Rant: An Imperfect City, Part 1
Fix up London. You’ve been a shabby shabbler for too long now. We all found it endearing throughout the 90s and at the turn of the millennium but it’s time to shape up or ship out. The Britpop boom (which wasn’t really that long ago) celebrated that distinct ‘wonkiness’ that made Britain unique but it also gave the country the perfect excuse to sullenly defend it’s many and varied failings. Failings? Yes, London, you may be have a population busting at the seams but they’re all saying it [monocle.com]… you’re a bit shit these days. If anything, the pre-Olypmic grab for gold is only highlighting the intelligence meltdown which is inhabiting this once great capital. This once brilliant and brainy city is experiencing a cultural deficit disorder that is going to run and run. So how to improve a big, stroppy, spoilt child of a city that prefers to react rather than plan. There’s a gabillion and one ideas out there at the moment, here’s our two pence worth…
As Lawrence of Demin once sang, ‘Council Houses, Inner City, Urban Squaller, ooo I won’t pay the rent on this concrete slum, imprisonment’… actually I only included that bit of lyrical majesty cause the track is called ‘Council Houses’ (and cause Demin [wikipedia] are ace). Council Housing needs to work harder. It seems blindingly obvious that it you improve inhabitants environments then you move them closer to he point of optimum happiness. When people are happy they don’t need to rob, maim or kill each other. When people have a space where they feel safe and comfortable they can focus on other issues and make a larger contribution to the community. It’s common logic. The other issue is while us non-council tentants squabble over the tiniest, mankiest, dodgily managed (can we somehow force all buy-to-let property owners take some sort of course in property management and how to be a decent landlord… please!) crappy, baggy, over-inflated, sub-standard, badly decorated properties… many council tenants perch aloft spacious, ‘mid-century modernist’, potentially iconic buildings without the slightest appreciation of the amount of space afforded to this select group of inhabitants, squinting at the world through their ridiculous net curtains and tudor style lead-lighting. Sure the many incompetent city councils seem to do their best to make these places feel uninhabitable but great things can happen with a bit of respect and imagination. Already there is a bright ring of community housing projects drawing more and more attention from æstheticians and sensible types simply looking for cheaper, better housing. Estates such as The Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury [nothingtoseehere.net], Rowley Way in St. John’s Wood [greatbuildings.com] and, the place Boicozine currently calls home, the Golden Lane Estate [goldenlane.co.uk] in the City of London are all example of mid-century ideals of community living that have endured and even prospered. It’s time council and decision-makers changed their half-century old attitudes to the ’spectre’ of council housing. They are an integral, interwoven part of the city’s fabric whether we like it or not and just waiting to be enhanced for use by the community at large.
Further Reading / Viewing:
[flickr.com/groups/londonsocialhousing]
[bbc.co.uk/cheaphomesfor sale]
[emptyhomes.com]
[philobiblon.co.uk/TheRealHistoryofCouncilEstates]
[bdonline.co.uk/RobinHoodGradens]
[c20society.org.uk]
The thing about seriously criticising London’s many flaws, something becoming more and more popular in the run up to the inevitable Olympics debacle, it that it’s such a juicy topic to attempt to tackle. In coming posts I’ll be bashing on about subjects such as London’s architecturphobia, the weird sense of ‘disconnect’ (if you can think of a more perfect buzzword for our modern times let me know) that has pervaded the city since Tony Blair made rather his dubious mark on modern Britain and more domestic issues such as how shitty cinemas has become in London and what a waste of space the Houses of Parliament are (think ‘barricaded play pen for poshos’). If you’ve got a topic on the state of London town or if you’d like to defend the city for what it is leave a comment or post something yourself and let us know.
Even Further Reading:
[monocle.com/Failing State 01—United Kingdom]
[cityofsound.com/london_hasnt_ch]
[channel4.com/london_sucks]
Things heard said in the Flickr ‘Graphic Design’ group: #001
“So typography is basically the study of the design of letterforms. Basically its arranging and choosing font styles, choosing the colour of a font, it’s placement, emphasis, etc… its all so easy really, nothing big. It’s common sense. At school, they didn’t mention anything about typography in my Graphic Design course. All they talked about was art etc… so when it came to design, we just did whatever looked nice.”
[flickr.com/groups/graphicdesign]
A Tale of Two Cities
Okay,so this is only really going to be of interest if you live or have lived in either Sydney or Melbourne. But if you thought the Melbourne/Sydney rivalry was a myth, here’s proof that it’s very much alive and well and as spikey as it’s ever been [melbournesucks.com.au]. Apparently Melbourne is “a rip off drug infested hole” where “everything costs money” and “in Melbourne we do like to spell correctly” (grammar seems to be less important though), whereas Sydney has “nice weather”… a lot. I read somewhere (sorry, being lazy) that Melbourne’s population was set to outrun Sydney’s by 2020 so here’s hoping this one runs and runs. (Where’s our London Sucks website, surely that’s a site that would be immensely popular).
I couldn’t find any images of the ‘Melbourne Sucks’ posters that have provoked this recent furore (furore-ish) — if you have pics of said posters please let us know — so here’s an ace piece of artwork for one of Melbourne’s many hip shopfronts dotted around town [forepaw.org] instead. Oh, yeah and guess which city I’m from?
The Trouble with Typography
This is a re-post from March last year, but I didn’t want to bury it in the Boicozine archive because, a year on, it’s still just as relevent especially after reading this… [aestheticrew.com]. So the typeface licensing debate goes on, only it looks like foundries will have to to go the way of record companies and film studios soon if they don’t pick up their game. Here’s how it ran last year… Today’s topic for discussion, ‘Typography is in trouble’, and not just any sort of trouble but serious trouble of the most heinous kind… and possibly something to do with extinction as well. This is due to three distinct factors which I shall endeavour to introduce here, one by one: The rise of the Photoshop Monkey, Internet Browsers and the Type Foundries themselves.
Photoshop is easy. That’s why people love it. It can do some crazy stuff for you but if are designing most of your work in Photoshop then you shouldn’t really be designing at all. Does that sound harsh? Have a look around at the visual noise you see everyday. Have a look at any effects laden website disaster [smashingmagazine.com]. Have a look at any recent Movie Poster [impawards.com]. Many of these Photoshop Monkeys will lazily pick through their existing font menu and use whatever is pre-installed on their computer rather than seeking out the most appropriate or well drawn typeface for the job. Either that or lazy marketing hacks (who love manipulating Photoshop Monkeys cause they can’t argue their case as well as fully fledged Graphoes) will specify a typeface simply because they have it on their PC and, therefore know what it’s called and what it looks like. In this case familiarity doesn’t breed contempt, just laziness.
The website you are looking at has the ability to display any typeface you’d like to specify. In fact, any website that employs Cascading Style Sheets [wikipedia] has been able to do this for ages now. Problem is your Browser can’t (well, IE4 could but this doesn’t really help much — Note: it’s back in Safari 3.1, see link above) [msdn.microsoft.com]. Could be developers just decided embedding fonts was unnecessary when you had a least five typefaces to choose from already. For the developer that finds typefaces a frivolous waste of resources you can already specify them as simply ’serif’, ’sans-serif’, ‘monospace’, ‘cursive’ and, ‘fantasy’ (!?). The other possible reason leads us to our third set of culprits in our ‘death of typography’ scenario…
Typefaces are expensive. Well, most good ones are. They can take a long, long, time to put together or require the sort of slight of hand only a handful of type experts can deliver. Typefaces need to be less expensive. Compare them to your average consumer product. Pretend you are shopping on your local high street or shopping mall or whatever and Woolworths now have a typeface aisle. Should I get Children of Men on DVD for £15 pounds or buy Berthold’s new OpenType version of Akzidenz Grotesk for £230 [bertholdtypes.com]? Sure, it’s a loose analogy but none of these type foundries seem to want to admit that many of the decisions regarding typefaces are being taken out of the hands of your traditional design professionals. People being free to create their own types of media (be it a blog, or a blurb book [blurb.com], or a myspace profile etc) means decisions on what typefaces to use are being made by more and more people. Typefaces are mass media. So why do they continue to be marketed to a select few. Surely, there’s some educating to be done on both sides of the fence here.
There are real solutions to this dilemma. Possibly, the best way to solve it is to separate typefaces into two distinct areas. The ‘bite-size’ chunkette [wired.com/snack_attack] and the Deluxe (or Professional) edition. For a typeface to be popular, all it really only needs is four fonts (this is what you should be calling a singular version of a typeface [typophile.com/wiki]), the Regular, the Italic, the Bold and the Bold Italic. That’s your basic package right there. Now all you have to do is market it like the delicious collectable eye-candy that it is and you’re away. The way the web is, this should get people chopping and changing fonts like crazy. The thing to remember is, that like candy, this is only the cheap substitute to the real meal (and you and I know that it’s okay to snack between meals but never substitute your dinner for candy). That’s where the Pro version comes in and the big cash money comes out. Whaddya think? It’s time to stop edging around the consumer and dive straight in. Now which foundry is going to be first to test the water?
Update: And so it begins: [fonts.info]
Further Reading on the Trouble with Typography:
The unfortunate death of Helvetica
[designbyfire.com/31]
Web Design is 95% Typography (Part 1)
[informationarchitects.jp/the-web-is-all-about-typography-period]
Web Design is 95% Typography (Part 2)
[informationarchitects.jp/webdesign-is-95-typography-partii]
Over Marketed
I’ve been looking for an excuse to post an image of this poster since I first saw it over on Daniel Grey’s Binky blog [binkythedoormat.wordpress.com]. It’s possibly one of the best film posters that’s come along in some time. Even the copy is spot on (“You must admit you bought this on yourself”), giving the viewer an impression of the film without explicitly stating anything about the plot or what it might contain apart from the facts that it’s sinister and Naomi Watts gets quite upset (having been too wary to see the original Funny Games [iMDB], I’m guessing this is a bit of an understatement). Crew Creative [crewcreative.com] have been a bit clever too in crafting an intelligently designed poster that still puts the big name star up front, ticking off the first rule of modern movie marketing.
Now here’s the rub. Apparently, according to the bright sparks marketing Funny Games in the U.K., British audiences aren’t sophisticated enough to understand the sinister intrigue that permeates in this poster. They have issued a new version based on the image in the poster shown at the bottom of this post (click to enlarge)… only with vivid red blood instead of black, a clunky over emphasised line of copy and a kind of scattershot typography that attempts to give the star names, copyline and film title equal billing (though the film title is in red, natch).
Everyone is saying it. Film posters are shite these days. This special U.K. revision of the Funny Games poster exemplifies the reason why. It’s ‘over-marketed’. The film industry has reached a point where the type of marketing they use has bottomed out and become a hollow ’style’ which they apply liberally to most of their output. In an attempt to ‘catch all’ they have missed to point of targeting distinctive markets and instead constantly aim for the Lowest Common Denominator. So, instead of a poster that will intrigue, unsettle and make you want to seek it out to find out more about this film you get a poster that condescends to all, bar people with the most base of intelligence who are happy to have culture prescribed to them rather than trying to work out things for themselves, and although we often like to believe otherwise, surely this is actually targeting the minority.
Rant: The Difference Between
Uettbein? & Wellbeing
The rise of the ‘logo designer’ is an interesting phenomenon. The logo designer is freed from the shackles of ordinary graphic design conventions. They actively shirk the responsibility of creating cohesive and rigourously designed visual identities in favour of creating mere stamps for clients to stick wherever they please. I imagine it’s quite an easy life, doling out logos like bites of candy (expensive candy, some logo designers may charge up to £600 for said ‘mere stamp’ without having to worry about implementation or ‘after sales care’). In the case of Gareth Howell’s ‘Optical Pleasure’ [opticalpleasure.co.uk] you don’t even have to bother with generating your own ideas for said logos. Just visit a website you like, grab a bit of artwork and away you go.
Am I sounding a little sarky? You might too is you opened up Computer Arts magazine [computerarts.co.uk] and saw you’re own original carefully considered artwork (in this case a typeface) with someone else’s name under it… and reworked so badly. In the image below, the top graphic is Gareth’s butchered rendition of the word ‘wellbeing’ which actually reads something like ‘Uettbein?’; in the middle there is the graphic posted on my foliosite which I guessing he used to make said logo and below is how the logo should have looked had Gareth actually had the ‘Bubbleblock’ typeface and used the letters correctly.
Gareth’s biggest blunder was mistaking a typeface for straight artwork. The typeface in question, Bubbleblock, is still in development and he could have asked for a Beta version which I have been gingerly distributing to a handful of fellow designers to see if it’s any good (it also comes with a legal notice outlining terms of use which Gareth’s wellbeing logo has breached). If you’d like a version of the Bubbleblock typeface, email [michael at boico.net] and if you’re especially nice I’ll email you back a Beta Test version for you to have a play with… then we can all start to create logos as special as the one Gareth has chosen to fling out into the world (well, into Swansea anyways).
At the risk of sounding like an accident insurance advert… have you had your work right royally ripped off (and I don’t just mean ‘re-appropriated’) by a another so-called ‘creative’? If so and you feel the need to vent, send us examples and we’ll post the best… er, most well jusified examples up here on Boicozine or just repeat after me… out with anger, in with love, out with anger, in with love…
Home Sweet Borough
Why do London’s Borough Councils need their own unique graphic identities? Is there a better, more efficient way for the various councils to communicate with their inhabitants? A number of factors have recently lead me to ponder this question. I think it started after having a look at the Legible London [legiblelondon.info] website put together by NLA [newlondonarchitecture.org] and the Mayor of London’s office. Seems folks have trouble finding their way around Olde London Town. Could be something to do with the wide variety of signage that changes from borough to borough. Something design agency Bibliothéque [bibliothequedesign.com] tackled after a recent request from This is Real Art [thisisrealart.com] to help promote Creative Review…
The other thing that seems pretty evident from the assemblage of logos above is that many councils seem to find it hard to justify investing in keep their identities fresh and engaging. I mean, look at poor old ‘Southwark’. You get the impression that many of these marks and symbols are hang overs from the 80s and Britain’s ‘golden’ age of privitisation when it was expected that councils would be in some wierd sort of competition with one another. This idea of constituents as ‘customers’ has proved hollow with the steady rise of Council Tax which is too expensive to provide any sort actual ‘best value’ comparison. Councils as commercial bodies only work when Tourism is heavily involved, as is evident in the identity work for an aggressively marketed ‘destination’ like the City of Melbourne [thatsmelbourne.com.au].
So here’s the idea. The Olympics are coming up, London needs a lot of work. Let’s start with an umbrella identity for the various London Boroughs [wikipedia.org/london_boroughs] that can be easily applied to the various signage around town, so that means one standard set of typefaces for all the boroughs. Then each council could be allocated a colour palette (of no more than 2 or 3 colours) and a graphic element to go next to their name. This could be derived from the coat of arms that each council already has available to use. Then, to make the operation as cost effective as possible, all design work could be done from a central bureau, like a sort of design laboratory. Whaddya reckon?
in Graphic Design / Ideas / Politicosis / Rants
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Review Review
What happened to The Architectural Review [arplus.com]? I grabbed a couple of ‘vintage’ copies from the excellent Archiv warehouse off Brick Lane, one from 1962 and another from 1970. I wanted to buy more but I was feeling a bit ‘kid in a candy store… er… sweet shop’ so I managed to stop at 2 ARs and a couple of issues of Design [vads.ahds.ac.uk] from the late 60s.
So, with my interest peeked, I sought out the latest edition of said magazine. No wonder I hadn’t noticed it before. What happened? I guess almost half a decade had passed but today’s The Architectural Review feels like a magazine on the edge of extinction (and coming under Emap’s current remit they should be very weary of this). Gone are the crazy fold outs and different types of paper stock, special colours and lush blueprints (in black, natch). I’ve never seen Gill Sans looking so tired and unloved. Maybe it’s punishment for helping push the social housing agenda of the 60s. I dunno, but with the recent glut of ace architectural magazines at the moment AR needs to step up or go the way of Mondial House [lightstraw.co.uk/mondial].
Premium Bond
Following on from the International Herald Tribune’s article on film poster designers. I can’t help having a bit of a go at Casino Royale… Not the film, mind. I saw the film last night and am happy to report that Daniel Craig makes poor old Pierce Brosnon and Roger Moore look like Sophia Loren’s male equivalents. Particularly cruel was coming home and switching on the telly to find ‘For Your Eyes Only’ playing. Yikes! My only critisisms are that most of the women still look like painted monsters stuck in 1989 and the Chris Cornell theme song made me bolt from the cinema at the end of the film. It’s dire.
No, my real critisism is a lot pettier than that. It’s the ruddy font they have used for the title ‘Casino Royale’. I know a lot of people shrug off this sort of thing but getting the right font adds quality to your film and James Bond has to be about quality, right. James Bond is expensive. Century Gothic [identifont] is not. In fact, if you have a look, it’s probably lurking about on your computer as we speak.
Why is it free for anyone to use without, necessarily, having to pay for it? Why do they have a to give it away? Well, for the same reason you didn’t pay for Arial or Impact. It’s another shoddy redraw of a classic font made to avoid having to pay for licensing the real thing. Shame Daniel Kleinman (whose new titles are pretty fab but still not a patch on Saul Bass), when you had the choice of a well cut classic or one the latest crop of rigorously developed cut geometric style typefaces currently available (there’s a few suggestions above). Would Bond have approved?
Want to check out almost every Bond opening sequence eva? Here’s your linkage: [cinematical.com]
