Sommaire pour September 2019 de Computer Arts

MARINA WILLER Partner, Pentagram www.pentagram.com The new brand identity for Opera Ballet Vlaanderen centres on the institution’s Flemish name. By focusing on the abbreviation OBV, the goal was to create a clear, concise symbol; easily recognised across the world. There was also a desire to create an identity that reflected the vitality that came with the merger of the opera and ballet companies. While built around typography, the new visual system is designed to express movement and transformation, and embrace the transitory nature of performance art. It’s both a response and a tribute to the words of ballet director Larbi Cherkaoui: “Dance is essentially transience. One movement disappears in the other. It is a temporary sketch of reality. Transience is a pacesetter for new hope.” The key concept of the…

Strong ideas are the bedrock of the creative industries. They keep the work fresh, but also help engage audiences who are overwhelmed and fatigued by the relentless noise coming from brands. Strip away the craft, and if there isn’t a compelling thought beneath there’s a risk that even the most beautiful piece of design risks becoming little more than decoration. “Ideas are what engage and delight an audience,” confirms Jim Sutherland, multi-awardwinning founder of Studio Sutherl&, who delivered a playful workshop at D&AD Festival 2019 on how to cultivate ideas. “Being able to sum up an idea in a few words is a good way to know you have a strong and simple solution,” he adds. “You should be able to tell someone your idea over the phone.” “Ideas come…

Winning three Yellow, three Graphite and four Wood Pencils at D&AD in 2018, Trash Isles demonstrates how out-of-the-box thinking can provide a totally fresh perspective on how to solve a seemingly insurmountable issue. “Trash Isles is a creative answer to a massive problem: there’s too much plastic in the oceans,” she explains. In the international waters of the North Pacific, a vast island of plastic trash the size of France has been largely ignored by governments the world over. In an ingenious twist, Plastic Oceans Foundation and LADbible submitted an application to the UN to recognise The Trash Isles as an official country – thus compelling other nations to clean it up. Some 200,000 people became citizens of the ‘country’, and the campaign reached half a billion people. Craft took…

Every book printed by The Folio Society has high production values and we knew that for this one we wanted a special slipcase to store the book in. After confirming the text, illustration paper and other materials with the binder, they supplied a digital book template with the measurements of the final book for us to work from. The introduction to each chapter advertises Ubik as a product – such as electrical devices, coffee or deodorant – and so the text was designed to be like a brand logo that could work in different forms. A design was created for the die-cut and applied to the slipcase template, but it needed more solid space around the holes that would be cut, so that it wouldn’t be flimsy and tear when…

DEVELOPING THE CONCEPT By Alex Fenton Our relationship with the property investor and developer Delancey began by chance. A planning application for a nearby scheme they were working on landed on the doorstep of our old South Bank studio, so we got in contact and then went for a coffee. The Royal Mint Court project came up in conversation and we were invited to pitch. The site was built in 1809 to house the Royal Mint, but had been left dormant since Barclays vacated in 2000. Delancey were now regenerating the site, delivering offices with retail, cafés and restaurants to create a modern commercial campus. Its courtyard was designed to be an open area with no traffic – a tranquil space on the City fringe where creative professionals could work…

However, when I recently read an article with Richard Turley (who led the design of the new F1 brand identity) it dawned on me that my love for graphic design actually started much earlier. I’ve always known that my dad gave me the gift of motorsport (a big passion of mine), but what I didn’t realise until recently is that he also gave me the gift of graphic design. As a kid, we would spend our weekends at stock car racing circuits. He was a tyre and exhaust fitter who loved cars and he was an avid follower of short circuit racing, particularly stock car racing, which a friend of his competed in (Conrad Self, car 636). We’d often spend time in the pits with Conrad, and we’d wander around…

Creativity, strategic thinking and the ability to work with clients in a personal and invested way – these are the USPs of Studio Zenko, Manchester’s newest branding agency. Already, the studio is making a powerful visual impact with its clients in fashion, and founder James Fox sees a range of new opportunities on the horizon. “I’m fascinated by people – what we share, what makes us different, what makes us tick and what drives our emotions,” says James. “Being able to create or instigate something that actually holds some meaning and makes a genuine connection with our audience – whether commercially, culturally or ethically – is what I find really satisfying.” Studio Zenko has come about in an organic way. After spending 13 years working for other agencies, James decided…

With the incessant rumblings that all traditional creativity will soon be eschewed for multi-platform-primed digital media (created by AI turbo robots presumably), it’s great that the globally lauded World Illustration Awards retains at its very core its love for the idiosyncratic, often traditional, always human. Sure, there was plenty of software-manipulated material on show this year, but walking around the awards gallery in Somerset House, London, the draftsmanship, craft and hands-on creativity was the main attraction. It must have been a time-consuming task for the panel of industry professional judges, whose ranks included illustrators, editors and agency heads. With a record 3,700 entries, and a wider global reach of entrants than ever before, 2019's awards was as fiercely competitive as it was creative. There were eight categories – Advertising, Books,…

SALLY HENDERSON Head of creative, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust www.etsy.com/shop/MicklegateDesign “The best piece of advice I was given as a 22-year-old graduate leaving Cumbria Institute of the Arts back in 2007 was that ‘you make your own luck’. It made me realise that to land that first job in the design industry, I had to put myself in the position to be the lucky one. To put the graft in, make the contacts, turn up every day standing next to my work at my degree show with business cards at the ready. Everyone’s got to start somewhere, but the work doesn’t end when you get your first job: keep knocking on doors, making phone calls and sending emails, and you’ll find that you’ll be ‘lucky’ when breaks come around. Lucky breaks…

LIBRESSE: VIVA LA VULVA Inspired by a worrying increase in the number of women seeking labiaplasty surgery to reshape their vaginal lips, feminine hygiene brand Libresse – known as Bodyform in the UK – decided to set the record straight. AMV BBDO’s brief was to normalise conversations about vaginal health, and remind women that there’s no such thing as a perfect-looking labia. Viva La Vulva was born: a celebration of female genitalia that is as uplifting as it is hilarious. Without once showing an actual vulva, it expresses their rich and proud diversity through an array of vulvalike objects – from conch shells to fortune cookies to coin purses – all lip-synching to the Camille Yarbrough track Take Yo’ Praise. NEW YORK TIMES: THE TRUTH IS WORTH IT In the…

Design is not a job for Paul Sahre; it’s an identity. He’s gained respect in the industry for forging a creative path driven largely by passion, rather than power or finances, and is best known for his innovative and unexpected book covers, his graphic work for the New York Times, and that time he created – and blew up – a life-sized cardboard monster truck hearse (more on that later). Today, Sahre’s a successful sole practitioner, but the journey hasn’t always been smooth. Here, he speaks about the highs and lows of working alone, the struggle between money and ethics, and why the digital shift has been a blessing in disguise for book cover design. Why did you get into graphic design in the first place? I started my career…

Arber Racaj is a man who likes knowing the ‘why’ behind his work. This thirst for knowledge about the mechanics of creative design saw him going straight from a degree in Design and Visual Communications into a Masters in Visual Brand Design. “And throughout all this time,” he tells us, “the most important lesson that I ever took was on minamilism – learning how to effectively simplify things is the most important lesson for a designer!” Although Racaj espouses the benefits of simplicity in his craft, his work style is quite different. “I like to work on really demanding projects – two at a time if I can. Although it’s a kind of suicidal thing to do, it makes sure that I never get bored or fatigued at work!” Recent…

“DR.ME is run by Ryan Doyle and Mark Edwards. We formed the studio when we returned from working in New York for the illustrator Mike Perry in 2010, but we actually met on the first day of studying at Manchester School of Art. We’ve worked with clients including Mick Jagger, The Tate, Riposte magazine, Sony, Levi’s and Warner Music. We’ve written, designed and published a book called Cut That Out: Contemporary Collage in Graphic Design, and been invited to exhibit in New York, Berlin, London, Hamburg, Dublin and Barcelona, along with running workshops around the world. We’ve just completed some design work for Manchester International Festival’s The Anvil, an event which commemorated the Peterloo Massacre. We’ve also been creating a series of new 12-inch vinyl EP covers for John Talabot…

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According to Matt Baxter, bullshit is endemic – and we’re all guilty of it to some degree. “Bullshit in briefs means the problem isn’t clear, so it can’t be solved accurately,” he begins. “Bullshit in creative work means the work risks failing to connect with its intended audience. And bullshit in our everyday working lives – from emails to meetings – means we don’t communicate our ideas clearly to one another.” Alongside his sister, copywriter Kate van der Borgh – president of the Writing for Design jury at 2019’s D&AD Awards – Baxter gave an insightful session at D&AD Festival that explored what bullshit means exactly, why it happens, and most importantly, how to cut it out. Their conclusion was that bullshit is often pretentious, and designed to give a…

THE CONCEPT By Tom Walker and Raquel Leis Allion Ubik is one of Philip K Dick’s great novels. It’s overspilling with ideas and exceptionally strong visual language, so it felt like the perfect book to illustrate. His central premise of time slipping at variable rates is illogical, unthinkable and undefinable, yet he walks an incredibly clever narrative tightrope, which keeps sheer absurdity at bay. His obsession with antitheses – of realty and unreality, of real and fake – defines much of his work and Ubik is no exception. It’s a brilliant, exciting and very relevant book. We wanted to work with La Boca because of the way it uses strong concepts and graphic imagery. A lot of the studio’s work has a futuristic feel about it and somehow it’s able…