Flyer Design / Re-Design

As well as being a Graphics student I, as many students are, am also a barman. As such I have to suffer the terrible incompetence of my peers when it comes to menu/leaflet/point of sale designing. So when it cropped up in conversation that I was a Graphic Designer I was more than happy to be asked to design some stuff for them. From editing their power-point slides (?) to designing promo cards and Christmas menus, everything with a hint of a graphical element was passed onto me. Anyway, it was to my horror this weekend when I spotted this monstrosity of a flyer in the office...

 

(sufficient to say, I did not design this!) Apparently we are to host an Electro 80's night. All sounds good. However, the company that are organizing it (we are just providing a venue) and the 'designer' they hired are idiots. Not only did they think this flyer would attract the 300+ people that they claim to be able to get but, when we rang up to enquire about the horrendous pixelization of our logo and offer them an high res copy of it they replied with "well we just got the logo off your website and we can't change it now we've had already had 1000 printed." Idiots. Anyway, I did find a use for this today. In G-Man's skills session we were given the task of 'taking a shit flyer and making it better'. I had perfect fodder. An hour and half later...

Using exactly all the type that was on the original and using the obvious themes of Peter Saville's Blue Monday cover (and also his Grayscale font) and the 80's colour palette I managed to create a clean, concise, relevant version that I would say would appeal to more people than the original.

If only I knew about this sooner...

Helvetica. Period.

I finally got around to watching Helvetica in it's entirety recently after only ever watching it in the background whilst I'm working or little bits here and there. Now, for me, it's a fantastic film. It may be a bit geeky and it may not be to everyones taste but I loved it. It is brilliantly shot with a great soundtrack that I think brings alive what could be quite a dull subject matter to those who aren't particularly interested in typography or design. I actually think it is so well made that it could fairly easily cross over and interest the 'non-graphical' public as it is generally a very captivating documentary. There are some great interviews with design legends such as Wim Crouwel, Massimo Vignelli, Neville Brody and some fantastic insights into the minds of Erik Spiekermann and Michael Bierut. A much see for designers and interested public alike.

(Just a little extra: check out El Ten Eleven who provided a lot of music to the soundtrack.)

What (and what not) to do this year...

As it's the start of the new term I figure I need to know what to do and what not to do as regards design trends this year. Handy then that I stumbled across this lovely little manual from Elliott Scott and Christopher Doyle. Turns out everything I planned to do this year I should have done last. Behind the times? Maybe? Attempting to be intentionally humorous to fill out this blog post? Definatly.

Visit trynotto for a better look at this beautiful little booklet.

Back To School

Its been a while but, as I promised myself, I am back on the blogger trail. It's almost that time of the year when we all head back to school and, as so, I have to start working properly again. After doing numerous shite design jobs for people who know nothing about design (or even what is generally accepted as looking anywhere near nice) I will be glad to do work for people who actually know what they are looking at again. Anyway, doing some intrinsic research I stumbled across Gareth Procter. Having a need for cleanliness and preciseness I found some of his work very appealing. His '10' magazine is especially prettyful. Check it out.