Tuesday 29 December 2009

The poison Chalice




The lead up to Christmas is usually a busy time for a designer. Work is generally squeezed in in the lead up to christmas, for no other reason than people think that a weeks hiatus makes a massive different to 'the holiday brand experience of our customers'. Account Managers, not having to deliver anything themselves, also love these 'false' deadlines as there a great vehicle to to try and graft some further recognition for themselves from the client, so they're free to over-promise more than usual.

But rather than this expected annoyance, there is one thing that always makes the designer roll their eyes with pain at this time of year. And it always comes in the form of the 'company Christmas card'

For a digital designer, this brief rates up there with 'redesign the company website' as the job to should be avoided at all costs.....unless of course, you like painful, undirected, waffling and pointless exercises.

There is no brief
Regardless of what people say, these jobs are based on 'nothing'. They are simple a box that needs to be ticked in an agencies yearly communication calendar. And they do it to improve their credibility and keep themselves 'front of mind' (account manager bullshit word there) with their clients. You don't need me to tell you how bullshit that is.

If, like any decent designer, you generate the brief yourself as as I have done on a number of times, then the people you speak to about the project are uninterested. I suspect they think you can pull out of some compartment near your anus.

There is no audience.
More to the point, everyone is the audience. Trying to nail down a brief is a way of trying to focus the goals of the project. But as its the company card, everyone has input and the project is quickly mired in personal opinion that is untrained and unhelpful.

But this doesn't temper peoples ambitions of the project. Typically, and this applies to most design projects, the people with the most lofty ambitions, are the ones who don't have to deliver on the work. This is not to say, designers are not ambitious, we are very ambitious, but its also tempered with focussing on what's right, what's good and what's deliverable.

It doesn't matter
On thing design can bring to a project is innovation, but this doesn't sit well with the lofty ambitions about the company Christmas card, which are a waste of effort because what people really want is not good design, but a hackneyed and twee piece of communication. No matter what you do It's forgotten within a day of being sent out and by the time January comes around, even christmas itself is such a distant memory.

I suspect people think that being enthusiastic about the company christmas card is a way of showing other people in the organisation what drive you have and how your creative ambitions are. To me that shows a criminal lack of understanding about creativity, innovation and design. It never ceases to amaze me that there are people like this hovering around design and advertising agencies when they really no so little about it.

So, if you avoided this poison chalice this year, keep on avoiding. If you got stung with this irrelevant brief (or lack of) from hell, then what I've written, well, you've already lived it.

Monday 21 December 2009

designer Whinge #4738 - yes, another parody...



This one is old, and by old, I mean almost 6 months!!! Which in internet terms is like finding a pterodactyl fossil or something.

Anyway.....Its yet another parody of the 'design process', this time looking at what happens when 'clients' meddle with a project. It also wouldn't be complete without the obligatory user comments along the lines of 'its funny because its true'.

Sure, it is true, but this sort of interference has been around for so long its hardly suprising, let alone remarkable enough to make yet another video about it. What I find increasingly annoying about these parodies, apart from being unoriginal, is that they always portray the designer as the 'victim' in this railroading process.

Honestly, the only thing true to life in this video is the gormless expression all over the designers face, perfectly complementing his complete lack of backbone in dealing with the issue at hand. All he seems to do is nod, take notes and then agree to whatever the client wants.No doubt off camera, he's down at some commercial road boozer having a whinge. Honestly,this degree of spinelessness is the sort of behaviour you would expect from an account manager but is spookily like a lot of real life digital design agencies in London today.

View it here

Friday 18 December 2009

End of ID



With a touch of Sadness I read that ID magazine is closing. , I don't buy it anymore, i used to years ago when there seemed to be a strong focus on industrial design, but have since lost touch with the publication. That happens, but is a shame that after 55 years an actual design publication is closing. Why is it a shame? Well is seems to show a possible shift in the design profession.

The Magazine is owned and run by F+W Media who also owns How magazine, a magazine I described as being a publication so less about design it should be renamed "US Artworker".

You wonder if "US Artworker (the magazine formerly known as HOW)" is in dire financial straits as well, but the way they peddle their 'webinars' every five seconds with an email bombardment second only to the US army's demolition job on Dresden, you would hope that it either signifies major revenue streams or a possible major scrambling for revenue. Who knows?

Anyway, on the surface, its worrying because whilst an actual design journal with pedigree closes, a new title about artworking continues unabated.

Join the Revolution



I like the idea of this a lot. I stumbled upon Julian Lennon, (sounding more and more like his father every day) doing a youtube video to promote a charity song to raise money to research into the disease Lupus. An illness whose previous claim to fame was that it was regularly featured as the illness of choice on HOUSE. It now has the 'honour' of taking the life of a subject of a Beatles song.

Anyway, in the Preamble to the video, Julian spoke of setting up a music label to turn the 'music business back into the musician business'. This label is called "The Revolution"

I thought this was a brilliant idea and something or a version of that commercial designers and design studios should consider. Can you imagine, the design business being about the designers?

The client commissioning process is usually at odds with the work process that musicians follow, which is more like a product development process but really all thats needed is a fresh look at how the commissioning process works. However, what really appeals, (and no suprises there) is that talking about a "musician business' or a 'designer business' is that there is an inherent value in authorship, craft, innovation and production. A concentration on the people actually making and doing the work, rather than how it seems now for most commissioned work, a focus on the stuff that surrounds it (account managers, powperpoint presentations, endless artworking etc).

Anyway, I'm all for the revolution.

Tuesday 15 December 2009

SSOW: The Art of Trench


This is a new blog segment (its title being a bastardisation of the old macromedia shockwave website on the 90's) which aims to take a look at some truly horrendous websites and ponder, what in the hell were the cleint and the agency thinking when they did this?

The winner goes to Burberry's latest offering about all things trench, imaginatively called artofthetrench.com which has all the hallmarks of a truly disastrous project.

It seems that Burberry, buoyed on with the 'success' of getting people to sign up to their facebook page decided to take extend their lead in 'social media' by building this rogues gallery of trench-coat wearing urbanites. The motivation for which I still don't fully understand. Is it about the democratisation of a £400- £1000 trench coat? Or Is it just to show the poses of moneyed up hipsters? In any case, I am not sure what brand values they are projecting here. I suspect, Burberry felt the need to do something with 'social media' which is not surprising, a lot of companies are feeling that pressure and fail just as easily, just look at Wendy's latest offering of irrelevancy, Wendy's RealTime

Thing is, I suspect now one actually explained to Burberry what social media acutally is and what, for their brand, is a strong and robust social media proposition. Perhaps the people explaining it didn't know? (likely) or perhaps Burberry refused to listen? (the most likely).

As a social media site it is failure on a number of levels. The 'social' bit is seriously flawed. As an interface, It offers no connection between the trench photography and the social stuff that live around it. This is a major problem. Comments are ridiculously small and ineffectual, and furthermore are hidden away from the actual picture behind a poorly animated card. Really, the whole site could have been replicated on Flickr, and I suspect,done far more successfully. The comments themselves are also vacuous, are typically short one liners like 'I love it' or 'so chic'. With the commentary system so flawed it hard to see how they could expect any interaction with their brand deeper than the shallow level its currently maintains.

It 'curates' social content really poorly. The site encourages you to upload your own pics of your hipster mates wearing trenches. However, rather than opening this up, and perhaps risking negative commentary along with honest conversations about your brand, Burberry attempts to stamp down on this through what I suspect may well be heavy handed censoring. This makes all the social stuff appear stilted and contrived. By simply implementng this 'curatorial' approach to image submission, I suspect that Burberry has kicked a big own goal here by spending a lot of money on a 'social media' site that actually isn't social. Someone should have explained this to them.

Its disingenuous: I pre-registered to be informed when the site launched. I logged on immediately and it was full of comments, not just a bit full, but suspiciously full. I suspect everyone at Burberry was enlisted to tap on their keyboards.

The interface sucks. This is a biggie.

It provides, without a doubt the most retarded image viewer I have ever seen. It is just a wall of image which makes no sense whatsoever and provides no sensible was to navigate around. I am not talking about 'using your mouse to scroll across images', what i am talking about it people actually knowing where they are when they use this site. I don't know how many images there are, what i have clicked on, what ones are new, what ones I have already seen. As an interface, it FAILS big time. As an apology to this mess It offers filtering, which means you can, allegedly, filter out images you don't want. However, this doesn't work, as the ordering and arrangement of the images, changes very little from one filter to the next.

It mixes flash and HTML really poorly. Certain parts of the site are in HTML (e.g. photographer profiles) and other parts are in flash. A normal user journey would mean you move between both two content types and it is this that causes major problems. The result is that the flash file is reloaded, you lose your place in this wall of images. It really surprises me that such a fundamental flaw in the interface was allowed to go ahead.

All in all, a major fail here and it seems I am not alone. Alexa stats on the domain show an initial spike in interest, then a pronounced and regular decline since launch. If you are looking for ways to measure social media, well there's one to show a nose-diving audience for ya! Compare to the Burberry.com domain as a whole, you would at least expect page impressions to mirror the parent company. Especially at a time when 2009 was supposed to be the big thing for fashion brands

Monday 14 December 2009

Photography is not dead - Ceci ne tuera pas cela!



RED Cameras, they're all the rage in the Advertising world at the moment, and as usual, any new invention there's a lot of hype and a lot of bullshit that comes out AROUND the object itself.

Its hard to despise a technology. Technology is generally 'attitude neutral' which means it is generally just there, inert, doing nothing. However, it's when people get a hold of it, bend it, twist it, use it, that's what elicits the most reaction. This exact debate has been used to justify peoples stances against further gun control (guns don't kill people, people kill people) to Internet Piracy (we don't offer pirated files, we only offer the torrents[files to get to the files])

And so, we move onto RED cameras, and the latest position is that now, digital photography, is on the out on account of the HD digital image capture of RED that can provide stills of high enough resolution. It's coffin being carried by RED cameras to the technology cemetery down the street.

Incidentally, I should point out that the grave where photography is to be buried happens to be right next to painting (killed by photgraphy), down from the one occupied by radio (killed by television) and books (killed by the internet) which is just left of the plot occupied by writing(killed by blogging), which is next to Blogging (killed by twitter).....you get the idea?

Haven't we been here before? Yes we have, many times. But it still doesn't stop people writing about it

To dismantle this argument is beyound the scope of this blog, not because I am too lazy, but because it has already been done so to some degree by Umberto Eco in this essay writing about the death of writing.

Recently, Cormac MAcarthy's typewriter, which he bought for $50 was sold for over $250,000. He has now bought another one for $20.

It goes a long way to show that great writing, doesnt require the latest kit. Great story telling and great ideas live beyond the technology used to create them on. Its a very important point that most people not involved in the actual craft and production of creative endeavour fail to understand.

Now, why I am against this? Well, when reason and discernment is replaced by fad and fashion, it is usually the account manager who is the first to jump on the new technological bandwagon. I have written about how social media is being gang-tackled by the cerberally challenged non-production people as a way of establishing a process they can hitch their reputations too. But it seems I am not alone, I am sure there are a lot of people out there thinking that RED cameras will indeed spell the end of photography.

Thursday 10 December 2009

Digital Design is bullshit

This article is an excellent treatise on the pursuit of thinking over style, of substance over bullshit.

"Hey, why dont we use twitter...."



This one falls into the category of people trying to use a new technology whilst leaving their brains at home. I wonder how this happened?

It has all the hallmarks of the account manager driving the project, hitching onto a new 'expression' and never really using their brain to assess whether its a good idea to start with.

It also smacks of the client, desperate to be seen to be current by 'latching onto the latest thing and never really using their brains to assess whether its a good idea to start with'.

Maybe the ad agency creative who is getting pressure from above to use the latest communication medium and therefore 'latching onto the latest thing and never really using their brains to assess whether its a good idea to start with'.

Or maybe its because.....you get the idea.

The person i feel sorry for, the one person, who either thought, and perhaps even said (but was shouted down) "hang on, aren't we just latching onto the latest thing and not using our brains to assess whether its a good idea?"

Wednesday 9 December 2009

The designers Rogues Gallery



Sometimes, and I mean sometimes, Deisgners, do unjustifiably get a hard time about being vacuous trend whores. Other times, I am so overwhelmed with people who seem to spend more time trying to look the part than actually doing the part, that i all but give up hope.

However, this latest 'expose' to land in my inbox/twitter/facebook/ always generates a wry smile. Perhaps if you're a client, you can take it to you next design meeting and ask the people there (that's if you actually deal with designers and not a moronic Account Manager) which one they fit in to?

View it here: http://digital.pastemagazine.com/publication/?i=26727&p=29

Tuesday 8 December 2009

Bullshit Company Profile just in....

This just landed in my inbox. Its from ClearLeft, the design and events comapny who try really hard to look like the people from 37 Signals

They're latest event is being sponsored by Lab49, which has the honour of having the mostbile inducing corporate synposis i have seen in a long time:

You can view the event here....and take a look at Lab49's bio:

We’re really happy to announce that Lab 49 will be sponsoring UX London next year. Lab 49 is is a technology consulting firm that builds advanced solutions for the financial services industry, helping clients effect positive change in their markets through technological innovation and a rich fabric of industry best practices and first-hand experience.



Helping clients 'effect positive change?'....."through...the rich fabric of industry best practices"

Surely, someone there would have said when reading this: "You're fucking kidding right....wheres the real company bio?"

Apparently not....

Social Media Agency - Hall of Shame winner



For those who missed my rant about how to choose a decent social media agencies, well you can read it here. However, on the back of that I am going to cruise the social media agency landscape and every week or so name and shame those whose appearance seems to be nothing but a agency trying to hitch their wagon to the latest marketing fad.

So....The inaugural award goes to:

TwentySix Social Media - http://www.twentysixsocialmedia.com/

I am sure they are great people there. but honestly, they look exactly like the people to avoid. Take a quick look at their site. Firstly, its small, 4 sections, that's about it.

The first red flag is the services section.

They only do three things:
Monitoring services
Strategy
Implementation


Such broad headings, well, its a sure sign that they're not even sure themselves. The reason? Its not becuase social media is new, its because they're not at the pointy end of execution. They talk about it about doing it, rather than doing it. Take note of the fairly prominent "Social Media Seminars"

I cant see any expertise in execution. They may be able to tell you about social media on a really superficial way. But I can see no expertise here in executing work within the realm of social media. No evidence that the principles have first hand involvement in telling the stories in the space you want to tell them.

Next take a look at their blog...

1) They link to other peoples work. Curatorial blogging isn't new, but you don't gain credibility showing what the tech guys at google do. If I was a client, I would want to hire people that can do the work the tech guys at Google do, not the ones who can only blog about it. What does this say about them as an organisation, that they can report but not create?

2) They talk about their passion, 'why they love digital', but what have they produced to back that up? Having a passion for something isn't enough, where is their credibilty born from the hard slog of authorship. What have they crafted? What have they made? Who cares if they own iphones, they should have iphones...but where is there android phone? And they should be coding in objective-c and java themslves and have an app there for you to download. Where is that?

3) They tell whimsical tales of spoons in the kitchen...enough said.

3) They talk a lot about what social media is "connections between people' 'not a fad' , they talk about being in the 'social space themselves' but all they do is blog. Hey does that make me an expert on social media?...hell, I run 4 blogs! I post more than their ENTIRE company....

Anyway, rant over. TwentySixMedia.....congratulations!

Saturday 5 December 2009

Designer Whinge #462



You encounter this a lot in the digital design profession. Designers just love having a whinge (about account managers ;-) ) but also about clients. I see this as a pretty stupid thing to do because if you took everything away, clients still have one thing going for them, they pay. If you removed all the account managers from the world..well

But here in lies the rub, they think that because they ultimately control the purse strings, they ultimately control the process. This is not how all clients work, just, (and any clients please note when reading this) the stupid, spineless, the controlling, the arrogant. Their value system is skewed, the think money is the sole detriment of control, which is is exactly the wrong foundation for a project and wrong motivation to do it. It isn't,the sole determinant of control should be 'who is the best person to run this project', "who is the most capable'. In all cases it will be the designer, why? Because the client wouldn't have come to the designer of he/she could do it themselves, could they?

Thursday 3 December 2009

A bad workman blames his tool....





This cartoon happened to fall into my lap, from none other than my brother, who in a far more sensible approach to career decided to forsake the 'creative' industries and pursue a career in finance where he can make decent cash, has a job people understand and don't think you're a twat with a fin haircut or come to you for lame interior decoration colour advice.


Its especially pertinent to digital Design, more so than other of design disciplines, as it seems defined by the tools it uses. However, that cant be much of a surprise, my first post was all about Adobe Photoshop and their incessant save for web beach ball!

Tuesday 1 December 2009

Standing behind me does not make me work better...or faster




I once worked with someone whose agency mantra was "the first day you win a client is the first day you start losing them'

Not only was that phrase loaded with marketing speak and gobbledygook, no doubt at home at some middle management bible, but it was also rather depressing. Underpinning it is this inevitable resignation that one day, clients leave. This isn't ground breaking, but what does underpin this statements is fear. The fear that without a client you are nothing. That a client leaving is something to be avoided at all costs. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Lets set a few things straight, clients leave for LOTS of reason, like people leave jobs for lots of reasons. Some of those are because they don't like you, others are because they prefer someone else who may seem cheaper, or more enthusiastic. Perhaps they think another agency would be better for this job. Maybe personnel changes within the client means new people want to bring in their own tried and trusted agency?

Sometimes, like all clients, they like change for changes sake. This happens and it's not earth shattering. It is not the same as being diagnosed with an incurable cancer.

This fear is the preserve of the account manager because losing the client is virtually the ONLY thing an account manager may be taken to task over. After years of working with account managers and I still have no idea what the hell they do (apart from raise over-heads and say yes to the client, work on their tan) so losing a client, losing that piece of revenue, is a major fucking problem for them.

This is the reason why most account managers only ever say yes to the client. They're scared and they're spineless to do anything but agree. They're also desperate to impress, to look good, to be appreciated by the client. Any why wouldn't they? They're contributing nothing to the project so they hunt for any glory they can find. But that's the nub of the problem. As they don't produce anything, they rely on other people, i.e. the designers to make them look good.

Which is where we find ourselves now. The new design brief was going along swimmingly. The team was briefed we started working, collaboratively, and surprisingly without ego. Ideas were generated, binned, kept, worked up, moved along, re-interogated. Interfaces and interactions were designed, changed, re-changed, binned again....you get the idea. All pushing towards a common goal: Fulfilling and then going beyond the requirements of the brief we took a week ago. Driven by the desire to create something unique.

Then the account manager, like a meerkat on speed, 'just happens to be wandering over and thought he might just take a peek at what we're doing'....

...Then the inevitable oar in the proceedings.

Here's what they say:
"hmm...yeah...what i think the client would like is if you did it this way...."
"I think the logo should be bigger on this one..."
"maybe if you moved this up there and that a bit to the right...."
"can we do like 50,00 variations of this one idea so it looks like we've got lots to show them..."

Here's what they should say:
"..........................................................."
"I want to schedule a meeting for next Wednesday. Is that OK? And let me know closer to the time what you will be presenting"

Oh Joy, the inevitable and soul grinding tedium that is sparring with the account manager can begin in earnest. Now, not only do I now have to do the work, I also have to spend a considerable amount of time 'hand-holding' the account manager through the intricacies of communication, branding, interface design, information design, web development, browser, bandwidth, etc, etc so that he can understand why the work has moved in that direction and have his fear allayed.

..Then he wants changes, changes or changes sake. Changes before the client has even fed back. Changes because he's trying to second guess the client, he's trying to add his 'bit' to the process. Pointless work, busy work for the sake of it. Churning it out in a desperate bid to impress. Ironically, their agenda is now more important than the clients and i have always wondered how clients would feel if they saw this going on, how hours were wasted on projects because of the one person there who is suppsoed to manage that client relationship?

And so it continues, another week of this before the we put this in front of the noses of the client.

Epilogue:

The above is played out in all studios across London and no doubt across the globe. But it doesn't need to be this way. Normally a client comes to a designer with a brief to be solved, not with a pre-existing idea they want you to artwork. I say normally, a lot of clients do indeed just want you to artwork their idea! Those clients suck!

However, most clients, when you explain to them this simple relationship, are suddenly relieved. They want to put this job in the hands of a professional, they actually don't want to micromanage this job. They want you to come back with the best option, and typically only one option, if you think that's the best. They want to explain to you their goals, aspirations and they want you to help them get there.

Account managers, in almost all cases, seem unable to grasp this point.

Monday 30 November 2009

Mirror MIrror on the wall



Carrying on with more How Magazine bashing...I looked through a couple more of their emails.

They say (well I am just saying) that you can tell a lot about a group of people by the advertisers sell to them. You could also say that advertising also picks up on the way the group views themselves.

Well, if that's the case, then this latest bit of email marketing, brought to us from How (soon to be renamed 'US Artworker') says a lot about this profession.

If these toothless check wearing twats are what designers are supposed to look like, then things are really that bad. Honestly, if designers or young designers in particulr, think that dressing like that makes you a designer, well...they're probably right and deserve to be made unemployed by istockphoto's new logo division. If toothless stupid grins are di reigeur then you deserve not to be taken seriously. If you think that 'being creative' excludes you from say having a brain and being able to run a business (I'm creative, i don't do numbers or insurance[the ad btw, is for insurance]) or say (in the digital arena) not knowing how to program a computer, then you deserve to be at the end of the soup kitchen line.

Honestly, with all this furore about How publishing an ad for a stock logo library, and how its effects standards of professionalism within the industry, I bet there wasnt a peep about the patronising (not to mention inbred) image of desingers used in this campaign. Even though Gary Lynch assures us in his istock logo backpeddle:

"It is not my place to pass judgment on the products and services promoted by our advertisers; however it is my responsibility to determine whether or not we should deliver the message"

Sergeant Major Cock up



There has been a bit of a firestorm over at How, a 'design' magazine that really isn't that much about design at all. In fact, if they called it 'US Artworker' then that would be a more accurate reflection of its process obsessed and 'inspiration devoid' publication.

Like most magazines, they like to have healthy dialogue with their subscribers, and bombard them with emails all week, usually to try and flog of a few places in some "webinar" on such indispensable topics like "10 freelancing tips you must know!" or 'how to control the money situation with clients". Something where the advice 'dont bullshit them' and engage in "plain talking about money and stop being a whimp about what you charge" would suffice.

Anyway, in some major stuff up, they decide to run an email campaign from one of their advertisers, iStockPhoto, the photo library that clients love (because they're cheap) but designers hate because you have to wade through a lot of crap and their watermarks are a bugger to get rid of for your mockups.

Istock, are now looking at crowd sourcing logos. Originally they crowd sourced photos, before account managers had even dreamt up their latest wank-term. People would upload their images and would receive a payment for each one sold. Now they're asking for designers to send in logo designs and they'll flog them as stock. This is great for Clients, who now have a choice between dealing with some flannel shirted poser with a trucker cap and surly attitude..or dealing with a stock company and getting their new identity within the hour. This is also better than the clients usual choice 'nephew with a pirate copy of photoshop'.

Now this sort of 'farmed out' design work really gets up designers noses. They hate seeing their 'work' devalued to the point where they think they'll going to be replaced by a stock library (or a clients nephew with a pirate version of photoshop). They also hate crowdsourcing and sites like crowdspring, a site poor clients and shysters from an MBA course try to get really poor design work done for not much money.

With all this animosity towards what designers feel as threats to their profession. How magazine, in a genius bit foot-shooting, decided to send out an email...too all their designer subscribers, advertising iStocks new logo service with a call to action

"Starting in 2010 iStockphoto will start selling a whole new type of file: logos. But before we start selling, we're looking for designs from creatives like you. As a designer, you've probably created hundreds of different logos over the course of your career and now you can sell them to the world's largest community of creative buyers..."

Cue designer outrage and then a hastily worded reply trying to back peddle. As I write this, F+W medias website has gone down due to technical difficulties.

Thursday 26 November 2009

Social Media - the easy guide to choosing an agency.

Venturing out of Hoxton for the moment..

One of the modus operandi of this blog seems to be as a panacea bullshit. By documenting the travails of a working digital designer in London, i hope to shed some light on some of the insidious and potentially unethical practices that pop up.

I hope that perhaps by actually showing how full of hot air a some of this stuff is, it might go away and we can concentrate on producing good work. The result will hopefully be a re-valuing of priorities so that authorship is now more important than messaging. That a site that does something is more important than a site that can only talk about something.

Most clients are thoroughly unaware of this. They simply choose their agency through a flawed pitch process or by sheer inertia. The incumbent agency stays that we because its easier to keep them. Their goals may be wrong to start with, they think they need a marketing campaign, and go to a marketing agency but the marketing agency is too spineless and greedy to send them to someone who can help them. They are also bamboozled by language and seduced by the sales pitch. They have lost their objective criteria for assessing which agency to choose.

Now we get onto the point of the post, and it is the buzzword du jour of 'social media'. This is the buzzword of the year and ready to spring into action are a burgeoning number of 'social media' agencies that are popping up. They're everywhere, some good, the rest are absolutely hopeless. Its understandable, its a new field and most people see this field as the new gold rush frontier. Agencies quickly try to reinvent themselves to try and stay relevant to their clients. Others will simply buy in that which they cant do. The result is, with all this bullshit flying about, its impossible to tell who is good and who isn't.

Well this guide hopefully will make it easy for you by splitting the agencies in two sorts.

The first sort, we'll call "The Consultants" actually have no one who can produce anything within their immediate group, or at least the people you are dealing with. They may have a design 'arm' they can use, and they may even be part of a larger organisation. However, what you are after are practitioners not talkers. This is key. The "Consultants" are high on talking about it and can suggest 'strategy' and approach but will fail on implementation. They may point to things they do, they may have a blog, they may have some wacky pics they've taken for movember, they're, no doubt, on twitter and they've got a facebook page. Well, they're operating in the field, they must be experts in it? Well..no.

Why aren't they? Well, the reason is clear when we look at the 2nd sort of agency, the good sort:

These are called "The roll year sleeves up and get on with it' mob.

These are the people that actually make the things they are talking about. These are the people who are simply not just active in the social space (anyone can blog...hell, I'm blogging here!) but are actually making THINGS that live in the social space. They make applications, they make stuff that has lasting significance.

The key here is, if the person you are dealing with can produce original content, then he's worth continuing the conversation with. You need people, who not only can talk but can do. Ask the question, "the MD of the company, was he a programmer before he started running this business?" "Was she a designer that actually designed and built things?"

In short, is he/she a practitioner?

These people, and only those people have the intimate knowledge of the medium to make ideas work in this field. These are the people that know how to tell the narratives of social media, and what works, because they've actually done it before. They've actually made web applications, they've built social games and deployed and monetised them on Facebook. They focus on authorship of original content. They can give you a road map and build the road to get you there. Not talk to you about it and suggest a bus to take.

Didn't Sun Tzu say something about 'all warfare being based in deception' - well that's what Charlie Sheen said in Wallstreet!
Well with social media agencies, its a pretty big deception.

Starting next week, I shall scour the internets and find websites of companies who offer 'social media' and shine the harsh "hoxton prophet' light of truth and see how they measure up.

Already in the clients briefs.

All about bud puns this morning after a very enjoyable client meeting yesterday afternoon. The brief is a goodun': Initally we're looking at the 'holistic brand development' of fashion retailer followed by 'a cross channel rollout of digital livery' . What this means is we'll being a corporate ID, they're too cheap to spend time (and money) on us coming up with a Visual language (read: Brand assets). So we're going to shoe-horn that into an actual project, that being a a Website.

What it also means is they will require, outside of scope, quite a few other things that will either, 1) they wont have any money for or 2) (most likely) the account manager, being spineless and clueless, will simply agree too do for no extra cost. They do this because they never have to deliver on the promises they make. They do this with impunity because they use the well worn line of 'trying to keep the client happy' which is a great way to defend the fact you know nothing about what anyone else does in the company.

Anyway, There was a lot of talk, a lot of hand flapping and people getting passionate about the "Brand". Notes were taken, account managers were there to agree with bloody everything the client had to say, and in the end, through all that, a brief was actually taken.

Now language is something that most professions use for, what i can tell, is for two main reasons. The first one is efficiency of communication. Talking amongst ourselves, designers use their own lexicon because of the improved efficiency in communication that accompanies words used that are specific to that industry. The other reason is that it excludes others and creates a cache of prestige that, inevitable, improves credibility to an outside audience, and by extension, means we can charge more. People tend to pay more for things they don't understand. In effect, they're paying you because you know things they don't. I wonder what Orwell would say about this.

However, design, well, its a pretty big church. And if you asked most people to define 'design' you would get a lot of different answers. Ask a designer, next time you see them, to define design. I can assure you they may struggle, unless of course they are any good, in which case they will say 'let me get back to you' and return with a proper response that that question deserves.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is back to this language issue again. The word most otfen chucked around the meeting room yesterday was the word 'BRAND".Hot on the heels of "Aol.'s" new branding exercise, this was topic-du-jour at this organisation. Now, this word is misued all the time, not only by clients (they dont need to know it anyway) but also by designers. Can I point out, that your corporate Identity is NOT your brand. I dont think I can make it any clearer than that. If you want more info, and primer on 'branding' then head on over to here

Looking fwd to this one. I love the smell of optimism that accompanies a new project. Ask me again what this project smells like when the many hands of account managers have had a chance to fuck things up.

Wednesday 25 November 2009

Oh my god, its so true!!!

No doubt a lot of fellow designers will be getting pretty hot under the collar about this 'comedic exposé' on the creative process....done by that bastion of corporate subversion...YAHOO! Well I snagged this from Adscam, the 'well intentioned' Advertising rant of George Parker.

Well, regardless if its true, or even funny. Which is, to some degree. What i find somewhat recidivist, is that I can almost see the desinger whinge-fest in the comments already. There are none so far, so I may take the bait and post a 'OMG, its so true', one of the many you will no doubt see.




Finally meeting the new client this afternoon. A bit worried that its wednesday, 3 solid days of outlandish promises from the "Account manager" to try and reign in.

Tuesday 24 November 2009

I'm SuperDry!!!!




The 'designers dress code'- a statement of beautiful uniformity. The heady mix of quirky and contempory style, a statement of 'arms-length conservatism', "I need to appear creative, but not so crazy as you wont hire me, but not boring as you'll think I'm not creative!'. Its the couture tightrope we walk every day.

Its not like were all doctors wearing white coats or surgical scrubs, (practical necessity) or say, in the Armed Forces (equality and simplicity). For a creative profession that is supposed to embrace innovation, the irony is that large number of participants dress exactly the same! How quaint!

The latest designer 'Brand du jour' is currently SuperDry, a japanese clothes company..and thats all I know about them. This 'Superdry' thing isnt new, its been going on for a while, but as i was walking to work this morning, I couldn't help but notice the words 'superdry' on almost everything, and I mean almost fucking everything. Jackets made of that slightly greasy looking oilskin material (a new young mans Barbour?), bags, shoes, and most importantly, the designer staple...the t-shirt.

A few years ago, 'ironic statements' were all the rage, the staple of that fad being the "This is supposed to be the future, where is my jetpack" t-shirt. Now, you cant walk for a wall of twats wearing Superdry ,or on the days when mums doing the washing, Hollister.

So next time I am in my 'Agile Scrum' sipping my Machiato, tapping on my iPhone, you're sure to recognise me, I'm the surly one wearing "SuperDry".

Monday 23 November 2009

Monday-fucking-morning



What do I hate about Mondays? There is a lot to detest at the start of the week.


Typcially, Mondays start with a "work in progress' meeting. Otherwise known as "The WIP" or unkindly as the "Whip" .


In some agencies, this is a great way to work out what everyone is working on,  how the project is progressing, and what other work is coming up. Nothing like being part of a team that's moving forward where you voice is heard and respected. That's a simplistic view on how a good commercial design practice is run. 


Back in the real world, things couldn't be further from that! Firstly, we tend not to do 'wips'  anymore. Especially in digital design where there is a managerial obsession with 'granularity'. Nowadays,  we are subjected to the "Stand up Meeting" -  basically another bullshit title for what should be described as "quick meeting, so tossers can't drone on about irrelevant shit too much'. And rather than doing them once a week and just getting on with the work, we do them "every fucking day" usually at a time like 10:30 because account managers are too lazy to get in before 10:00.


This is part of the fallout of 'methodology du jour' called 'Agile'  (where they are known as 'Scrums') which everone is getting a hardon over. It also goes hand in hand with marketers wet dream "Social Media" (more on that later). Agile is supposedly the panacea of all our ills, where we concentrate more on doing and less on talking about doing. One would assume that that this would result in account managers fucking leave us alone to get on with it. However, the kicker is, Agile is implemented on a company level by the people its supposed to exclude, so no matter what people say, its just another long line of 'process tools'.


Honestly, clients, if you want to "be Agile", leave the agencies alone and just hire the designer and developer directly...and stay the fuck away from advertising agencies, they're shit at it.


This week is looking like a 'good-un' though. Management are dragging my sorry arse along to a meeting with a potential client. Already, the fire-fighting will commence, where I will attempt to introduce some shred of reality into a project which has been overbloated with the hype and outlandish promises from the account managers, who, not having to actually deliver anything, are free to promise absolutely everthing with impunity.


Plenty of opportunity too for management to get me to 'output some jpegs' for his new shittastic powerpoint presentation. No doubt upload some "moody shots of my feet" I took over the weekend to my flickr page at some point  and maybe "rehash some links i found on other sites" and present them as my own on my blog.


Good times.

Thursday 19 November 2009

Fuck you Adobe Photoshop



People often ask me, "why did you start this blog?" Well, the truth is...no one has ever fucking asked me. However, if they were to ask me, the above image would be the reason. This 'spiral' is the most common motif to confront a jobbing designer every day. Its the blessed Apple "beachball" that accompanies your mac system deciding to shit itself.

Why is it called a beachball, well in some mashed up semiotic fuck-fest, its name is a hangover from the earlier version  of the 'hang icon' which was a two-bit circle with alternate quadrants filled in. Trust me, it looked like a beach ball. Before posting, I asked my programming mate "what would you shove into google image search to get a pic of that sprial thing" and being a programmer, who knows fucking absolutely everything,  he said 'beachball'. So, there it is, 'Beachball'.

Anyway, Why Fuck you Adobe Photoshop?  Well, that symbol is part and parcel of the "Save for web feature" in Adobe Photoshop. Infact, it is so entrenced it may as well be a feature. New versions of Photoshop will probably say 'featuring "save for web beachball 2.0".

Being a working designer, it is often my task to output hundreds of fucking jpegs so some bullshit-peddler can try and pull the wool over some prospective clients eyes, or we have a meeting, or we have a 'design review' meeting....infact, anything nowadays seems to need a fucking jpeg accompaniment! And why is this annoying, because its always last minute, and you're always in a rush to try and get this work outputted so someone can catch a flight to blow (or be blown by) someone and that's when the blessed 'Beachball' appears. Adobe photoshop just sits there, hangs for minutes, like a silent 'sit in' by a bunch of crusty hippies at a proposed runway site near Heathrow.

Well, fuck you Adobe Photoshop! Thanks for the wasted time, the ulcers and the lack of productivity. Shortcut to brilliant? More 'Long way round to fucking average'.