Alan
Fletcher is an icon of post-war graphic design in Britain. He spent over fifty
years creating stunning identities for clients as prestigious and diverse as
the V&A and Reuters. He was a founding member of D&AD and
founding partner of international design firm Pentagram.
His style and approach can be best understood by flicking through his seminal publication, ‘The Art of Looking Sideways’. Fletcher himself described the book as 'a journey without a destination'. The book is a collection of images, quotes and comments that provides insight into Fletcher’s inspiration and visual philosophy.
Here's a selection of his work. A big thank you to Pentagram for sourcing images.
Pirelli cintura: 1961
Reuters Logo: 1965
Designers Saturday: 1982
IBM Poster Series: 1983
IBM
Poster Series: 1983
IBM
Poster Series: 1983
Daimler Benz Poster: 1986
Metro wanted to give creatives the chance to play with their newspaper, so last month they launched a competition with D&AD. The challenge was to produce a coverwrap that would inspire and motivate commuters on their way into work. The winning work was wrapped round this morning’s edition of the paper.
A diverse mix of work was nominated, but it was the simple, bold images that won over judges. ‘Lots of the entries brought a smile to my face which to me is no bad thing,’ said film director Ringan Ledgwidge.
A team from branding and design agency The Partners came out on top with their simple and beautiful idea to ‘make someone’s day’ – turning the wrap into a bunch of flowers by rolling up the paper.
‘We wanted the idea to have a purpose; getting people to re-use and pass on their newspaper, said Jack Renwick, Creative Director at The Partners. “Everyone likes flowers. You can use them as an emergency gift, to say sorry, or just to cheer someone up. If someone proposes using our paper I hope we get invited to the wedding!”
Thanks to everyone who entered - and congratulations to the winning team!
(L-R): Alex Woolley, Jack Renwick, Samuel Hall & Sam Griffiths
As D&AD and Hyper Island announce our partnership bringing the Hyper Island Master Class to the UK, we investigate the skills gaps that the digital revolution has precipitated.
Most people feel a bit behind when it comes to that thing termed ‘digital’. Even hardened professionals admit that keeping up with the pace of change can be impossible. So how can agencies ensure they leverage the opportunities that digital media offer them?
There is a widely acknowledged dearth of graduates with the right skill sets and competition to recruit is fierce. A fact demonstrated by the high placement success rate of educational institutions like Hyper Island, who specialise in this area. So training existing staff is key as well.
Harry Fowler at
Cogs Agency recruits talent with a strong digital bias to creative agencies. He
thinks that training is essential if the industry is to avoid the same small
number of skilled people being headhunted around the industry. The talent
pipeline needs to be kept active and one way to do that is to retrain existing
staff. ‘A crossover of skills is needed between traditional and digital
agencies’, says Harry, ‘Digital agencies need the strong brand understanding
and conceptual approach of traditional creatives. Traditional agencies need
people who understand the process-led production of digital work.’
One agency that has taken the bull by the horns is Wieden & Kennedy London. The whole agency participated in the Hyper Island Master Class. ‘Whether we like it or not, we are all ‘digital’ now’, says Sam Brookes, Managing Director of Platform, W&K’s innovation unit. ‘We all live in that world, and we all need to be able to navigate it to a certain degree’. A sentiment echoed by Harry who points out that ‘The rules have changed and so have consumers, those that fail to skill themselves up will be redundant.’
Sounds scary, but many see it as an opportunity. Sam Brookes says, ‘One of the important things about the Master Class was that it didn’t make us feel inadequate. In fact the training affirmed that we were already fantastic storytellers and it simply gave us opportunities to do more of that, more of what we do best.’ The pay-off has been visible across the whole organisation. ‘We now have a much better idea how to act as an agency in this new landscape’ says Sam.
Here at D&AD
we were keen to work with Hyper Island given their track record; they have
placed graduates in almost every large agency in London and delivered their Master
Classes to professionals around the world. Their learning philosophy has great
resonance with our own approach to training, using experience-based learning as
a foundation. ‘It is fantastic that D&AD are working with Hyper Island to
bring this training to the UK’ says Harry, ‘Everyone should want and need
this’. If you are interested in the Hyper Island Master Classes read further or email workout@dandad.co.uk.
Domenic Lippa is
a Partner at
Pentagram, an international multi-disciplinary design studio.
‘In an age of
visual saturation it is reassuring to see calm, minimal work, which has an idea
behind it,’ says Lippa. ‘There is
no need for cheesy photos of the band, instead the simple tick referencing the
title says it all. The design defies
the traditionally superficial ‘pop’ stereotype.’
What would you do if you
had to design a shop window? Last year, Tom Carey and his team won second prize at the Student Awards challenge to create an installation for Hamley's
shop window on London’s Regent Street.
They came up with the
idea of creating an interactive summer environment in the front of Hamleys shop
window. Children colour in a butterfly template, which is scanned and made into
a digital version of their design. Their butterfly comes to life and flies
around the window display, which they can interact with using motion sensor
technology. Their design can then be turned into a kite that they can take
along to a butterfly festival at the end of the summer.
The story doesn’t end
there, though, as Tom needed to find himself a job – and in the middle of what
we all know is the ‘worst recession since 1993.’ He maxed out his overdraft by
turning down part time work as a shelf-stacker to get experience on four work
placements. 'Once I graduated, it really helped having made lots of
contacts and having industry experience'. Today he’s 6 months into a job
at interdisciplinary brand design consultancy, A+B Studio.
'Tom stood out the
moment he walked in - not only because of his untameable hair-do but his
scatter-gun approach to design. On second glance we realised that each piece of
work (whether it was jewellery, books, installations and even a
multi-functional-festival jackets) was incredibly thought out,
thought provoking and beautifully designed. Most
importantly - Tom was a person we really liked to spend time with,’ said Benji
Wiedemann, Creative Director.
Tom’s journey to A+B
Studio has 3 main features
He took a targeted
approach; ‘While doing
placements I was looking for small up-and-coming companies that might be
looking to take someone on. I wanted to jump in at the deep end and get stuck
in.
He wasn’t afraid to ask
for help: ‘While on placement at hat-trick, I asked
pretty much everyone to have a look at my
portfolio and asked them about other companies that I might not have heard of.
One of the designers mentioned A+B Studio, who I emailed straight away.
And, as ever in life, he
had a bit of good luck: ‘A+B Studio were about to move to a bigger place and
were looking for someone – I was in the right place at the right time.'
Tom's worked on plenty of different projects since he got started, including the titles for BBC series, Hairy Bikers. Watch the title sequence here:
Here's Tom working on the shoot:
D&AD09: Creative excellence in design and advertising will launch next month. This book is the result of D&AD and TASCHEN's partnership to make The Annual available to anyone. Designed by Jeremy Leslie, it will be available in two versions; English, German, and French as well English, Italian, and Portuguese.
Jeremy Leslie is director of magCulture, member of the D&AD Executive Committee and a passionate advocate of editorial design. Busy, then! He's agreed to share a few insights into his latest project, the redesign of men's magazine, FHM, which relaunched in the UK this month.
1. Can you
describe the process of editorial design - are there unique challenges to the
discipline?
A critical issue often overlooked by designers
without editorial experience is that a magazine isn’t a series of single pieces
but needs to hold together as a whole. The balance of text and image and any
page can vary enormously. The
running order and variation from page to page needs not only be carefully
considered but also open to change as the issue comes together. During
production the whole magazine is in a permanent state of flux, and only when
the final page is completed does that flux end and the flat plan become secure.
Harder still is the way that creating pace through
the pages means sometimes a story will be designed and illustrated in a
particular way to appear different to what precedes and follows that story,
rather than designed purely in the best way for that individual story.
2. How do
you start tackling a project for a well-established brand like FHM?
The first things to do were to get to know the
magazine, talk to the editor, pull some tear sheets together from other
magazines, then agree the right direction – agree a brief.
FHM is a long-standing brand that has lost its way in
recent years. This made it a relatively simple brief. In its heyday it was one
of the most influential men’s magazines, but it had lost sight of its audience.
There was a strong magazine trying to fight its way through the wrong design
– it was confusing to the reader, the content and look didn’t match. The
FHM reader wants simple things presented without being over-designed. The
design had to be invisible, which is harder to achieve than it sounds.
Design-wise it had to look strong but unremarkable.
3. The FHM
redesign launched the same week as Apple's new iPad was unveiled. Where do you think the future of the
lad's mag and mainstream mag publishing generally lies?
If I had a simple answer to that I’d be a very rich
man.
Magazine publishing is experiencing a collective
depression at the moment caused by several factors, one of which is the
presence of online competition. But the Internet is not the only reason for
this depression. It’s easy to forget the massive boom the magazines industry
has experienced over recent decades. Like other sectors, magazine publishing
couldn’t continue to grow at the rate it was going. It’s been too easy to see a
successful magazine, rip it off, and watch the money pour in from advertisers.
A downturn was inevitable, and here it is: US publishers have just experienced
a 9% drop in newsstand sales. Shocking from a business perspective but from a
creative standpoint there have been too many similar magazines chasing the same
reader. It’s time for a shake out, and the fact it’s happening is cause for
long term optimism; a return to quality over quantity.
But from a creative point of view, the prospect of
the iPad is very exciting. There have been plenty of attempts at merging
magazine and digital content and presentation with little success. At last,
perhaps, the iPad will make this possible. There’s a generation out there for
whom the iPod Touch allows seamless access to digital content, be it music,
games, news or utilities. The combination of image and text we are used to
experiencing in magazines is ideally suited to this environment.
I rely on the Internet hour to hour, but as well as
the open interaction it allows me I’d also like a more immersive, mediated
digital content experience that is less open-ended than a website and provides
the ongoing relationship I experience with magazines.
The future will be a mix of both. Printed magazines
will continue to exist alongside digital magazines of some sort, whether its
the iPad that proves the catalyst or not.
We are pleased to
announce the release of the Product Design briefs. We have two briefs in the
product categories, one sponsored by DIY Kyoto and the other courtesy of
Seymourpowell. They can both be downloaded now from the site.
We
are planning to run some more workshops. Currently we have two planned for
January 27, one from LIDA around Direct Response and the other with Seymourpowell
for Product Design. Spaces on each are limited to 12 persons. For full details
click here.
With workshops in
mind, we have embedded the videos from the Autumn season below.
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