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…and when I say ‘meet’, I mean kind of saw from a distance… …and when I say ‘hero’, I mean graphic designer I have definitely heard of.

On Wednesday night me and a couple of colleagues were given the opportunity to see the ‘most influential graphic designer of today’, talk about his work in Hammersmith. As a mere student/scavenger, I know when I see an offer I can’t refuse/normally afford, so I took my chance.

The three hour seminar (by neoco client Quark XPress & I Love Design) provided us with a glimpse at the ‘chaotic’ world of David Carson and some of his favourite work. Two hours in, after the projector had jammed for the fourth time, the audience didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, although fortunately the majority did the former. It was hard not to chuckle when the old machine was literally throwing slides of his work across the room, and vibrating on the spot. Luckily David saw the funny side too.

David Carson was undoubtedly entertaining and certainly had some great work to show and some interesting stories to tell, even if half of them were about his latest surfing accident in California. He liked to use images of his wounds to wake the audience up, which reminded me of when your at school and you want to show your best mate your biggest scab. He seemed to ‘potter about’ a bit too much though, fiddling with things on his desktop, unsure of where files were and you couldn’t help think it might have been an act. When he did get down to showing his work though it was very interesting to see his how he worked through a project and what his relationships with the clients were like.

At one point he made some refreshingly down to earth comments about having to (to paraphrase) bullshit clients. It was moments like these he connected to the audience at a personal level and won us over a bit. I think it would have been better if it was half as long though, leaving you wanting more rather than wanting to leave (which people had to towards the end).

Despite all the subtle hints of the staff (‘we should probably wrap it up now’), he didn’t want the show to end. When it eventually did, some of the hardcore fans queued up to buy some one-off pieces of work which he signed. I managed to capture him amidst his glory. I’m definitely glad I went and it was a great experience for me. So thanks again to the team down here at Neoco!

“A big part of being a designer is seeing stuff which is around you and incorporating it in your own way in your work…”

“…your family, how you grew up, these are the things which are unique to you, no one else has these things so use them in your work“

“a design shouldn’t necessarily be timeless, the fact that it relates to the culture of it’s time is often what makes a design successful”

David Carson 18th June 2008

So it’s almost time for Glastonbury, and it even looks like it might not rain for five days like it did last year.  The key accessory for any Glastonbury trip – except for wellies and maybe fancy dress outfit – has to be a flag.  So the cast and crew of Neoco were set a challenge to design a flag for me to use for this year’s festival.

The brief was simple – it needs to be bright, and it needs to be easy to make (only one week left now).  I’m still wondering why all the entries are very camp.

The winner – chosen mainly due to simplicity to make – is LBs entry, with a slight tweak to the background colour:

Second place was Benn’s inspired effort - although perhaps slightly too effeminate for my liking:  

The other entries are shown below:

We enjoyed an interesting lecture last night from the dutch design trio Experimental Jetset…’interesting’ probably being the operative word, as the team seemed to have lacked a little rehersal time when putting their presentation together. However, despite not being as polished as the previous lecture we saw, ‘Digital Pecha Kucha,’ it was entertaining (though perhaps for all the wrong reasons), and refreshing to see a company talk in such open and frank detail about their work.

I especially liked their logo and identity designs for the 104 (Le Cent Quatre), building. Based in Paris, this is a French cultural institute that will open its doors later this year. A work in progress then, ongoing over the next few months, yet is looking pretty polished at this early stage. Based on the and raw structuralism encompassed by the as yet incomplete construction of the building itself, the design work plays with the concepts of scaffolding and assembly resulting in a really great typographic approach characteristic of the Jetset threesome. They even embraced the bizarre client request that the finalised logo be elongated to an eight word sentence impressively well – a situation that methinks would have left many tearing their hair out.

All in all an interesting and worthwhile lecture, worth going alone for nuggets of wisdom such as treating design the dutch way, as garden rather than a singular flower… oh and along similar lines, ‘never trust the French.’ Touché Danny.

As you can see, the countdown is finally over and our new website is now live! This is just the beta version, so there will be a lot more content and some really cool features coming soon!

Have a look at our new portfolio section, which shows you a selection of the projects that we have worked on - we now have client quotes and pulled out stats for all of our case studies. We also have API’s, social bookmarking and much more, so have a look around.

The most important thing for us though is the site’s new visual design and our new neoco branding. It’s very different, but its very ‘us’

Let us know what you think…

Since Motorola announced that they were seriously reconsidering the future of their mobile division, it was obvious that they were either going to sell it, or split it from the rest of the company.

They have in fact decided to split it in two, and the two new companies will be:

• Motorola Mobile Devices - which will handle manufacturing, design and sales of mobile handsets

• Broadband & Mobility Solutions - which will take care of wireless broadband, IP video, as well as voice and data communication solutions.

Greg Brown, Motorola’s CEO says: “Creating two industry-leading companies will provide improved flexibility, more tailored capital structures, and increased management focus–as well as more targeted investment opportunities for our shareholders.” Which basically means that their shareholders have pressured them into splitting because Motorola’s mobile division hasn’t really been doing well in the last couple of years.

Today was the launch of Quark’s global campaign site www.ilovedesign.com, which was devised and implemented by yours truly.

We developed the site around an interactive and accessible community concept that was inspired by both neoco and Quark’s love for design. The content of the site will be largely user generated with the aim being to create a platform where designers from all over the world can join the community, showcase their work, be inspired by the work of others, and discuss their love of design. Users can search, view, and rate designs uploaded by other members and even contact them in a secure way.

The site features the work and video testimonials of leading industry designers including David Carson, Peter Saville and Chip Kidd, providing inspiration for users, as they can watch and listen to their heroes tell their own stories, debate the relevance of design in today’s world, and contemplate its future. Designers can also learn how leading global brands, such as the Salvation Army, Metro International, Design Week , and many others, are using QuarkXPress 7 and view samples of some of their work.

The site is part of an overall campaign that we created, with the focus on harnessing the creativity of today’s designers. It comprises of a design of the week competition, seminars with leading designers, e-mail marketing, online and offline media, and a fun Facebook application called “What font are you?” - why not find out which font you are by clicking the link below:

(http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=22841955173)

Last night, I took some of the team to the D&AD New Blood event in Old Billingsgate. The event is supposed to showcase the best creative talent from across the UK higher education system. If you are a student creative, this is the place to be seen and try and get that elusive first job.

We went down, full of hope and smiles, arriving just before 8pm and then spent over 30mins queuing to get in - even though we had private invitations. When we did get in, we were informed that all the free beer had been consumed within the first hour ‘by the students’. Not only that but the free beer was the only beer they had - so you couldn’t even buy any! I was offered warm white wine or a coffee? No thanks. Fed up from queuing, thirsty from the lack of decent drink and bloody sweating from the heat of so many people in the venue, we decided to hit the task at hand… until the size of the task became apparent. In previous years the D&AD student showpiece has grown from one floor, to one and a half… this year it covered three floors. How the f*ck are you supposed to be able to go through that amount of exhibition area in the 2-3 hours of the evening, without air con, no cold drinks, serious heat, and after a 35min queue? Stick with me because I am not at the REAL issue yet…

We split up and headed out to all corners, looking for someone with a flair for creative and digital and that was the issue. I can count the number of websites I actually saw on screen on ONE HAND! Some of these did not even work. I don’t mean the buttons did not link I mean they did not even load (on a local machine). Personally, I think there is a massive issue, when we have such a skills shortage online and yet the colleges, unis, etc are just vomiting out thousands of students who know FA about digital and have not been made aware of it (except for the Flash or Dreamweaver lesson that just puts them off).

Why is digital treated as the bastard brother to traditional creative?
Why is the system churning out a zillion print designers when there are hardly any pure print jobs left? Look on any creative job page (on or offline) and you will see that most jobs expect experience or an understanding of digital. These kids have none.

Digital is the future, so why are our future generations are so bloody unprepared for it?!