STUFF THAT HAPPENED, sponsored by Snapple™

SO THIS WEEK HAD BEEN INTERESTING... sort of. We went to a few interesting design related things, which was good, I guess we're part of the 'scene' now! Firstly we went to the Annual D&AD awards, but we aren't really members, and you need to register to enter, so we were only allowed to see the section with the entries, but not attend anything actually fun. But luckily some of the entries were Wii games, so we played them for a while. I think the Wii itself was an entry actually. So that was a fun thing to do on a Monday night, Soryi got herself a few issues of their magazine, and I swiped some CD's and books (that were being given away, but only to members) and it was fun.

Then we attended a super exciting, super nerdy conference from Adobe! Hooray! It was so interesting they spread it over two days. But actually it was interesting. And in the several seconds I could actually hear what the lectures were about, in between the yelling of scenster students and confused old-people, I actually learnt a few tricks. Plus Adobe's Creative Suite 3 is looking very very nice. I'll miss GoLive though. I don't understand Dreamweaver, and I don't want to understand Dreamweaver. And Flash? No thanks.

One highlight of the Adobe thing was the guest speakers. We heard the president of the D&AD talk about why the winners got their awards. They couldn't praise Nike+ enough! I was kind of skeptical of why Nike+ was so good, but it turns out it really is. Some of the features are amazing, it has a voice that encourages you when you start slowing down, there's a 'power song' button to give you an extra kick, it lets you input how much weight you want to lose, and by when, and it'll work out how much you running you need to do, you can challenge friends anywhere in the world, and plus, it's Apple! I'm very impressed. Only problem is that it only works on an iPod nano. Soryi and I will get them, including nano's soon, we're both going to try and get fit. After all the money stuff is worked out of course.

But cooler than that was a talk from Neville Brody!!! He's a design legend! I actually used him in my 2006 portfolio for the designer showdown! He's very good. He talked a bit about himself and all that, and about his work, but mainly just about how we should take some risks and not worry about getting fired. That's individually and as a company. Of course we need to do some work to pay the bills, but we can't just do that, or we'll go crazy. And contribute nothing to society. The thing that struck me and Soryi about Brody was that while his work is dated, and completely not relevant to today's audience, his message is true. I didn't do a very good job explaining what he said, but it struck a chord. Maybe he's just a good talker.

What else? Oh, my PowerBook died. Sort of. Well, it was having problems with fonts, and missing links and general problems arrising from 2 years of use without turning it off or reinstalling things. So I tried to repair it myself. I used Soryi's restore CD that came with her computer (I left mine in Australia) but it didn't work. It did delete all my files, but not restore the computer. So I certainly couldn't use it then.

I took it to the Apple store on Regent St (next to Oxford Circus) and they were all "you're gonna have to call Apple to sort it out, we're just a store". I called Apple in the US and they were very annoyed, "They are our flagship store, they were supposed to take care of everything for you. We apologise for any inconvienience." Which was nice. I took it back to the store and they had an appointment for me to speak to a technician. I saw him, he took a look at the computer, I explained what needed fixing, he plugged in a cable and 15 minutes later it was like brand new! Aside from the one person who had no idea what she was talking about (she said my computer had been out of warranty for 500+ days, even though I had an extended warranty on it, and in fact it had 500+ days left on the warranty), everything worked out nicely. I'm still a big fan of Apple, not just for it's nicely designed and perhaps overly simple products, but for it's ongoing quality support services.

Lastly, London, and the world I suppose, received it's Olympic logo. No-one likes it. No-one. The head of D&AD slagged it off, and when they asked an audience of 250 designers if they liked it, no-one did. Neville Brody criticised it in front of 800 designers and got a huge laugh and cheer. But I do like it. Maybe it's just me, but I think it's a great new direction for the Olympics. Aside from the monstrous task of acheiving something that matches an incredibly complex brief, the logo is new, exciting and different. For the last 4 or 5 games the logo is basically the same style, completely interchangeable with the various countries.



This logo is either London or Tokyo. The shapes are very Japanese, but they're also very Sex Pistols. Punky, dynamic, exciting! It totally breaks from the obvious images of a stuffy and boring London. I like that it doesn't have any London landmarks, going beyond the obvious. Maybe it could've been produced better, maybe it's a little too radical, maybe everyone in London is pissed off that it cost £400,000, but I think it's a great idea. Incidentally, despite D&AD slagging it, they did mention that the designer did receive designer of the year in 2005! So it's not all that bad.

In the newspapers's they suggested that the logo competition be opened up to primary school kids, and that the winning school gets £40,000. First of all that's a great idea. But secondly that's stupid. The logo isn't just a bunch of shapes that can easily produced in minutes (which of course they can), it has to represent a buttload of complex things, convey a bunch of invisible emotions and do a whole lot of stuff that people don't understand. It really pissed me off to hear people say that a child could do better. That's bullcrap. Here's a better quote:

It's simple. When we hear "my kid could have done that!" we think "success." Some of the greatest logos of all time involve two lines (the Christian cross) or three lines and a circle (Mercedes). Your kid COULD have done that, but she didn't. Nor did she design the graphics standards manual that goes with it. So give it a rest. Or send us her resume.


If this logo fiasco has done anything, apart from piss people off, it's damaged the graphic design industry. £400,000 doesn't cover jsut the logo, it covers the million versions before it, the hundreds of companies developing printed material, web stuff, videos, everything! And now people are demanding that the studios give all the money back. That's crap.

Pisses my right off. On the otherhand, one video did cause epilepsy in 40 people. That is bad design. And I don't excuse that. I try to design with these things in mind. Epilepsy isn't much of an issue for print design, but color-blindness is something to watch out for. Not red-green combos!

Anyway. I didn't mean for this post to have corporate sponsorship and product placement, but it totally did! Huzzah!

IESSO

PS. I love Snapple.