I think partly its to do with education, many clients don’t want good designs. They want something they perceive as being good and from a graphic design point of view they aren’t always the best solutions to the project.

Occasionally clients can be swayed from bad design decisions by providing them with alternatives but that isn’t always the case. I would agree with those individuals critical of graphic design as a profession. Many people have recently been lashing out at the design community saying that bad design arises out of the DIY capabilities of individuals.

Most people have a computer and they mostly come with graphical software, usually MS Paint. I think to be a designer you need to have some sort of graphical skill regardless of being degree educated or not. I believe you can see the difference between designs produced by non professionals and amateurs.

Just because your a design professional though doesn’t automatically entitle you into making good designs. I recently read the article ‘don’t be a tooler’, which highlighted the need for designers to engage properly with their tasks.

Design is one of those fields that is constantly moving forwards and the biggest revolution has been the computer but maybe its time to return to the drawing board.

Another reason for bad design is cheapness, sometimes clients only have so much budget and designers so much time. Also there is some value to be had out of cheapness.

If your brand looks cheap it exudes qualities of being good value and being affordable. Some people intentionally want poor design.

However ultimately whats ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is down to personal taste, in the end there are no guidelines to taste.

Bad design is a post from: The Typhon

Letterpress is a form of relief printing using a printing press and moveable type, the kind of printer invented by Gutenberg in the 15th century. Modern industrial letterpress techniques are different from the traditional version which uses a photopolymer plate to reproduce digital art.

Typically a print would consist of raised blocks carved into letters or pictures, ink is then rolled onto the surface of these blocks. Paper is placed on top and pressure from above marks the ink with paper and also leaves a textured indentation of the block.

In the UK printing presses were largely abandoned in the 1950’s. Today letterpress printing is largely used for specialist ornate books, personal stationary and invitations.

In the UK and US letterpress has been undergoing a revival partly fuelled by Marther Stewart in the 1990’s and the craftivism movement. Stewart featured invitations in her weddings magazine and it took off from there.

Part of the appeal of letterpress is the tactile nature of the print itself. You can’t do a print run on cheap paper due to the embossing process so the heavyweight paper gives a feeling of quality.

Another graphically distinctive feature of letterpress is its inability to reproduce photographic images, that might sound like a disadvantage but it restricts the designer to strong typography, line and pattern.

When designing for letterpress your restricted to spot colours, it requires a bleed on both the actual document and the areas where coloured ink is to be printed and fonts must be no smaller than 5 point.

Theres a lot of debate between traditionalist letterpress printers and the modern technique. The modern letterpress uses digital art and plastic film negatives. The plastic film is mounted onto aluminium for the printing process and ink is applied by hand.

There are of course some advantages to using the digital method since theoretically you’re not limited by the artwork which can be created and the printer doesn’t have to invest in letter blocks. Of course there are the detractors who say it isn’t real letterpressing and the quality of print isn’t the same, but I think either way there are some truly stunning designs out there.

There are some great letterpress designs on etsy and if your feeling really DIY you could even make your own letterpress machine!

Letterpress, we’re bringing it back is a post from: The Typhon

A logo is broadly defined as a graphic mark or emblem used by organisations to promote and assist public recognition.

Before the modern contemporary logo people were using watermarks, coats of arms and cylinder wax seals all of them could be broadly defined as logos. They assist the viewer in instantly understanding an organisation or society.

“They are a hangover from old-school thinking about branding. There is no desire by the public for a new logo. They are simply an old-fashioned approach to differentiating products or services.” Simon Manchipp, SomeOne

Logos now face increasing pressure there are now a plethora of logos representing brands, bands, voluntary organizations, websites the list is potentially endless. There is only a brief time for the brand impact to be made before we move on to the next one.

“Each of us now encounters a staggering 30,000 commercial
messages every single day, and the vast majority of them are visual.” Julian Treasure

Viewers of logos and branding have also become increasingly critical and often the suggestion of the term ‘logo’ itself is a very negative one. After all as a designer your coercing the viewer into a particular state of mind, in essence you are intentionally trying to manipulate someone.

Theres no better example than the UK Olympic 2012 logo for creating mixed opinions. It was a design by committee and that approach is notorious for producing poor results. Almost everyone I’ve talked to hates the logo.

Logos traditionally represent huge faceless corporations who hide behind wholesome images attempting to brand our lives, our natural instinct is suspicion highlighted in the book ‘no logo’ by Naomi Klein.

“Your brand is more than your logo, website and advertising. It’s also what you say, what you do, how you act, and how you treat people.” Peter, SEO Blog

In addition to the volume of logos now on display they also have to compete on ever changing platforms from mobile phones, PDA’s, laptops, and even in traditional print. Its these pressures that the cover of the latest Metallica album ‘Death Magnetic’ attempted to avoid.

“And I think the vernacular for the band and heavy metal is a simple, iconic world, and that translates fantastically well to small icons that go on your phone or iPod. So it boils down to a simple iconic graphic.” Bruce Duckworth

The coffin iconography for Death Magnetic helped to cement its position on shop shelves, magazines and on ipods thanks to ifs flexible branding.

So maybe rather than considering logos ‘dead’ they just need to work smarter rather than harder.

The logo is dead, long live the logo is a post from: The Typhon

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Every few years theres an overhaul of web technologies or someone comes up with ‘the latest thing’ which will apparently exponentially improve our webby lives. So I often come at these things from an overly critical stance. Out there in the real world what’s it gonna do?

On a very basic level there are a variety of new tags which help to define and identify elements within a web page.

This is handy for a couple of reasons; you no longer have to go round defining divs and the way web elements integrate into the page will be much smoother.

So for example you’d no longer have to define a header as < div id = "header" > you’d just use the tag < header >. If you really want to know all the new tags they can be found on the design shack blog.

Another advantage of these new tags is that it helps Javascript, Flash, AJAX and other web technologies to integrate better into HTML pages. Back in 90’s most people’s internet connection couldn’t cope with streaming live video or audio however both these things are now commonplace. So the tags < video > and < audio > has been introduced.

You may have also been hearing about the < canvas > tag. Created by Apple it allows graphics to be drawn using Javascript, this giving more robust graphics since it doesn’t matter what screen size your running at. It’ll resize to compensate. In a way Canvas is related to SVG since they do similar things – drawing on the screen. You can find out more about Canvas on the Opera site.

Both Canvas and SVG rely on what goes on in the background in Illustrator, that is creating point based vector graphics by mathematics. I think this is one of the key changes in HTML for designers. It means that in the future there may be no JPG’s it’ll all be scalable vector graphics. I think it’ll be interesting to see how graphics software changes in order to cope with this new web ability.

As part of this new drawing ability CSS also now includes some new features. The functionality to create animations, its lining up to be some sort of face off between flash and CSS. Check out this CSS Animation tutorial on 24 ways.

The best new tool of CSS is probably rounded corners. Creating consistent looking round corners is generally a bit of a faff. Being able to automatically generate them is a dream come true with CSS.

Anyway the final thing you might have been hearing about is Font Replacement.

I’m not convinced that Font Replacement is such a great idea. It’s one of those things that has the potential to be incredibly annoying like GIF’s were back in the 90’s. I recently read a tutorial on how to do it and the article argued that font files are so huge that you have to ‘ease in’ the sudden change between the loading font and what your looking at on the screen.

To do this it suggested using a font stack, now font stacks are a common tool of CSS. But if your going to do a font replacement with a font that looks kinda similar – whats the point? Why not just use the web standard font anyway and not bother.

In my opinion Font Replacement isn’t worth it unless font files become smaller data packets or the internet continues to speed up (which it probably will!).

Of course all of this relies heavily on the support of browsers to be able to process HTML 5 and CSS 3 and what with IE dragging its heels who knows how long that’ll be. If your building a new site soon then it may be worth considering writing it in HTML 5 but otherwise theres no hurry just be prepared!

If your after some cool HTML 5 resources check out this list of great tutorials on speckyboy.

HTML 5, CSS 3 and Font Replacement is a post from: The Typhon

I’m a big fan of the AIGA website, my only gripe is that because I don’t live in the US I can’t join. Anyway, their site is a great repository of articles about design. It’s not quite the same as a blog since blogs often intentionally choose topics that will raise their SEO.

I came across this article about Otto Neurath and Bliss symbolics.

Otto Neurath believed that words were defunct in the world that though their inherent use it incited segregation and hatred. Which in some cases is true words and meanings can be used in order to isolate groups of people. If you can’t speak the lingo then you can’t roll with us.

Neurath grew up during post war times a strange and having lived through where propaganda and in particular words were used as part of the battle. There are of course some problems with the work of Otto Neurath and that is stereotyping.

Much of his work relies on a series of commonly understood symbols. In creating symbols they have their meaning compressed down to bare minimums. So if a symbol of a man wearing a cowboy hat represents an american in symbolics it serves a purpose as a graphic, but at the same time could be construed as culturally insensitive.

Charles Bliss the creator of Bliss symbolics constructed an entire language of symbols moving back to hieroglyphics. The amount of obvious time and attention put into Bliss symbolics makes you feel instantly sympathetic with Charles Bliss. Sadly he died without seeing his innovation being adopted by the world.

I might seem somewhat obsessed by icons, but why is any designer obsessed by icons?

I think its because icons and logos are some of the most visually complex things you can design. They have to express so much meaning in a condensed form. Not only that sometimes they have to express beyond simple meanings to abstract concepts such as emotions – fun, freedom, love, hate.

Icons can be beautiful in their simplicity but I think talking of beauty can be reserved for another post entirely.

I’m getting more interested in semiotics. Semiotics is the study of signification not just visually but also how we interpret use of an object. There are three streams of Semiotics – Semantics, Syntactics and Pragmatics.

Otto Neurath and Semiotics is a post from: The Typhon

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It allows the marketeer to target a specific market with a message tailored to that particular person. If your that interested in knowing more about landing pages you can find them on Wikipedia.

I came across this article on Grok dot com about comparing different search engine websites landing pages together and how effective their designs are in assisting users to make the goal. That would be downloading the browser.

Its a really interesting article with some very interesting points including the thing about making buttons red. Personally I think there’s a lot to be learnt from looking at other people’s designs how we can reflect upon our own designs and change them in order to make them more effective in the long term. Design is a sort of constant learning process an attempt to improve and also getting that ‘reading people’s minds’ thing down.

Anyway I was also looking at slogans and how to write effective ones, how we identify slogans as either good or bad. I think its interesting to note how slogans can become so effectively imprinted on our minds even if we hear the slogan years afterward our minds still associate it with the brand.

That was quite a short entry for this week but since I’ve had a long absence in writing new posts it’ll do for now.

Landing pages and slogans is a post from: The Typhon

I think the easiest way of describing the theory is that in our minds we see a shape and then the shape has a colour attached to it. So when we look at a post box we first see the shape of it as a object and then attach a colour to this object – which in this case is red.

Some strange stuff starts happening when you take away the shape and colour relationship. If one eye starts seeing one shape with a colour and then the same shape with another colour in the second eye the brain gets confused.

These two same shapes somehow can’t be combined into one in the brain, theres a conflict as if our minds are trying to figure out which is the ‘right’ colour.

I’ve always been interested in how we process the world around us not just in colours but also symbols. Certain symbols appear to have a universal meaning such as in airports but out there on the web there is not set standards. We’re left to the whims of designers who think we’re intelligent enough to interpret symbols in a particular way.

However in the past through user testing I’ve often found that although visually more appealing people like the reassurance of text, it generates authority and lacks ambiguity.

Of course pairing up images and words opens up an entirely new can of worms where our interpretation of the image is entirely skewed by our understanding of the accompanying text. A great famous example of this is of course Rene Magritte.

I’ve also recently become quite interested in the idea that age can be connected to our way of seeing, not just because our eyesight deteriorates over time but our understanding of what we’re looking at changes. Perhaps we aren’t able to grasp complex visual ideas or lots of constant movement.

Then theres the generational factor where someone is designing on behalf of someone who’s older, our expectations about what they want as users is also somewhat skewed. Personally I think its important to keep the goal for completion in mind when designing. What is it that your user is looking to achieve and how can your design facilitate their goal?

How we interpret colours is a post from: The Typhon

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Part of that is being able to find suitable inspiration when it comes to writing these things and I’ve often been too busy to be ‘inspired’.

However when I was browsing around the internet I discovered an article on The Guardian website by Charlie Brooker about how he thinks the world is now too full of things. And something in his article struck a chord with me.

“I’m fairly certain I recently passed a rather pathetic tipping point, and now own more unread books and unwatched DVDs than my remaining lifespan will be able to sustain. I can’t possibly read all these pages, watch all these movies, before the grim reaper comes knocking. The bastard things are going to outlive me. It’s not fair. They can’t even breathe.”

I started watching a programme on BBC starring design guru Philippe Starck I found him endlessly annoying in the traditional art school sense of spouting arty bollocks to make a flowery point. However underneath all that rubbish was an actual genuine point, that some things which are designed and produced are pointless.

When your a designer its important to think about who your designing for and what your product is intended to do, how its going to fit into their lives rather than just producing more ’stuff’.

I’ve often thought that when we die all we’ve left behind is the accumulated possessions of our life on earth and what is your nearest and dearest going to do with your DVD collection in the future? Quite a grim thought perhaps but maybe its those intangible things we leave behind which are really valued the ideas and shared knowledge rather than the here today gone tomorrow stuff.

Although just watch Dragons Den and you’ll see people trying to make careers out of useless gadgets and gizmo’s. I’m pretty confident theres some money to be made but perhaps we should think more about the purpose of our designs and what happens to it once it lands in the bin.

On a slightly related note the North East’s design festival called ‘Design Event 09′ is taking place this October. As part of it the Tyneside Cinema http://www.tynecine.org will be showing Objectified, a film about the relationship between people and the objects they use, the NGCA is running a design event called Think Tank.

Buried under all that stuff? is a post from: The Typhon

So with that in mind I’ve been thinking about fonts and font sites. One of my favorites is da fonts it offers a comprehensive list of fonts often getting new ones in weekly and they are often ‘on trend’. Its particularly handy if you’ve seen a font out and about and you want to try and get something similar. http://www.dafont.com/ Da fonts has both mac and windows fonts for free download.

1001 fonts is also another great resource but theres fewer fonts and theres a slightly different focus to the collection with more of a bias towards unusual fonts, particularly those of a sci-fi tilt. http://www.1001fonts.com/

I also really like this windswept text tutorial on the Computer Arts site, I loved it when I saw it in the magazine but you can download it for free online Bring type to life tutorial. If your looking to do something more unusual and graphic with type then its a great tutorial to try out.

From experience I find it sometimes difficult to make type flow within a design but thats the relationship between the image and text. I’m also interested in the idea of how graphical text can be and how far to the edge of legibility it’ll go.

Another great site for looking at typography as a whole – rather than as fonts is I love typography. Although not frequently updated (I cant say anything!) Its a really beautiful looking blog and covers all things type. In an attempt to better understand type though nothing really beats experimentation and practice in the field.

On a slight side note I came across an article on the BBC site that got me thinking about the power of type and how we interpret text in our mind. The rather interesting case of a New Zealand woman loosing her job over typing an email entirely in caps.

Fonts and caps lock is a post from: The Typhon

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But since its my first time I’ve been researching designing shirts. I’m specifically looking at doing some for Ragnarok so I’ve also spent some time thinking about what makes me buy shirts and looking at the Nuclear Blast shop which contains a vast array of heavy metal shirts.

I’m a bit of a fan of Computer Arts, the site gives away its featured tutorial of the month on its site. Of course you don’t get the resources that you get with the magazine but its still a useful source of inspiration. They have a design tutorial for creating one colour prints in photoshop. Theres also this tutorial over at GoMedia zine.

I was also really taken with a tutorial in Digital Arts magazine, I actually have the mag that its from but if you don’t then it can be found on their site here. Skulls on shirts are a kind of timeless classic, they look cool and can appeal across genders. Its become one of the icons of metal. That lead me onto another tutorial about Tattoo art, something also very close to the hearts – or skin – of metal culture.

Personally I’ve always been facinated by tattoo art particularly the font styles and the quality and crispness of line work. Great tattoo art is really something else, I must say I really like the work of Chris Garver too.

Anyway I’d recommend checking out the website of Chris Parkes, hes done a lot of shirt designs for clothing labels but also has a site of vector resources and fonts which are rather snazzy.

Anyway the Ragnarok shirts will eventually be printed on cotton shirts by me silk screening which does of course mean custom orders can be done too.

The pitfalls of designing t-shirts is a post from: The Typhon

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