This is England 88

Amongst the many Christmas specials now packing our TV schedules this is an absolute gem. It must be said though, this is no sugary sweet festive treat. We are dealing with some very dark subjects here.

Shane Meadows continues with his surprisingly enduring story following a group of Mods and Skinheads living in a bleak northern housing estate. Most viewers will have first met these characters in his 2006 film This Is England which was then followed by a harrowing series of hour long episodes last year.

The performances are uniformly excellent again as each character deals with their individual heartbreaks and although the pacing is slow at times I think this allows the emotion to emanate from the screen and also allows us to appreciate the sparse, bleak, beautifully framed shots of the landscape which the characters inhabit. Meadows also manages to intersperse the very emotive scenes with flashes of humour and some remarkably realistic portrayals of human interaction. It seems more awards could be on the way.

Working 9 till 5

Having had a few projects with relatively quick turnarounds in the last few months, doing the odd bit of extra work after hours is something I know a little about. Here at Glow we really believe in a work/life balance though and I'm happy to say that it is rare for me to stay much longer than our normal working day. With this in mind I stumbled upon this great article by Edward Hann.

What a way to make a living

Edward Hann

Before I start, I would like to note that I love the work I do and wouldn’t want to do anything else. At times It doesn’t even feel like a job, but when I sit down to think about it, graphic design is still exactly that, a job. It involves hard work and frequent long hours. Sitting in front of a computer screen for 14 hours a day does not make for a healthy lifestyle; a creatively driven career is great but being expected to switch it on at 9pm every night of the week for the last week, less so. I have been working in design for around 5 years, give or take, and in this time have worked at a range of studios of varying sizes, each totally different from each other. My time at these studios has been exciting, challenging, incredibly rewarding although at times utterly frustrating. For the most part my career has been a positive and vibrant experience, but I have come across a worrying trend, a culture of late nights and long hours that are openly encouraged. I would even go so far to say that a macho culture has arisen, which one might expect from the finance or banking industry but not in the creative one. To me there is nothing creative or satisfying about trying to see who can stay awake the longest after a 24 hour stint. In other professions this could be considered dangerous, clear and simple, but in design culture it seems to be becoming more and more routine.....

Read the whole article here

Rory Sutherland: The wiki man

The festive season is fast approaching again and I may have found an early Christmas present for myself. Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman of the Ogilvy Group UK and regular columnist for the Spectator, has a new book out. A champion of behavioural economics and a quick adopter of new technologies, Rory is a very talented man and this book Rory Sutherland: The Wiki Man should be a very interesting read. It acts as an introduction for those uninitiated with his key ideas and includes snippets from his many blogs, tweets and articles. However, if you just can't wait until Christmas why not check out some of the videos of his talks available online. Below is a hilarious insite involving Shreddies cereal.

Design and compromise

Good design requires compromise. Simple. I have learnt a lot of things throughout my creative life but this is a lesson which is only just starting to sink in. Any designer working commercially will tell you about the time and budget constraints which they face on a daily basis and how this means they have to make compromises with their big, sparkling, fantastic design concepts. This can't be avoided though and therefore it seems silly to devote some time complaining about it.

The compromise I think is worthy of our time is best described by the differences between Apple and Microsoft. Apple have become elevated to some higher level in recent years due to the aesthetic appeal and fantastic usability of their products. The really interesting thing is that this great design and usability has sometimes been the result of removing features that some people consider essential. In contrast Microsoft will cram in every feature any customer could ever want, but this results in products that are complicated or suffer poor usability. In both cases , compromises are being made. It is a fine balance to create an object that is both beautiful and true to it's purpose. Apple have been closer to the mark though in my opinion. This old but still comical video proves the point pretty well.

Being a designer I want things to look their very best and a certain amount of white space is essential to this, think of me as Apple, but from a marketing point of view we naturally want to make sure the message is clear. Like with Microsoft, this often involves a good amount of extra copy, making sure each point is made well. The struggle begins. Copy vs space, design vs message it's the eternal battle that designers face and the only answer is to use that word we started with, compromise. A good designer is not stubborn, they roll with the punches and adapt. I'm not saying you shouldn't stand up for yourself if you strongly believe in your work but I am saying you should pick your battles.

Art Revealed

This great series of idents to promote part of the BBC's art season was voted one of the Creative Review's best in book winners in this years photography annual. The hypnotic motion of pigment in water is truly beautiful and is a clever reference to the world of the artist. If you missed them the first time around I think this is the perfect excuse to have a look.

London Bus Tour

This brilliant video seems to be doing the rounds on a few design blogs at the moment but I think it is worthwhile following the crowd with this one. Moritz manages to capture some of the beautiful idiosyncrasies of life in a whimsical but slightly melancholy fashion. Never has public transport seemed more appealing, great work!

London Bus Tour from moritz oberholzer on Vimeo.

Weekly Competition!

Solve the weekly dingbat puzzle to win!  

  

Win a special edition poster designed by the Glow team, printed on gorgeous paper to brighten your office and make you smile!

Competition closes Friday 16th September at 12.00pm

Send your answers to yesplease@theglowstudio.com and include your name and address, or follow us on Twitter and send us a direct message. A winner is drawn every Friday!

A new puzzle is uploaded to our website each week. Please send your answers with your name and address by 12pm each Friday.   

Good Luck!

Include Social Media in your Marketing Strategy now!

At Glow we love Social Media but appreciate the difficulty that small business have in allocating time and resources to using Social Media effectively.

Despite its kudos as an instantaneous and easy communication tool, Social Media often gets added to the end of the action list, by which time the window of opportunity has passed.

We have a solution!

Using our extensive marketing and communications know-how and our knowledge of the ever evolving world of Social Media, Glow introduces the Social Media Strategy.

Strategy sounds like a time consuming and costly word - it needn't be!

Glow has formulated 5 questions from which our Social Media Strategy has been drawn. The Social Media Strategy sits within our overall Marketing Strategy but acts as a great stand alone guide for our designated Social Media Team to follow.

Glow's Social Media Strategy includes a Plan and an Activity Schedule. Both are formulated from our answers to 5 questions and make our Social Media Activity effective, achievable and manageable.

We HIGHLY recommend creating a Social Media Strategy for your business. A few minutes a day, week or month can add up to great engagement!

Would you like to hear more about our 5 questions or would you like Glow's help with creating a Social Media Strategy to suit your business and budget? Contact us!

01329 836390

yesplease@theglowstudio.com

www.theglowstudio.com

**Social Media is the new wave of marketing, get ahead of the game and include it in your company's Marketing Strategy now!**

New - Weekly Competition!

Solve the weekly dingbat puzzle to win!  

  

Win a special edition poster designed by the Glow team, printed on gorgeous paper to brighten your office and make you smile!

Puzzle No.4: Entry closes 12pm Friday 29th July 2011

Send your answers to yesplease@theglowstudio.com and include your name and address, or follow us on Twitter and send us a direct message. A winner is drawn every Friday!

A new puzzle is uploaded to our website each week. Please send your answers with your name and address by 12pm each Friday.   

Good Luck!

The Graduates

Yes thats right, it's that time of the year again. Another throng of young talented creatives are about to stumble, blurry-eyed into the real world in the hope of finding a job. Having been in the same position only two years ago, I know completely how they feel. I went back to the Winchester School of Art last night to see this years degree show and have to say the standard was very good.

With this in mind I think the Graduates 2010 Catch up feature by Its Nice That is very interesting. It's nice to see how different the situations are that these young designers have found themselves in after only a year.

Read the feature here

The Lost Collection

As a daily commuter I have had my fair share of near misses when it comes to leaving things on the train. I once went to move my bike at the end of the carriage, leaving my bag on my seat. I got distracted by something in the Metro and twenty minutes went by, I had completely forgotten about my bag by now and went to step off at my station but luckily for me I was reminded at the last minute by a kind lady who had been watching.

If everyone had been as lucky as me then this new exhibition, The Lost Collection, curated by KK Outlet would never have come into existence. They have been given access to the Lost Property Office belonging to Transport for London (TFL). In amongst the sweaty jumpers, false teeth and vast amounts of old literature you would expect to get left on the tube, overground trains, buses and black cabs of London it seems there were also some artistic treasures to be found.

With anonymous work ranging from whole portfolios to single, carefully crafted sketches you could have a lot of fun imagining who the work is by, what their inspiration was and also of course if they have any talent.

The thing of most interest and probably what I love most about this idea is the fact that it is actually our daily routine and idiosyncrasies which have put this exhibition together, bringing together things that, given slightly less misfortune or slightly differing circumstances may have never ended up together at all.

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace

On Monday night I managed to catch the first in this series of films by Adam Curtis, looking into the impact of computers on our society. This first episode looked at the russian philosopher Ayn Rand and how her ideology would go on to influenced the computer reliant social and economic system which economists of the 90's thought would lead to a more stable, self-regulating market creating infinite good times for all (yay!).

While deeply interesting I freely admit that the intellectual clout of the subject matter did leave me with a headache at times, pondering terms such as "logical positivism" and "planetary consciousness" but the way in which Curtis covers the subject, with dizzyingly quick cuts and clever use of music and archive footage, you never failed to engage. I also enjoyed the footage of Loren and Rachel Carpenter's Pong experiment where thousands of participants were packed into a dark barn with a giant screen showing the classic video game. Participants were also handed a paddle with a red side and a green side. Using these they had to work together with their side of the barn to control the onscreen paddle. I think the results really told us something about human nature and our ability to form a subconscious consensus .

The program is still available on iplayer at the moment so I recommend giving it a go.

View on Iplayer here

Ayn Rand

One of the Carpenter's later but very similar experiments

Social media for business: Tip One

The world is going crazy for the newest wave of marketing media since web and email: Social Media.

A Tip Top Tip

Since it's introduction and the phenomenal response from personal users, platforms have evolved so much and now cater for businesses and organisations as a marketing tool. A means to communicate and engage with a huge audience (over 500,00 daily users). However it is important to stay savvy when approaching social media for business.

There are unwritten rules. For instance, the 3 top platforms: Facebook, Twitter and Linked in are successful for a reason. They are used by real people in real time and are an attractive networking tool. People meet, share, connect, advise and, most importantly, they chat.

When using social media for business keep the word 'social' in mind and remember the user's expectations. They don't expect to have marketing messages shoved in their faces 24/7 they expect to be enlightened, informed and entertained.

These simple steps will get you started on the right track:

1. Interact
2. Engage
3. Converse

Happy Chatting :-)

Should design come from disaster?

The truly devastating natural disaster which decimated parts of Japan just over a week ago has lead to a heated design debate. A flood of designers have offered up designs for posters (many based around the Japanese flag) which are being auctioned to help raise money for the cause. Few people would be able to argue with this as a worthy deed. The problem is that the posters often have no further info on how to donate to the cause and in-fact feature the studios name and a link to their website. Here then, lies the problem, is it right for a designer to get any sort of free promotion from a terrible event such as this?

Definitely an interesting read, the full article can be seen here

A hard question to answer

Having received the 2011 Census Questionnaire in the post yesterday I did chuckle when I got to question 17.

There must be some feasible reason for this but I like to think it's the designers way of stealing back some ever cherished white space.

The most stunning TV spot for.....yoghurt?

This advert was done for FAGE a popular food brand, although not in the UK, to help them launch in the US. It's called Plain Extraordinary and is a rare mix of 3D CGI, video compositing and editing combined with a great poem.

Obviously a lot of craft went into making this spot and it is the mix of great imagery and playful use of words that really make it special. You could be forgiven for thinking it was an advert for some high end fragrance or beauty product instead of a yogurt, mind you, they look fairly tasty!.

BAFTA posters

I love these great posters for 4 of the nominees for best film at the 2011 BAFTA awards. The Kings Speech went home with seven awards in the end, including this one. The posters have a great atmosphere and effortless style to them.

The Kings Speech and The Social Network

Inception and Black Swan

Average is beautiful

This is a hypothesis that goes back to the work of Sir Francis Galton in the 1800's. He projected the faces of many different people on to one piece of photographic film to create an average. His idea was to produce the average face of a criminal to help with crime prevention or to depict the average face of a good soldier to improve the quality of recruits. However when he showed his colleagues the results, they all unanimously agreed that the composite image produced was far more attractive than each of the component images. This lead him to think that the key to being beautiful was to be as close to average as possible.

Researchers have now developed some software which does a very similar thing but manages to create a much sharper image. As part of this research they have also managed to create the average face for women from 41 different countries. You can even make your own composite from images you upload. It's all very interesting so why not check it out for yourself.

http://www.faceresearch.org/demos/average

The Super Bowl ad spot

It was that time of year again over on the other side of the pond but you can be sure that the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers players were not the only people with nerves that were starting to fray over the weekend. With a television audience of at least 80 million people and the cost of a 30 second advert during the game rocketing to $3,000,000 the marketing executives must have been just as apprehensive.

There were a few stories on the advertising side of things in 2011 as Pepsi returned to the scene having opted out last year in order to channel more funding into digital and social media. Could this be a reflection of a wider shift back to more tradition TV advertising? There was also an appearance from Eminem in a nice Wieden and Kennedy spot for Chrysler and a couple of feel good examples from Coca Cola, the best of which had a slight Lord Of The Rings feel. There was also an offering from Motorola which can be seen below. Interestingly it had a less than subtle reference to the original Apple Macintosh advert which can also be seen below.

Marwencol: The human brain never fails to amaze

11 years ago Mark Hogancamp was beaten up in a bar. His attacker's, having inflicted so much damage to his head, left him without any memory of his prior life. He is now regaining his motor skills but more importantly his sense of self by creating miniature vignettes from a fictionalised World War 2 village called Marwencol. This world is beautifully detailed and features miniature versions of Mark, his family and his friends meaning each of his photos have a startlingly emotive and authentic feel. His story has now been made into a film, the trailer for which can be seen below.

Fluid font video

I love this short typographic A-Z and the way each letter morphs into the next. It would also serve well to introduce the names of some well known fonts and their individual characteristics to anyone who is less accustomed to the world of fonts.

Interesting Viral ad

EA (Electronic Arts) have used a rather unconventional method to advertise an upcoming game. The 30 second TV spot uses real footage from a selection of interviews with rather conservative American mothers, all of whom have just seen the gorier parts of the game. They then run with a strap line "Your mom's going to hate it". I think this is quite an interesting angle to take as they are effectively highlighting the bad or controversial aspect of what is actually a very gory game. It obviously shows that EA know their core market well enough that they don't mind the fact they may put off less hardcore gamers. The ad has amassed almost a quarter of a million views on Youtube already ( The extended version had 491, 194 views when I checked) so it looks like a clever move.

You can view a full article about the campaign here

New Starbucks logo raises some issues

The new Starbucks logo is the latest in a recent line of high profile re-brands to be received negatively by the general public. personally I quite like the simplification. It feels really fresh and the fact that it is still round and uses the same green is enough for me to link it to Starbucks. What people often don't think about is the context in which you will encounter the brand. After all Apple and Mcdonalds have managed for years without any type in their respective logos.

The issue it raises for me is how much attention we give to this negative feedback? The masses have been given I voice through social media, everybody's personal tastes and opinions can be shared with thousands of people in seconds. Now that everyone can be heard maybe we designers should keep our fingers in our ears.

I think this article covers the subject brilliantly

New years motivation

Having recently added some motivational screen prints by Alison Hardcastle to the wall behind my desk, I think all of us could do with a little lift as we trudge into the studio and out of the cold January rain. This cheery print is a great example and is available in red, green or yellow from here.

Very seasonal, very beautiful

Given the arctic Christmas and new year most of us have just endured I think this norwegian TV spot for VW is particularly fitting while also being great to look at. There are some lovely stills below but you can view the actual video using this link

http://www.behance.net/gallery/VW-Winter-Motion/875691