Hasta La Ideas

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.

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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.

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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

Or the Raspberry Pi computer

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)

As did the Australian Government Department for Health and Ageing’s cigarette packaging

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

A full list of nominations can be found here

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.

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.

Illustrator and cartoonist Tom Gauld will be giving the next Typographic Circle Typo Talk on March 27. Not only is this the chance to hear Gauld discuss his brilliant work, but you get a free A1 poster (shown above) too

As usual, the talk will be at ad agency JWT in Knightsbridge, London. Tickets (on sale here) are £10 for members (student members £4), £16 for non-members (£8 for students).

Gauld’s latest book You’re All Just Jealous of my Jetpack, a collection of his weekly cartoons for the Guardian, will be out soon.

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.

Creative Review has teamed up with Uniqlo and 12 more magazines and journals around the world in the UT Creative Journal Direction project. Each magazine has commissioned a local designer or artist to create a T-shirt for the range which is on sale in Uniqlo worldwide

Each year Uniqlo commissions limited edition T-shirts from designers, artists and brands under its UT Project for sale in its 1300 shops globally and online at uniqlo.com. The UT Creative Journal Direction project was organised by +81 magazine in Japan.

Each participating magazine (including Étapes in France, Surface in New York, Design in Korea and Look At Me in Moscow) was asked to submit half a dozen proposed designs. They were not allowed to be overtly self-promotional (ie no logos) and should feature the work of a local designer. We submitted various ideas, but +81 and Uniqlo chose Anthony Burrill’s reworked version of the image which he created for our April 2010 redesign issue.The final shirt is shown above

You can buy the CR T-shirt direct from us here

Other T-shirts in the range include this by Superscript from Etapes

This by Masayoshi Kodaira for +81

And this by Workroom for Design magazine in Korea

See the full range of shirts 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.

Qatar Sports Investment’s takeover of Paris football club PSG has brought big-name players and a Champions’ League quarter final spot. But an ongoing row over the club’s new logo reveals that not all fans are happy with their club’s wealthy new owners

We know the recipe by now: perennially under-achieving European football club is bought by massively rich middle eastern backers and is transformed overnight. As with Manchester City and Malaga, so it also goes with Paris Saint-Germain. With carte blanche for star-shopping, PSG has acquired players such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thiago Silva and, most recently, David Beckham. Under manager Carlo Ancelotti, the club has qualified for the UEFA Champions’ League quarter finals and, at the time of writing, is five points clear at the top of Ligue 1.

PSG club badge 1970

And from 1972, which Eiffel Tower, cradle and fleur-de-lys

At just 43 years old, the PSG is a young club but, alongside the much older OM (l’Olympique de Marseille) is already one of the most popular in France. Affectionately nicknamed ‘Pas Sur de Gagner’ (not sure to win) by its supporters, it has been likened to ‘a rebellious teenager, exasperating, unpredictable, but full of charm and charisma,’ not unlike the city itself.

Typographic badge adopted in 1992

1996 saw a return to the previous approach

40-year anniversary badge

Now, at 43, the rebel has grown up and come in to some serious money. PSG’s Qatari president, 39 year-old businessman Nasser al-Khelaifi – the first non-French PSG president in its history – has big ambitions for the club – to turn it into a world class sports brand, and money’s no object. Aside from recruiting star players, the stadium is being renovated, a new training centre created, the infrastructure improved, an academy for training local talent founded and the funds for the PSG Foundation tripled.

This is the biggest transformation in the club’s history. To mark this turning point, the club has just rejuvenated its brand identity. Four studios pitched, three French, one British to a succinct brief; to place Paris at the heart of the club’s brand identity.

Previously, the predominant feature of PSG’s insignia was a red Eiffel Tower on a dark blue background with, underneath, what must be one of the oddest symbols of a football club anywhere – a baby’s cradle. This cradle is King Louis XIV’s, who was born in St Germain-en-Laye. Next to the cradle was a tiny fleur-de-lys, (or lily), symbol of French royalty.

In Dragon Rouge’s new badge the circular insignia with its red Eiffel Tower is maintained, as is the fleur-de-lys, but the date of the club’s creation and the cradle symbol have been dropped. The bleu-blanc-rouge insignia colours are more luminous, the fleur-de-lys now appears, appropriately, in gold. A new brand statement ‘Rêvons plus grand’ (Let’s Dream Bigger) in a bespoke typeface consolidates the message.

“The result is a timeless brand which is resolutely Parisian yet totally international,” Lisa Deschamps of Dragon Rouge told CR. “The logo has a greater synthesis of ideas and a more immediate impact, and is now ideally placed to capture the imagination of football and sports fans around the world.”

“The evolution of the Paris Saint-Germain logo marks an important stage in the implementing of our ambition,” adds Nasser Al-Khelaifi, “namely making Paris Saint-Germain one of the world’s greatest sporting brands.”

But some diehard PSG supporters are less than thrilled. The takeover itself caused an uproar. The arrival of multinational players was seen as adulterating the ‘blue blood’ of the team, (the only Paris-born player is Mamadou Sakho). Then, before the official unveiling of the new brand identity, a version of the supposed ‘new logo’, featuring a red Eiffel Tower on a sky blue background, was leaked to the Le Parisien newspaper. The sky blue was dangerously close to that of rivals OM. All hell broke loose.

Leaked version of what was wrongly purported to be PSG’s new badge in Le Parisien

The badge of deadly rivals Olympique Marseille

“Why don’t they replace the Eiffel Tower with an oil well while they’re at it?” fumed one fan on the PSG website. An online petition ‘Touche pas à mon logo’ (Hands off my logo) received just under six thousand signatures before the authentic evolution was revealed.

Calm has been restored as the new brand identity prepares to take its place on the jerseys of Ibrahimovic, Lucas and Beckham ahead of its official launch in June. But the online debate by supporters rages on, and in typically Parisian style, the precise nuances and symbolism of the brighter PSG blue are discussed ‘à l’infini’. A Champions’ League win might ease the pain for PSG fans.

PSG store on the Champs Elysée

Design studio: Dragon Rouge. Creative Team: Olivier Vinet, creative director, Nicolas Jousselin, senior art director, Anaïs Allegrini, art director. Consultants: Olivier Grenier, director, Lisa Deschamps, consultant.

CR’s View:
PSG’s new owners have been explicit in their desire to turn the club into a world-leader. Therefore it makes perfect sense to focus in on its major asset – being in Paris. PSG may mean little to the fans in Asia who are the target of every European football club with ambition, but Paris will conjure up all kinds of glamorous and desirable connotations.

The new badge makes this strategy blindingly obvious. Perhaps ‘Saint-Germain’ may even be dropped entirely in time? Until then, the badge can fall back on its home’s most recognisable symbol – the Eiffel Tower – along with the fleur-de-lys to up the unmistakable Gallic flavour. Shame to lose the quirkiness and the story of the cradle though.

But as with other high-profile sporting takeovers, the new owners risk alienating the loyal core of support in their dash for global domination. The ongoing row over which shade of blue the badge really is underlines the sensitivities involved, although PSG fans have a lot less to complain about than those of Cardiff City whose new owners decided to change kit from blue to red this season. As with Manchester City’s fans, PSG supporters are no doubt torn between excitement at the prospect of winning trophies and seeing great players and unease about the nature of the new ownership, what such takeovers mean for the wider game and sense of loss of ‘their’ club. PSG was a football club: Paris sounds more like a franchise.

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.