Hasta La Ideas

Final year students up and down the UK are beginning to plan their degree shows and, dear readers, they need your help. What did you learn from your own show and what do you wish today’s shows did better?

If you’re a recent graduate:

What tips would you give next year’s grads when it comes to the show?

Is it worth doing a physical publication or should they just have a website?

Should they theme the show?

If the college is based outside London, is it worth doing a London show? As part of a group show eg New Blood or standalone?

What about the work: how many projects should you show? Personal work or work for briefs such as D&AD?

How do you divide up the space fairly but in such a way that you can create an engaging show?

Anything else you learned?

The Kingston graphics show from 2013

If you’re a designer, creative and/or employer:

Do you attend degree shows?

If so, are you going with the intention of looking for someone to employ or just out of interest?

What do you want to see at degree shows?

What are your biggest frustrations with/criticisms of degree shows?

Is there any point to students doing printed catalogues or would you rather just view work online?

Any other tips?

What was the best degree show you ever went to and why?

Please give us your thoughts in the comments below and let’s help improve the degree show expereince for all

Riposte is a new women’s magazine promising intelligent editorial and beautiful design. We spoke to editor Danielle Pender and creative director Shaz Madani about the title, which launches next week.

In the women’s magazine market, glossy fashion titles and gossip-based weeklies still dominate the newsstands. There are few alternatives for women who’d rather read about art or science than celebrity culture, and those that do exist are often poorly designed or focus on just one topic. Riposte, however, is hoping to fill that gap.

Described as ‘a smart magazine for women’, Riposte is a title concerned with style and substance. Published twice yearly, each issue presents five ideas, four meetings, three features, two essays and one icon piece, profiling women working in tech, music, design, science and visual arts.

The concept

Editor Danielle Pender, a curator at KK Outlet, came up with the idea for Riposte a year ago after growing frustrated with the limited content on offer in other women’s titles.

“I found I was buying a lot of art/design magazines and more male orientated titles as the breadth of their content was more interesting. I felt like there was a need for a women’s magazine which featured fascinating women and a broader range of topics,” she says.

When conducting market research, Pender spoke to a lot of women who felt the same way and who had grown tired of titles that focussed on celebrities’ appearances and love lives.  “I think there has been a sea change coming for a while – people aren’t stupid and I think they’re bored of reading negative and formulaic content,” she adds.

The first issue boasts a fascinating line-up: subjects include Francoise Mouly, the editor co-founder of Raw magazine, Nelly Ben Hayoun, founder of the International Space Orchestra and set designer Es Devlin as well as musicians, DJs and computer programmers.

“The aim is to profile incredible women who do incredible things across a range of sectors and disciplines – not to big them up in an over the top way, just to let their achievements speak for themselves,” says Pender. “We’re not interested in that world of big name celebrities and interviews full of media trained responses where you end up finding out nothing of any meaning,” she adds.

Riposte’s name is inspired by a line in Maximo Park song, The Coast is Always Changing. “It’s [also] our response to what is currently on offer and we’d like it to be a source of talking points,” Pender explains.

Aesthetics

In its look and feel, the magazine is more like an arts journal than a women’s weekly – cover stars appear on the back instead of the front, which simply lists the names of those featured in the issue.

“Riposte in its meaning is rebellious and provocative, so we wanted to try something that was a bit challenging,” explains Madani. “More importantly, we wanted the women we feature on our cover to stand out for who they are and what they have to say, rather than what they look like or what they wear. It’s a risk to not have an image on the front cover – we all know images sell – but we hope we can capture people’s imaginations first with words,” she says.

While Riposte has a structured content format, Madani was keen for title’s design to remain fluid: there are no chapter or section openers, but paper stock changes and colours to signal a change in content. A 16-page visual monograph has been inserted in between the meetings and features sections to break up the longer articles.

“I wanted to create something elegant that had reason and meaning. But it was important that these attributes didn’t make the magazine feel too stiff or exclusive…we kept stylistic interventions and typographic tricks to a minimum and instead focused on creating simple spreads that don’t overshadow the content and allow the images and words the space to breath,” she adds.

While Riposte features some beautiful full-bleed photography (and illustrations by Le Gun and HelloVon) none of its subjects have been Photoshopped, in keeping with the title’s mantras of openness and honesty. “There’s minimal if any styling, and settings are personal to the people we photograph – you can take a beautiful photo of an older woman without trying to make her look younger or like someone else,” says Pender.

Riposte’s colour palette mixes yellow, pale blue and coral with plenty of white space, and the colour of each cover will be dictated by the back cover image, explains Madani.

The title typeface is “a very slight alteration” of Gerard Unger’s Amerigo, which has also been used throughout the first section of the magazine. “We’ve removed some of the curves on the tapered strokes for sharper, more chiseled like serifs…This has been balanced with a softer more friendly sans serif. I love this sans font for all its small quirky imperfections that give it so much personality,” Madani adds.

While we haven’t yet seen the finished product – the magazine isn’t out until November 27 – Riposte looks like it will be a refreshing, intelligent and beautiful read. It’s unlike any women’s magazine we know of and while it’s subjects are all female, Pender hopes it will appeal to men as much as women.

“The tone is quite neutral – it isn’t focused on gender politics. We’ve had a lot of pre-orders from men and I’m really happy about that – an interesting person is an interesting person regardless of their gender,” she adds.

For more information or to pre-order a copy, see ripostemagazine.com

Rebranding your own agency is no small feat. Dario Grandich, who recently saw his company transform from Snapshot Media to Parallax, here offers an overview of the experience – including the pros and cons…

Over the past year we’ve made some important decisions about the identity and direction of our company. Our business has grown considerably since 2009; we started in a bedroom, before quickly moving into the living room, and then progressed through three offices. Our projects have also scaled up, are more complex, and take longer to complete.

Throughout that growth, while so much has changed and improved, we’ve maintained the same corporate identity that we’ve had from the very beginning. My brother designed our first logo and website, and while it served its purpose well, it was often neglected.

Our brand was something we didn’t value as much as we should have; we didn’t have rules, and it was more of a visual asset than true branding. Rebranding was a big topic at a number of board meetings, and we’d all become convinced that it was something we needed to do. The decision was finally made to go ahead.

The initial rebrand was to be a slight change – replacing ‘media’ with ‘digital’ in our name, Snapshot Media, and we created a simple plan and bought the domains. It was at this crucial stage that we met Ian Thompson, from Thompson Brand Partners, who opened our eyes completely: he spoke of our brand as if it was something in all of us, something we’ve naturally created. It all made complete sense.

The rebrand process

The initial meetings were workshops where we all explained how we felt about our brand, how our customers perceived us, and then what we and our customers should be thinking. A lot of discovery work was done to establish a firm foundation, adding a lot to our business plan.

Working with TBP, we spent much time defining our values and how we wanted to be perceived internally and externally. Once we had it all down on paper, we created a brand wheel so that we could describe ourselves in three simple words: passionate, intelligent and innovative. These three words were the benchmark for every decision we made, and helped us further define our business plan.

At this point, we all realised that ‘Snapshot Digital’ wasn’t enough. Though a positive change, it didn’t match the three defining values; it wasn’t passionate, intelligent or innovative, and it would have been a mistake to proceed. We needed something new.

After many more workshops, we narrowed down our list to ten names. We closely analysed each one, searched for domains, and did the usual trademark and competitor checks. It was a close call, but there was one name that got everyone’s vote – a real breakthrough. We decided it was to be Parallax.

The pros of rebranding

A defined purpose and values
This really helped us understand what our brand means to us and our customers. It has helped us hire more suitable staff and target the right sort of clients, but most importantly has given us a sense of purpose. It’s not just a logo anymore.

More pitching confidence
We always thought our old visual identity made us look small-time. The new brand gave us an unbelievable amount of confidence pitching to new clients, and it’s no surprise that in our short time as Parallax we’ve won some of our biggest projects.

Beautiful and contemporary visuals
We think our logo and visual language looks stunning. It’s flexible enough for us to build on, and it matches a design style that is perfectly suited to digital. It shows a lot of the characteristics of Apple’s iOS7 which we were delighted with.

Staff morale and ambition
We got our staff involved in a lot of the brand work. I think all but one or two fully bought into the values and the new name. It was a great way to boost employee morale and make them ambitious to take us, and themselves, to a new level.

Design awards and exposure
The brand and website has been featured on a lot of design galleries and award websites, giving us a lot of exposure to the international design community. We’ve been featured on Smashing Magazine, Awwwards, and many more.

More perceived value
One of the issues of our previous brand was getting low-value leads through. Although we had a screening process, we’d still get clients looking for the cheapest agency. Now we attract the clients that have the budgets to achieve their ambitious goals.

An excuse to have a party
After a lot of hard work it was a great excuse to celebrate with all of our staff, friends and clients. It also allowed us to catch up with a lot of key clients and update them on our plans for the future. It was a great networking opportunity.

A big learning exercise
It’s been a steep but efficient learning curve. We have all learnt an awful lot about branding from real experts. It’s something that has, no doubt, made us better, and has opened everyone’s eyes to what branding really is.

The cons of rebranding

Resources
We knew a rebrand would be a big job, but we had no idea how big. The amount of internal hours everyone clocked up was the equivalent to a full month of billable work for the entire team.

Cost
Doing a rebrand well is never going to be cheap, especially if you do it properly. There are many different fees, and though they were expected, they added up to a considerable total. You’ve got to consider agency, print, domains, furniture and signage fees, to name a few.

Uncertainty
You can never be sure that it’s going to get you the desired effect. So many rebrands happen and get negative publicity. Fortunately, while ours went down a treat, there were still times when we were quite nervous.

IT changes
Software licences, email changes and domains all gave us a few headaches and incurred fees. We’re still using aliases instead of emails sent from our new domain, simply because it’s so difficult to move across.

Loss of brand awareness
When changing everything, some loss of brand awareness is inevitable. We’re just not sure how much. We tried to get the message across loud and clear on social media and by email, and we also kept our old website up for a while too. This wasn’t ideal, but it’s essential.

Search ranking
Our new name is a commonly searched word which has caused some SEO issues. We’re working on it and have seen some amazing gains, but we’re still not at the levels we were prelaunch.

Weighing it up: was it the right decision?

Absolutely. The rebrand was a long process, involving a lot of hours and people, causing internal debates, and at points becoming the dreaded design by committee. It was one of the biggest projects we’ve ever done and now, a few months after launch, I can safely say it was a very positive move.

From a business development point of view it has been great, and we’ve won new clients that have the potential to be massive for our growth. We’ve had new business meetings, and calls with companies that we’ve dreamed of working with, one of the first being with Google in San Francisco to scope a project.

For any rebrand it’s going to be about the long term value versus the short term pain. We’re glad the rebrand is over, but as for our vision, we’re only just getting started.

Dario Grandich, below, is a director of Leeds-based digital agency, Parallax.

This house is not what it seems. Viewed from one angle it looks white, from another it’s black. And those marble walls are actually made of paper

The Chameleon Cabin was created by Swedish agency Happy Forsman & Bodenfors for printer Göteborgstryckeriet.

Together with architect Mattias Lind, HF&B built the three-metre house in the style of a Swedish friggebod, the small cottage-like buildings which are popular in part due to the fact that they do not require planning permission.

The idea was to show off the printing expertise of Göteborgstryckeriet. The house is constructed entirely from paper which has ben printed with a marble pattern. It’s “Göteborgstryckeriet’s way of saying: We can produce any kind of packaging that you might want,” says design director: Andreas Kittel.

The house is being taken around various events including packaging trade shows and there will be a direct mail campaign based on it.

Photos: Rasmus Norlander

The Independent revealed a new look today, the result of a three month-long project from designer Matt Willey and the newspaper’s in-house design team. Here, Willey and the paper’s Stephen Petch and Dan Barber, talk through the changes which include a new bespoke type family and a radical masthead redesign…

Since launching in its ‘compact’ format in 2003, The Independent has famously shifted its appearance several times; going full-colour in 2008 under Roger Alton’s editorship, relaunching again with Evgeny Lebedev’s acquisition in 2010, with another new look steered by editor Chris Blackhurst a year later that brought in the brick red sans-serif masthead (yesterday’s edition, shown below).

The front page of yesterday’s Independent

Last Friday, the paper’s editor Amol Rajan announced another redesign. Referencing the “gorgeous and radical” look of when The Independent first launched in 1986, the aim with its new incarnation would be to better reflect this “bold” and “forthright” founding spirit. Further, Rajan continued, the daily edition needed more differentiation from i, its sister paper, and greater emphasis on creating the “feeling of a broadsheet in compact form”.

News page and opening page of Voices section

All writer and columnist portraits are illustrated by Dan Williams

That Matt Willey, the designer behind Port, Elephant, and the recently redesigned RIBAJ, was brought in to refresh the newspaper, perhaps suggested that the influence of his magazine background would permeate the new look.

While elements of his experience in the field (which notably includes working with Arem Duplessis on the New York Times Magazine in 2011) occur throughout the new design, what is perhaps most interesting about the result is how he has so seamlessly turned his hand to newsprint.

Willey was initially approached to work on the redesign by The Independent’s head of creative, Dan Barber. From the outset, says Barber, it was clear that the two had very similar ideas on what the newspaper should be doing.

Willey knew of Stephen Petch’s work on the Independent on Sunday’s magazine, The New Review, and asked that he be part of the team. In-house designer Gordon Smith also contributed to the later stages of the design process, working on the Sports section.

“The whole reason behind it was that The Independent as it was didn’t look like The Independent,” says Petch. “It needed someone from the outside to come in and completely re-examine the whole thing, [to start] a stripping out process.”

The changes themselves are less a redesign and more a complete overhaul, thanks in part to the new set of typefaces designed by Henrik Kubel of A2/SW/HK and A2-Type, that are worked through the newspaper. Designing from the type up has meant that the way each page works has been rethought, restructured, and, in particular, de-cluttered and simplified.

Opening page to Section 2

“We knew quite quickly what we wanted the paper to look like, it was very organic,” says Barber. “We looked at the Antwerp face in the early stages then talked to Henrik; he started pushing it around and customising it. It’s the first time we’d actually talked about getting a whole family of fonts custom-made – and taking everything back to a family of fonts became essential. The majority of the identity for this comes from the typeface. We started from a very basic framework and built in the details and flourishes of interest.”

From the front page the new direction is striking. The blocky sans-serif masthead has made way for a new design that is at once radical but also elegant. Willey says its placement is a way of making the compact front page appear more sophisticated, creating a taller, more broadsheet-like format for the cover story and photograph.

“I wanted to go back to an elegant serif for the masthead which felt like such a strong part of the newspaper’s identity when it was a great paper,” Willey says. “Running it vertically allows what is a fairly long name to be prominent, unapologetic, without it getting in the way.”

Perhaps most importantly, he adds, the repositioning gives the lead story or photograph room to breathe. “The story can be at the top, you can lead straight in to it, without it being sat-on by the masthead. It’s a strongly and more clearly branded cover, but it gives more pertinence to the story, to the news of that day.”

With the masthead moved to the left, the ‘eagle’ device sites top-left of the front page. The logo remains true to the previous design but has been tidied up by Walter Molteni of Latigre and redrawn with particular scales and uses (e.g. digital) in mind.

For the type, Kubel has produced a set of custom drawn typefaces for use across the whole newspaper – an Indy Serif with italics (light, medium and bold); an Indy Sans (light, bold and heavy), an Indy Sans Condensed face (light, medium and bold) and an Indy Hairline, a version of which is used in the masthead. “I didn’t think of working with anyone else and I liked the fact that Henrik hadn’t done a newspaper typeface before,” says Willey.

“The fonts have been designed to deliver everything from delicate headlines, to hardworking text settings, down to very small point sizes for factual information and listings,” says Kubel.

“The final font set comprises 14 fonts in total, divided into four sub sets [above] and a special Numbers-only font. Each of the fonts share the same underlying structure and basic framework which means that, although they differ in look, style and weight, they do feel the same – a real family.”

The new-look weather page features illustrations of 11 cities by Sarah McMenemy

This holistic approach to the type means that all the sections of the paper have a clear visual link with one another. And Willey’s work has extended well beyond the daily newspaper to creating new cover templates for the Radar and Traveller publications, the insides of which are put together by the Barcelona-based designer, Jennifer Waddell.

Covers of the Radar and Traveller sections which will be published with Saturday’s edition

He has also redesigned the Saturday Magazine with Petch, alongside picture editor Annalee Mather and editors Will Dean and Larry Ryan. The new-look magazine incorporates “bold use of the Indy Sans Heavy for feature headlines [and] a cover template that pays homage to the Derek Birdsall-era design of the magazine”.

Cover of Saturday’s Magazine

Tim Key’s column in the Magazine, illustrated by Ping Zhu

While there is something of the classic look of the paper’s early days within the new design, Willey sees the project as addressing the very real concerns involved in producing a paper in today’s climate. “I think the design had lost some of it’s confidence and coherence,” he says, “it had become a complicated and chaotic thing both in terms of how it looks and feels to read, but also, crucially, in terms of how it’s put together by the team here.”

Editorially the restructuring has meant there are far fewer middle-length stories and more ‘news in brief’ and longer features. This, says Willey, made a big impact on how the pages looked as immediately there was more contrast between the stories just in terms of length. “It’s a difficult time for newspapers,” he says, “and the reality is there’s a limited amount of people doing a huge amount of work to tight deadlines. So you can’t design something like this without that being the first consideration.”

News in brief stories

The thin column to the right of articles takes captions, pull quotes and extra details

The small size of the team putting the paper together was a practical aspect to the work that the designers put to the forefront of their approach. “A lot of the pages are put together by subs under very pressured deadlines, and it was a complicated and unclear thing to build,” says Willey. “It felt important to do something confident, something cleaner, more sophisticated and so on, but it also had to be something that could be built better, put together more easily and with more understanding – something that could be sustained.

Spread from Saturday’s Magazine

Opening to The Back Pages section in the Magazine

“We were keen to strip out a lot of the clutter, to simplify the colour palette, to have more deliberate and rational use of colour, photographs and graphics, he says.

“The problem is that when everything is shouting, as the pages used to do, nothing actually stands out. By having cleaner simplified pages you can choose to put emphasis on something much more effectively, it can be more subtly done and be more impactful – it doesn’t have to fight with 30 other things on the same page.

“I get the hints back to the previous Independent designs but I wasn’t concentrating on that. This feels like something very new. It’s modern, it’s not too reflective. It just feels like The Independent to me.”

The redesign has also been rolled out on the The Independent’s website, independent.co.uk (horizontal masthead shown below), with an updated iPad edition appearing next week. More of Matt Willey’s work at mattwilley.co.uk. A2/SW/HK’s type foundry, A2-Type, is at a2-type.co.uk.

Ping Zhu also illustrates the ‘Let Me Ask You This’ column in the Magazine