’s time to move on. Windows Phone 8 leaves the world of fake chrome behind. Its ‘live tiles’ and flat graphics are a digitally-native environment which represents a genuinely innovative step in GUI design. Will it be commercially successful? Who knows. Today, Android and Apple dominate the smartphone market: there may not be room for a third player. But this is a design exhibition and Windows Phone 8 proposes an elegant and thoughtful aesthetic and functional alternative to an increasingly frustrating and clumsy status quo.
www.gov.uk Grand public projects feature large in the graphic design canon. Kinneir and Calvert’s road signage programme, Harry Beck’s London Underground map, Massimo Vignelli’s work on its New York counterpart: such projects reassure practicing designers that, yes, what they do does matter and can genuinely improve our lives. The gov.uk website is perhaps the digital equivalent of those great public projects of the past. It may not look particularly exciting or pretty, but that is not the point. This is design in the raw, providing vital services and information in the simplest, most logical way possible for everything from renewing a passport to understanding your rights as a disabled person.
2012 Olympics Wayfaring The London 2012 logo will forever divide opinion, but even its most implacable detractors were forced to admire the consistency and rigour with which the look of the games was applied across London and the other 2012 venues. LOCOG claimed to have taken the development of a comprehensive graphic language for the 2012 Games further than any previous Olympiad, liaising with local authorities, the GLA, TFL, sponsors and all other interested parties to ensure ‘One Look’ applied from the airport all the way to the venues. We were promised a brand and not just a logo, a comprehensive visual experience to an extent not seen in previous Games. LOCOG and its design partners delivered just that.
The Design Museum’s Designs of the Year show is its usual eclectic self, marrying the gigantic (The Shard) with projects of more modest ambition. We pick out some highlights from the exhibition
The curatorial methodology of Designs of the Year, where various ‘experts’ in the field are asked to nominate projects for final selection by committee, is guaranteed to produce diverse, if not quirky results. The criteria for selection are very loose, trusting in those submitting nominations (including me) to come up with content that genuinely reflects the industry. The overtly commercial tends to get overlooked (not withstanding the likes of Apple’s iPad having featured in previous years). So you won’t find many corporate identities for big companies or much mainstream packaging design. This is, by and large, design as the profession would like us to think of it rather than the bits that really bring in the revenue.
But the role of an exhibition such as this is to inspire and to showcase – to reflect the ambitions of the profession perhaps rather than the day-to-day. As such, in most categories, it does that very well.
There are a lot of projects, for example, which illustrate design’s ablity to tackle ‘needs’ rather than ‘desires’.
ESource by Hal Watts for example is a bicycle-powered waste recycling system that separates the materials within electrical wiring so that they can be more effectively processed with fewer harmful fumes.
And the 3D Printed Exoskeleton ‘Magic Arms’, designed by Nemours/Alfred I du Pont Hospital for Children in Delaware US, allows parts to be individually 3D printed and tailored to children suffering form musculoskeletal disabilities who need upper body support.
In the Child ViSion glasses designed by The Centre for Vision in the Developing World and Goodwin Hartshorn, the prescription can be adjusted by injecting a fluid into the lenses, thus extending the life of the glasses significantly as a child can keep the same pair as he or she grows and their eyes change.
Other projects reflected efforts to ‘democratise’ design, such as the Free Universal Construction Kit by Free Art and Technology Lab and Sy-Lab
While the Gov.uk website was a welcome nod to design’s role in public service provision (see our article here)
Its inclusion also helps address a perennial problem with the show, that visual communications can be overshadowed. Talking to some graphic designers after the show opening, many felt that their particular sphere suffered in comparison to some of the ideas above or to a project on the scale of, say The Shard
This has consistently been a concern with the Designs of the Year show, not always helped by the curatorial process which, as mentioned above, tends to veer in the case of graphics toward what we might call the ‘arty’.
But there are some strong graphic and digital projects included this year. Gov.uk will probably have more of a direct impact on British people’s lives than anything else in the show and who can deny that the Olympics Wayfaring by TfL /JEDCO / LOCOG was an important, major work?
I was also pleased to see that the Occupied Times Of London by Tzortzis Rallis and Lazaros Kakoulidis made it in to the show (see our interview with them here)
And as for ‘commercial’ projects, you can’t get much more so than the Wiindows Phone 8 interface
And there’s still room for great projects which, while they may not change the world, are brilliantly done examples of their genre. In such category I would place The Gentlewoman by Veronica Ditting and Jop van Bennekom
APFEL’s Bauhaus book and exhibition design
Photographs: Luke Hayes
Identities for the Strelka Institute by OK-RM
And for the Venice Architecture Biennale Identity by John Morgan
Plus Serviceplan’s light-sensitive Austria Solar Annual Report
It was also good to see Uniform’s Digital Postcard and Player in there which uses printed circuitry to combine print and digital (slot the cards into a player to hear music ‘printed’ on them)
And Indian design publication Dekho: Conversations on Design in India by CoDesign
As mentioned, I was a nominator this year, so in the interests of disclosure, here’s what I put forward and the texts I wrote for the catalogue putting forward my reasoning. I also nominated Occupied Times but wasn’t needed to contribute text for that as others had also nominated it
Windows Phone 8 Skeuomorphism in interface design is the digital equivalent of a Mock Tudor house. Why is the database of contacts on a smart phone rendered in faux leather with a tiny ringbinder down its spine? Because it makes us feel comfortable and, in the early days of GUIs, linking digital functions to their real-world counterparts was a very useful means of introducing users to their screen-based future. But it’s time to move on. Windows Phone 8 leaves the world of fake chrome behind. Its ‘live tiles’ and flat graphics are a digitally-native environment which represents a genuinely innovative step in GUI design. Will it be commercially successful? Who knows. Today, Android and Apple dominate the smartphone market: there may not be room for a third player. But this is a design exhibition and Windows Phone 8 proposes an elegant and thoughtful aesthetic and functional alternative to an increasingly frustrating and clumsy status quo.
www.gov.uk Grand public projects feature large in the graphic design canon. Kinneir and Calvert’s road signage programme, Harry Beck’s London Underground map, Massimo Vignelli’s work on its New York counterpart: such projects reassure practicing designers that, yes, what they do does matter and can genuinely improve our lives. The gov.uk website is perhaps the digital equivalent of those great public projects of the past. It may not look particularly exciting or pretty, but that is not the point. This is design in the raw, providing vital services and information in the simplest, most logical way possible for everything from renewing a passport to understanding your rights as a disabled person.
2012 Olympics Wayfaring The London 2012 logo will forever divide opinion, but even its most implacable detractors were forced to admire the consistency and rigour with which the look of the games was applied across London and the other 2012 venues. LOCOG claimed to have taken the development of a comprehensive graphic language for the 2012 Games further than any previous Olympiad, liaising with local authorities, the GLA, TFL, sponsors and all other interested parties to ensure ‘One Look’ applied from the airport all the way to the venues. We were promised a brand and not just a logo, a comprehensive visual experience to an extent not seen in previous Games. LOCOG and its design partners delivered just that.
The April print issue of CR presents the work of three young animators and animation teams to watch. Plus, we go in search of illustrator John Hanna, test out the claims of a new app to have uncovered the secrets of viral ad success and see how visual communications can both help keep us safe and help us recover in hospital
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
CR for the iPad Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.
OgilvyOne UK has created a campaign for new Shoreditch restaurant Dishoom that allows visitors to share their experiences on one-off plates that will be added to the restaurant’s inventory for other people to read and share.
The restaurant plays homage to the Irani cafés in India, where people of different backgrounds and means share food and stories. The campaign is anchored in this idea of sharing, and launched with 80 typographic plates that incorporate the personal memories of Irani cafés from the older generation in Bombay and the UK, collected through spoken accounts and on the internet.
Tea for Two by Dolly Thakkore
Chapatis in the Sky by Boman Kohinoor
Chai Remedy by Anil Nirody
Standing Spoon by K.E. Eduljee
The agency wanted to capture the spoken history of the old Bombay cafés and share them with a new generation, according to Emma DeLaFosse, executive creative director at OgilvyOne UK. “But rather than using Twitter or Facebook, it seemed more fitting to use real plates, as the sharing of plates of food is an inherent part of the cutlure of these cafés.”
Customers of Dishoom can submit their own stories and memories online, with the best chosen and fired onto plates to be used in the restaurant.
CR in print The March issue of CR magazine celebrates 150 years of the London Underground. In it we introduce a new book by Mark Ovenden, which is the first study of all aspects of the tube’s design evolution; we ask Harry Beck authority, Ken Garland, what he makes of a new tube map concept by Mark Noad; we investigate the enduring appeal of Edward Johnston’s eponymous typeface; Michael Evamy reports on the design story of world-famous roundel; we look at the London Transport Museum’s new exhibition of 150 key posters from its archive; we explore the rich history of platform art, and also the Underground’s communications and advertising, past and present. Plus, we talk to London Transport Museum’s head of trading about TfL’s approach to brand licensing and merchandising. In Crit, Rick Poynor reviews Branding Terror, a book about terrorist logos, while Paul Belford looks at how a 1980 ad managed to do away with everything bar a product demo. Finally, Daniel Benneworth-Grey reflects on the merits on working home alone. Buy your copy here.
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
CR for the iPad Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.
Advertising Week Europe is in full swing, having decamped to London for the first time this year after nine in New York.
Billed as the world’s premier gathering of marketing and communications leaders, the four-day festival has advertising and media big wigs such as Sir Martin Sorrell, Maurice Lévy and Havas’ David Jones topping the bill. The schedule is impressively packed, with leadership breakfasts and talks on subjects such as ‘What TV can learn from online’, ‘ The power of personalisation’ and ‘Creativity in a connected world’.
Judging by the couple of sessions we dropped in on, the festival certainly seemed well attended, although the snugness of venue BAFTA’s staircases might have heightened that impression.
What those panel discussions also highlighted, however, was the perennial challenge of such congregations to provide genuine a-ha moments.
Take the Metro Masterclass: the Art of Storytelling, which promised insight into storytelling “as a magnet to attract hearts, minds and ultimately wallets of consumers”. It had the collective creative might of Mark Boyd, co-founder of Gravity Road, Paul Lavoie, chairman and co-founder of Taxi, George Prest, VP executive creative director at R/GA London, Satin Reid, board director at Carat, and Seb Royce, founder of Glue, as well as comedian Richard Herring and Colin Kennedy, assistant editor at Metro newspaper.
They noted that we lived in “the age of the death of bullshit”, brands these days were “behaving rather than telling”, “execution – not content – is king”, advertisers should stop coming up with excuses like branded content, but think of the real competition – the likes of Pixar. Success was not so much about “storytelling” but “story creation”, said Royce; and media organisations should think of themselves as content partners, not just in terms of being a platform for branded content, said Kennedy.
All in all, it provided a neat summary of current thinking on content in multichannel advertising. But what does this all actually mean in terms of creative idea and execution? Where are the current campaigns that push those general ideas about storytelling further and deliver that sought-after engagement, participation and return on investment? What exactly do those lofty notions on advertising content look like in practice at Carat, Glue, R/GA London et al, now and in the future?
They mentioned some examples, such as Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic space jump last year with Red Bull, or Duracell’s campaign to help those affected by hurricane Sandy by rolling out mobile charging stations in lower Manhattan.
But aren’t those examples essentially just PR stunts rather than innovative brand storytelling?
Another example was Bombay Sapphires’ Imagination Series which partnered with Oscar-winning screen writer Geoffrey Fletcher. He wrote a script without any direction, and members of the general public were challenged to create any film they wanted from it, with the winner to be screened at the Tribeca Film Festival. This was an example of brands empowering people to tell their stories, said Boyd. But how does Bombay benefit in real terms? Will it sell more bottles of its gin as a result?
There have been a slew of tie-ups between brands and award-winning film-makers recently – Gael García Bernal’s Canana production company created two short films for Chivas, for example, while Jaguar is heavily trailing its short film with Golden Globe-winning actor Damian Lewis.
First part of Canana’s short film series for Chivas.
Trailer for Jaguar F-Type’s shortfilm with Damian Lewis.
But aren’t these just a bit of film-making whimsy, something to feed the publicity machine?
Prest said his personal litmus test was, if a story is not going to improve the existence of human beings around the world, don’t tell it – but which brand can truly claim that?
It is certainly a topic that should be taken by the scruff of the neck and shaken about a bit more until it coughs up some convincing answers.
CR in print The March issue of CR magazine celebrates 150 years of the London Underground. In it we introduce a new book by Mark Ovenden, which is the first study of all aspects of the tube’s design evolution; we ask Harry Beck authority, Ken Garland, what he makes of a new tube map concept by Mark Noad; we investigate the enduring appeal of Edward Johnston’s eponymous typeface; Michael Evamy reports on the design story of world-famous roundel; we look at the London Transport Museum’s new exhibition of 150 key posters from its archive; we explore the rich history of platform art, and also the Underground’s communications and advertising, past and present. Plus, we talk to London Transport Museum’s head of trading about TfL’s approach to brand licensing and merchandising. In Crit, Rick Poynor reviews Branding Terror, a book about terrorist logos, while Paul Belford looks at how a 1980 ad managed to do away with everything bar a product demo. Finally, Daniel Benneworth-Grey reflects on the merits on working home alone. Buy your copy here.
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
CR for the iPad Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.
Google’s latest Chrome Experiment aims to demonstrate the browser’s ability to turn speech into text by letting users add intertitles to old film clips by speaking into their computer’s microphone
Google has recently developed a Web Speech API for Chrome which enables users to interact with their browser via speech rather than using the keyboard. This latest project from Google Creative Lab is an attempt to demonstrate the abilities of the API, but in an engaging, fun way.
At Peanut Gallery Films, users can choose a film clip and add their own title screens by speaking into their microphone (using Chrome and with the API installed, of course). Those clips can then be shared with friends. Why Peanut Gallery? Apparently it was the nickname for the cheap seats in early American cinemas.
It’s not perfect – Google recommends you speak slowly and clearly, punctuation must be added by saying ‘question mark’, ‘period’ etc and you can only use ‘regular dictionary words’. When we tried it, “My mother is upstairs” came out as “My mother is a test” and, bizarrely, our attempt to start our clip by shouting “Action!” came out as “Vagina Action”!! And, of course, one of the first things we tried was swearing which disappointingly is asterisked out.
But it’s a lot of fun and will no doubt prove far more effective at sharing the news about Google’s latest technical development than any dry press statement might do.
Design note: the lettering used in the project is by Jessica Hische.
CR in print The March issue of CR magazine celebrates 150 years of the London Underground. In it we introduce a new book by Mark Ovenden, which is the first study of all aspects of the tube’s design evolution; we ask Harry Beck authority, Ken Garland, what he makes of a new tube map concept by Mark Noad; we investigate the enduring appeal of Edward Johnston’s eponymous typeface; Michael Evamy reports on the design story of world-famous roundel; we look at the London Transport Museum’s new exhibition of 150 key posters from its archive; we explore the rich history of platform art, and also the Underground’s communications and advertising, past and present. Plus, we talk to London Transport Museum’s head of trading about TfL’s approach to brand licensing and merchandising. In Crit, Rick Poynor reviews Branding Terror, a book about terrorist logos, while Paul Belford looks at how a 1980 ad managed to do away with everything bar a product demo. Finally, Daniel Benneworth-Grey reflects on the merits on working home alone. Buy your copy here.
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
CR for the iPad Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.
Wieden + Kennedy Portland, Oregon, has wrapped up its Cookie vs Creme campaign for Oreo cookies with a seemingly endlessly entertaining website, SuperImportantTest.com.
The site asks visitors to choose the best part of an Oreo, rewarding them with a slew of quirky videos for the ‘right answer’. The collection of videos, created by animators and artists including director and designer Carl Burgess, graphic designer and animator Max Erdenberger and Jimmy Marble, ranges from the endearingly amusing to the downright bizarre – from a painfully slow sloth to graffiti grannies and robo-cats. Viewers are bound to keep on clicking. We got through 30 or so, and counting.
The website caps the W+K campaign, which kicked off with the Super Bowl ad Whisper Fight, which saw two Oreo fans kick off in the library over the Cookie vs Creme debate. It also included a series of four Oreo Separator videos that challenged various machines to separate the cookies from creme, featuring a physicist, toy scientists, conceptual artist collective Dentaku and Carnegie Mellon University’s robot, HERB.
CREDITS: Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Oregon Creative Directors: Jason Bagley, Craig Allen Digital Director: Matt O’Rourke Copywriter, Digital Creative: Jarrod Higgins Art Director: Ruth Bellotti Video Creators: Carl Burgess, Cat Solen, Tony Foster, Fatal Farm, McRorie, Jimmy Marble, Max Erdenberger, Power House, Agile BrandTelligence, Visual Arts and internal W+K resources, including W+K Motion Department and Don’t Act Big Productions Development Partner: Hook LLC
CR in print The March issue of CR magazine celebrates 150 years of the London Underground. In it we introduce a new book by Mark Ovenden, which is the first study of all aspects of the tube’s design evolution; we ask Harry Beck authority, Ken Garland, what he makes of a new tube map concept by Mark Noad; we investigate the enduring appeal of Edward Johnston’s eponymous typeface; Michael Evamy reports on the design story of world-famous roundel; we look at the London Transport Museum’s new exhibition of 150 key posters from its archive; we explore the rich history of platform art, and also the Underground’s communications and advertising, past and present. Plus, we talk to London Transport Museum’s head of trading about TfL’s approach to brand licensing and merchandising. In Crit, Rick Poynor reviews Branding Terror, a book about terrorist logos, while Paul Belford looks at how a 1980 ad managed to do away with everything bar a product demo. Finally, Daniel Benneworth-Grey reflects on the merits on working home alone. Buy your copy here.
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
CR for the iPad Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.
The New York Times is currently redesigning its website and trialling a new layout, offering a preview of the first phase of the project which focuses on the “look and feel of articles”. We asked a few editorial designers to assess how the NYT’s new look is shaping up…
But before we look at the new design, here’s a quick look at how a story looks on the current version of the site:
And here’s how an article viewed on the new site (you can see more online here) will look:
It’s clear to see that the new design approach minimises the previous clutter, with main stories clickable across the top of the page with a “sections” button top left offering the chance to navigate to different sections of the paper:
“I’m really impressed by the demo, it’s the latest in a number of projects pushing towards a calmer, more reflective online reading experience,” says regular CR contributor Jeremy Leslie of magculture.com. “Matter, Aeon (a client of mine) and others are looking to provide an elegant reading environment: less interuption but with neccesary elements (commenting, ads, sharing etc) appearing as required rather than jumping at you,” he continues. “Taking advantage of the retina resolution, they are typographically fine-tuned and are built and designed to take longform content and make it legible and accessible across multiple devices.”
Leslie hints that this approach is now the way forward for newspapers’ online offerings. “Not so long ago all the ‘broadsheet’ newspaper websites looked the same,” he says, “sporting system fonts, familair grids, common design tics. The Guardian, for instance, was very influential when it relaunched years back (it’s taxonomy etc) and other UK papers followed. It now looks very dated, as this latest NYT demo establishes.”
“The big decisionn seems to be to streamline the reading experience,” says Mark Porter, principal at Mark Porter Associates who worked on the editorial design of the Guardian newspaper and also its iPad app. “The article pages look as if they will have a lot more space, and a lot of the clutter will be hidden away until activated,” he observes. “In most editorial websites the content on the article pages is swamped by navigation, links, promos and marketing material, which makes it hard work getting to the story, and after all, that’s what you came for.
“The NYT appears to be taking a lead from the kind of design we’re seeing on touch-screen tablets and smartphones, making the content the hero, and trusting the reader be smart enough to invoke the naviagtion, comments and links when they want them,” adds Porter. “This also unlocks the possiblity of making the site much more responsive, and a better expereince on a wide range of devices.
“On this showing, it promises to be pretty revolutionary. In recent years, the New York Times has been one of the densest and most cluttered editorial sites on the web; but if they get this right they will become one of the cleanest and most usable.”
Above: a small speech bubble and counter top right of an article’s page can be clicked to open a side panel revealing comments actually alongside the article
Jon Hill, design editor at The Times is also positive about how the NYT’s online articles are looking in the proposed redesign. “For a while now we’ve seen websites care more about typography, grids and layout – for want of a better word,” he told CR. “The early indications are that the NYT site will adopt their elegant and recognisable palette of typefaces and page furniture from the print edition and bring them to their website,” he continues.
“This has to be a good thing for the reader and commercially as I think it stacks up to be a more valuable product, and not just another news site.”
This longer section of a news story shows how links to related content can be neatly flagged up alongside a story, and also how image captions too appear to the right of the main text and image column
Hill is also impressed with the thinking behind the redesign approach: “Editorial design aside, I think the most exciting developments here are ideas like the navigation changing depending on what you’re reading and if you’re logged in. For me, some of the most exciting aspects of digital editorial design is thinking about the conditions in which the reader is looking at your site / app. For example, can you give them related stories or updated stories because you know they’ve logged in previously and read these subjects. Or can you provide an abbreviated version of a story because you can tell they’re reading on a smartphone.
“The NYT site seems to be taking all of these ideas on board and, like any big site redesign, is thinking about creating responsive systems so the site works well across all devices and screen sizes.
“The most mind bending part of all of this for editorial designers is the idea that wysiwyg is dead,” Hill suggests. “The most sophisticated sites, particularly sites that contain lots of editorial components, like NYT.com, have to be built around the principles of responsive and fluid layouts. Hats off to the New York Times, they seem to be making some intelligent moves in this direction.”
CR in print The March issue of CR magazine celebrates 150 years of the London Underground. In it we introduce a new book by Mark Ovenden, which is the first study of all aspects of the tube’s design evolution; we ask Harry Beck authority, Ken Garland, what he makes of a new tube map concept by Mark Noad; we investigate the enduring appeal of Edward Johnston’s eponymous typeface; Michael Evamy reports on the design story of world-famous roundel; we look at the London Transport Museum’s new exhibition of 150 key posters from its archive; we explore the rich history of platform art, and also the Underground’s communications and advertising, past and present. Plus, we talk to London Transport Museum’s head of trading about TfL’s approach to brand licensing and merchandising. In Crit, Rick Poynor reviews Branding Terror, a book about terrorist logos, while Paul Belford looks at how a 1980 ad managed to do away with everything bar a product demo. Finally, Daniel Benneworth-Grey reflects on the merits on working home alone. Buy your copy here.
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
CR for the iPad Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.
Ninety years of innovation at the BBC is celebrated in a new campaign from the broadcaster, complete with an interactive time-line of technological achievements…
Agency RKCR/Y&R worked on the campaign with the BBC, while the 60 second launch film was produced by Red Bee Media.
The short tells the story of broadcasting at the Beeb, outlining various significant moments of technological progress that have happened since 1922. This takes in radio and TV (including outside broadcasts and colour), the BBC Micro Computer (in schools!) and Ceefax, to the iPlayer and the broadcaster’s expanding digital content, as seen at the London Olympics.
Blending together archive footage, characters in the film appear to walk between one moment and the next.
Watch it here (unfortunately we are unable to embed it).
Interestingly, the soundtrack is by the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop, which was relaunched last year. The campaign premieres on-air this weekend; there’s an accompanying making-of video here (scroll down), and also an interactive timeline of innovation, here.
CR in print The March issue of CR magazine celebrates 150 years of the London Underground. In it we introduce a new book by Mark Ovenden, which is the first study of all aspects of the tube’s design evolution; we ask Harry Beck authority, Ken Garland, what he makes of a new tube map concept by Mark Noad; we investigate the enduring appeal of Edward Johnston’s eponymous typeface; Michael Evamy reports on the design story of world-famous roundel; we look at the London Transport Museum’s new exhibition of 150 key posters from its archive; we explore the rich history of platform art, and also the Underground’s communications and advertising, past and present. Plus, we talk to London Transport Museum’s head of trading about TfL’s approach to brand licensing and merchandising. In Crit, Rick Poynor reviews Branding Terror, a book about terrorist logos, while Paul Belford looks at how a 1980 ad managed to do away with everything bar a product demo. Finally, Daniel Benneworth-Grey reflects on the merits on working home alone. Buy your copy here.
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
CR for the iPad Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.
Duval Guillaume Modem, the makers of last year’s YouTube hits A Dramatic Surprise on a Quiet Square and Unlock the 007 in You, has come up with another health & safety-defying live-action-Joe-Public drama, this time putting true friendship to the test for Carlsberg.
The online campaign was created through an elaborate set-up. Volunteers call their friends in the middle of the night, asking them to ‘rescue’ them from a dicey situation – a back-alley poker game gone wrong.
The friend needs to make his or her way to the location asap, with €300 to bail out their buddies. On the way they encounter seedy characters, burly doormen, bare knuckle fights, an overenthusiastic chef and other intimidating and off-putting challenges.
Those who pluck up the courage to persevere are adequately rewarded at the end…
Credits Creative Director: Geoffrey Hantson, Katrien Bottez Production Company: Monodot Director: Cecilia Verheyden DOP : Pieter van Alphen Post production company : Grid Brussels
CR in print The March issue of CR magazine celebrates 150 years of the London Underground. In it we introduce a new book by Mark Ovenden, which is the first study of all aspects of the tube’s design evolution; we ask Harry Beck authority, Ken Garland, what he makes of a new tube map concept by Mark Noad; we investigate the enduring appeal of Edward Johnston’s eponymous typeface; Michael Evamy reports on the design story of world-famous roundel; we look at the London Transport Museum’s new exhibition of 150 key posters from its archive; we explore the rich history of platform art, and also the Underground’s communications and advertising, past and present. Plus, we talk to London Transport Museum’s head of trading about TfL’s approach to brand licensing and merchandising. In Crit, Rick Poynor reviews Branding Terror, a book about terrorist logos, while Paul Belford looks at how a 1980 ad managed to do away with everything bar a product demo. Finally, Daniel Benneworth-Grey reflects on the merits on working home alone. Buy your copy here.
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
CR for the iPad Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
