Sommaire pour July 2019 de Computer Arts

“I love the thought of creating work that could have a genuine impact on the world,” says Carmen Ladwig, junior creative at Manchester’s Music. “I want to work with people who are interested in change.” Ladwig was 12 when she first started playing around in Photoshop, and by university she was specialising in branding. “There’s something about understanding a brand fully, bringing it to life and communicating its story in the best possible way that I find really satisfying.” Interested in doing things differently, the designer is in good hands at Music, and in Manchester. “The city’s attitude has influenced the way I think about a project,” she says. “Rather than thinking about how other brands or designers have done something, I try to look at it from a different…

BREWING UP A STORM BRAND IDENTITY AND PACKAGING DESIGN FOR BREWING by Play www.play.studio San Francisco-based Play had the luxury of starting from the ground up to launch the Original Pattern Brewing Company out of Oakland, California. Before the brewery space was even built, Play and its seemingly ready-for-anything client began to collaborate, with the aim of creating a brand that could grow, evolve and eventually reflect the spirit of a company that was committed to constant flavour experimentation. “The logo and packaging system captures the brewing process: always moving, mixing and expanding,” explains Play’s creative director Casey Martin. “Shifting gestural patterns and typography run throughout the system, which easily adapts to its context and content. From ‘Pattern Party’ announcements to cans of new brews, everything has its own mark,…

One of Superunion’s proudest associations is with the Invictus Games, the sporting event for disabled, wounded and sick servicemen and women initiated by Prince Harry. Creative partner Adrian Burton and senior designer Andi Yanto have been working on the branding since the event’s inception, with the first Invictus Games taking place in September 2014. “When the name Invictus originally came to us from the organisers,” Burton recalls, “we knew it as the name of a Matt Damon film about South African rugby. But what became clear from the research Andi did was that it’s also a famous poem, with the final lines: ‘I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.’” “I found those two lines encapsulated the whole spirit of the Games,” Yanto explains.…

Sidonie Warren is one half of the duo behind Papersmiths, the UK-based onestop shop for contemporary stationery and paper goods. Moving their design studio from Bridgeport to Bristol in 2013, they transformed a small space to house their design studio and first shop, celebrating design-led goods that inspired their own day-to-day creative endeavours. By 2014, the studio team had outgrown the space and the shop was getting busier. They moved to a four-storey Georgian building in Clifton Village and Papersmiths was born. The company now has locations in Brighton, Chelsea, King’s Cross and Shoreditch. Colorplan notebook “I was given this by GF Smith because we often work on client projects with Colorplan papers. It was designed by Made Thought as part of the Colorplan rebrand,” says Sidonie Warren. “I was…

Each mood animation is unique, but they all share a precise structure and feature the curve of the numeral ‘2’, which is revealed every seven seconds. In addition, each animation has a two-second intro sequence that sees the mood animation fill the screen and form the ‘2’ curve – visually connecting the brand to its content. Each ‘2’ curve creates a precise match-cut moment, which enabled us to seamlessly cut from one animation to another. Working with particles and animated textures, it can be difficult to get the timing right. This means that the animations had to hold on the ‘2’ curve long enough to make an impression on the viewer, before cutting into a different animation.…

When designing a label it’s important to reach consumers at an emotional level. With Missouri Ridge Bourbon, the element that caps this off is the log cabin illustration. It’s there to generate mood and atmosphere. In addition, the quote captures what it would feel like to be a moonshiner, escaping to a log cabin with your buddies – what that means to somebody. At first, I intended to have a message written within the smoke in hand-illustrated text. In the end, this might have looked too busy so I compromised by using the typeface BookmanJFPro.…

We first met and became friends at university. In 2007, after years of talking about it, both of us [David and Mark] quit our jobs designing for Waitrose, Royal Mail, Diageo and the like at leading London studios, and took the plunge together. We resurfaced in the heart of the beautiful West Country as Buddy, inspired by fresh air, scones and clients who we care about. Today, our brand and packaging work has attracted awards, a team of talented like-minded souls, and repeat business from some of the country’s leading brands. Buddy’s aim is to create memorable solutions across all media formats for clients big, small and in between. We believe passionately in the power of ideas – thought-provoking or emotive. Good design ideas are memorable, engaging and ultimately effective.…

“My work focuses on the spiritual side of art through the revisionism of classical shapes and compositions,” says Luis Toledo. “I want to look beyond the latest trends and try to create something that’s unique.” Toledo’s eye-catching graphic compositions have won him commissioned work from the likes of Warner Music, Atlantic Records, EA Games and Y&R. He’s also created artwork for a range of music outfits, including Weezer, Antemasque, Big Wild, Gary Clark Jr., Residente and Caravan Palace. His art has been associated with the Wacom Awards, Awards Pantone and Behance National Design Awards, and has been exhibited in Amsterdam, Spain, Singapore, Portugal and the US. “Instagram is the social media platform that I like the most,” says Toledo. “I receive feedback on my art and I can also see…

So you’ve just got your qualification. Congratulations! And smart thinking too, because, quite frankly, you’ve chosen a great profession to enter. You could have studied, for example, photography or journalism. In a post-digital world, making money from either of these disciplines is increasingly difficult, even for seasoned professionals. In contrast, there have never been more jobs available for graphic designers, motion designers, animators and illustrators. As Emma Barratt, head of design at Wolff Olins in London, puts it: “The demand for new talent and new ways of looking at things is rising across the industry.” Ben Brears, strategic design director at Leeds studio Robot Food, agrees with Barratt. “For better or worse, we live in a hyper-connected, warp-speed world and everyone’s always looking for the new and the next,” he…

The Nespresso concept – sleek-looking machines with colourful coffee pods – made it one of the most recognised brands in the world. But three years ago its capsule patent had run out, and the company was at a crossroads. “We did two distinct things with Nespresso,” recalls creative partner Dave Roberts. “The first was to evolve its luxury cues - which had been widely copied by others. The second part was messaging; to get it to talk about the coffee itself, as opposed to the machines. We took those elements and brought them into a new visual identity, which gave the brand a sense of personality and an almost visceral feel.” Every single little detail of the visual assets was evolved incrementally, so that everything became more about the coffee…

Based in Portland, Oregon, Aaron James Draplin is a graphic designer, author and founder of Draplin Design Co. (DDC). Specialising in brand identity, logo design and typography, his client list includes Burton Snowboards, Nike, Red Wing, Field Notes, Esquire, Ford Motor Company and the Obama Administration. Draplin’s 2006 book, Pretty Much Everything, is a mid-career summary and story/showcase of his work that includes case studies, advice and commentary about his career to date. Rock guitar “I found this rock in the mud flats near Anchorage, at low tide. Would’ve been the summer of 1996, in between dish-washing shifts in the land of the midnight sun. People don’t have anything else better to do than hike, it seems. I find it pretty insufferable. It was my first summer up in Alaska…

Benjamin Van Oost is co-founder of TOYKYO productions and art director/sculptor at CASE STUDYO. Famed for his unique artistic approach, distinctive fibreglass sculptures, beautiful porcelain and other objects, Van Oost takes limited edition artworks to the next level. Today, the creative agency based in Belgium assists international clients who are looking to add clarity, flavour and quality to their identity. TOYKYO’s products department is the heritage of its hands-on approach, and manages the entire production process of creative products and art installations for artists such as Parra, FriendsWithYou, Andy Rementer and Steven Harrington. Wish card and motivational words by Joseph Kosuth “Back in 2016 my ex was working in a hotel in Ghent, Belgium and one night she came home with this piece of paper and the following story: apparently…

PROJECT HISTORY Chloé Templeman We have a long-standing creative relationship with Fortnum & Mason, and we’ve worked across its confectionery, biscuits, honeys and Christmas ranges in recent years. The latest instalment of our work was all about reinvigorating the iconic British retailer’s classic County Biscuits tin. Inspired by traditional woodcut techniques and quirky English folklore from the counties the biscuits originate from – Cornwall, Lancashire, Yorkshire and Shropshire – the result is rich in craft and storytelling. It’s a biscuit tin that people will cherish and want to use again and again. THE BRIEF Our brief for the County Biscuits tin was to revive the classic product and, like all our briefs for Fortnum’s, bring storytelling to the fore through carefully considered craft and beautiful design. Another important part of…

We’re within my favourite time of the year for natural pattern-spotting in the urban setting: the pollen puddle season. I love to walk around after a heavy rainfall and study the whirling marbled patterns made by masses of yellow pollen spread out in dirty rain water on the roadside. It’s a pleasure to study the beauty and intricacy – an intriguing piece of natural beauty in the mundane urban landscape made seemingly without cause or purpose. I’m endlessly fascinated by the intricate ways that patterning occurs in nature, from how pollen distributes in swirling patterns in rain puddles to the wide variation of brightly contrasting and complex Turing patterns in fish, and large rock formations that take on perfectly geometric shapes. The detailed complexity and decorative order in which nature…

Designers and artists from across the creative community have collaborated on a digital exhibition tackling two of the biggest issues we face: the climate crisis and gender inequality. Man Made-Disaster: Patriarchy & The Planet can be viewed online and contains imagery and information that will blow you away. The site was created by Do the Green Thing, an environmentally focused project led by Pentagram partner Naresh Ramchandani, and the New York design agency Area 17. All the artworks were created either by women or non-binary artists – 30 in total – and the site’s bold design sandwiches the artists’ names and the exhibition’s themes, which scroll across the screen like a Wall Street ticker. The idea was sparked by a Do the Green Thing article by Pentagram writer Ashley Johnson,…

Pictoplasma is an international festival that highlights the best contemporary character design and art, and this year it celebrated its 15th birthday in style with a supercharged festival in Berlin. The mega event was split across two main venues. The Babylon cinema housed a schedule of talks presented by trailblazing character designers from around the world, while the smaller Pfefferberg Haus 13 hosted workshops, Q&As, film screenings and indie game labs. On top of that, there were multiple exhibitions spread around the Mitte area of Berlin for everyone to enjoy. There was barely enough time to take it in, but we tried our best! While the work on show was hugely varied in style and purpose, there was a common thread that cropped up repeatedly: the idea of putting a…

ROB COKE Executive creative director, Studio Output www.studio-output.com KATE CHANDLER Graphic designer, Greenwich Design www.greenwich-design.co.uk VERITY KENT Art director, FINE www.wearefine.com The aim of the brand refresh and website design is to present Intelligence Squared as the home of intelligent debate. The overall tone creates a sense of quality editorial through typography combinations, while colours indicate topic areas, creating sub-sections that aid navigation. As is often the case when adapting brands to digital platforms, we evolved the logo itself to fit the system, rather than building the system out from the logo. It’s an elegant update of the previous wordmark, optimised to provide greater strength and legibility at all sizes. Creating a hidden character for the shorthand icon was challenging – while a second meaning is desirable in a logo,…

Back in January 2018, five companies under the WPP umbrella joined forces to create a new global branding agency, Superunion. A year and a half on, the company has gone from strength to strength, winning a slew of awards for its work for clients, big and small – including both a yellow and a wood D&AD pencil for its BBC Two ident work. We sat down with them at their London studio, to discover what they’re all about… What’s different about Superunion? Mark Wood: There’s a gap I like to think we’re filling, which is creativity at scale. There are lots of boutique agencies doing some really beautiful, amazing stuff. But at the larger scale there are fewer companies, and some might be more strategically minded, some more executional, some…

LEVEL is a new airline brand that Superunion developed for IAG (International Airlines Group), the holding company that owns BA, Air Lingus and Iberia. “The interesting thing about this project is that it doesn’t look like any other airline brand,” says digital creative director Marta Swannie. “It’s quite distinctively different.” The identity was aiming at a younger generation who have never had the opportunity to fly long-haul. “The airline would give them that opportunity for the first time because it was so affordable,” Swannie says. “So we were targeting this group - although not in an obvious way; it wasn’t exclusive.” One thing you immediately notice is the use of subtle blues and greens. “This was something we decided from the off,” says senior designer Peter Hollstein. “When you think…

Merijn Hos is a visual artist and illustrator from Utrecht, The Netherlands, known for his curious, characters and quirky illustrative work. He divides his time between working as a commercial illustrator for clients such as Bose, Red Bull, Google, The Guardian and Keds, and working on personal projects, exhibitions and independent publishing. Baseball “When I was a kid I was obsessed with American culture. I loved those 80s movies in which kids would ride around on their BMX bikes wearing a baseball cap and varsity jacket carrying a baseball bat with them,” says Hos. “Around the age of 10 I went to see a baseball practice game with my friends and I found this baseball in the bushes. It’s been on a cabinet in every house that I lived in…

DEVELOPING THE CONCEPT By James Callahan This project began for us after Superunion had won the initial pitch to rebrand BBC Two. They invited us to their offices to discuss how we might help them bring some ambitious ideas to life. Superunion talked us through some pretty detailed and complex schematics, covering how the animations would connect with one another to form idents. The hardest thing initially was noting down as much detail as possible to take back and share with our wider team. British people hold the BBC close to their hearts, and BBC Two hadn’t rebranded for 25 years. People were passionate about the current idents and there was a great deal of love for them. If the public didn’t like what we created, we knew we’d hear…

REFINING THE CONCEPT Tom Lane The Missouri Ridge project began when Alex Hull from Costal Distillery contacted me after seeing previous bottle labels I’ve worked on. Lincolnshire-based Coastal Distillery had purchased a quantity of craft bourbon from Missouri Ridge Distillery to import into Europe and bottle as a premium liquor. Alex wanted a label that would convey the bourbon’s quality and its origins in a unique manner. He had some information about Missouri Ridge and the specifics that needed to go on to the bottle to comply with UK law, and it was up to us to come up with a strong theme with the right visual and textual approach. As well as making the label distinctive, I felt it was important to convey the origin and atmosphere of the…