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GAP's New Logo...

I feel like I should join the GAP logo debate but I've been a bit slow, if you're looking for a pretty comprehensive and entertaining view on the whole debacle, check out Steve Price's comments on Design Weak. Oh, and the one on the right is utter tosh...

Next Media

Feature in US Wired this month on Jimmy Lai - a tabloid tycoon, who made his money in newspapers - and his "animation assembly line" in Taiwan, Next Media. In 2007 he had the idea to animate stories and decided to build his own CG studio, producing short features as quickly as possible. Next Media gained world wide recognition for their notorious Tiger Woods vid, depicting the moment his mrs chased him down the driveway with a golf club. Since then Next Media has animated the death of Michael Jackson, Barack Obama having an affair and I think my favourite... Steve Jobs/Darth Vadar selling his iCrap. You can read the full article here.

The Truth About iPad Owners...

Selfish, elitist, gluttonous, lustful and horrible c**nts, read more on the Guardians website

Swearing in the Guardian, 1998 - 2008

Funny chart created by Tom Hume mapping the amount of swear words in the Guardian over a 10 year period, check out a more in depth description on Tom's blog and an article on the Guardian's own website discussing how to trend swear words in the paper.

Thanks to James for sending me this.

Cool Hunting

Always good to find new design blogs and websites, so thanks to Graeme for pointing me in the direction of Cool Hunting, a site/blog showcasing the latest design trends, and ideas in culture and technology.

Spotted Christopher Chiappa’s latest work, which includes covering a basketball with corn and dressing upside-down, “High Fructose Corn Syrup”, his latest exhibition is on show at Kate Werble Gallery until April, you can read more about Christopher here.

Another article that caught my eye was on Diesel’s latest “Be Stupid” campaign. I was in New York a couple of months back and saw the posters everywhere, the adverts are pretty bang on when it comes to visualising a particular cultural moment and I guess the dumbing down of society (although I don’t think this concept is much of a revelation), I quite like the idea that “without stupid thoughts creativity wouldn’t really evolve” and that taking risks and potentially failing is the best option. You can read more here.

Thanks again Gra

Five Ways the iPad Will Change Magazine Design

So the dust has settled and its been a couple of weeks since the launch of Apples iPad, presented by Steve Jobs as revolutionary and game-changing, the initial excitement seems to have died down but what effect will it have on the way we read magazines and the future of editorial design?

Pentagram’s Luke Hayman, designer of, among others, Time, New York, and Travel + Leisure, was asked how this new format would change the world of magazines and came up with five ways off the top of his head.

A reversal of a decades-long trend

“For as long as I’m been alive, publication formats have been getting smaller. First, oversized magazines like Life and Esquire either disappeared or switched to conventional formats to save money on paper and mailing. Then editorial content started moving online, shrinking to fit computer screens and then even smaller for PDAs and 140-character tweets. The iPad represents the first time this trend has been reversed. Instead of smaller, more low-res content, we have the chance to get bigger, brighter, sharper content. Designers used to making it smaller may have trouble learning to go the other way.”

The end of frequency

“Say goodbye to the idea of monthly magazines, or weeklies, or dailies. Print publications, already under siege by the Internet and 24-hour news cycle, will have to learn to adapt to a world of instantaneous updates. This is most obvious for news and business publications, but it’s just as true for fashion, entertainment and specialized titles.”

A reset on advertising

“The mean little conventions of online advertising—banner ads, pop ups, and so forth—aren’t popular with readers, with advertisers, and certainly not with designers. The iPad’s a new medium that will create a whole range of opportunities. Once people start exploiting what it can do, we may see the kind of creative renaissance that will deliver the next George Lois or Lee Clow. People will start subscribing to certain i-mags just for the ads alone.”

A new way of telling stories

“Editors have been telling us for years that people won’t read long stories online. Yet they will read 1,000-page novels on their Kindles. What will they be willing to read on their iPad? I predict the return of long-form journalism. At the same time, visual storytelling will take deeper, richer forms. Information design will be more important than ever. Something like New York’s Approval Matrix that we designed back in 2005 with Adam Moss is popular in print but will really come to life in this format. Some people might subscribe to it all by itself.”

A new role for print

“If digital magazines with rich, uncompromised, real-time content corner the market on delivering what you need to know right now, what’s the point of print? I think that the publications that end up enduring will be the ones that exploit what print alone can do. The best ones will be things that you want to save, not toss in the recycling bin. They’ll project a sense of craftsmanship and permanence. And each one should be an object that just feels terrific in your hand. If you’re spending most of your free-time holding an iPad, you just might welcome a change of pace.”

Thanks Graeme. Via Pentagram

Dec vs Ant

This happened ruddy ages ago but still makes me chuckle, so if you missed it, you can read the full story on the guardian website. I’m sure you’re aware newspapers do a few print runs, the first edition carried the headline “Can Dec finally match Ant?” on a two page spread. The headline was changed to “Can Dec at last match Ant?” but someone one forgot to change both sides, resulting in the question we all want to know… “Can Dec anally match Ant?” Does anyone know the answer?

Are we ffff*ucked? by Mario Hugo on Its Nice That

Obviously blogging has been around for quite a while now and I’ve been a little slow to get involved but I find people’s opinions on it can be extreme. Quite a few designers I know are anti blogging, they feel that too many simply regurgitate the same old stuff from other blogs such as Form Fifty Five and ffffound, without making any sort of comment or justification for displaying the work again.

Blogs can be a great resource, especially for students who are discovering styles and techniques for the first time, but its also great to discover things by accident, looking through books or music collections for inspiration, which is the point Mario Hugo makes in his article on Its Nice That. ”We no longer seek out the portfolios of incredibly talented illustrators and designers, writers or filmmakers, but the convenience of aggregated, often dodgy mass sourcing”.

It’s an interesting article and a topic that’s being discussed more and more but the main problem with websites like ffffound is that the story behind the image is often missing, leaving it devoid of substance.