13. Time is precious: get to the point

Inspired by my own, and my friend’s (sometimes rocky) experiences within the creative industry, #The50 Things Every Creative Should Know addressed the most common concerns held by creatives graduating from art college into the professional world.

The guide can now be read on its own website.

www.the-50.org

Storytelling, it's all 'me, me, me'

Those who are familiar with my work will know that I’ve been lucky enough to call myself an ‘Airsider’. I was a member of the Airside studio for nearly 6 years, and in that time I witnessed at first-hand the studio’s unique cross-discipline approach to design.

However, in recent years I’ve noted how Airside’s motion work has seen the studio increasingly looked upon as a storyteller, and I find this label incredibly interesting, since it hints at the growing importance of narrative in design.

A brief look at Airside’s showreel acknowledges the studio’s emergent role as a storyteller; to many of its clients Airside has become something of an interpreter — a translator: using the craft of storytelling to clarify abstract ideas, distill unfathomable data, and in many cases find intrigue and entertainment in even the driest of subjects.

Clarifying the abstract

Witnessing the economic climate that’s seen this type of work commissioned, I believe it’s the sudden downturn of the early millennium that’s made storytelling a paramount concern for business. Faced with some of the most competitive markets of the last 50 years, businesses have suddenly realised they need to claim the attribute that defines them, a reason for the public to buy — a story.

Looking over Airside’s work, a great example of this ‘purposeful storytelling’ can be found in Airside’s information film for Vitsœ, keepers of Dieter Rams’s 606 Universal Shelving System, where Airside has condensed 50 years of Vitsœ’s core philosophy: ‘live better, with less, that lasts longer’ into just over 2 minutes.

Narrative in branding — Wolff Olins's AOL re-branding (Image: Wolff Olins)

Narrative in product design — Nike+ iPhone running system (Image: Nike)

However, it’s not just Airside who can be found telling stories. Open your Creative Reviews and your Design Weeks and you will see how narrative is pervading design: influencing everything from branding to the next generation of product design — storytelling (and consequently narrative) is seemingly everywhere.

Branding, meet social media...

But why? Well, aside from the economics of the recession, I believe the emergence of storytelling is concurrent with the rapid developments surrounding branding and social media, and crucially, how these two fields are becoming increasingly related in the search for ‘engagement’.

Social media will eat itself

The term ‘engagement’ is one of those buzzwords that all too often gets bandied around when a company has little to say. But in the next few years, I think engagement will really come to mean something, as the creative industry re-examines how it engages with an audience that’s undergone a seismic change.

Storytelling, it's all 'me, me, me'

Over ten years into this new century, we’ve all seen how social media has changed our association with information. We’ve been enabled to freely share, comment and create everything and anything conceivable — we’re no longer passive consumers of information. But what social media has also given us is a palatable narrative.

It's out there for all to see

This is by no means a new concept — we’ve always had a narrative. Everybody is the lead in their own personal story. But now the technology exists to capture and document this narrative with frightening efficiency — it has contextualised our existence in a way other people can dip in and out of, perhaps even ‘live’ within. How many of us have experienced someone’s day-to-day routine on Twitter or trawled through an ex’s Facebook account?

A digital familiar

Intriguingly, everyone who opts into social media now possesses an extra level of context. Tweets, Flickr streams, status updates — these are all slices of time that go to create what you could call a digital familiar. A virtual you, playing out their life intermittently, one upload at a time.

Brands can be social entities too

But we’re not the only ones who are capable of doing this — brands can also exist in this digital space. By adopting the same technology they too can possess a narrative, and like us, they too can become a social entity.

A 'human' brand

A brand that’s capable of being viewed a social entity is a real sea-change moment for branding. It heralds an era where business can finally exist in the same social channels we occupy, and crucially, interact with us at a ‘human’ level. This is the beginning of a new type of brand — a ‘social brand’ — a curious entity that’s capable of engaging with an audience on a personal level.

I believe this level of engagement will give ‘social brands’ a phenomenal advantage over traditional, more remote, brands because the social narrative that defines this new breed of business also implies humanity — and nothing is more engaging for audience than humanity, even if it doesn’t really exist.

Airside: character and humanity aplenty (Image: Airside)

Implied humanity is something that Airside knows only too well, having been in the business of giving abstract things character and life for nearly 15 years.

Clockwise from top-left, Airside characters for Fiat, Nokia, Clear and Vitsœ (Image: Airside)

Airside has given countless brands a face, metaphorically or otherwise, because there’s simply no better way at emotionally engaging a client’s audience than with something human. But humanity doesn’t necessarily begin and end with character, humanity is a sum of many other facets; something as abstract as humour can also convey warmth, since there has to be someone responsible for it.

Airside is well versed in all these techniques, but looking over its lengthly back-catalogue, it’s the notably the Stitches and Meeghoteph that demonstrate how incredibly engaging something can become when given implied humanity.

The Stitches (Image: Airside)

The Stitches were the woolly offspring of Airside’s Anne Brassier, a campion of all-things woolen. Each Stitch she created was a hand-knitted individual, released into the world with a fully realised personality. Crucially, each Stitch was adopted, never bought.

Stitches in 'the wild' (Image: Airside)

But as the Stitches entered the wild, Airside began to notice they were writing blogs and apparently traveling the world, as well as engaging in some rather questionable behavior. Online at least, the Stitches were living lives of their own.

Don't make him angry! (Image: Airside)

Similarly, Meeghoteph’s interactive booth found a similar emotional connection with it’s audience.

Airsiders suffer for their art (Image: Airside)

Meeghoteph was an ancient alien God, confined to a booth, who visitors could interact with at the Big Chill Festival. However, hidden behind the booth’s curtain you would find an uncomfortable Airsider, operating Meeghoteph with a set of hidden controls.

With this set up, Meeghoteph could engage festival-goers in conversation, and being a festival, Meeghoteph’s booth was privy to some very colourful conversation indeed. But crucially, some of the festival-goers had a very different Meeghoteph experience. Although some saw him as a bit of fun, many saw him as a confidant, a friend or even a shoulder to cry on. As the festival wore on, people begun to bare their soul to the animated character — bizarre when you consider Meeghoteph’s visitors never once saw a human face.

Twitter and Facebook defined

It would seem that humanity, even if it’s implied, is an incredibly effective enabler for audience engagement — and ‘social brands’ inherently understand this. With the idea of ‘humanity’ so highly valued, it was only a matter of time before Facebook and Twitter, networks built around human engagement, realised their worth to ‘social brands’.

If a brand could now possess character, these social giants wanted to be the first services to give them a voice: hastily creating innovations to give them a narrative on their networks, smoothing the way for users to share promoted content.

'When social networks go bad...' (Image: Twitter)

But as social networks have become stronger, they’ve become more volatile. The very networks that propagated ‘social brands’ now have the ability to destroy them. In fact, it’s a wonder ‘social brands’ have managed to get this far. Since perversely, for image-conscious businesses, social networks are relatively un-policed environments, where brands have little-to-no control over what’s said about them.

This is a sting felt keenly by BP in the aftermath of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, where a slow and inadequate response gave rise to an incredibly popular (175,400 followers and counting) spoof Twitter account, registered to satirise and ultimately condemn the company. Aptly, by making themselves more appear more ‘human’, ‘social brands’ made themselves easier to criticise, even attack.

Don't cross the streams!

Ultimately I think it’s this fragility of the ‘social brand’ that will see storytelling emerge a major force in design.

This is because storytelling is as much about controlling narrative as it is about creating it. To some extent this already happens within our existing design work, but as our channels of communication and consumption merge with those from business, storytelling will become the key skill employed to effortlessly intertwine a brand’s narrative with yours.

But this storytelling won’t be restricted to the web or social networking, it will permeate every discipline, anything that faces an audience.

The spread of social media

As technology progresses ever further ‘social brands’ will seek to reject unpredictable third-party social networks and occupy the real world in ever more ‘mundane’ ways. They will commission their own interfaces, their own networks, and seek to become an invaluable texture that permeates your life.

In fact, if you look closely you might spot this already happening: television programmes are starting to carry hash-tags; newspapers are becoming ‘interactive’; shoes can tell you how fast and far you’ve run, and broadcasters are asking you to inform the news — it’s storytelling at a micro level.

This is the new landscape I believe the create industry is about to enter: a heavily interconnected world, where the traditional creative disciplines are going to be increasingly intertwined and harder to see. As the voice of business becomes harder and harder to distinguish from your friends and family, I’ll wager that storytelling and narrative manipulation will be found at its core.

Storytelling’s power in design is only beginning to be explored — what that means for the future is for us to find out. However, one thing’s for sure — storytelling’s about to grow up.

Does this sound familiar?

If you’re reading this article then there’s a high chance you work within the creative industry… Congratulations, a lifetime of poverty is yours!

Sorry, think of that last remark as a designer’s take on gallows humor. You won’t be poor, just ‘perpetually underfunded’, boom boom.

No, the reason I bring up the subject of profession is to briefly examine what I think is an emerging debate within the creative industry: the thorny issue of job-description.

The phrase that launched a thousand awkward conversations

I want you to pause for a moment and picture this familiar situation: you’re at a party, glass in-hand, when someone drops that perennial ice-breaker — ‘so, what do you do?’

Think of your response: what is your job title; your lively hood; your passion?

Now, I’m guessing the majority of you would respond with something like ‘a Designer’ or maybe something exotic like ‘an Art Director’ — but I ask you: do these singular terms really describe what you actually do?

Some say 'yes'...

If your answer was ‘yes’, then I congratulate you. To have such a firm understanding of what you do, and how to apply it with such brevity is a fantastic skill. With this kind of focus, the chances of becoming a revered and eminent authority on your chosen craft is a distinct possibilty.

...Some say 'erm'

However, for those who stumbled at my question, even for a moment, I suspect you dislike being cornered creatively. My guess is that you freely and frequently move between multiple disciplines, whilst paradoxically maintaining a traditional, singular job title.

It's all becoming a blur

No one needs to be told that the creative industry is changing fast. With the internet’s democratization of creativity, and the prevalence of easily attainable software, we’re seeing the boundaries of our creative disciplines blur.

For the first time we’re seeing each successive generation of the creative industry more versatile than the last. Throw a stone in any city’s creative quarter and you’ll hit someone who could not only DJ at a bar mitzvah, but design the invitations and direct the psychedelic after-party visuals as well.

This is incredibly at odds with the status quo: where creative studios and individuals are expected to labour under a specific title or reputation.

‘So what?’ I hear you ask. Well, whilst on the surface this problem seems rather trivial, I think it hints at a much larger problem concerning the creative industry’s marketability — as unlike the creative businesses of yore, modern practitioners have the skills to address a creative brief in any way they choose. Whilst creative freedom has never been so broad, the processes behind this freedom has never been so hard to market.

Mind the gap

I have a belief that each industry finds every other industry innately threatening. Think about it: every single industry is essentially a tribe, it has its leaders, its own lingo, and in many cases, its own geographical stomping ground. In fact, half the fun of seeing a client is to step into ‘their territory’.

We each exist within our own professional micro-culture — and I’m in no doubt that those outside the creative industry view us with the same mixture of suspicion and intrigue as we view them.

However, this tribal perception is also damaging for the business of creativity — as inter-industry suspicion makes the act of commissioning design extremely difficult. Many businesses sadly do not understand the creative process, and ultimately fail to grasp the mercurial craft that lies at the heart of every successful design.

Only a very few people within the creative industry have realised how to successfully remedy this. They have learned how to monetize design: to market the creative process using the language of business.

A studio or individual that describes itself as being ‘able to do anything’ is difficult to market to those who commission creative solutions. Multidisciplined studios and individuals are problematic for marketeers, who’s job it is to connect their firms to the creative talent. Day to day they look for quantifiable results: financial, behavioral, or otherwise — and this extends to creative commissioning. It’s far clearer (and easier) to hire a designer to design, an illustrator to illustrate and a director to direct. Present a studio or individual who offers these skills or more, and it leads to confusion.

We’re stuck with our specialised descriptors because our client’s dictate it.

To some it's a dirty word

However, there is one descriptor that could go some way to addressing this problem, but I’ve taken great pains to avoid using it in my argument since, shall we say, it’s quite a loaded term.

It’s the term ‘Creative’ — yes, that one with a capital letter.

Pronounced 'cre-a-div'

As a descriptor to ease the commissioning of multidisciplinarians, it’s a pretty good catch-all term. A person who defines themselves as a Creative is unbound by expectations. Their response to a brief could as easily be a film as it could be an illustration. But many have a fundamental problem with this term. Yes, it’s light and unspecific, but it’s these qualities that have seen it become indistinguishable from a specific sector of the creative industry.

To call it a hijacking is a little too strong, but advertising has got the term Creative by the short-and-curlies. In fact, so strong is the word’s association, a Creative is now a fully realised pop-culture stereotype: a hot-desking, youtube-ing, Fitzrov-ing, stereotype.

In advertising Creatives are at the business end of ideas, it’s their job to pluck the next big idea from the ether, and I presume it’s the absence of a tangible craft that’s seen this term so widely adopted.

I also suspect Creative is a term used by the advertising industry to cover their staff — after all, to some of the public, advertising is a threatening profession.

Ka-ching!

‘Advertisers’ are there to sell you something, where as ‘Creatives’ are softer types. Their concern is about the idea, they’re not there to sell but to create a mythology around their product. If you happen to buy the product because of this, then good for you.

Pronounced 'creative'

However, any studio that presents itself as a Creative studio, a collective that can do whatever a client wants, is too unspecific, too woolly for the people who commission creative work.

Many studios who have taken this approach have only managed to stay in business by systematically breaking up their output in favour of presenting their portfolio piecemeal to clients — addressing the problem at the expense of being further labeled as a studio of a particular discipline.

‘Graphic Design’ is a loaded term. It’s synonymous with print, with signage, with ‘surface’, but it totally fails to embrace new forms of expression bought by new technology. The same can be said for other singular descriptors.

In the future, I’d like to be able to refer to ‘Creative studios’ and know that clients will understand these types of studios are capable of any creative response. Design, in all its forms, cannot be wedded to a single discipline (after all, ‘form must follow function’) — and I believe the term Creative could well remedy this.

With this situation as the status quo, I’d personally like to see the term Creative embraced to describe those agencies and individuals who are capable at turning their hand to any creative solution. With time and rigorous adoption this terminology would become as clear to those commissioning design as the usual, singular, descriptors. Creative would become a descriptor to represent a studio or individual unbound by discipline, focused instead on free creative responses — whatever these turn out to be.

The 2009 London Underground map (Image: Transport for London)

In 2011 the UK’s design community was rocked (or nudged, depending on your viewpoint), by a frosty televisual exchange between information designer David McCandless and the infamously opinionated Neville Brody. Appearing on BBC 2′s flagship current affairs programme Newsnight, the pair debated the validity of information design, with McCandless in favour and Brody against. Whilst the jury’s out on whether information graphics is indeed ‘the language of the eye’ (McCandless) or just ‘beguiling and seductive’, (Brody), it was a treat to see graphic design go ‘mainstream’ — even if it was at a quarter to eleven on a weekday night. However, all this talk about information graphics got me thinking about the value of information design, and about the influence of one info-graphic in particular.

The London Underground map is perhaps one of the most famous (and effective) designs of the 20th century, so when questioning the validity of information design it’s hard take a dim view when considering the map’s profound influence. But what excites me about information graphics and specifically the London Underground map, is that this type of info-graphic suggests something found very rarely in graphic design. Perfection.

Mark Ovenden (Image: Annie Mole)

Many years ago, whilst studying at university, I happened to attend a lecture on information design delivered by author and journalist Mark Ovenden. Compiled to promote his new book Transit Maps of the World, Ovenden’s talk showcased his research into how the world’s great cities tackled mass-transit mapping, introducing an audience of under-grads to the trials and tribulations of every information designer’s wet-dream.

The Tokyo Subway Route Map (Image: Bureau of Transportation, Tokyo Metropolitan Government)

I remember the most striking aspect of Ovenden’s talk was the shear breadth of mapping presented — never before had I seen so many metro maps in one place. However, instead of seeing a diverse set of mapping solutions, it soon became apparent that most of the world’s transit maps shared a single graphic ancestor: Henry Beck’s (known to many as Harry Beck) trail-blazing interpretation of the London Underground.

Harry Beck's original interpretation of the London Underground network (Image: Transport for London)

Originally drafted in 1931, Beck’s schematic re-design of the London Underground network was staggeringly original. His use of topological distancing (as opposed to geographically accurate distancing), simple iconography and the introduction of a 45-degree grid suggested a perfect solution for transit mapping.

The London Underground map before the adoption of Beck's 1931 re-design (Image: Transport for London)

In stark contrast London Underground’s previous effort, whilst well intentioned, suddenly seemed difficult to read by comparison.

A detail of Transport for London's 2009 re-design (Image: Transport for London)

And it’s time that’s proved the effectiveness of Beck’s approach. Since, despite being one of the most re-designed maps in existence, the logical structure Beck proposed has remained unshakable. Even Transport for London’s most recent update could do little to better it, opting for a spring-clean rather than a complete overhaul.

The Paris Métro et RER (Image: Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens)

Yet the strongest argument for the power of Beck’s design is it’s massive influence over this form of information design: a glance at any contemporary metro map is essentially a window onto the past, showing the same graphic system Beck defined nearly a century ago. With such extensive take up, Beck’s ideas on mass-transit mapping can be seen as vital now as they were in the 1930s: an astonishing achievement for any design, let alone an info-graphic.

And it’s this near uniform adoption of Beck’s approach to mass-transit information design that suggests he hit on some kind of perfection with his approach.

Yet, to use the word ‘perfection’ could be considered somewhat an oxymoron in the field of graphic design. Design itself is a changeable vessel, a conduit for communication limited only by a designer’s skill. Perfection shouldn’t exist in a medium that offers an infinite set of valid responses, so how can there be such a thing as a ‘perfect design’?

Perfection? (Image: Getty Images)

The term ‘perfection’ is a very loaded word; when thinking about perfection, the mind immediately comes to rest on ideas of impossible beauty. It’s word filled with classic allusions: beautiful cars, beautiful villas, beautiful people; there’s an ephemeral quality about the word that suggests proportion, balance and grace. Obviously, while design can be all these things it’s very hard for design to be viewed as conclusively perfect: subjectivity simply won’t allow it. However, what makes Beck’s design timeless (and arguably perfect) is that his map is an information graphic, a very particular form of graphic design.

Information design is a form of design that values the clarity of its message above all other concerns; the medium’s sole aim is to communicate as quickly and as efficiently as possible. With this in mind, Beck’s map can be considered one of the finest examples of information graphics ever created — it’s efficiency defined.

Beck realised the previous London Underground maps attempted to communicate too much: the public didn’t need to know how far the next station was, they just needed to know how it was connected. The most important and immediate thing the public needed to know was their context within the system. By identifying this and other redundant information on the existing London Underground map, Beck was able to ditch a stylistic approach, letting the map’s function define the design’s overall aesthetic.

Harry Beck's original sketch for his version of the London Underground map (Image: The Victoria & Albert Museum)

By realising such a closed, artificial system could suggest it’s own interpretation Beck acted as a guide, letting the map represent itself through the filter of his topological system. By trusting the data at hand he was able to create a map free from aesthetic choice and subjectivity. Beck’s masterstroke was to let logic define his design, and I think it’s this dogged logic that makes his map perfect, since, as Spock would point out: you cannot argue with logic.

The importance of logic in information design cannot be underestimated. Since info-graphics are regularly employed to describe the abstract, any diagram’s logic has to be solid enough to carry the reader through; this is especially important when there are no figurative images to fall back on. Beck’s map is devoid of pictorial representation, existing as a collection of topologically distanced points. It’s a map created from perfectly executed logic, and so by its nature, is perfectly executed.

The mind-bending MTA New York Subway map (Image: Metropolitan Transportation Authority)

Though my opinion on Beck’s map is obviously subjective I urge you to think about the mess made when designers try to amend his approach to transit-mapping. Though an excellent designer, Michael Hertz’s re-design of the New York Subway map was an info-graphic car crash of curvy lines and confused iconography.

Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 MTA New York Subway map (Image: Metropolitan Transportation Authority)

By attempting to reject Massimo Vignelli’s (and duly Beck’s) ideas on topological distancing, Hertz created an extremely ineffective version of this form of info-graphic.

The KICKMap, an independent re-design of the MTA New York Subway map (Image: KICKMap)

As an aside, such was the frustration with the Hertz re-design, the KICKMap was created: a further re-design of New York Subway map that pulled the logic of New York’s mass-transit info-graphic closer to the Beck template.

Dieter Rams's SK4 record player (Image: Design Museum)

So, if a design is primarily concerned with aesthetics, there will always be a number of visual solutions that will be just as valid as the next. Obviously, some choices will be better than others, but I would argue that since aesthetics imply choice, there will always be a slightly different way to approach a successful design. In comparison, logical design offers a definitive conclusion. In other words, a solution that is quantifiably better than all others — a perfect solution.

While extreme, these ideas on logic and aesthetics inform day-to-day design more than you think. ‘Form follows function’ and ‘starting with a big idea’ are just two familiar adages that recognise great design has logic firmly at it’s core.

Communication stripped to the bare-minimum

Whilst not always exercises in logical thought, timeless design has a lot in common with great information design because both recognise the importance of stripping back the superfluous to reveal the bare minimum. Removing visual or physical chaff reduces the work the audience have to put in to read the message your design wishes to communicate. Great icons, products, branding, cars, buildings — regardless of the form they take, are all products of design and are consequently there to communicate something, and anything that makes this interplay easier needs to be embraced.

Beck’s London Underground map is one of the finest examples of this visual efficiency and while the map’s restrictive medium goes a long way to making this possible, the endurance of Beck’s thinking should be seen as evidence of a basic truth in graphic design: simplicity is the essence of good design.

'What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given about graphic design?'

If I told you that by the end of this article you’d be a better designer would you believe me? It’s a bold statement and not one I make lightly but I’m willing to put your trust and my reputation on the line to share with you what could be the most useful piece of advice concerning graphic design you’ll ever hear. Even if you disagree, I’d still argue the following advice is an incredibly effective take on the design process.

Recently I had the pleasure of giving a talk to a fantastic group of students from Aberdeen college on the subject of graphic design. The topics covered were varied and numerous, but in the question and answer session that followed I was asked by one student to give my take on ‘what was the best piece of advice you’d ever been given about graphic design?’

This is without a doubt my favourite question to answer: not only because the anecdote is rich like a good old-fashioned story, but because it really did change my outlook on design. In fact I’d go as far to say that you can pretty much divide my professional career into two halves, a before and after, it really was that important.

Bob Gill (Image: Phaidon Press)

I was in my second year of college when I stumbled across the teachings of legendary designer and Fletcher / Forbes / Gill — later Pentagram founder Bob Gill.

'Forget All the Rules You Ever Learned about Graphic Design, Including the Ones in This Book' By Bob Gill (Image: Bob Gill)

And stumbled I indeed did: the Central Saint Martins copy of his book ‘Forget All the Rules You Ever Learned about Graphic Design, Including the Ones in This Book’ quite literally hit me in the face as I careered hap-hazardly into the library’s bookshelf. It would prove to be the best misstep I had ever taken.

The dust cover of this particular edition made this book an oddity (Image: Bob Gill)

I’d been looking for something completely different, but picking the book off the floor I was immediately grabbed by the cover’s authoritative yet contradictory title. Turning the book over I realised that the title was in fact the book’s opening paragraph that snaked its way across and under the dust jacket to continue within the book. I was hooked: this curious book demanded my attention. Discarding my more frivolous reading-material, I sat down in the library aisle, and read the book there and then.

‘Unless you can begin with an interesting problem, it is unlikely you will end up with an interesting solution.’

Bob Gill

It was this single sentence that hit me like a sucker punch to the stomach. Its astonishing brevity in the way it condensed Gill’s countless years of academic toil and experience into a simple statement floored me. It just seemed to make so much sense. For me this single piece of advice had all the hallmarks of a paradigm shift, a sea-change moment, since on reading it and re-reading it, the teaching just seemed so glaringly obvious. How could I have never seen design this clearly?

It was at this precise moment that I began to become a graphic designer. I realised that until a few moments ago I hadn’t had the faintest idea of how to design something. As shameless as it sounds, I’d confess that before I’d read Gill’s book, the closest I came to being a designer was copying (and tweaking) another design I liked.

You'd be surprised at the number of variations Gill's advice can be compared to

The statement’s power comes from its seemingly universal truth. You may have even encountered variants of this advice in more quantifiable professions, like accounting or programming. Here the adage of ‘garbarge in, garbage out’ is rigourously followed: you simply can’t get valid data if your input data is flawed. I find it’s this cool reductionism, an approach to design seemingly at odds with such a notoriously subjective profession, that makes Gill’s teaching so very effective.

At a more base level, in the same way ‘you can’t polish a turd’ or ‘throw good money after bad’ if you begin with an ill-defined or boring problem you will be totally unable to think of an interesting response. Only by re-defining the brief into something interesting, cutting to the core of what you or your client really wants to communicate, can you truely come up with an unexpected response. You may not be answering the actual statement of the brief but you will be answering the true problem of the brief: the solution informing everything from your choice of typeface to the illustrations you will use.

Since the solution naturally suggests the aesthetic choices Gill’s rule serves as the perfect compliment to the idea that ‘form must follow function’, another universal truth of graphic design.

The problem (Image: Bob Gill)

As Gill’s approach to problem solving forms the thematic core of ‘Forget All the Rules…’ the rest of his fantastic book is devoted to illustrating his thinking in a variety of ways. Looking back over the book (it’s since been re-printed a few times) his RentaNooYawka logotype is, for me, one of his most memorable solutions. It not only perfectly illustrates his attitude to problem solving, but it appeals to my love of language. Bob Gill explains:

The solution (Image: Bob Gill)

‘I had a client who supplied guides to tourists, they were called “Rent a New Yorker” and that was the problem. Well, I’m sure every third year design student would immediately do a logo with the skyline of New York with some contemporary typeface underneath it saying “Rent a New Yorker”. To me that’s pretty boring. So the first thing I had to do was to try and convert this problem, which is a very conventional one, into an interesting one. I decided the most interesting statement I could make, the most interesting problem to give myself was to say that “our guides are authentic New Yorkers, they’ll really show you New York!”

Well, how do you communicate that a guide is an authentic New Yorker? Well, eventually I came to the conclusion that if I could give their logo a New York accent that might in some way communicate that these are real New Yorkers. So I suggested to the client that they could spell their name in a New York accent: “RentaNooYawka”. Well, they loved it, but that’s an example of making what is essentially a conventional problem into an interesting one.’

Bob Gill

Reading my enthusiasm for Bob Gill’s approach to design you may be mistaken in thinking I’m slavish to the process. I can’t deny how astonishingly useful it’s been, but I’m not interested in distilling the design process into a dry academic exercise. Gill’s approach is useful because it strips away the indecisiveness that hounds any new problem. All designers are, after all, communicators and what Bob Gill reminds us is that we need to first and foremost concentrate on answering the client’s problem, and anything that can streamline this or make this exercise quicker is to be applauded.

So forget what design is meant to look like, there’s no such thing as ‘style’. Just concentrate on re-defining the problem to get a better solution. And one more thing, purchase some notebooks — I promise you won’t regret it.

Space and graphic design, the final terrifying frontier (Background image: NASA)

Seeing how planetary exploration rarely graces the pages of Creative Review, it’s easy to picture the expressions worn by an audience comprised mainly of creatives, as I wheeled out the first slide of my talk: ‘A Graphic Designer’s Guide to: The Pioneer 10 Plaque’.

Space is vast, but its huge vacuum is nothing compared to the yawning gulf between the subject and graphic design. As this time there’s no free bar to cushion the blow, I’ll provide some context before the science…

8x8 London — 8 designers, 8 minutes each, 8 navels (Image: ilovedesign.com)

A few summers ago I had the good fortune to represent Airside at ilovedesign.com’s 8×8 London hosted by Imperial College. Sold as a spin on the familiar Pecha Kucha event, ilovedesign asked 8 designers to talk for 8 minutes on a subject that inspired them. Although this sounded easy on paper, the darn time limit made it decidedly less so.

To encourage a fast paced and lively event (making sure navel gazing was kept to a minimum) the terrifying dual action of a bell and an air-horn were employed to keep our presentations in check and under the 8 minute mark.

'For those standing up, can I just add that there's a free bar afterwards. Anyone? Free bar? Ah — sod it.' (Image: ilovedesign.com)

The night’s setup (sponsored by Quark) was perhaps the slickest I’ve seen for a talk, and like a fine garnish, we were graced by Noisy Decent Graphics author Ben Terret as our MC. Not only did he do a sterling job of keeping us in check, but I’ve been introduced to more graphic design puns than I’ll ever want to hear.

ilovedesign even managed to film each presentation for posterity, which you can see here at ilovedesign.com.

'No, seriously, there's a free bar afterwards! Ah — sod it.' (Image: ilovedesign.com)

The evening saw presentations from a nicely varied group, with the design heavyweights of John Bateson, Vaughan Oliver, Ian Tait and Richard Hooker sharing the stage with the comparative upstarts of Hellicar & Lewis, HudsonBec and Matt Dent. In retrospect, if this was a designer sandwich, my presentation would have been gherkin surprise.

With an evening on the subject of ‘inspiration’, there’s always a danger of the audience being ‘inspired’ out of their seats and into the free bar, so I risked a curve ball to talk about the design of the Pioneer 10 plaque.

Carl Sagan and the Pioneer 10 plaque (Image: NASA)

To many, the Pioneer 10 plaque is one of those all too familiar images that few can actually place. I must admit that until a few years ago I too was in this majority: though the image and its purpose were clear, the design itself possessed little meaning to me.

However, the more I read about the plaque and the thinking behind it, I came to appreciate just a what a colossal achievement of information design it is. The design is worthy not just for what it represents, but how it communicates information in a way that is totally unlike any piece of design produced before or since.

The design is unqiue because it attempts to present information concerning humanity’s place in the universe in a way that can be read without any prior semiotic knowledge. Essentially it’s created for an end-user with absolutely no concept of human communication.

Consequently, the resulting design remains familiar, yet totally alien. A grand feat considering it was completed in just two weeks, and by just two people. And as an added bonus, it’s a fantastic example of inspired 70s thinking — and we all know where they got their inspiration from.

Carl Sagan, with a friend (Image: NASA)

Frank Drake, without a friend (Image: NASA)

The plaque itself is currently 7.6 billion miles away from Earth having done its job of exploring our outer planetary bodies. Realising that this probe would certainly be the first man-made object to leave our Solar System NASA had the foresight to ask two very different men to undertake the challenge to design what would be man’s eternal calling card.

The men who rose to the occasion were then, and now, two giants of astronomy and astrophysics: Carl Sagan and Frank Drake (he of the famous Drake equation).

Hi-five!

Together, with the life drawing skills of Carl’s wife, this odd couple of science created a plaque to be carried by the Pioneer 10 probe — a diagram that would become an enduring image of space exploration.

Though the plaque’s design is not totally perfect (a few leaps of faith are needed to decode it) it’s a fascinating exercise to unravel it, if only to see just how Frank and Carl used only maths and physics to communicate our place in the universe.

1. The Measurement

The plaque’s design is comprised of four parts: a measurement, a map of our galactic neighborhood, a map of our solar system and a representation of the human species.

Restrictions on the space available meant Frank and Carl had to overlay much of the information, and without words, symbols or numbers the diagram’s constituent parts can seem pretty indecipherable, but the key to translating the design lies with the diagrammatic circles in the top left hand of the diagram. This is the plaque’s key.

Bigger doesn't necessarily mean clearer

Before encoding any information Frank and Carl realised they needed something to give them a measurement from which to calculate time and distance. However this proved to be a bit of a challenge, as they needed to find a universal yardstick that was not only readily observable, but crucially, constant throughout the universe.

Thankfully it happened that hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, had a particular property that provided just that. It even had a snappy name: the Hyperfine Transition of Neutral Hydrogen.

A scary title for sure, but the property is quite easy to explain. A single hydrogen atom can sometimes flip-flop between two energy states, and when this change occurs a small amount of energy is released.

This change in energy is what Frank and Carl attempt to represent in the key: each circle representing a different energy state of the same hydrogen atom. The left circle shows the atom with a low energy, and the right shows the same atom with a high energy. The line between the two shows the energy change of this atom is worth noting.

But to understand just how a time and measurement can be calculated from this atomic property, we have to look a little deeper into the science of the hydrogen atom. It may seem exhaustive, but it’s this energy change that is the key to understanding the rest of the plaque.

When dealing with sub-atomic physics, think of a globe

It’s best to first consider a spinning globe — it sits on an axis, and the globe has a direction of spin. In our globe’s case the direction of the spin and the direction of the axis are intrinsically linked — if the globe were to be flipped upside-down, the direction of the axis would be in the opposite direction meaning the direction of spin would be the opposite too.

A hydrogen atom

The sub-atomic particles that make up a hydrogen atom are no different. Each hydrogen atom’s single proton and electron has an axis direction and most importantly a direction of spin linked to the axis.

The proton and electron usually have their axes aligned and spin in the same direction, giving the hydrogen atom a high energy state.

A gaseous cloud in the Milky Way, take a left at the lights (Image: NASA)

But in the huge gaseous clouds that pepper the Milky Way, hydrogen atoms can sometimes knock together causing their protons and electrons to suddenly spin out in opposite directions, flipping the direction of their respective axes. With the proton and electron now spinning in different directions with their axes unaligned, the hydrogen atom acquires a lower energy state and its excess energy is released in the form of a photon.

One hydrogen atom, two states

And it’s the photon’s release that Frank and Carl attempted to represent with the above diagram. The lines within each circle are aligned differently to represent the two possible alignments of a hydrogen atom’s proton and electron. The line between the two is marked with binary to indicate that the photon’s energy has a unit.

A photon wave's 'time' and 'distance'

A photon is an excellent measuring tool since it exists both as a particle and as a wave, and a wave has both a wavelength and a frequency, in other words, a distance and a time. Consequently, the whole of the plaque’s translation hangs on the two measurements derived from a photon’s wavelength (21 cm) and its frequency (1420 MHz).

2. The Galactic Map

Now with a unit of measurement, the plaque’s galactic map can decoded showing our location in the Milky Way.

14 of our nearest and strongest pulsars

Using our Solar System as a centre point, Frank and Carl drew 14 lines encoded with information to show the 14 strongest pulsars that surround our Sun. An longer and unmarked 15th line was added to show our Solar System’s distance from the Milky Way’s centre.

Like the hydrogen atom’s flip-flopping state, Frank and Carl chose the pulsar above the other galactic landmarks for one crucial reason.

A pulsar in the Crab Nebular (Background image: NASA)

Unlike stars, pulsars posses two unique traits that make them very easy to identify: they spin extremely fast, and instead of emitting light they shoot narrow beams of electromagnetic radiation deep into space. Dense bodies, pulsars have their radiation squeezed by tight magnetic fields, forcing their reach further than most other visible radiation. This makes them very easy to ‘see’.

It’s best to think of pulsars as lighthouses of the night sky. Lighthouses appear to flash, but it’s actually a beam of light moving in a circular motion, and the same thing happens with a pulsar’s spinning beam of radiation.

As a pulsar spins, its beam of radiation hits an observer at regular intervals, giving each pulsar their own unique ‘beat’. Frank and Carl realised that if enough of these ‘beats’ could be identified it would be possible to triangulate the Solar System’s position within the Milky Way.

A line of encoded pulsar information

But a pulsar beat and its relative position to our Solar System and our galaxy is a lot of information to fit into one line, so Frank and Carl decided to use the most universal (and logical) communication tool known to man: binary.

A binary set

By using seperate marks to represent either a 1 or 0, Frank and Carl were able to encode numerical information in a way that was both efficient and universal.

Binary’s great attribute is its logic. Although it was agreed between the pair that language and number could not be used on the plaque, they hypothesised that if a civilization were to actually find the probe they would have to have possess some knowledge of a system such as binary to get there. It was a leap of faith, but it can be argued that they didn’t have a choice.

The pulsar binary decoded

Looking at the mark again in binary, it’s possible to decode the line into a series of 0’s and 1’s, which can then be translated into decimal figures.

The pulsar beat calculation in action

This number is multiplied by the time provided by the hydrogen measurement to calculate the pulsar’s individual ‘beat’ in seconds.

Again, Frank and Carl had to hold onto the belief that the plaque’s future audience would eventually plug in the right unit to get the pulsar’s beat. It’s another leap of faith, but they argued anyone attempting to decode the plaque would surely aim to use only the information supplied on the plaque, rather than introduce outside thinking that could muddy the results.

All the pulsar beats together, I recommend you don't look at this for too long

By applying the same calculation to all the encoded lines on the diagram it’s now possible to calculate the individual ‘beats’ for all 14 pulsars in our galactic neighbourhood.

However, this information is nothing without decoding the line’s other mark, and thankfully it’s a tad easier than the first process.

The mysterious other mark

Within the pulsar line there is another mark set aside from the binary.

The mark's a marker

Frank and Carl could see the opportunity to include a crude physical map of the pulsar’s position, so included an isolated mark to show the pulsar’s rough distance from the centre of our Sun.

A 2D pulsar map

With these marks highlighted it’s easy to see a rudimentary 2D map of the 14 most identifiable pulsars that surround our Solar System.

A prettier 2D pulsar map (Background image: NASA)

It was Frank and Carl’s belief that if enough pulsars from the diagram could be identified, they could be used to triangulate the position of our solar system in the Milky Way — greatly increasing the chance the recipient would find where the probe originated from.

3. The Solar System

The penultimate part of the plaque is a much more local affair. With the position of the probe’s Solar System calculated, Frank and Carl wanted to wanted to show the planetary make up of our Solar System in greater detail to increase the chance of contact. The inclusion of Saturn’s ring was included to make this task easier.

Binary, not Klingon

A closer look at the diagram reveals the planets have been headed in binary. Once decoded the planet’s headers reveal the relative distance of each planet from the sun. The arrow was included at the last minute to give an approximation of the probe’s trajectory. In my opinion this is the Frank and Carl’s only glaring oversight, since an arrow loses its meaning once removed from the context of human understanding.

It's like trying to find an inter-planetary probe in a universe

By decoding the binary headers a set of 10 values are given. Together these can be seen as a series of ratios from which a graphic representation of every planet’s relative distance to the sun. While not the pinnacle of accurately, this result at least gives a clear indication of our solar system’s overall layout. Together with the pulsar map, the representation of our Solar System’s make up would prove extremely useful for pin-pointing the probe’s home planet.

4. The Human Species

The last part of the plaque’s message is to answer the question of who sent it, and ignoring the possibility that extra-terrestrials will forever consider us nudists, Frank and Carl presented a carefully posed man and a woman against a silhouette of the probe.

The male was drawn not only to show the Earth’s universal greeting of good-will, but to demonstrate the movement of joints and reveal our opposable thumb.

As an aside I should add that the two particular figures where chosen as they were meant to be approximations of the most average human beings in the 1970’s.

Mr. Average

I find this particularly worrying, because when I think of an ‘average man’ from the 70s, I think of moobs, a pint of lager and a packet of crisps. Still, first impressions count for a lot.

Binary never looked this good

The only information that needs to be actively decoded on this part of the plaque is a small piece of binary between the woman’s height marks. When converted into decimals and multiplied by 21 cm (derived by the hydrogen measurement) a length of 168 cm is calculated.

This height serves as an excellent reference point for relating the scale of the probe to the average size of the human race.

Decoding this is all well and good, but first you've got to find it (Image: NASA)

And that’s it. As you’ve seen through my rather bumpy translation the plaque is by no means perfect, but I still have a lot of respect for it. It’s an incredibly brave piece of information design, and a great historical artifact, perfectly encapsulating the 1970’s fascination with the possibilities of space. As a disclaimer I should add that I’m no scientist, and I’m writing purely to bring attention to the logical leaps and bounds used to design this unique diagram. So if you find any faults with my explanation, do please get in touch and I will do all in my power rectify the error.

If the probe is ever found (and it’s Drake’s cautious estimate to wait 2 million years), the key to the plaque’s success is for other civilisations to be way smarter than a slightly stressed graphic designer.

The Design Museum (Image: Design Museum)

As part of the Design Museum’s Super Contemporary season, I joined fellow Airsiders Nat Hunter, Fred Deakin and Malika Favre to talk about every (yes, every) single job that had passed through the studio in the past 6 months.

The talk is now available as a free mp3 podcast — download it here, and you can listen to our enthralling tales of server management (I did say this was every job) next time you’re on the bus.