Nexus animation director Celyn has created a lovely film using hand drawn 2D animation to promote the Map Table, a new product from furniture brand Vitra and designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby.
The Map Table is a flexible system that can easily re-configured: multiple tables can be stacked or connected in a range of formations, and Vitra says the product is designed to meet the ever-evolving needs of studios, offices and homes.
To highlight the product’s versatility, Celyn directed and designed a film that follows the life of a young designer who sets up her own studio. As the film progresses, the company grows and so does the number of Map Tables she needs:
The simple shapes and bold colours are inspired by picture books from Celyn’s childhood – in particular, Satomi Ichikawa’s A Child’s Book of All Seasons, which he recently re-discovered in a box in his parent’s attic.
“The beautifully illustrated book was elegantly unassuming. [It] captured the transition of the seasons in subtle detail, with a composition that implied limitless space, even within the confines of a room,” he says.
The film was commissioned with children in mind before market research revealed an older target audience, but Celyn says the picture book visuals remained a fitting concept, capturing “the process of joyful play for artists and children alike. We are all big kids at the end of the day,” he adds.
It’s the second film Nexus has produced for Vitra – Jonny Kelly used stop motion animation to create a film promoting the Tip Ton chair in 2011, below – and the latest in a series of charming productions from Celyn, who has directed music videos (including Wagon Christ’s Chunkothy, below) and spots for WWF, Coca Cola and the Guardian. See more of his work here.
Credits Concept – Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby Direction and Design – Celyn Producer – Beccy McCray 2D Supervisor – Dave Walker 2D animation – Stuart Doig, Maki Yohikura, Manav Dhir & Luca Toth Composer – Dan Arthure
Design studio hat-trick worked with local artists to create a wayfinding system based on patterned tiles for the Stockwell Park Estate in Lambeth, south London…
The brief for the project, which has just been installed, was to help make the estate feel more accessible and welcoming, says hat-trick’s Gareth Howat. “The signs needed to be clear and simple, with the aim of helping both the first time visitor and residents of the estate,” he says. “[It] has a wide variety of buildings and surfaces within it, so the signage needed to be adaptable.”
“A modular system of tiles combine with a bespoke palette of patterns to give a balance of both functionality and personality,” Howat adds. “The tile system allows the signage to adapt to a range of surfaces and configurations to suit the variety of surroundings the wayfinding has to work in.”
The studio commissioned a range of local artists and designers to create a palette of patterns for the tiles, inspired by the history, culture and architecture of the area. Contributors included pattern maker Linda Florence, designers Telegramme, illustrator Rebecca Sutherland and local graffiti artist, Boyd.
“The idea was to create a striking, bold and eclectic mix of styles to represent the diversity of the area,” says Howat. “These patterns were applied across the range of signs, even down to bird boxes which were given tiled roofs and placed around the estate.”
The studio was commissioned by cultural consultancy Future City, who created a ‘cultural strategy’ for the area for housing association alliance, Network Housing Group.
Edenspiekermann announced a major update to the identity system for the City of Amsterdam last week, but the project’s merits have been overshadowed by a public debate about its six-figure cost. We spoke to creative director Edo van Dijk about the refresh and the reactions to it…
Last week, Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported that the City of Amsterdam had unveiled a new logo – one that cost €100,000, but differed little to the city’s existing marque.
The article received hundreds of angry comments from members of the public, who deemed it a waste of money, and prompted creative director Edo van Dijk to write a blog post explaining Edenspiekermann’s latest work for the city.
As van Dijk pointed out in his article, the update is not merely a logo refresh: Edenspiekermann and Thonik have spent four months designing a new set of icons and a revised set of guidelines to support the city’s identity and while it cost €100,000, it should save money in the long run, he said.
Edenspiekermann’s predecessor Eden designed the City of Amsterdam’s visual identity with Thonik in 2003. The aim was to create a distinctive but flexible scheme to replace the 60 or so logos used by different departments and services (above).
The centrepiece of the scheme was a new city marque made up of three red crosses, which have featured on Amsterdam’s coat of arms since the 13th century:
The initial identity system, designed in 2003
This was accompanied by a red, black and white colour palette and secondary elements that allowed each department its own distinct voice: organisations could choose a supplementary colour from a choice of 15 and use their own symbol underneath the three crosses.
When it was launched, the scheme was a resounding success: it was adopted by 95% of city organisations instead of the anticipated 60, was widely praised by the public and used on everything from rubbish trucks to billboards and earned the agencies several awards.
Work continued on the project until 2006 and by this time, Eden and Thonik had developed a comprehensive set of guidelines that offered flexibility for each city service but still communicated ‘the flavour of Amsterdam’.
“People from Amsterdam are known for being direct, a bit cheeky, autonomous and perhaps even slightly anarchist. We wanted to reflect that, albeit in a more subdued way, so we developed a clean and bright system based on strong, bold visual statements.
“At the time, it was a leap ahead of what other cities were doing,” explains van Dijk.
A decade later, however, the city decided to adopt a more streamlined communications strategy, and Edenspiekermann was asked to update the system to reflect this change. There will now be less of a focus on giving departments and services tools to customise communications to create their own distinct voice, and more emphasis on making all communications from the City of Amsterdam visually consistent.
“It’s complex politically, but there has been a major re-organisation of the city’s departments and how they communicate, which will be rolled out this year,” explains van Dijk.
“Ten years ago, the identity system was based on the principle of creating a streamlined system but giving services and districts their own supporting elements, so that the public would connect that information with its sender. Now, it’s more about the message that’s being communicated than who communicates it – the city wants one clear voice, and one clear identity, so we had to build more of a communications toolkit,” he adds.
Communications designed before the refresh
Rather than choose sub colours to represent their ‘brand’, departments now choose colours depending on the type of message they’re communicating: blue can be used for communications relating to air quality or water, or green for environmental issues.
Departments must use the same three cross logo – a fourth element is no longer permitted – and it must appear in a certain size and position on letterheads and stationery. This has dramatically reduced the types of envelopes needed from 250 to 25, which should lead to considerable savings by allowing the city to place bulk orders for various departments.
All this may sound like departments now have less freedom to use the identity system creatively, but van Dijk says a key focus of the agency’s work over the past four months has been developing tools to make it easier to play with the scheme. New guidelines also provide clearer guidance on the use of photography and illustration.
Communications designed after the refresh. Each department now uses the same logo, without an individual fourth element, saving on stationery costs
One of the most significant additions is ‘a modular guy called Adam’, who can be placed in a variety of poses and combined with props to create an extensive but coherent set of icons.
“He’s a nice graphic tool to create stories such as visuals for brochures and advertising, and the strong graphic style works well with other elements of the identity,” says van Dijk.
It’s been a significant undertaking – and of course, an expensive one – but van Dijk says the project will simplify official city communications. “We’re making life easier by helping departments to produce documents more quickly and without mistakes,” he says.
van Dijk isn’t surprised by the criticism the project has received, however – after all, expensive public design projects are always placed under scrutiny, and it’s difficult to quantify the labour, research and time that goes into creating an extensive identity system to those with little knowledge of design.
Perhaps this is something governments could discuss more openly – although as van Dijk acknowledges, it’s difficult for any government to announce investments in the midst of job losses or funding cuts. More of a dialogue, however, could surely help address the issue of branding updates being seen as expensive logo revamps.
Communications designed using updated guidelines on illustration, text, photography and logo placement.
One week on, van Dijk says fuss over the update’s cost is dying down – he has seen a significant rise in traffic to the company’s blog, however, and hopes his article has helped educate readers about the details of the project.
The initial branding cost €1million but yielded an estimated €3million in savings. It is hoped that the update will provide similar benefits. If so, it will prove a worthwhile investment, and certainly make city communications more consistent.
The Design Museum has announced the nominations for Designs of the Year 2014. The diverse line-up includes life-saving inventions, experimental architecture and some intriguing graphics and digital work…
Seventy six projects have been shortlisted by industry figures and entries are divided into six categories: product, digital, fashion, architecture, graphics and transport. As always, this includes designs chosen for their beauty, orginality or unusual approach – entries include a floating school in a Nigerian lagoon, a watch that allows users to feel the time as well as read it and the ABC Syringe (below), which changes colour when exposed to air thus alerting users to its pre-use or potential exposure to infection.
Digital
In the digital category, the screen-based aspects of McCann Melbourne’s multi-award-winning Dumb Ways to Die rail safety campaign has been shortlisted alongside Bristol studio PAN’s Hello Lamp Post – a platform that allows residents to converse with street furniture using the text function on their mobile phones. (Read our blog post on the project here). Bare Conductive’s Touchboard project also offered an ingenious take on interactivity, turning almost any surface into an interface using electrodes.
As well as immersive gaming experiences such as the Oculus Rift headset, the digital category contains some potentially life-saving inventions. The Aerosee (above) is a crowdsourced search and rescue drone that enables smartphone, desktop or tablet users to search mountains in the Lake District for people in danger, and the Portable Eye Examination Kit enables eye exams to be carried out in remote or low-income areas where traditional eye exams aren’t possible.
Nominations such as Vitamins’ Lego Calendar (above), the allowing studio to visualise how much time they spend on different projects using different coloured bricks (when you take a photo of it with a smartphone all of the events and timings are synchronised to an online calendar), and City Mapper (below) an app that helps users navigate large and complicated cities on foot and public transport, simply make life easier.
Graphics
Nominees in the graphics category include Experimental Jetset’s ‘Responsive W’ identity for the Whitney Museum (above, which we covered back in July), Marina Willer and Brian Boylan’s identity for the Serpentine Galleries (below), and the M to M of M/M Paris: a 528-page book on graphic designers Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustiniak, designed by Graphic Thought Facility (featured in CR Nov 12 issue, read our piece here).
Also featured is the Art Directors Club Annual 91 with illustrations poking gentle fun at the industry (see our post here).
Chris Ware’s amazing Building Stories graphic novel (see review by Jimmy Stamp here) in the form of a a boxed set, consisting of 14 distinct printed works-cloth-bound books, newspapers, broadsheets and flip books.
Stephen Jones’ issue of A Magazine Curated By, which was dedicated to Anna Piaggi and the art of illustration
Chineasy, a Chinese language learning system created by entrepreneur ShaoLan Hsueh and illustrated by Noma Bar:
James Bridles’ Drone Shadows, a series of installations depicting an outline of an unmanned military aerial vehicle promoting Jeremy Scahill’s investigative documentary Dirty Wars:
Grand-Central by Thibault Brevet, an open internet platform that lets people express themselves freely through a tangible output device (see top an above). Users can submit text via their smartphones which is then ‘written’ in marker pen by a mechanical printer – creating a physical embodiment of a digital message.
Arts and culture journal, The Gourmand, Created by David Lane (Creative Director), Marina Tweed & David Lane (Founders/Editors-in-chief)
And Anthony Sheret, Edd Harrington and Rupert Dunk’s Castledown Primary School Type Family – a typeface commissioned for a primary school in Sussex that evolved into a project aiming to create a unified, dyslexic friendly type system in UK primary schools.
Because of the way it is put together (submissions from ‘industry experts’ which are then reviewed by a Design Museum-appointed panel rather than a paid-for entry system), Designs of the Year always throws up a quirkier selection than industry awards such as D&AD. That is both a strength and a weakness in that some nominations can appear a little random but there are always delightful surprises and some welcome attention for designers who may not figure in other schemes.
Makoko Floating School in Nigeria, A prototype floating structure, built for an historic water community. Designed by NLÉ, Makoko Community Building Team
Shortlisted entries will be on display at the Design Museum from March 26 to August 25 and you can view the full list of nominations here.
A visitor’s vote will be open to the public. The museum is introducing a social vote this year, too, allowing Twitter and Facebook users to choose their favourite of two exhibits from the show each day. Design of the Year is supported by Bird & Bird
A stubborn Israeli landlord is partially to thank for a delightful new Tumblr. When that building owner refused to extend Avner Gicelter’s lease, he and his partner were forced to search for a new apartment in central Tel Aviv, which in 2003 was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its collection of more than 4,000 Bauhaus and International Style buildings. “That process awakened my dormant passion for Tel Aviv’s unique architecture, and I got more interested in the buildings than in the apartment we were looking for,” says Gicelter, a graphic designer. He decided to share his interest with the world through Tel Aviv Buildings, a site inspired in part by Jose Guizar’s Windows of New York. “I wanted to use this simple yet very honorable way of design to show my love for my hometown and its most beautiful buildings.” We asked Gicelter more about the project and some of his favorite Tel Aviv buildings.
How do you describe the architecture of Tel Aviv? I don’t really have a professional way to describe Tel Aviv’s architecture, only a point of view as a designer—in Tel Aviv’s central area (where you can find most of my illustrated buildings) there are two major architecture styles: the eclectic style which was active during the 1920s and 30s, and the International Style which was the major architecture movement during the 1930-50s and led UNESCO to name Tel Aviv as a world heritage site for its International Style architecture. I think that the difference between these two styles creates an unique and very interesting dialogue throughout the street of the city. In my opinion this dialogue is the best way to describe Tel Aviv’s architecture.
How do you decide which buildings to illustrate? I start by walking throughout the city’s old areas. During that I shoot photos of buildings I find interesting, whether it is their architectural style, the way the residents designed their balconies or the presence of the building in the street. After choosing and shooting the buildings, I illustrate them with the pictures as reference. continued…
Cheltenham Design Festival is back for a third year bringing together top names from the creative industries to explore how great design can make a difference and improve our lives.
Two days of talks and workshops this year fall under the banner of ‘Design Can…’, taking place at the Parabola Arts Centre in Cheltenham.
D&AD President Laura Jordan Bambach discusses why purpose is essential for the future of the creative industries; design luminaries Kenneth Grange and Ken Garland will be in conversation, and Garland also presents a separate event on publishing; and Erik Kessels of KesselsKramer explores the ever-expanding toolbox of the designer when it comes to telling the story of a brand.
Other speakers include Jack Schulze, founder of design consultancy BERG, on new technologies and the creative industries; hat-trick design’s Jim Sutherland discusses the joys of doing as well as viewing design; and Harriet Vine, one half of Tatty Devine, talks to the BBC’s Fi Glover about how challenging traditional design can help a business flourish.
And not forgetting graphic designer Morag Myerscough talking creativity and belonging; the European Space Agency explain how good design is a mandatory requirement in space; architectural theorist Alistair Parvin on his plan for democratizing architecture, and artist Dominic Wilcox shares his thoughts on combatting creative block.
Tickets go on sale in mid-February, with individual events costing an affordable £6, and day tickets at £20 (£10 for student and under 18s).
Penguin Books has officially revealed a new identity for its relaunched Pelican imprint, home of many a non-fiction classic. Publishing May 1, cognitive scientist Bruce Hood’s The Domesticated Brain is one of the first titles to be released…
Earlier today @PenguinUKbooks tweeted two ‘reveals’ of the redesigned Pelican logo, which is a continuation of the bird in flight designed by Edward Young and used on the series’ covers when first launched in the late 1930s. (William Grimmond later refined the design of the logo.)
Art director Jim Stoddart says that the new logo is is part of “a much broader and in-depth project that involves the design of the books, inside and out, and a unified and a creative new web-presence.
“The new Pelican will focus the meeting point between people’s hidden interests – whatever the subject – and helping them fill the holes in their understanding with accessible writing from the very foremost experts,” he says.
The Pelican series, which became famous for its books on contemporary issues of the day – not to mention its cover design – was discontinued in 1984. Professor Hood tweeted a link to his forthcoming book on February 2 which revealed the new-look Pelican cover design in full.
Another four titles by Melissa Lane, Orlando Figes, Robin Dunbar and Ha-Joon Chang are listed at pelicanbooks.com where visitors can also sign up to a mailing list.
CR will have more details on the design behind the relaunch in the coming weeks.
Ready to respond to requests of “Show me the data!” with more than a sad little bar graph? The Mediabistro mothership is now recruiting would-be data visualizers for an online course in infographics that can “engage an audience in your brand, cause, or mission.” Guided by veteran creative director Sascha Mombartz, whose resume includes stints at The New York Times and Google, students will get up to speed with online tools (we’re looking at you Many Eyes) and develop a robust spec for a data visualization. The infographical fun starts February 11th. Learn more here.
Finnish branding agency Bond has created a modular logo and monochrome visual identity for Helsinki’s Design Museum.
The museum’s new logo is inspired by classic modernist designs such as Alvar Aalto’s Stool 60, says Bond. It’s made up of geometric letterforms that can be arranged in a variety of ways, and forms the basis of the new identity system.
The scheme is already in use on stationery and a new website and ‘virtual exhibition’ will be launched in spring. It will also be applied to signage, wayfinding and exhibition graphics, and is part of a three-year initiative to strengthen the museum’s identity and improve the overall visitor experience, says Bond designer Jesper Bange.
“As a designer, I felt the [museum’s] old design was a little out of date. I also felt the museum needed a clearly distinguishable design language – previously, all the exhibitions had their own identities and the museum’s…was lost behind these,” he says.
The modernist-inspired scheme represents “a golden age of Finnish design…but with a contemporary twist” says Bange, promoting the country’s creative heritage to foreign visitors, who make up almost half of those attending the museum each year.
Inkeeping with the minimal aesthetic, the new scheme is mostly black and white, but red will be used occasionally as an accent colour, explains Bange.“We wanted to keep it as basic [as possible]. We tested the identity with several different kinds of colours, but together with the Design Museum, decided to go with this strong set,” he says.
Laurenz Brunner’s typeface, Circular, provides the perfect accompaniment to the modular logo with its simple geometric shapes, and has been used in posters and graphics for the museum’s latest exhibition, showcasing the work of fashion designer Henrik Vibskov. “I think it is very fresh and current,” says Bange.
The centrepiece of the show is a large timeline, plotting key events and achievements in the designer’s career. “We discussed with Henrik Vibskov about his life, and he told us it had been pretty chaotic, so we wanted to represent that kind of feeling in the timeline,” says Bange.
By using simple shapes and a modular system, Bond has created a strong but flexible identity for the museum. The organisation now has a coherent, distinctive visual language and one that can be used on everything from letterheads to large-scale murals. Most elements of the rebrand are still under development, but the new scheme works well on stationery and print communications, and is another lovely piece of work from Bond.
Parkinson’s UK head of marketing Lily Dwek says that last year’s campaign helped shift attitudes but that “our findings are that people don’t understand what Parkinson’s is at all. [With the new campaign] we are really trying to get people to understand Parkinson’s and to empathise. We wanted to explain the diversity of Parkinson’s and that everyone’s Parkinson’s is different.”
One of the particular problems is that sufferers often have a mixture of ‘motor’ and ‘non-motor’ symptoms. Dwek says that one of their challenges was “how do you portray a non-motor symptom? How do you portray not being able to sleep properly or having hallucinations?”
Assembly art director Alexandra Taylor’s solution was to recruit (with the help of designer Graham Wood) a diverse group of pro bono contributors to work with her to attempt to dramatise an array of Parkinson’s related conditions. “Each designer was given a specific condition of Parkinson’s and a headline/title and supporting body copy [written by Sean Doyle and Dean Webb] and as much information, case histories and client insights as possible,” ECD Steve Dunn explains. “Some spoke to people with the condition to glean first hand reality of their symptoms.” Others already had experience of people living with Parkinson’s due to family connections.
Each contributor, Dunn says, was “encouraged to interpret this content in their own style… The only prerequisite as such, was that each ailment reflect the central theme of our communications – which was ‘Parkinson’s. A psychological horror’.”
The symptoms to portray were chosen by Parkinson’s UK who then tested the resultant posters with members of their community, some of whose feedback was incorporated in the final work. Dwek explains that in campaigns of this nature, charities have to engage in a lot of complementary communications work to ensure that their various constituents understand the aims of the work. “It’s crucial that we don’t offend people,” says Dwek, “but we are also very aware that we need to get the attention of the public.”
Here lies one of the great problems of charity advertising – finding a balance between an approach that will cut through ‘charity fatigue’ and grab people’s attention but doing so without causing offence either to potential donors or those already affected by the cause.
Was the campaign’s emotive line ‘Parkinson’s. A psychological horror’ a particular concern here? “There are going to be mixed views,” Dwek concedes, “but we have to make the call on whether we want to make an impact or not. We want to be noticed and to put the charity on the map. We are trying to do that in an interesting way that is true to our values.”
Another possibly contentious feature of the campaign is that none of the posters carry the Parkinson’s UK logo. Having listened to countless advertising art directors bemoan the straightjacket of corporate identity guidelines and many more creatives complain of having to work with a logo they find difficult or domineering, I find this an intriguing aspect of this campaign. Without the ‘official’ logo, there is obviously a danger that some may miss the connection with the charity. However, as pieces of communication, their power may perhaps be neutered by the presence of the charity’s corporate identity. It’s an argument that takes place in agencies and design studios every day.
As the client, Dwek’s view is interesting here. The main aim of the campaign, she stresses is “to change people’s attitudes, get them thinking about Parkinson’s and to empathise [with sufferers]… It’s not a brand campaign about the charity but about awareness of Parkinson’s – it’s a much bigger picture.” She also points out that the word Parkinson’s appears several times in each execution and that each poster carries the charity’s URL “so people can go to our website to find out more information – which is what we did in the previous campaign and we have the results to prove that worked.”
Dunn argues that “In the general malaise of charity advertising, it was felt that anything that looked overtly like an ‘ad’ would make people switch off and given the charity¹s limited budgets, there is always a great need to stand out from the sea of emotional messaging we are constantly bombarded with.”
This touches on another intriguing aspect of this campaign which highlights a familiar debate: the posters don’t look like ‘ads’, they certainly don’t look like typical charity ads. Will they therefore attract more attention and engagement or will the public be confused by them or assume they are for perhaps a band or a theatre production? Perhaps the important thing to bear in mind is that these 20 posters represent just one aspect of the charity’s communications. Alongside them, the charity engages in all manner of support and awareness-generating activity.
The work may also have a life beyond posters. Having so many different contributors involved, some of whom have tackled the same symptoms but in different ways has, Dwek says, provided the charity with “a great suite of creative images that we can use in different settings. I was really pleased with the way the campaign evolved with different takes on different symptoms.”
The posters had a soft launch before Christmas at 100 six-sheet sites in London train stations. The charity is now planning further bursts of activity over the coming year and looking at how to use the imagery in other media.
Credits Agency: The Assembly Network. Executive Creative Director: Steve Dunn Writers: Sean Doyle and Dean Webb. Art Director: Alexandra Taylor. Art Producer: Donna Goldberg. Account Manager: Anneliese Wensley Managing Director: Kate Fulford-Brown. Client: Parkinson’s UK
Full list of collaborators; Nick Howe and Colin Grey, Ian Pollock, Marc Atkins. Jonathan Barnbrook. Graham Wood, Vaughan Oliver. Neville Brody, Jason Kedgley and Dylan Kendle at Tomato, Eddie Opara, Jeremy Kunze, Lucy Groom and Dominic Lippa at Pentagram, Tony Brook at Spin, Ian Anderson, Mark Bonner, Laura Jordan Bambach with Liv Bargman, Flo Heiss, Tom Hingston, Claire Parsons, Peter Crnokrak, Astrid Stavro, Warren Du Preez & Nick Thornton Jones.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Ready to respond to requests of “Show me the data!” with more than a sad little bar graph? The Mediabistro mothership is now recruiting would-be data visualizers for 
