World AIDS Day

December 1st marks the start of Advent, and for some a chocolaty countdown to Christmas. December 1st is also World AIDS day, something I was reminded of when caught sight this morning of a red looped ribbon trampled into the ground.

The BBC has produced an interesting retrospective of posters promoting an awareness of the syndrome. The narration indicates how in dealing with a global problem, different messages have been constructed for different demographics with distinctive relationships to HIV/AIDS. In one instance, a poster targeted at African American women addresses the risk of catching Aids as a consequence of crack-fuelled, unsafe sex with a direct slogan: “CRACK… SEX… AIDS.” condensing the problem into three memorable words. A woman holds up a condom by way of a solution. A different poster aimed at respectable, middle-aged New Yorkers warns that any individual may have with AIDS with the statistic “more than 8000 New Yorkers over 50 years old have been diagnosed with AIDS”. The intention is to reduce risky sexual encounters as a result of complacency. In both cases the advice is the same, in the latter example expressed in words: “use a condom every time you have sex”. HIV/AIDS though remains a pandemic, with particularly high rates of infection in South Africa, where a culture of government-lead denialism has contributed to the problem. Better understanding of HIV and better access to antiretroviral drugs will help to reduce rates of infection and bring AIDS under control.

Label

When I was at primary school I jumped on the ‘school magazine’ bandwagon, though sooner rather than later. Multiple A3 photocopies folded together into a crude black-and-white publication, and sold to a queue of supportive/sympathetic parents in the assembly hall before lessons began. We raised a small amount of money for the school, and in so doing they didn’t dictate the content, so I suppose what we did was entrepreneurial (I still remember haggling on the sale price with the headmistress). To the best of my recollection, my project – imaginatively titled ‘School Mag’ – had the longest run of all… two issues; it was the end of year six that curtailed operations. To speed things along, the wise thing would have been not to insist on doing the whole thing myself, and share some of the responsibilities. The lessons of life.

Roll forward twelve years and I am part of an all-together more sophisticated and slicker operation: working on Label magazine’s design team. Label is a free fortnightly magazine produced by Loughborough Students Media. The design team, of which I am part, is responsible for coalescing text and graphics. We read the content in advance and request photographs and illustrations from the section heads, or else source them ourselves. Then, over two evenings we design the section we have been allocated, which changes from week to week. Into the early hours of a Wednesday morning the editors and section heads edit and package everything together so that by Friday the magazine is printed and Loughborough students can read what’s going on in their dining halls and flats.

You can view back issues of Label from this year online here, but here are some my favourite spreads that I have designed (I also designed the Sports logo because previously we didn’t have one).

Life

Google Books, one of my favourite research sites, now boasts a large collection of Life magazine issues from decades ago that can be read in their entirety for free. They are an interesting opportunity to evaluate the design choices of yesteryear, some of which stand up well in my opinion. I particularly like the graphic cover of the July 14, 1952 edition: a hung-over man – scrappily drawn and worse-for-wear – sporting a bolt through his head.

Turn a few pages, however, and the design becomes less timeless: advertisements for toothpaste with “active chlorophyll”, ‘safer’ cigarettes, and another for cleaning products that asks ‘Should men wash dishes?’ and decides that the wife will probably do them. Though to look at this another way, we have our modern equivalents: skin cosmetics that use a bull-shitty jargon of ‘Boswelox’ and ‘collagen biospheres’ to cloak themselves in a medicinal air, alcohol advertising in the face of a binge-drinking culture and cleaning adverts that still depict women as the completer of domestic chores, all be it because her husband is too inept. Despite this lengthy introduction my intention is not to look at social history through the lens of graphic design.

   

I came across The Telegraph’s reproduction of Lennart Nilsson’s photographs from the book A Child is Born. These photographs – including the very first of a living embryo inside the womb – created a storm when they were first published in Life in 1965. It occurred to me that I might be able to see them in this context, and this issue is also available to view on Google Books here, with the article Drama of Life Before Birth on page 54.

Any designer worth their salt should find nature inspiring, particularly the origins of human life. It’s humbling and bizarre to consider our microscopic and alien origins. This photograph shows a five week old embryo with a very rudimentary face. At some point we all looked like this (and indeed some enthusiastic gurners still can). These pictures emphasise the commonality of all humans, before age, culture and society make their mark on us and send us on individual convergent paths, good and bad. In this light they only reinforce the idea that all we should treat all people as equals in the same manner as we would wish to be treated. But they also remind us of our fragility as biological machines, and in a form more pleasing than a raging hangover, a.k.a. a bolt through the head.

A propaganda failure

The study of propaganda makes you more sensitive to the examples you see about you every day. For my dissertation I am exploring the nature of propaganda and government, and propaganda’s ability to reproduce or resist the imbalance of power in society. When The Sun newspaper publicly proclaimed their support for the Conservative Party before the Labour Party conference, it positioned itself as form of resistant propaganda seeking to bring about political change, and marked the end of Rupert Murdoch’s support for New Labour. A cynical view would be that this switch was a reflection of growing support for The Conservatives, whom The Daily Telegraph places in the recent polls at 41% to Labour’s 28%, and was a move designed to ingratiate Murdoch with the probable future leaders of the country, rather than a sudden change in the newspaper owner’s political beliefs. Regardless of the reason, The Sun recently launched a campaign directed against the Prime Minister, accusing him of writing an inconsiderate hand-written letter of sympathy to the mother of deceased Guardsman Jamie Janes in Afghanistan. Nick Robinson points out that the issue of the letter’s legibility and possible spelling mistakes, are being used by The Sun as a proxy for the “more important debate about whether ‘our boys’ are fighting and dying in vain”. As propaganda it has somewhat backfired, with growing sympathy for the attack on Gordon Brown due to his eye-sight and his reputation for poor handwriting. It seems The Sun has misjudged the overall mood of the country, or at least the mood of those who oppose the war and believe Gordon Brown’s foreign policy in Afghanistan to be wrong. People may believe the government can do more to supply and reinforce the armed forces, to reduce the rate of casualties, but this issue is separate to that of Gordon Brown’s sincerity in his expressions of sympathy.

The letter as it appeared in The Sun with the caption: "Shoddy ... Pm's scrawled, barely legible letter with errors highlighted"

Charles and Ray weren’t brothers…

…as I first assumed (years ago).

I am slightly disappointed by the frequency with which I have been writing blog posts recently. It is probably for my benefit more so than for anyone else, because I always feel that essay-writing is an excellent way to learn, and to consolidate what you know. If you can put down in words some new perception or something that you have learned, and structure it in a way that is clear and coherent, then you go a long way in reinforcing your knowledge and benefit from being able to scrutinise it. I consider this to be the closest thing that I do to keeping a diary, as I see that my study of design inevitably shapes my personality; being a designer is not so much a profession that you can step in and out of as a lifestyle that demands that on some level your mind is always at work.

Why I am writing this…

I was very satisfied today to have something affirmed that I have suspected for a while. Eames Demetrious – in his talk The design genius of Charles + Ray Eames – recalled a ‘brutal’ quote of his grandfather (Charles): “The extent to which you have a design style is the extent to which you have not solved the design problem”. At times I have considered whether I have a style; previously, I decided that I did not, and saw this as something that would develop as my designing improved, partly based upon some advice I had been given. Later, after reading Paul Rand, who said not to confuse style with form, I concluded the absence of a style is probably a good thing. In abundance it highlights predetermined thinking and therefore laziness. A good designer bases their original solutions on a solid bed of research.

My recent preoccupation has been the design field in which I could or should specialise. I feel a pressure to choose, but my tendency is to not want to be pigeon-holed, mainly because I feel that design skills are translatable across different mediums. This all-encompassing view of design is one shared by Charles and Ray Eames; at least, this is the impression I gather from Demetrious’ talk. Throughout their career the couple worked with film and animation in parallel with furniture design and architectural projects. Whilst it is a fascinating talk, it is not very well structured and goes at a very fast pace, so I shall have to return to it again. On the theme of design boundaries, I was rather impressed by something drawn to my attention by Barbra Streisand in her recent Jonathan Ross interview, which rather persuaded me that my view of design was a natural one. Streisand loves architecture, the design of buildings inside and out, and has done her own interior design work. She remarked that she would design her own clothes to match the wallpaper and to avoid colour clashes. However, she later discovered that the great architects like Frank Lloyd Wright would design the dresses for the women who lived in their houses so that they would complement their surroundings. As she said herself: “how wonderful”.

Mrs Darwin D. Martin, c.1910 in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who probably also designed the dress.

Process

Design is a verb and a noun: a process and an outcome. The two are inextricably linked but are seldom presented together for your consideration. Sketchbooks and other outlets for ideas add a different dimension to the study of design by exposing the thought process behind polished pieces of work that appear as entirely natural and effortless solutions to briefs they answer. Paul Rand, to some extent, managed his own reputation as a brilliant designer through the careful presentation of his thought process in the boardroom. The design of a logo such as for NeXT Software, which may have taken months of careful work and consideration, is presented by Rand in a condensed and carefully designed presentation booklet. Each design problem is articulately written, and the next page reveals another defined step in the logo’s evolution. This format was appropriate for the purpose of his presentation to client Steve Jobs, but his sketchbooks would probably be more interesting to the designer wanting to learn more about Rand’s mindset. In seeing discarded ideas and the organic flow of critical thought, the ability of the sketchbook to penetrate the mindset of a revered designer such as Rand, or indeed an accomplished painter such as Turner (whose sketchbooks are easily accessible online), can sometimes make the sketchbook more interesting than the outcomes to which they lead.

In the particular case of ‘Harry’ Beck and his design work for the iconic London Underground map, the drawings catalogued in Mr Beck’s Underground Map tell an interesting story. Beck proposed an abstract but functionally brilliant redesign to the map that resolved the problem of being able to clearly show the central, denser part of the network – its lines and stations – in relation to the sprawling outer regions. In return for giving copyright to London Transport, Beck was assured that he would be called upon to oversee future redesigns. The book documents with Beck’s sketches, drawings and letters of correspondence, his slavish devotion to refining the map and responding to changes to the network. It is also a story of his attempts to regain control when others were commissioned in his place to mess-up his map. Though Beck found himself in the wilderness after 1959 when he was excluded from further redesigns, he still continued his own work as a form of therapy with “piles of sketches on the bedside table, even under the bed”. That he regarded it as a labour of love even though his maps fell on blind eyes is slightly poignant, but makes this unmistakable piece of design even more interesting.

Harry Beck's first sketch for the London Underground map, 1931

Resistance

In the middle of The Second World War a 10-minute cartoon premiered in Nazi Germany. Weather-beaten Melody follows the story of a wasp flying through a meadow who comes across an abandoned phonograph and inadvertently brings it to life by dragging his stinger across the record. Soon, insects and wildlife from all around are dancing together and enjoying the new sound brought to the countryside. It is a remarkable artefact, not just for the level of skill required to achieve some difficult animation techniques, such as rotoscoping, which would rival the sophistication of Walt Disney’s output of that time. More significant is the content and the themes that the cartoon portrays for a work produced under the scrutiny and with the finance of a racist, totalitarian state. There is a strong element of escapism to the story in the way that the creatures throw off the shackles of work, and this was typical of a significant majority of German propaganda directed at a war-weary population. However what is surprising is the way in which the cartoon challenges Nazi social and cultural beliefs in its portrayal of a diverse, happy community.

Nazi doctrine deemed many races and cultures to be inferior and dangerous to the National Socialist movement. To this end many forms of popular music from America, such as Jazz, were banned outright and could not be played or listened to. German musicians responded to the ban with Swing, which was a close but tolerated relation to Jazz, sans saxophone. One such example is the song featured in the cartoon written by Bruno Balz. Around this music an eclectic mix of creatures, a clear metaphor for a cosmopolitan society, socialise and live together peacefully. This contrasts sharply with the Nazi’s treatment of East European prisoners of war, many of whom died in captivity or were murdered, as were innocent Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses amongst the civilian populations of the countries the Nazis occupied. Perhaps the conflict between director Fischerkoesen’s message of tolerance against the prevalent practise of discrimination served to confuse some of the people who saw the film, and made them question the morality of their leaders. The impact of such of a film is very difficult to measure without written testimony, but as an artifact of resistance it provides some comfort, that even in the darkest chapters of human history there were sophisticated attempts to subvert and change a corrupt system from within.

How to build a browser-friendly website

I have been overhauling my website these last few weeks: adding content, improving the design of the layout, and re-writing the code from near-scratch. It was a steep and tedious learning curve. Forever will I be grateful to the technical geeks that litter internet forums and blogs, fielding questions that have been asked many or few times and making my life a little easier each time I hit a brick wall. Usually this wall is in the form of Internet Explorer, which I now despise. That should be too strong an emotion for a piece of software to induce, but I fully support .net magazine’s Bring Down IE6 campaign. This particular version is too old to be used in 2009, and its continued use is a burden to innovative website design; in their words the campaigners ask if it is “finally time to take IE6 behind the shed and shoot it”? Thankfully, I have now addressed my concerns about my website’s accessibility, as every page I host is now standards compliant XHTML. This means that every modern browser should render my website the way I intended.

Each project includes scans of the related sketchbook presented alongside; additional projects have been added and are now categorised by date with a separate category for competition briefs completed outside of university. This weblog has also been reformatted to match the rest of website. However, for me the biggest change is in the code, and ditching old habits to move with the times to create a more accessible website. These are my recommendations for creating a modern website:

1. Understand what the doctype means and does to make sure you are using the most suitable one. It can affect how browsers render your webpage and determine whether code is understood or not. For example if you are using deprecated html tags (like <font>) you may need a ‘transitional’ rather than ‘strict’ doctype.

2. Specify font sizes in ems or percentages. Web browsers have a default font size that individual users can change to suit their needs. It is commonly set to 16px. You can set all font sizes in relation to the default using ‘em’s or percentages, so for most people 1em would equal 16px and 0.5em would equal 8px.

3. Similarly, specify heights, widths and margins in ems or percentages where possible. That way divs in you layout can be scaled in relation to the default font size, and there is less chance of it breaking if someone increases the font size.

4. Don’t use tables to create your webpage’s layout. This was common before CSS was widely supported by browsers. Instead you should use divs to structure your content and leave tables for presenting tabular data. Your pages should load quicker and be rendered properly for years to come.

5. Don’t use javascript to create rollover effects. This is the method employed before CSS was properly supported. CSS can be used to create instantaneous rollover effects. This is better as the rollover effect works for internet users who have javascript disabled.

There is more information readily available on the internet as these issues have been covered and discussed for years, so go forth and make browser-friendly websites.

Just for the sake of it

   
Coca-Cola advertisements from 1936 (left) and 2007 (right)

The strength of the Coca-Cola brand is its visibility in a competitive drinks market. The world-famous logo remains remarkably distinct and unchanged after 120 years, and for this reason it is easily recognised by generations of consumers. Its heritage inspires confidence and induces loyalty, playing on our conservative instinct to buy goods with which we are familiar and comfortable. However, branding alone is not responsible for the success (or potential failure) of a product such as Coca-Cola. Branding is a process by which objects are made to seem to be more than the sum of their parts; it transforms an ordinary product into a unique commodity. Above all, the integrity of the product must be preserved. It is the foundation on which emotional attachment to a brand it built. This means consistently delivering a product to a specification and a high level of quality, to build a brand’s credibility. If, as occurred in 1985, the Coca-Cola recipe was to change substantially then the correlation with the brand would weaken to an extent where sales would suffer.

All lowercase = fail. Also a missed opprtunity to reunite text and graphic

Altering the brand of a product, particularly the logo, is a greater temptation, and one which cola rival Pepsi seem unable to resist. In autumn 2008 Pepsi unveiled the biggest overhaul to their logo since the introduction of the blue and white globe. It subscribes to an annoying school of thought that says that in order to appear modern and trendy you should only use lower-case letters. On a word like ‘Pepsi’, which now begins with a descending ‘p’, this looks particularly stupid. I don’t believe there is the same of justification for this redesign as existed half a century ago when Pepsi needed to distance itself from its biggest rival.

Pepsi and Coca-Cola in 1940

Pepsi Cola is quite an old brand, albeit one that has had many face-lifts. The drink was first formulated in 1898, 12 years after Coca-Cola. It was given the name Pepsi-Cola in 1903 and shortened to Pepsi in 1962. Pepsi-Cola’s first logo was designed to mirror Coca-Cola with an elaborate red script; the intention was probably to share in Coca-Cola’s success by making the two products harder to differentiate. However, the problem with this strategy is that it risks presenting the product as an inferior copy unable to stand up on its own merits. The best decision that PepsiCo’s marketing department made was to drop the script in favour of clean sans-serif capitals. The addition of the Pepsi globe originated from a patriotic move made during the Second World War when red, white and blue waves were added to the bottle cap. It evolved and was integrated with the product name. At this point I believe that Pepsi found a logo that could be used to establish a brand identity clearly independent of Coca-Cola, and so it should have remained without need of the regular tinkering it has received in the years since.

Pepsi in the 1960s and 1970s

A logo should transcend changes in style that affect the design of labels, posters and advertisements, and be beacon of consistency when all else around is changing. That way Pepsi can still chase the next ‘Pepsi Generation’ without sacrificing brand recognition, because ultimately that’s how I feel about the new Pepsi logo: I don’t recognise it as symbol of a drink I grew up with, as with Coca-Cola's logo, but see it as a shallow attempt to position Pepsi as part of modern culture. Coca-Cola doesn't respond this way and as a result is a more consistent and confident brand. Pepsi should learn the lesson that logos should not be changed for the sake of change.

Swine Flu

When Parliament takes a much-needed break in the summer, the attention-grabbing headlines which so often rely on political developments tend to dry up. The final Question Time before September gave some clue as to the story that may carry newspapers through the silly season: swine flu. Question Time is an intriguing political program in which audience members award populist statements from the panel, and themselves, with regular rounds of applause. There was a lot of a sentiment surrounding the belief that the media were over-exaggerating the risk of swine flu. One man said that the mortality rate was no higher than for seasonal flu. It may be true that the people who are dying are people with underlying health problems, but the potent fact is that swine flu is spreading fast outside of the traditional flu season. Clive James was perhaps the most reassuring voice when he put our public health in a 50-year context, remarking that our ability to provide vaccines now is far removed from a time not so long ago when polio would visit every street, and whither the limb of a child. Our public health system has indeed come a long way since the founding of the NHS, which will be sorely tested if swine flu becomes a second Spanish influenza pandemic. Until a few years ago when I read about the life of Egon Schiele, who was a high-profile victim of Spanish flu, I wasn’t even aware of this aggressive disease that killed more people in two years than died in the entire First World War. The future of this current influenza is still highly uncertain, though history shows the potential dangers that may test our society.

Whether following an economic or in this instance a public health ‘crisis’ you can rest assured that the BBC will find an interesting way to map it.

This is a simple and efficient piece of design. With a scrollable timeline it makes clear the spread of swine flu from Mexico and the United States to Europe and Asia, and that the number of confirmed cases is mushrooming in Great Britain, unparalleled by other European countries. The important black nucleus of death, however, remains reassuringly small relative to the spread of infection. Whereas graphics such as these have been common to television news reports for years, their presence on the Internet has increased with the proliferation of plug ins (particularly Flash) that have become a standard for the vast majority of web users. The BBC also now embeds videos into the pages of BBC News, something that only became practical with the adoption of Flash, and the increase in bandwidth web users now enjoy. The archived pages of BBC News extending back to the late 1990s indicate stylistic and technological changes that have impacted on the overall design and format of the website, from a time when bits of data trickled to and from a dial-up modem and manifested themselves on a fat, low-resolution CRT monitor, to today, where you will have a better setup. Hopefully. The best reason being the ability to enjoy the BBC News website it all its glory.

To end on a note somewhere closer to swine flu, here's an interesting Flash game where you try to wipe out humanity with a pandemic of your creation: Pandemic II. It is not an attempt at scaremongering.

Graphic designer slash astronaut

Forty years ago the first human being set foot upon another celestial body. This is the cultural significance of Apollo 11’s mission that has endured the decades. It is its political significance that has since declined into irrelevance with the fall of the Soviet Union. We can easily forget that forty years ago the Americans were hoping to make a political statement in their drive to reach the moon first: the triumph of capitalism over socialism. This arena of the Cold War known as the Space Race at least avoided the bloodshed, the human sacrifice and controversy of the Vietnam War, despite the great financial expense involved. It was embraced by an American people who were inspired by President Kennedy’s promise to land a man on the moon before the end of 1969 and “do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”. However, the Apollo missions ended abruptly in 1972 after six successful moon landings when America’s scientific supremacy was proven and the political will to finance further manned space exploration dissipated. The Apollo missions were ahead of their time in that without the political rivalry that existed, the pace of technological development would have been more relaxed and fewer risks would have been taken in order to place a man on the moon. The British astronomer Patrick Moore – whose lunar maps were used by NASA to choose landing sites – had predicted many years ago that the first human landing on the moon would not occur until the 1980s, his only substantial error in a prophetic list of space firsts. This perhaps indicates the extent to which America’s manned space program was accelerated, and explains why after 40 years Apollo still remains the (isolated) pinnacle of achievement in this field.

Of the three-man Apollo 11 crew one never walked on the surface of the moon: Michael Collins. Yet his contribution to the mission goes beyond the role of astronaut. Collins was directly responsible for the design of the Apollo 11 mission insignia after Jim Lovell mentioned to him the idea of the American eagle. Collins traced a picture from National Geographic and depicted it swooping over the surface of the moon with a gibbous Earth in the background. In reality that eagle could not fly through a vacuum, if it didn’t explode due to the lack of pressure then its bloated carcass would be suffocating on the surface. As a symbol of patriotism and an American icon it is a superior choice to the American flag, which would have been overtly political. An olive branch was added to its talons to tone down the aggressive connotations of a bird of prey. Unlike later Apollo insignias, the names of the astronauts were not included so as to reflect the fact that many people had made important contributions to the mission overall.

Over the past week ITV news has had an extra 10 minute news feature presenting the Apollo 11 mission as if it were happening today. The use of modern CG graphics doesn’t seem out of place for such a historical event (though the slightly rehearsed feel does). NASA have also being streaming communication audio in real-time on their website. Tributes such as these are important. In their attention to detail they help to create a sense of the anticipation that built up over the week-long journey to the moon. They are more than the marking of an anniversary, but a greater attempt to communicate to people like me what it must have been like to be alive in 1969, to have been drip-fed information unfolding day by day, awaiting one of the most significant scientific and cultural events of the twentieth century.

The two Michael Jacksons

In the immediate aftermath of his death, the creation of the posthumous memory of Michael Jackson began in earnest. People gathered in cities across the world to pay tribute to a renowned entertainer, celebrating his music with impromptu street concerts and dancing. CD sales and digital downloads of his albums also skyrocketed, breaking and setting new records in the process. The television news channels lead the way with tributes from people in the music industry, who praised Michael Jackson for his talent and inspiration, and also the prejudicial barriers to black entertainers that he removed. For all his recent controversies there was a sense that people were taking control of a public image that for years had been tarnished, and restoring it to a position of honour. It is as though there had existed two Michael Jacksons in the popular consciousness. The first was a grown-up child star of the Jackson 5 who forged an immensely successful solo career with Thriller, Billie Jean and Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough. This was the Michael Jackson of the 1980s and the red leather jacket. The second was almost a figure of ridicule and tragedy, a man who by middle age exhibited a process of self-destruction and some bizarre eccentricities. Sometime this Michael eclipsed the latter. These weren’t, however, two different people, but the highs and lows of a person who lived under unique and exceptional circumstances. It is difficult to reconcile these characteristics within one person, so this separation in popular perception was aided by the fact that Michael Jackson’s appearance changed radically across the course of his life. As family, friends and fans continue to pay their last respects, the enduring face of Michael Jackson will be the young, fresh-faced entertainer in his prime, and the connotations of a man who dominated pop music culture of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Photograph by Herb Ritts, 1992

Hard Sell

Graphic design is often most challenging when it is employed to change established behaviour. Asking people not to smoke, or not to illegally download films and music is difficult when you have to counter the incentives for doing so. I have been frustrated when I have asked friends and family to give up smoking. They express a lack of will-power, and position themselves as ‘light smokers’ against theoretical worse candidates who would be more worthy of (my) positive peer pressure. Because it is so difficult to overcome this stubbornness, many attempts will misfire by adopting the wrong strategy. In recent years, British anti-smoking campaigns have largely fallen into two camps. The first places emphasis on shock images to hammer home the negative health impact of smoking: pictures of charred lungs, tumours and rotten mouths placed on cigarette packets. How successful is this form of campaigning? I suspect that after some initial shock value, some smokers can tune these images out. If long-term smokers are comfortable with ignoring the risks to their health then they will find it easy to ignore the same repeated warnings in the same place on their cigarette packets. Supermarkets make this easier by displaying their cigarette packets with large price labels to cover the health warning.

The second anti-smoking strategy is the emotional campaign. These campaigns often focus on the negative impact of a family member’s smoking on young children. Where they have a greater chance of success is by challenging the idea that smokers are responsible only to themselves for their health. Whether the fear is that you are setting a bad example for your child, or that they will suffer by passive smoking (cue CGI smoke wafting out from the mouth of a smiling baby), or by risking your own life you risk depriving you and your child of something hugely important, the sense of responsibility to someone other than yourself is an important step in reaching out to people about the dangers of smoking because it diminishes the capacity for self-delusion.

These emotional campaigns are therefore perhaps the more effective strategy to adopt. This is not the 16th Century, we do not smoke tobacco believing it to have medicinal qualities; the health effects are well-known in most societies and many people continue to smoke in spite of this. That being the case, I believe that emotional and shock campaigns work best together; it is important that health campaigning does not relent in targeting smokers but seeks to communicate the dangers in meaningful ways that are hard to ignore. In 2004 the British Heart Foundation ran a gruesome advert Give Up Before You Clog Up. The advertisement featured a scientist in white gloves squeezing the thick fatty deposits from a smoker’s artery. A survey by Hall and Partners research agency indicated that of 500 smokers interviewed that there was a 94% recognition level, and 83% had considered giving up smoking.

From YouTube to UKIP

The British Local and European Parliament elections have passed and The Labour Party is feeling the electoral vengeance that has been dished out to it. Gordon Brown has to contend with the backlash over the MP’s expenses controversy, which although a cross-party affair, has fallen more so on the governing party. This problem was exacerbated on Wednesday by certain MPs ‘rocking the boat’, timing their resignations from the cabinet to the day before the elections and so hoping to the further undermine the PM’s position. One of the prime offenders has to be the ‘poison dwarf’ Hazel Blears. Blears has exhibited marked self-serving behaviour with disloyalty to the Prime Minister, and her avaricious expenses claims, whilst maintaining a sickly-sweet exterior for the media. She probably fancied herself as a potential contender for the top job when she mocked Gordon Brown’s YouTube appearance for being out of touch with the Thatcher-esque line “YouTube if you want to”. Thankfully, public opinion about her flipping of second homes and actively using up her expenses allowance with spending sprees will most likely prevent her from gaining enough support within her party.

My concern about MPs like Blears is the damage they do to our perception about British democracy. Not all MPs are greedy careerists, but fringe parties like the BNP, who hoped to make sweeping gains from the public backlash, would certainly like you to think so. At least, the ones from the three main parties.

I read an article in The Guardian by Charlie Brooker about the BNP’s publicity attempts. He makes an interesting point (though not entirely seriously) that their crass production values and poor graphic design may serve to help them present themselves as an alternative to “professional politicians” whom we hold responsible for the current crisis of confidence. “Extremist material of any kind always looks gaudy and cheap… because anyone who's good at graphic design is likely to be a thoughtful, inquisitive sort by nature. And thoughtful, inquisitive sorts tend to think fascism is a bit shit”. Morality and political beliefs would certainly deter many graphic designers from working for the BNP, but these cannot be the only factors. Graphic design is commercial, and ultimately the biggest political parties with the largest pots of money can attract the hottest design agencies and the talent that works for them. What this means is that the smallest parties in general will generally have the worst advertising campaigns, because they have less money to spend on branding and marketing.

Here I come to the bad example of graphic design I referred to in my last post. It came not from the BNP but another small party, the Euro-sceptic UK Independence Party. Situated near Loughborough train station a fortnight ago was a billboard poster featuring wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the slogan “He’d get our money back!”. UKIP are in favour of a complete withdrawal from the European Union. The European Union never existed in Churchill’s lifetime, it came into being in 1993, so any claims that he would have opposed it are speculative. However, in the aftermath of The Second World War Churchill gave a speech in Zurich. He proposed that that in order to avoid the “frightful nationalistic quarrels” of the past and for Europe to be “united in the sharing of its common inheritance” that we must “re-create the European Family [and] build a kind of United States of Europe”. So, I would assume that Churchill would not endorse UKIP; Churchill after all was not to the right of the Conservative party as many Euro-sceptics are, but was a former Liberal. My next point would therefore be: why would a politician endorse another political party to their own? I think that the level of woolly thinking that UKIP exhibit is of the same kind that they expect of their voters and for that reason they will continue to find it difficult to break into mainstream politics.

I love... Marmite ads

      

There are occasions when notably good and notably bad examples of graphic design hit you in the same day. In this post I shall address the good: Marmite’s poster advertising campaign (DDB London). The idea behind the series is based on their current slogan for Marmite, “You either love it or hate it”, and seeks to increase awareness about their expanding product range. These two opposing views are embedded in ambiguous graphics whose meaning changes depending on the angle of viewing.

       

I am very fond of this technique; it’s an economical and intelligent way to use space and a perfect way of symbolising the dichotomy of opinion that exists about Marmite. I suspect, however, that there are many people who (like me) are rather more indifferent about Marmite, but this polarisation of love/hate is an effective way of presenting the product as something of an acquired taste and encouraging people to try something that have heard they may not like. I only appreciated the campaign when I saw the middle poster and was amused by the idea of Marmite making someone sick. I also engaged with the advert because I went to the effort of rotating the newspaper. It has clearly stuck in my mind because this day was two weeks ago.

The campaign is not perfect, however. Creating images that work from two different vantage points is difficult. In the third poster the breadstick has been placed on the hand so that it appears in the palm when viewed under the normal orientation. When rotated it either appears to be floating or stuck to the back of the hand, though the contrast between the black and the other breadsticks tends to draw the eye towards those that appear to be falling back into their packet.

I shall address the bad tomorrow...

Books

With the assessment deadline having passed I returned to the printmaking workshop to have another go at book binding. The opportunity to enjoy the post-assessment quiet was too big to resist. This is my third visit in two weeks and marks the end of a long lull after my cack-handed attempt at book binding on foundation (the outcome being so bad perhaps it should have been called an anti-book). Thankfully, I have improved, to the point where I can pass my knowledge on to others. My recent outcomes are a container for a poster (in its folded state) that I have been working on, in support of UNAWE projects to bring astronomy to disadvantaged children. I hope to put photos online in a few weeks.

One important thing I have learned is not to underestimate the humble book as a presentation device. It is more than that. Books are so varied in size, shape, texture, function and complexity that there is a lot of scope for designers to intelligently use these options to produce beautiful books that add meaning to their content. Today I saw a remarkable example, a miniscule book with type that could only be read with a magnifying glass. It was a book about dolls houses. Simple idea, but difficult to make. It was impressive, I only wish I’d had my camera.

We are Astronomers

My current project to spread awareness of astronomy is focused on children. One of International Year of Astronomy 2009’s flagship projects is UNAWE (Universe Awareness). UNAWE seeks to educate children from deprived backgrounds about the beauty and scale of the universe, and imbue a sense of global citizenship by way of the numerous contributions from different civilisations and nations to the history and development of astronomy. Fittingly, the project is running across the world, but the level of existing infrastructure (schools, technology, people etc.) varies considerably. In Kenya, for example, UNAWE worked hard to reach out to children whose lives were disrupted by post-electoral violence in 2008. In Britain we are fortunate that more people enjoy the right to a basic standard of living, but deprivation still exists, and children are missing out on an education that could empower them with a sense of purpose and responsibility that could guide them for life.

Today I visited the National Space Centre in Leicester. My aim was to find the mindset of a child that I have forgotten, to fully engage with my project. Like most attractions, there are lots and lots of things to do, always more than any individual could reasonably read, watch or play within the recommended visiting time. The centre radiates enthusiasm for astronomy and broader science by the sheer number of ways in which play is integrated with learning (fuelling water-powered rockets to see how high they can be launched was a personal and damp favourite). There were a large number of school children at the centre. It was disheartening to see a significant, disruptive minority dicking around, engaging solely with the play element but not the science behind it. Nevertheless, the National Space Centre does an admirable job to support UNAWE in Britain. A new Fulldome film for the 360° cinema by NSC Creative in support of UNAWE premiered tonight called We Are Astronomers, a title chosen because “it summed up everything we were trying to say about collaboration, democratisation of information, sharing and mashing up data, all things digital and connected.” Fortunately I can go back for free if I have the opportunity, to see more than the trailer: here. It’s narrated by David Tennant. I mention it because to some that’s an endorsement (particularly to Dr. Who-loving 10 year-olds).

p.s. I wonder if the people are meant to be Canadian?

Powers of Ten

The concept of humanity's place in the universe is an interesting one. Throughout history people have continually re-evaluated or resisted the evidence that, in a cosmological sense, has made us seem so insignificant. It is not surprising that the Earth was once considered to be the centre of the universe. It is very important to us: it is the cradle of life, and our only home. But then the process of revision began in earnest when Nicolaus Copernicus first proved that the geocentric model was wrong; the Earth orbits the sun and not the other way round. Later, spectroscopy was discovered. The chemical composition of stars could be studied by looking at the light they shone, which indicated that they were much like the sun but at incredibly great distances (so great that we measure their distances by the number of years it takes their light to reach the Earth). The next monumental change in perspective occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century. Until the 1920s it was widely believed that the extent of the Universe was our Milky Way galaxy. Edwin Hubble proved that the Andromeda nebula was in fact a distant spiral galaxy, and there many more galaxies, most of them moving away from us. The universe is expanding, continually, beyond already incomprehensible dimensions.

Charles and Ray Eames' documentary film Powers of Ten is a successful attempt to communicate the scale of the universe. Based on the graphic essay Cosmic View by Kees Broeke, the film explores the effect of 'adding another nought'. The view begins with a picnic viewed from 1m away. The camera then pulls back to 10m, 100m, 1000m etc. Using a logarithmic scale is a simple and elegant solution for allowing great distances to be travelled in a short time. Soon the entire earth is visible, then our sun and our Milky Way galaxy. It is applied not just to the macro universe, but the micro universe as well, right down to the nucleus of an atom. An awareness of what we are made of means that we consider our place in the universe more accurately. Human beings may seem small and trivial when the billions of stars and planets in the universe are considered, but we are probably the most complex and intricate entities that exist as a result of billions of years of evolution. I'd rather be me than a gigantic fiery ball of plasma.

Not quite an epitaph but getting there.

Where on Earth is Wally?

As I'm going to a Where's Wally fancy-dress party this evening, I thought a mention of Martin Handford's work would be appropriate. There is a stigma attached to the Wally books (or 'Waldo', as the character is bastardised in America). Disgruntled children who dislike reading in all its forms, and are forced to enter a library, will often immediately gravitate towards an available copy. In turn they will circle Wally with a black biro in every spread, ruining the fun for the rest of us. Therefore, there is a sense of them being refuges for the illiterate. Nevertheless, they are fine examples of illustration, and hold a strong nostalgic value for many people (including me). Handford would spend up to eight weeks drawing a scene. Although painstaking, this level of dedication is repaid by the level of scrutiny that people then give to his illustrations. Beyond searching for Wally there are visual jokes to be found and recurring characters to be discovered. Hopefully, the rewards for developing a keen eye encourage young people to be as equally observant about the world around them. If this is the case then this has to be Where's Wally's redeeming feature for being permitted in a library.

A Vancouver student spotted an opportunity to use Google Earth to pay homage to Wally, by painting a large-scale version of the character on a roof somewhere in the city. This would have been an excellent promotional device had it been utilised by Wally's publishers, carrying Hanford's playful spirit from the world of illustration over to an entirely new format. Because of its novelty, it had a viral quality, and received a lot of column inches from newspapers and webloggers. In March 2009, a similar idea was tried again when it was revealed that a man dressed as Wally was visible somewhere on Google Street View. As the message proliferated through the media, web-users trawled through countless street images of Britain's biggest cities. The announcement - perhaps unsurprisingly - came from Google. It served them well: free promotion for their new Google Maps feature and an incentive for people to familiarise themselves with it. In both cases the Wally brand will have benefitted from the free publicity as well; it's just nice to know that in a world that is increasingly moving to digital media and away from print, that Wally still has his place.

Fly me to the moons of Saturn

I am currently researching a design project to coincide with the International Year of Astronomy 2009. The IYA aims to spread awareness of astronomical science, and engage people worldwide in the study of astronomy with various projects and distributable media. The Technology, Entertainment and Design website (TED) – a ‘highbrow YouTube’ – is an excellent source of high-quality presentations on a wide variety of topics. In addressing the issue of how to introduce people to astronomy, I found much inspiration in a presentation given by NASA planetary scientist Carolyn Porco.

Porco’s talk focused on the photographic discoveries of the Cassini space probe, which studies the planet Saturn and its moons. She exhibits a clear understanding of how to make science approachable and engaging. Much like Carl Sagan, who was also a passionate astronomer and articulate speaker, she uses colourful metaphors to relate the alien environment of Saturn’s moon Titan, to the Earth. Porco talks of the hydrocarbon-rich environment as she imagined it before the mission, and being able to stand on the shores of lake Michigan brimming with paint thinner. She also speaks of an environment so cold that methane is a liquid, and can condense into clouds and rain down onto the surface, carving gullies and forming rivers, summarising: “methane is to Titan, what water is to the Earth”. Remarks like this hopefully communicate clearly to scientists and non-scientists, the similarities and differences between these two worlds, and so help people to better understand the relevance of planetary astronomy as means of realising our own place in the universe.

The driving force behind Porco’s presentation is the enthusiasm she radiates for her subject. She moves between relating scientific fact and personal emotion, at one point informing the audience of her goosebumps as she tells them about her belief in the Cassini mission’s significance: namely nations working together “in a colossal effort for good”, “to understand a planetary system that for all of human history had been unreachable”. Looking beyond what the mission has achieved so far, she ends her presentation by speculating about what the disovery of life would mean for humanity. She mentions the possibility of having discovered an environment, far from the sun an at Encyladus, where life could possibly survive. She relates the role of science to humanity's quest for understanding of our siginificance with a profound statement: If we could demonstrate that Genesis had occured not once, but twice, independently in our solar system, then that means by inference that it has occured a staggering number of times throughout the universe.

Click here to watch Carolyn Porco's 17-minute talk Fly me to the moons of Saturn.

Annie Hall

The other night I was skipping through Annie Hall, Woody Allen’s acclaimed romantic comedy. I didn’t want to stay up to watch the entire film, so I picked out my favourite parts instead (starting with the famous cocaine party scene). By accident I happened to watch two scenes close together in which Allen’s character (Alvy) comments on a word used by Annie, played by Diane Keaton. The first occasion occurs when Alvy visits Annie’s apartment for the first time, and their immediate friendship has just begun:

ANNIE
Right. Well, I don't know, I mean, uh,
some of her poems seem - neat, you know.

ALVY
Neat?

ANNIE
Neat, yeah.

ALVY
Uh, I hate to tell yuh, this is nineteen
seventy-five, you know that "neat" went
out, I would say, at the turn of the
century.
(Annie laughs)
Who-who are-who are those photos on
the wall?

At this point in their relationship, Annie is already attracted to Alvy. She respects his intellect and takes his ‘criticism’ of her use of language playfully, as it is intended. Alvy encourages Annie to get out of her flat: to pursue her singing career and broaden her mind with adult education. Their relationship grows in strength and romance blossoms. However, as time goes by, the relationship becomes increasingly strained. Alvy becomes paranoid about Annie’s change in character and the confidence he has helped her to find. Annie in turn becomes frustrated by Alvy’s neuroses, and her inability to change him and move their relationship on. In a seminal scene, Alvy vents his suspicions about Annie’s relationship with her Russian literature teacher. This is the second time he comments on Annie’s use of the word ‘neat’:

ANNIE
(Continuing to walk quickly)
We're not having an affair. He's married.
He just happens to think I'm neat.

ALVY
(Still walking next to her)
"Neat"! There's that- What are you-twelve
years old? That's one o' your Chippewa
Falls expressions! "He thinks I'm neat."

ANNIE
Who cares? Who cares?

This is the first point in the film where Alvy and Annie heatedly argue about the state of their relationship and threaten to go their separate ways. Allen marks this seminal moment by referring to a time in the audience’s mind when the couple had first met, juxtaposing two states in their relationship: past and present. By reproducing a familiar exchange with different overtones, Allen emphasises the changes in how the characters now respond to each other. Alvy’s neurotic nit-picking is no longer perceived or broadcasted in terms of affection, but frustration. In addition, Annie has become dismissive of Alvy’s opinions about her. This reflects the diverging goals of the couple. Alvy wants to further mould Annie into his image, whereas Annie wants to adopt her own course. Ultimately the couple split because they cannot reach a compromise about their future. Annie moves to California and Alvy stays in New York.

I did not notice this device on first viewing; it’s very subtle but works beautifully. Ultimately, what matters to me is the value of re-watching films and discovering things you hadn’t noticed before.

Larger than life

I like Bond films. I think that the series - particularly in the 1960s and 1970s - pushed at the boundaries of film-making and showcased the talents of some remarkable individuals. Of particular note to the success of the Bond films are Peter Hunt's editing, Maurice Binder's titles, John Barry's scores and Ken Adam's production design. Adam is responsible for helping to create the ulra-modern universe of the Bonds with huge and spectacular animated sets, and gadget-laden cars like the Aston Martin DB5 and the submarine-car Lotus Esprit.

For Goldfinger Adam produced the exterior and interiors of Fort Knox. As the inside of Fort Knox was top secret and no photographs existed, Adam relied on his imagination to communicate the sheer amount of gold that the villain intended to irradiate, a 'city of gold'. Adam stated that he felt it more important to portray what he thought a bank vault should look like rather than the reality; gold is never stacked very high because it is so heavy, and the lifts depicted in the film would not have functioned for this reason. Even so, the strength of Adams' design must lie in creating a believable fantasy, for the sheer number of people who accepted unquestioningly what they saw as the real Fort Knox gold depository.

During the recee for You Only Live Twice, Adam took the largest risk of his career by agreeing to build Blofeld's volcano lair for $1 million. So much was the stress at the prospect of such an expensive and experimental set that he broke out in eczema and was prescribed Valium. As no stage was large enough to accommodate the set, it was built free-standing and dismantled after production. Even though he considered this wasteful, Adam still believes that the decision to construct a set rather than a model was important for creating the right feel, having things happen for real such as a helicopter dscending into the set through the roof and landing on a heliplad, instead of using models.

Adam worked with director Lewis Gilbert again on his last two Bonds The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. The stories of these films demanded as similar a level of extravagance as Twice. For Spy Adam designed a villain's base that could rise out of the sea. The idea came from a trip to Okinawa where there was supposed to be an underwater structure that came out of the water, but it did not. Adam struggled to adapt its oil rig shape for his designs, until he threw it out and began to experiment with curves and created a spider-like structure. In contrast to the modern exterior, the villain Stromberg had a Renaissance-style interior with Botticelli paintings that rose into the ceiling revealing a shark tank behind them. Animated sets filled with surprises are a Ken Adam hallmark, as is the juxtaposition of the modern with the old. In Moonraker this idea is pushed even more with a shuttle-launching base hidden amongst Mayan ruins in the depths of the rainforest. Adam designed the interior rocks of the temple to appear artificial and glassy to demonstrate the engineering of the environment and the extent to which the villain Drax had gone to conceal himself.

Ken Adam deserves more recognition for his work on the Bond films. He has won two Oscars for his work on historical films Barry Lyndon and The Madness of King George that is not typical of his output. He has also received a high deal of acclaim from people like Spielberg, as well as a BAFTA, for his war-room set in Dr. Strangelove. Working alongside Kubrick, Adam designed a fantastic set, a humongous concrete bunker in which world leaders appeared to be playing a giant poker game for the future of the world across a round, flood-lit table. His design demonstrates the same level of innovation and consideration for the film as any of his Bond designs. It therefore seems that what prevented Adam from receiving an Oscar for any of his seven Bond films is snobbery about a series of big-budget and financially successful films. It should not be forgotten that part of their success - the larger-than-life universe of Bond - is attributable to Ken Adam.

Talk by Andy Schmidt of Pixar

By six fortuitous cancellations I was able to attend a talk on animation this evening. I'm glad I didn't miss an opportunity to hear someone from Pixar talk at length about their profession. Andy Schmidt has worked on several Pixar films including The Incredibles and Ratatouille. He went from an art background into 2D animation, learning and developing his skills from scratch, and then finally progressed into 3D animation. Although this is a natural progression - the two animation forms share the same techniques such as 'squash and stretch' - Schmidt stated during Q&A that whilst experience of 2D animation is helpful, it is not a necessary prerequisite for working in 3D.

As I have little experience of working in animation I found some insights particularly useful, in particular that "acting is the most important part of animation". Schmidt described acting as 'reacting', in other words, what happens to your character isn't as important as how they feel about it. Characterisation is a carefully refined process in animation, as the degree of control is immense. Characters can be defined very precisely by manipulating their body weight, shape and size, and through the way they move. The formal possibilities are greater for the animator than a film director casting for a role. That is not to say that animation is superior to live-action, but that the difference in style results from different options being available in real world and the CG world.

After the talk I was fortunate enough to talk briefly with Andy about how he finds satisfaction in collaborative work. At Pixar, I think this comes from animators being given particular animation challenges suited to their strengths. Therefore, talent is utilised most effectively, and a personal sense of your own importance and value to a big project is much greater.

The Art of Looking Sideways

Alan Fletcher collated a life's-worth of experience and wonder into a single megalith, The Art of Looking Sideways. Coming in at over 1000 pages this is a coffee-table book, and by its weight has a tendency to bruise those who attempt to read it in bed. Although it was compiled and written by a graphic designer, and it is an excellent book for designers, it should have broad appeal for the variety of subjects it covers. It's a difficult book to categorise; Fletcher thought it warranted its own 'looking sideways' section in a bookshop, because for all the culture, jokes, history, puzzles and science it contains, what unites the content is the idea of defamiliarising the ordinary and looking at the world with fresh eyes. For example, how many letters does the Roman alphabet contain? When you consider that many letters in upper and lower case bear little to no resemblance to each other (Aa, Ee, Gg) the figure is more like 37, and this poses problems for foreigners with different alphabets, learning a language like English.This is what makes this a great book. Revelation is an enjoyable experience, even in the case of solving difficult puzzles (or finding their solution). This puzzle is by no means new, but can be found in the book. The aim is to connect each dot by drawing four straight lines without removing your pencil. The solution can be Googled.