Hasta La Ideas

Christmas is a time for giving and sharing, and is also an opportunity for ad agencies to compete to create the most inventive Christmas messages. Here’s some of our favourites so far this year…

First up is an interactive Christmas window from Wieden + Kennedy London. Visitors to the Hanbury Street office can join in the fun, while the film above shows Neil Christie, Kim Papworth and Tony Davidson leading the W+K choir.

Over at TBWA in London, the agency windows have been turned into a giant advent calendar where 24 artists are being given the chance to share a piece of work. The artworks revealed so far can be viewed online here. The 24th window space has yet to be decided, and the agency is inviting artists to send in their work to be considered for this. If you have an illustration you’d like to share, simply email advent@tbwa.com with your image and also your wish for 2012.

Another advent site has been created by Blink Productions director David Wilson, who is sharing a new video clip every day until December 25. Visit the site at altadvent.tumblr.com/.

A second choir now, this time all the way from Sydney. Host ad agency has created an interactive piece that is on display at its offices on Butt Street in the city. The film above also shows the Butt St Choir at work for those that can’t pop by.

Saatchi & Saatchi has created Lovemix 2011, a holiday album created by musicians and bands working at Saatchis’ offices around the world. All the songs on the album are original and include an eclectic mix of styles from dance to indie, ambient to calypso. It can be downloaded free at saatchi.com/lovemix.

CHI & Partners has collaborated with illustration agent Agency Rush to host a Christmas-themed exhibition of new work from Rush’s illustrators at the agency, including Kate Jenkins’ crocheted Christmas dinner.

and this from Al Murphy:

A couple of charity-based ideas now. First up is an initiative by Mother in London, called Mother’s Psychic T-shirts. The agency has teamed up with Los Angeles-based psychic Lucinda Clare, who has used her spiritual powers to create a set of 100 predictions for 2012, which have all been written onto T-shirts and are awaiting their destined owners to pick them up. Each T-shirt costs £100, which may seem a lot but hey, destiny predicting don’t come cheap. Happily all monies raised will go to Age UK. Find out more at psychictees.com.

Over at Karmarama, founder and chief creative officer Dave Buonaguidi completed a 24-hour ping pong marathon earlier today, which was also in aid of Age UK. You can still donate to the good cause online at pingpong24.com, where footage of the challenge can also be viewed.

We finish with a couple of Christmas cards: first up the flatpacked Flying Santa card from graphic and product design company Studio 91, which turns into a rather fetching balsa wood aeroplane-cum-Santa’s sleigh. You can buy your own for £4.99 from Studio 91’s online shop.

And finally, this downbeat but funny missive from 3D animation and visual effects studio Kettle in London. Merry Christmas everyone!

One of the highlights of the Walker Art Center’s Graphic Design: Now in production show is Daniel Eatock’s installation in which images are ‘automatically’ created by upturned marker pens. Here, he explains the process

Designer Michael Cina reviewed the Walker show in our December issue. You can read his thoughts here

CR in Print

If you only read CR online, you’re missing out. The January issue of Creative Review is a music special with features on festivals, the future of the music video and much much more. Plus it comes with its very own soundtrack for you to listen to while reading the magazine.

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.

Here at CR we’ve been enjoying Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror on Channel 4. We caught up with Joel Collins of Painting Practice, responsible for the production design, motion graphics, visual effects and the title sequence on the series…

Painting Practice was formed after production designer Collins and VFX art director Daniel May had led the early VFX team inside the art department of Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy back in 2004. “What we’ve tried to do is grab the zeitgeist of film and everything that it now encompasses – vfx ,gaming and media – and put it all in one pot – which we call ‘The digital art department’,” explains Collins. “Rather than the creative work of the art department, graphics and vfx being split up, we do all of this interactivy and live playing as one company and make it work. Our work on the Black Mirror series is a great example of what we as a company are trying to achieve.”

In case you missed episode two, 15 Million Merits, which screened on Sunday night, the film showed a world where everyone has to live a life of drudgery and  relentless screen-based entertainment and advertising unless they can save up to audition for the Hot Shot talent show and impress the three judges. Here is the main character, Bing (played by Daniel Kaluuya) waking up in his box-like, screen covered bedroom to be greeted by his own avatar:

Black Mirror – 15 Million Merits – cornfield from Painting Practice on Vimeo.

“Actually taking on so much of a project was slightly unusual for us,” says Collins of the Black Mirror series. “Barney Reisz the producer approached me before any directors were involved to see if I could get involved with the series. As a designer I was eager to come aboard for the whole series. However I was adamant that a project this complex would need more than a normal art department so I introduced Barney to the team at Painting Practice. As a company we were eager to do everything from set design, motion graphics, vfx matte paintings to the title sequence. Our aim was to ensure the series maintained quality throughout. With our most recent partner, matte painter and vfx supervisor Justin Atkinson, we were also able to offer a solid level of visual effects.”

Printing Practice designed the sets meticulously, as these set designs and renders clearly show. Above, is a design image showing the bedroom. Below is a set design image for the bathroom:

“Episode 2 was the only script ready to go when we first started on Black Mirror at the start of 2011,” says Collins, “and one thing you notice if you read the script is that every scene could be a visual effects shot. But the way we did it, everything you see with Daniel (the actor) well about 95 percent of what you see, was filmed live. So when he swipes his hand to interface with the screens in his bedroom room or in the bike chamber, someone behind the scenes presses a button syncing his action to the screen in front of him.”

The reason for doing it this way is because we wanted it to feel as real as possible. The weird thing is that in the finished film it looks almost like post production because it’s so effective. But the bedroom really was a room made of screens with camera’s set up above to look down into the room. The walls were made out of the latest LCD screens. They’re the best quality you can get. In terms of the graphics we generated, we wanted them to be a little bit like Angry Birds. We felt this would get over the idea that he’s living in an iPhone. This idea that even when we’re talking, we stop to look at our iPhones (even though it’s quite rude). In episode two the claustrophobic screen bedroom is a bit like that – a bit like you’re living inside media.”

Above is Painting Practice’s visualisation of the pedal room. And here’s how it looked on set:

Black Mirror – 15 Million Merits – Pedal Chamber from Painting Practice on Vimeo.

As well as designing the sets, Painting Practice also designed all the onscreen visuals and motion graphics, including each character’s onscreen avatar. “Every cast member had their own avatar which appeared among the hundreds of avatars that appear in the talent show audience,” explains Collins. “We had a character illustrator work with us on the origination of the avatars and then a team of animators in our studio working away generating their every move.”

The filming of Black Mirror took place in a disused university campus in Buckingham. Just as for the scenes involving screen interaction, the audience of avatars appeared on a giant screen behind the three judges. “For filming, we had a host of audience responses that we could trigger at the appropriate moments in the script,” says Collins. This enabled the audience to ‘react’ to what the actors were saying or doing.

Black Mirror – 15 Million Merits – Hot Shot Audience from Painting Practice on Vimeo.

The third and final episode of Black Mirror will screen on Channel 4 this Sunday night, entitled The Entire History of You, which is again, Collins explains, “set in the not too distant future where everyone can record their personal experiences and download them for viewing at a later date – basically Sky Plus for the brain.” Watch the trailer at Channel 4 here

Find out more about Painting Practice and its work at paintingpractice.com

To watch 15 Million Merits, visit 4OD at channel4.com/programmes/4od

CR in Print

If you only read CR online, you’re missing out. The January issue of Creative Review is a music special with features on festivals, the future of the music video and much much more. Plus it comes with its very own soundtrack for you to listen to while reading the magazine.

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.

Festival goers often have trouble locating their tents within a sea of muddy green and blue tarpaulin. FieldCandy, a new design-led tent manufacturer no less, may well have the answer…

The company is, apparently, hoping to change the face or camping with its range of limited edition tent designs, some of which have been created by designers Terry Pastor, Philip Gatward and Jonathan Zawada.

There’s a bricks and mortar design (above) and a cosy quilting pattern, while many of the other designs ape objects such as an open book, a suitcase, a massive wedge of cheese and even, er, a slice of melon.

For those conscious of the fact that a huge slice of fruit could well distract from the surrounding countryside, there’s this rather more subtle number, below. But we wouldn’t advise setting it up in a field full of sheep.

FieldCandy tents start at £395 and are available from fieldcandy.com. More of the tent designs on offer are included in the poster, below.

CR in Print

If you only read CR online, you’re missing out. The January issue of Creative Review is a music special with features on festivals, the future of the music video and much much more. Plus it comes with its very own soundtrack for you to listen to while reading the magazine.

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.

To mark its 50th birthday, D&AD is delving into its archive to highlight significant pieces of work that have featured in the awards. We will be publishing one a week with accompanying analysis by ex-Design Week editor Lynda Relph-Knight. This week, Derek Birdsall’s talks to Relph-Knight about his highly innovative cover for To Kill a Mockingbird

“I tried to get my son to do it, but he failed miserably,’ says Derek Birdsall, the doyen of book design of the handwritten cover for the 1964 Penguin edition of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Christopher Birdsall was then aged about ten – a similar age to American author Lee in 1936 when the real event on which the novel is based occurred near her hometown. But, says Birdsall Senior, “you’ve got to exaggerate this kind of thing’ and a child doesn’t do that”.

The copy itself – an overblown build-up to the book – was lifted from a press release sent to Birdsall as background. Getting the contact to publish the paperback version of the American best-seller was “a big thing” for Penguin, he says, so he too bigged it up.

The colours – magenta, blue and orange – “were my favourite colours at the time,” he adds. No focus groups there then. The child-like drawing of a dead bird is a nice touch.

Birdsall was commissioned by Penguin art director John Curtis. Birdsall had worked with Curtis since 1960 and, despite its success, To Kill A Mocking Bird isn’t his favourite cover. He prefers The Great Crash 1929 by JK Galbraith, designed four years earlier, because of the simplicity of the idea of a falling dollar sign replacing the ‘s’ in crash.

Both covers predate Penguin’s top grid (see above) devised by Romek Marber for Penguin’s subsequent art director Germano Facetti. Birdsall wasn’t a fan. “Once they introduced the top grid, you were buggered,” he says, as it gives the cover designer very little freedom. He was grateful when Facetti’s successor David Pelham dispensed with it in 1968, replacing it with a simple grid using only the Penguin symbol.

Birdsall’s relationship with Penguin continued on and off until he created a cover for one of the commemorative Pocket Penguins in 2005 to commemorate the publisher’s 70th birthday. And it wasn’t only just related to literature, despite a series of novels by his hero John Updike building on an outline portrait of the author by Michael Foreman and a photographic Somerset Maugham collection, created from a long assemblage of artefacts put together with Harri Peccinotti and cut to create a string of covers.

In 1971 Birdsall became consultant art director to head of Penguin Education Charles Clark on Pelham’s recommendation and set about rethinking titles he describes as “typical 1950s design in their uniformity”.

“I took time to think what was the perfect brief for a Penguin,” he says. “I was on the side of the designers. I thought ‘Give me a typeface – Futura – so I don’t have to agonise over that,” They were mainly white covers with only one guidline. Then I got this spine idea of exploiting the width of the book – if it was a fat book you used fat type. Words [on the cover] became a housestyle.”

Birdsall is fascinated by how ideas are so often unwittingly recycled – the subject of his forthcoming second book. Looking back over his own work, he can identify themes recurring often years apart. But he’s not against such clichés. “There’s a power in the fact it’s been seen before,” he says.

But occupying a prominent place on Birdsall’s heaving bookshelf is an example of his idea being recycled by someone else. Rock band Travis asked to use an eye motif he created for Penguin’s Roald Dahl novel Someone Like You in the late 1970s for its 2008 album Ode to J Smith. “I made 2000 quid out of that,” quips Birdsall, gleefully. Birdsall’s To KIll a Mockingbird cover was itself referenced on the cover for Penguin’s 2007 history of cover design, Seven Hundred Penguins.

Related content

Read our extensive piece on Romek Marber here
Read the first post on this series, on Barrie Bates’ 1963 A union, Jack! poster, here

D&AD’s 50-year timeline of landmark work is here

CR in Print

If you only read CR online, you’re missing out. The January issue of Creative Review is a music special with features on festivals, the future of the music video and much much more. Plus it comes with its very own soundtrack for you to listen to while reading the magazine.

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.