Not dead, but still massively slack at updating this blog. I do however microblog, my Twitter is updated fairly regularly to give me that feeling of warm connectiveness. Check out who else Twitters – The UN Secretary General, how nice of him. I would love to believe he does it himself, sends a text to twitter at the beginning of all his meetings.
Lately I have been working on a few things, one has illustrations in the style of a personal favourite, Miroslav Sasek and another that uses extensive 3D modeling and Motion Control cameras and green screen. That one was torture.
I am going to be leaving my job at Dare, which is quite sad for me, as it has been a cracking job, hopefully I can feel the same about the next one. Look out Agency.com.
I started clearing out my desk, as it is full of 18 months worth of crap, and I came across this in my notebook. It is from my very first day at Dare, I was asked to help out on a pitch for the Talk To Frank website. You can just see in the top left hand corner where I wrote down the names of the people who were in the meeting with me, so I didn’t embarrass myself by forgetting their names – Yasmin, Mark, Phil, Flo and Jane. Mark being Mark Collier and Flo being Flo Heiss, who both part own Dare. I have used this peice of paper to help me remember their names ever since.
The bottom right crappy looking scamp is where the idea for the home page started to take shape, and ended up looking like this. I think you will agree, that the scamp is an uncanny likeness to the final site.
Filed under: Design
I went to the new Wembley for the first time at the weekend, and we decided that we would take the long way round to our seats and approach from the Olympic Way, as we wanted the full effect, I was expecting to be in awe.
All five of us who went were left feeling a bit cold, I found the place fairly unimaginative, huge and stark. The arch was great, but that is where it ended for me. Inside was just concrete, the underside of the roof looked like the inside of some cow shed, grey and bland. There didn’t seem to be any details considered. The outside was a lot of glass, but there was no colour or character underneath it, you look straight through on to grey concrete again. I have heard that if it were at night, it would be illuminated the participating teams colours, which would have certainly helped the otherwise grey canvas.
It also seemed to be situated in emptiness, all around there was just flattened rubble, which I assume will be developed to give the area more stature, but nothing seems to be happening as yet?
Maybe it is a place that you will learn to love, but for me, for now, the stadium is way overpriced at £800m. The Emirates is a nicer gaff (I hate to say that being a Utd. supported) That looks much nicer on the approach, and in close up, more considered, on time and on budget.
Give them a big pen and a big bit of paper and it all goes tits up. Take a bow Dare Senior Planner Jane Hovey.
I saw this ad at lunchtime yesterday on a phone box from the Home Office, to try and curb mobile phone crime. The image is made from a text message, I think it is mint.
Nice touch too, on the unfinished line ‘You never know when a stolen mobile will stop worki’. I don’t know who did it, but well done anyway.
Filed under: Design
A tough days parenting at Legoland today, my highlight was these cool bursting for a waz toilet icons. I did look a bit of a weirdo taking pics of the toilets in a predominantly kiddie establishment though.
The static logo is still crap, it’s that Comic Sans type font what bugs me the most, but the animation is cool, if you haven’t got epilepsy that is.
Apparently Ken Livingston has called on the Olympic Committee to withhold payment from Wolff Olins in light of the epilepsy debacle. Well done Ken. You’re still a twat though.
So the new London, sorry, london 2012 video has been withdrawn because it made people go a bit skew whiff, and not because it is so lame it made them angry, because all the flashing sent people into epileptic fits.
I design sites at Dare, and Dare get paid money to do a job properly, which means I have to check that everything just right, especially for those with disabilities. Surely Wolff Olins could have spent some of the £400,000 they got for asking the GCSE student placement person to quickly knock up a logo that is down with the kids, on checking the video they made to explain the effort produced, wasn’t going to bugger up those with a disability. Just a thought.
By the way, I read in The Times that Ken Livingstone hates the logo. He is still a twat though.
Tessa Jowell said: “This is an iconic brand that sums up what London 2012 is all about – an inclusive, welcoming & diverse Games”. What the Olympic committee has achieved is less iconic than moronic, but it is certainly inclusive. By the looks of all these disparaging comments left on the BBC website, everyone is included in the opinion that this logo is shit.
Our Greater London Authority tax went up by 13.3% last year, and a further 5.3% this year to pay for this debacle. Ken Livingstone thinks that all the money I am paying is a ‘good deal’ for me. I will get nothing from the Olympics, nothing at all, not even a sense of British pride by the looks of this logo, I mean, for the love of God, is that font some sort of funked up Comic Sans?!! It leaves me feeling embarrassed and angry. Ken Livingstone is a twat.
Filed under: Design
2 bits of design that stopped me in my tracks this week, above is the inside of a CD sleeve for Global Underground designed by Geordie agency MAAD Ltd. I am feeling the simple primary colours and the bold layout. I have opened up this CD sleeve and stuck it in front of quite a few people and said, ‘check that out!’only my illustrious colleagues have agreed with me so far, mention it to anyone outside the Dare building, and they just look at me in pity. There is also a TV advert likely done in After Effects, I am not as enamoured with that though, it just doesn’t seem quite as bold.
The other thing that struck me was this poster for The Southbank Centre that was down the tubes. Maybe it was after seeing Wim Crouwel the previous week that did it, but I loved the deconstruction, and re-construction of the Southbank Centre logo to make a cloud, and it is on a blue that reminded me of Crouwel’s work.
