Hasta La Ideas

I’ve yet to see or touch the Apple iPad, writes Malcolm Garrett, so the following is based on conjecture, and quite a bit of enthusiastic anticipation, but when it comes to interactive technologies I am a receptive audience. I had an instant liking for the iPhone, not so much for the object itself, but for how it would shake up both the telecoms market and the whole world of computing. After only a few minutes of playing, and of enjoying of the way the touchscreen interactions varied from task to task, it was apparent to me that this direct yet dynamic way of handling information pointed towards a complete rethinking of hardware interfaces everywhere.

Almost overnight, expectations of how technology could and should work, subtly but irrevocably changed. At once straightforward, yet playfully seductive, this way of manipulating information feels natural and obvious. It is not at all technical or intimidating. It just works effortlessly and effectively.

This can not now be taken away, nor can other products ignore it. I’m already expecting everything else to work in similar ways, and miss that level of control, even when it has never been present. I find myself instinctively touching and stroking screens, and already feel disappointed with old fashioned buttons, keys and clicks.

Many critics are understandably concerned that the iPad appears to be a solution in search of a problem, and are speculating about what it’s actually for [see reaction to our earlier post here]. For me the real interest lies in the evolution of the interface rather than any debate about the precise form factor.

I am excited by further exploration of this type of interaction, and the unpredictable outcomes it will precipitate. Arguably the most remarkable thing about the iPhone has been the sheer volume of inventive responses to its unique combination of hardware and software. It is the integration of accelerometer and GPS which makes the iPad such an exciting prospect, bringing together touchable interaction, connectivity and physical and spatial awareness. Together these features have added hitherto unexplored dimensions to software development, and implementing them in this next generation of device was inevitable. The irony is that although the iPhone was in part successful because it could, of course, be relied on to be a cool phone, the reality is that this is its least interesting facet. Far from being a criticism, this highlights a bold distinction between the iPhone and all else around it.

What is key is that Apple continues to simplify and demystify the computer interface. The flexibility of the screen is such that the location and function of screen tools is always contextual, and specific to each and every application. It is obvious that the iPad is intended to be a general purpose media device, rather than an office or work-related tool. Given the incremental development of the iPod over the past decade from the first click-wheel through to iTouch and iPhone, it is quite logical to see the iPad as a very powerful, and uniquely responsive, next generation iPod, rather than a downgraded MacBook.

That said, the iPad could really be the first laptop to actually warrant that description. You can’t use a MacBook on your lap for long without needing heat protection. The iPad just has to be more comfortable, portable and perfectly useful on your lap, in your hand, on the coffee table, sitting on a shelf, relaxing on the sofa, or even lying in bed. Thinking about its use, I note that there are many more games consoles and DVD players in the world than there are laptop computers, suggesting that mainstream media consumption is entertainment-oriented, and for most people becomes most usable in singular ways rather than in complex, work-like, mutli-tasking environments.

The consensus of opinion at my company, AIG, is that this is a good thing. As this is an Apple controlled operating system, the design of Apps maintains just enough interface consistency to enable them to be comprehensive yet comprehensible, and given that they are empowered by wi-fi and internet, this alone could easily make many browser-dependent websites redundant. It is no surprise that the publishing industry is finally seeing a challenging opportunity rather than a threat to its existence.

For my part, back in 1990, when I made the irreversible transition from analogue to digital, I was still somehow anticipating the development of a computer with a screen as large as a drawing board. I felt that screens needed to maintain a better physical relationship between user and media than was allowed by keyboard and mouse, and the disassociation brought about by the confines of such a tiny window into a vast virtual world was a conceptual step too far to grasp easily. The world now suggested by the iPad isn’t at all how I imagined things would progress, yet it feels like a step towards something much, much better.

Malcolm Garrett RDI is creative director at Applied Information Group

This article will also appear in the March issue of CR, our 30th birthday issue in which we have asked 30 notable people in the field of visual communication to nominate one thing that they are excited about for the future: Malcolm Garrett chose the iPad. The March issue of CR is on sale on February 20

It’s that time again when we stick up some pics of the books (and other nice print things) that are currently in the Extra Nice pile of stuff here in CR towers…

First up is the beautifully produced hardback tome called, coincidentally enough, Stuff We Really Like – a 785 page exploration by design studio Music of, well, stuff they really like… The likeable stuff inside includes such no-brainers as Christmas day morning and The Muppet Show – but also more personal likes such as the music of Scott Walker, Edward Hopper paintings, South Indian Food, cycling round London and Asterix comic books. Whether you like everything listed or not, the book is wittily laid out and full of joyous anecdotes about such things as Boarding A Moving Routemaster Bus. We really like this one – here are a few spreads:

Now then, we recently posted about the splendid group exhibition entitled If You Could Collaborate – organised by Alex Bec and Will Hudson – the dynamic duo behind previous If You Could exhibitions and publications – and the pair also founded the rather lovely blog, It’s Nice That. What we didn’t mention in any detail in our post about the exhibition was what a great job the pair have done on the accompanying catalogue. Rather than simply show the work of the exhibition, the book’s 310 pages include profiles on all the included artists and interviews with them about the work they created specially for the show and of the collaborative processes involved in making the works. Having enjoyed the show immensely, it’s great be abe to find out a little more about the processes, conversations, journeys and considerable efforts that have gone into the production of the artworks from the show…

Catlin is an insurance company with a growing art collection and its own Catlin Art Prize (now in its fourth year) that looks to nurture emerging artists. The Catlin Guide is a new publication funded by the company that collects together profiles of 40 up and coming artists selected by curator, gallerist and art writer Justin Hammond. To make his selection, Hammond travelled up and down the UK last year visiting degree and MA shows scouting for the hottest new talents in the world of fine art. The 40 artists featured are, essentially, the shortlisted artists for this year’s art prize. The book, housed in a red slipcase (above), has been designed by YES studio and looks like this:

Illustrator David Janes sent us a little box full of old fashioned record cards with a personalised note to CR editor, Patrick, on one – and a pen illustration on each of the others of a political figure of some sort along with either an asinine quote by the person depicted or some witty anecdote about something silly they did or said…

The sixth issue of Draft magazine features a print of a Jake and Dinos Chapman artwork entitled If Hitler Had Been A Hippy How Happy Would We Be printed onto watercolour paper and tipped on to the glossy black cover. Inside a note informs the reader that everything included in the issue has been drawn from the Archive of Modern Conflict. And so a host of contributors including Anthony Burrill, Martin Parr, Ian Jeffrey, Stephen Gill and Garry Hume introduce the artifacts that they have selected from the archive… the result makes for an interesting trawl through a huge variety of visual material spanning photography, illustration, graphic design and even some experimental images that were transmitted by radio in the early 1930s in Paris. 

Also in our pile of nice projects is this box which we received in the post with a horeshoe graphic on the top. On opening the box, it turns out not to contain a horseshoe, but a nice photographic print of a horseshoe (see below) – and a whole heap of prints stacked underneath it of other imagery, mostly portraits, shot by photographer Alex Telfer as part of his series of images entitled The Travellers. Wonderful stuff.

For some reason my camera finds this book cover tricky to photograph… sorry about that. The book is called It’s A Wonderful Life and it was sent to us just before Christmas by Dorothy up in Manchester. Just to clarify, the cover is white cloth with debossed angel wings and gold type. The text at the bottom reads “From the film by Frank Capra, retold by Dorothy”. So yes, it’s Dorothy’s version of the 1946 film of the same name, in which the story is told in verse (penned by Guy Nelson) and illustrated by Tracy Worrall. Here are some spreads…

Trailer for I’m Here, directed by Spike Jonze

There’s been a plethora of nice work passing through CR Towers this week – here’s a selection of what we’ve seen for your delectation. First up, Absolut reinforces its associations with art and creativity by funding a short film by Spike Jonze…

The 30-minute film, titled I’m Here, was shown at the Sundance Film Festival as part of its shorts programme. Jonze was apparently given creative freedom by the vodka brand to make the film. “It was a pretty incredible opportunity,” he says. “They didn’t give me any requirements to make a movie that had anything to do with vodka. They just wanted me to make something that was important to me, and let my imagination take me wherever I wanted. And it wasn’t like working with some huge corporation where I had to meet with committees of people. It was just a small group, and it seemed like creativity and making something that affected them emotionally was the only thing that really mattered to them. I got to make my first love story. It’s about the relationship between two robots living in Los Angeles.” A trailer for the film is shown above.

Wrangler Red: We Are Animals, from Fred & Farid, Paris

Fred & Farid agency in Paris has released the latest work in its We Are Animals campaign for Wrangler. This time the agency worked with fashion photographer Jeff Burton to create a campaign based on the colour Red, which, according to the press info “celebrates man’s most primal urges”. Golly.

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Barclaycard ad; agency: BBH; creatives: Szymon Rose, Daniel Schaefer; prod co: MJZ; director: Nicolai Fuglsig

BBH in London has followed its successful waterslide campaign for Barclaycard with a rollercoaster of a journey to work, which aims to emphasise how the bank card can make your life easier. The spot was directed by Nicolai Fuglsig.

BBC Radio 4 History of the World, Horse; agency: Fallon, creatives: Sam Walker, Joe De Souza; prod co: Red Bee; director: Wiz

Earlier this month we featured the first film in a campaign from Fallon for BBC Radio 4, which showed a man jumping a bull. The second film is a little less dramatic but equally beautiful, and is again directed by Wiz.

Coke ad; agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland; creatives: Brian Murphy, Nate Miller; pro co: Rattling Stick; director Daniel Kleinman

Daniel Kleinman has directed this ad for Coke, which sees a history book come to life as its protagonists try to wake a slumbering student in time for him to get to his final exams.

Everyman rebrand by Marksmith. Photos: Michael Fair

Marksmith has completed a rebrand of the Everyman chain of cinemas. The rebrand includes flyers (shown top), the magazine (shown above), the cinema menu, postcards and vouchers.

Nurofen ad; agency: Mother; prod co/director: Psyop

Finally, we end on a charming spot for Nurofen from Mother, the agency’s first work for the painkiller brand. The campaign will run across TV, print, and online.

In 2009, the last batches of instant photographic film produced by Polaroid reached their expiry date. NB Studio has marked its passing with a rather nice memento

NB asked four photographers to explore what they feel nostalgia for, what things they appreciate in the present and what things they might miss in the future.

The result is This year… a beautifully produced folder housing a Polaroid print (one of a limited edition of 150) mounted onto 350gsm Colorplan and presented to the studio’s collaborators, friends and clients.

The photographers involved were Linda Brownlee, who “took the Polaroid camera everywhere with me for three weeks, and spent the time savouring the good stuff”

John Ross, who is nostalgic for 70s porn apparently

Jane Stockdale who “photographed priceless one-off things we treasure – from the Elgin marbles to a classic signed ‘I LOVE NY’ poster by Milton Glaser”

and Matt Stuart who “wanted to capture the human errors and foibles of everyday life, and Polaroid is the perfect medium to do that with”

More details here

Last Thursday the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock, the metaphorical clock that monitors how near humanity is to catastrophic destruction, was moved back one minute to six minutes to midnight. Pentagram marked the event in print…

The Board of Directors and the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recently agreed that the world is one step further away from annihilation and, in keeping with the tradition that has now seen the clock reset 19 times since its creation in 1947, moved the minute hand back, from five minutes to six minutes to midnight.

Pentagram’s response was to create a printed publication that would garner wider awareness of the Doomsday Clock project. According to the studio’s blog, a tabloid newspaper was “printed on inexpensive newsprint [and] it explains the purpose of the Bulletin and the Doomsday Clock in clear language and blunt, unadorned graphics.”

The clock, the studio continues, has “become a universally recognised indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and emerging technologies in the life sciences. It is the focus of the Bulletin’s graphic communications effort.”

In 1984 the Doomsday clock was moved to a nervy three minutes to midnight and reached the relative stability of seventeen minutes to midnight in 1991, when the US and Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Since then, other issues such as an increase in global military spending and nuclear weapons testing has seen the clock reset to five minutes to midnight in 2007 (and now to six minutes to – thanks in part to an increasing awareness of the effects of climate change).

More at the Pentagram blog, here.

The origins of the Doomsday Clock as a graphic device are explored in an interesting piece by Michael Bierut over on Design Observer, here.

Martyl Langsdorf, the wife of the nuclear physicist Alexander Langsdorf Jr., was asked to create a cover for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ magazine. With input from Egbert Jacobson, design director of Container Corporation of America, Langsdorf came up with the image of the clock; in the first instance set to seven minutes to midnight, “simply because it looked good”.

In 2007 Pentagram suggested to the Bulletin’s publishers that the clock be used as the organisation’s graphic identity.

To get involved with the Clock Coalition and Doomsday Clock Symposium, go to turnbacktheclock.org.