The Hoxton Prophet

The Digital Economy Bill

2010-03-23T06:40:00.001-07:00

In 36 hours, the UK leader of the commons, Harriet Harman, will decide whether to pass a bill into law un-scrutinised, or subject it to a line by line analysis, thereby delaying it until after the election (GB will soon head to the palace to dissolve the govt) or kill it completely.

This bill is the Digital Economy Bill, which has been creating a hash-tag storm across the world of all the work-shy people out there, otherwise known as "Twitterees". As we know from Nestles social media 'fail' a few days ago, its easy to generate a storm in the online world, all you need is a cause because people will always throw their weight behind something that requires no effort for them to support.

However, I just want to point out one thing that, was in fairness, pointed out to me by a photographer. In the digital design world, it's really easy to not see past your own nose, even into supporting fields, like illustration and photogrraphy. This I thought was surprising, then again it's not as designers are a self obsessed lot.

Its concerned with the 'Orphan works' clause, that refers to a photograph for which the copyright owner (the photographer) is unknown and cannot be traced. Publishers, can use that image and not pay royalties by claiming it as an orphan work with no traceable originator. In effect, It will open the floodgates for publishers to use images willy-nilly without payment to the photographer by claiming that they couldn't trace them. It also puts the onus on photographers to make sure their work isn't being ripped off.

Now compare this to the recording industry lobby groups on whose back this bill rides. Its main aim is to stop the supply, distribution and use of copyrighted material, mainly music and film titles in order to wrest back lost revenue from the pirates, or those that download, distribute and consume copyrighted material.

The contradiction is stark, even within the bill, to remove copyright protection for one group and ramp it up to pernicious levels for another. The only difference I see is that one group is represented by powerful rights holders and the other, is the creator of original work.

I actually plan to go down and protest

And as the Vultures pick over the decaying corpse....

2010-03-19T09:58:00.000-07:00

Its really easy in the heat of 'battle' to lose all sense of perspective ( I am sure Sun-Tzu would have something to say about this), to forget your position relative your comrades and colleagues, to be so buoyed with bloodlust that you ignore all personal safety and drive in for the kill.

Usually, on a battlefield, its only when the fighting has stopped that the vultures, circle for the spoils, and villagers from the nearby town pick over what remains looking for objects of value. Not so in today's virtual battlefields.

Its with this i draw you to Nestlés FAIL (internet parlance) on Facebook. Their foray into social media was met with a barrage of protests about formula milk, baby orang-utans and palm oil. If social media is good for one thing, then its good for a virtual lynching. Nothing can excite a mob more than a cause, with an avenue to vent it, especially if the avenue requires little effort on their part.

Hats go off to activists who brave poor weather to protest, even more to people who devote their lives to causes. But on this sliding scale of commitment, a social media lynch mob rates pretty poorly. Its the protest equivalent of switching from "strictly' to 'Dancing on ice'. So it was with Nestle. Since it requires no effort to stick the boot in, hundreds of 'fans' all starting swarming all over Nestle like a tour group from weight-watchers at an 'all you can eat' buffet.

Now from this 'carnage' there was a number of things happened, namely, the vultures didn't wait until the battle had ended before picking over the spoils, they were there almost immediately as the battle waged. And this vulture, comes in the form of the 'social media expert', who seeing Nestlé stagger under the blows, are only too keen to offer their services.

Nestle did themselves no favours to resist these carpet-baggers, by updating their Facebook status, mid-battle, to say 'Social media - we're learning as we go'. So I guess they invited these ingrates to tea. However, it goes to show you the lack of integrity of these people (hardly surprised there).

The question I need to ask is, where did these social media experts come from? You really must question these self-styled titles, and treat them with as much suspicion as someone, like these people from "The Social Media Academy" whose only motivation to comment was to try and drum up business.

As Orwell says: Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket

Giddy up!

Update:

As the post is oh so current...her is a list (ongoing) of companies hoping to tout their services. Identified as such through their blatant posting of URL's in their comments, etc

Tank PR - http://www.tankpr.co.uk/
Contently managed - http://contently-managed.com/
RGC Media - http://www.rgc-media.com/nestle-fail

Temporary Break in Transmission

2010-03-04T01:51:00.000-08:00

Real work has gotten in the way of blogging.
This happens, clients actually require work doing.

On another note, there has not been much to raise my ire lately. The Argos rebrand and the expect cacophany of abuse with regards to the fee and the value for money it represents.....

Design v Styling

2010-01-30T01:27:00.000-08:00

Continuing the iPad theme: This feature in The Guardian featured this important paragraph, worth repeating here.

What none has managed is to imagine how it would actually work – which is of course the really important thing about any piece of technology, and one that Steve Jobs emphasises again and again. Design, he points out to journalists who don't seem to get the message, isn't about how something looks; it's not something you put onto the outside of an already-built product. It's how you build the product, from the inside out.

Guardian - http://tinyurl.com/ycv25xu

As a statement about the frames of reference design operate within, its concise and revealing. Far more revealing that a debate about what a crime the use of Papyrus was in the film Avatar....

IPad will make laptops like desktops

2010-01-29T01:56:00.000-08:00

There is so much stuff being written about the iPad I thought I would concentrate on one thing which I think no one has mentioned yet, or most likely, I have not read yet.

It’s also easy to be seduced by art of making predictions. It’s really a great game to play because you are very rarely held accountable for the things you predict. You rarely lose, unless you say something glaringly wrong. However, most people will have forgotten what you've said by the time you predication fails to arrive. The benefit it that when you do get it right, blogs, Twitter, etc, all provide you with a date-stamped record and thereby prove to the world what a techno-prophet swinging dick you are.

But rather than talk about 'seismic shifts in the world economic order’ that this products hails, and try to make sense of whatever brave new world this product is supposed to usher in. I thought I would concentrate on what this product means to me, as an average consumer, and why I think its will resonate with other consumers.

I am sure that all one of my readers are sure to find this interesting.

Lets start by taking into consideration price and features. In the Apple product range it sits between an iphone and a macbook. Looking at this product range as a whole, I noticed the following which is shown in the headline graphic, which is a diagram showing, on a gross scale, the amount of wires and cables required to run the device. Its not a true scale, even with my iPhone I need a shed-load of cables, and docks., but the general trend is that the as you move down the product range you need more cables. Also, the further you move down the scale, the more computing power you get too, dedicated hardware, etc.

Importantly, this diagram is also a scale of how the machine is increasingly tethered to the desktop. ON one end of the scale is the iPhone which requires little or no cabling. On the other end sits Mac Pro Tower. which requires extensive cabling for monitors, keyboard and a mouse. Each product sits nicely along this scale.

When I first saw the iPad, like any consumer making a purchasing decision, I asked how much this machine overlaps with technology I already own. Most people tend not to want to piss money away, especially, now, so the reasons for buying the product need to be valid. These questions, or at least the ones I asked, were like this: "Its sort of like an laptop in size but its may not have enough power to do what I need", "its not a phone as its massive, so it cant replace that device, so what does it do', "..and it cant multitask, so I cant really do real work on it, never mind that it doesn’t really have a keyboard, etc'. All on the surface rather negative, but really an exploration into how this product overlaps with what I already own. The point that I wouldn’t fork out for a product that can be done with the devices I already own.

Then I realised, it actually does fill a need. Like most people, I work on a laptop connected to a large display at work. The reason I have a laptop is portability. I regularly am out meeting clients, working in different locations and the portability of a laptop is perfect for that. However, most of my time(around 90%) is really sitting at my desk working. My laptop is really a’ portable desktop computer’.

Laptop performances have improved greatly that now, so much so, that I don't really take a huge performance hit by using a laptop. What I might sacrifice in speed, but this is made up for in portability. A good display is far more important to me. Also bear in mind that over the last few years, Laptop sales have been improving at about 11% (according to a really inaccurate google search I did). Desktop computer sales have been heading south at about the same rate. So I am not alone in this migration away from towers to laptops.

And because this is my only computer, I regularly schlep it to and from work each day, mainly because I like do work at home in the evening but also because I like to surf, book tickets, shop, check my emails, Skype friends, play games,etc. I do all these tasks on my laptop as well because its portable and I have schlepped it from work. But the real issue is that no matter how portable laptops are, they’re not. They’re heavy, they’re cumbersome on public transport, they’re difficult to walk long distances with. If I didn’t want to use a computer at home, then I wouldn’t lug my laptop hom again, preferring to leave it at work, where I can catch cabs to client meetings, etc.

And this is where I see the iPad fitting into my life. What it is going to do is be the machine to do all the stuff i don't need my laptop for. I could do it on my laptop but I wont now, because I have left it at work and have an iPad at home. In essence the point I am making is that the iPad is a machine that allows me to leave my laptop at work.

Now add to that purchasing decision, the portability, the size, the fact that it will be an e-book reader. I can read my daily newspapers in a format and size similar to a newspaper in real life (i.e. on my lap and at arms length), then it becomes more than a partial laptop replacement and really starts to appear as a compelling thing to purchase.

And that to me is where the product sits and to a consumer, why the product will be a success. As a product,it fills a need, the need to leave my laptop at work. Laptops are the new desktops. So what happens to the desktops then?

Why treat the most important aspect of your site like shit?

2010-01-27T04:37:00.000-08:00

I encounter this a lot, and many programmers I work with have the same issue, and its to do with a complete lack of regard for your sites most important aspect, site content.

Bear with me as I go on a ramble...

In publishing, the notion of content is alien. They write books and the 'content' producer goes by the title of 'Author' or 'writer'. You have have heard this word bandied about, but its rarely heard in digital design. Its like authorship has been forgotten, replaced by the word 'content' and with it an degradation of the implicit importance you place on writing that the title 'author' conveys. In Journalism, the importance of writing is integral to the integrity of the newspapers that prints it.

However in digital design, the notion of content as varied as the applications that are built on top of the internet. Sometimes in application design there is no authored content, simply functional executions of tasks. Other times, such as in learning resources, that's all there is. And its not always writing as its mixed in with multimedia content (audio, video and images). However, the majority of decent sites, do their utmost to tell a story, and hand-in-hand with story telling comes the importance of the author.

So why is content so devalued?

Is it because of the variety of expression available in digital output,? That there is blurring of the boundaries between application and story, utility and entertainment? Are people are seduced by the delivery that they simply forget to deliver something decent? Perhaps because of this, people forget that in some cases, they even need an writer?

Perhaps it is because authorship isn't needed all the time? As its something considered outside the core skillset needed to deliver a project on time and too a budget (never mind delivering a quality project). Perhaps in the digital arena, there aren't very many good writers?

Whatever the reason, its simply not given due importance when it is needed. It is typically relegated to the end of the process when really it should be the opposite, writing should be the first thing you do.

Which gets to my point about the post, the way people treat content is a true indicator of their standard as a professional.
Information Architects, considered by this blog as a pseudo profession anyway, regularly treat 'content' with disdain. Its seen purely as modules, inserted into a page architecture and not integral to the page itself. In some cases, wireframes show a box with the words "Content in here". This is poor.

Many times the way content is delivered is poor. Many programmers i know complain about this. A long stream of emails, each one containing 'content' hastily written to populate a site that needs to be launched in 2 days time. This isn't a time management issue here, this is a fundamental problem with the process that treats writing with such disdain, that they simply think they can add it at the end of the assembly line.

Which begs the question, why do so many people treat their most important aspect of their site like shit?

The Marketing Department

2010-01-26T02:45:00.000-08:00

Milton Glaser, in a lecture I saw at the D&AD around 2000 spoke about the 'road to hell' which was later published in Metropolis magazine. It's a series of steps, some small, some great, that would call into question the designers ethics. Some, you would think ,we're obvious. Such as "Designing a brochure for an SUV that flips over frequently in emergency conditions and is known to have killed 150 people." Others could be considered simply a product stretching the truth to jostle for position above its competitors, such as "Designing a package to look bigger on the shelf."

Glasers roadmap raises some interesting questions. Due to vary degrees of ethical transgression presented, it helps motivate designers to question, exactly where,if at all, they stand on the road to hell? In the talk, Glaser also spoke about the growing acceptability of these transgressions. Initially, you may start of with only a small infraction, but little by little, over time, they become greater and greater.

What made me think of this was what I heard this morning on the radio 4, about an upcoming episode of the show "File on 4"(8:00pm tonight), and how it would be investigating concerns about the way a bestselling antipsychotic drug was marketed. The result is that a British drug company is now being sued by more than 15,000 people in the United States over claim its bestselling antipsychotic drug caused severe weight gain, diabetes and other serious medical conditions.

Anyone who has worked for any number of years in design, shudders with revulsion when the words 'marketing department' have been used, who for the most part, are peddlers in half truths, spin and deceit

The suggestion, from the excerpt, is that there was internal research, that suggested the company did have prior knowledge of these side effects, but then chose to downplay these concerns. The show interviewed one of the companies former scientists who spoke of pressure being applied in him to make sure his research showed the drug in the best possible light.
He went as far as saying it was suggested to him that by not doing so, would be "severely limiting" to his career.

And where was this pressure being applied from?

The Marketing department.

Why was I not surprised?

Spot the Account Manager

2010-01-19T05:57:00.000-08:00

No, not the 'junior' account manager, or the 'trainee' or the account manager in weekend civvies..the proper, at his desk doing Sweet F.A. account manager....

Cleudo: in the restaraunt, with the shish pipe by the Web Designer

2010-01-12T07:46:00.000-08:00

Its hard not to see some element of humor in this, a Met Police office, now on trial for threatening and falsely arresting his web 'designer'[my quotes], Waad al-Baghdadi, who claimed Dizaei had failed to pay him for a website he had designed for him.

The value? A paltry £600.....

The whole affair was played out outside a restaurant and featured a the top of a shisha pipe, in what would be this years entry into the weird cluedo awards: "in the restaurant, with the shisha pipe by the Web Designer".

First things first

2010-01-09T13:06:00.000-08:00

I have read this manifesto a few times in the past, and it tends to keep cropping up at regular times in my life. And as you can tell by my rants here, I love a good manifesto. I am even writing one at the moment for myself and my design enterprise.

Anyway, First things First, was published in In 1999/2000, signed by 33 designers signed a was a reiteration of Ken Garland's 1964 call for design to be used for things other than peddling tat through advertising.

I think its worth re-iterating. You may not agree with it entirely.

http://www.emigre.com/Editorial.php?sect=1&id=14

Here it is in all its glory

We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it.

Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession's time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best.

Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.

There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programs, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help.

We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication - a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design.

In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of global commercial culture, their message has only grown more urgent. Today, we renew their manifesto in expectation that no more decades will pass before it is taken to heart.

Designer whinge #4321

2010-01-08T02:12:00.000-08:00

I am a bit late to this debate, but it's explainable as I have been "WORKING" and not "FUCKING ABOUT ON TWITTER", which by going by the screens I walk past everyday, is all that designers do nowadays.

Now this whinge is centered on the mega-box office flick Avatar, and James Cameron's choice of Papyrus as the logotype for the film...and apparently the subtitles, but I wouldn't know as I have been working and not 'fucking about on twitter raving about how good avatar was'.

This 'blog debate' came in the form of this blog post from the appropriately titled 'pr*tty sh*tty'. Krut Vonnegut would have been proud as its the only blog I have seen with two assholes in the title. The debate 'raged' here, designers were typically outraged that Papyrus was used. The debate focused on the aesthetic crime that using Papyrus was. Others tried to up the level of intelligence by referring to less subjective goals such as 'readability'. However, I suspect only the most degraded typeface would be unreadable when shown at the size of a cinema screen.

Anyway, if you can't be bothered to find my comment, here it is. My first comment, which was actually really succint, was eaten by the internet when the posting mechanism broke down. Alas, this one isn't nearly so crafted. But in a nutshell: "Design should concern itself with more serious issues than style"

Honestly, how important is this issue to warrent 176+ posts in reply?

If you're not a designer the choice of Papyrus over any other font is arbitrary and considering Avatar, with its 'crappy logotype' is the 2nd highest gorssing movie ever, shows the negligible impact the logotype has. Infact, the only impact it seems to have had is to raise the ire of a few style snobs.

Design has a far more relevant role to play in life and furious debate about the aesthetic unsuitability of a logotype confirms the myth that design is only concerned with irrelevant surface details and is full of whimsical aesthetic decisions of little importance.

Nothing could be farther from the truth, but as long as designers take 'issue' with things like this, then you only have yourself to blame if people don't take the profession seriously.

The poison Chalice

2009-12-29T02:28:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2009-12-21T12:31:00.000-08:00

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

End of ID

2009-12-18T04:36:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-18T03:58:00.002-08:00

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.

SSOW: The Art of Trench

2009-12-15T08:39:00.000-08:00

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

Photography is not dead - Ceci ne tuera pas cela!

2009-12-14T03:40:00.000-08:00

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.

Digital Design is bullshit

2009-12-10T05:07:00.000-08:00

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

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

2009-12-10T04:47:00.000-08:00

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?"

The designers Rogues Gallery

2009-12-09T09:23:00.001-08:00

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

Bullshit Company Profile just in....

2009-12-08T05:31:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-08T03:24:00.001-08:00

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!

Designer Whinge #462

2009-12-05T00:00:00.000-08:00

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?

A bad workman blames his tool....

2009-12-03T14:36:00.000-08:00

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!

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

2009-12-01T03:17:00.001-08:00

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.

Mirror MIrror on the wall

2009-11-30T14:14:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-30T12:09:00.000-08:00

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.

Social Media - the easy guide to choosing an agency.

2009-11-26T07:37:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-11-26T02:54:00.000-08:00

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.

Oh my god, its so true!!!

2009-11-25T04:40:00.001-08:00

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.

I'm SuperDry!!!!

2009-11-24T03:35:00.000-08:00

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-fucking-morning

2009-11-23T03:34:00.000-08:00

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.

Fuck you Adobe Photoshop

2009-11-19T06:17:00.000-08:00

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'.