Manchester creative studio MARK has designed a set of stickers for Johnson & Johnson that celebrate everyday items invented by women, from windscreen wipers and chocolate chip cookies to the fire escape.
The stickers will be placed around Johnson & Johnson’s head office in Berkshire to raise awareness of International Women’s Day on March 8. The company is hosting a series of events to mark the date and wanted to increase staff engagement.
“We were given an open brief to devise a simple, impactful and quick to produce idea that would engage staff interest and create a curiosity about the day itself and the history behind it,” says MARK creative director Mark Lester. “People are then informed about specific events mostly through email,” he says.
Eight stickers have been designed in total and each uses elements of a visual system MARK created for Johnson & Johnson late last year – the studio also designed office graphics, induction packs, internal communications and iconography (see more pics on MARK’s website).
It’s a simple yet effective solution, and while it’s a shame the stickers won’t be appearing elsewhere in the UK, Lester says they will be applied to various desks, doors, kettles and other spaces at J&J’s headquarters.
Pentagram, WWF and environmental charity Do the Green Thing have launched a poster campaign to promote Earth Hour on March 29.
Pentagram partners and creatives including Paula Scher, David Shrigley, Quentin Blake, Marion Deuchars and Neville Brody were asked to produce a poster promoting sustainable living. The first designs were unveiled on March 1 and a new one will be released each day until March 29, when people around the world will take part in a ‘lights-out’ event at 8.30pm local time.
The posters encourage taking up simple activities such as walking to work, sharing bathwater and eating seasonal food or less meat (see Rankin’s design, top).
Marion Deuchars
Hudson Powell
Pentagram launched a similar campaign last year, with contributions from Olympic logo designer Patrick Cox, illustrator Andrew Rae and photographer Dean Chalkley.
Paula Scher
Harry Pearce
This year, creatives aged between 16 and 25 were also invited to take part (we published a call for entries back in December). Six finalists were offered a session at Pentagram to refine their designs and the overall winner – 22-year-old Rebecca Charlton – was decided by a public vote.
Charlton’s design (above) will be released on the final day of the campaign and will appear at advertising sites around the country. Runners up Matthew Elliot and Jamie Eke’s work will also be featured online.
David Shrigley
Matthew Elliot
Neville Brody
Quentin Blake
Posters are available to buy as an A3 print for £12 and all proceeds will go to Do the Green Thing. You can also see last year’s designs – and follow this month’s new releases – at dothegreenthing.tumblr.com
Heal’s has launched its first own-brand fabric collection since the 1970s, featuring patterns from Malika Favre, Petra Börner and Hvass and Hannibal as well as archived designs by Zandra Rhodes and the late Diana Bloomfield.
The re-launched business will combine work from young designers with updated versions of patterns sold in the 1950s and 60s. Hvass and Hannibal, Favre and Börner were commissioned by illustration agency Outline Artists and have created some colourful floral-themed designs.
Hvass and Hannibal’s Herbarium (top) is inspired by forests and pressed flower samples, while Börner’s Lady Jane references horticultural images found in vintage books. Börner created the design using layers of coloured paper which was then photographed and interpreted digitally.
Favre’s geometric print, Peacock Flower, was inspired by peacocks she saw wandering the grounds of a hotel in the French Riveria. “I wanted to do something fun, playful and summery,” she says.
The first archive patterns to be re-worked for the collection, which launched in stores on Saturday, are Zandra Rhodes Top Brass 2 and Diana Bloomfield’s Tea Time (both below).
Rhodes designed the pattern while studying the Royal College of Art in 1963. Bloomfield’s work was designed in the 1950s and updated for the collection with help from her grand-daughter Julia.
Pia Benham, Heal’s head of fabric and design said the collection aimed to “inject fun and excitement into Heal’s fabric design once again” by combining contemporary patterns with those inspired by the brand’s heritage.
Fabrics were priced at £45 per metre and Heal’s has also launched a co-ordinating accessory line, 1810, which features textiles, cushions and stationery.
It’s nice to see a brand reclaiming a business that used to champion the work of emerging designers, and even better to see collaborations with illustrators as well as textile designers.
As I discovered when visiting with my family over the weekend, the Barbican is now selling an exclusive range of Alan Fletcher merchandise, including T-shirts, bags and iPhone cases
As we reported at the time, in May last year Alan Fletcher’s daughter Raffaella set up an online archive of the late great designer’s work, Work and Play. The family has now licenced a range or merchandise (created with Kit Grover) which has been on sale at The Barbican and via online retailer Culture Label since the beginning of February.
I stumbled across it while attending the We Create Barbican Weekender (great idea, shame about the queues…)
On sale in the Barbican Shop, as well as Fletcher’s books, are tote bags and fridge magnets bearing a famous Miss Piggy quote rendered in Fletcher’s unmistakable scratchy hand
Notebooks and iPhone cases using Fletcher’s Technological Graveyard poster of used pencils
This T-shirt, with one of his favourite quotes (by Queen Victoria)
And a Rorschach print silk scarf
We often moan that graphic designers never get the wider acclaim enjoyed by their peers in other areas of design and art so it was great to see a collection celebrating a “grand master of modern graphics” alongside the Lomography cameras and Vitra posters (they also sell a book on the Barbican’s visual identity system by the way – how many other places do that?)
The iPhone case did make the launch though – Alan once described Apple’s business model to CR as eing equivalent to someone “grabbing you by the throat with one hand while going through your pockets with the other”.
The Alan Fletcher range is available from The Barbican here
The final day of Design Indaba featured some moving, funny and uplifting presentations rom Stefan Sagmeister, Alt Group’s Dean Poole and South Africa’s most treasured photographer, David Goldblatt. Here’s a look at some of the best bits…
89plus – art, post 1989
Following a talk from Ivory Coast architect Issa Diabate was a group of South African artists from new platform and research project, 89 plus. Founded by curators Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist, 89plus supports artists born in 1989 or later, after the birth of the internet and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
This age group represents half the world’s population and for South Africans, it’s a generation that has grown up post-apartheid. The first 89plus exhibition, Poetry Will Be Made By All, was recently launched in Switzerland and will feature 1000 books by 1000 poets over two months, presented in displays designed by artists, designers and architects (more info here).
Images (top and above): Jody Brand
Among the 89plus artists speaking were Kyla Philander – a videographer and musician who uses film to address social inequality and racism and Jody Brand, a photographer and art director who captures South African street and club culture on her blog, Chomma (slang for friend).
Dean Poole – simplicity and constraint
After a talk from Danish designers, Alt Group’s Dean Poole delivered an excellent presentation on his love of language, simplicity – and holes. Beginning with a playful look at the letters of the alphabet (which those who attended AGI Open in London may remember), Poole explained the concept behind the studio’s award-winning identity for Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.
Inspired by visual word play, experimental poetry and sculptors that work with language, Alt Group created a visual system based around the word art. By reducing the subject to three letters, Pool said he wanted to create a simple message that anyone could understand. The system has been applied to merchandise, wayfinding and communications and offers a flexible, playful scheme.
Poole also discussed condensing the story of an opera into one simple symbol when designing an identity for New Zealand Opera (see image, top) and the studio’s fantastic work for experimental theatre group Silo – for which they created ‘emoticon’ logo marks referencing tragedy and comedy theatre masks.
Funny, engaging and entertaining, Poole’s parting thought was to go out and do something different, or “give the world a bit of a wobble”.
Man building his house, Marselle Township, Kenton-on-sea, shot by David Goldblatt.
David Goldblatt – a life’s work
His talk was followed by photographer David Goldblatt, who discussed the stories behind some of his most iconic portraits and received a standing ovation from the audience.
Offering a fascinating insight into his 50-year career Goldblatt spoke about photographing victims of police brutality, township residents and political figures including Nelson Mandela during apartheid.
He also presented his work photographing offenders at the scene of crimes they were imprisoned for – including a victim of corrective rape who was jailed for 3 years after being falsely accused of armed robbery – and his close-up series of body parts from the mid-70s.
His work remains a powerful and poignant reminder of the country’s recent past and it was inspiring to hear Goldblatt’s insights on his images and their subjects.
Stefan Sagmeister – on happiness
The final speaker of this year’s conference was Stefan Sagmeister, who delivered an uplifting talk on happiness.
Showing examples of typographic installations, motion graphics and short films created with studio partner Jessica Walsh, as well as examples from his brilliant exhibition, the Happy Show:
He shared some surprising insights based on research into what makes us happy. Climate, age and life conditions play only a small role but marriage and religion can make us considerably happier.
Speaking of his experiences filming the Happy Film, his documentary on happiness which is now at rough cut stage, he also provided some tips based on what he had discovered from scientists, pyschologists and a trip to Bali. Singing in groups, making friends and taking part in non-repetitive activities will improve our happiness, but procrastinating and not doing the things we intended to will make us unhappy – some simple yet sound advice.
Last year, photographer and Colors co-founder Oliviero Toscani gave a speech at the 92nd Art Director’s Club festival. The text has now been turned into a newspaper and a series of four typographic posters by illustrator Ben Weeks and Underline Studio…
The paper now forms part of the Art Director’s Club‘s communications for its 93rd awards, which will take place in Miami Beach this April.
To make it, Canadian illustrator Weeks took Toscani’s ‘Creativity = Courage’ speech from 2013 and invited Underline Studio to work on a publication which would be sent out to 2,000 ADC members, and made available online to download.
The four posters are shown here, along with an image of the inside text (above) and also of a single page from the PDF version (bottom of post). Spot illustrations of elements from images Toscani has created in his career feature throughout the newspaper.
The ADC was keen to bring the speech’s theme of to life, says Weeks, and initially the illustrator thought it might be easiest to do so within a gallery space. But print won out and Weeks and Underline also created a series of four type-based posters to go with the newspaper, which were also printed by Newspaper Club.
The team also had a link with Toscani himself which no doubt helped the process along. “One of Underline’s principals, Fidel Pena, used to work at Pentagram with Fernando Gutiérrez on Colors,” Weeks explains. “Toscani had to personally approve our work, so Fidel’s deep intuition about the right tone was a huge help.”
The full text of the speech is here; while the 12 page PDF of the newspaper (one page shown below) is also linked on this page, here.
The 2014 edition of Dublin’s OFFSET festival still has early bird tickets available – until March 1. With an impressive line-up of speakers this year, the long weekend of March 21-23 promises to be a memorable one…
OFFSET has become one of the most well-regarded creative events around – not bad for an organisation which launched only four years ago. That it now pulls in a wide range of big names from the creative industries (see below), as well as looking after some 2,000 delegates, says something of how its reputation has grown.
Jessica Walsh, Partner @ Sagmeister & Walsh Designer, Art Director / USA
Put simply, say OFFSET,the three days are a chance to construct “a weekend of presentations, interviews, panel discussions and debates with the very best of Irish and international designers, animators, illustrators, advertisers, artists, photographers and more live on stage.”
Highlights this year include illustrators Sarah Mazzetti, Jon Burgerman and Mike Perry; artists Marian Bantjes and Geneviève Gauckler; designers Jessica Walsh, Marina Willer, Tom Hingston and Neville Brody; agencies Mother London and W+K Amsterdam; animation studios Brownbag and Golden Wolf; and Bloomberg Businesweek’s creative direcror, Richard Turley. Legendary graphic design Milton Glaser will also be appearing in a special filmed interview.
Marina Willer, Partner @ Pentagram London, Graphic Designer / UK
There will also be a week-long series of screenings and exhibitions held across the city – more details of those here.
The full list of speakers for this year’s event is below, with links to their OFFSET biographies. Early bird tickets are €165 (with a reduction for group bookings of six or more), and will be available until March 1 from iloveoffset.com. Thereafter, tickets are €180 each.
CR will also be reporting from the event over the three days.
In a neat twist on Ikea’s space-saving appeal, German agency Thjnk Hamburg has created a billboard ad which displays three different headlines thanks to the use of coloured bulbs
As this film explains, the billboard’s three headlines are printed in different colours which are switched ‘on’ and ‘off’ using coloured bulbs attached to the top of the poster site:
A very neat and appropriate idea which also gives us the chance to feature once again a project that has generated more page views than anything else featured on the CR Blog over the years – the RGB wallpaper by Italian studio Carnovsky which revealed different paterns depending on the colour of light shone on it
Ikea credits Agency: Thjnk Hamburg Client: IKEA Germany Executive Creative Director: Armin Jochum Executive Creative Director: Bettina Olf Creative Director: Georg Baur Creative Director: Torben Otten Art Director: David Lasar Art Director: Nicolas Schmidt-Fitzner Production Company: I Made This Director: Dominic Repenning
This year’s Design Indaba in Cape Town kicked off with some inspiring talks on advertising, digital innovation and interactive story telling. Here are a few of the highlights from the first day…
Ogilvy & Mather – story making not story telling
Chris Gotz, creative director at Ogilvy and Mather‘s Cape Town office, spoke about the agency’s shifting focus from story telling to story making, creating interactive print and digital campaigns that rely on audience engagement.
Gotz cited several projects that put this theory into practice – the first was a campaign marking the end of production of the Citi Golf, South Africa’s biggest selling car for over 20 years.
Volkswagen wanted to create a farewell campaign using material from previous commercials, but O&M instead decided to take the last ever Citi Golf on a tour of South Africa, allowing residents around the country to say goodbye in person and write a message on the car. The model is now a permanent exhibition at a South African museum and the project attracted 60,000 followers online.
In another project for Volkswagen, O&M used Google Street View technology to create a game where users would win points for spotting VWs in South Africa, which resulted in a 700 percent increase in traffic to VWs website:
And when the company wanted to launch a print campaign advertising its new range of eco-friendly cars, the agency devised a sticker that offered free postage to a recycling centre so when readers were finished with their magazine they could pop it in the post box. The campaign was launched in Cape Town but has since been rolled out in other destinations.
For Carling Black Label, O&M devised a mobile app that allowed fans of football teams the Orlando Pirates and the Kaizer Chiefs to be coach, choosing players for the starting line-up and voting on substitutions. 85,000 tickets were sold and 10.5 million votes placed through the game in seven weeks.
Ushahidi – connecting rural communities
Gotz’s talk was followed by one from Juliana Rotich – co-founder of Ushahidi, an open-sourced crisis mapping platform that allows citizens to report incidents or emergencies during national disasters, conflicts or major events.
The platform is free to use and was set up after Kenya’s 2008 elections chaos, but has since been used to report on unrest in Ukraine, the earthquake in Haiti and the tsunami in Japan in 2011.
The company recently moved into hardware and last year, developed Brck: a modem built for areas where internet connection is expensive or unreliable. The modem can withstand power surges from circuit boards, is portable and cheaper to use than other internet services in Africa and can operate using 3G during blackouts, which are frequent in many African countries.
Ushahidi’s main aim is to get the world connected, particularly in Asia, Latin America and Africa where there remains huge potential for growth. Better internet connection has a direct impact on GDP and having access to it is as essential as other utilities such as water and energy, she said.
Experimental Jetset – the A-Z of Influences
Experimental Jetset‘s talk offered a look at the studio’s biggest influences. Citing one from each letter of the alphabet, founders Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen paid homage to the Beatles and punk rock, film directors Jean Luc Godard and Stanley Kubrick, designer Wim Crouwel and the political movement Provo, of which Stolk’s father was a founding member, amongst others. The trio also acknowledged the influence of Helvetica on their work, but said they do not feel it defines them.
As well as providing an insight into the inspiration for some of the studio’s most successful projects, it provided a look at the ideas, quotes and visuals that shaped their careers, and inspired them while studying design.
Local Projects – interactive story telling
The last talk of the morning was delivered by Jake Barton, co-founder of Local Projects, a New York-based media design company that has created interactive platforms and installations for museums, cities, galleries and schools.
At the Cleveland Museum of Art, Local Projects has developed some excellent works that offer greater engagement without taking away from the traditional experience of visiting a gallery and viewing exhibits up close.
The company created an interactive wall where users can view different items in the museum’s collection and curate their own tours to share with others, as well as an interactive game that uses facial recognition software to re-create artworks in the museum using visitors’ faces:
It also developed the media for the 9/11 memorial in New York: using recordings from visitors, survivors and people around the world recounting their memories of the day to create a powerful alternative to an audio guide or curator tour, and creating a database where visitors can search for names among the thousands listed on the memorial fountain and view people they are connected with, either personally or through events that took place on the day.
Both use technology to create more immersive experiences that enable visitors to create their own stories as well as find out about others’. And in each case, Barton said the company reversed the traditional creative process of planning before designing and testing, building prototypes throughout. While he acknowledged it can be an inefficient way of working, he also said it leads to better work in the long run and is how the company approaches all of its projects.
Thomas Hulme – open-sourced design
After Pecha Kucha style talks from a range of creative graduates (see the line-up and links to their work here), and an interesting talk on branding from Wolf Ollins’ Ije Nwokorie in which he stressed a need to create brands that people can engage and have fun with, was a talk on the democratisation of design from Tom Hulme, co-founder of IDEO’s collaborative creative platform, OpenIDEO.
OpenIDEO is in its early stages but is effectively a crowd-sourcing platform where people can pose a problem or idea and work with other users to create solutions and prototypes in response. People can then rate and evaluate suggestions and winning ideas will be developed.
The company regularly works with charities to set briefs: it launched a challenge with Amnesty International to design a device to help people at risk of kidnap and, earlier this month, launched a challenge for people to create solutions to help improve safety for women and girls living in slums.
Like an open online suggestion box the platform is designed to act as a blank canvas, explained Hulme, allowing anyone to collaborate and build on others ideas.
While it raised questions over ownership and the role of trained professional designers, Hulme said they still have a vital part to play – but will have to listen to rather than dictate how products or designs will be used in the future (presumably through collaborating on platforms like OpenIDEO). It’s a fantastic platform for charity and grassroots initiatives as well as local problems, already achieving some impressive results.
Thomas Heatherwick – Cape Town development
The last talk of the day was from Thomas Heatherwick, who discussed several recent projects including the famed Olympic torch and cauldron (see image top of post), the new London buses, a university campus in Singapore and the UK pavilion for the Shanghai Expo.
Explaining the briefs set for each and the problems these posed, Heatherwick spoke about creating a campus free of monotonous lecture halls and long corridors (the Singapore building has 57 rooms with no corners) to create a university with a more inspiring human feel, and re-edesigning London’s buses to make them more enjoyable to use, putting user experience at the heart of every project.
He also discussed the garden bridge and a project he is working on in Cape Town, which will see an old grain silo on the V&A waterfront turned into a space showcasing contemporary African art: a challenging project given the tube-like structure of the building and lack of a central space.
Full details of this year’s Design Indaba are at designindaba.com.
While Americans pound coffee and gobble sleeves of Milanos, those in more civilized—if less productive—nations know the restorative power of a pause that involves a fresh cup of tea. Bigelow Tea joined Los Angeles-based artist and designer Geoff McFetridge for tea time and captured the creative magic that can happen in the couple of minutes it takes to to steep a cup of tea. The contemplative short, directed by Bucky Fukumoto, is part of Bigelow’s “While You Were Steeping” series.
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