Tim from Hat-trick design sent me some images of their recent Giants of Rugby project, which he must have had some sort of sixth sense about, because it was right up my street. In fact, it’s very similar to something I’ve done for another sport-related project, but I’m not allowed to show you yet. I loved it when I saw it recently at their Typographic Circle talk, but couldn’t find much evidence of it online.

Anyway, as it’s Hat-trick, it’s pretty self explanatory. The giants of Rugby, made from little Rugby shirt icons, and printed at massive scale at Twickenham Stadium.

Which reminds me, their identity for the stadium itself was lovely too…

Apparently, Rugby is like footyball, but you’re allowed to pick the ball up and hit people.

I went along to the sold out Typographic Circle lecture last week by Hat-trick Design and I’m glad I got a ticket because it was fantastic.

In what was possibly the exact opposite of the recent Neville Brody D&AD lecture, they told us straight away that they intended to show us 30 projects in 60 minutes. And while Brody relished operating on some kind of higher plane to his audience, Jim and Gareth from Hat-trick were pointedly down to earth about the whole thing.

You’ve probably worked out that the self imposed format meant there would only 2 minutes to talk about each project, but the thing with Hat-trick’s work is that it is so well engineered and idea-centric that 2 minutes is generous. The concept hits you in the face as soon as the JPG flashes onto the screen, and a moment later you’re wishing you had thought of it yourself. That left an average of 110 further seconds to look at it and become increasingly envious before the next project was revealed. 30 times.

“Most of these projects are fairly self-explanatory”

Coming from an environment where even the simplest idea is explained by a 50 page PowerPoint deck and a conference room for the morning, I loved the efficiency of it. So, I’ll be similarly to the point here, and show some of my favourites from the evening along with the odd quote I managed to scribble down. I’ve gathered all of these images from the internet, as, while I did take my camera to the event, I was forced to watch it all through a tiny gap between the neck and ear-lobe of the guy sat in front of me.

Remembrance stamps for the Royal British Legion

Can you see the ••• – - – ••• ‘SOS’ perforations in this coastguard set? Genius.

Apparently Darwin was related to apes. Who knew?

“The first thoughts are usually the right ones”

Bright sparks from the Norwich University College of Arts

Regular readers will remember this one…

House of Illustration identity

There was loads more, I won’t post everything here. I only wish I had been brave enough to ask questions at the end, but for some reason the Typographic Circle had decided to turn the heating up to insane levels and I was about to pass out due to dehydration. Don’t worry though, there was a pub next door.

I would have asked about what other work they do, as not every project has a perfect outcome or client relationship. Especially when they started out, they must have had to produce some work that they had less control over and had to acknowledge would never be an award-winner. Although these days they’re design industry stars, that position took some earning and I’d like to have heard about the journey from hard reality to design driving seat. The D&AD wouldn’t let just anyone walk off with a silver pencil for a self initiated project without an actual brief or real client, but that shows you how far Hat-trick have come. And rather depressingly told me how far I still have to go.

Hat-trick seem to have ascended to such heights that they can convince any client to indulge their creative whims, talking property developers into letting them do stop frame animation, or The Salvation Army into going all trendy. All this is particularly frustrating when I possess first-hand knowledge that it’s next to impossible to get a corporate branding client to have any real print done instead of a PDF, or to consider any kind of brochure that isn’t A4.

Jim Sutherland’s mind boggling typographic playing cards which appealed greatly to my OCD gene.

I think one of the main things I took away from the talk was the scale of their ambition. Even though they’re a small company, they relentlessly tackle big projects, as well as the little creative urges, and throw themselves into things they not necessarily already know how to do. That’s how you get better you see.

Oh, and one last quote from the evening:

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail.”

Go to their website immediately and look at the rest of their work.

I’m quite excited about the upcoming Apple Tablet, or iPad, even though I’m not likely to be buying one.

Not as excited as I was about the iPhone though…

Those images above are genuine Apple prototypes from 1983, the image below however is real, ladies and gentlemen, the first ever Apple Computer from 1976…

Whatever is announced in a couple of hours, it’s sure to be impressive. Steve Jobs has been allegedly quoted as saying it’s the “most important thing I’ve ever done” With rumours ranging from the reinvention of newspapers, to fingerprint identification and impressive gaming capabilities, the idea is that you really DO need another shiny Apple product in your life.

We’ll see.

Funny how life works, after I posted Paul Rand’s business card I found this similarly minimal letterhead belonging to another genius.

Letterheady is a blog of old letterhead examples, so if you’ve ever wondered what Adolf Hitler’s letterhead looked like, wonder no more:

…let’s hope he was writing with good news. In the interests of fairness here’s Winston Churchill’s:

…and to complete the Paul Rand circle of logic, here’s an old IBM one:

…even if I do prefer Clive Sinclair’s:

An interesting site and the collection is growing. Remember, you spell stationery with an e when you mean envelopes.

I can’t remember where I found this, but it claims to be Paul Rand’s business card.

I really hope it is.

We were treated to a visit by Storm Thorgerson last week, album cover design legend and, as it turns out, very entertaining guy. Storm’s portfolio is overwhelming, famous for working with Pink Floyd and creating arguably the most iconic album cover of all time in Dark Side of the Moon, but has since worked with bands as diverse as Anthrax, Muse, The Offspring, Audioslave and Biffy Clyro. He admits he doesn’t always like the music, but that’s mainly because he often has to listen to it repeatedly during the design of the artwork. Storm told us that he was going to “show pictures, tell you how I did them, or what I was trying to do.” which worked for me. He also said at one point:

“I wouldn’t buy a record for it’s cover, and I wouldn’t expect anyone else to.”

…which was fantastic and kind of set the tone of the evening. He split his work into sections, which rather suspiciously spelled out his name…

S is for Sets & Scupltures

“If we get a chance to build something we do it”

Storm clearly loves to make stuff. The example below from Anthrax’s Stomp 442 album was never a whole sphere. Instead it was a quarter sphere, rotated and manipulated to create a composite image. Storm told us of his fascination for spheres, and the fact that “you never know what’s inside them, if they’re solid or hollow”

Anthrax ‘Stomp 442′ 1995

T is for Tales

“Things are richer with a story, so I try to encourage people to make one up, even if it’s not the one I intended.”

For the Biffy Clyro album Puzzle, Storm fixated on the fact that lead singer and songwriter Simon Neil’s mother had recently died. The figure in the foreground is in a fetal position, something which Storm associated with grief, and the missing piece is just beside him, although he can’t see it. A detail often missed is that of a figure being forcibly removed from the room, symbolic of having a loved one wrenched away. This is Storm’s own story, based on his understanding of the band and their music.

Biffy Clyro ‘Puzzle’ 2007

O is for Obsessions

“How much can you persuade someone to look again?”

Storm told us that he simply loved the idea of taking a cow and photographing it for the front cover of Pink Floyd’s 1970 album. The randomness of this delighted him “I’m lucky I’ve worked for people who don’t know any different. They didn’t know if my work was any good, any more than I did.” The cow was an instinctive idea and not over-thought, eventually ending up reproduced at huge scales incongruously across billboards worldwide. Storm’s insistence and the support of the band made sure it happened.

Pink Floyd ‘Atom Heart Mother’ 1970

R is for Real

“Design is in the doing”

The photograph for Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here is impressive stuff. Storm is proud that he actually set a man on fire to achieve it. Interestingly, he told us that to start with the figures were the other way round, but the prevailing wind set the unlighted man’s moustache on fire, so it was rearranged.

Pink Floyd ‘Wish You Were Here’ 1975

M is for Models

“It’s better to have something good than something shit”

Storm’s Back Catalogue is exactly that. Not a row of polite captioned JPEGs but the album covers painted on the back of lovely ladies. That’s the sort of thing you can get away with if you’re Storm Thorgerson.

It was a great talk and the man himself was very happy to talk about any aspect of his work. I decided not to mention the fact that I used to design CD covers, because those were mainly the kind of ones you find in motorway services bargain bins. Two more which he brought with him were a long term favourite of mine for Muse…

…and the newest Biffy Clyro album cover, which was frankly amazing.

Not many people make album covers like that any more.

You can see a clip of Storm talking about his work here and the poster I designed for the event here. After the talk, he even signed my copy of Dark Side of the Moon, and you can tell he’s a visual perfectionist, because he did it along one side of the prism. I liked that.