What club shall we go to tonight?

Forget half naked blond bombshells, garish multi-coloured patterns and copy that only fourteen year olds from West London find appealing and check out these promotional flyers for club nights around the world created by Job Wouters (Letman) in collaboration with Roel Wouters. They designed material for clubs like 'Sugarfactory' in Amsterdam and 'Club Rotterdam'. These flyers would definitely sell even the most grimey club to me!

They are uncluttered, bold designs that have room to breath. The hand-made style typography and eye-catching blocks of colour bring an element of youthful creativity without looking naive or innocent.

On the surface these designs are fun and exciting but it's only when you look deeper into the many layers you really start to appreciate the quality of the composition and extraordinary typography skills.

Designer//Slash//Model

While reading the book 'Field Guide: How to be a graphic designer' I came across a case study about Digital Kitchen, a creative agency in the US. I looked them up and found the promo video below...

Yes, it doesn't make me laugh out loud (possibly because of the characters are made so annoyingly frustrating and American) but it is so refreshing to hear an agency talk about themselves and the design they do without sounding horribly pretentious. Through taking a tongue and cheek look at the world of design, Digital Kitchen have produced a promotional short film that doesn't alienate a large percent of the public. So many agencies and designers go on about how the industry is under appreciated and try to glorify the design profession (don't get me wrong I'm glad people are fighting the cause) but this film seems to rise above being resentful and just hilariously pokes fun at the situation.

Through tackling the problem in this way, they have allowed themselves to create a film that not only people in the design industry but anyone can watch, enjoy and still take some important knowledge away with them about a design agency and the design world.

Ads are changing tactics

Recently I have noticed a change in direction for a lot of adverts that are directed towards males. Adverts, especially for those products that can be seen as 'fun' seem to have given up on aspirational advertising, including strong, professional business men in their stories but are instead picking up on mens' sense of playfulness, silly quirks and things men really enjoy. They appear to no longer want to persuade men by showing them the great person they could be if they used 'x' product but they are actually embracing males for who they are, warts and all... This allows men to empathise and interact with the advertising, producing a 'that's what I would do' response. For example the new Reno Clio advert doesn't really do a great job of selling the pros of the car itself but it seems to still get the attention of it's male target audience by using humor and including a male character that is realistic and essentially 'normal' and unintimidating. This is a huge step away from the Burton and Cigarette adverts of yesteryear that almost always used formal professional male icons in their advertising but it seems to be working! Other examples of these new types of adverts are the fantastic BT adverts with Adam and Jane and the new Heineken one with the walk in beer fridge!

Design Book Covers

Recently I got my mitts on four Design books published by Antiques Collectors' Club. Like many other of these books their front covers follow the hugely eye-catching black and white pattern combined with a block colour design. The patterns that make up the cover sleeves are inspired by the work of the artist that the book is about, for example the pattern for Nash brothers book is composed of Paul Nash's 1925 engraving, Flower.

The block colours that have been chosen for these four books are so rich and bold that they sit most comfortably among the busy patterns. Sit all the books together and although a little hectic I think they are a real graphic beauty.

Thomas Saraceno at the Baltic

Saraceno's new dramatic installation called 'Galaxies Forming along Filaments, Like Droplets along the Strands of a Spiders Web' really captured my imagination and creativity. He worked with both spider researchers and astrophysicists for several years to develop this impressive 350 cubic metre installation that filled the whole of the Baltics Level 2 gallery.

It's formed from interwoven elastic rope that stretches to the floor, walls and ceiling and instantly provoked thoughts of energy and time and made me remember just how tiny a spec I am within this galaxy. If you wanted to walk around the exhibition you were forced to interact with the installation, climbing over or ducking under its ropes. Bumping into one meant sending vibrations up and around the whole giant web which made it look like a great spider was shivering. The spiky web was somewhat menacing but also beautiful and other-worldly and really got my mind thinking and exploring...

Abram Games- Maximum meaning, minimum means

On my travels I stopped off in Halifax, near to Leeds to go to the Abram Games poster exhibition in Dean Clough Mill. It included over 70 posters, sketches, original works, product designs and films. There were a variety of posters ranging from the ATS recruitment poster that is a WW2 icon to ones for the Festival of Britain and promotions for Guinness, Shell and London Transport.

Games makes words and lettering an inextricable part of the image he is creating, irradicating the need for lines of explanatory text. He combines essentially different objects to create striking new pictorial logic. He so cleverly expresses important issues and messages in such a simple way through the use of just a few objects to create something symbolic. For example, Games combined a spade with a ship in a ploughed field which also looked like a rippling ocean (see image below)...

The point of this poster was to tell people to use spades, not ships and grow their own food. A strong message sent to the public by using just a few simplistic objects. The design is elegant but also extremely impactful and conveys everything you need to know in one concise statement.

'Maximum meaning from minimum means' was Games motto and therefore he would always work out his designs at the size of a postage stamp. The exhibition displayed many of these initial designs and ideas which made me appreciate the amount of work that had gone into each individual poster.

Games argued that all posters looked small from far away so his compositions should be bold and uncluttered. I felt that the poster he designed for Guinness in the 1950s was perhaps the most extreme example of this. It is made up of a simple letter G that also contains a smiley face and a pint. This poster was in fact one of his own favorites...

A poster I found most impactful was one named 'Freedom from Hunger'. It was very shocking but still beautifully crafted and the image still sticks in my head now. The poster combines a sheaf of wheat with a child to make it look like it's emaciated, insinuating that the skinny wheat grains are the child's ribs. He has so ingeniously brought together the problem and the solution in one high-impact symbol.

Beautiful England

For the past couple of weeks I've been traveling around the UK, truly appreciating the beauty we have in this country. Yes it's not always blazing hot sunshine and seductive accents but we really do have some utterly stunning areas of natural beauty and impressive architecture.

Whitby abbey stands strong right at the top of a hill over-looking the seaside town. It is now only ruins because it was destroyed by Henry VIII in 1540 but this only adds to it's romantic charm. The walls are richly carved with 'dog's tooth' embellishment, characteristic of an early English gothic style but also through centuries of wind and rain they also have this spectacular etched and pitted decoration.

These eery but enchanting ruins are renown as the backdrop to Bram Stoker's Dracula, the victorian novel which has made Whitby the 'Goth' capital of Britain.