Hasta La Ideas

Try to look something up on Wikipedia today and you will be met with a black page. The English language version of the site is down in protest over SOPA and PIPA, two pieces of legislation that it believes will “fatally damage the free and open internet”. As both creators and consumers of content, where do CR readers stand on the issue of copyright online?

SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) are two pieces of legislation currently before the US House of Representatives and US Senate. Their aim is to restrict the unauthorised downloading, distribution and use of copyrighted material online. Opponents have accused the measures of being heavy-handed, ineffective and that they will severely inhibit people’s access to online information. Some of the more alarmist critics of the bills have accused them of effectively ‘killing’ the internet as we know it.

Anti-PIPA/SOPA video from Fight for the Future

These are long and complex pieces of legislation (Mashable has a pretty good walk through here. Try this Guardian piece too). The issues of particular interest to CR readers are those involving sites that allow contributors to upload content (such as our Feed section, for example, YouTube or Behance) and those that collate large amounts of imagery (Fffound, for example, or But Does it Float). Under the original SOPA legislation, it has been suggested that sites could potentially be shut down on receipt of a complaint about a piece of content from a copyright holder. So, potentially, if a student uploads a piece of work to a portfolio site which includes perhaps a logo that they do not have permission to use, that site could be shut down while the complaint goes through the US legal system. Sites would even be liable for content on other sites that they merely link to.

Our view is that SOPA, in its original form at least, appears to be a sledgehammer to crack a nut: an exercise in corporate power in protection of corporate interest. It is impractical and iniquitous. Currently, it seems unlikely to pass into law without at least some major amendments. However, this issue is now ‘live’ and is not going to go away – there are too many powerful interests involved for that to happen.

So perhaps the time has come to ask what we in the creative community want from the internet.

Wired registers its opposition to SOPA with this ‘redacted’ homepage

CR readers create content. If you are a photographer, for example, you will want protection from those who might use your pictures without your permission. If you licence your work through a photolibrary, you will expect that photolibrary to pursue anyone using your images without paying for them. But you may also recorgnise that having your work featured on other sites that have a creative industry readership (even if used without permission) may well bring great opportunities that otherwise you would not enjoy.

And CR readers also consume content. One of the great phenomena of the internet has been the explosion of blogs featuring imagery and videos. There are a huge number of inspirational sites offering, for example, vintage ads, found photography, old posters and so on. We all enjoy these sites but how many have sought permission from a copyright holder before posting an image or a film? How many have paid to use content? Should they?

We have just finished our February issue. We’ve chosen our 20 favourite slogans, each one illustrated with archive images of the slogan in use. One of the slogans we chose is Beanz Meanz Heinz. To illustrate that piece we had to pay the History of Advertising Trust over £100 to use each image. That money goes to fund the work of the Trust – without those fees, it couldn’t exist. If sites like Fffound had to pay similar fees for each image used, they couldn’t exist either.

There’s no doubt that unauthorised copying, downloading and distribution is a problem for anyone who wants to make a living by creating content. How would you feel, for example, if you had invested two years of your life in writing a book which you hoped to sell online only to find that it had been made available to download for free elsewhere? But the counter argument is that you if make your book available for free, millions more may read it and the fame and opportunities that this exposure then brings you is worth far more than you would have made by selling the book in the first place.

Those familiar with Creative Commons will know that there have already been considerable efforts made towards a reasonable compromise. People want protection for their work, but they also recognise that there are benefits in having their work seen widely and that there is a great difference between, say, a non-profit site like Fffound posting an image and a corporation using that same image in an advert without permission. SOPA, its critics argue, would not make such distinctions.

This is a massively complex area and we don’t pretend to have the answers. What we’d like to use this space for is to ask readers where you stand on these issues:

As a creator of content, are you happy to see sites using content without permission?

Do the benefits of the current ‘free’ model outweigh the drawbacks?

Is current copyright law sufficient to protect you?

How can livelihoods be protected without destroying the free flow of information?

Let us know your views. We’ll get involved below the line to respond to particular points

Massoud Hassani’s Mine Kafon is a wind-powered device for clearing land mines

The Design Museum has announced its longlist for the Designs of the Year 2012 exhibition and, as with previous years, the difficult task of showcasing a whole year in design reveals both the strengths and weaknesses of such a process…

The Comedy Carpet in Blackpool by artist Gordon Young and Why Not Associates

This year’s selection of work from architecture, digital, fashion, furniture, graphics, product and transport naturally includes a host of varied projects – from Barber Osgerby’s Olympic Torch and David Chipperfield’s Hepworth Wakefield museum, to the BBC’s homepage and the Comedy Carpet (above) by artist Gordon Young and Why Not Associates.

Perhaps the most bizarre design is Massoud Hassani’s Mine Kafon, a wind-powered land mine clearing device, constructed from a ball of sprung bamboo sticks which are attached to a plastic core. As the ball is deployed over terrain where landmines are known to have been hidden, it explodes any in its path and tracks its route via GPS.

United Visual Artists’ High Arctic installation at the National Maritime Museum in London

Designer Yves Béhar has work nominated for a fourth time (he won the inaugural competition in 2008 with the One Laptop Per Child initiative) and there are three electric cars, a defibrillator, an exhibition by the illustrator Noma Bar, plus copies of Bloomberg Businessweek, a promo sample of GF Smith papers and the album cover art for Join Us by They Might Be Giants among the selected work. (The full list of all the nominated projects is copied below.)

Anomaly and Unit 9’s One Thousand Cranes for Japan project

As Eliza pointed out in her look at last year’s show, exhibits from the furniture and transport sections usually come across particularly well, simply by virtue of how much space they command compared to, say, paperback books or websites.

Textile Field at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, fabric by Kvadrat. Photo © Studio Bouroullec & V&A Images, Victoria and Albert Museum

And in that lies the ongoing problem with the competitive aspect of the show: just how do you compare a dress with a car, or a website with a house? And is there any point? Individual categories produce their own ‘winners’, where like is compared with relative like, but the final showdown between disciplines still seems a little confusing.

Homeplus: Tesco Virtual Store, Seoul, South Korea

But as we’ve seen since 2008, the overall winners do tend to emerge from the social/useful camp, with the aforementioned One Laptop Per Child project, Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster, and Min-Kyu Choi’s Folding Plug all taking the top prize (OK, so last year’s Plumen lightbulb is a beautiful exception to the rule).

Life-Size Paper Monster Hearse by Paul Sahre, from the video for Join Us by They Might Be Giants

But regardless of the judged aspect to the show, which, after all, does stoke reinterest in the show itself, the Designs of the Year is a welcome attempt to capture the best of the year’s design work in one place. Exhibits are nominated for inclusion, thus there is a wealth of professional expertise on hand to highlight some of the most interesting projects within a specific field, and, on past visits, the displays within the Museum are also given a lot of thought.

The T.27 Electric Car by Gordon Murray Design

Last year’s exhibition, for example, imposed the themes of Home, Share, Play, City and Learn over all the work so that the projects were completely mixed up. For me, that’s a much more satisfying way of experiencing everything that the show’s notoriously wide remit brings in. For designers and non-designers surely that best shows how design is a fundamental part of the real world.

Designs of the Year opens at the Design Museum in London on February 8 and runs until July 15. More details at the DM site, here, and also at the dedicated blog, designsoftheyear.com.

Here are the nominations:

ARCHITECTURE

Butaro Hospital, Butaro, Rwanda
MASS Design Group

Folly for a Flyover, London, UK
Assemble CIC

Guangzhou Opera House, Guangzhou, China
Zaha Hadid Architects

Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, UK
David Chipperfield Architects

Home for Senior Citizens, Huise-Zingem, Belgium
Sergison Bates Architects LLP

Maggies Centre, Gartnavel, Glasgow, UK
OMA

National Park of Mali Buildings, Bamako, Mali
Diébédo Francis Kéré of Kéré Architecture

Moses Bridge, Fort de Roovere, Netherlands
RO&AD Architects

Olympic 2012 Velodrome, London, UK
Hopkins Architects

Spaceport America, New Mexico
Foster + Partners

The Iron Market, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
John McAslan + Partners

Youth Factory, Mérida, Spain
Selgascano, Gestaltskate and Jarex

2012 Olympic Velodrome
Hopkins Architects

Guangzhou Opera House, China
Zaha Hadid Architects

DIGITAL

BBC Homepage Version 4, London, UK
BBC

Beck’s Green Box project
Beck’s

Face Substitution, New York, USA
Arturo Castro and Kyle McDonald

Guardian iPad edition, London, UK
Guardian News and Media in consultation with Mark Porter

High Arctic, National Maritime Museum, London, UK
United Visual Artists

Homeplus Tesco Virtual Store, Seoul, South Korea
Homeplus Tesco

Letter to Jane, Portland, USA
Tim Moore

Microsoft Kinect and Kinect SDK
Microsoft Games Studios, Microsoft Research and Xbox, UK and USA

Musicity, London, UK
Concept by Nick Luscombe and Simon Jordan and designed by Jump Studios

The Stanley Parable, California, USA
Written and created by Davey Wreden

Suwappu, London, UK
Dentsu London, UK, in consultation with BERG

Homeplus Tesco Virtual Store, Seomyeon Subway Station,
South Korea

FASHION

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, USA
Andrew Bolton with the support of Harold Koda of The Costume Institute, New York, USA

The Duchess of Cambridge’s Wedding Dress, London, UK
Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen

Céline Autumn/Winter ’11, Paris, France
Phoebe Philo at Céline

Late Night Chameleon Café, London, UK
Store design: Gary Card, Creative director: John Skelton, Brand director: Dan Mitchell

Mary Katrantzou Autumn/Winter ‘11, London, UK
Mary Katrantzou

Melissa + Gaetano Pesce Boot and Flip Flip, New York, USA
Gaetano Pesce, Manufactured by Melissa, Brazil
Oratory Jacket, London, UK

Will Carleysmith, Head of Design at Brompton Bicycle Ltd
Suno Spring/Summer ‘11, New York, USA
Suno

Vivienne Westwood Ethical Fashion Africa Collection, Autumn/Winter ’11
Vivienne Westwood, London, UK

132.5, Tokyo, Japan
Miyake Design Studio

FURNITURE

Balsa Furniture, London, UK
Kihyun Kim

Chassis, Munich, Germany
Stefan Diez

The Crates, Beijing, China
Naihan Li & Co

Earthquake Proof Table, Jerusalem, Israel
Arthur Brutter and Ido Bruno

Harbour Chair, London, UK
André Klauser and Ed Carpenter

Hemp Chair, Berlin, Germany
Studio Aisslinger

Lightwood, London, UK
Jasper Morrison

Moon Rock Tables, London, UK
Bethan Laura Wood

Not So Expanded Polystyrene (NSEPS) , London, UK
Attua Aparicio & Oscar Wanless at SILO

Oak Inside, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Christien Meindertsma

Osso, Paris, France
Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec

Textile Field at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, fabric by Kvadrat

Tip Ton, London, UK
Edward Barber & Jay Osgerby

Waver, Munich, Germany
Konstantin Grcic

XXXX_Sofa, Eindhoven, Netherlands
Yuya Ushida

GRAPHICS

AA Files, London, UK
John Morgan Studio

Beauty is in the Street, London, UK
Four Corners Books, Cover designed by John Morgan
Book interior designed by Pierre Le Hors

Bloomberg Businessweek, New York, USA
Bloomberg Businessweek

The Comedy Carpet, Blackpool, UK
Gordon Young and Why Not Associates

Cover artwork and video for Join Us by They Might Be Giants, New York, USA
Paul Sahre

Cut it Out, London, UK
Noma Bar

Matthew Hilton identity and website, London, UK
Spin

Nokia Pure Font, London, UK
Dalton Maag

One Thousand Cranes for Japan
Concept by Anomaly and Unit 9, London, UK

Photo-Lettering, Yorklyn, USA
House Industries

Promotional sample book for GF Smith, London, UK
SEA Design

Stockmann packaging, Helskinki, Finland
Kokoro & Moi

Self Service
Editor-in-chief: Ezra Petronio

What Design Can Do!, Amsterdam, Netherlands
De Designpolitie

Your Browser Sent A Request That This Server Could Not Understand, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Koen Taselaar

PRODUCT

Ascent, London, UK
Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby

A-frame and Corbs
Ron Arad

Botanica, Eindhoven, Netherlands
Studio Formafantasma

Carbon Black Wheelchair
Andrew Slorance

Defibtech Lifeline VIEW^TM Automated External Defibrillator (AED), LLC, Guilford, USA
Defibtech

Heracleum, Schiedam, Netherlands
Studio Bertjan Pot

Hövding Invisible Cycle Helmet
Hövding

Jawbone JAMBOX, San Francisco, USA
Yves Béhar, Fuseproject

The Learning Thermostat, USA
Nest, Palo Alto

Mine Kafon, Eindhoven, Netherlands
Massoud Hassani

Olympic Torch 2012, London, UK
Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby

Orb-it
Black and Decker

Shade, London, UK
Simon Heijdens

Solar Sinter, London, UK
Markus Kayser Studio

Thixotrope, London, UK
Conny Freyer, Sebastien Noel and Eva Rucki of Troika

TMA-1 Headphones
KIBiSi

Totem, London, UK
Bethan Laura Wood in collaboration with Pietro Viero

White Collection, Finland
Ville Kokkonen

TRANSPORT

787 Dreamliner
Boeing

Autolib’ 3000, Paris, France
Bertrand Delanoë, Mayor of Paris, France

Bike Hanger – Bicycle Storage, New York, USA
Manifesto Architecture

Mia Electric Car
Mia Electric

Re-design for Emergency Ambulance, London, UK
Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design and Vehicle Design Department,
Royal College of Art

T27 Electric Car, Surrey, UK
Gordon Murray Design

Taurus Electro G4
Pipistrel doo Ajdovscina

Laura Marling has collaborated with creative agency Studio Juice, and visual artist collective Shynola to create an interactive, animated digital poem, entitled The Beast.

The project, which utilises the interactive features of HTML5, presents an animated, scrolling poem, accompanied by illustrations by Shynola. The poem itself tells the story of a dark, fairytale love, with a distinctive ‘movie-trailer’ narration provided by Laura Marling’s friend Gil, from the band Old Crow Medicine Show.

The poem, based on Marling’s song of the same name, was also written by the singer, and she explains, “The first line of the poem was essentially what sparked the ideas behind the album, for one reason or another though, it didn’t seem to work as a song. It came from a quote from Thomas Jefferson that I came across in a book called Sisters of Fortune, talking about the abolition of slavery, ‘We have the wolf by the ears and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go’. Blind plagiarism.” For comparison, the opening line of The Beast runs, “The Beast was a creature I did not know. I held him once and could not let him go.”

Laura Marling’s new album, A Creature I Don’t Know, is out now.

It’s coming to the end of another year in the wonderful world of visual communications. Time to test your knowledge of who did what in the CR Quiz of the Year.

We’ve divided the questions up into the months of the year. If you’re stuck for an answer, you can find them all by digging around either in this website or in your back issues of the printed magazine. Best of luck. Answers to be revealed in the New Year.

January

1. CR’s January issue introduces readers to six Ones to Watch. One of these young creatives also designed our cover – who was it?

2. Starbuck’s reveals a new stripped-down logo designed by which US consultancy alongside the brand’s in-house team?

3. Intel launches The Chase, an innovative ad featuring a 105-second chase across a wide variety of programme windows on a computer desktop including iTunes, Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft Office and the Adobe Creative Suite. Which agency was responsible?

4. “It does look like a bulbous penis, unfortunately.” Which major sporting event’s logo, launched this month, was this CR commenter referring to?

5. The Gunn Report reveals the most awarded commercial of 2010. An unlikely tale in French, can you remember the name of the ad and the client?

February

1. Can you name three of the typefaces honoured in the Best in Book section of our Type Annual?

2. Droga5 launches a campaign to remove all the advertising from Times Square in aid of the new documentary by which filmmaker? Bonus point: what was the film called?

3. VW reveals what would go on to be the most viewed ad of the year at the Superbowl. Name the ad and the agency responsible

4. Unit Editions launches its book on Dutch studio Total Design: can you name two of Total’s founding partners?

4. Penguin Books follows up Great Ideas with Great Food. Who was the art director on the series?

5. Which country threatens to boycott the 2012 Olympics because of the logo? Not as a comment on the quality of its design but because it allegedly spells ‘zion’.

March

1. The Brit Insurance Design of the Year Award goes to…?

2. CR profiles the designer of pictograms that represent every aspect of life. His work also appears in our Monograph booklet that month: what was his name?

3. Which punk band did we also feature in the same issue?

4. Wieden + Kennedy launches a new commercial featuring cats with thumbs: which client was it for?

5. Eurostar launches its new identity – or should we say ‘brand world’? Who designed it?

6. The Design Museum’s Wim Crouwel show opens. Which London-based designer and self-confessed Crouwel stalker co-curated it?

April

1. CR announces its list of our 20 favourite logos of all time. Which one came top?

2. Who designed the cover of our April issue?

3. Hat-Trick designs a series of RSC stamps featuring Shakesperean quotes written out by which illustrator?

4. A spoof Royal Wedding video becomes massively popular on YouTube (comments on CR range from “You can feel the smugness coming off the screen in waves” to “I LOVE this ad, it’s funny, and that… as they say, is that! “- which ad agency was responsible?

5. D&AD launches a new award for work done for creative ideas that change the world for the better: what colour pencil will the winner receive?

May

1. In CR, Rick Poynor interviews someone described as a “musician, artist, film director, writer and patron of great graphic design”. Who?

2. Name three projects honoured as Best in Book in the CR Annual

3. The Little Chef gets a makeover, courtesy of which brand design studio?

4. BBH creates an epic two-and-a-half-minute commercial for Audi in which a driver talks about his experiences of which famous race?

5. The Design Museum stages a show about which soft drink?

6. What was this little feller advertising?

June

1. CR profiles veteran ad man Sir John Hegarty: what was the name of his creative partner on the 1985 Levi’s Laundrette commercial?

2. The Glue Society creates an installation consisting of a house where it rains on the inside for an arts festival in which country?

3. Name two of the six Black Pencils awarded at D&AD

4. And the winner of the Titanium Lion at Cannes?

5. Wieden + Kennedy launches an innovative scheme by which fans of which band can create their own album cover and even earn a share of sales?

July

1. Name two of the illustrators featured in the Best in Book section of the CR Illustration Annual

2. And who designed the cover of this issue?

3. Former graphic designer and music video director Mike Mills releases his second feature film, starring Ewan McGregor. What was it called?

4. MoMA in New York opens a major show on interactive design – what was it called?

5. Which Leeds-based studio created this new identity for the National Railway Museum?

August

1. CR’s Summer Reading issue features a selection of great writing on visual communication. Who wrote this? “Early in my life as a designer, I acquired a reputation as a good bullshitter.”

2. Levi’s releases the latest in its Go Forth series of ads but which event made the timing of this ad somewhat awkward and ensured that it would not be shown in the UK?

3. Which illustrator releases a Daily Monster Maker app?

4. How old would Bill Bernbach have been on August 13?

5. The Radio Times launches a controversial website designed by which studio?

September

1. CR features a book on the in-house packaging design department of which major supermarket?

2. Name one of the graduates featured in our September Graduate Special issue?

3. Interbrand renames Airmiles as what?

4. At last some interesting work for the Olympics – a series of Paralympic posters by agency McCann Worldgroup and which illustrator?

October

1. CR features the Comedy Carpet, a major installation in which seaside town?

2. In his regular logo design column, Michael Evamy looks at the Google Android: who designed it?

3. The Imperial War Museums unveil a new identity by which studio?

4. Steve Jobs passes away: in which year was the Mac launched with Ridley Scott’s famous ad?

5. “What an appalling redesign. The choice of font is uninspired. The mark is lazy (ten minutes in illustrator?). The positioning of the mark lacks dynamism. And the strapline is so trite that it must have come out of a marketing dept group ‘workshop’.” Which logo for a major UK corporation is this CR commenter talking about?

6. Name three of the cartoon characters featured in TBWA’s Müller yoghurt Wunderful Stuff commercial

7. As the Occupy movement pitches camp outside St Paul’s it publishes a newspaper, The Occupied Times, using which Jonathan Barnbrook typeface?

November

1. “I like it to be powerful. I like to have some humanity in it.” That’s why his body of work still speaks to us decades later. It has humanity. Who was Rick Poynor talking about in a major feature in CR?

2. Who painted Coke’s Yes Girl, the subject of a major piece in CR this month?

3. “Such a great twist at the end! Watched the video 3 times and wanted to cry each time!! So heart wrenching… but lovely” Which ad is this CR commenter talking about?

4, Name three of the artists producing posters for the 2012 Olympics

5. “Looks like he spilt his paint and was trying to wipe it up”. Which artist’s Olympic poster was this CR commenter referring to?

6. Students from which college produce alternative Olympic poster designs featured on the CR blog?

December

1. Which city is the focus of CR’s attention in print this month?

2. Which Dutch designer, profiled in CR this month, increased her body weight by almost 50% during the course of one mammoth project during which she barely left her desk?

3. The Design Museum acquires which weapon and design ‘classic’ for its collection?

4. Which brand suggests shopping with it will allow us to avoid the Walk of Shame?

5. Which rapper-turned-design critic offered this analysis of the work of Charles and Ray Eames: “they was doing mash-ups before mash-ups even existed!”

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year from all at CR

CR in Print

If you only read CR online, you’re missing out. The January issue of Creative Review is a music special with features on festivals, the future of the music video and much much more. Plus it comes with its very own soundtrack for you to listen to while reading the magazine.

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK,you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

New iPad app inspires in-the-moment personal problem solving to help you live better every day

There are times in life when the blank notebook page stays blank for far too long—even the most productive people occasionally get stuck. For moments like these there’s Unstuck, a recently released iPad app to help you work through the situation at hand. Acting as a step-by-step troubleshooter and catalyst for action, Unstuck walks the user through a series of questions that end in a diagnosis, complete with suggestions of thought-provoking tools to help find a solution, as shown in this cleverly animated intro video.

Released by SYPartners, the free Unstuck app marks the first endeavor of a new sister company that taps into their nearly 20 years of experience helping big-name companies, leaders and teams during times of transformation and offers these strategic lessons to the individual. Having helped great leaders lead over these two decades, SYPartners felt compelled to take up the journey to offer this accumulation of knowledge through “tools and methods” to help people people get themselves unstuck. As Keith Yamashita, Chairman at SYPartners, said in our recent conversation, “we’re driven by greatness by trying to help people, companies, teams be great.”

The user-friendly app features a clutter-free layout with eye-catching infographic-style illustrations and easy-to-read instructions designed to get your mental gears moving again. As you work through the series of fill-in-the-blank questions Unstuck uses an algorithm—combined with your answers—to offer a diagnosis of what’s likely to be going on. From here the user is given a series of tools to help themselves work through the situation. Check out this demo for a closer look.

Most importantly though, Unstuck delivers a different diagnosis each time to account for the user’s ever-evolving situation. This adjustment mimics real life in the sense that no situation is ever stagnant and the reasons behind it generally change over time. And thus Unstuck becomes a tool that can be used time and time again.

To make the app accessible to as many people as possible it’s been made available for free download through the App Store’s Lifestyle section. Once Unstucks’ subscriptions build more community-based aspects will be rolled out. Here individuals will be able to instantly connect with others who are in or previously were in the same place, to work as a team and share the good will to help one another get unstuck.