5 Principles of Good Design (via Shillington)

This is taken from the Shillington school of Design Theory, in New York, and we couldn't agree more. Great graphic design doesn't happen by accident. It needs architecture, structure, rigour, discipline. Then you must add a dash of creativity.
You can read more about Shillington and their courses here.

The Malaysia Design Archive

1920's luggage lable for E&O Hotel Penang
The British marketed Malaya as an exotic getaway, using the romance of the Far East with its colours, smells and beauty as an antidote to an increasingly urban and industrialized UK

The Malaysia Design Archive is a website that tracks the history of design in Malaysia, from Colonial times through Japanese Occupation, Independence and beyond. 

We fully support and encourage this site, it's great to see a small and passionate group of people who are devoted to the study and support of Malaysia's own design ethos. 

It's also a fascinating record of the diversity and change that Malaysia has undergone in the last 120 years, capturing visually and graphically the explosive growth and demographic changes in the country.

The below is just a small selection of the historic designs that are available on the site, to give you a feel for the breadth of social and cultural history that the site covers.

Ten dollar ‘Banana Money’ currency

Issued by the Japanese during their occupation of Malaya between 1942 and 1944. The front of this rare note features a tree bearing fruit, with the obverse featuring a depiction of a ship on the horizon.

Banana money is an informal term given to a type of currency issued by Imperial Japan during the Japanese occupation of Singapore, Malaya, North Borneo and Sarawak and Brunei, and was named as such because of the motifs of banana trees on 10 dollar banknotes.

Japanese War Leaflet, 1944

The leaflet above was dropped by the Japanese in both the Malay and Chinese languages. It addresses the Malayans as “brethren” and asks that they inform on the British and Americans, It offers rewards for worthwhile intelligence. Some of the text in Malaya and Japanese is:

The Japanese Army is your friend unlike the foreign British and Americans. We are all of a common ancestry and are Asian brethren. As such, we have a common enemy in the British and Americans.

If you see any British or Americans, please capture or report them to the Japanese Army and do not let them escape. If you can transport them to the Japanese Army then do so.

The Japanese Army will not harm you and you will be paid a reward.

Signed: Japanese Army Commander.

As a Brit in Malaysia, obviously this is spooky, imagining what this must have felt like for the British forces that were in Malaya at the time. 

Straits Times Annual, 1957
Featuring Datuk Maria Menado, apparently the most beautiful woman in Malaya at the time
http://www.malaysiadesignarchive.org/magazine-the-straits-times-annual-1957/

The Station Hotel, luggage tag 1950's
The Majestic Hotel KL, just opposite the station shown here, re-opened under YTL in 2013 after years of neglect, showing a trend for nostalgia and historic experiences that offer more than the modernised tower-block, cookie-cutter hotel.
Note the use of the oversized 'O' in the header to give the font a distinctive feel.
http://www.malaysiadesignarchive.org/emergency/

Malaysia-Singapore Airlines ad, 1969 promising the 'finest food aloft'
Proof that airlines always have been - and always will be - key media spenders. An interesting angle for a product or aircraft shot, not seen often these days. The rear 3/4 view, rather than showing a side-on or in-flight shot. Suggestive of immediate departure or travel. There is plenty still to learn from the ad-men of the past (this written having worked for 2 years on Malaysia Airlines here in KL).

http://www.malaysiadesignarchive.org/advertisement-the-707/

All images here courtesy of http://www.malaysiadesignarchive.org/

Please share this site widely and donate. Thanks to Ezrena Hussain for making us aware of this great resource.

More on what3words...

I had blogged previously about what3words before here - and great to see their new video, which explains very well what they're about and how they work. Love the concept. Scared by how complex it must have been to setup, but such a great simple idea. Here is a company that makes the world a better, easier place to be. Truly useful technology, that gives back - unlike so many apps and .coms out there...

Steve Jobs the Adman

This video is taken from an Apple internal meeting in 1997 (thanks Harinder Singh). Steve Jobs had only just returned to the company after his period of 'exile' at NeXT. It shows - in a most candid way - his instinctive grasp for branding and the central role he gives it in the turnaround plan for Apple. Jobs understood that despite all their technical ability, if Apple couldn't communicate simply and clearly their values, they would not be successful. It also shows, through his eloquent and powerful presentation, his ability as an adman himself - I doubt there are many in the industry today that could present this work as well. Clearly he was heavily invested in the production and success of the campaign. What a fascinating insight into one of the most famous campaigns of all time. And most astonishing....that all this was completed in 2 months' time. The result of this hard work? By 1998 Apple was back in profitability after almost going bankrupt.

Big in China?

Illustration by Daniel Mitchell http://www.daniel-mitchell.co.uk/

Sometimes you just have to say ‘yes’ and worry about the consequences later…an email arrives saying we, G.A, have been invited by one of our biggest clients to speak at the Asia-Pacific Hotel Design Association’s 4^th annual conference in Dalian, and am I free to do this?

The first thought is: what would I say? The second thought is: I have so much going on. The third thought is: where on earth is Dalian? The third thought, after a quick bit of Google mapping, tipped the decision in favour of a ‘yes’.

Dalian is pretty close to North Korea, a “2^nd tier” city (‘only’ 6 million inhabitants – about the size of greater Kuala Lumpur - and everyone in Dalian refers to how ‘small’ the city is). It has an interesting history, having been founded by Russians, invaded and taken over by the Japanese, Russian again after WW2 then ‘gifted’ back to China as a sign of friendship between the two Communist countries.

I had never been to a “2^nd tier” Chinese city before, and was interested to see a new part of this giant country. The conference, coming hot on the heels of our G.A rebranding and the opening of our Shanghai office would also be great exposure for the company. So it was a ‘yes’ then and let’s worry about the rest when it happens – necessity is the mother of invention, after all.

It was later I discovered there were no direct flights to Dalian from KL. This meant flying China Southern airlines from KL to Guangzhou (4 hours), then transferring on a domestic flight across from Guangzhou to Dalian (3 hours)*. 

'View' of Guangzhou coming into land. I have been there twice. Whenever I have been there it was covered in this soul-destroying pollution. For more thoughts on that, see Why we should be thankful for the haze

After a near-miss at customs in Guangzhou, I arrived at Dalian at night. I was greeted with a full bouquet of flowers and whisked off to Starwood’s 300-key Castle Hotel, part of its Luxury Collection, designed by HBA and only opened 1 month ago – the venue for the APHDA conference. The hotel was a reinterpretation of a French chateau, replete with marble flooring, chandeliers, grand staircases and reproduction furniture – a style very popular in China to denote ‘luxury’ and ‘success’, but distinctly odd and a bit Disney-esque to my British eyes. I can understand, however, why this kind of design is so popular in a country that has laboured under grim public/civic-minded architecture for so many years.

The Castle Hotel, Dalian

I was immediately impressed by the scale of the event, about 1,300 delegates were in the audience – and the way it had been set-up to include the biggest names in the industry, from across China, Hong Kong, Singapore. Previous guest speakers had included Tony Chi, Peter Remedios and Jean-Michel Gathy – so no pressure then.  And I was one of only a handful of Westerners in the room.

View from Dalian's main square (the biggest in Asia). The world's biggest and flattest half-pipe skatepark. And a giant unfinished bridge mid-construction in the background. Smog wasn't as bad here, but still noticeable.

The theme of the event was “Future Hotels”.  I am a fan of future-gazing, like most people, so this theme attracted me and I wrote a speech focused on what the hotel design of the future would be like. I won’t go into it here, but if you are interested I will post a separate link to the video of my speech when I have it.

The speech went down well, mainly because of G.A’s reputation in the region thanks to our great work on projects like W Taipei. For that I can only say again what great (and hard) work our team is doing around the world.

It also went down well because of the student-based audience – I suspect that not many event speeches in China encourage the audience to think and participate in a dialogue. I was nervous about doing this, given my experience in Asia in general is that people are very reticent about asking questions in a public forum. However, on the advice of Susan, my brilliant translator, we decided to go ahead and open up the discussion.

It was only after the speech, that I started to get a sense that ideas like ‘crowd-sourcing’ and group participation, discussion are considered more radical perhaps in China than elsewhere, especially amongst a large group of students (and to the back-drop of the student civil disobedience in Hong Kong).

I sensed there was a formula which they had been expecting – design firm principals turn-up and show their portfolio, talk about the past, how they ‘made it’ and got to their current position etc. Given that I am not a designer, I was reluctant to do that, so focused more on a group session trying to define the future of hotel design, using ideas harvested from the G.A global family and examples of our current work as stimulus.

What I certainly didn’t expect was to be mobbed by students, suppliers and clients alike for the rest of the conference. One man approached me asking us to work on a boutique 60-room hotel project apparently attached to the Great Wall of China (!)

Seemingly everyone wanted pictures, signatures or to exchange business cards. After nearly an hour of this, it was frankly a bit overwhelming. I suppose everyone is due their 15 mins of fame, but it also got me thinking….is there something in Chinese culture where role-models are held in very high esteem, perhaps without the criticism or cynicism you would find in the UK? Or maybe our work was just that inspiring…I hope the latter. Either way, it seems that G.A is now ‘big in China’. For all those in our team that worked on these projects, I wish you could have been there to see it – I am sure it would go some way to make the long hours and effort worthwhile.

*A footnote about China Southern Airlines and an example of the general statistical craziness of China…. I learnt this during my days working with Malaysia Airlines on the launch of their own A380 services from KL to London. China Southern Airlines is, I am told, the only airline in the world to fly profitably Airbus A380s (the huge, double-decker ones). Why? Because China Southern flies their A380s converted almost entirely into economy-class seating, more than 500 people being flown this way in one plane. But here’s the killer – they fly them exclusively domestically. So whilst in the UK we may have invented the concept of the double-decker bus, in China, they created the double-decker plane. Literally bussing Chinese around their country from city to city.

Ni hao G.A Shanghai

Welcome to G.A Shanghai. The culmination of years of planning and hard work. It's exciting to see our China presence come to life, of course with a brilliant office design which we executed in-house (well done Ying). You will also notice our new G.A branding on the door - by G.A Brand Design, also in-house of course. More on that tomorrow with the official launch of the new G.A mark and brand architecture; suffice to say, it's great how we can now combine brand positioning and design execution seamlessly from concept through to physical space. And no better place to start doing that than with your own company. If clients don't see you 'walking the talk' why should they bother listening to your advice? With the Shanghai office located a stone's throw away from our W Shanghai project, launching 2016, we look forward to growing and developing our group presence in China.

GET BETTER - dan le sac Vs Scroobius Pip

Some more from Scroobius here...in case you liked the last post. We love the vibe, the positivity and the self-motivation - GET BETTER people!

Scroobius Pip vs Dan le Sac: Thou Shalt Always Kill

We love this so much. It's an original, fresh and honest voice. Ok so we have a big thing here about 'brand honesty'. A lot of brands could do with rigorously interrogating their products and product position and finding the honest truth about what is they stand for, be it good or bad - Marmite did this famously with their 'love it/hate it' campaigns. 

This is a few years old, but we stumbled back over it today and still love it. Spoken word can have its hits and misses, but the scene in London is vibrant and energetic, underground and original. Scroobius Pip merges the mundane with the philosophical. We love its irreverence and its ultimate message - THINK FOR YOU YOURSELVES (although he'd probably hate it being blogged about on a branding blog - too bad).

Rubik's Cube Google Doodle - 19.05.14

You know that we love Google's Doodles and have posted on them in the past. But how cool is this? For the 40th anniversary of the Rubik's Cube, today, Google recreated the Cube in digital form inside their Doodle. Amazing. Rubik's Doodle

We love the way the Rubik's image uses subtle colours to spell out the Google logo on the home screen (blue-red-yellow-blue-green-red) - see image directly below. When you have a mark that is so ubiquitous, so famous and well-known, you can play with it in referential terms like this. It's similar to some of the recent Coke graphic work also posted on this blog: http://ga-brand.blogspot.com/2014/05/brilliant-work-from-coke.html

Just to think, if the Cube had been created in the 21st century, it may never have been a physical object - it probably would have a been an app or digital game, with high-speed scores shared real-time on social media to your friends. Just goes to show how far we've come in 40 years. However, digital or physical, one thing hasn't changed, I still can't complete the damn thing :) 

Brilliant Work from Coke

(Courtesy of Ads of the World - Coca-Cola's Summer Together Poster)

The FIRST 'Pantone' Colour Guide (from nearly 300 years ago)!

If you have ever flipped through a catalog of paint swatches for your home, then you probably used the Pantone Color Guide. It is basically a guide to almost every color you could think of. Pantone has been around since 1963. However, someone else beat Pantone to the punch… nearly 300 years before.

A medieval book historian by the name of Erik Kwakkel came across an extremely old handwritten book, full of color swatches. An author and artist known only as A. Boogert filled 800 pages with watercolors, creating almost every color imaginable. It was meant as an educational guide, but very few have seen it until now.

The guide was carefully handwritten and lasted hundreds of pages.

The artist mixed hundreds upon hundreds of color samples.

It was called the “Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l’eau.”

 

It was most likely the most comprehensive color guide of its time. 

 

Back in 1692, the artist began by explaining the process of mixing colors. He described how to create certain hues and change the tone by adding one, two, or three parts of water.

 

That simple explanation turned into hundreds of pages of swatches.

How the artist was able to create the scope and detail of this book, especially given the time period, is nearly unfathomable. If you’d like to see this historic book in person, it’s kept at the Bibliothèque Méjanes in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Source: Erik Kwakkel and viralnova.com

Brain Crack (Explicit Version) - ZeFrank - or getting ideas to reality quickly

I like this is a lot - warning for those of a sensitive nature regarding the explicit language. But ZeFrank's point is hugely relevant. Don't suffer from Braincrack. Get those ideas OUT early. Make them real. It's ok if they're rubbish at the beginning, you gotta start somewhere. And the scary thing is - you have to work on this continuously, it's so easy to fall back into bad habits....

Dan Reisinger: a graphic life of colourful design

This post focuses on the work of Dan Reisinger. Reisinger was born in 1934 in Serbia, but immigrated to Israel in 1949. He is famous for his work as a graphic artist that often expressed his political views associated with his Israeli nationality and experiences during the Holocaust when he was growing up. His EL AL series of posters which commenced in the late sixties and continued through the seventies, were radically different to the prevailing trend at the time. For reference, look at this pre-Reisinger EL AL 'London' ad. Simple and clear, but how would this stand out in the marketplace?

By contrast, Reisinger's poster for London introduced a new and playful approach, improvising on the visual theme of the El Al logo.

Graphic, simple, bold, block colour and instant cut-through versus the clutter of standardised photographic shots being used at the time. In fact in some ways this style was almost a harking-back to the original travel posters of the 40's and 50's, with their vivid used of illustration and colour.

Once Reisinger and El Al had struck the theme, the campaign was seemingly endless and spawned a number of different destinations. The typographic play could be on the L of the EL such as below ads for Amsterdam, Rome, Vienna or the USA:

Note the clever and suggestive use of colour in his work, each colour chosen carefully to represent the character of the destination - for example the metallic aluminium feel to the grey background of the USA poster reminiscent of the polished aluminium finish of the Greyhound long-distance coaches and the metalwork of Detroit's automobiles; likewise the orange backdrop to the Amsterdam poster reflecting the Dutch national colours.

His 'typographic rules' however were not set in stone. He could also play with the A from the EL AL. The rules were flexible and in service to the idea of the campaign - seemingly however best to bring life those particular destinations:

Sometimes he would work on both words EL and AL as per Istanbul - each time and each execution does not sacrifice the legibility of the logo, nor the impact and clarity of the destination's allure.

And sometimes he wouldn't even play with the logo at all:

What had been created was such a powerful and vivid CAMPAIGN IDEA that the audience could take part in the game, spot the next ad and wait to see what typographic plays, destinations and designs would appear next.

But in our mind, best of all was when Reisinger added some thematic messaging and copy to his work. As in the case of the launch of the Boeing 747 service 'Rainboeing the skies'. What a wonderful line and vivid imagery - although of course this is all coming from an era with less awareness or concern about envrionmental issues such as global warming. An image such as this today, would be impossibly naive, but then, like all art, it is a product of its times.

Reisinger continued to produce work and is still alive today. Some of his later offerings include this poster from 1986 and he even branched into environmental design with this Tambour Paint factory in Israel and packaging design:

Testament to a great graphic eye and design philosophy. To find out more about Dan Reisinger, please visit http://www.danreisinger.com/

Charlie Chaplin to Jacques Tati to The Artist

Two clips here below from 'Mon Oncle' by Jacques Tati (1958), ideally to be watched in sequence. A wonderful film. It portrays a very French fear of a very modern future. Tati plays the traditional Uncle who doesn't conform to the modernist view of the picture perfect, bourgeois lifestyle. His character struggles to adapt to the automated kitchen.

I love these clips. I love the 50's feel of the film, the use of colour, the way grey is used to represent the prison-like effect of the modern family's pursuit of suburban, material bliss.

Simple film-making that reminds me of Charlie Chaplin at his peak. Whilst mostly silent, 'Mon Oncle' does use music and sound effects, but with light touch. We have become so used to after-effects in cinema, sometimes simple physical humour carefully crafted can be so powerful.

It makes the recent film The Artist - another of our favourites - so special. And shows us that true creativity is about thinking out of context, not following the 'norms' of your genre or group, but finding the path less travelled, the path overlooked in the fashionable rush. A timely reminder for all of us striving to create breakthrough and original work.

Men Wanted

Sometimes, a great, motivating idea + good copy is enough.

The Poetry of Rodriguez

When I was 15 a friend of mine played me a tape (yes, tape - which shows how long ago that was) with a track called Sugar Man on it, by an artist called Rodriguez. My friend Ken couldn't tell me anything about the artist then, but the mystery just added to the coolness. Here's the track if you haven't heard it before:

Then coincidentally I watched a very good film over the weekend called Searching for Sugar Man. It's a documentary about the life & times of Sixto Rodriguez, the 'nearly man' of 70's music in America. The essence of the film is the question, 'why did an artist who was so talented, never become a sales success in the US?' (and conversely, why was he so wildly successful in South Africa...)

In any case, I thoroughly recommend the documentary, which explains the full story (I won't spoil it here). It won at the BAFTAs and an Oscar too, by the way. But some interesting points to note from this:

1. Sometimes an absence of information or air of mystery can create something unique - a movement, a following, a brand - I am interested in this day and age of 'information saturation' to think about how 'mystery' can be used in brand building...creating something unique, WITH MEANING and letting people come to you rather than vice versa. It takes confidence and a philosophy to do this, but branding & marketing must come to stand for more than simply selling people more stuff.

2. The essence of the film is that Rodriguez failed to make an impact in the US because his name - that of a Mexican immigrant - was not the kind of person that early 70's US wanted to be listening to, when set alongside Elvis, The Rolling Stones etc. How many other great artists have been overlooked in this way? Was this a failure of branding on behalf of the record label? What if they had changed his name (like so many other artists)? At what point do decide to change public opinion or simply bow to the common currents?

3. Does mass sales success equal success? I suppose it depends on your criteria. Of course it does in the marketing world. But the whole story of Searching for Sugar Man, is that the success he achieved, outside the US, and the humility of the man, are almost greater achievements.

And just to end, because we like great copy here, with some lyrics from Rodriguez himself. A wonderful, brief, Dylan-esque song full of metaphor:

Crucify Your Mind
Was it a huntsman or a player
That made you pay the cost
That now assumes relaxed positions
And prostitutes your loss?
Were you tortured by your own thirst
In those pleasures that you seek
That made you Tom the curious
That makes you James the weak?

And you claim you got something going
Something you call unique
But I've seen your self-pity showing
As the tears rolled down your cheeks

Soon you know I'll leave you
And I'll never look behind
'Cos I was born for the purpose
That crucifies your mind
So con, convince your mirror
As you've always done before
Giving substance to shadows
Giving substance ever more

And you assume you got something to offer
Secrets shiny and new
But how much of you is repetition
That you didn't whisper to him too