TravelSmart is an initiative of the Government of South Australia to promote alternatives to car travel in urban areas. This brochure is full of information and tips to make travelling without a car easy for residents in Adelaide. Its target audience is any resident from the age of 16 to 60+. We produced the design and created the original illustrations throughout.

Our redesign of Nature’s Own range of health product labels on behalf of not-for-profit research organisation CRI, resulted in a number of exciting innovations in label design. We developed a design solution that works effectively over the four different bottle sizes and across the product range in excess of 300 types.

Before doing any design work we tested the old labels with customers to see if they could use them effectively.

We found that the key information on the front of the labels was obscured by cluttering graphic elements such as starbursts and the busy logo. Important product information was missed by customers because it was divided across two panels, while the use of red type on a yellow background made the text difficult to read. The instructions were hard to read because they ‘disappeared’ around the circumference of the bottle. In response to these findings we made a number of significant changes.

As well as reducing the clutter on the front panel by removing elements and cleaning up the logo, we did away with the tired old convention of placing the ‘front panel’ in the middle of the label. Instead, we moved this panel to the left hand side of the label. This layout change allowed the instructions and product information to flow uninterrupted as a list. We also rotated the instructional text sideways so that it did not disappear around the bottle’s circumference. This was a radical departure from what had been produced previously.

Finally, we changed the order of the information in the instructions to reflect the order that a consumer would follow when making a choice, or when using the product.

When we tested the new label design the usability problems had vanished. Nature’s Own have adopted these labels and successfully implemented the design across their entire range. The design received the annual Quality Use of Medicines award for label innovation in 2005.

In 2005/06 Country Energy – a major supplier of gas and electricity to rural and regional NSW – commissioned us to develop a new bill design. The redesign project was aimed at addressing the high number of late payments made by customers. Country Energy also wanted to streamline the payment instructions so that their preferred methods of receiving payment were followed.

We conducted three rounds of usability testing with Country Energy customers in the major regional centres of Bathurst, Queenbeayan and Port Macquarie. The findings from this testing provided invaluable information on which to develop the final bill design. We found that there was a need to simplify the metering information and graphs, and improve the navigation for customers so they could find their account number, the due date and the total amount due, and the contact information more easily.

The new Country Energy bill design, with its harmonious colour scheme, uncluttered base stationery and type hierarchy, and simplified presentation of electricity and natural gas meter information, clearly has the customer in mind. Key design and text components have been reordered so that customers can readily find and understand information that is important to them, such as the total due and when they have to pay.

Since the launch of the redesigned bill, Country Energy staff have reported a reduction in the number of customers making bill enquiries to their call centres, and a decrease in the number of overdue notices being sent to customers.

Recently I was travelling back to my office from Melbourne’s city centre via a train that circles the inner city—the city loop. Sitting alongside me were a couple of anxious middle-aged English tourists. They were debating whether or not they should get off at the next station—on their map the station was listed as Spencer Street—but the announcement was telling them that the approaching station was Southern Cross. I told them the name had recently changed and they happily hopped off the train and went on their way.

This got me thinking about the new name. Why has it changed from Spencer Street to Southern Cross? Which consultant or spin doctor had this amazing brain-wave? Certainly nobody from the design industry seems to have been consulted, or at least anyone from the design industry that knows anything about signage and way finding systems.

Looking around, its a nice looking station, with confident use of simple modern shapes and materials, unlike Federation Square which could have been so much better with just a little editing. The roof structure is a sight to behold – it seems like the architects have taken their inspiration from either Pamela Andersons‘s breasts or ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle. Unfortunately the station signage is lost amongst the steel supports of this architectural marvel.

The advertising ‘guff’ claims that the Southern Cross Station will provide me with a truly 21st century travel experience. However, changing the station’s name to Southern Cross makes the experience of wayfinding anything but 21st century.

Travelers orientate themselves through a number of ways: memory or familiarity, landmarks, and street/place names being the most common. If I need to catch a train I will read a Met route map, and use a street or place name – including place names that relate to landmarks – to work out what train I need to catch, and when to get off that train.

The name Southern Cross does not help me. I know that if I get off at Flinders Street station I’ll be at Flinders Street in the city. If I get off at Flagstaff Station, I’ll be near Flagstaff Gardens. Parliament is adjacent to Parliament House and the recently renamed Melbourne Central station is smack bang underneath Melbourne Central. Southern Cross however, is only useful in telling me that, yes, I am somewhere in the southern hemisphere. And if you don’t know that, then you really shouldn’t be catching public transport on your own.

The name of a station aids wayfinding by providing travelers with a description of where they are. Spencer Street station was perfectly suited to this. If the name did need to change, then perhaps Docklands Station would have been more apt, given that Spencer Street straddles the new Docklands precinct.

This station is the city’s main terminus for country and interstate trains and buses. Approximately 55,000 people pass through the station on a normal working day, and around 15 million people a year. Such an important station should not have fallen prey to marketing spin. We were told it was all going to be finished in time for the Commonwealth Games. It wasn’t. Lucky for them they didn’t need to get off at this station for too many events.

Heard this quote? “Chip Kidd is the closest thing to a rock star in graphic design”. How about this quote? “Book design has been described as before Chip Kidd and after Chip Kidd.” What about this one? “The AGIdeas conference can be described as before Alex Tyers and after Alex Tyers.” Sound ridiculous? These are just the kind of grandiose statements about designers that make me dry retch. In an industry that is often lamented by its protagonists as being ‘invisible’ we are overly eager to clamour for visible design heroes. Fortunately, in the case of Chip Kidd, we actually have one.

I didn’t start out thinking that way though.

A couple of days earlier Andrew and I had planned the complete Sunday – Chip Kidd’s book signing at Metropolis, followed by a twilight football match at the MCG between Carlton and the Tigers. (Go Blues!)

I like reading, especially comics. I have a stack of publications on my shelves at home wrapped in Chip Kidd jackets. I wished I’d brought along my copy of ‘Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans – the best of McSweeney’s humour catalogue’, for Chip Kidd to sign. Instead I purchased a copy of Chip Kidd Book One and sidled up to the book signing table. After a brief introduction Chip proceeded to sign my book with the words: “I can’t think of anything to write. Sorry.”

I must say this was a bit of a let down. No clever witticisms or bon mots for me. He seemed either totally disinterested or brutally honest. I could only hope that Chip had a little more to say in his AGIdeas presentation.

Subsequently I arrived at AGIdeas with quite low expectations. Chip Kidd’s talk was late after being delayed by presentations from a guy who loves to stack rocks, a Sydney studio by the name of Zed preaching the virtues of ‘radicality’ (what the hell?) and by Graphic Thought Facilities’ tales of interesting gallery signage projects.

I found Chip Kidd’s presentation to be not only entertaining, but full of insight, considered opinion, and lessons for all of us. His talk was well-structured and planned. Chip had actually thought long and hard about what he could say to give us a sense of his perspective about our craft. More than just giving us a run-down on the work he has done, he revealed himself.

Chip Kidd lives pretty much at the centre of Chip Kidd land. Consequently, much of his work seems driven primarily by self references. From playing second fiddle to Batman as a child (his mother used to dress him in a very cute Robin costume she made herself) to snapping ‘Big Nozzo’ at the Portuguese fisherman village parade while staying with his partner in their weekender – its all there in his work. I couldn’t help but feel that these personal references must occur over and over, evolving and changing over time, in different contexts and in response to different briefs.

Even the words that Chip Kidd inscribed in my book started to make sense after he described a poster brief for Adobe that he received. It was largely the responsibility of Chip to develop his own brief, to come up with something that was suitable. Like many of us, he struggled with the blank canvas for some time, initially developing a poster that said ‘I couldn’t think of anything’. The client hated it. He then used the photograph of ‘Big Nozzo’ – a person dressed as a hideous green nose. Again, the client responded badly thinking that it was a big brain. Finally it took a frustrated conversation between Chip and the client to provide an inkling of a brief. The final solution utilised a commissioned illustration of an oyster by comic book artist and illustrator Charles Burns.

Chip likes to respond to briefs rather than making up his own. In his words, ‘that is why (he) is a designer not an artist’. I have often thought that one of the fundamental differences between artists and designers is that an artist defines their own brief while a designer interprets a brief that someone else has provided. It is great to hear someone tell you something that reaffirms your own thoughts, and makes you think harder about what you do yourself. Chip did just that throughout his presentation.

Chip reads every book that he designs – and not just the good ones. Again, this is part of the self referencing process for Chip. He reads the novels, lets them become part of him, and then uses his own interpretation and experiences to develop the design solution. How often do we as designers even consider the content that we are working with? How many design possibilities do we miss out on exploring because the text is treated as a design element rather than words with actual meaning?

I liked the way Chip Kidd brought a bit of classroom into his presentation. To demonstrate the importance of experimenting with different voices in design Chip gave a somewhat camp impression of the Wicked Witch from Wizard of Oz reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Sometimes it works, sometimes you need to use a voice that is appropriate. Chip also spoke a little about the use of scale of image – big works for him.

One theme in his work that mimics his self-referencing is the idea of a book jacket within a book jacket. Chip showed us a series of covers for crime writer James Elroy’s novels where he had employed this visual device – gunmen jumping from the covers of a novel, bad guys being punched right out of a page, crime vixens resplendent on an open book. Personally, I hated the look of these, but it did provide an insight into Chip’s thinking process and showed that sometimes if you try to be too clever the result can appear a little contrived.

Chip is a comic book tragic and gleefully showed us the work he has produced for two new comic book series – Superman, and Batman and Robin. He created mastheads for these by stretching type into perspective in Photoshop. On Superman the ‘Super’ was in the foreground, while on the Batman and Robin comic book cover ‘Robin’ was in the foreground – finally Robin was not playing second fiddle to Batman – at least typographically.

Crosswords are a passion for Chip. He uses them as a means to sharpen his word association skills. (I have been doing crosswords as often as possible since his talk to see if it will make any difference to me but no obvious difference so far…) Chip seemed to yearn to be back at home in New York doing crosswords after a month on the road in Australia – incidentally the longest he’d ever been away from home. He finished his presentation with the answer to a crossword clue that he had revealed earlier in his presentation – clue: ‘a number of people’, answer: ‘anaesthetist’. The audience was definitely not ‘numbed’ by Chip Kidd.

Every now and then you hear a speaker that actually makes some difference to the way you see things as a designer. Chip Kidd was one of these speakers.