identity, logo

A new company, doing consulting in aviation, in need of a company profile, web, logo. I enjoyed this project, mainly because the client wanted an abstract logo. People often say that, but they do not really mean it, when you get down to it. The logo, I know, breaks pretty much all logo rules and sensibilities, but I am really pleased with it. It gives me assosiations to aviation instruments, radar, sunrises from below, aeroeverything, space, and in some versions, to propellers. For obvious reasons, the logo being so complex, it comes in a few different versions depending on use. What makes me happy is that I can slice the logo, I can use only a part of it, and the recognition should not be a problem.

web

The client wanted different images on different pages of the website. I am not really a fan of background images for two reasons: it can take forever to load, and it is a hassle to scale. Responsive design is a relatively new way of dealing with a plethora of screen sizes, so the “standards” to deal with it is not exactly set in stone.

IA

IA, or information architecture, is not as trivial as many seems to think. This is where clients often gets confused and I am considering building a little “beginners guide to IA” to make it easier for me, cheaper and more understandable for the client. Much time can be basically wasted because of structural uncertainties.

misc

I like testing out the grapics I make on different things. It gives an idea of how it might work in the real world, and problems arrive that needs to be solved for the logo to do the job. A logo like this is not easy to place on letterpapers, envelopes, businesscards, cars etc. Basically, it cannot be in just one version for all these uses. FedEx can, Quality Flight Solutions needs sophisticated solutions.

The devil is in the details. Favicons! Everyone should have one.

New technology, new gadgets, new software, I need to instantly see a use for it, a purpose. I have no patience with gizmos that have no intrinsic value – a justification for existence, a value unto itself. Things that rests comfortably in their own existence. I would argue the same about art.

A few weeks back, I was up in the mountains, sans plan, direction, meaning; sans electricity, sans internet – and it struck me how much easier it would have been, could I look up accommodation, interesting places along the way, approximate time & distances, weather forecasts, trekking routes.
I discovered that my phone in fact have navigation. I’ve had it for over a year. I fiddled with it for two minutes, and then lost interest. And bought a map. I couldn’t be bothered. I will go, the weather will be what it will be, the sights surprising or boring, the accommodation, well, worse case, I’ll sleep in a ditch or in the car. Legends and stories do not come from trips that are minutely planned and goes accordingly. Nor surprises.

Sometimes the technology gets in the way, keeping me away from goals or desired direction. If I got lost in thick fog in the mountains, I would be happy to have a GPS to help me find my way, but if the weather is reasonable, the fiddling with buttons and gadgets would be annoying, invasive. People with their noses constantly stuck in a  phone, iPod or GPS annoys me no end. Beside, the worry that you might run out of batteries at some critical point. And you will. Trust me, I have some experience with that.

My learning curve is to learn technology. For my fellow students, the most educational would be to go without.
They are born with reasonable graphic user interfaces and applied technology, I am more or less born in medieval times. Developing a sense of direction; a feeling for maps. Gadgets comes naturally to them, I use few and discard most.

And that brings me to the tech stuff that actually works. Being a bookbinder in restoration, you’d be excused to think I would be a complete nazi regarding books. But I have been given an e-book reader, and it is simply brilliant! It works, it travels well. It rests in it’s own existence.
I wish I could.

Graphic design and coding of web pages for customers HTML, CSS, Illustrator, Photoshop.

I have done a few projects for Dikom, basic webdesign, ideas and graphics. Undoubtedly, the most interesting one, was making a 800-page catalogue for Schneider Electric. Basically, I built a template in InDesign, and took into account all kinds of eventualities such as images, captions, tables, headings, illustrations, page numbers, headers, footers, primary and secondary pages, chapters, etc etc. Then, giving the respective elements an xml-tag, building a database query… InDesign will import. So, magic: from a 10page template with a sound structure… tada! in pours pages, and you magically have an 800-page catalogue. Complete with index, table of contents, references, images, captions.

It is odd: few people do this, few people know how to do it, and even fewer know it is at all possible. They pay insane money to companies to make these things more or less manually. I think I know why: InDesign is so much a desktop publishing tool, a tool mainly used by print people. Like magazine designers. Then there is the word “database”….

-Douglas Hofstadter-

What on earth is it? No one can give a vaguely sensible answer to what goes on in my brain. It is non-stop, it goes on every waking hour, and, I suspect, when I sleep as well. It is a constant rattling, a background noise in my head: constantly having new ideas, judging colours, angles, texture, making connections, soaking up words or phrases in any situation. Connecting bizarre things together; finding some hue, taste or sound that bring unrelated things together in my head, spanning languages, centuries, words, colours, poetry, sounds, materials, buildings, life forms; from teaspoons to magma. It is exhausting, in a way, but it’s been going on my whole life, so I have no idea what it would be like without it.
It makes me able to make metaphors no one understands. How admirable.

Bits of paper, books with notes in the margins, or the last blank pages missing to some long forgotten desperate need for scribbling something. Piles of notebooks half filled out with unidentifiable ideas, but sometimes, sometimes a notebook contains a tiny little doodle that have it. Some magic little quality.

And there it is – a perfect little doodle or a surprising combination of letters or words. Something that it would be impossible to improve on. Adding something would ruin it. A doodle; born perfect. An interaction of letterforms in perfect balance and meaning. Trying to do it again would not work.
Magic.

I can track a meeting through the doodles I make. I remember what was said from little squiggles. People who have not seen my meeting-doodles show me endless post-its with circles repeated endlessly and say, I do it too! No you don’t. Because my doodles – unconsciously – covers and span universes. They are bizarre, funny, sometimes scary, sometimes awful. often abstract. I am sure a psychologist would have a field day, but at least it keeps me awake through boring meetings. The doodles are an illustration of the noise that goes on in my head – forced to sit still and listen to some boring twat go on about strategies for the future and how to fix something that is not broken – the endless connecting process bursts out on paper.

And I am beginning slowly to realise that not everybody have this racket going on. In fact, very few people have the faintest idea what I am talking about.
So I wonder what goes in their heads.

The art of looking sideways
Alan Fletcher
This is how it looks like inside my head. It a fountain of musings, facts, the odd, solid, and whimsical. It is design, doodles, unfinished thoughts, images, drawings. It is colours, shapes and wisdom. It is a delight and frustration at the same time – if I could show what goes on in my head, this is pretty much it..
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I should have stayed home
Roger Rapoport, Marguerita Castanera
Very funny. About all the glorious trips and travels that goes wrong. A collections of discomfort, disaster and disappointments. Timbuktu is not like you’d think. Not a homage to the well-planned, but rather an honest picture of how things can go, regardless of preparations.

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the IRA
Tim Pat Coogan
There’s a lot of junk about the IRA out there; a lot of rubbish. This is not without it’s faults and exhausting going-ons, but it is one of the better ones.
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All the trouble in the world – the lighter side of famine, pestilence, destruction and death
P.J O’Rourke
O’Rourke should not be read in one sitting – he can be exhausting and a little too much. But he IS funny, cynical and sometimes, dead on. All the trouble in the world is not always what it looks like, or what some would like us to believe.
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The great war for civilisation – the conquest of the middle east
Robert Fisk
Depressing, informative, exhausting and impressive. It is very good, and the good Mr. Fisk is a relentless journalist, not letting sleeping dogs lie.
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Thinking with type
Ellen Lupton
Despite this being part of the curriculum, it is very, very good! Hah! Imagine that – a first class book in an educational institution… what marvels…
It gives a good, sensible introduction to typography, without the annoying, sentimental waffle often found in such books.
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The elements of typographic style
Robert Bringhurst
Clearly for the especially interested – but the book on the subject. In-depth, clear and sharp.
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Neither here nor there
Bill Bryson
Mr. Bryson can be a little too much too, and sometimes rather predictable. But his travels around Europe is very funny, and combining his experiences with the ones he had as a youth doing the same trip, is hilarious. Personally, I am fond of the story about the german restaurant, the incomprehensible menu and the threat of calf brain.
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Three in norway by two of them
anon
Hysterically funny, and should maybe belong under fiction for the many tall tales and absolute nonsense. But the descriptions of norway and inhabitants are spot on..

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Out of Africa
Isak Dinesen /Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke
Never mind the film. The book is beautiful, intelligent. Her view on her time in Africa very interesting, and the stories she tells vivid and touching.
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Hidden agendas
John Pilger
Well. Good old Mr. Pilger seems to repeat himself endlessly, so one book will do. He is relentless in his digging for truth, and like a dog with a bone, will not let go. Bless him.
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Those are real bullets, aren’t they?
Peter Pringle, Phillip Jacobson
There is a large pile of books on Bloody Sunday, but this is the best to my knowledge. There is a limit to how interested I am in reading about bullet entry angles over and over, when we all know what went on. They got the new inquiry, and we are still waiting to hear it.
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We wish to Inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families
Philip Gourevitch
The awful story of the genocide in Rwanda.
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Tyranny of the Moment: Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Brilliant thoughts on time.
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Color – travels through the paintbox
Victoria Finlay
This is the book with the annoying language and irritating fancies and guesswork. But the subject is immensely interesting, and her travels to all sorts of odd places entertaining. The myths and stories well researched; the fascinating conflicts and wars fought over colours fantastic.
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The ice master
Jennifer Niven
The mad story of the polar expedition of the ship Karluk and it’s crew. It is a story of survival, cruelty and a mad scientists’ need for self-promotion, but most of all it is a story of how tragedy can split men and bring out the worst in them. The crew and scientists of the expedition survives or dies along social divides, rather than work together. Revealing and terrifying.
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The politics of nationalism and ethnicity
James G. Kellas
Interesting. Don’t think I need to say more than that.

She says she was at a press check, and “…deliriously inhaling the pervasive aroma of ink…”. And, since makereadies are practically gone, she claims, she continues “I confess to a certain amount of personal mourning for the death of the makeready, and what it stood for“.
What it stood for?! Hello! Seriously. It didn’t stand for anything! It was necessary. It was routine. It was hectic, usually. The day cars will fuel themselves, you’ll say that the pump handle stood for something. The stone ax in prehistoric age didn’t stand for anything. It was a tool.

I worked in a printing business for a few years. It was noisy, messy, hard work with tight schedules. It took years to learn to know the whims of the different printing presses, different paper, different air humidity, it was desperate when we only had a few sheets to make the alignments and colour adjustments. I did use some of the makereadies. I made envelopes out of the best ones, and letterpaper. And I liked them. But this sentimentality is pathetic, it is the luxury of those who didn’t have to do the job.

I have set led type, I have mixed inks, I have used precomputer techniques. I have retouched manually, on film, used scalpels and millimeter grids; stood over glaring light tables with a hangover. I have made a mess of positive/negative films. I have seen fellow students missing the door and hitting the wall for all the nasty chemicals working havoc in their brains. I have had teachers severely damaged by chemicals. I have stood alone at my printing press at midnight, struggling with balance of ink, water and paper, knowing I would not manage to get the last bus home. There was little glory there. I have messed up a Heidelberger windmill with white ink. I have washed more rollers, oiled more knobs, cut more paper than I care to think about. This gives me some bizarre cred among the sentimental DO readers. I don’t care for it. It was a good job, with good people. But let it go. To remember is not the same as sentimentalising and go all weepy. Save that for the truly tragic.

Other posts in DO goes on about the advertising world in the sixties. And then again, Jessica Helfand pops up with more sentimentality about making new things old. This, I think, is a US obsession. It’s like scrapbooking (which I detest). It is a lot of stupid pretending. There exist a disturbing product called a “Distressing Kit” – a kit with tools to make things look old or worn. Truly stupid (unless you’re in the film industry. I have made pottery to be smashed in a film. Different kettle of fish).

I am not trying to be hip & cool. And after all – I am a bookbinder. The hand craft variety. And a potter. There is not a lot of romance there, either. But at least it has another dimension; the content of the book. I like old things. I photograph structure and texture of old wood and stone endlessly. My ideal home would be a cabin in the woods (I have done that and loved it). But I have no illutions that growing all your own food and wittling all your own tools was particularly romantic. Or can be today. In short, I find Henry David Thoreau a pretentious git.

Kids today have never seen a floppy disk or a telephone with a dial. There is nothing more or less genuine about grandmothers telephone than an iPhone. It is change. Either go amish or get over it. The world moves on.

The film is seen as a homage to Helvetica, but if you watch the extras, the table turns. Seen from there, not much positive is said about it. And Rick Poynor goes a little overboard with his talk about the psychology of enslavement. Sometimes he is away with the faries, sometimes he is dead on. Paula Sher sees Helvetica as the fontface of war, power and corruption.

Matthew Carter, the man behind verdana, tahoma and caslon, seems to be the one of a few genuinely in awe of the fontface, and Vignellis rants over the “flowerchildren” is both hilarious and serious. Such a sweet, sweet man.

Most of the interviews take place in offices, meetingrooms and those bare, pale designers hideouts. One bizarre  exception is Michael C. Place – interviewed in a spare room in his house, it seems, with two or more hairless Sphynx cats crawling over a spare bed, chewing on microphone cords and climbing over cardboardboxes; green trees and the hint of a garden outside. In contrast to the bareness of designers meetingrooms. Not a coincidence, surely.

Hoefler and Frere-Jones are delightful – Hoefler cannot shut up to save his life, and his endless stream confirms Frere-Jones’s quiet assurances that type designers are bonkers, no exceptions.

Müller, a norwegian gone swiss-german-dutch-english, with a bizarre gray lions mane, points at all sorts of signs. He looks increasingly self-conscious, but it gets funnier and funnier, as he stands beside all sorts of signs, popping up behind them, pointing out Helvetica.

Hermann Zapf – I have always admired Zapf for his calligraphy, but this is the first time I have seen him in moving pictures – he seems the incarnation of graphic craftsman and artist, an unassuming elderly gentleman with enough understatement to go around. If you didn’t know, you’d think him a doddering, doodling anybody. And, in the extras, it turns out, when he cannot say anything nice about helvetica, he refuses to say anything at all. When pushed, he mutters “I have never used Helvetica”. To him, it’s too 19th century. I like 20th century design, he says. Frutiger. There are lots and lots of other good faces around, he says, there is no need to always use helvetica.

Bless him.

David Carson – fruitcake par excellence – a brilliant, silly, funny guy, not in the least bit interested in squares and rules, and a doer of – and fan of – those mistakes others might find deadly.

So what do I think of Helvetica?
I hate the a. I really do. It ruins it all for me. This is a simple, clean face, and then you add that bendy little thing on the a. It’s not a serif, maybe it is to soften the font a little, I don’t know. But the a is fiddly enough as it is. It doesn’t show in the bold, thank god. I know a guy who doesn’t like the k, and for that reason refuse to use it.

Designers are lunatics. They are weird and wonderful. I’m happy to be one.