Monday 31 May 2010

Silhouettes Display



I first spotted this Unilever logo at Tate Modern about 5 years ago. As sponsors of the work that appears in the Turbine Hall, the Unilever Series has become a media talking point with images of Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project appearing in any article about Tate Modern.



Then a few days ago, CR Blog posted about Waterstones rebrand. I passed one of the new logo variants displayed in my local branch window as I walked through town last week.



On the same walk through Ipswich, I also noticed Arlingtons brasserie logo.

Does anyone spot a theme going on here?

Only another 23 characters to find and I've got myself a display font of type constructed of silhouettes.


Links:
Unilever
Waterstones
Arlingtons
Waterstones rebrand, CR Blog

Sunday 23 May 2010

13:2



Saw this in Norwich yesterday. It's either been there for over 13 years, or for two weeks.

Saturday 22 May 2010

Boys from the black stuff



Greenpeace are asking graphic designers, design students and the general public alike, to rebrand BP's logo.

"BP rebranded themselves as 'beyond petroleum'. And yet, in their search for new sources of oil, BP is about to make a decision on whether to invest billions of pounds into the Canadian tar sands - the dirtiest oil currently being produced. In doing so, they are not only threatening the Canadian wilderness, they are also threatening to accelerate dangerous climate change, at precisely the time we should be cutting carbon emissions." greenpeace.org.uk


Download Illustrator, PDF, Tiff and EPS files from the website and have a go at smearing the black stuff.

Links:
Rebrand the logo competition
Rebrand submissions on Flickr


Friday 21 May 2010

UCS Degree Show 2010




Private view:
Wed 2 June 6 - 9pm

General view:
3 - 17 June
10am - 6pm Weekdays
11am - 3pm Weekends

Venues:
School of Arts & Humanities, R Block, Campus North, Ipswich
and
Waterfront Gallery, Waterfront Building, Neptune Quay, Ipswich



Friday 14 May 2010

Surge


426

As the McJunk book nears its final stages, (fifth rewrite, second and third reader checks to arrange, finalising layout and folio decisions, selection of the cover shot to make, etc), there's been a huge increase in the number of views of recent uploads of the project on Dubdog@Flickr. The piece above, '426', has had 95 views since posting 5 days ago.

This probably isn't a great deal for many Flickr users, but it is for me. I usually only attract 4 or 5 hits on shots of locational typography. This occasionally increases if I include profanities or sex and conspiracy theory related words in my tagging.

I've submitted, via requests, to a few Flickr groups recently and this probably accounts for the increase in activity. This is a great incentive for pushing on with the book which keeps taking a back seat to the day job. I might even get some sales at this rate.

That said, there might just be one person who has looked at '426' 95 times!



McJunk: the book, 80 pages of graphic design introspection and pictures of McDonald's litter, will be published via blurb.com, August 2010.


Links:



Thursday 6 May 2010

All over, people changing their votes.

I'm not sure about the logo for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival.



Taken with out too much analysis, it's not objectionable. However, growing up in the 1970s, I can't help but see a resemblance to far right National Front graffiti I saw scrawled on many a wall.



You can obviously read a certain amount of irony into the NNF logo's similarities to that of the National Front's, in that the festival is truly inclusive with many international artists performing. As the festival brochure points out:

"The arts, which create pictures of potential new worlds, are ideally placed to guide us through periods of change. Jordi Savall’s Jerusalem, for example, makes the possibility of Middle East accord believable, while Ian McEwan and Metis Arts explore a world after the environmental tipping point. And if, like me, you tell people from elsewhere stories of why our part of the world is such a vibrant and appealing place, rare performances by John Cale (co-founder with Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground), Michael Nyman, David McAlmont, Paco Peña will help us tell that story." Jonathan Holloway, Norfolk and Norwich Festival Artistic Director.

It would be some stretch of the imagination to suggest this the NNF logo was a deliberate design savvy attempt to 'claim back' the NF one, an arguement I'm firmly against when it's applied to the Union Jack and George Cross (let it go Billy, move on). I'm more incredulous that this similarity wasn't spotted by whoever created it, or by the cultural committee at the festival when they approved its use.

But then, maybe I'm just being a bit nazi sensitive at the moment having just returned from the polling station: I still find it a shock to see the BNP on a ballot paper. Thankfully they have not been leafletting in my area and have no chance of getting any significant returns, but it doesn't sit easy. And with that, Joe Strummer's line from 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais' has been ringing through my ears recently:

"All over, people changing their votes,
Along with their overcoats.
If Adolf Hitler, flew in today,
They'd send a limousine, anyway."

But as I say, I may be feeling a little bit too sensitive at the moment. I think I need to go and hear John Cale doing Paris 1919 or see the Mick Jones Public Rock & Roll Library, both at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. I'll just have to try and not look at the logo that'll be emblazoned on everything.