davidthedesigner

Learning kerning

End of the week, friday and we all live for the weekend. Unless of course you might be a designer and you don't necessarily live for the weekend, as you never stop thinking with the exception of sleep I suppose. (I can tell you for sure I do not dream about design, deadlines perhaps but that's a whole different kettle of fish all together) So yes Friday were all looking forward to relaxing, so I thought after yesterdays rant, I'd post something a little less weighty. I'm not a huge typography fan but recently I have come to appreciate and yes, adopt a geek type of sensibility. Below are a couple of examples I've spotted recently of bad kerning quite a fundamental corner stone of design. Isn't interesting that these examples come from opposite ends of the retail spectrum? I guess no one is safe from the designers who don't learn to kern!

Pizza Hut on Cambridge Heath road.

Waitrose advertising, Elephant & Castle station, nationwide campaign.

It's amusing to see such a simple element subjected to a lack of knowledge, and would love to know how wide spread this principle extends. If you have any bad kerning photographs please by all means do share. A simple observation that would however go unnoticed to the general public, but us designers, we don't switch off really do we? 

In any case I hope you might have enjoyed one or two posts, and advocate criticism, comments and ridicule... constructively of course... 

Joe 'Hug' Hughes

southbank centre celebrates mastercard

Welcome to austerity Britain, but this time on credit. And no Abram to guide us.

oh, dash it

I keep on seeing dashes where there ought to be hyphens.

Stop it. Now.

i love the sound of breaking glass

I have a certain fascination with 'brown box' packaging. That is the cardboard boxes that are used to transport goods around the world, but which are usually discarded before those goods are put on sale in a retail store. Unless, of course, you're buying something which might be 'flat-packed' (from IKEA, for instance), where what you receive or take away with you comes straight off the warehouse shelf. I'm fascinated because these boxes have to be highly functional, as do the graphics that are applied to them. Perhaps I'll write more about this one day. But in the meantime I can't help wondering about a couple of boxes that I've had stored for a long time. They contain glass lampshades that I've never got round to putting up. The boxes have text in several languages advising me which way up to store them, and this graphic which reminds me that the contents are made of glass and are breakable:

 

Does its job well, doesn't it? Except, though, that if I did drop a wine glass on the floor the one part that is never going to break is the stem.

don't you just hate it when...

You're checking out a website, trying to get to know what's on offer, you click on a text link...

...and next thing you know you're downloading a bloody PDF file.

oh dear: downlighters and decking

My story about my espresso cups illustrates, I hope, the mantra that 'good design is as little design as possible'. But it's a very difficult trick for designers to pull off: to design in such a way that what you create is accepted as just being itself, rather than something that declares itself as having been 'designed'. Not least is the fact that we have to earn a living, and it's often the client who might expect to see 'bangs for their bucks' that determines how 'designed' something might appear to be. And the client's own customers - for very often what they might want for their money is a little bit of 'bling'. Or, as the estate agent I met at a party declared to me, "so your job is to make things look sexy".

Now, talking of estate agents, I've been keeping an eye on the local property scene for the last two or three years (in the idle anticipation that I might one day decide to move house). And no doubt people (and estate agents) need to spend some time on preparing a property so that it will photograph well and entice potential punters over the threshold. Or made to look 'sexy', as my fellow party goer would have it. But there are two forms of 'sexiness' that I see on Rightmove almost every day that really do make my heart sink.

Downlighters. In the bathroom, fine - I don't really have an issue with that. In the kitchen - I might possibly be persuaded. In the lounge - NO, NO, NO (particularly if the house is Edwardian, as many in my area are).

Decking. Look, I live in southern England. If I'm really, really lucky, the times that it might be possible to relax with a glass or two of Chardonnay on a wooden platform in the open air occur between the months of May and September. The other eight months it's invariably pissing down with rain and I'd be arse over tip as soon as I stepped out of the back door. There's only one place for decking - and that's Australia.

And the sad part of this particular rant? It's that some people look at these things and think that they're 'well designed'.

Normal - ie cheerful - service will resume tomorrow. Maybe.

this made me smile #133

Hampshire police release 'lettuce' e-fit of suspect.

slave to the rhythm?

Is this really and honestly a great piece of applied graphic design? And isn't the whole point of pictograms the fact that you don't need words to explain what the picture means? Or am I missing something here?

grappling with the gray book

A few weeks ago I received an email out of the blue:

"Dear David,

This is an initial email to see if you would be interested in reviewing some books. We are a small pr company and have recently taken on a well known publisher of graphic design/ art direction led titles.

What we would be looking for is a small review on your blog and/or on amazon. We can send you a hard copy or an edited version as a PDF if you prefer.

If you think this is something you might be interested in please drop me an email and we can get the ball rolling."

"Excuse me for being rude, but what's in it for me?" I replied. "Not a lot, except the chance to build a library for free", came the response.

Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained - so "OK, I'll give it a go".

What I hadn't anticipated was that I'd hate the first book that was sent to me. It's all about graphic design, written and compiled by a 'graphic designer [who] divides his time between teaching, writing, lecturing and consulting', so it ought to be something I'd find really interesting. It's American, by the way: straight out of New York (hence the gray bit in the title). But it's horrible. And even more horribly designed. Just look at these cruddy end papers (which, rather than the gray you see here, are printed in a dark sage green):

So, there you have it: my non-review of the gray (and dark sage green) book. Don't go out and buy it now.

georges huel not good enough for you?

Now I'm guessing that some of you might not know who Georges Huel is. Well, he's the man who designed the logo (along with a lot of other stuff) for the 1976 Montreal Olymics, widely regarded (by designers at least) as being one of the classics. You can read more about it over on Alistair's blog. And here it is:

But, in case you were wondering, this post isn't about logos for the Olympics. No, it's about spam comments.

They're one of the little irritations of running a blog: spammers who leave comments in the hope that somebody might click onto their web site. In my case they usually seem to come from China and have something to do with Air Jordans, whatever they are. Anyway, they get weeded out. Simple as that.

But here's a thing: if you were a designer specialising in producing logos, how would you go about drumming up some business? Well why not try spam commenting? Because Company Logo Design reckons that Georges' logo isn't that good, and that the next Olympics Organising Committee ought to be going to him instead. After all, he could do the deal for just $99 with two original full-colour concepts and one revision, and all within 24 hours.

And who can argue with the quality?

 

Company Logo Design: I reckon you've got 2016 in the bag.