Mayor Doyle – its hammer time!
Melbourne Mayor, and self-confessed MC Hammer fan, Robert Doyle’s comments that a conscious decision was made to hire an international branding firm over local designers, because he “wanted the best product and this is not the kind of work that is actually done very widely” (the Age 23/07/09) is an indictment on himself, and unfortunately the Australian graphic design industry.
Cr Doyle, by saying this, exposes himself as not only ignorant of the local design industry – an industry with an enviable international reputation – but also exposes the kind of cultural inferiority complex that infects many of the decision-makers in this country. If he had bothered to look in either the phone book, or visited the Australian Graphic Design Association website, he would have found hundreds of capable designers that actually specialize in branding right here in Victoria.
But this decision also points to a failure by the Australian graphic design profession in the way it represents itself to the community. Australian graphic design is an almost invisible industry. It seems the only time we ever hear about graphic design in the press is when somebody gets wind of how much something has cost, or they don’t like the look of something that is in the public eye. Apart from the odd story in the press about how internationally acclaimed designer Stephen Banham hates the typeface Helvetica (and quite rightly so – it was designed for road signs) our industry hardly rates a mention (and thank God for Stephen or we’d have no press coverage).
More worrying is that graphic design is still viewed by many as something that is not worth spending money on. Jack Davis, president of Ratepayers Victoria, thinks the spending on the new logo is exorbitant, asking ‘Is it made of gold?’ (the Age 23/07/09). $148,000 is not a lot of money, especially if the design stands the test of time, which in design years is about 20 years tops – an investment of just $7,400 a year. How this is countered is up to the design industry, and those who create the design briefs and, might I add, the design budgets – the Cr Doyles of this land.
I’m just glad Cr Doyle’s not in state politics anymore, or we could be sending even more money overseas for projects best handled right here in Victoria by our own, internationally acclaimed local talent.
Bear Hour
Bear Hour by Jenny Tyers
This limited edition book of illustrations by Jenny Tyers is dark and beautiful. A graphic novel that tells the story of one man’s night through ink and watercolours. Only 250 copies are available, all signed and editioned. Only $15 per copy, plus $5 postage and handling in Australia (email us with your name and postal address, and post your cheque or money order, made payable to “Alex Tyers”). Also available in a number of book shops, including Greville Street Books, the Avenue Bookstore, Readings, Ariel, Metropolis and Minotaur, as well as the fantastic Sticky Institute (in the underground tunnel leading to Degraves Street from Flinders Station).
You can see more of Jen’s work at www.jennifertyers.com
Panadol label instructions
Several years ago, we developed a new way of designing medicine labels. At the time we thought that we were only helping to improve the instructions on GSK’s Panadol label, however, since its implementation our approach has been repeatedly mimicked by pharmaceutical companies, so much so that our design approach (developed for the CRI) has become somewhat of a design standard for medicine labels.
We created a list of tasks that would lead a consumer to to identify, select and use the medicine appropriately. We tested the old label to see whether it could be used for these tasks and used the evidence from testing to redesign the label. The results showed us the way a consumer needed the information presented to them, basically in the form of a long list, and the order that this list needed to be. It seems like an obvious approach, but at the time it wasn’t.
Since implementation most companies have adopted a similar approach to these highly usable and successful label instructions. This redesign was also the winner of the inaugural Quality Use of Medicines Award.
Improperganda
‘Coles can be saved, branding experts believe.’
This headline appeared in The Age business section, on Saturday October 27th 2007. All praise be to the brand experts I thought to myself. Well, actually I lie. It was more a feeling of incredulity at such a preposterous statement. Everyone knows that if something stinks, you can’t get rid of the smell by gift-wrapping it. I read on…
‘Coles can be revived with some intensive surgery.’
The brand experts’ operating theatre is more about theatre than operating. Changing the branding is not a surgical procedure, more like adding a prosthetic limb to help it hobble along.
The article continued in much the same way.
‘What retailers have is space where they can talk to you, have conversations with you, engage with you, inspire you.’
The last thing I want is to be ‘engaged with’ when I am buying a 12 roll pack of loo paper.
We designers are great at talking crap. Many of us believe our own crap. And, unfortunately many in our industry believe that spinning crap is what we are being paid to do.
It is precisely this kind of design industry propaganda that undermines our industry. How can anyone view what we do in a professional light when design practitioners make such ridiculous claims? (Proven in this case by the fact that the brand experts did not save Coles, rather a corporate takeover by Wesfarmers).
As designers we are in the business of creating propaganda. We help to present things in a deliciously palatable way, regardless of whether they are bad, bland or bull.
Designers are often told by their clients what to do and how to do it. But, if you were to hire a plumber, I doubt you would tell him where to lay the pipes. Unlike a good plumbing job – where toilets flush, showers flow and pipes drain – there is no clear evidence provided to clients to show that a design will work.
Rather than providing spin, we should be providing evidence that a design works. How do we do this? By demonstrating that the intended user can read the design, navigate their way through it, and act appropriately on the information it provides – for example, using the information on a medicine label to take the right dose, using warnings on a toy box to buy a suitable product for a child under 3, using a bill to find out when to pay, using signage to find the maternity section, and so on. If designers focussed on developing design solutions that not only looked good, but were usable and functional, perhaps less propaganda would be needed. Unfortunately, many of us have nothing more than aesthetic arguments to support what we do at the design stage, resulting in the kind of terrible dross we see peddled by the brand experts in The Age article. And, as long as clients stay hooked on the rain dance rather than the actual rain, we will continue to see more of the same.
We are also in the habit of continually re-branding ourselves: commercial artists became graphic artists, who became graphic designers, who became communication designers, corporate identity specialists, branding experts, wayfinders, and information architects. People could be forgiven for not knowing what industry we are actually in.
Interestingly, architects do not feel the need to change their industry title every 5-10 years. This speaks volumes about the difference in the level of professionalism and professional standing that exists within the community for these two disciplines. It doesn’t need to be this way. A move to a performance-based approach would not only improve the standing of designers, but make them more accountable for what they do and say.
It makes me cringe when I read statements, like this one from the brand experts in The Age article, describing the supermarket experience:
‘It’s the sense of having a shopping trip where you know you will come out stimulated, instead of having fulfilled that core and ticked the items on the list.’
The article features a full colour photo of the brand experts, who look like they have never set foot in a supermarket in their lives.
Fortunately for all of us, Douglas Adams had a solution 20 years ago for those among us who undermine our industry. In the final installment of his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy novels, the Golgafrinchams round up all of their designers, hair dressers, documentary filmmakers, governmental bureaucrats and other vacuous inhabitants and trick them into leaving their planet, shipping them off in Ark Fleet Ships programmed to crash-land on a distant planet so they can never return. If only…
This article appeared in Open manifesto {4}, Australia’s leading design publication and brainchild of Kevin Finn. openmanifesto.net
The Rage in Placid Lake – cartoon strip
In the lead-up to the launch of the film the Rage in Placid Lake, Palace Films commissioned us to develop a cartoon strip, a kind of teaser, to whet film-goers appetites. We developed six separate strips which appeared in local street magazines around the country. The stories were written by the extremely talented Tony McNamara, who also wrote and directed the film. Alex drew the cartoons.
