Noisy Decent Graphics

Letterpress: Forward thinking

That looks good. Tickets etc here.

The Metro sent me a blog post

The Metro sent me this the other day. It's a marketing mailshot pretending to be from the future.

It's spectacularly bad.

Not only is it a terrible idea with no purpose and little thought, it's really badly executed. The craft is shocking. The attention to detail non existent. Everything jars.

In the future we will all listen to music on mini CD roms (You can't tell from the picture but that's one of those annoying mini roms that doesn't fit in a laptop.). Who the fuck thought that up?

Contact lenses. Er, yep. I have no idea why they sent this, there's no obvious call to action. I can only assume it was meant for media buyers, maybe? Someone needs to give the mailshot list buying people a bollocking. After the creatives. And the production people.

They did include this toy solar powered car, which is pretty cool. Marketing people - send more toys!

Papercamp 2 - review

Today was one of those days that's hard to explain to the in-laws.

You know, what are you doing today? Is it work? Is it with people from work? Is it with friends? Is it a conference? Is it for fun? No, yes, all of those and more. But also less. Something, everything and nothing.

Stuff is happening at the moment that I feel we'll look back upon and enjoy saying, I was there. Papercamp was one of those.

(more pictures here)

It's Nice That 4

I was at the launch of It's Nice That 4 last night.

Alex and Will did a sort of 'live magazine' where contributors explained their stuff fomr the magazine in short presentations. It worked very well, interesting evening. You should buy a copy.

But I want to talk about colours.

The colours they photograph these magazines on are fantastic. Sure, it's a pretty simple concept, yellow on green. But THAT yellow with THAT green. Awesome.

THAT pink, THAT green, THAT yellow, THAT blue. Really sharp colours that ping out. Every single time. Picking the exact colour, that's a reall skill. A simple thing that makes the world of difference.

 

 

PaperCamp 2 this Saturday

PaperCamp 2 is happening this Saturday. Come along, it will be nice to see you there.

Crafts people, developers, designers, writers, anyone! SIGN UP IT IS FREE.

Follows, blurb:

Papercamp 1 was like this: http://adactio.com/journal/1546

Papercamp 2 will be the same but different:

It's been thrown together rather opportunistically because the venue suddenly became available, so there won't be as many visitors from foreign lands.

There'll be lots more making stuff, courtesy of Stu Bannocks and his gang: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42665617@N07/sets/72157624859532351/

There'll be quick talks from the stage. Let us know if you fancy doing one - email Matt: [email protected].

There'll be tea and biscuits.

We'll be starting at 12, going to 5 and then heading for the pub.

It'll be at the Conway Hall, Red Lion Square. this Saturday - October 9th.

 

 

Pictures taken by Matt Jones who is in my list of the top 10 best people ever.

 

Photo advice

I've been working a lot with Guy Featherstone at w+k recently and one thing he keeps saying, which I think is advice worth repeating,

"No such thing as a bad photo only a bad crop".

He didn't invent that, someone else did, but I can't rememeber who right now. I'll get back to you.

UPDATE: Guy says it was Terry Jones from i-D magazine who said that. Bizarrely Terry's wikipedia page has been deleted so check out this Eye interview with him instead.

Words social media have stolen from us

I keep seeing these all over Shoreditch. I have no idea what they're for, though I could probably find out if I spent a few minutes Googling. Whenever I see them I just think about Facebook.

But more than that, I somehow want to 'like' them for real. Walk up to them and press a button, like, like, like! They make me smile, they make me feel like liking stuff. I like them. I might put them on Facebook so I can like them.

There are other words that Social Media have stolen from us. Post is another obvious one. Post and Like, simple words with new added context. (Nothing wrong with that, just saying.)

Worth pointing out that Russell was on to this back in 2006.

Some things I noticed this week.

This week and last week really as I've been ill in bed most of this week. But anyway.

It was National Cup Cake Week. Strangely ignored by Magic FM.

You can now get Pizza, On Demand! Which must be better than when you had to wait 20 minutes.

Soho is awesome. As ever.

Newspapers look good hung on a ladder. Who knew? Ruby knew that's who.

Romanians are a profound bunch.

 

Ads that are better than ads.

The other day I had to get a train from Tonbridge into London.

In one of the waiting rooms these people were displaying some ads.

I think this is a smart idea and a good use of the space. Better than, you know, adverts.

It follows the advice, if you can't be beautiful and incredible then be useful. Lots of people would say useful is better any way.

 

 

Boston

I'll be in Boston on Tuesday 12th and Wednesday 13th October. Anyone fancy a coffee?

ITV and Clay Shirky

I was at home ill today and I was watching something on the ITV iPlayer thing.

When the ads came on, this little graphic appeared in the bottom right hand corner.

Why don't they do that on real telly? That would be good wouldn't it? It would be helpful, useful.

It reminds me of something Clay did at SXSW that really stuck with me; at the start of his talk his said he was going to talk about three things and then listed what they were. That kind of sign posting is very effective. Smart and helpful. It gives you an idea where you are in the talk, it stops you getting bored. It helps pace your expecations. ITV could learn from that.

 

 

Look what I had framed

Framing shops, often expensive, inconvenient and rude. But oh so sweet when you get the end result back.

Blogging is coming back

Lots has happened since my plea to 'make blogging good again'. The good news is it seems like blogging is finally making a comeback.

The above picture is from Iain who has joined to the campaign to start 'blogging like it's 2004'. 

Warren Ellis is in too. Coincidently he'd written something similar to my plea earlier in the day.

Katy is in, although she wants to blog like it's 2000 as 2004 wasn't a good year for her blog. (No problem with that.)

Paul is in, he needs a redesign first though.

Russel, being the proactive type, has actually just started blogging like it's 2004.

And as a coincidence the day I wrote that post, Kottke built on my 'Helveticas to the moon' post which in turn got linked to by Boing Boing which sent hits through the roof.

I think blogging is back.

Cache Rules Everything Around Me

Cache Rules Everything Around Me from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

It was Michael Buble's birthday today

To celebrate I started the day by having breakfast with Russell. We discussed country hotels, constant rejection and Matt Le Tissier.

 

Then I had some time to spare before a meeting so I sat down by some water and did some thinking, sketched some ideas and sent a few emails.

Because one of the roles I hold is the Creative Director of the Guardian advertising account for Wieden & Kennedy I had various meetings at the Guardian and the Observer today. Too many too list here but I did manage to get a few photos.

This is the Reverend Dan Catt he makes digital magic. Here he is inspecting a camera I passed to him from one of my earlier meetings. He is not upside down he has a massive beard and a shaved head.

I think the Guardian would be a nice place to work. Everyone gets a parrot on their screen when they start.

Picture from Jason, obviously.

Then I cycled home missing my Personal Best by an agonising two seconds. Two seconds! It wasn't all bad news, I discovered Jason Kottke had written this awesome post based on my 'How many helveticas does it take to get to the moon?' thought.

A good day.

Er...

When I was copying and pasting quotes from that Esquire article mentioned in the last post it automatically added a link back to the article!

The internet eh?

And old fashioned link to an article

A good interesting article that Russell emailed me. It's an interview with J Mays, Ford's Chief Designer.

There's lots of good stuff there. Here's a few quotes.

"Clichés are more correct than we give them credit for."

"A designer is only as good as what he or she knows. If all you know is what you've garnered from fifteen years of living in Detroit, it's going to limit what you can lay down. If you've had experiences around the world, you'll be able to design a much richer story for people to enjoy."

"They're not writing songs about cars anymore."

Read the full article here.

Let's make blogging good again

Picture from Russell, usual stuff applies

I don't think blogging is as good as it used to be. It's lost a little magic.

I know this is down to rise (and ease of use) of Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and all them but I miss blogging. Proper old fashioned blogging, like this and this and this.

So let's bring it back. Let's make blogging great again. Come on, we can do it.

I don't know how to do it, but I'm sure that just by writing this everyone will just start making blogging better. That's what used to happen. In the old days.

I've got some meetings today. I might start by blogging about them.

A ship called Dignity

As spotted by Doug E Fresh, the man, the legend, the meme.

Come on, someone out there must know Ricky Ross? Anyone?

Spotify link.

Sometimes you gotta love Google