Snog

I really like the branding for Snog frozen yoghurt by ico design. Its really bright and eye catching. The interiors of the Snog shops are even more amazing with the neon pink walls and bright lights. It reminds me of the frozen yoghurt shops I went to in New York such as Pinkberry. Yummy stuff, lets hope they bring one up north soon!

Magazine Design And The Modern Man

From: http://dandad.typepad.com/dandad/2010/02/magazine-design-and-the-modern-man.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dandad+%28D%26AD+Blog%29

Jeremy Leslie is director of magCulture, member of the D&AD Executive Committee and a passionate advocate of editorial design.  Busy, then!  He's agreed to share a few insights into his latest project, the redesign of men's magazine, FHM, which relaunched in the UK this month.

1. Can you describe the process of editorial design - are there unique challenges to the discipline? 

The basics of editorial design will be familiar to any graphic designer. Typography, grids, use of imagery and spatial composition all figure. But there are also a number of less familiar specialist skills involved.

First of all, you are one of a team of people with specialist creative skills. As designer you are responsible for every visual aspect of the magazine, but alongside you the editor has an identical level of responsibility for the choice of story and tone of writing. Then there’s the picture editor who will share with you responsibility for photography. You have to work as a team, taking on board each other’s views. I believe the roles of editor and designer are merging – the best magazines employ people who comprehend both content and its presentation. 

A critical issue often overlooked by designers without editorial experience is that a magazine isn’t a series of single pieces but needs to hold together as a whole. The balance of text and image and any page can vary enormously.  The running order and variation from page to page needs not only be carefully considered but also open to change as the issue comes together. During production the whole magazine is in a permanent state of flux, and only when the final page is completed does that flux end and the flat plan become secure.

Harder still is the way that creating pace through the pages means sometimes a story will be designed and illustrated in a particular way to appear different to what precedes and follows that story, rather than designed purely in the best way for that individual story.

2. How do you start tackling a project for a well-established brand like FHM?

The first things to do were to get to know the magazine, talk to the editor, pull some tear sheets together from other magazines, then agree the right direction – agree a brief. 

FHM is a long-standing brand that has lost its way in recent years. This made it a relatively simple brief. In its heyday it was one of the most influential men’s magazines, but it had lost sight of its audience. There was a strong magazine trying to fight its way through the wrong design – it was confusing to the reader, the content and look didn’t match. The FHM reader wants simple things presented without being over-designed. The design had to be invisible, which is harder to achieve than it sounds. Design-wise it had to look strong but unremarkable. The various regular sections needed clearer, separate, identities. The whole thing needed a more masculine tone, meaning new fonts and a return to red and black as central colours. In most respects it was exciting working with such a longstanding and successful newsstand brand, but in one specific way it was disappointing. I’ve always felt the FHM logo was weak, so I proposed a revision to that but the publishers didn’t feel confident changing such a key asset.

3. The FHM redesign launched the same week as Apple's new iPad was unveiled.  Where do you think the future of the lad's mag and mainstream mag publishing generally lies?

If I had a simple answer to that I’d be a very rich man. 

Magazine publishing is experiencing a collective depression at the moment caused by several factors, one of which is the presence of online competition. But the Internet is not the only reason for this depression. It’s easy to forget the massive boom the magazines industry has experienced over recent decades. Like other sectors, magazine publishing couldn’t continue to grow at the rate it was going. It’s been too easy to see a successful magazine, rip it off, and watch the money pour in from advertisers. A downturn was inevitable, and here it is: US publishers have just experienced a 9% drop in newsstand sales. Shocking from a business perspective but from a creative standpoint there have been too many similar magazines chasing the same reader. It’s time for a shake out, and the fact it’s happening is cause for long term optimism; a return to quality over quantity.

I’d separate reactions to the iPad in similar fashion. From a business perspective it’s the Holy Grail, a new way to publish content without the cost of paper, print and physical distribution. Whether or not the big publishers can build a successful business model with it remains to be seen – Apple will be taking a cut.

But from a creative point of view, the prospect of the iPad is very exciting. There have been plenty of attempts at merging magazine and digital content and presentation with little success. At last, perhaps, the iPad will make this possible. There’s a generation out there for whom the iPod Touch allows seamless access to digital content, be it music, games, news or utilities. The combination of image and text we are used to experiencing in magazines is ideally suited to this environment. 

I rely on the Internet hour to hour, but as well as the open interaction it allows me I’d also like a more immersive, mediated digital content experience that is less open-ended than a website and provides the ongoing relationship I experience with magazines.

The future will be a mix of both. Printed magazines will continue to exist alongside digital magazines of some sort, whether its the iPad that proves the catalyst or not.

Dieter Rams: Ten Principles For Good Design

Although these originally applied to product design, I think Rams' principles for good design apply to the design world as a whole. I agree with the majority of these and so think they are important to include in my design context book. I think that the last one is especially important to consider when designing.

From: http://www.vitsoe.com/en/gb/about/dieterrams/gooddesign

Back in the early 1980s, Dieter Rams was becoming increasingly concerned by the state of the world around him – “an impenetrable confusion of forms, colours and noises.” Aware that he was a significant contributor to that world, he asked himself an important question: is my design good design?

As good design cannot be measured in a finite way he set about expressing the ten most important principles for what he considered was good design. (Sometimes they are referred as the ‘Ten commandments’.)

Here they are:

Good Design Is Innovative
The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.

 Good Design Makes A Product Useful
A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasises the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.

Good Design Is Aesthetic
The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products we use every day affect our person and our well-being. But only well-executed objects can be beautiful.

Good Design Makes A Product Understandable
It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product talk. At best, it is self-explanatory.

Good Design Is Unobtrusive
Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.

Good Design Is Honest
It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.

Good Design Is Longlasting
It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society. 

Good Design Is Thorough Down To The Last Detail
Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the consumer.

Good Design Is Environmentally Friendly
Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimises physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product. 

Good Design Is As Little Design As Possible

Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

Till Wiedeck

Till Wiedeck is a designer from Berlin with some lovely print work. His work features a lot of geometric shapes within the designs which I think helps them to stand out. He combines bold logos with simple type and a good use of processes to create some great branding work. I really like the black on black used in the last image as it makes it look quite mysterious.

Stamp Website Graphics

This is the main splash page of the Royal Mail website. They have a banner to advertise the special edition music stamps.

They then have a page that displays all the special stamp ranges together.

If you click on the music stamps it leads to page which has an image of each of the products within the music range, a description and the price with the option to add it to your shopping basket.

They also have a special website to promote the stamps which has an iTunes promotion, information about the stamp designs and the editions that are available to buy.

E-Cards

This is the form on the e-cards.com website. You have to choose from a list of options, add your info and write a personal message. This then sends an email with the card graphic and a postcard style image that delivers the message to the email recipient.

Most e-card websites use a similar format, the main difference is that some e-cards are animated. But due to my lack of animation skills I think I'll stick with the plain graphic.

Design Context Proposal

This is a screenshot of my design context proposal. I tried to think of the different design elements that have to be taken into account when designing an editorial publication as the chapter headings. After chatting with Fred I added 'Budget/Cost' as one of the chapters as this has a large impact on the amount of advertisements and original content, especially the design style of the magazine.

Presentation Feedback

After doing my presentation this morning, I got some useful feedback from Lorenzo and Justin. They seemed to think that using the title 'What Is Good Design?' was way too broad for me to be able to research and that a more limiting title would focus my research so that it is specific to my interests and development. Therefore I have decided to change the working title to 'What Is Effective Editorial Design?'.

They also said that my chapters were a bit vague as there is so much more to think about when focusing on just editorial design. So I need to add more chapters and as I research and select the information I wish to include in the publication, these chapters will be sectioned into sub-chapters. This will aid the order and clarity of my book.

Otherwise they seemed quite happy with the kind of work I was looking at, my thought process and how I have been researching editorial design so far.

Design Context Presentation

My umbrella statement as a designer is type and layout for publication design with an emphasis on grids/modernism. I want to design mainly editorial work and for the delivery of information. Clarity, legibility and communication with an audience are of utmost importance to me as these are some of the things that I feel define good design. I am mainly interested in print based design as reading a publication online is nowhere near as good as holding one in your hands but web design always has been an interest of mine so I try to seek out ways to extend my work onto a web format. This is something I aim to do with the briefs I have chosen.


The first brief I started work on was the continuation of my In/Visible Grids exhibition from the Design Practice module. So far this term I have designed the tickets for the exhibition and experimented with perforation techniques as ways of showing that the ticket has been used. For this brief I still have to design an exhibition catalogue and a piece of merchandise but this is a long running brief so its kind of on the back burner at the minute.


My next brief is an RSA Design Directions brief to create a set of limited edition postage stamps for Royal Mail. I chose the theme of Valentine’s Day to base the stamps around. After trying out some different ideas I went with stamps which say ‘I love you more than something’. I then realised that this was quite a boring idea and a good way to make it more exciting would be by having a leading statement printed on the stamp and then give the sender a set of letters to stick their own response onto it. This would make it personal to the couple. I’m now just designing the stamp packaging and then this brief is done.


I’m also working on a re-design of Pick Me Up magazine. This kind of trashy magazine always have bright colours, jaunty angles, poor quality photographs and bad typography. I’m taking 20 of the real life articles from several issues of Pick Me Up to form the content of the magazine and I will be redesigning these to create a classy editorial publication.


The brief I’ve done the most on is my magic brief. This is an ISTD brief where you have to create a members kit for a magic circle in order to excite teenagers about magic. So far I have designed posters, membership certificates, cards and badges. I am currently working on the accompanying booklet. I need to finish off the booklet and then work on the packaging of the kit. Processes will be important in the finishing of this brief as I want to experiment with foiling, varnish and embossing as ways of revealing the secrets of magic.


For my Design Context book, I’m looking at what is considered to be ‘good’ design. There are 5 chapters, all of which are things that I think are important in the design process. These are typography, layout, process, interaction and communication. The chapters will consist of my definition of what is good about each of these design elements followed by case studies of studios who exemplify this and their opinions on good design. This will generate further content as I research the kind of work that inspires them.


I have identified 5 publications that I perceive to be consistently well designed. These are Nylon magazine, Dazed & Confused, No Zine, Station magazine and the EFFP View magazine. I will contact the art directors of these publications as they will most likely know more about editorial design than most people.


I have also identified many studios and designers whose work I constantly look to for inspiration. They are all people who are involved in publication design. These include Music in Manchester and Pentagram in London.


Some others are Sort Design, Shaz Madani, D8, Deep, The Consult and Purpose.


And finally I will contact Public in Hertfordshire. As well as these people I have also interviewed several designers already for my dissertation including Antonio Carusone, Adam Nash and Paul Felton. One of the things I asked them was what did they consider to be good design. My dissertation should be a good resource of quotes and opinions for my design context book as I looked at the importance of the grid within design and this often led back to a debate about what good design really is. I now need to contact all of these studios and hopefully will get a good level of response.

Stamp Packaging Sizes

 

  

  

Now that I'm creating the full range of stamp products for the brief I decided to look at how the normal stamps are packaged as well as the special editions. The packaging has some interesting information on the back of the pack about what the stamps are valid for and the contact details for Royal Mail. I think I need to add these and a barcode onto my limted edition packaging before I print the final version. The dimensions for this packaging is 80x58mm and the front panel is a bit shorter at 75mm so I will need to cut off half a centimeter from the front.

Qube Konstrukt

Looking at the work of Australian design studio Qube Konstrukt is really inspirational. Their work is really clean and features some of the Modernist principles that I admire oh so much. They do loads of really nice branding:

 

  

  

The stationary they did for Cream uses black and white with gold foil which what I want to do with my magic brief. They also do loads of publication work:

  

  

  

 

I really like this last spread with the columns of text at different heights and the different shades of black working to create the imagery. As well as their work for their clients, Qube Konstrukt's website is a great example of what you can do with indexhibit.

 

This looks loads better than any of the portfolio websites done on the course. All of ours are a bit samey, I might re-do mine so it stands out more like this one.