Indice dei contenuti per July 2017 in Computer Arts

NICK CARSON EDITOR Nick has been ‘treating’ the team to pictures of his new bike shed, painted with an abstract mountain pattern under his fiancée’s art direction. He doesn’t yet have a bike to put it in it, but is working on that. MARK WYNNE ART EDITOR Mark became obsessed with monk and ‘typestract’ artist Dom Sylvester Houédard (see CA ’s Instagram account). The next step is to start dressing in black and take a vow of chastity. Er, actually... ROSIE HILDER OPERATIONS EDITOR Rosie has recently taken up running, and is disappointed by the team’s muted reaction to her big achievement: running non-stop for 20 minutes. She has also been making/eating lots of cake. KEY CONTRIBUTORS PETE GRAY VIDEO PRODUCER Pete had the pleasure of joining Nick on this…

SAM BECKER ECD, BRAND UNION www.brandunion.com Sam spent five years as a design director at Brand Union from 2008–2013, followed by a short stint at Interbrand – before returning to Brand Union as creative director. He was promoted to ECD in 2016. With a background in development and technology, he won the inaugural IBM Watson hackathon. LISA HASSELL DIRECTOR, WE ARE GOODNESS www.wearegoodness.com Director of Inkygoodness and We Are Goodness, Lisa Hassell has seven years’ experience in the creative industry as a freelance writer, agent, producer and lecturer. She also coordinates the Birmingham chapter of Glug – to set up your own event, check out www.glugevents.com/host DESIGN MATTERS: Freelancers: how do you deal with your biggest money worry? – page 22 PLUS: We critique Audi’s new identity by KMS Team…

All my life, I’ve prided myself on being a glass-half-full kind of a person. I seem to have been born with an unwavering (and sometimes irritating) ability to put a positive spin on everything, from failed relationships to frustrated clients, and as a result have faced life head-on with a kind of naive optimism – in no small part because I also happen to be a single parent. When I decided to launch a business in 2015, my friends and family expressed their concerns, knowing full well that my experience of such endeavours was limited. Yet I trusted my gut instinct and did it anyway, and doing so has meant some of the worst and also the best times of my life. Frequently measuring my sense of self-worth by how…

M ost designers choose to freelance because they love their craft and they want the freedom to do it on their terms. That, or they loathe the foibles of traditional employment, like the nine-to-five grind, meaningless meetings, or how Greg from marketing thinks his wacky ties are the same thing as a definable personality trait. Whatever your reason for freelancing, it always comes with a cost: responsibility. Quite simply, the financial side of running your own business is difficult. There’s a lot to know, and even more that can go wrong. That said, freelancing can empower more meaningful work, a better work-life balance, and a bigger bottom line. It’s never easy, but it is almost always worth it. Over the following six pages, I’ll explore the four most common financial challenges…

It’s best to start freelancing part-time. Ideally, you’ll already have a job or career that somehow complements your chosen freelance field. If not, that’s fine too. Either way, you’ll want a reliable source of income as you begin to sow the seeds for a life on your terms. Here’s eight reasons why: 1. There’s less pressure on your burgeoning business, which saves you stress and gives you more freedom to figure things out. 2. Any early mistakes become learning experiences, not things that ruin your now full-time career. 3. You have the time to learn business skills at a more digestible rate. 4. You can pick and choose projects without the fear of going broke. This helps you build your ideal career instead of choosing projects purely for cash. 5.…

LUKE STOCKDALE Australian-born Luke is the owner and creative director of Sideshow Sign Co, a Nashville-based team of designers and fabricators who specialise in custom sign making. He is also the creator of the Church of Sign Tology, a comprehensive online guide to sign making. www.sideshowsignco.com A ccording to Aussieborn designer Luke Stockdale, signs are not what they used to be. In response to people “caring less” about signs and the craft of sign making, Stockdale’s Nashville-based creative design and fabrication company, Sideshow Sign Co, strives to improve the profile of the signage industry, and get both designers and clients demanding better signs. On top of running the business side of things, creative director Stockdale wants to popularise sign making. With his online resource, the Church of Sign Tology, he’s…

1. Carve out a unique space “It’s about getting the quality of that initial piece of thinking right,” insists creative director Jonathan Hubbard when asked how to make the ‘clear territory’ The Clearing strives to create for clients defendable. “That space should be based on truths, and built from the inside out. Competitors might want to claim the space, but it’s completely owned by that brand – and they have a right to it – because it’s what they’ve done all along. We’re always trying to look for the thing that’s different and special about an organisation, and make a virtue of that.” 2. Make all the assets work hard Most brand identities are composed of a relatively small number of assets, Hubbard points out. These could include colour, typeface,…

GIZMOSIS First, we gathered audio samples from tiny machines and mechanical objects, and edited them into a sort of conversation. Then we created the animated gizmos that would actually have the conversation. THE WALK This film was inspired by my visit to the Lake District, and is based on walking tours I took. It is about the emotional impact a walk in nature can have, and shows the epic beauty and vastness of nature. CANYON ROAD Celebrating ’70s and ’80s gangster films, Canyon Road draws inspiration from Julius Shulman, whose photos embody that era’s LA scene. We wanted to tell a complex story in one slow camera move.…

Debbie Millman, the influential designer, author and educator – and host of podcast Design Matters – shares how her love of logos and brands began. I fell in love with brands when I was in the seventh grade. I looked around and noticed everyone in school was wearing really cool trousers with a little red tag on the back pocket. The chic fashion of the day also included polo shirts featuring crocodiles stitched onto the fabric, right above the heart. Levi’s and Lacoste: the names that go along with these iconographies are intimately familiar to us now. In my junior high school years in the late ’70s, Levi’s and Lacoste clothing was more than my family could afford. Furthermore, my mother couldn’t comprehend why we would have to pay more…

Ask any freelancer what their biggest worry is, and it’s likely to involve money. How do you decide what to charge for your talents when first starting out – or negotiate higher rates when you know what you’re doing? Can you get enough invoices paid on time each month to cover your outgoings? That freelance dream of being your own boss, taking on the projects you want, setting your own hours, and working in your underwear (if you so choose) may be clouded by this financial uncertainty if you don’t get your affairs in order. But fear not. Our cover feature this month is absolutely packed with great advice to help you conquer all your cash concerns as a freelancer – from selling yourself to new clients, to chasing up…

T here’s hardly a project that Brand Union works on these days where, at some point, the cautionary tales of Gap or Tropicana’s disastrous rebrands don’t rear their ugly heads. Most know what it looks like when things go wrong, but it’s a bit harder to know when and how they go right. That is especially true in the digital age. The process of launching a brand digitally may feel more routine but, as many are keenly aware, it’s no less risky. As clients and agencies begin to (rightfully) cede more and more control of their brand to their customers and the connected world at large, it becomes more critical that the brand itself be built to anticipate and withstand future challenges. Today’s most resonant brands are responsive to changing…

Over 70 per cent of freelancers say a client has stiffed them on their invoice. The best way to avoid these cheapskates is to use a solid contract and get paid upfront. But, if preventative measures have failed you, here are six steps for getting what you deserve. 1. DON’T WORK WITHOUT GETT ING PAID By working without pay, you remove your client’s primary motivation for paying you in the first place. “If you are still invoicing for past work and you’re not getting paid, immediately stop,” suggests Brennan Dunn, founder of Double Your Freelancing. 2. CHARGE LATE FEES Begin to charge payment late fees when your contract stipulates it will happen. Most invoicing software can automate late payment fees for you. Resend your invoice with the added late fees.…

1. CONTRACT ERRORS “I see too many freelancers working without a contract, which in the end often leads to late or even non-payment,” says Leif Abraham, co-founder of AND CO. “It’s potentially the biggest money mistake they can make.” 2. BANK BALANCE BLUNDERS “Most of us come from full-time employment,” says Brennan Dunn, founder of Double Your Freelancing. “Whatever money hits our bank account is typically ours to keep. When you’re freelancing, you’re running a small business. Businesses invest in themselves, so you need to set aside money for growth, and separate owner pay from money in the bank.” 3. TIME MANAGEMENT MISERY “Not enough freelancers understand how much time they’re investing relative to how much money they’re making,” says Josh Hoffman, founder of Epic Freelancing. “I’m not just talking…

01 CONSIDER YOUR MATERIALS Knowing your materials and being aware of how they react to the weather is crucial. “You can’t really have wood outside, for example, and that’s a problem. It’s because it’s organic and changes shape,” says Stockdale. “But also there are some woods that are just too expensive for most sign companies.” 02 READ UP ON REGULATIONS “Laws depend on where you’re based, but are often similar,” Stockdale says. “The only federally policed one in the US is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). So you have to have braille on any permanent signs, things have to be a certain size, and the logo or the word has to come off the sign a little bit so people can feel it. This is for wayfinding. For vehicular…

“That classic two-minute case study video reared its head again,” says Craig Oldham, jury president for the Monotype brief. “I wish to implore students: focus on getting the work right, not putting the work in a video.” It’s true, the work is what matters. However, if you do decide to go for the video format, here is a simple checklist to ensure your film lets the work shine, and stands out from the rest. 1 GET TO THE POINT If you have two minutes to tell the story, aim to land the idea in the first 20 seconds. Don’t restate the brief or spend too much time explaining the problem. If you’re struggling to do this then your idea may need simplifying. 2 WRITE AND REWRITE THE SCRIPT There are…

1 Getting buy-in According to Pete Dewar, getting everyone within the client organisation to believe in a new name is one of the biggest challenges. “It helps to be clear about the parameters, and what the name needs to do,” he says. “You also need to determine who needs to be involved. Often a CEO who hasn’t been part of the process comes in at the last minute and says ‘no’ when you’ve got alignment from everybody else.” The lesson? Get them onboard at the start, keep them updated, and manage their expectations throughout the process. 2 Ensuring availability The second challenge, which is only going to get tougher, is availability. “This could be trademarks, URLs, or social media handles,” explains Dewar. “And if you’re naming an international brand, you…

The inspiration for the project Eeormoo? goes back to a poster I did for a conference called Cowbird at Norwich University of the Arts. It had a cow saying ‘tweet’ and a bird saying ‘moo’. This made me smile, and I started thinking that animals making the wrong noises would be funny. Taking the idea of onomatopoeic words, set in big, beautiful, woodblock type, I wrote some short stories to explain why the animals were making those noises. An owl who’s scared of the dark, a sheep who’s tired of being told what to do – those kinds of scenarios. Kelvyn Laurence Smith and I then worked on the layouts, and Rebecca Sutherland did some wonderful illustrations, which we made into woodblocks for printing. The technique is lovely and tactile,…

SAM BECKER Sam is executive creative director at Brand Union. On page 20, he argues that for brands to survive in the internet age, they need to be flexible and transparent, with a compelling narrative. www.brandunion.com LISA HASSELL Lisa is the director of Inkygoodness and We Are Goodness, and has seven years’ experience in the creative industries. On page 24, she reveals why she’s had to redefine what happiness means to her. www.wearegoodness.com BRYCE BLADDON Creative communications specialist Bryce is the editor-in-chief of hilarious cult blog Clients From Hell. He shares advice for how you can cash in as a freelancer on page 42. www.clientsfromhell.net LARS DENICKE Along with Peter Thaler, Lars is founder and director of Pictoplasma – an annual conference in Berlin examining contemporary character design. On page…

FranklinTill Studio is a forecasting agency and creative consultancy that works with lifestyle brands across the disciplinary spectrum to provide research-based insights that drive creative innovations in materials, colour and design. It creates reports, publications, exhibitions and events with the aim of making its research both accessible and inspiring. It also edits and produces two magazines, published by View Publications, which you can buy from www.viewpoint-magazine.com. VIEWPOINT DESIGN Viewpoint delivers visual, editorial and statistical information to brands, designers, agencies and consumer insight teams determined to create lifestyle products, campaigns and environments that anticipate consumer demand. Written by professionals in the branding and design business, each issue explores how a significant trend will impact consumer behaviour and the global design landscape. VIEWPOINT COLOUR Launched December 2016, Viewpoint Colour offers visual inspiration,…

“Instagram is by far my favourite form of social media. I love opening the app and getting tons of inspiration thrown at me,” says Danish designer and maker Andreas M Hansen, who runs his own small design agency A-SPACE. “I think the reason why I create posts is to try and inspire other people the way that I get inspired. There’s nothing better,” he adds. Hansen likes taking pictures that mesmerise him, shots which he can go back to later and just stare at. He posts images solely on Instagram. “I think this is because I really like seeing how they interact with each other when they are all in one place, sitting next to each other on the grid,” he explains. His feed is minimalistic, and although it’s not…

GRANT BURKE Freelance designer and illustrator www.grantburke.com “As a freelancer, your next pay cheque is never guaranteed, and maintaining a full schedule can be challenging for even the most seasoned designers. It only takes a few slow weeks to cause panic, and multiple slow months could mean financial ruin. To avoid this, I focus on securing my next project before the last one has ended. Even when up against a deadline, I make time to track down leads and pitch to potential clients. During hectic weeks, this strategy can feel like self-inflicted pain, but it ensures that I rarely find myself at my computer asking: ‘What’s next?’” HEATHER SHAW WILLIS Freelance graphic designer www.heathershaw.com “Staying organised! I’m the worst at keeping track of income, expenses and receipts, and it leads…

INSTRUMENTAL DESIGN THE METROPOLITAN ORCHESTRA IDENTITY by byHAUS www.byhaus.ca Montreal-based firm byHaus has modernised symphony orchestra The Metropolitan Orchestra (Orchestre Métropolitain) with a playful new identity. The new logo is a monogram that compromises two letters: one an elegant, high-contrast serif; the other a dynamic graphic device through which various instruments appear. “The Orchestra never had an identity, per se,” explains byHaus associate Philippe Archontakis. “They had a logo and a pink colour, but that was pretty much it. Each year, they graphically improvised promotions with what they had. It lacked cohesion. The brief was to revisit their logo and develop an identity system,” he says. With many decision-makers involved in the process, one of the biggest challenges for byHaus was to convince everyone of the new strategy. “Another was…

Disqualifying clients who don’t seem like a good fit for you should be one of your first priorities when you meet a potential client. You save time and energy you would spend learning about the client and their business. As a result, that time and energy can be spent finding better clients and bigger pay cheques. Say no if the client... 1. Requests free work, work ‘for exposure’, or any other type of work that doesn’t provide value to you. 2. Asks for an impossible solution, product or asset. 3. Requests for you to work below your normal rate. 4. Offers to pay in the form of project proceeds or other services. 5. Keeps expanding the scope of the work without extra pay. 6. Wants you to work on areas…

People often confuse being busy with being productive. When you run your own business, there are some insidious habits that are closer to self-sabotage than a meaningful use of time. An unexpected illustration of what this looks like was declassified in 2008: the CIA’s 1944 Simple Sabotage Field Manual. Within the manual is a section for spies to ruin productivity in foreign organisations without being caught. If your clients seem to be taking the manual’s advice for sabotage a little too far to heart, make certain you are billing them for all the time they’re wasting. The manual’s advice includes the following: 1. Make ‘speeches.’ Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your points by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. 2. Refer back to matters…

More so than ever before, characters do not belong to their creators. As they become charged with our projection, imagination, fantasy and longing, they gain a virtual identity or life of their own, making them independent from their creators. This has arguably always been true, but in times of an omnipresent internet, the speed of their diffusion has increased. Characters now act as autonomous agents, roaming freely across media, spreading like wildfire across social networks and attaching themselves to other artefacts beyond our control. Once our creations are released into the void, we seem to have to let them go. The recent Pictoplasma Conference explored this trend; its theme was Character Upload – and the opening titles and the talks explored the challenges for artistic creation and authorship designers face…

THE CLEARING Since 2010, The Clearing has built a reputation for thinking differently, spurred by its mission to find “clear, defendable territory” for its clients. These include Ascot, Fitness First, Ocado, Eurostar, McLaren and Breast Cancer Now – which won a Brand Impact Award in 2016. www.theclearing.co.uk Following stints at various large agencies – including Wolff Olins, The Partners and most recently Interbrand, where all their paths first crossed – Richard Buchanan, Jonathan Hubbard, Andy Howell and Pete Dewar founded The Clearing in 2010. “We didn’t feel there were any agencies who worked in the way we wanted: a collegiate way of putting designers, writers, strategists and project people together to really solve problems,” explains Buchanan. “It was about this very linear process, where a consultant would go and crack…

NEXT MONTH POLITICAL ANIMATION Use your illustration skills to make an environmental point CLAUDINE O’SULLIVAN Irish artist Claudine O’Sullivan is known for her distinctive hand-drawn illustrations. Her work for the worldwide Apple Pencil campaign was a category winner at this year’s World Illustration Awards – other clients include MTV, WeTransfer and Derwent Pencils. www.claudineosullivan.com TRANSITIONING TO DIGITAL Ever since childhood, I’ve been a pencil and paper girl. In my teens, I started using colouring pencils, and my love for them was instant. I’ve been working as an illustrator since 2013, primarily working in my beloved coloured pencil. I then scan in my work and tidy up using very basic Photoshop skills. As I’ve gained more commercial work, editing and working digitally makes a lot of sense. Last year, I first…