Saddened to hear the news about Steve Jobs today, but inspired all over again by his wise words. Rather than a load of overblown sentimentality or sub-par FastCompany-esque analysis, here are three of my favourite clips of Steve’s amazing thoughtful clarity.

What an inspiration. Rest in peace Steve…

Title image via Jonathan Mak, clever bugger.

Just a few things I spotted this week…

A modular typeface system which overlays different weights to build different combinations. Via typetoken

Lego walls! Via ohdeedoh

Milton Glaser on the fear of failure. Via Creative Review, where there are more from similarly wise people.

And finally, delightfully crazy Doctor Who T-shirts. Via GeekAlerts

I’m going to try and do a post like this every Friday. Juicy JPGs and creative clips without the burden of my tiresome opinion…

I was asked to talk about significant brand this week at work. I chose Apple.

Yes, I know, I know, it’s all painfully predictable. But it’s only a predictable choice because it’s an obvious example, and it’s only obvious because it’s true. I showed the above clip which I stumbled across online. It’s Steve Jobs explaining what Apple is about. And in just over one minute, he renders flip charts and cryptic diagrams useless. Get ready to squirm if ‘dynamic’ is one of your brand values.

A little bit of me dies inside every time I see Apple used on a mood board or held up in a branding meeting, not because I don’t love it, but because it’s become a lazy cop out for people who aren’t thinking hard enough. I actually think a lot of people have entirely forgotten what really makes Apple different. It isn’t just because they have sold a lot of iPods, made computers transparent or managed to get people to spend twice as much on a laptop, it’s smaller and more straightforward than that.

Apple isn’t perfect, but a lot of what I admire about them comes down to clarity, and Steve Jobs is clearly behind that. He reinvented the company since rejoining it in 1997. He’s an inspirational guy. If you’re curious about what makes him tick, watch the speech below. He starts talking about 7 and a half minutes in.

Not every brand has a Steve Jobs, but that’s no excuse for not having vision, appetite and clarity.

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.

Last week I went along to see Wim Crouwel give an iSTD talk about his work and clients. It was a celebration of the iSTD being 80 years old, but the most staggering thing is that at 81, Wim still stands as one of the most interesting and progressive designers and typographers. He’s a nice guy too.

This guy was excited about pixels before there were pixels:

He showed us a lot of his work, which he was producing from the 1950s to the present day, and it’s amazing to see things that this guy was doing 50 years ago still look cutting edge. You don’t have to have a Hoxton fin and listen to Hot Chip to be knocking out devastatingly original work, reassuringly you can just be yourself and care about getting it right.

Read the rest of this entry…

Bryan Edmondson came over to the studio this week to talk about his work at SEA design. They’re just over the road in Farringdon so he didn’t have to come far. It was great stuff, lots and lots of the achingly beautiful design work which they are known for and maybe just a little too much Helvetica. They do a great deal of work for paper company GF Smith, which every designer is probably familiar with but still looks lovely every time you see it…

And a wonderful logo type for a bar called OQO, based on cocktail glasses from above…

…loved this identity for Sansaw which flexes with all the different tree sillhouettes. Bryan told us he doesn’t like things to stay the same as he gets bored easily.

Their work for screenprint studio K2 is another example, with a different usage of the logo shapes every time.

You really should visit their site and check out these projects and more at a larger size. It’s always sexy stuff. Meanwhile, here’s something which isn’t on their site yet, a lovely new screenprinted poster for GF Smith which Bryan gave away to the person who asked the most interesting question.

It wasn’t me.