The studio has produced for Saxton paper a guide for small to medium printers to assist their customers who utilise their local print shop to design and produce stationery systems. The guide taps into the notion that people outside of the design industry are looking to personalise, or design their stationery systems.

American graphic design writer Ellen Lupton explores this idea in her 2006 Princeton Architectural Press publication – D.I.Y. Design It Yourself, she states in the opening pages that – design is art people use.

The idea of non-designers designing can be quite threatening to design professionals – I say bring it on. At the very least it will help normal people (who don’t design for a living) experience the process of making design. D.I.Y may also help normal people discover that making design isn’t as easy as it looks, or that design doesn’t happen magically on the computer.

Thanks again to Saxton Paper for this opportunity.

Visit Saxton Paper here, visit Ellen Lupton’s design-your-life journal here

The graphic design for the 2008 Melbourne Fringe Festival is close to hitting the street. We are not at liberty to preview the campaign, however the 27 August is an opportune time to talk about the font we choose to use for the 2008 campaign – Antique Olive.

Designed by Roger Excoffon in 1962 for the French foundry Olive, Antique Olive was designed to be the French equivalent to the Helvetica or Univers font families. It is a curious type family that intrigues from initial review. It’s extremes in stroke weights take on the aesthetics of a serif font, yet it’s squared and sometimes convex edges, with a mix up of brutal and barbed features, make for an awkward type experience. The x height of this font; the height from the baseline and mean line, is one of the largest in the world of font design. It has the potential to be highly legible if it wasn’t compromised by its quirky collection of ascenders and descenders. The “s” and “O” characters are distinctly top heavy, or upside down, and along with numerous character quirks position the design somewhere between a functional serif and a kooky display font on class A drugs.

Many graphic designers love to hate Antique Olive – it has too much personality for modernist design and their is nothing better than inflicting this typeface upon designers seeking clean and sleek design.

Antique Olive’s awkwardness made it an appealing choice for this year’s festival – as it complimented the festival’s thing of being on the edge, and potential questioning of mainstream thinking. It is not a font for the uninitiated layout designer. It is a typeface that requires it’s user to test and fine tune character size and weights, leading, character spacing, column widths and line breaks to achieve quality setting. Be prepared to test print the final result often – it looks very different on screen as apposed to the physical page.

The font weights are peculiar too, only some of the weights have an italic and across all of the range the kerning pairs are unpredictable. The italic overall is a disappointment, as the design is not a true italic that complements its roman counter part. One hopes that this quaint font may become a new project for a contemporary type designer to fine tune, yet maybe Antique Olives’ charm is about embracing its eccentricities.

Australian and International publishers in the pursuit of profit, seem to fall over themselves to produce the latest chef’s version of cookery, yet are absent when it comes to publishing Australian graphic design. As a result Australia has a disturbing lack of publications that track the workings of past and contemporary graphic design.

If one is prepared to look for signs of Australian graphic design, there are many studios have taken the initiative to self fund and produce various forms of monograph. In most cases these books often serve as expensive promotional pieces, which appeal to small audiences and are a limited reference of the profession’s output.

One suspects that this sorry state of affairs is mostly a reflection of how designers perceive themselves, and their subsequent ability to read the audience and package the information they have to offer. Typically, best selling graphic design monographs are by famous designers that: do jobs for other famous people; or write successful fiction novellas as a side project to doing award winning book jacket design. There has to be a better idea to pitch graphic design to major publishers.

Apart from the odd industry award annual, Australia scarcely has few publications that have hundreds, even thousands of work samples that are introduced, categorised, captioned and illustrated for people to review, comprehend and assess. It is no wonder that graphic design is misunderstood by the majority of Australian citizens.

In this sorry situation there are exceptions – Symbols of Australia; originated and authored by designer Mimmo Cossolino, is one of Australia’s most important design publications. Over twenty years old, it is a reference that continues to be a great companion for anyone familiar with local brands and cultural icons. Over fifteen hundred symbols and icons are vividly documented, mostly sourced from early Australian white history, that help the reader trace cultural cues to the Australian brands of today.

What strikes one while quietly musing over this piece is how abstract, humourless, simplified and emotionless modern communication has become – even though our society is educated, operates with complex frameworks and has an ongoing programme of understanding the human condition and the life forces that it operates within.

Symbols of Australia is an amazing cultural contribution made by a remarkable and generous Australian designer. The lack of Australian design books is a call to Australian designers to redefine the design conversation and compel the readership – thank you Mimmo for leading the way.

Contact Symbols of Australia here

Read Jason Grant’s Symbols of Australia review in Eye Magazine no.46 here

We regularly catch up with design issues and stories brought to life by the team at By Design on the ABC’s Radio National.

This week catch up on stories that investigate Font design, Urban design in Bogota, writing and trends in sustainable packaging.

From the website

Presented by Alan Saunders By Design is a program about how we shape our world - a vibrant show about people and the things that surround us.

From the cities and buildings we live in to the cars we drive and clothes we wear, the program deals with architecture and material culture, the politics of the built environment and design - all through the prism of our daily lives.

It explains how, through the creative process, human ideas take on tangible form and designers reinvent the world to keep pace with its changing needs and desires, lifting the quality of our lives.

The program explores how design — the way things look, feel and function — reflects social change; what the decisions we make as consumers of architecture and everyday objects tell us about who we are.

Visit By Design here

Brett Phillips from 3 Deep design tempted Nowality to rattle the cage regarding the recent “refresh” of the ABC’s graphic identity; Australia’s public free to air television broadcaster. So if this piece offends track down Brett as well.

The new year is usually the time for television broadcasters to launch a new season identities or overhaul the brand identity. The last tv brand that hit the Australian with a bang was Channel 7’s brand change on the first day of a new millenia in 2000.

The new ABC brand has been launched with mixed reviews. A brand like the ABC has a lot of history, however over fifty years it has stayed almost the same – probably because it is a public service, rather than a commercial enterprise. The bigger-better-newer factor to attract high ratings and good advertisers isn’t a major factor influencing the development of the ABC’s marketing and brand. 

The digital age has changed the broadcasting in Australia. Media providers have the opportunity to be multichannel broadcasters. As the ABC’s marketing video states – the new digital channel – ABC 2 introduced in 2006, didn’t link in with the existing ABC channel (or Channel 2), and an obvious branding problem transpired.

The new branding scheme launched in February is an attempt to fix the overall brand presentation. The mixed feedback of the new ABC 1 and ABC 2 scheme suggest that the solution is still a work in progress.

The current presentation to have too much going on; what was once a symbol, now has type, a boxed area and symbol too. The discrete on screen branding, or watermark, that has been enjoyed in the past is now a blatant expression. Today it is hard to watch a program on ABC 1 or ABC 2 without being bugged by the watermark in the bottom right corner of the screen – a type, symbol and an area of colour cluster. Blog sites around Australia are rumbling with the same comment.With all due respect to the team that put this scheme together – doesn’t at least one of these elements have to go? – the cluster of type, the symbol and the area of colour? I look at the new ABC scheme and think of my partner as she leaves to go out – routinely she will take a last look in the mirror, remove an something and walk out the door. The design team at the ABC seems to have taken a last look, tried to remove something, but market testing said no, and then launched the new brand campaign.We have taken the liberty of removing either the word ABC or the ABC’s symbol – lissajous curve, to make a point. The symbol and number seem to make sense.

As a design company, we will of course have comments on the tired choice of type – Din (we think) – a type choice that addresses the requirement of the design brief “for a modern, hip, trendy feel”. The current summer ident – bold stripes of red, white and blue creates a Bastille Day crossed with the return of Brit Pop impression, could the designer be french or english one asks?If it is any consolation the recent BBC multichannel brand solution in the UK is heavy handed too. It seems that in 2008 people have become less sophisticated visually and the trend to be blatant over discrete continues. Even though humanity is the most media savvy that it have even been in its 3.6 million year history.

As the clip above clearly demonstrates, the watermark pre change was less of a distraction. Can the management and design team at the ABC give some further thought to this current watermark eye sore – the cliché type choice and summer colour scheme one can live with.

Watch the ABC’s brand launch promo here
1 Sources Wikipedia