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It's been a great few weeks as a Noisy Decent resident and the time has flown by. But like all good things it must come to an end. Normality must resume, Ben must come home, the standard of writing must go up, and I must go to Dorset.
But I'll look back on the time here fondly, remembering the happy hours spent with Ben's toys and friends, collecting birds eggs and running in the long grass.
It's been a pleasure.
Thanks. Matt.
The second thing is that a friend of mine, a very talented friend, a suspiciously autistic-natured friend, held a private view this evening of his most recent illustrations. His name is Jim Stoten, and the exhibition is called Studies of Another Place which runs until September 25 at Super Superficial, Fouberts Place, London.
Of the work he's got on show is a piece measuring just A2 in size but which took 3 years to finish (not the one above). This might sound a touch self-indulgent until you see the style – the most intricate pen work with fantastic designs within fantastic designs. Really rather special.
I've got a dilemma – I'm off on my summer holiday from Saturday so set aside this evening for the penultimate Noisy Decent Graphics post, but there are two things that I really want to share. So I'm breaking a key blogging rule by publishing both at once.
So onto the first thing...
Stefanie Posavec evaluates words, rhythms, and punctuation within writing.
This image is taken from Part One of On the Road by Jack Kerouac. What Stefanie has done here is divide the text into chapters, chapters into paragraphs, paragraphs into sentences, and sentences into words. Everything is colour-coded according to key themes in the literature. It's a style of representing text that aims to visually compare the writing styles of different authors. A beautiful style of information presentation that I haven't seen before.
It's an interesting one that.
I was chatting about this very thing to a mate over a barbecued sausage over the weekend. There's an argument which says that the most reproduced image is one taken of the Earth by the astronauts onboard Apollo 17.
But I can understand that it had an massive impact in the way we saw the planet, and I imagine that there aren't all that many other options of the Earth from this distance to choose from, and not to be underestimated – it was, as still is, readily available for reproduction. But what I found interesting is that it's not the kind of image which springs to mind as being super common.
The ones that jumped to the fore tended to be the iconic ones like the Raising the flag on Iwo Jima
or Phan Thị Kim Phúc
or a windy Marilyn Monroe
But these are no-doubt in the shadow of the portrait of Che Guevara
and a little black mouse.
But I'm going to challenge the Apollo 17 image of the Earth with the Queen. Of the different media that carry her mug – stamps, coins, banknotes, and err mugs, I think that the coins might be more heavily reproduced than the others as her portrait turns up on the face of all Commonwealth coins, whereas this isn't the case with stamps and banknotes. Of her four coinage portraits I reckon her most recent one by Ian Rank-Broadley used from 1998 might be the most common.
But I'm prepared to be challenged on this...
Meets the dirtiest shoes.
Squeezed between the boxes of wine and rounds of cheese that I brought back from France this weekend was a packet of Kellogg's Corn Flakes. Why? Because the mascot – Cornelius Cockerel – had a pupil! The Corn Flakes mascot that I know doesn't have a pupil. What's going on?
(French Corn Flakes)
(UK Corn Flakes)
This might appear fairly insignificant for the amount of valuable Terrett blog space it occupies, but hang on there - I've got a case to make.
Kellogg's Corn Flakes has a rare spot on our shelves – it's a cereal that has a mascot which isn't a caricature; it's not a Tony the Tiger, Coco the Monkey, Snap, Crackle or Pop.
The Kellogg's cockerel has suffered at the hands of a redraw or two that introduced beveled edges, highlights, gradients and drop shadows, but it has kept its integrity.
If we begin down the line of introducing a pupil, pretty soon we'll be back here. And let's face it, no-one wants to look at that first thing in the morning.
Ben's asked me to remind you to vote for him to be elected to the D&AD Executive Committee. Go on, I did.
His original post runs below:
Short version: Would you be so kind as to vote for me to be elected to the D&AD Executive Committee? You can do so by clicking here and using your membership number to log on, or if that is too tiresome you can email [email protected]. Voting only eligible to members who have been in the book.
Long version: A few weeks ago I met with Tiffany from D&AD and we discussed a few things and she also asked me to put my name forward for the Executive Committee.
I thought about it for a while and spoke to some people who are on the Committee and who have been on it previously. And I decided to stand. Tony Davidson and Matt Dent were kind enough to nominate me.
The Exec Committee is a slightly strange thing, but it would appear that they are after some 'younger' representation and some people who aren't in Tokyo/New York/São Paulo when the meetings take place 6 times a year.
In Design there are 9 other people on the list (which is quite a lot) and we've all had to write a manifesto and include a CV. To save you some time my manifesto is below and my CV is here.
I’m sure you have lots of these to get through and many of them will be sesquipedalian, so I’ll keep mine short.
I’m sure there are many things I have in common other exec members (a passion for creativity and a belief in education, for example) but if elected to the D&AD Committee I hope to specifically add the following attributes.
1. I will turn up.
A friend of mine was kicked off a committee at the RCA once, “I missed two meetings” he said, “and they wrote to me and said if I couldn’t commit to the panel they didn’t want me on it”. I’ve had the luxury of learning from his mistakes and don’t commit to things I’m not passionate about.
2. I don’t mind looking at spreadsheets.
Seriously. I run a small business and I sit in meetings with accountants. I actually enjoy those meetings. I like to think I’m not afraid of an empty A4 sheet or an empty balance sheet.
3. I am your design audience.
95% of the design community is like me. Exactly like me. Did the same stuff at college, scrabble round for the same work, worry about the same things, bookmark the same pictures on Ffffound.
4. I can blog.
I don’t really think this is important, but I know other people do. I would like to use the stuff I’ve learned from blogging (that’s another manifesto) to help the D&AD spread the word to more people in new ways.
I hope you’ll give me the honour of joining you on the committee
The D&AD isn't perfect (nor is my manifesto) but it's our organisation and we'd be a poorer industry without it.
The election is only open to Members, so if you'd be so kind to pop over here and read all the manifestos and if you decide to vote for me that would be grand. Thank you very much.
A combination I've never seen before.
I've been trying to find a commercial design with these three combined, but the closest I've been able to come are the AnimalFlowers posters by Hanna Werning.
I thought I'd come up with a great idea the other day. I had to wrap a friend's prezzie in a rush, so grabbed some song lyrics off the internet, type set it all nice, and printed it out. Hey presto – rapping paper.
I'd got my business plan halfway done, ordered the stationery and was all ready to go global, when I discovered someone out there had already thought of it. Oh well.
But I still like what I've done so I thought I'd share it with you.
If you like any of them, you can download the top one here, the second one here, and the last one here to use for your own rapping paper.
Points go to those that can name the Song, Artist, Typeface and Typeface Designer.
Road markings are commonplace but it's rare you actually see them get painted. It is a sight to behold.
I used to do jujutsu (before I got a girlfriend), and once-upon-a-time I went to the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham for this jujutsu competition. It was pretty special because you got to watch the dans fight. They were super-elegant, and so full of power and control. This fella writing 'bus stop' on the road was no less graceful than those jujutsu masters.
No errors, no repeats, just complete confidence.
I had a few ideas on posts lined up as I approached my term here, but to throw the net out I asked my friends and family if there was anything they thought was worthy of your attention.
Now, we've all seen box office figures - week gross, ranking change on last week, number of weeks on release etc. It's normally presented in tables - nothing special. But my friend Emma told me about this, and it has totally blown the posts I had in mind out of the water.
It's easier to understand than the conventional way of presenting this type of information, you can track the success of films over time at a glance, you can see how oscar success impacts on ticket sales, plus it's beautiful. I'm scratching my head wondering why they don't use this method of presenting information more often.
Thanks Emma.
Welcome to August, I'm Matt Dent.
If you're here for the insightful design commentary and the witty observations you'd be best to come back from September. But if it's mindless blogging that you're after, then welcome – you're going to enjoy this month.
I've got some big shoes to fill and I'm going to give it my very best efforts. Fortunately, Ben has told me that his readers are all very nice and I have nothing to worry about.
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