Hasta La Ideas

The latest release from musician Stay+ comes in a record sleeve-size package that contains no music format whatsoever. Instead, the highly limited transparent acrylic sleeves contain a foldout, 50inch QR code screen print that leads the buyer to a download page online…

The packaging, conceived by Daniel Mason of Something Else in collaboration with Stay+ comes in three different colourways – there’s a red, a green and a blue sleeved version, as shown above. Only 144 in total have been made and are available from stay.cx/arem.

Each sleeve is made from 4mm transparent acrylic made to the same size and template as a standard 12″ card record sleeve – even the fold over flaps.

Inside, the folded QR code insert is printed on specially manufactured newsprint, made to size.

Stay+ fans can also buy a six track 12″ vinyl version or a digital download instead if they don’t fancy this limited edition “physical download” format. All formats include a download code for The Buzzer, a film by DEERHEAD, Stay+ ‘s longterm visual collaborator, but this particular format’s download package is the most comprehensive version of the release as it includes music, the film, stills plus song lyrics.

Here’s a film which we linked to via our iPad app last week showing Stay+, DEERHEAD and Daniel Mason overseeing the screen printing of the QR code prints:

Find out more about the release at stay.cx/Stay/the_Stay+_website.html

A CR film in which Daniel Mason talks about his work as a packaging and materials consultant can be viewed in the free sample issue of our iPad app offering. Visit creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2012/april/cr-ipad-app for more details.

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.

Virtual decoupage? It’s an oxymoron come true thanks to John Derian. The New York-based purveyor of whimsical plates and paperweights, who has proven his range (and boundless appeal) in previous collaborations with the likes of Astier de Villatte and Target, has taken to the web with a collection of ephemeral yet fine stationery for Paperless Post. “My artistic vision of textures and colors has been translated into this collection of digital stationery in an amazing way,” said Derian in a statement announcing the collaboration. “I’m excited that people who enjoy my work will now be able to experience it so beautifully online.” His signature eclectic imagery—jaunty letters, sea creatures, ferns, a possibly enchanted frog—appears on 65 digital notecards, save-the-date cards, and invitations that Paperless Post users can customize and send (for a small fee). Derian joins a growing stable of guest designers that includes Thornwillow, Boatman Geller, and calligraphy god Bernard Maisner.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Visiting the promotional site of a new film adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel, Ecstasy, five months ago, Mark Blamire was disappointed to find “an ugly adaptation” of the Trainspotting film poster he co-designed at Stylorouge back in the mid 90s. He got in touch with the director to “have a word” and ended up redesigning the film’s poster campaign and more…

Creative Review: You haven’t taken on any commercial design projects for a few years – tell us how you got involved in this project.
Mark Blamire: DJ John Digweed has a cameo roll in the just-released Ecstasy film in one of the clubbing sequences. I follow him on Facebook and he posted a link to the film’s website about five months ago. As I created the poster campaigns for Irvine Welsh’s two previous films, Trainspotting and Acid House, I followed the link with interest, only to find that an ugly adaptation of the Trainspotting poster had been created to promote the film.

16 years ago, after we had delivered our original Trainspotting poster campaign to the client, the work was given to a third party to adapt and make ready for market. They did a great job of butchering all the best bits and undoing a lot of the details that had made us so proud of the original work. So when I saw that the poster for Ecstasy looked to follow this trend, it brought back the irritation I’ve always felt, that the Trainspotting campaign was never finished off properly.

CR: So you took matters into your own hands?
MB: Yes, I decided to contact the director and producer and say something along the lines of ‘Come on guys, show some imagination, you’re copying a campaign that was custom designed for another film entirely that was made 15 years ago.’ I’m not going to lie, it was a rant. Amazingly, the next day the film’s producer, Ashley Pover, rang me to say he’d spoken to the film’s director Rob Heydon and that they liked what I had to say and appreciated my honesty.

As it turned out, they weren’t entirely happy with what they’d come up with and were a bit stuck on how it should look. They had a small window of time to explore ideas with me, if I was interested in coming up with an alternative poster. Taking into account the history of it all, it was hard to say no so I agreed to have a look at it.

CR: Did you have a carte blanche, so to speak?
MB: Er, yes and no. At first, I knew where I wanted to go with it so I sat down and wrote the brief of what the poster needed to do and to clearly define what I needed to deliver. I didn’t have a traditional brief to follow so it made sense for me to create some guidelines to work within. The initial direction was that it had to look like it was for the launch of a superclub like Ministry of Sound or the Hacienda rather than the launch of a film.

I discussed this with the client who was keen to illustrate the love story element which runs throughout the film. This was challenging as this is no Love Actually! The title of the film is Ecstasy, it’s written by Irvine Welsh and had been rated 18 for its strong use of violence, drug-taking and sex scenes, so we had some discussion about the love story direction. The result was the copyline ‘Perfect Chemistry’ which is the only nod to the relationship between the two main characters in the film.

CR: They’d previously attempted a Trainspotting pastiche of sorts – was such an approach still on the cards?
MB: The Trainspotting campaign has been well received over the years and the initial Facebook poster campaign for Ecstasy had pastiched it as well as playing on the Irvine Welsh connection. So it made a lot of sense to follow the visual style of the original Trainspotting poster but to move it on 15 years. In other words we wanted to keep the DNA of the Trainspotting design but again try to create something new which was fresh and interesting.

We agreed to set sail along this course. The initial visuals received a tepid response.  I got the impression the client wasn’t jumping up and down so I kept chiseling away at ideas until we hit on the pill-packaging theme, which I think was the third idea we proposed. I sent over some sketches and Rob the Director responded saying ‘very cool’, the best response yet. I made the decision to take the bull by the horns and say this is the one we need to go for and why I thought it would work.

CR: How did the pill-packaging idea end up looking like it did?
MB: Trainspotting had been heavily influenced by Modernism and also at the time I worked on it I was going clubbing regularly at places like the Ministry of Sound, Hacienda, and Cream. The way clubs marketed themselves to a youth audience was a more interesting way to market a film and it had a greater meaning to me so we kept these influences and these were the building blocks for the final ideas we presented.

Above and below: examples of Geigy pharmaceutical package designs

We had also played around with chemical warning labels on the Trainspotting campaign using the copy line ‘Danger – keep out of reach of children’ which the film company discarded so these got picked up from the cutting room floor and recylced for this poster. I went back and looked at my modernist book collection for inspiration and tried to find a similar spark so the influences for the poster came from a piece that Helmut Schmid pharmaceutical packaging for Otsuka, plus Damien Hirst Medicine Cabinets artworks also the Geigy Packaging also played a huge influence into the approach – and finally back to the theme of clubbing where we borrowed the colour scheme from the branding of the Hacienda, or specifically from the Hacienda 15th Birthday poster by Mark Farrow.

Above: An example of Helmut Schmid’s pharmaceutical packaging for Otsuka

8vo’s Haçienda 7th anniversary poster

Mark Farrow’s 15th birthday poster for Manchester’s legendary Haçienda nightclub

It was also when the poster design came about it dawned on us that pharmaceutical packaging had been used extremely well for Spiritualized’s Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space album – again by Mark Farrow. This became my biggest problem with the final campaign: I had to send the visuals to Mark and discuss it with him as I didnt want it to be an issue with him so whilst he hadn’t been the starting point for the idea and inspiration, we had to reference the piece to avoid any visual similarities. The outcome did look different and took a different approach. It still didn’t sit comfortably with me so I made sure he was OK before showing it to the client and happily he was totally cool about it all.

Farrow’s pill-packaging design of Spiritualized’s 1997 album, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space

CR: But your pill packet design approach nearly fell at the final hurdle, right? What happened?
MB: During the latter stages of the process, the marketing person wasn’t happy with the overall approach of the pill packet. ‘It could be a pizza box’ was one of the more baffling comments I had to contend with. He hadn’t been present for the first part of the journey but has a vast experience of how to market a film campaign so I was worried that it would be turned back into a traditional safe looking poster that risked not matching the edginess of the film.

At this point, I was asked to scrap the four months of work we had spent on getting it to a stage where Rob, Ashley and myself were really happy. I had to do a full U-turn and come up with an alternative design. I wasn’t happy about starting again [as in my mind we had nailed it]. After considering my options, I realised I could maybe edit the artwork taking on board the  the reservations about the pill packet device. We were also getting really close to the release of the film and walking away would have been unprofessional so I had to get on with it despite disagreeing with some of the changes.

Reluctantly, I set about simplifying the poster to remove the chemical packaging references. I re-submitted the poster (above) and they were happier with this toned down version. I still wasn’t sure about this direction so it was at this stage that I showed the finished version to several trusted friends and colleagues working within both the film and design industry [and a few mums and dads from my sons school for a bit of balance] and the response was everybody preferred the pill packet approach by a ratio of 5-1, I had asked about 20 people in all, they had all given me useful input and feedback which I passed on to the client to use as extra leverage to argue my case of why it was a better option to go with and at the 11th hour they thankfully agreed and it was re-instated.

CR: Is it true that the posters have been screenprinted for use in cinemas. Can people buy them as well?
MB: The screenprinting came about because the colour scheme was influenced by the Hacienda nightclub’s branding as this was the probably the number one clubber’s paradise at the time the book Ecstasy is set. It was a nice reference for us to doff our cap towards the Hacienda 7 poster by 8vo and also the final poster the club ever printed, Hacienda 15 designed by Mark Farrow. Both of those posters were screenprinted because of the nature of the inks they used for their final designs. So it was something I was fighting for from day one with the Ecstacy poster.

We made some sample t-shirts using special inks and I also sent the client some other screenprinted posters I own to better explain why it could be really nice to go that extra mile on the production. It went from him looking at a PDF on a screen for approval to ‘Wow, this looks amazing.’

We used two metallic inks and one fluro for the yellow. Actually, because there were only three colours and because of the size of the print run we needed, screenprinting was cheaper than lithoprinting the posters. They cost less and looked better!

Yes, we printed an additional 50 which are available to buy on my site blanka.co.uk.

Here’s how the posters looked adapted for use in 60 London Underground station sites – we decided that the simpler version without the pill packaging graphic actually worked better as tube posters:

And here’s how the soundtrack CD cover looks:

And Welsh’s Ecstasy novel has a new cover design courtesy of Blamire and the film poster campaign:

Ecstasy opened in cinemas last weekend. ecstasymovie.co.uk

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.

It’s an unusual design brief – to make the product as unappealing as possible. But that’s exactly what proposed designs for cigarette packaging in Australia hope to achieve, using a grim combination of photography, graphic design and type…

In the UK using graphic photographs of smoking-related diseases on cigarette packaging has been a method of dissuasion in place since 2008. But the proposals for the Australian packaging, which could become law by the end of the year, go further in that many of the pictures are more horrific (referring to a host of other diseases perhaps less associated with smoking), even showing images of infant suffering and death.

Furthermore, the packaging is set to be stripped of any branding, associative colouring or typography whatsoever. The proposed packs will instead use a single colour – a drab olive green (Pantone 448C) alongside a bold yellow ‘warning’ label – with the brand name written out in Lucida Sans, which was designed in 1985 by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes.

According to bloomberg.com, research carried out by Sydney-based GfK Blue Moon concluded that “dark colours were perceived as more harmful, and dark brown was the least appealing, carrying connotations of uncleanliness. A lighter-brown color was rejected as it could be perceived by consumers as gold. An olive tint prevents the brown from looking like chocolate, which also has positive associations.”

The result is indeed a feat of negative association – suffering, pain and death – rammed home via a nausea-inducing colourway and expressionless typography. In a way, the designers have achieved something quite remarkable: a product that, on face value at least, you really wouldn’t want to buy. For those considering taking up smoking that may be enough to stop them. The counter argument is, of course, that for millions of already addicted smokers, it’s more than a simple matter of choice.

According to The Guardian, the cigarette manufacturers have claimed that the unprecendented move will mark the end for their established trademarks and logos, with the government effectively acquiring these pieces of brand property without offering compensation. The Australian government, however, has said it was “incongruous” that companies were compensated for being required to act in the best interests of public health.

But going back to the design approach, we wondered what it was about Lucida Sans that made it seem applicable here? Is it enough of a deterrent? Could the adoption of a particular typeface across all brands mean that the face becomes, in Australia at least, the default lettering for cigarettes? Will other companies and brands that use the typeface be tempted to switch from it if the association becomes too dominant?

In the design industry, Comic Sans is perhaps the most well-known typographic bête noire that springs to mind – yet in this context, the name probably sits a little uneasily with the brevity of the project. But what other typefaces might be suitable for this unusual and difficult job?

UPDATE:

Cancer Research UK has issued an appeal for signatures to its petition calling for the removal of all branding from tobacco packaging via this compelling TV spot from AMV/BBDO. It is based on recent research which sheds light on the new packaging techniques cigarette manufacturers are developing, with the aim of luring young people towards smoking. More on the story on independent.co.uk – the ad is below. Thanks to @purplesime for the tweet.

Illustrator Richard Hogg worked with graphic designer Anna Fidalgo on the exhibition design for the current Measuring The Universe exhibition running at Royal Observatory Greenwich until September 2…

The exhibition coincides with June’s Transit of Venus event – during which Venus will pass directly between the Earth and the Sun, appearing as a tiny black dot that will appear to move across the sun. This event won’t happen for another 105 years and, says the Royal Observatory, in centuries gone by these rare cosmic events were used to accurately measure the distance to the planets, giving astronomers an idea of the truly mind-boggling scale of space.

The idea then for Measuring The Universe is to showcase the history of measuring distance between objects in space and demonstrate the various methods used by astronomers in doing just this.

While Fidalgo worked on the graphics and typography side of the exhibition design, Hogg produced illustrations to be incorporated into the exhibition’s poster (above) and also created a 4 minute animation as part of the exhibition. The animation explains, thankfully in layman’s terms, how there are various ways to measure the distance between objects. Here are some stills:

“Because the concepts involved in measuring the universe are pretty tricky to comprehend, interactive designer Henry Holland who was working with the Royal Observatory on the exhibition got in touch with Dick if he could create an animation that would simplify it all,” says Fidalgo of the project. “That was the starting point for us working on the project as Dick then got me involved because we’ve worked together before.

“So we collaborated on a look and feel for the animation,” Fidalgo continues. “I chose a typeface and created a colour palette which Dick used for the animation. Then I took some graphic elements from the drawings Dick was creating when designing the animation, such as the wavy lines, and incorporated them into the exhibition identity.”

“The script for the animation really was an evenly split collaboration with astronomer Olivia Johnson and Henry at the Royal Observatory,” explains Hogg.”It was a really amazing way of working, collaborating with a scientist and trying to understand the science and draw diagrams that were technically correct,” he continues. “I was a little worried that I was doing the dumbing down role, trying to edit what Olivia was saying down to four minutes, but actually it was really inspiring working like that and trying to capture these things in a way that makes sense but is still fun.”

Because of the animation’s importance in the exhibition, the whole show is in a low lit room and all the information is presented on backlit light boxes:

Measuring The Universe runs until September 2 at the Royal Observatory, Blackheath Avenue, Greenwich, London SE10 8XJ

rmg.co.uk/royal-observatory

The full four minute animation (which Hogg created working with animators Robert Milne, Ross Phillips and Kwok Fung Lam, and sound designer George Thomson) will appear in the next week or two on the CR iPad app

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