Hasta La Ideas

Last night D&AD launched it’s most sustainably produced annual to date. Published by Taschen and the brainchild of D&AD President and AllOfUs founder, Sanky along with Nat Hunter of Airside and graphic designer Harry Pearce of Pentagram, its carbon footprint is an impressive 82% smaller than that of last year’s edition…

Questioning every element of the processes involved in producing such a tome, the team considered not actually making a physical book. “We looked into creating a digital version of the Annual,” says Hunter, “but when you consider the huge amount of energy consumed in hosting large files on servers for decades to come – and the possibility that many people would print them out on inefficient printers, the benefits became less convincing. So we reduced the amount of materials used, made it a stunningly beautiful object so it’s not likely to ever end up in a landfill site, but if it does… it’s fully compostible.”

Instead of cheap pulp from South America, the book uses 100% recycled material from Austria (to the highest international environmental standard) where 70% of electricity comes from Hydro power. The pulp was made into wood-free, RecyStar Polar 80gsm paper. Thanks to making the paper stock as light as possible (and leaving it uncoated), this year’s Annual is almost a kilo lighter than last year’s. As well as weight, distances travelled were reduced which meant less fuel was consumed in the production and shipping of the books.

Pentagram’s Harry Pearce’s editorial design also contributed to the extra light annual: fewer images were used than in previous years – if a piece of work won in more than one category, the image/s were not duplicated. There are also no chapter dividers in the book but rather three section dividers. The limited edition D&AD member’s version delineates categories with thumbcuts in the pages – thus saving even more weight. Pearce’s layout too is lean, there is no superfluous page furniture or decoration.

The book is printed with soy-based inks and the hard cover sports a compostible laminate.

Regarding the cover, Pearce says: “Alan Fletcher was a dear friend of mine for one thing, and as a designer, all your career the D&AD logo floats around you – it’s an intriguing mark (designed in 1962 by Fletcher Forbes Gill the studio that later became Pentagram) and the use of it has become quieter and quieter each year. I thought it would be great to bring it in to the fore this year.

“Instead of just reproducing it we made models of it using white paper and card,” Pearce continues, “and worked with photographer Richard Foster who took shots of and filmed the models in his studio lit by a single source of light. Once we’d discovered where the most poignant, descriptive moment was with the shadows – that’s when we took the image. It’s an exploration of [the D&AD logo] really – showing a bit of relish for the actual mark.”

D&AD members’ special edition not only sports thumbcuts – but also Pearce’s signature:

And finally, here are the stats for this year’s annual production’s carbon footprint as compared to that of the 2010 annual:

Also see the post on Pentagram’s blog about its work on this project: pentagram.com

dandad.org

To celebrate reaching 500k followers on Twitter, we are giving away five copies of Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design, kindly donated by Laurence King. The book contains a great list of quotes by Bass on the subject of working in the creative industry, and we’d like to hear your own personal favourites for a chance to win a copy…

This competition has now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered. The winning entries are listed below.

The 400-plus page book features a wealth of imagery of work from the US design legend (Rick Poynor takes an in-depth look at the man and his work in the latest issue of CR) but the last chapter is dedicated to Bass’s thoughts on various subjects, from clients and problem solving, to collecting things and retirement.

Publishers Laurence King have kindly given us five copies (worth £48 each) to give away. To win one all you have to do is share with us your favourite piece of wisdom from a figure in the creative world. It could be a few words from an eminent designer on the subject of inspiration, or a sharp piece of advice from a seasoned ad creative.

Leave your quotes with the name of who they’re attributed to in the comments below, and we’ll pick our five favourites. Where repetitions occur we’ll refer to the first posting of the quote, and we’ll announce the winners tomorrow (Thursday) on the blog and via Twitter. The deadline for your entries is 12pm GMT this evening.

To get you started, here are a few examples from Bass himself, taken from the new book.

On work:

“Work? It’s just serious play.”

“Unless I have to stretch, then I’m not really interested.”

On clients:

“Clients? I have a sign in my office that reads ‘They need us more than we need them’ but on the other side reads ‘We need them more than they need us’.”

On process:

“So, the good news, I say to students, is that what you are experiencing is exactly what everybody else experiences, even those people you most admire. The bad news is that it doesn’t get any better.”

On creativity:

“Interesting things happen when the creative impulse is cultivated with curiosity, freedom and intensity.”

“Sometimes when an idea flashes, you distrust it because it seems too easy. You qualify it with all kinds of evasive phrases because you’re timid about it. But often, this turns out to be the best idea of all.”

This competition has now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered. The winning entries are listed below.

After much deliberation, here’s our list of five winning quotes.

“You are obliged to go off at a tangent if you want to stop going round in circles,” Alan Fletcher, posted by Lee.

“What I’m trying to produce is the visual equivalent of the chord change that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up,” Rian Hughes, posted by
George.

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler,” Albert Einstein, posted by Marcus.

“When people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong,” Neil Gaiman, posted by
Mark.

“Design isn’t about what something looks like, it’s about what people think when they see it,” Craig Frazier, posted by
Marc.

Lee, George, Marcus, Mark and Marc, please get in touch via mark.sinclair@centaur.co.uk with details of the address that you would like the book sent out to. Thanks again to everyone who entered.

Not getting Creative Review in print too? You’re missing out.

In print, Creative Review carries far richer, more in-depth articles than we run here on the blog. This month, for example, we have nine pages on Saul Bass, plus pieces on advertising art buyers, Haddon Sundblom, the illustrator who ensured that Coke will forever be linked with Santa Claus, Postmodernism, Brighton’s new football ground and much more. Plus, it’s our Photography Annual, which means an additional 85 pages of great images, making our November issue almost 200-pages long, the biggest issue of CR for 5 years.

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.

Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs is full of examples of the latter’s ‘challenging’ behaviour. But when Jobs asked Paul Rand to create the identity for his Next business, he finally met his match

Isaacson’s book describes how Jobs, in 1986 and recently ousted from Apple, wanted a logo for his new computer business, Next. He decided to go for the best – Paul Rand. But Rand was contracted to IBM at the time. After pestering IBM senior management, Jobs managed to get their permission to use Rand and flew him out to California.

The Next was to be cube-shaped so Rand suggested the logo be so too. Jobs agreed and asked to see some options. Big mistake. Rand didn’t do options.

“I will solve your problem and you will pay me,” he told Jobs. “You can use what I produce or not, but I will not do options, and either way you will pay me.” And it would cost $100,000.

Two weeks later, Rand flew back and presented his solution in the form of a book (scan above, more at Imprint here) walking Jobs through the rationale. Jobs loved it but asked for the yellow of the ‘e’ to be brighter. According to Isaacson, “Rand banged his fist and declared, ‘I’ve been doing this for fifty years and I know what I’m doing.’ Jobs relented.”

Not only that, but he respected Rand for standing up to him, as this interview shows (spotted over at David Airey’s LogoDesignLove site). A lesson there for anyone presenting to clients? Perhaps, but Rand was 71 at the time and a globally-renowned expert in his field: not everyone could get away with it.

More design and advertising-related stories from Steve Jobs: the exclusive biography by Walter Isaacson (Little, Brown, £25) here

CR in Print

Not getting Creative Review in print too? You’re missing out.

In print, Creative Review carries far richer, more in-depth articles than we run here on the blog. This month, for example, we have nine pages on Saul Bass, plus pieces on advertising art buyers, Haddon Sundblom, the illustrator who ensured that Coke will forever be linked with Santa Claus, Postmodernism, Brighton’s new football ground and much more. Plus, it’s our Photography Annual, which means an additional 85 pages of great images, making our November issue almost 200-pages long, the biggest issue of CR for 5 years.

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.

We’ve already posted up a glut of beautiful music packages this month but feel it’s time for another round up. This time there’s a distinctly vinyl flavour with releases from Massive Attack, Box Codax and Martin Creed, Tom The Lion, and the latest 7″ release on Fred Deakin’s Impotent Fury label…

The Vinyl Factory joined forces with Turner Prize winning artist and musician Martin Creed, and also Box Codax – the band formed by Franz Ferdinand guitarist Nick McCarthy and Manuela Gernedel along with lyricist Alexander Ragnew – to create a limited edition art and music release.

The 12″ white vinyl release has a song by Creed on one side (Where You Go), and a song by Box Codax (Dawning) on the other. The colourful central vinyl labels have been hand-painted by Creed and each of the 100 pressings come in plain white card window sleeves signed by both Creed and McCarthy. It’s music and it’s an original painted artwork so you’ll need £100 to buy one from vfeditions.com.

Also from The Vinyl Factory is Inhale Gold – a 12″ vinyl release containing two new Burial remixes of Massive Attack tracks Four Walls (previously unreleased) and of Paradise Circus, a track from the Heligoland album.

The sleeve is adorned by a hand numbered, gold glitter screenprint designed by MA’s Robert Del Jaja (aka 3D).

The glitter screenprint has a rough, slightly sandpaper-like texture so to prevent the sleeve “doing a Durutti Column” (Durutti Column‘s first album, The Return of the Durutti Column, Factory, 1980 had a sandpaper sleeve) and wrecking the sleeve next to it on your shelves, the release is shipped in a transparent plastic sleeve.

Only 1000 of these releases were pressed at £25 each. I think they might have already sold out on pre-orders – though you can check here: vfeditions.com/product/view/43 and sign up to The Vinyl Factory’s mailing list if you don’t want to miss out on future releases.

The latest release from Fred Deakin’s Impotent Fury label is one in an ongoing series that feature similarly engineered embossed and die-cut card sleeves. Each release is packaged in a different colour package sporting its own unique pattern on the back.

Actually, we featured the video for one of the two tracks, by Frank Eddie, Let Me Be The One You Call On the other week. Here it is again in case you missed it:

Design, direction, animation by Mr Kaplin and Airside Nippon. The release is limited to just 500 pressings. To buy it / find out more, visit play.airside.co.uk/products/let-me-be-the-one

Daniel Mason of Something Else is a man obsessed with creating products of high covetability – and this is no exception. Devised, developed, produced and supplied by Mason, this is a special collectors edition slip cased set of artist Tom The Lion‘s two 10″ EP records, released on Theatre Records.

The mock leather, screenprinted slipcase contains two case bound and foilblocked gatefold sleeves which each house two coloured vinyl discs plus a lyric sheet printed on bible paper. The EPs can be bought separately but this package comes in the slipcase pictured above and also houses all the music contained on the vinyl discs on CDs which are included and housed in uncoated coloured card CD wallets. Lion illustration by Konstantinos Gargaletsos.

To find out more about Tom The Lion and this very limited release, visit tomthelion.co.uk.

Manchester-based Creative Spark is raising money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust with Little Print Shop of Horrors, a series of horror film-themed prints to buy this Halloween

Yes, we know that there have been a lot of film poster projects recently but this one is for a good cause. Members of the Creative Spark agency have collaborated to produces six prints on their favourite scary films. The prints cost £10 each with all monies raised going to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

You can buy the posters here