based on his profile picture alone it would be safe to say that ‘olaf zwetsloot’ is a fairly unconventional creative mind, his newly launched website and utopian vision hipcescu just proves the point further
me news
similarities
there has always been a fine line between homage and copying… still i wouldn’t really want to see something i’d made appear in this online set:
an amusing collection of ‘similarities’, but to be fair some of them are clearly intentional and by now well-known examples of referencing the past… although some of them are also just really awful copies
a bit of a stasis in graphics
…type-only logos have ruled for well over a decade as the harsh economics of designing for the limited ‘real estate’ available online has forced a concentration on the words. Perhaps the pressure of tiny web icons, phone buttons and favicons will make us all consider ‘pictures’ again. If Shell and Apple have become synonymous with pictures, not words, maybe it’s possible. It’s been a while…
interesting piece from michael johnson on the the way ahead for corporate identity design
…tight times and tight budgets mean that clients tend to err on the side of safety. So innovative design has to prove its worth and prove its contribution to the bottom line – tough to do but a pre-requisite if we’re not going to get sunk in a sea of mediocre, ‘safe’ design for two years. ‘I just preferred it like that’ is not a viable piece of boardroom rationale anymore…
what design…
can’t do …if you want to be a brand, I tell clients, you must work from the inside out. A great logo isn’t going to make a shitty product any less shitty, any more than a hard worker is going to make a bad boss a compelling leader. In this model, the inner layers affect the outer ones, not the other way around (with the possible exception that a well-articulated brand can help employees feel pride in their organization which can, for a time, boost morale)…
old fox
an article in the arts section of the dutch newspaper ‘het parool’ from journalist jan pieter ekker dated 19th of january bemoans the role of marketing departments in the choice of imagery for cultural posters and specifically as relates to the work of designer ‘lex reitsma’ who has designed the posters for the dutch opera (dno) for more than twenty years now
evidence for this phenomenon is mainly provided by two poster designs for the same production ‘the cunning fox’ both by the same designer and with virtually identitcal typography… one (2006) with a clever image of a smoking gun in the form of a fox’s tail, the latest (2010) with a rather staid ‘on stage’ image instead, based on this evidence and the fact that i had also noted the change for the worse in this case, one finds it hard to disagree with the arguments
although the fact that the journalist and designer are acquainted makes me wonder why neither the designer nor the marketing department in question, were asked to react to this article, it does seem to be a change for the worse but do they agree and if not, why?…