Table of contents for July 2015 in Computer Arts

For every creative director up on the awards stage collecting the gong, being the figurehead on the global conference scene, or being fawned over by the design press, we all know there are hundreds of hardworking individuals behind the scenes who make those award-winning projects happen. This issue, we celebrate those very individuals with our inaugural Unsung Heroes initiative. From the designer who pulled in a global account off the back of a uni friendship, to the account director who pitched successfully after two overnight flights, no shower and no coffee – these are the people who really keep studios running. In a fascinating special report, Adrian Shaughnessy explores the state of contemporary typography, and asks whether the future is crisp, clean and governed by traditional rules, or a no-holds-barred…

Studio Output, Studio Output Beijing and Found Studio and are coming together as new parent agency Output Group. As well as this launch, the outfit is announcing new studio Allez!, which will deliver immersive content for a variety of projects. Previously working with the likes of Syco, Penguin, BBC and Sony, the merger will bring together the strengths of each studio into one, first-rate team. Managing director of Output Group, Ian Hambleton, spoke to us about what this means for each individual team. What made the three studios merge into Output Group? It’s a restructure that we’ve been thinking about for a while, both in terms of what it would mean for each of the creative studios and how we would communicate it to existing and potential clients. Our previous…

MARIA DOREULI TYPE DESIGNER www.mariadoreuli.com “As a type designer, I wouldn’t be able to live without Lexicon, Eames and Caslon. I love these designs and they influenced a lot the projects I’ve been working on so far. As a graphic designer, I would have answered differently though…” ANDREW MORLEY HEAD OF ART, LANGLAND www.langland.co.uk “As for something that genuinely makes a difference to my daily working life, as opposed to a font with a great ‘R’, then it has to be Knockout. The reason is 100 per cent practical, and 100 per cent about working with healthcare brands. Every pharmaceutical product must be clearly labelled with the active ingredient(s), so brand names have to run with with the generic name alongside (think Nurofen and ibuprofen). The regulation minimum x height…

rejanedalbello.com How would you describe your personal approach to typography? If I have one, I’m not conscious of it. I see type as image. This is not a creative approach, it’s a consequence of the fact that since the age of six, I have had difficulty learning how to read and write. At that time, dyslexia was not a ‘thing’. Since it could not be diagnosed right away, I had to have after-school teaching to help me get through schoolwork. So I guess I have always absorbed things visually – meaning was just what I felt it to be. This experience shows how I have been shaped as a designer. I see everything as an illustration or as shape. That’s why I am not really interested in long editorial design…

REBRANDING A GLOBAL ICON Fast-food branding is, by very definition, mass-market and disposable. But when Burger King approached Turner Duckworth to reinvent its visual identity system in line with its new ‘Be Your Way’ slogan, the agency rose to the challenge of representing the chain’s commitment to uniqueness and customisation. “We talked about this element of flame-grilling as perfectly imperfect, and we looked for visual ways to represent this, begins creative director Clem Halpin. “We came up with a textural finish that reflected this, as a reaction to perfection and a slightly plastic standardisation. We really wanted every element to be different but the same, and the best way we found to do this was to develop this visual stamp system.” Discover how the agency developed iconography and colour-coding for…

1. BECOME THICK-SKINNED “If you’re thinking of becoming a production manager, you’ll need to be smart, thick-skinned, forward thinking, a good communicator and assertive,” says Clevercherry’s Deep Sangar. 2. LOVE YOUR STUDIO’S WORK “Be interested in what your company does. You should care about the work your studio puts out,” advises ilovedust project manager Alice Isaac. “Also, learn as much as you can from designers about how they work and what they do. No two people work in the same way.” 3. TACKLE CHALLENGES WITH CALM AND GRACE “Google Creative Lab London is a team very much in tune with zeitgeists and technological innovation,” explains operations manager Janay Sor. “We need to keep our ear to the ground so the pace can be pretty fast and demanding. This is best…

PROJECT FACTFILE BRIEF In honour of Super Bowl XLIX and Bud Light’s role as an official sponsor of the event, Pearlfisher helped Bud Light design a limited-edition aluminium twist-off bottle. Printed directly onto the aluminium substrate, the project required Brandi Parker’s problem-solving skills to bring the designer’s vision to life. STUDIO Pearlfisher www.pearlfisher.com CREATIVE Brandi Parker STUDIO SKILLS • Understand the printing limitations of different substrates • Use negative space to let the underlying material form part of the design • Butt-fitt colours to achieve the illusion of a smooth colour gradient VIDEO CONTENT watch the video at bit.ly/ca242-pEARL fisher or in our ipad edition See page 44 PEARLFISHER Proud of its “bold behaviour, lucid thinking and unexpected creativity”, Pearlfisher has studios in New York and London. It builds brands…

I always put a lot of time and effort into the development phase. When I get briefed on a project, I’ll always work up a whole load of rough scamps in my sketchbook. I feel you have more creative freedom by just using a pencil, and it’s the best way of getting a nice, quality design at the end. I fell in love with typography at university. I’m particularly interested in how you can transform it to change a viewer’s perspective of things, and will always try to change it up and challenge myself in different techniques. Nine times out of 10, clients will approach me for my typographic work, but that can then lead to other graphic design work. I use Illustrator, Photoshop and occasionally InDesign if necessary. There…

RIZON PAREIN Our cover illustrator this issue, Belgian-born Rizon took his passion for street graffiti to the forefront of the design world, developing a unique style that’s both colourful and playful, and which incorporates digital models that come close to reality. His portfolio includes work for Nike and Toyota. www.rizon.be ADRIAN SHAUGHNESSY Adrian Shaughnessy is a graphic designer and writer. In 1989 he co-founded design company Intro. Today he runs ShaughnessyWorks and is also founding partner of Unit Editions, producing books on design and visual culture. His considered look at the future of type starts on page 46. www.unitededitions.com BRANDI PARKER Brandi is the head of Pearlfisher New York’s Realisation team, and is the common thread between the creative vision and the technical expertise of project execution. On page 83,…

KEN LO Founder, BLOW www.blow.hk “Craig & Karl’s style is always colourful and pop. I would say this is a successful crossover project as the products’ colour range is quite matching with their style. I think the eye shadow and nail varnish packs are my favourite in the whole collection. The design is bold and clean. You can also see how the style matches with the product.” HAMISH CAMPBELL Creative director, Pearlfisher www.pearlfisher.com “The limited-edition design by Craig & Karl for Sephora is vibrant, bold and striking, and recognisably them. The range is a memorable deviation from Sephora’s sleek black colour palette. The fact that the illustrations, which span the range, cue the corresponding body part or palette that each product is intended for, is a clever touch. While it’s…

www.colophonfoundry.org Where do you see Colophon Foundry fitting into the contemporary typographic landscape? We see Colophon as a platform, a distribution point for our work and the work of others. It has one foot in the type design landscape, and another in a wider spectrum of design, not limited to graphic design. We are more interested in the application of typography, and not only in its purest sense to graphic design either. What are your specialisms? We feel that our approach is our specialism. We don’t believe our skill set is specialist. A lot of our projects and typefaces are interlinked together, with each discipline informing the other, which has enabled us to get a much richer and contextually stronger result in the end. How do you approach the design…

MAISON MONO BY TIMO GAESSNER www.milieugrotesque.com/typefaces/maison/ “This monolined grotesque has been one of my favourite fonts for a while. I don’t know if it is a hidden gem, but it is a gem to me.” – Rejane Dal Bello BC LIGURIA BY JAN NOVÁK http://briefcasetype.com/about/bc-liguria “BC Liguria is highly typographic while being playful and distorted at the same time. It reads amazingly well and oddly enough, I have not seen anything quite like it. Normally typefaces like this miss the mark in one or more levels but Liguria is well executed from start to finish.” – Michael Cina HAAS UNICA / UNICA77 BY LINETO bit.ly/unica77 “Originally drawn for phototypesetting technology, the typeface was everything Helvetica should have been, but sadly lost to time and a legal battle. Now beautifully re-drawn…

1. HAVE THE RIGHT ATTITUDE “Your attitude to work and the way you carry yourself is just as important as your design skill-set,” argues Vault49 designer Chris Wise. “You can be the most technically skilled and experienced designer in the world but if you can’t work well with others you won’t make it very far. Stay humble, honest and learn as much as you can from those around you. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. They will be the best thing for you. It’s how you handle them and move forward that’s important.” 2. DON’T BE AFRAID TO ASK FOR HELP “It is okay to learn on the job,” believes Jessy Wang, junior designer at Potion Pictures. “Every project will teach you something new, so seize the opportunity! Feeling stuck…

1 Key presentation We usually take four weeks to deliver the first key presentation. Two weeks are used for brand analysis and sketching, a third one is used to create logo concepts in vector and the last one is spent making the initial presentation of our ideas, for the client to choose the visual direction. 2 Hand-drawn fonts We initially tried out a variety of different, mostly hand-drawn fonts for the logo. Once we had narrowed it down to the preferred design, we decided to check whether there were any existing fonts out there, and we discovered the Pavement typeface, which was very similar. 3 Typeface purchase We decided to buy the typeface – which is designed by Johan Manschot – even though we needed only three letters. These days…

PROJECT FACTFILE BRIEF Having already worked with Craig Black on a typographic window display, Slick’s Barbershop in Glasgow commissioned the illustrator and designer to create another eye-catching design to promote its new Shave Room. DESIGNER Craig Black www.craigblackdesign.com PROJECT DURATION Five weeks LIVE DATE April 2015 CRAIG BLACK GRAPHIC ARTIST Craig Black is a Scottish multi-disciplinary designer based in London, with a strong admiration for all letterforms and typography. Graduating in 2013 from the University of West Scotland, his work now includes print, illustration and motion, for clients such as UEFA and the BBC. THE DESIGN BRIEF Craig Black I already created one window design for Slick’s last year. The company had just started, and they wanted to set themselves apart from everyone else in the market. They were keen…

PROJECT FACTFILE BRIEF William Hill approached UNIT 9 to help develop a ‘minimum viable product exploring the latest in wearable technology, and the way in which it can be harnessed to excite its customers. PRODUCTION STUDIO UNIT9 www.unit9.com PROJECT DURATION 10 weeks LIVE DATE May 2015 THE DESIGN BRIEF Crispin Nieboer I originally found UNIT9 because I was looking for some of the top developers for wearable technology and games, and UNIT9 ranked highly. I wanted to work on where I thought the opportunities were with this type of technology. The whole wearables market is going to be huge, so we wanted to test how our consumers respond to this type of wearable, 3D, virtual environment around horse racing. What I like most about the Google Cardboard is that it’s…

NICK CARSON EDITOR Nick went on holiday to Santorini and quad-biked around the island, making it back in time to attend WDCD and ‘accidentally’ follow a crowd of tourists into an Amsterdam sex show. Explain yourself, Nick. JO GULLIVER ART EDITOR This month Jo attended OFFF Barcelona but got her tan in Falmouth, attending the university’s grad show in preparation for next issue’s New Talent special. She also strong-armed Rich into going to spin class. TIM HARDWICK OPERATIONS EDITOR Tim flew over to Germany to attend TYPO Berlin and also moved into his new flat. This one doesn’t have a washing machine, but he’s hoping to meet the girl of his dreams down at the local launderette. RICH CARTER DESIGNER This month saw Rich move (again). During the clearout he…

LIBRERIA ANTIQUARIA PERINI Via Amatore Sciesa, 11, 37122 www.libreriaperini.com An old bookshop with a huge selection of Italian vintage prints, advertising posters, maps, engravings and old books. You can easily feel lost with the amount of stuff you can find here! A must-visit for enthusiasts and collectors. GIARDINO GIUSTI Via Giardino Giusti, 2 bit.ly/1dRGy3W Nature and history meet in this beautiful garden, just a step outside the city centre and near the Adige river. Built in the 1500s, it’s a quiet, meditative and romantic place. From the upper terrace, you can find one of the best views of Verona. LE CANTINE DE L’ARENA Piazzetta Scalette Rubiani, 1, 37121 www.lecantine-arena.com A typical Italian restaurant just in front of the Arena. It offers a good selection of traditional Venetian dishes and often…

KEY INFO LOCATION Barcelona, Spain www.offf.ws WHEN 28–30 May 2015 SPEAKERS Chuck Anderson, GMUNK, Foreign Policy Design, Gemma Anderson, Studio Yukiko, Stefan Sagmeister, Vasava, Filipe Carvalho Can good design be produced using a formula? That was a key question to emerge from OFFF Barcelona, Spain’s annual three-day creativity fiesta held in the city’s impressive Museu del Disseny building. This year, it was OFFF’s 15th birthday – and to celebrate the team invited their biggest list of speakers yet. Stefan Sagmeister, Chuck Anderson and Gemma Anderson were just a few of a 51-strong army of industry-leading creatives who took to the stage during the event. For designer Rick Banks, who most directly referenced the issue, the answer is yes. Banks told the OFFF audience that for him, good design is the…

ERIK KESSELS KESSELSKRAMER “Nowadays a lot of creations are pushed towards perfection with computers and so on. But it’s important to fuck things up sometimes to make them look different.” JOSH HIGGINS FACEBOOK “Building character has nothing to do with ‘me’, and everything to do with ‘we’. Allowing yourself to become something greater than you could ever be alone – that’s the stuff that builds character.” BERND SCHULZ & RUTH HOLZERBAUER CA COMPETITION TICKET WINNERS “We loved the mixture of handcraft and inspiration, mixed with great talks by a bunch of extremely interesting characters from the design field – we can’t wait for next year!”…

ABOUT THE WRITER Jason Romeyko is the global chief creative officer for GSK and Deutsche Telekom as well as the executive creative director for Saatchi & Saatchi Switzerland. Until recently, he also led Toyota’s creative work across EMEA. www.saatchi-ch.com The ‘HIV+ issue’ for Vangardist is truly a ‘nothing is impossible’ story. It has been a long time in the making, but we wanted to raise awareness of the stigma surrounding HIV, so we decided to transform the media into the taboo itself and thus printed every word, picture and page of the magazine with the blood donated by HIV+ people. On a basic level, one should take the idea as a press ad that communicates the staggering 80 per cent increase in new HIV infections, combined with a clear message…

ABOUT THE WRITER Jonathan Kenyon is an award-winning designer as well as the co-founder and executive creative director of Vault49, which creates branding, advertising, design and art for its clients. www.vault49.com The poaching of staff and team members moving on is a fact of our industry. An old mentor of mine – who used to be the global creative lead at a well-known agency – would recruit the best talent by telling them that their next job was going to be incredible. So envied was his creative team throughout the industry that it was inevitable that the big agencies would come knocking for his best talent eventually. That doesn’t mean that as a small studio you resign yourself to losing your best staff to bigger players. Vault49 is 13 years…

Welcome to Computer Arts’ inaugural Unsung Hero Awards: a brand new scheme that celebrates the exceptional behind-the-scenes designers and team members at your studio or agency. You won’t see these people at the glittering industry awards ceremonies, but they’re the backbone of the creative industries – and in the last 18 months the individuals profiled in these pages have done something amazing that deserves recognition. We’re talking about the middleweight designer whose brilliant stroke of creative genius led to the studio winning that special client; the junior designer who learned After Effects to prove just how perfectly a logo might move; the studio or project manager who got that pivotal project out the door against the odds, or demonstrated extraordinary skill in building a tricky client relationship. In short, we’re…

1. NO SUCH THING AS PROBLEM “Some days are better than others,” says account supervisor Annell Morrow. “Try to view problems as challenges and keep things in perspective. Projects change and you will have a new task soon – whether it is with the same client or a different one.” 2. SEEK FEEDBACK Get feedback as much as possible from your clients as well as your peers – that’s the best way to know whether you are doing a good job. If the feedback isn’t what you expected, at least you have something to work with to rectify the situation. 3. KNOW YOUR CLIENT Get to know clients as much as you can, whether that’s over coffee, through attending network events or spending time at their offices to see how…

INITIAL IDEA For The Shave Room, I had created a geometric pattern across a whole wall. I took that and developed it for the window. The idea came to me at the start. It was a way of bringing the two designs on the front window together. Also I wanted to take the back of the shop, The Shave Room, and bring it in front of people’s eyes. BRAINSTORM I always do a brainstorming session at the start, and putting up examples of interesting type on the wall helps. It’s a collection of typographic examples that I think could work, work from designers I admire or that feels quite inspiring. At any point, when I was thinking about a certain word or a letter, I could use that as a…