Designers Journal | A chronicle of jottings, doodles & boutique design treats

Designival ~ two days in November

17/10/2012

by DJ

News

Originally conceived as Design Symposium North back in 2008 by Liverpool creative agencies Smiling Wolf, Black & Ginger and Uniform (in themselves awesome studios) 2012 sees it relaunched under the new name, Designival – dubbed the largest design festival in the north of England – to reflect its larger, broader events.

Taking place on November 22nd across Liverpool and on the 23rd at Camp and Furnace, Designival will feature keynote sessions as well as a design-themed breakfast with guest speaker, masterclasses from Apposing, Milky Tea and Uniform, portfolio surgeries with Black & Ginger and Smiling Wolf, as well as an architour across the city (in association with RIBA), studio tours, networking, exhibitions and an after-party running well into the night. What more do you want?

Excitingly, Lance Wyman, who regular readers might remember from our own Martin Maher’s Heroes profile back in August, has been announced as keynote speaker. He’ll be joined on the stage by James Jarvis, illustrator and pioneer of the designer toy revolution and Simon Manchipp, co-founder of SomeOne (who our regular readers are probably also, just a little familiar with).

This year the event, hosted in partnership with Creative Review, marks the largest event in its short history, with an anticipated 500+ creatives from across the UK attending two packed days. It will also see the launch of The Designist, a design biased guide to Liverpool and an insight into where to go and what to do over the 48 hours for the committed design tourist (written and curated in association with online arts and design magazine The Double Negative).

Early bird tickets are practically being given away at £50 (until November 1), while students can get ’em while they’re hot for a cool £25 (limited availability in both instances). I’d get over there now and, if you see anyone from team DJ there, give them a wave…

www.designival.com
Tw. @designival / Fb. /designival

SomeOne pours another one

16/10/2012

by DJ

News

More great work from SomeOne, this time it’s 40% proof. You might be forgiven for thinking that in the last week DJ had become some sort of an unofficial media outlet for SomeOne… pause to think what that world might be like… but the truth is they’re just spitting out great stuff at the moment, like it’s going out of fashion. Five eclectic projects have vaulted out of the their door in a matter of days, each frothing at the mouth and baying for love and here’s the latest, 18 months in the distilling, a rebrand for the world’s best selling whisky brand, Chivas.

Now, I’m all gooey eyed at the more modern ‘flexible’ identity systems, the sort that live and breath and adapt to their application and all that but, call me old fashioned, I can’t help but love a good Mark with a bit of heritage. The sort you can print on a golf ball and you’d think has been around for ages. The Chivas branding incorporates such a stratagem in the form of a Scottish love token, coupled with type by Jonathan Barnbrook…

“Exponential growth in demand across Latin and Asian markets – as well as marketing restrictions in ‘dark’ markets, all pointed to a symbol based architecture. SomeOne worked with the global brand team at Pernod Ricard to establish a new and powerfully ownable way of talking across language barriers. A full Brand World was developed using custom pattern systems, colour hierarchies, a contemporary ‘luckenbooth’ icon – a traditional scottish love token – inspired by the original distillery gates in Strathisla and a bespoke typeface by world renowned typographic designer, Jonathan Barnbrook.”

You know the drill… read a little more here.

The Best of the Best {New Zealand Best Awards}

11/10/2012

by LWC

LWC / News

With the awards season rolling on the next in line to take to the design red carpet are the kiwis. Drumolls thundered through the hills last week as this years Best Awards were finally announced. So who was the best of the best?

Internationally acclaimed Alt Group did pretty well with 12 awards in total including the purple pin for their work on the rebrand of Auckland Art Gallery. Strategy Design also did pretty well with a handful of precious cargo to take away with them.

I was glad to see some of my top picks from the small scale identity section walking away with a prize or two, Auckland University Press by Alt and The Elephant Wrester by Designworks being my stand outs from a ‘great idea executed well’ perspective. Wandering over to the packaging section I was as usual slightly disappointed. This category always feels a little slim on the ground with this year being no exception. The highlights for me we Living Earth by Fracture and Stolen Rum by DDMMYY. I was disappointed to see Oob by Special Group walk away with the only gold in the category. For me the packs lack appetite appeal and any kind of hierarchy or shelf presence.

Lastly a couple of picks I feel maybe shouldn’t have walked away empty handed come from DDMMYY in the form of their packaging and branding for Triumph and Disaster. A nice niche brand excuted well I felt. Also the work for the Print Awards by Switch – again a nice idea rolled out effectively across a number of touchpoints.

All in all the awards do a great job of showcasing New Zealand creativity to the big wide world. Great job one and all. Check out the student section for next years potential winners!

@bestawards

SomeOne’s Halcyon days

10/10/2012

by DJ

News

It’s not been a bad old week for SomeOne… first, we had a sneaky peaky at a new brand for Tizen, not long after they regaled us with a tale of Beagle Street, that was all before they whipped out this puppy… The Halcyon (and just while you were catching your breath from that they gave us one last tickle with a few more Harris & Hoole bits and pieces. Nicely done).

But back to Halcyon. Just a quick look up of the word and you’ll learn ‘halcyon’ denotes a period of time in the past that was idyllically happy and peaceful. After that week, I would hazard a guess that probably not far described the mood in the local SomeOne boozer, circa 6.00pm on Friday night (perhaps not too peaceful). Probably, but I digress. Halcyon – in Islington of London fame – a soon to be open ‘exciting development highlighting the best of British art, retail, design, music, exhibitions, gallery, food – all with entrepreneurial spirit.’

“The Halcyon houses impressive gallery, music and retail spaces, and works seamlessly with The Thunderbolt restaurant and The Sundowner bar – to create a wonderfully rich, varied yet coherent set of experiences. The colours used within the brand and environment were derived from, and act as a subtle nod towards the diverse colour palette used during Britain’s great creative periods of the past – our Halcyon days, mixed with those we see around us today.”

SomeOne Co-founder and Executive Creative Director Gary Holt said “Working on The Halcyon with their team has been amazing. And we’re sure that we’re helping to build what will become an iconic London destination, offering all manner of splendid things from 2013 onwards – and believe the work is testament to this”.

Read more about the project here, likewise, follow SomeOne on Twitter just here.

Packaging in Paris {Pentawards}

09/10/2012

by LWC

LWC / News

Our Awards Special kicks off with a Parisan bang this week, step forward packaging design royalty, it’s time for the big reveal over at the Pentawards. With a huge international draw the Pentawards showcase the best packaging design from around the world spanning a multitude of categories covering everything from wine in a box (yes they have a dedicated category to our cardboard friends) to savoury snacks and luxury cosmetics.

The great thing about the Pentawards is it reveals new gems you wont have seen doing the blog rounds yet, hence a healthy dose of inspiration for packaging designers. The downside is the website. Tricky to navigate, unfortunately the site struggles to do the work justice. With this in mind take the time to view the Designers Journal Top Picks…

Number one for me was an angel and devil affair. While it took the creativity prize hands down it also took the crown for most unnecessary packaging from an environmental perspective. Step forward the most beautifully over packaged wellies (gumboots to the kiwis) the world has ever seen that just happen to be from Kazakstan! Second was a fishy battle between Cowan London and Mousegraphics. Both are strong from a creative idea perspective however Cowan might just have it from an appetite appeal perspective with a nicely shot clean bold aesthetic for Ahti. Other notable winners for me were Greenhook Ginsmiths Gin by Threebrand in the UK, a nicely executed contemporary take on traditional spirit cues and Eggs for Soldiers, a simple idea for a good cause. It was also great to see some Kiwi talent popping up in the form of Red Cactus’ three awards for Voila, Nice ‘n’ Tasty and KFC – nice work waving the New Zealand flag guys.

Overall, a truly tasty parade of goodness I would say. Check out the concepts section for a great selection of ‘if only’ ideas…

SomeOne puts the wind in Tizen’s sails

09/10/2012

by DJ

News

SomeOne have just released, unto the world, a full strategic brand world for Tizen — “an amazing new platform coming to something with a screen near you” aka, a spanking new, open source, operating system. Have that Windows.

“Tizen is an open source, standards-based software platform supported by leading mobile operators, device manufacturers, and silicon suppliers for multiple device categories, including smartphones, tablets, netbooks, in-vehicle infotainment devices, smart TVs, and more. Tizen offers an innovative operating system, applications, and a user experience that consumers can take from device to device.”

SomeOne’s founder Simon Manchipp adds; “Being open source, we created a strategic global visual brand identity that is open source. People can take it apart, use bits of it, change it and make it adapt to their specific needs, wants and whims. We created a multitude of brand assets for people to choose from. It can do as much or as little as you like.”

Typically handsome, solid SomeOne fodder, read more about the project here and give them a nod on Twitter.

It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part…

04/10/2012

by LWC

LWC

Who are we kidding, we all love winning! Didn’t we all have at least one dream at uni of wrapping our hands around a Yellow Pencil and making an emotional speech thanking our mother and our pet guinea pig for their support?! Yeh maybe that’s just me but one thing is for sure… it’s awards season!

The Pentwards will kick off our run of trophy handing with the ceremony taking place in Paris as we speak. Focused on packaging design, the awards always highlight a create mix of internationally effective packaging design from around the globe. Closely followed and in the opposite hemisphere will be the national New Zealand design awards, Best Awards. Always hotly anticipated this years nominations show strong contenders across the board, my picks being from the small scale identity sector. And last but by no mean’s least we have the Cardiff Design Festival awards on Saturday. Guest judges there include The Allotment’s Michael Smith, Lynda Relph-Knight (former Design Week editor), Glenn Tutsell (The Brand Union) and David Worthington (Media Square), amongst others (read about last year’s here).

Look out for our upcoming reports and observations on all three and in the meantime whet your whistle with a selection of previous winners and current nominations. Good luck to everyone involved, have a sherry for us!

MADE Quarterly

03/10/2012

by DJ

Bookshelf / News

You may remember last month, when we had a chat with Hunt Studio & Process Journal founder Thomas Williams, he let slip about an upcoming project. Well, today it’s been unleashed. This latest shelf candy, MADE, focuses on inspirational people from around the world who create incredible things, including but not limited to, industrial design, architecture, fashion, interior design, photography and the culinary world. MADE gets inside the heads of those individuals to find out how they do what they do, and what inspires them to create.

Each issue plans to take a peek behind the scenes and offer the reader a rare opportunity to glimpse inside the minds of these inspiring individuals. Edition One contributors include: Nendo (JPN), Aulik Fiser Architects (CZE), Dinosaur Designs (AUS), FEIT (AUS), Alt Group (NZL), Form Us With Love (SWE), Wrenchmonkees (DNK), Katie Quinn Davies (AUS), Patterns From Above (USA) and Noe Duchaufour-Lawrance (FRA).

All content in MADE Quarterly is hand-selected and curated by the Creative Directors, both from a design and editorial perspective. The content is not about breaking the latest news or events, it is motivated by a desire to uncover and provide insight into the inner workings of creative individuals and collectives from all corners of the globe.

MADE is now available with free worldwide shipping from the MADE Quarterly Online Store. GO!

Tw. @madequarterly