Last week I was invited along by Creative Review, to the Pentagram studio, for a talk by one of their partners, Angus Hyland, also the co-author of (relatively) new book Symbol.

Angus took us through ten corporate identity symbols of one kind or another, telling us a bit about their origin and meaning as well as why he liked them.

He started with the play symbol. Clever. And he went on to ask why that was such a recognised symbol for direction. In fact, perhaps arrows are one of the most fundamental symbols, and it must all come from arrowheads somewhere along the line, which we used to be pretty preoccupied by…

…In Angus’s words: “Things haven’t really changed that much.” Angus is a clear devotee of symbols, “SYMBOLS, not logotypes” and despairs of clear symbolic logos which have had the name of the company stamped across them. He quoted Eric Gill:

“Letters are not pictures, but signs for sounds”

We also learned that Bass was the first trademarked symbol in the UK, dating back to 1875, and that Carolyn Davidson designed the Nike swoosh symbol for $35. Blimey.

Angus told us that a symbol is like a bucket which doesn’t leak, it’s something which you can fill up, and over time it will hold much of the brand’s value. He told us that was why he would buy the Coca-cola logo over the secret recipe for the drink itself without hesitation: “That’s where the money is”

And so we went through the ten symbols, pausing every now and then for a quick quiz question, to which a correct (or hilariously incorrect) answer won a badge. Hyland was entertaining and witty, whilst remaining suitably shambolic with a playful glint in his eye which only comes from someone who knows their stuff inside out. He was toying with us. The thought occured to me that he’d make a good Doctor Who…

The first symbol was (of course) Apple. Angus wondered whether you’d covet a MacBook Pro if it had the ASUS logotype (not a symbol) on it, or indeed the original Apple logo: “I guess they figured that didn’t work terribly well.”

Modern branding is so damn clever and immersive, but if you get rid of the thing in the middle, you’re still at the heart of the experience… I’m not so sure…”

We learned that the bite out of the Apple was at Steve Jobs’s request, in order to give it scale – otherwise might it be mistaken for a tomato or a cherry?

He traced the evolution of the Shell symbol, reserving special comment for the”clever dick” who decided in 1955 that “it wasn’t enough to just show a shell” and admitting that as a child from Brighton, he had assumed the brand was all about the seaside.

He brought us to the WWF symbol, admitting a love for animal symbols, and saying gleefully “everyone likes their first teddy bear” and noting that although based on a drawing of a real Panda at London Zoo, it “represented a paradigm shift from illustration to symbol” in its execution.

And that brought him nicely to the Penguin symbol, where he revelled in the fact that it had nothing at all to do with the subject matter:

“Penguins don’t read books”

Angus told us how his more recent work on the Penguin symbol had involved slimming the bird down by 15%, primarily to make it easier to fit onto book spines, but also retaining it’s design quirks.

“Idiosyncrasies are what we associate that brand with.”

He spoke a few times about the tendency for companies to take the safe route when it came to their symbols, and described the woeful process whereby individuality is removed from a mark in the quest for boardroom acceptance:

“…and it enters the wind tunnel, the anodyne focus groups, where all the edges are blown off”

This struck a chord with me, I’ve often myself used a sculptural metaphor for this phenomenon, whereby the designer chips away at a piece of stone to create a beautiful sculpture, only to have a series of well-meaning but unimaginative people apply sandpaper to it, until there are no edges remaining on which anyone can snag their coat. You start out with a masterpiece and no matter what you do, you end up with a ball.

One final thought from Jan Tschicholdon on the inspiration behind the Penguin symbol? “My God, those birds stink!”

Next up was the CBS eye, where Hyland took us to the world of Mad Men corporate America.

Angus liked the “fundamental” aspect of this symbol, made from 4 circles building a pictogram of the human eye. Perhaps it was inspired by Magritte, who knows…

So from the eye to the mouth, and the Rolling Stones symbol, first used on their 1971 album Sticky Fingers.

Hyland told us the story of John Pasche who, while studying at the RCA was asked to design the symbol after Mick Jagger approached the college looking for a bargain basement symbol. The best thing about it? “It’s NOT The Beatles” but an “enduring pop-art symbol” which “encapsulates the time”.

And so that lead us to another zeitgeist-seizing symbol, that of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament…

…which we learned is actually not a trademarked symbol at all, and stems from the Aldermaston march of 1958. Perhaps an early use of a public domain socially powered identity? Why has it endured? In Hyland’s view, perhaps because it’s “so damn easy to make”, unlike other symbols for peace: “try drawing an accurate dove”.

As the symbol appeared almost virally on badges nationwide, it gained a “quasi-religious” status, but what inspired it? Opinion is divided on the matter, but Angus accepts the account which tells us it is made of of the semaphore letters N and D. Clever, huh?

The next symbol Angus talked about was the perpetual designers’ favourite, the Woolmark…

…with the most infamous aspect being who actually designed it? The symbol was the result of a competition in 1963, with the true designer to this day being somewhat unclear.

Hyland showed us how it was based on a Möbius strip, actually cutting one up in front of us, Blue Peter style.

Influenced by commercial op-art of the day, the Woolmark was agreed to be the direct ancestor of the ubiquitous recycle symbol.

Next, on to that monument of corporate identity, the Deutsche Bank logo.

I hadn’t realised that this was another symbol resulting from a competition, but crucially in this case, the entrants were shortlisted designers, judged by a panel of design experts, rather than the clients themselves. The result is an iconic symbol which would surely not have survived the “wind tunnel” if the client had intervened. Interesting stuff.

The symbol is a square you can’t penetrate “with profit inside” which is the sort of rooted abstraction many designers aspire to in mark-making. Finally, Angus reminded us that the symbol had been allowed to endure also, because it was at the heart of a well managed brand, the absence of which can be the slow death of an equally great symbol.

And so, to the final symbol Angus showed us, British Rail.

He told us this was the result of “proper design” by the Design Research Unit, the first generation of British multi-discipline design agencies, sitting around “stroking their chins”. And it’s certainly an enduring symbol, becoming the de facto icon for transport in the UK long after the demise of British Rail, as well as being emulated elsewhere in the world.

After this tenth symbol, Angus left us with an Alan Fletcher quote:

Commercial symbols are like people. Some are reasonably put together but lack personality, others are aggressive, or pompous, or merely unpleasant. Occasionally one encounters an interesting character. Whatever the case, to be effective, a trademark must meet a set of criteria: the utilitarian values of being relevant, appropriate and practical and the intangible qualities of being memorable and distinctive; and that something extra, the visual tweak which creates a unique personality.

Which seemed to sum it all up nicely.

And that was it. Ten symbols from the book, from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. The talk was entertaining and engaging, and Angus was fun to watch as well as learn from. He made a point of going into exhaustive detail about the origins of each symbol and went to great pains to credit the correct people (something which I wasn’t fast enough to write down all of for this post I’m afraid!) I didn’t win a badge, but I did pick up a copy of the book on the night which is full of this kind of detail, as well as the endless pages of pure symbols which designers crave.

There were some questions afterwards, mostly fixating on the origin of the CND symbol, with some frankly ludicrous rationalisations of its meaning. In the end Angus conceded that “you load your own reasons on to it” but I’m happy saying I’m pretty sure it isn’t anything to do with unborn children or the crucifixion of our lord Jesus Christ.

After that, Angus stepped back into his TARDIS and disappeared. The whole thing was brisk, making my note-writing somewhat chaotic, as it was obviously a cut-down version of the same talk he has given elsewhere. Like at the Design Museum for instance, where Amanda Jahn had the luxury of time to compile this impressively succinct summary of the talk. So if you haven’t managed to follow my rambling, you can simply glance at that to get the gist of it:

In fact I should probably just have shown that image at the start really.

Oh well, Symbol the book is available to buy now.

Ben Casey of The Chase came in to work yesterday, and instead of the usual career synopsis, which most visitors choose to relate, he chose to talk about something “more interesting”, just one project. This was to be his work for Preston North End football club, a project which he described as “the perfect self initiated project”, encompassing design, art and football.

And I have to admit, at that point I was worried, not being a fanatical football lover, and having attended the talk in order to see some great ideas-driven graphic design from a company who have featured in D&AD every year for 23 years, I wasn’t sure I was up for a lot of football anecdotes and personal indulgences.

But I was too hasty, because Ben went on to tell us how his childhood love of Preston North End football club led from him redesigning their logo and stationery…

…to actually designing their STADIUM with no prior architectural knowledge…

“…it was just working on a grid system, similar to type really…”

If you let a graphic designer loose on a football stadium, then this is what you’re going to get:

Amazing. Seats as pixels. I have to say, that football or no football, this was right up my street, and exactly the sort of thing I struggled to inspire various meeting rooms of people with for England United. It was that sort of moment when you see something you wish you’d thought of first, except it was worse, because I had thought of it, and had it discarded.

Here’s his logo for The Great Room, the stadium’s hospitality suite:

Another shot dead on target. And what about a gift bag for the ajoining National Football Museum?

Bang. A hat-trick. The crowd go wild.

The talk predictably went into extra time. Despite there being only one project to discuss, Ben’s love for it shone through and that sort of dedication to the fabric of a brief always results in special things.

Mike Dempsey came into work a couple of weeks ago to tell us about his inspirations and career. Mike is probably best known for being a founding member of CDT and also for his work on Royal Mail stamps. It’s taken me a little while to put this post together as Mike’s work isn’t that easy to find online, he seems to be a very modest chap and doesn’t often write about his own work. Even so, he was President of the D&AD in 1997 and has a fair few of those coveted pencils on his mantlepiece. He showed us some things which I’ve simply been unable to find online, so you won’t be seeing those. Sorry.

The talk took the form of a journey through his career from his earliest memories of discovering graphic design through the work of Josef Muller Brockmann to his subsequent enrolment on a local Calligraphy & Illuminated Lettering evening class to find out more. At that stage, he told us, he wasn’t even aware that there was such a ‘job’ as graphic design.

He started out designing book covers. He’d take books home from the library and redesign a better cover, just like the kids do online now. He took a portfolio of those to job interviews and found his way into work as a book cover designer. Over the years he designed covers for books and albums, as well as posters. He hungrily consumed all the influences and trends happening around him, including the groovetastic Pushpin in the swinging sixties:

“There’s nothing wrong with copying. Eventually you find your own personality but it takes a while”

These are his Fontana Modern Masters covers, a series which he simplified and based on a white background, admitting that he had even forgotten about art directing them until their recent renaissance. You can clearly see what he took from the sixties Pushpin aesthetic here.

“I’m as curious now as when I started as a 17 year old”

After founding CDT in 1979, he designed the fantastic English National opera logo:

As well as art directing the Royal Mail’s series of Millennium stamps in 1999. These subsequent ‘Sounds of Britain’ stamps show a clear influence from Apple’s iPod ads but are still lovely.

And Mike has kept working since leaving CDT, starting Studio Dempsey in 2008 to work on “projects I have a feeling for, for people that I like.” The projects have ranged from these stamps immortalising 10 British albums which broke the mould (die cut to show the vinyl spilling out…)

…to this understated logo for Beautiful Books…

“Being simple is quite difficult”

Mike is an active participant in the grassroots of the industry and has some strong opinions. His entry in last year’s Type Tarts exhibition was the only piece actually highlighting the misery of sex trafficking amongst the suggestive student innuendo. His contribution to The Art of Lost Words project was a little more upbeat:

MOLROWING: n. caterwauling; cavorting (as with prostitutes)

And his response to the D&AD’s 2007 flag project was pretty clear…

The main things I took away from the talk was that Mike didn’t get any real formal training in graphic design, he didn’t follow the established route, he just got out there, started doing it and eagerly learned everything he could. That was all very reassuring. People over in the Shillington College thread take note. He’s still doing it today, getting to grips with new technologies on one of his 5 Macs, through websites some of his contemporaries have still never heard of such as Ffffound!

Also, Mike hasn’t been afraid to copy great work. Perhaps ‘copy’ is a bit harsh (although that’s the word he used himself) but learn from great practitioners and investigate their work and influences. I was reminded of a quote I heard recently:

“It doesn’t matter where you take it from, only where to take it to…”

…which seemed to fit well.

These days in between design projects, Mike travels around interviewing great designers for the RSA’s RDInsights project which is well worth a listen. there seems to be no end to his curiosity – in fact, he says that his next wish is to direct a film:

“I’m fickle, I get bored easily and I’m not afraid to make mistakes.”

And his advice for aspiring graphic designers?

“Absorb. And please don’t just hang out with other graphic designers.”

You can join Mike’s graphic journey on his blog.

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.

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.

Last weekend my wife and I went to the London Apple Store because she needed to buy a new computer. While she was sealing the deal, I went along and watched Adam Buxton interview Spike Jonze as part of the ‘Meet The Film Maker’ series and to promote Spike’s new film Where The Wild Things Are.

Adam took an unconventional approach and read Spike the YouTube comments from the film’s trailer, which weren’t all particularly positive (or coherent)…

Spike took it in good humour, in Adam’s words: “YouTube is like a large toilet wall”. Here’s a rubbish bit of video I managed to record:

You can read more about it on Adam’s blog. The entire interview as a podcast is on iTunes, which is sadly audio only, so we’ll never know what picture Spike shocked Adam with on his conspicuously produced iPhone…