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A blog about my explorations, inspirations, discoveries and observations that spur on my passion for creative ideas.
For anyone who gets obsessed with type to the point of actually being turned on by it - these are for you. Tart cards are the small flyers prostitutes advertise their services, and place in phone boxes. Yet these are designed with a twist. Using the names of well known typefaces, Fold7 design studio created these inviting you to be teased, spanked or dominated by a font. Although written with such wit, there is a serious cause being highlighted here. The sexual criminal underworld often subjects many to violent and horrid experiences. The Helen Bamber Foundation helps to rebuild lives broken by human rights violations, and an exhibition was held by all designers invited to take part in the project.
I'd like to give a little nod and hoorah to the Ministry of Stories where I volunteer occasionally. It's been going for six months now and all involved have done a fantastic job in getting it up & running, spreading the word and making it it a huge success already. The Hoxton Street Monster supplies is fast becoming the place to go in the East end, (five-eyed creatures have been seen to queue up in an orderly fashion of a saturday afternoon). And the kids who visit benefit hugely from the many workshops held to assist their reading and writing skills and generally provide them with a fun place to go to get excited about books. The children from the drop-in sessions have published their first title, "Green Wobbly Things Dancing", which I myself found to make an entertaining night-time read. A group also worked on and produced a local newspaper, The Hoxton A.M. over the Easter break. Interviewing locals along the market and reporting on the history of the area.
The volunteers all got together for a knees up recently and were graced with entertainment from a variety of talented literaries. My favourite was a few performances by acclaimed poet/actress/writer/illustrator and all-round funny lady Laura Dockrill. She spoke and rhymed in character with such wit, it totally changed my sterotypical view of performance poetry.
Writers and design agency WeMadeThis have all been nominated in the upcoming D&AD awards in Writing for Design category for all the wonderful products and branding that make up the Hoxton Monster Supplies.
So please visit, volunteer & purchase anything from this wonderful project & keep the Monster work going!
I'm loving the phonetic ads scattered around for Google Voice search - they really make you stop and literally 'speak' the words in your head. The campaign is based on the insight that when you usually speak to automatic search technology on the phone it normally takes three attempts for the woman in an extremely posh recorded voice says - "Did you mean Lancashire?" when you were clearly saying 'Leicester Square' in your best Queen's English. And so with Google voice search for mobile, you have to say it to get -phonetically, in order to get the right result.
For anyone that was at glug a month or so ago, they will have seen the amazing video of the taxi art meticulously done in Mumbai - presented by Eliza of Creative Review. I had to put it up here as it was a nice to see a family run business still continued and brightening up the streets of the city. The craft that goes into making the graphic stickers is really quite amazing.
A short delay for my follow up about The Story 2011 - I just like to leave you hanging...
To start from the beginning, click here. And if you're a start in the middle kind of person read on, that's cool...but you might be missing something good!
Basically I took part in a one day conference where top speakers presented what they believe makes up a story.
Nick Ryan specialises in sound design and he introduced us to his now successful, audio game "Papa Sangre". I actually wrote a piece about it here, but it was great to hear the thinking behind it in full. Nick explained how by setting the scence & immersing players in a room of complete darkness, the sounds played to them allow them to visualise in their minds their own story. The senses are heightened once you remove sight, and the experience powerfully dramatic .
He also made an interesting point how we, from a very early age, associate different sounds with visuals automatically i.e like being shown in a picture book a cow and being told it makes the sound 'moo'. This in a similar way narrows our imagination of what sound can be, in the same way that adults become stifled by education, and are less imaginative than children. So similar sounds & effects are often used in film for instance as familiarity sets the scene for us.
Next up Lucy Kimbell took us through her personal project where she collected & documented the results of a questionnaire she sent to friends and colleagues, asking "What am I Worth?' It was interesting how obedient people were when asked to fill out a form, answering often personal questions about a person, that you may hesitate to do in person. She then created a complete audit of the results, and created "Lucy's Index" (or LIX), turning her own feelings and actions into measurable factors. The website then portrayed her as a commodity to float on the stock exchange, providing a daily figure based on factors affecting her that day. It was a fascinating approach to data, especially how we are obsessed with updating out status' and moods on social media sites. This project was done before sites like Klout and Datum, but it really does makes you question how much of your 'worth' you want to disclose to the world.
Mary Hamilton completely lightened the tone by shooting foam bullets from her Zombie LARP machine guns. The what? yeah, I wasn't familiar either. LARP stands for Live Action RePlay - a gaming term for, well live gaming. (Which to the average joe is just, playing a game). So everyone gets together, is put in a room with toy guns, fake blood and people dressed as Zombies, and participants kind of make up the game as they go along. Her angle was that the game is like a 'story - machine', and the really interesting bit happens after when everyone "froths", and people recall what has just taken place. Her presentation was put together by these wicked stick men slides:
There are two more speakers to mention, but since one is the great Martin Parr and will probably take up a long post, I think I'll do a part III. Like all good stories, there should be a Beginning, Middle and End. So stay tuned...
Beautiful interactive film by Pentagram that explores the personality of typefaces by asking the viewer 'psychological' questions to determine their 'type'.
A Slavic speaking phrenologist asks four questions relating to your personality. The charm lies in the way he delves into your psyche: asking how relaxed you are by likening it to your approach to a box of chocolates. You are then presented with your 'type' and a short film telling you the history an characteristics of that font. I was Archetype Hairline - Modern, a straightforward appearance, with outbreaks of elegance and tiny dots of emotion.
Archetype hairline
Ahem, that's on a quiet day. Really I'm Archetype Doesburg - A brutally fair & assertive typeface, expressing strength of form and firmness of purpose. I'd "wrestle with anyone that says that C's are any less significant than E's". - Damn right!
Ok, so the latest trend going around is all this visual notetaking at conferences and seminars. Cool huh? Well yes and no. Take these done by Eva Lottchen at The Story 2011 that I attended. These are quite detailed and beautifully presented; in fact they save me on reporting on what happened since I haven't written up part two of my notes yet!
However, looking at some of the notes on Ogilvy's new 'notes page' where people can upload their visual notes, and I can't blimmin' understand them. I wanted to find out what had been going on at the SWSX conference everyone's tweeting about, but check this - it all look's more interesting than a page of writing, but I can't make head nor tail of it. It is some else's shorthand and summary of the day - perhaps a great reminder/ nudge for those who were there, but to the outsider, not the best solution.
Nora Herting
So as an avid visualiser and illustrator I'm still on the fence about this. Maybe I need to watch last year's seminar on how to do Visual Notetaking to understand why it's so great. Let me know. fgfghghghjghfg fgfghghghjghfg fgfghghghjghfg
I'm a north Londoner with a passion for all things creative. I work as an Art Director in Advertising but I get a kick from coming up with ideas that range from the bizarre to the down right silly. I guess this blog is an insight into what makes me tick and the wonderful influences out there.
For anyone who gets obsessed with type to the point of actually being turned on by it - these are for you. Tart cards are the small flyers prostitutes advertise their services, and place in phone boxes. Yet these are designed with a twist. Using the names of well known typefaces, Fold7 design studio created these inviting you to be teased, spanked or dominated by a font. Although written with such wit, there is a serious cause being highlighted here. The sexual criminal underworld often subjects many to violent and horrid experiences. The Helen Bamber Foundation helps to rebuild lives broken by human rights violations, and an exhibition was held by all designers invited to take part in the project.
