Table of contents for March 2018 in Computer Arts

We’d have been happy to have any one of the 25 illustrators on our hotlist provide us with a cover, but with just four slots available, it was a case of selecting the most radically contrasting pieces, partly to make each cover stand alone, and partly to demonstrate the sheer diversity of styles and techniques we’d discovered on our quest for the year’s hottest talent… So Petra Eriksson’s super-bold, graphic simplicity contrasted nicely with Rosanna Tasker’s delicate line work and subtle palettes, whilst Andreea Dobrin Dinu’s joyful, semi-abstract artwork is a world away from the sensual, nearweightless dreaminess of Tianju Duan’s portraits of masculinity. All four artists demonstrate radically different techniques, and all four make beautiful covers. For newsstand readers, the main coverline is on a removable bellyband this month…

NICK CARSON EDITOR Nick handed in his notice this month to pursue exciting new freelance opportunities – next issue (his 72nd!) will be his last. He’ll be sad to leave such an amazing team, but will still be on-hand for lunchtime gossip. MARK WYNNE ART EDITOR Despite initially enjoying Rosie’s copy of cooler-thanf* ck Mushpit, the satirical fashion/political/feminist magazine gradually provoked a gender and design crisis in our white, middle-class male art editor... ROSIE HILDER OPERATIONS EDITOR Rosie went to D&AD HQ this month for an inspiring evening celebrating D&AD Shift’s class of 2017. Elsewhere, she celebrated turning 31 with a sophisticated tea party at (ahem) her parents’ house.…

Friends – amazing, I’m sure you’ll agree. No, I don’t mean those six people from that television programme who hang around in each other’s apartments, or that coffee shop. I mean your friends: the ones you do things with, like shopping or drinking or holidaying; the ones you share the moments of your life with, whose advice and approval you seek. Friends are great, but as far as seeking approval when it comes to your graphic design, friends are not necessarily the best place to look. Approval in graphic design is easy-peasy; all you have to do is simply ask enough people – or even easier – ask the people you know are likely to tell you what you want to hear. Those people who say things like, ‘Yeah, I…

Every designer needs to know about user experience, commonly abbreviated to UX. And the first thing to understand is exactly what user experience actually is, as well as being clear about what it isn’t. UX is not web design, which is about the nuts and bolts of making digital interfaces function. It’s also distinct from (though closely related to) UI design, which is about designing the visuals of an app or website. Instead, UX is about making the experience a great one for the user – which means that in theory someone who can neither draw nor write code could be an expert in it. UX is most commonly associated with making apps and websites, but as Matt Theakston, experience design director at TH_NK points out, it goes way beyond…

1 STAY NIMBLE While the principles of graphic design may be immutable, UX is a different beast. As Matt Theakston of TH_NK puts it: “Print design is like tennis, it’s individual and heroic, even. Digital service design is more like football, but played on a constantly moving pitch, without a fixed playing time, where the rules keep changing.” 2 IF IN DOUBT, REDUCE “Design for strong centre-of-use first,” says Theakston. “Every service and product has a core journey, so start here. Ask ‘What is our user’s intent, at every point?’ and design for it. And if you’re stuck, take as much out of the interface as you can for it still to function. Adding is easy.” 3 PSYCHOLOGY IS THE FOUNDATION As UX is focused on users, understanding psychology is…

1. Create eye-catching GIFs “I read an article about this: people are attracted to watching GIFs for a long time, because the human brain looks for tiny differences in a pattern,” explains Sarah Tanat-Jones. “So, you’ll look at a GIF and even though you know nothing’s going to change, you’re still staring at it, expecting something to change.” Her top tip for creating eye-catching GIFs for your portfolio? Don’t move too quickly. “It’s overwhelming if it whizzes through loads of images,” she insists. “Keep a steady, slow procession. Then you watch it for longer, and it’s more interesting.” 2. Show WIP if you have it Tanat-Jones finds other illustrators’ workin- progress shots fascinating. “When you’re interested in a particular person, you want to see how they work,” she says. “People…

FOUND FONTS The first edition featured images of our in-house lettering and font collection, which used lots of print techniques such as embossing, die cuts and varnishes. A CUT ABOVE After the succcess of the first edition, the next Noted showcased Italian razor blade packaging from the 1950s and ’60s, which was found in a Rome flea market. HEIDELBERG EPHEMERA Volume three consisted of a collection of items that all belonged to one woman during her one-year stay in London, found at a car boot fair in the city some 40 years later.…

One of the most important aspects of the installation was meeting safety requirements relating to the use of industrial machinery. Even in the studio, the team had to demarcate the robot’s space with a safety cordon. And, when it came to placing an animated assembly line robot in the environment of Grade II listed architectural treasures, structural engineers were called on to ensure the stability of the robots and the forces they generated through their choreography.…

Illustration is a hugely subjective discipline with, in theory at least, as many styles as there are practitioners. But the field can be buffeted by trends like a ship in a storm, with boundary-breaking individuals often swimming against a surge of shared influences and identikit styles that threaten to flood the market. Our cover story this issue celebrates 25 of the most exciting – and original – illustrators working today. In short, these are the people you should be commissioning in 2018. Some faces are newer than others, but the range of styles and approaches on show is hugely encouraging, we hope you agree. Four of our favourites grace this month’s cover, in our fourth split-run design of the past six months. Elsewhere, Logo Design Love founder David Airey has…

Single-use plastic products are icons of consumer culture. More than 300 million tons of plastic are produced annually, and nearly every piece of plastic ever produced still exists, floating in our oceans or buried in landfills. Awareness of the environmental consequences and planetary impact of our love affair with plastic appears to be growing – perhaps helped in part by TV programmes like Blue Planet. Last year witnessed the largest involvement in Plastic Free July since the campaign’s launch in 2011. For one month, more than one million people refused single-use plastics. Responding to this burgeoning desire for footprint-free consumption, eco brands and innovative designers are rethinking mundane everyday designs, and replacing ubiquitous plastic products with compostable alternatives. Maria Idicula Kurian, a recent Central St Martins MA Material Futures graduate,…

Berlin-based Hélène Baum comes from a graphic design background, but has slowly transitioned to illustration, using watercolour and vector drawing to create images. “Colour is primordial for me, and is a bit of an obsession,” she says. “Content-wise, many of my images are about identity and diversity. I also find inspiration in mythology, legends, nature and cultures around the world.” Baum says she likes to photograph “anything that intrigues me optically, or gets my ‘colour sensors’ going.” She enjoys using Instagram as an addition to her more static website portfolio, as it enables her to show her work in an “organic living way, with behindthe- scenes moments.” She also says the platform has been helpful professionally, and has brought in work. “I like this sense of an international community sharing…

RORY BERRY Creative director, Superrb www.superrb.com “One mistake we made previously was giving the client too many logo options upfront (in the concept phase). Doing this not only takes more design time, but it can often make things harder if the client wants to take elements from a few ideas and mash them together. Having gone through that experience, we’d now generally recommend selecting the three options you believe to be the best solution. These should vary in style so you can get a clear steer from the client on what they do and don’t like. We’ve also found it handy to spend time presenting logos across various media, such as business cards, signage, and so on. This really showcases your work and enables clients to visualise your ideas.” STEVE…

When you think of a person who’s impacted your life, whether that’s a friend, family member, spouse — anyone you have some form of relationship with — it’s almost certain that you can picture what he or she looks like. And so it is with the brands from which we often buy. We can easily picture the logo just by thinking about our experiences with the product, company or service. Where there was once just a handful of companies operating within a particular market or niche, there might now be hundreds, maybe thousands, all competing for attention, all wanting us to look at them first. That creates increasing need for brands to visually differentiate themselves so they’re not confused with competitors. And that differentiation is achieved through brand identity design…

“Like a lot of start-ups, Batch Organics was launching its product in key phases. The first was boxes of frozen smoothies delivered to your door. Phase two focused on soups and breakfast bowls, while phase three was about creating a one-stop shop for all your health food needs. We needed to simplify the process of building a box full of different flavoured smoothies so that there weren’t an infinite number of possibilities. It was important that the choice didn’t become overwhelming online; we did this by limiting the options. We introduced pre-filled boxes for quick purchases and also limited the number of smoothies in a bespoke box to six, 12 or 24. This had the benefit of helping simplify order fulfilment on the production line, too. The purchase process also…

1. Preserve the imperfections Working at large scale with pen and ink, Thibaud Hérem needs to scan his images at the highest resolution possible to preserve the painstaking level of detail in his images. While he’ll clean up dust and dirt from the scan digitally, he’s keen to make sure the hand-drawn feel remains, rather than giving it a clean, vector feel. “The original piece has to be the final piece,” he insists. “That’s important to me, so I try to preserve that as much as I can in the scan.” 2. Show bright work in RGB Bright, vibrant colour palettes are a running theme throughout Tim McDonagh’s portfolio. “I go through phases: at the moment, I like using yellow, orange and bright pink,” he explains. “Because of this, most…

We regularly build plug-ins for Cinema 4D that allow us to directly control and manipulate real-world hardware. Normally, we build a real-time link so that we can scrub the slider and see how the hardware behaves. These robots are a lot more complex and potentially hazardous so we decided to design choreographies in Cinema 4D. We built our own inverse kinematics plug-in so that we could apply all the motion graphics tools to design each robot’s choreography. We were then able to press a button, which would export a robot program from Cinema 4D, which we could then load into the robot’s system, press Go and watch it unfold.…

The majority of the AOP’s photographers operate alone. Of course, there are invaluable teams of people involved in a shoot, but the vision derives from the photographer. So what does the creative process look like for a photography duo? We catch up with Ilka and Franz, partners both professionally and personally, to investigate how a shared vision helps them both design and photograph sets... How did you first meet? We are from Germany and Austria originally, but have been living in London for a number of years. We met in London after Franz had just arrived in the city to work as a photographer’s assistant. We were both very much at the beginning of our photographic careers. What’s your creative process? For us, taking a picture is really just one…

Australian digital designer, creative director of London agency Mr President and co-founder of SheSays – a global creative network for women – Laura Jordan-Bambach shares how her dreams have inspired her. As creative people, our job is to set visions of the future for others to follow, but where do these visions come from? Where do we get our inspiration? It’s the question I’ve probably been asked most in my career. Well, looking inwards for inspiration in my dreams has given me an inexhaustible well of new ideas, as well as a sense of time travel, the courage to face fears and find ways around them. My dreams mean I have someone to ask and to trust in, who’s always at hand. The subconscious is a fascinating place to become an adventurer.…

CRAIG OLDHAM Craig is a designer, writer and educator and the founder of agency Office of Craig. Read an extract from his new book Oh Sh*t What Now? on page 18, and enter our competition to win one of five copies. www.craigoldham.co.uk SARAH TURNER Sarah, owner and managing director of Carter Wong, has been with the Londonbased branding agency for 17 years. On page 82, she shares the process behind its latest bespoke notebook. www.carterwongdesign.com DAVID AIREY David is a logo and brand identity specialist, and creator of book and website, Logo Design Love. Discover his 10 golden rules for creating memorable and lasting logos on page 36. www.logodesignlove.com THIBAUD HÉREM French-born, London-based illustrator Thibaud specialises in intricate architectural drawings. He shares his advice for improving your online portfolio on…

CRAIG OLDHAM FOUNDER, OFFICE OF CRAIG OLDHAM www.craigoldham.co.uk Craig is a designer, educator, writer, publisher, curator, letter-writer, website-putter-upper and lamenter. He’s also the founder of agency Office of Craig. His new book Oh Sh*t What Now? contains “honest advice for new graphic designers.” DESIGN MATTERS: Which branding mistake taught you an important lesson? Page 21 PLUS: Three perspectives on Formula 1’s recent rebrand by W+K London – page 22 Illustrations: Anna Higgie www.annahiggie.co.uk…

“The most effective design across any discipline stems from insight. You can wax lyrical about UX principles and theory, but if you haven’t taken the time to understand how your target audience behaves, what you want them to do and how you want them to feel, then there’s nothing to validate your thinking against. Once you know the audience you’re targeting, the three C’s of Context, Consistency and Content are a good starting point... _CONTEX T Thinking about where the piece of design fits within the overall customer journey is essential. When is this design being consumed? What have they done before? Who are they with? Where are they? What do they believe? What are they doing next? _CONSISTENCY Once you’ve built familiarity with a system, use of language or…

DATA ILLUSTRATION Paul Button I’ve been working in the data visualisation field for close to a decade now – in my day job I go by the role of information designer, but I sometimes feel data illustrator may be a more accurate description. Made from Data is a personal project that I’d been thinking about undertaking for a long time. I felt that there were classic stories that I wanted to visually portray through data visualisation, and then combine that with more bespoke production techniques. The end goal was to produce something that was beautifully designed, informative and a limited edition high-quality object in its own right. DEFINING THE MISSION When choosing a first subject, the Apollo programme immediately came to mind. I’m definitely a bit of a space nerd,…