davidthedesigner

you heard it here last

This world wide web is a wonderful thing, we all know that. And it makes possible all sorts of things, and connections, that were denied to the majority of us just a few short years ago. But you do sometimes wonder whether some of those things offer anything that's really worthwhile having. Take, for instance, designers talking about design. It's a growing trend, it would seem.

Over here Adrian Shaugnessy talks to a range of designers from Jonathan Barnbrook to Neville Brody.

And over here Mike Dempsey talks to Royal Designers (as opposed to us commoners, obviously).

Now, I have tried. Honestly I have. But I get about 7 minutes in and I start thinking "oh, shut up talking and just get on and design something".

Maybe I ought to put them all on an iPod and take them away on holiday. (On second thoughts, I think I'll stick with Clare Balding.)

they don't make them like that any more

A wonderful collection of old record sleeves over at record envelope.

Lovely, lovely stuff via Swiss Legacy.

i still don't get the big picture

You may remember that I've commented on the design profession's fondness for 'big picture' home pages a while back. They just won't go away, will they? Here's some more that I found yesterday whilst pootling around the world wide web:

Pretty aren't they? But what do they mean?

And you may also remember that I'd likened the fashion for this sort of thing to holding up a poster and getting someone to photograph it so that you can put it into an online portfolio.

Well, that clever chap Craig Oldham (I've told you about him before) ponders exactly the same thing just here.

never trust a spell checker

Marc Chagall, 'La Jeune Veuve (The Young Widow)', plate #72 from a suite accompanying the book Les Fables de la Fontaine, 1927-1931 published 1952

For many years I worked in the field of tourism, designing brochures and accommodation guides, that sort of thing. And when you asked hoteliers or guest house proprietors to describe their property, there was always the tendency to fall back on some well-worn words and phrases. I won't bore you with them, but just take my word for it that 'unique ambience' and 'tranquil setting' cropped up often.

But the funniest I came across was a description of the perfect Bed & Breakfast which included the words 'French widow in every room'.

this made me smile #32

"THE AMOUNT of hot air coming out of Hampshire County Council headquarters will be more than halved after a revamp, say experts involved in the redesign."

What? Are they doing away with the debating chamber?

the first two fonts that you could use instead of helvetica

Last week I announced a new category over there on the right: 52 fonts you could use instead of helvetica. So this is where it starts: two fonts beginning with the letter A. (And I'll do two more fonts every two weeks until we've gone right through the alphabet. Which will take exactly a year. Neat, eh?)

But, before I start, let's get something straight. Don't expect in-depth critiques on this blog. If you really want to get serious about typography, then there are better places to go: like I love typography or Dalton Maag. And if you're simply looking for a particular font, then try Indentifont.

No, this is about variety: a sort 'Joy of Text'. The design equivalent of 'there's more to life than the missionary position'. Because, speaking as a designer, it's very easy to get caught in a rut of using a few favourite fonts. Even more so if you work for clients who have a brand identity: because then you'll very often be told to adhere to guidelines which will specify the fonts that you're allowed to use. Usually one serif and one sans serif. Which is fine up to a point. But it probably wasn't why we became designers in the first place.

So this is an encouragement to let ourselves go. Loosen up those brand requirements. And have a bit of font fun (and, no, that doesn't mean you're allowed to use the one that dare not pass a designer's lips).

First up is Albertus. Designed by Berthold Wolpe in 1940. Lovely isn't it? And just look at that wonderful ampersand. Apparently Wolpe designed over 1,500 book jackets for Faber & Faber between 1941 and 1975. On many of those he will have used Albertus, maybe even these two:-

But it's not a font that you see used much nowadays. Which is a shame.

Next up is Avenir, which you do see used nowadays. (In fact, you just have to look up to the top of this blog - see that 'davidthedesigner' banner? That's Avenir.)

Designed in 1988 by the great Swiss type designer Adrian Frutiger. It's based on Futura (which I'm sure will turn up again when I get to the letter F): Avenir means 'future' in French. And it was completely revised in 2004 to include additional weights and italics, and released by Linotype as Avenir Next.

Next up will be the letter B (and you can bet your bottom dollar that Bodoni will be one of them).

but they could have said "it's oh so quiet"

This is going to be a bit of a ramble, but bear with me if you've got a couple of minutes to spare.

Last week was rather unusual for me, as I was working on the installation of an exhibition which involved working on site. And that required a daily commute. And that commute took me through the town of Four Marks in Hampshire. Now, I don't want to disparage anyone who actually lives in Four Marks, but it's one of those strange places that appears to exist simply so that it can be somewhere that's on the way to somewhere else. I've driven through it it hundreds of times, but there's absolutely nothing about it which would suggest 'I must stop here and have a look around sometime'. Even the county council would seem to agree with me, because they suggest that if you're looking for something to do there, you move several miles up the road to the next town.

Anyway, I'll come back to Four Marks later.

This is really about the hoardings outside a housing development that caught my eye as I was driving through. Well, they're nothing remarkable, I agree. We see them all around us, all the time. Just part of the fabric of the environment in which we live. But they've obviously had a bit of money spent on them. There's a lot of Illustrator and Photoshop work gone into them (in that strange 'style' that seems to be reserved solely for provincial housing developers and pub chains which serve food for families). And the vinyl they're printed on doesn't come cheap either.

But it was this one that made me wonder. And this post was originally going to be a smart-Alec comment about how never to trust a designer to spell something correctly. Because it's true, designers (including, I must confess, myself) can't spell. It's not deliberate, it's just the way that our brains are wired. You see, we look at shape and pattern and colour - all the things that make something look 'right' visually. What we don't do is to look at how words are constructed. So, if you ever find yourself commissioning a designer, take my advice and always check the spelling before something goes off to the printers.

And then I thought that maybe it's actually to do with the over-reliance on spell checkers. Because if you spell tranquillity with two Ls, your spell checker will not pick it up. But, by the same token, if you spell tranquility with one L, it won't pick that up either. Because, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, both spellings are acceptable. But that wouldn't have been the case ten years ago, because two Ls would have been the correct English spelling, whilst one L would have been the American spelling.

So maybe this is all about English becoming the language of the internet, and how that usage will spread. Because the English that will predominate will be American English, rather than English English. And does that matter? I guess not. We can, after all, pin the blame for it all on Bill Gates. And just accept the fact with good humor.

And finally, back to Four Marks.

At least one of its residents has a sense of humor (or maybe it's a sense of destiny). And I'm sorry I never got a picture of this, but written in the dust on the road sign which tells you that you've arrived at 'Four Marks' someone had added 'OUT OF TEN'.

do you have an eye for the beautiful?

Just remember, there are options out there.

this made me smile #31

365 down, 366* to go

Just in case you hadn't noticed (and there's no reason why you should, of course), today is this blog's first birthday. And to me it feels like a coming of age; like I'm now big enough to hang out with the grown ups. And let me tell you it feels good, just like Nina Simone in fact.

Now I'm not one to run the numbers, but there are other design blogs that started around the same time as me which appear to have achieved phenomenal success. As for me, all I've managed is the position of number 51 on a list of 50. Oh, the ignominy. (Actually, I was originally in a much higher position, but then others started barging their way in, upset that they'd been excluded.) On the upside, though, if you do a Google search for 'Cow Gum' you'll probably end up here. Which is something I hadn't expected a year ago.

But numbers don't matter to me, because I'm writing this for you. So, if you've got this far on this post, thank you. I appreciate it. If it's your first time here, welcome. And if it's not, thanks for coming back.

Now, I have a plan of action for the next year. I think it's only fair on you that the next year isn't going to be a simple matter of repeating the past year. So I've added two new categories over there on the right. The first of those is called '52 fonts you could use instead of helvetica'. Not that I've got anything against Helvetica, but I thought it might be interesting to have a very personal look at fonts that I particularly like. It was partly inspired by Richard's first-rate guest post while I was away. But also, way back last December, I'd written a list of things to post about - and one of those was an A-Z listing about design. But it never happened. So I'm going to combine the core idea with the theme of typeface selection and give you 52 stunners - one per week, and two per letter of the alphabet - over the course of the next year. I'll do the first selection next week (what I can tell you is that the first will be Albertus and the second won't be Arial). So, do come back for that.

Next up is a chance for you to get involved, and to contribute your own observations. It's a category called 'bad design decision' and was inspired by the exchange that followed on from my post about recycling bins. Because I think the fact that a council should use two sizes of recycling bins in different colours - one green, the other the same black as its regular rubbish bins - is stupid. And, fundamentally, a 'bad design decision'.

Let me explain a little further: some years ago I was commissioned to design a leaflet by a national body (it was basically a guide to architecture and gardens) and a week into the process the client took me to one side and explained, quite politely, that I was thinking too much about the project. Actually what he really meant was that I was asking too many questions. Suffice it to say that when he retired 15 years later he proudly told me that that particular leaflet was one of his personal favourites from his career in commissioning design. Because, you see, the one thing that you can't do as a designer is think too much. It's like telling David Hockney that he uses too many colours in his paintings; or telling Stevie Wonder that he uses too many notes in his music. In short, if you don't think about something enough then you'll probably end up with a 'bad design decision'.

Let me illustrate what I mean. Now, when I'm not designing, I'm a keen cook. And the one thing that any reasonable cook needs above anything else is a good sharp knife. Now, I've never had any professional training as a cook, so I've never mastered that chefs' technique of using the back half of a large knife to chop vegetables and herbs, and I therefore prefer to use a much smaller knife. And, you know, the world is full of kitchens with blunt 'sharp' knives; so I always take my own when I go away. And consequently lose them. So I always like to have a small selection to hand, which means buying one when I see one.

Now the type of knife I prefer will have a serrated blade - here's an example of a good one:-

(I bought that at HEMA.)

And I recently bought a set in IKEA; here's one of them:-

Of course, when you buy knives these days, you can only get them in those 'impossible to get into without a very sharp knife and a spare half an hour' packs. And this one had a lovely serrated edge sitting there in its pack on the rack:-

But get it home and start to use it, and guess what? The other side of the blade isn't serrated:-

Which means that when you use it to chop vegetables the knife will move to the left when you apply downward pressure. Which is fine if you're right handed, because that slight leftward movement is towards the remainder of the vegetable that you're cutting. But if you happen to be left handed, as I am, that leftward movement actually makes the cutting action impossible. Which means, for the 10% of the customers who buy it, this knife is completely useless. And all it needed was serration on both sides of the blade.

It's not what you would expect, is it? - discrimination from IKEA. But it is a perfect example of a 'bad design decision'. So forget about those machines in IKEA which show you how they test opening a kitchen drawer a million times; not enough thought was put into this simple little knife.

And, because I'm left handed, don't even get me started on fish knives:-

*The next one's a leap year, in case you'd forgotten.