Hasta La Ideas

The Design Council has announced the five winning ideas to come out of its Living Well With Dementia challenge – an attempt to create practical solutions to this growing problem. All five are explained via a series of films by Why Not Associates

One in three people living to the age of 65 will experience some form of dementia before we die. The UK’s Design Council launched a 12-month Design Challenge to prompt responses from the creative community to this issue. The Design Council asked for practical product and service solutions that could be launched as real initiatives. Five ideas have been selected for funding and support towards their further development. Each is explained via a film by Why Not Associates, with photography by Julian Germain and illustration by Mike Nicholson.

Buddiband is a response to the clunky personal alarms currently used by many older people. It proposes a comfortable, waterproof wristband alarm that can send alerts to support services from anywhere, in the hope thatits use will allow people with dementia to feel confident about getting out and about.

Trading Times looks at the issue of encouraging those caring for older people to stay in paid work. It proposes an online service to match carers with local opportunities for flexible work

Ode is a fragrance release system aimed at stimulating appetite in those with dementia, weight-loss being a common problem for people with late-stage forms of the condition.

Grouple is a ‘secure, private online social network helping people share the responsibilities of caring for someone with dementia’.

And Dementia Dog is ‘a service providing assistance dogs to people with dementia, helping them lead more fulfilled, independent and stress-free lives’.

If you’d like to get involved in future Design Challenges, details are here.

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. Try a free sample issue here

CR in Print
The May issue of Creative Review is the biggest in our 32-year history, with over 200 pages of great content. This speial double issue contains all the selected work for this year’s Annual, our juried showcase of the finest work of the past 12 months. In addition, the May issue contains features on the enduring appeal of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, a fantastic interview with the irrepressible George Lois, Rick Poynor on the V&A’s British Design show, a preview of the controversial new Stedelijk Museum identity and a report from Flatstock, the US gig poster festival. Plus, in Monograph this month, TwoPoints.net show our subcribers around the pick of Barcelona’s creative scene.

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.

In Britain, punk music has been strangely but inextricably linked with the monarchy since 1977 saw a Silver Jubilee and the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen. 35 years on, this year’s Jubilee sees an exhibition from collector Toby Mott and The Vinyl Factory which looks at the sleeves of 60 singles that helped form the punk aesthetic…

Jubilee, 2012: Sixty Punk Singles will show some of the most interesting 7″ designs to have come out of the punk scene in the late 1970s, including Headache’s Can’t Stand Still on Lout Records, shown above (art direction: Big Al; photo: Box Brownie).

And among now famous covers by Jamie Reid for the Sex Pistols and Malcolm Garrett for the Buzzcocks, there are plenty of other lesser known sleeves for bands like Menace, Angelic Upstarts, The Wasps and Chelsea, which frequently made use of one-colour printing, black and white photography, and type that came straight out of the fanzines which supported the burgeoning scene.

Here are some of the perhaps less familiar sleeves from Mott’s new show, which will be at The Vinyl Factory, 91 Walton Street, London SW3 2HP from May 30. All tracks are linked to the songs on YouTube.

The Snivelling Shits’ Terminal Stupid featured the late Giovanni Dadomo, an ex-music journalist, on vocals. Billed as a novelty record intended to fool the NME into giving it a Single of the Week (listen out for “don’t use yer sleeve, use an ‘anky” at the end), it stands up as a much stronger track than that. The sleeve used a photograph taken by Brian Randle of a girl watching The Stranglers at a gig in Manchester. The image had first appeared on the front page of The Sunday Mirror, June 12 1977 with the headline ‘Punk Rock Jubilee Shocker’, according to punk77.co.uk.

This no-nonsense, almost-modernist sleeve designed by Hothouse for The Wasps’ Teenage Treats made use of a punk staple: the live shot of the band (photographed here by Dave Clark). The tune itself fair zips along in a kind of proto-Undertones-y way.

Somewhat overlooked these days, despite being on Beggar’s Banquet, Fulham’s The Lurkers released their Shadow/Love Story single in this bright pinky-red sleeve, complete with marker pen type at the top. It featured photography by Wally Davidson and Rod Cartmell.

The Undertones’ Teenage Kicks has become a bit of a classic, thanks in part to DJ John Peel’s famous adoration of the track, but did you know the sleeve lived up to the brilliance of the song? (Sire Records, 1978).

A suitably ominous sleeve for Menace single, Screwed Up/Insane Society, by Jill Furmanovsky and Phil Davis.

Anonymous location; shuttered shop-front; gritty black and white photography: Alternative TV’s dub-influenced Life After Life ticks all the boxes for the British post-punk look. There’s some interesting rehearsal footage of the track, here – with what looks like a young(ish) Jools Holland on the keys.

The Adverts’ Gary Gilmore’s Eyes sleeve in garish yellow, pink and green. Gilmore was the first person in the US to be executed after the death was reinstated in 1976 and he requested that his eyes be donated for use in two cornea transplants. (According to Dan Wieden, founder of ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, Gilmore’s last words as he faced the firing squad – “Let’s do it!” – were the inspiration for the famous Nike slogan, Just Do It.)

Chelsea’s rather bleak, urbanist sleeve for High Rise Living (Step Forward Records). Designed by a ‘Sandra Tiffl…’ (according to Mott the credit has been cut off the sleeve – if anyone can complete the ‘Tiffl…’ let us know). [It’s Sandra Tiffin – thanks to Russ in the comments].

Finally, here’s the cover of The Angelic Upstarts’ The Murder of Liddle Towers. Released in 1978 on Small Wonder and Rough Trade, it made use of the ‘ransom note’ lettering, a technique also used by Jamie Reid on his God Save the Queen cover for the Sex Pistols (and later on the Never Mind the Bollocks album). The song is about the amateur boxer, Liddle Towers, who died in police custody in 1976.

In addition to the exhibition of sixty sleeves a limited edition book, with an essay by Toby Mott and an exclusive 7″ vinyl record of the notorious Sex Pistols Bill Grundy interview, is also published (designed and printed by Ditto Press. Jubilee, 2012: Sixty Punk Singles is available exclusively from The Vinyl Factory Chelsea gallery and vfeditions.com.

More details on The Mott Collection at facebook.com/themottcollection. For details on The Vinyl Factory’s work, go to thevinylfactory.com. The site for their Chelsea gallery is at thevinylfactory.com/chelsea/.

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. Try a free sample issue here

CR in Print
The May issue of Creative Review is the biggest in our 32-year history, with over 200 pages of great content. This speial double issue contains all the selected work for this year’s Annual, our juried showcase of the finest work of the past 12 months. In addition, the May issue contains features on the enduring appeal of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, a fantastic interview with the irrepressible George Lois, Rick Poynor on the V&A’s British Design show, a preview of the controversial new Stedelijk Museum identity and a report from Flatstock, the US gig poster festival. Plus, in Monograph this month, TwoPoints.net show our subcribers around the pick of Barcelona’s creative scene.

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.

Multi-platinum selling rapper, music mogul and Mr Beyoncé Jay-Z has unveiled a new string to his bow – graphic designer. The erstwhile Shawn Carter has reportedly ‘designed’ the new identity for the basketball team he co-owns, the Brooklyn Nets

The primary logo (above) continues the use of the shield from the team’s previous identity, as the New Jersey Nets, into which the Nets name has been somewhat painfully squished. Rather better is the basketball graphic featuring a large capital B which is carried through to the secondary logo below.

Brand New’s Armin Vit, whose site unveiled the identity yesterday, is, we think it safe to say, not a fan, calling the logo family “technically worthless and embarrassing”. But as sports branding goes, we’ve seen a lot worse and its retro minimalism certainly exploits the hipster associations of all-things Brooklyn right now.

Perhaps Mr Z’s savvy for merchandising and branded clothing (his Rocawear label has been a huge success) can be seen in the T-shirt range that was launched at the same time.

We’re not imagining that Mr Z actually, you know, ‘designed’ the thing himself – Gareth Hague, via Twitter, got in touch to suggest that the work was actually done by Timothy P Morris who has worked a lot with Jay-Z in the past – but his involvement is the latest example of the pop-star-turned-design-guru trend.

Yesterday, we were invited to the RCA’s Innovation Night at which Intel’s Director of Creative Innovation, also known as will.i.am off The Voice, will be sharing his thoughts on whatever it is Intel pay him to do. Mr am (above) was appointed in January 2011, just after Polaroid announced Lady Gaga as its new Creative Director.

So far, the UK has sadly lagged behind in this trend except, of course, in fashion where various poppets have ‘designed’ high street ranges following in the expensively-shod footsteps of Kate Moss at Topshop. And there’s Liam Gallagher’s Pretty Green clothing line.

Surely it’s time for the UK’s pop stars to fire up InDesign and get on board – after all, anyone can be a designer or a creative director can’t they?

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. Try a free sample issue here

CR in Print
The May issue of Creative Review is the biggest in our 32-year history, with over 200 pages of great content. This speial double issue contains all the selected work for this year’s Annual, our juried showcase of the finest work of the past 12 months. In addition, the May issue contains features on the enduring appeal of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, a fantastic interview with the irrepressible George Lois, Rick Poynor on the V&A’s British Design show, a preview of the controversial new Stedelijk Museum identity and a report from Flatstock, the US gig poster festival. Plus, in Monograph this month, TwoPoints.net show our subcribers around the pick of Barcelona’s creative scene.

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.

Over the next week, we will be posting about our judges’ choices for this year’s CR Annual, discussing the decisions and picking out some highlights. First up, our graphic design selections

The Annual is Creative Review’s juried showcase of the best work of the past 12 months. This year’s Annual is out now, published in our double May issue. The chosen work is shown according to the month in which it was launched with the exception of our Best in Book section containing the judges’ choices of the best of show.

I was one of the judges looking at graphic design projects this year, alongside Marina Willer of Pentagram, Greg Quinton of The Partners, Andy Altmann of Why Not Associates and Violetta Boxill of Alexander Boxill.

When we judge the Annual, the first stage is for all the judges to look at all the work, then pick out the projects they think are at least worthy of further discussion. From that ‘shortlist’ we whittle things down through discussion to a final selection and then, from that, choose our Best in Books. We don’t specify how many projects must be chosen – if it’s good enough, it’s in.

If a judge has a piece of work entered, they have to leave the room while it is being discussed and are not allowed to vote or otherwise influence the other members. This was a factor in our first Best in Book, the Comedy Carpet (shown top and below), as Andy Altmann was a judge.

There’s always a point in any judging session where someone says ‘hang on, is this really that good’? We had that moment with the Comedy Carpet but the resounding response from the other judges was a very clear ‘yes’. Strangely, the Comedy Carpet did not even make it into the D&AD Annual this year, never mind win a pencil, but we felt that it deserved our highest recognition because of a number of factors – its craft, its attention to detail, its sheer scale and ambition and the fact that here was a piece of graphic design that was destined not for some other designer’s bookshelf but that was going to be enjoyed by millions.

One of our other Best in Book choices will also have a very public impact – Rejane Dal Bello‘s identity for the Tony Molleapaza Rojas children’s hospital in Peru.

The hospital was funded by a Dutch NGO, Paz Holandesa, hence the involvement of Dutch-based Dal Bello who did the identity on a pro bono basis. The judges were charmed by the icons which represent Tony Molleapaza Rojas, an 11 year-old boy who died in 2005 and whom the hospital is named after, and various members of staff.

Our one concern was whether the project was ‘for real’ or still just a concept. But we checked wioth the designerwho was able to provide documentary evidence that the hospital is open and her identity is in place.

Less public, but notheless beautifully done, was Love’s special edition series of Johnnie Walker whisky bottles, illustrated by Chris Martin, which the judges felt were superbly crafted.

Elsewhere in The Annual, the work selected runs the full gamut of large and small firms, work from the well-known and people we had never previously heard of, and an impressive geographical spread with selected entries from Mexico, Canada, Singapore, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and elsewhere.

We had quite a bit of debate over this pregnancy testing kit by Eduardo Del Fraile for Spanish brand Interapothek. While everyone liked the cleanliness of its design, there was some debate over whether people would feel comfortable buying such a personal product with such explicit packaging. After much back and forth it went in on a majority decision.

We also had quite a debate over venturethree’s Little Chef rebrand. As frequently happens, judges liked some parts of the project more than others. We also touched on another common awards show debate – that juries tend to favour beautiful projcts fro small clients while not always appreciating the difficulties of doing more mainstream work that may not be 100% successful but which nonetheless represents a major achievement in context. For a client like Little Chef, we felt that this was a really major step forward.

Other work involved more straightforward decisions. Everyone loved the tactile screenprinted Falcon enamelware packaging, for example

The Brixton Pound by This Ain’t Rock and Roll

Leftloft’s posters for Inter Milan (more here)

The Playtype concept store in Copenhagen

Boat magazine’s Detroit issue

The Chase‘s Almost Extinct calendar

GBH‘s lenticular Thunderbirds stamps

And these graphics by Bond for the Finnish Sport Federation’s car park

There were lots more great projects in our section not shown here – check out the May issue of CR to see them all. YOu can aslo view all the Best in Book projects on the CR iPad app (details below). We will post on the selected advertising and interactive projects in the coming days.

Full details on the Creative Review Annual 2012, in association with Bigstock, here

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. Try a free sample issue here

CR in Print
The May issue of Creative Review is the biggest in our 32-year history, with over 200 pages of great content. This speial double issue contains all the selected work for this year’s Annual, our juried showcase of the finest work of the past 12 months. In addition, the May issue contains features on the enduring appeal of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, a fantastic interview with the irrepressible George Lois, Rick Poynor on the V&A’s British Design show, a preview of the controversial new Stedelijk Museum identity and a report from Flatstock, the US gig poster festival. Plus, in Monograph this month, TwoPoints.net show our subcribers around the pick of Barcelona’s creative scene.

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.

Among the onslaught of Diamond Jubilee souvenirs to come our way so far, Harvey Nichols’ Tupperware corn flakes box has to be one of the oddest – but it is at least quite funny

In 2003 the Daily Mirror famously managed to get one of its reporters a job at Buckingham Palace as a footman. Among his red-hot revelations of royal life one stood out – that HMQ is served her morning cornflakes not in sumptuous silverware but in a humble Tupperware box.

With this in mind, Harvey Nichols is selling a Diamond Jubilee Tupperware corn flake box with a graphical tribute to Her Maj designed by Ruan Milborrow and Mark Nightingale at mr.h.

The underside of the lid reveals the phrase “I now declare this sandwich box open”

And there is a cheery stamp on the bottom

Each box contains six dark chocolate corn flake cakes made from Royal Warrant holders, Charbonnel et Walker and is on sale for a somewhat optimistic £14.95.

Harvey Nichols is also running a wider promotion on British food and drink across its six stores, for which mr.h created the logo

Other manufacturers have, of course, also been getting in on the Diamond Jubilee act – we posted about Ma’amite (below) last week.

While our sister publication Design Week has also spotted Diamond Jubilee syrup and icing sugar from Tate & Lyle

And Heinz beans and Spaghetti re-issued in 1952 packaging (see the DW story here)

An idea also used by Kellogg’s, which is selling its cereals in 1950s packaging

There will be more. Much. much more.

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. Try a free sample issue here

CR in Print
The May issue of Creative Review is the biggest in our 32-year history, with over 200 pages of great content. This speial double issue contains all the selected work for this year’s Annual, our juried showcase of the finest work of the past 12 months. In addition, the May issue contains features on the enduring appeal of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, a fantastic interview with the irrepressible George Lois, Rick Poynor on the V&A’s British Design show, a preview of the controversial new Stedelijk Museum identity and a report from Flatstock, the US gig poster festival. Plus, in Monograph this month, TwoPoints.net show our subcribers around the pick of Barcelona’s creative scene.

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.