Hasta La Ideas

Marian Bantjes’ first monograph is a refreshingly honest visual history of the last ten years of her work as a graphic artist…

It’s a bold decision to title a collection of your life’s work to date with what could be taken as a dismissive criticism of it.

But calling her new book Pretty Pictures, as suggested by the designer Rick Valicenti, captures perfectly the character of Marian Bantjes, who has both the confidence and wit to confront the slight head on – in shiny mirrored silver cover stock.

While Bantjes’ last book, I Wonder, was a treatise on the subjects of wonderment, ornamentation and memory, via her own design philosophy, this new publication contains just about all the work she has made during 2003-2012.

It is chock-full of it – set out chronologically, covering everything from posters, magazines, installations, lettering, patterns and personal projects, even sketch work and rejected designs.

And rather than label simple captions to each project, bolstered with a brief chapter opener here and there, Bantjes has instead written in detail about each and every piece in the book; as if turning them over again to rediscover what they meant when they were first created, and what they might mean now.

Bantjes touches on her early creative years, starting out as a typesetter in 1983 before becoming a graphic designer a decade later, but it’s her most recent body of work, where she looks out for projects that she really wants to do as a graphic artist, which shows her distinctive approach to pattern, colour, lettering and wordplay really taking off.

As Rick Poynor suggests in his foreword, her career has been unique because of these two stages – and it is the later years of making work in everything from Illustrator, to pen and pencil; or ‘illuminating’ projects with gerbera petals, feathers, coral, even sugar, that gets its due here.

Just as the metallic cover reveals a surprise underneath, Bantjes’ book offers up plenty of her thinking behind how and why she does what she does. She has said the book is partly a way of explaining the processes that led to the work she is often asked about; so that she can move on.

While she does that, it would be wise to enjoy the fruits of her last ten years in the pages of this beautifully produced, highly personal book.

Pretty Pictures is published by Thames & Hudson; £42, thamesandhudson.com. More of Bantjes’ work at bantjes.com, @bantjes.

From this month, the Typographic Circle will be running a series of evening events for its student members aimed at inspiring and informing the next generation of creatives and designers

The student programme was set up by BETC London head of design Louise Stolper. The events are aimed at helping students “prepare for the creative industry and highlight the amazing roles and exciting opportunities that are out there”. According to Stolper, “These will be smaller, more intimate sessions [than the regular Typo Circle talks] with leading industry figures, to give you a chance to ask questions, interact and learn from the best.”

Speakers over the coming months will include Mark Denton, The Partners and Alison Carmichael but the programme will begin with a session with Charity Charity, the ex-Executive Worldwide Creative Director at JWT, Global Creative Director at EuroRSCG and Saatchi & Saatchi who will talk about creative inspiration.

Tickets are £8 and are for Typographic Circle student members only, available here. Details on membership here.

Once, the future looked like this. The Human League’s Martyn Ware explains how night shifts as a computer operator helped him create the band’s first flyers

At this year’s AGI Open, Graphic Thought Facility’s Andrew Stevens delivered a talk on Letraset, the graphic and type system first launched in the 1960s. As part of the talk, he showed the first ever gig poster for The Human League, which was designed by band member Martyn Ware. The image sparked a wave of interest among the audience so we thought we’d ask Ware about the inspiration for the design.

In 1978, Ware was working nightshifts as a computer operator in Sheffield, “doing really boring things like payroll on a computer the size of a house. It was tedious, but it paid pretty well,” he says.

He had also formed a synth pop band, The Human League, with his friend and co-worker Ian Craig Marsh and school friend Philip Oakey. (Marsh and Ware had previously formed a synth band called The Future, but decided on a name change after their lead singer left and Oakey joined).

Keen to present their futuristic sound in a suitably futuristic way, they decided to create posters to promote their first gig using .matrix coding. “We were messing around with different ways of presenting our band to the public, and thought it would be fun to play with inputting info into the computers. I chatted up one of the punchcard girls and asked her to put in the letters for us,” he explains.

“We wanted it to look like something from a sci-fi film. Now of course, it looks retro but at the time, it was pretty futuristic. And there was something really lovely about the misalignment of the letters. I never went to art or design college, but it was something I’d always had a strong interest in” he adds.

Ware and Marsh had also experimented with .matrix coding when trying to promote the Future. “We sent out invites in the same style to a load of record companies, asking them to meet with us, and we got asked to 12 meetings in two days. It certainly got people’s attention,” he adds.

When The Human League signed to record label Virgin in 1979, Ware says the band kept control over and final sign-off on all album artwork and promotional visuals. But when the label’s art department misinterpreted the band’s brief for the cover of their first album, Reproduction (above), Ware says they were unable to organise a re-design before its release date.

“We said we wanted an image of a glass dance floor in a discotheque which people were dancing on and beneath this, a lit room full of babies. It was meant to look like a still from a film – like some kind of dystopian vision of the future – but it just looks like they’re treading on babies. We were quite upset but at that time, it was too late to change it.”

Graphic designer Malcolm Garrett designed the cover for their second album, Travelogue, which featured a shot of a man with a sled and a group of dogs in the snow – and no babies being stepped on. Ware and Garrett are now close friends and still work together on album art: Garrett designed the artwork for House of Illustrious (below), a 10 CD boxset released by Ware and Vince Clarke, and was awarded a D&AD pencil for his work.

“I’m still obsessed with the way bands are visually represented,” says Ware. “The mood you create with your writing and production can be destroyed with the wrong kind of artwork – like the weird abstract nonsense that record companies like to put on compilation and greatest hits albums. For most bands, and certainly The Human League, their look is an intrinsic part of who they are,” he adds.

In Creative Review’s October issue Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja of Massive Attack discusses the artwork he created for the band, from early flyers to data-driven stage shows. Oh, and he designed the cover for us too…

The October issue of Creative Review is available to buy direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.

Our interview ties in with new Vinyl Factory book 3D and the Art of Massive Attack, a retrospective of Del Naja’s artistic output from the Wild Bunch days to this year’s Adam Curtis collaboration. The piece features sketches, paste-up artwork and previously unseen material from the Massive Attack archives over nine pages.

Readers can win a copy of the limited edition version of the book (worth £350) in our Gallery competition this month

Robert also designed our cover which has been printed on Curious Matter Andina Grey board from Arjowiggins Creative Paper. We’ve been stroking our house copies all day….

Here’s a running sheet with the back cover also

The inside back features a charge sheet from 3D’s grafitti days, amended by the artist himself

Plus, we you can bring the pages of this month;s CR to life with a series of Blippable Gifs from JWT London’s recent Loop show. Just download the Blippar app onto your smartphone, open it up and hold it over the page to animate the image of your choice

Rachael Steven reports on Football Type, Rick Banks’ new book on the typography of football

Rachael (she’s had a busy month) also profiles illustrator-turned-artist Jonathan Zawada

And, to tie in with the Festival of Marketing Punch event, we look at the impact of Big Data on creativity – can algorithms really determine whether or not an ad campaign will be any good?

While Mark Sinclair has written an in-depth case study on the work that Browns has done for international finance company, Invesco – proof that major work for global organisations does not have to be the preserve of the big international branding firms

In Crit, Rick Poynor reviews Power to the People, the Graphic Design of the Radical Press and the Rise of the Counter Culture 1964-1974

While Hamish Muir enjoys a survey of the highly influential Swiss typographic journal Typografische Monatsblätter

For regular columnist Mr DA Benneworth-Gray BA MA PgC, the onerous admin tasks of the freelance designer are made more palatable when they involve great stationery while Paul Belford lauds the great art direction in a classic 80s ad for Woolmark

Plus Gordon Comstock reviews a new documentary film by Robert Opie of the Museum of Brands

And, for subscribers only, our Monograph supplement features a selection of work from the recent Glory Glory project in which designers created posters based on the football chant of their choice

The October issue of Creative Review is available to buy direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, get Monograph and make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.

Tesco has launched Hudl, a low cost Android tablt, sorry, tablet, computer with a visual identity, name, packaging, point of sale and more from SomeOne

It’s an intriguing move from Tesco. The retailer has apparently had the device built to its own specs (based on shopper feedback). As much as it represents a fascinating new challenger at the bottom end of the hardware market, the Hudl also provides Tesco with its own portal into its existing online services such as Clubcard TV and both film and ebook offerings. No doubt it will also provide very valuable consumer data in the process.

The branding has, therefore, had to look both ways. On the one hand, its competing against the likes of Nexus as a technology brand

On the other, it sits alongside the parent Tesco brand in mainstream, mass retail.

SomeOne’s co-founder Gary Holt sheds some light on the studio’s thinking here: “It’s important that the Hudl has a brand and personality all its own, yet brought to you by Tesco. It’s what Tesco refer to as a ‘brand by Tesco’. Just as they have F&F for fashion. This means that the brand, look and feel and tone can be crafted and delivered for the specific area and target audience”.

Pick up a Hudl and you would be hard-pressed to realise that it was a Tesco product at all. On the front, the only Tesco presence is a subtle T button bottom left via which the user accesses the various Tesco services.

On the back, the Hudl name is applied subtly, the Tesco logo sitting at the bottom

That star comes from SomeOne’s over-arching idea for the brand – that “the tablet is becoming an important device in people’s lives, notably family lives, ideal for online shopping, digital entertainment and social networking and as such they are emerging as a ‘retail portal’ of the future”. So the star “is a solar system metaphor that reflects Hudl being at the centre of a digital orbit, and of family life”.

A more explicit evocation of that idea can be seen in this treatment which is being used on the Tesco homepage.

The word mark uses Neutraface No 2 from House Industries, which is also used on the packaging

and on collateral

“The Hudl has its own separate iconography, notably designed to help you set up and use the tablet, as well as helping deliver the Tesco branded services,” Holt explains. “These have been specifically designed for Hudl, yet clearly consider the user experience and relationship that they have with the Android platform – which also has functional iconography all its own. This did mean that a number of the icons for Hudl could be warm in tone. Like the Magician’s top hat icon for ‘Tips & Tricks’. We also created a special Getting Started App (represented by another icon of ours ‘123’) to ensure new users get the help and support they need.”

Here’s a selection of the icons, some of which add the Hudl star to standard Android designs

And the Guardian’s hands-on review of the device which explains a litle bit about the relationship between the Hudl bits of the interface and the standard Android experience and in which you can see some of them in use (if you look very closely)

According to SomeOne, one of the key parts of the brief for the product was to try to, as partner and creative director Laura Hussey says, “inject warmth into a category that can often be overly technical.” Their idea, she says, was to “help to soften what can often be stark and technologically-led communications”.

This is very much a ‘family’ product. Without having used the device it’s very hard to assess how well this ‘warmth’ comes across. I’m not a particular fan of the icons as they appear in the stills above, for example (just a bit too cutesy for me), but they may well be more succesful in context. They also embody a particular challenge for this project. Kids intuitively get technology and are probably far more expert in its use than their parents and grandparents. There’s no need to ‘dumb down’ or soften edges for them. So the ‘friendliness’ here is far more likely to be aimed at older users who may otherwise find technology forbidding. It’s very much the ITV of tablets.

Is there, rather like pre-iOS7 Apple, a disconnect between the slickness of the branding on the hardware compared to the approach of the interface? Again, it’s hard to tell how that plays out without having used one but, if so, it makes some sense. There are almost two messages being put out here – firsty to convince consumers that the device is credible as a piece of kit, and then to provide all the family with a user experience that is appropriate to the brand and gets neophytes comfortable with using all those lucrative digital services and products. That’s quite a tought trick but one that the Hudl appears to have pulled off. And for a Tesco product, that mark – in particular as it appears on the back of the product – is really very nice.