This article appears in the 25th Anniversary issue of Desktop Magazine (no. 275, Sept 2011).

What we did

We conducted an online survey of Australian design students to capture their mood, their opinions and, most of all, their responses to a series of questions about the way they communicate, how they rate their course, and their take on design itself – both now and into the future. The survey was open for one week. During that time we received 375 responses. From these we collected 44 pages of data and comments, which we painstakingly sifted through and crunched down into this article. The image above sums up the average student.

Where the responses came from

Gender ratio

Their computer

75% of students use Macs, while just a quarter are PC:

Their phone

24% of designers are still using a ‘dumb phone’ – I’m guessing they are the same students still using a PC:

Their use of social networking

Almost everyone uses one or more forms of social networking. Facebook is king, followed by blogging and micro-blogging, i.e. twitter. Despite this trend, students were divided 50/50 when asked whether they thought technology will make traditional forms of communication redundant:

How they communicate

You could almost argue that Facebook is killing face-to-face communication, with 97% of students communicating via Facebook, compared with only 30% talking face-to-face. But perhaps they are communicating more, any way they can:

Their most important design consideration

1. It is usable

2. It is innovative

3. It is appropriate

4. It is beautiful

Their age at graduation

The youngest graduating age was 18 – the design equivalent of Doogie Howser – and the oldest was 59. As the graph shows, people are still being attracted to design at later stages in their life, with 115 graduating in their late 20s through to their 50s:

What inspired them to choose a design path

Who inspires them

Most students drew their inspiration from artists/illustrators (71) and graphic designers (52), while others were inspired by filmmakers (11), architects (9), musicians (8), industrial designers (7), photographers (6), philosophers (6), writers (4), fashion designers (4) and last, but not least, God (4).

Still others’ creative passions were fuelled by people as diverse as Greens leader Bob Brown, Fat Duck chef Heston Blumenthal and ex‑Guantanomo Bay in-mate David Hicks.

No Australian made it to the top 5. Perhaps the latest crop of students can turn that around in the next 25 years.

Sixth on the list of people to inspire students were industrial designer Dieter Rams, graphic designer Paul Rand and artist Salvadore Dali.

Ranked 7th were four Sydneysiders: photographer Alexia Sinclair, and designers Mark Gowing, Christopher Doyle and Vince Frost (our favourite UK import). Ranked alongside them were Saul Bass, Jan Tschichold, Leonardo DaVinci, Tim Burton and Hoefler and Frere Jones.

Ken Cato, David Pidgeon and Jackson Mussett were the only Melbourne-based designers to be nominated – each receiving a single nomination. They were just as popular as Antonio Banderas and Lady Gaga.

The best thing about their course

1. Course content – 60%

2. Lecturers – 18%

3. Other students – 14%

The worst thing about their course

1. Cost – 33%

2. Workload – 26%

3. Facilities – 14%

Changes that they would like to see

Of the 104 suggestions we received, 37 were industry-related, with students wanting more industry experience through an internship year on graduation, or part-time internship throughout a course, and more contact with mentors and teachers with practical industry knowledge.

There were 17 suggestions for changes to course content, again much of it industry-related, including a compulsory intern semester, industry-relevant briefs, teaching different production methods, more training for core design skills such as typesetting and use of software, additional time to complete their course (i.e. a four year degree), less group projects and less workload overall.

Students were highly critical of the push for increased school enrolments, requesting smaller class sizes and stricter selection criteria for new students.

‘Make the course more difficult to get into.’

Having taught as a sessional lecture, I believe that making the selection criteria more stringent for both local and international students is pivotal to raising the standard of design graduates. To illustrate this, I recently had to explain what Pantone colours were to a third year student!

Lecturer response to a 3rd year student that does not know what a Pantone colour is…

Factors that will impact on design

What they’re worried about

Students were extremely worried about ‘not being original’, with 155 separate comments about their inability to come up with original ideas and designs, or to sustain a level of originality:

‘Most ideas are taken or done already.’

‘Its hard coming up with a new look for an already exhausted concept.’

‘Creating something new in a world full of diluted ideas and designs that you see everywhere.’

Sounds bleak? It is, especially if you are a prospective employer.

Their second major concern was not being able to find employment, despite 84% believing that their course had adequately prepared them for a career in design.

Students identified the environment and the impact of technology as other major concerns.

What they won’t be designing

We asked students what they won’t be designing in 25 years time. If their responses are correct, there won’t be any forms, annual reports, business cards, or new books.

While I can live without forms, I’m not sure too many businesses or government organisations could function without them. I’d like to think we’ll still be reading books, in one form or another.

How outside influences will change

We asked students to rank four major influences on design today and what they might be in 25 years time. The biggest change they saw was the environment overshadowing society as a major influence.

While it may seem obvious that design is driven by economics – clients who want 1. bums on seats, 2. products sold or 3. better public perception so that 1 and 2 can occur – students ranked the economy as having the least influence on design.

Student optimism

I’m not sure what students are on, but I want some! Students are wildly optimistic about graphic design and the benefits it can bring to their lives and the lives of everyone else around them. This unbridled enthusiasm is a fantastic thing for any employer – anyone hired with these übermensch qualities would surely provide an incredible morale boost for the studio.

My biggest worry is that schools are over-selling design (the bums on seats economic scenario), setting up students for a great big crash once they hit the workforce. It might be time for some plain packaging laws for design schools.

Design will make me rich

60%

Research shows that design is not the easiest road to riches. According to the latest AGDA Industry Survey ¹ 40% of designers earn less than $50k, while just 5% earn more than $150k. As a graduate expect $40k. That will rise to an astronomical $70k for senior designers. In the uk 49% of design studios have an annual turnover of less than £50k ².

I will be working in design 10 years from now

63%

The reality of the situation is that 25-34 year olds make up 46% of the industry workforce and that by the time designers hit their mid 40s, this number is reduced to just 10.5% of the workforce.

Design will reduce the no. of useless products being added to our world

66%

Um, isn’t industrialisation the reason we have piles of ‘things’ in the first place? According to Phillipe Starck (in his reality tv show – Design for Life), better designed products have greater longevity, and they are ‘sexy’.

Design will improve the economy

72%

According to Design Victoria, the design sector contributes $7 billion to Victoria’s economy, and businesses that use design are more likely to show profit growth, as well as higher rates of profit growth.³

Design will be part of the average australian’s vernacular

75%

When travelling overseas, particularly in Europe, one of the things that was a real eye-opener for me was how design is an integral part of society. It is expressed in the way people think, talk and live. They are positive and proud of their design heritage, rather than seeing it as ‘a wank’. I think Australian designers have a huge job ahead of them to make design a positive part of our vernacular.

Design will save the environment

85%

If the trucks roaring past my parents’ house in Tasmania are anything to go by (1 every half hour) – loaded up with old growth Myrtles, King Billy Pine and ancient gums, en route to the woodchippers – design isn’t going to save the planet any time soon.

Design will flourish

95%

Design can flourish, but it seems it can’t be BIG. According to the Design Institute of Australia ⁴ : ‘Small business pressures dominate the industry and the high levels of competition make it difficult to grow larger business structures.’ Their survey found there is an average of 3.1 people per design business.

Design will make communication between people better

98%

This is what I keep telling my wife but she just won’t listen to me.

Design will improve our lives

98%

We’ve been repeating this sentiment since we first worked out how to use a rock to club an animal over the head for dinner. Everything we do has a consequence – design is no exception.

footnotes

1 AGDA Industry Survey (2010)
2 UK Design Industry Research (2010)
3 Five Years On: Victoria’s Design Sector 2003-2008
4 DIA Industry Survey (2004): www.design.org.au/index.cfm?article=112&id=102

END!

‘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.

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.

www.openmanifesto.net.au

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 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.

When I talk to people about what I do, the first thing that they identify as being ‘information design‘ is forms design. While being one of the areas we specialise in, we are relieved to say that its not ALL we do.

Forms enable organisations to obtain the information they need to understand their customers better, collect details for sales, tax returns or insurance claims, or register information for an event. Without forms, many businesses simply could not function.

Forms are often the single most important piece of design for businesses, yet they are often the poor (design-budget) cousin of promotional design and branding. To create effective forms takes time and money. Perhaps its because they aren’t that glamorous, and our emotional associations with them are so poor.

There’s something about forms. No matter what their purpose most people hate them. My wife and I even hated filling out our forms for the baby bonus — despite the guarantee of $5000 at the end of it. It starts with the look and feel of most forms — busy and bland. The detached language used subsequently compounds this odious impression.

People are both wary and tired of giving away their personal details. How often are we asked to provide our name and address? It’s like having the same conversation over and over again — boring and tedious. And, giving away our personal information to someone that engages us with scant interest and in some instances lack of respect is difficult to come at.

Most people have difficulty navigating their way through forms (i.e. the sequencing of the form questions was not clear, or easy to follow), instructions do not make sense, explanations do not explain things and language is often too detached in tone. As a result, errors and omissions of data in required fields are rife. Tthese forms-related problems can result in loss of business, additional spending on continuous form redesign and printing, plus huge expenses for call centres and form processing staff.

It does not need to be like that.

We employ a number of strategic design and writing features in our forms design to improve the form experience for both form fillers and processors.

In June 2007, I attended the 12th Vision Plus IIID Conference in Austria. The four day conference was held in a small alpine village called Schwarzenburg. The village is set amongst the most lush green hills and breathtakingly beautiful mountains I have ever seen – the kind of place where you’d imagine Heidi eating cheese, or Arnie pumping iron.

Speakers from the international design community with a specific interest in information design were invited. The title of the conference was Information Design – Achieving Measurable Results. I submitted a synopsis and was excited to be asked to give a 40 minute presentation. I represented the Communication Research Institute at this conference in my former capacity as a Research Fellow.

My presentation was the first session on the second morning of the conference. After a 30 hour journey and more than a touch of jetlag, I was glad I wasn’t presenting on the first morning as I may have been the first person to ever fall asleep during their own paper.

Using examples from professional projects, I discussed how measuring a design’s performance can improve the design process and deliver superior design outcomes.

The presentation was well received, I received invitations to visit Coventry, Reading and Santiago Universities, requests for contributions to overseas design journals, and the possibility of working with overseas studios on project work. It was exciting to see how much the work I have been doing was valued by my international peers – information design is a lonely world in Australia.

Papers at the conference discussed how and to what extent we can measure the success of design, how the role and impact of design can be quantified, the techniques and technologies that can be used to obtain measurable results, and how designers are building these into their projects.

Projects discussed covered the whole gamut of information design – from signage and wayfinding systems to the more complex representation of financial and health communications. Highlights for me were :

1. Jose Allard’s typeface design for Santiago’s transport system based on the hand-painted typography of Chiles personalised buses (each bus driver tended to make his bus all his own, at least visually) showed that even under the crushing conformity of modernisation, individual expression – albeit standardised – still has a place and a very loud voice.

2. Krzystof Lenk’s students’ work from Rhode Island School of Design based on Harper’s Magazine’s Annual Index – a page of statistical data on American society – where various statistics were represented in an immediate and visual way.

3. Paul Stiff’s discussion of rudimentary wayfinding maps – an ephemeral collection of hand-drawn notes, maps and diagrams on pieces of scrap paper, napkins and on the back of cards – that demonstrated that in everday life most people create both cognitive and tangible aids for navigating.

Not to mention, meeting and talking with the amazing people from this industry that are doing such interesting work all over the world.

It was obvious from the conference that there are many differing views and levels of competency in the design industry when it comes to measuring design. While some speakers expressed concern over the difficulty of measuring design, others including myself, demonstrated that not only is the measuring of a design’s performance a straightforward process, but is also a key stage or component of any design process that achieves the best outcomes for our clients, and more importantly for the users of the designs we produce.

I learned a lot from this conference and hope to bring some of this inspiration to my work here in Australia.

Hands up who has ever watched someone actually using something they have designed?

Its interesting that we are in the business of designing things that are intended to be used by people, yet we don’t ever take the time to observe how well our designs can be used.

We not only watch people using my designs, but actually incorporate this as part of our design process. What I am talking about is design testing and what I am going to show you is that the only way that you would know that a design can be used effectively is to observe people using it.

You don’t need a lot of people to help you test the design. After 6 interviews most of the faults have been uncovered. By testing the design with more people you don’t necessarily find out anything more about what is wrong with it.

Design usability must be tested in one-on one ‘depth’ interviews rather than focus groups. When was the last time you sat around in a room with 10 other people and collectively looked at your phone bill? It just doesn’t happen. Most design is used in a solitary fashion, so its pointless testing it in a group.

Now I am going to show you some jobs where the testing totally changed our thinking, or led to design solutions far more successful than they would have been if no testing had taken place.

The first is a project for NRMA to redesign their insurance certificates. Their feeling was that it looked cluttered and could do with a design overhaul. When we tested this design we found that people didn’t know what to do with it.

So, we changed the design so that the first page provided a set of steps to follow – such as check your contract, make changes, pay your premium by the due date and so on.

After implementation many customers increased their insurance cover, realising they were underinsured. There was also a huge increase in the number of customers paying their premium on time because they realised they wouldn’t be covered if they paid late. Phone queries fell. And customers have been less inclined to change to other insurers because their insurance policy is more transparent and easy to use – a great example of how good design that considers the end user can build customer loyalty.

After this project we redeveloped NRMA’s Policy Booklets. A lot of document design is based on the traditional book layout – nice cover, followed by general contents, chapters, headings and bodycopy. This is great if your reading a novel but most documents aren’t used in this way. In testing people said that they would only ever use the policy booklet as a quick reference guide, either at the point of taking out insurance or making a claim. So we redesigned the booklet to make it task-orientated – which not only helps you to navigate and use the booklet, but also provides a visual sense of how your policy operates.

At the front is a list of the main tasks you would expect someone to perform using the booklet – such as finding out what the policy covers you for, how to take out a policy and how to make a claim. From here you go to a chapter heading for the task with a list of topics that are involved. And, from here you go straight to the topic you are after. Each topic is divided up into 3 columns – a description of the topic, what NRMA will do and under what conditions. These booklets have been extremely well received by NRMA’s customers, who, based on this design describe NRMA as being open, honest and up-front.

The next job is a label redesign project that we did for Nature’s Own. In testing we found that the key information on the front of the labels was obscured by graphic elements such as the starbursts, the fruit motif and busy little messages. Important product information and instructions on how to use this product were missed by customers because they were divided across two panels, while the use of red type on a yellow background made the instructions difficult to read. These instructions were also hard to read because they ‘disappeared’ around the circumference of the bottle. In response to these findings I made a number of significant changes.

We reduced the clutter on the front panel and moved the ‘front panel’ to the left hand side of the label. It makes no difference where the front panel is placed once it is wrapped around a bottle. This layout 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. Each line of text is essentially on a flat surface. This was a radical departure from what had been produced previously and is a more efficient use of the label space. Finally, we changed the order of the information in the instructions to reflect the order that testing showed a consumer would follow when making a choice, or when using the product.

The next example where testing had a major effect on the design outcome was a redesign of the Telstra bill. Telstra’s bill design had been around for over 12 years. The old bill had been designed when all we had was a landline. Telstra was having a few problems with their bill, in particular, customers weren’t paying on time. When we tested the old design one of the problems we found was that customers couldn’t find the late fee warning. In the new design we made this more prominent by placing it at the point where you need to see it, following on from the bill total and the due date. After this bill went live Telstra’s call centres were flooded with calls from people complaining about the late fee, even though it had been on the old bill for 7 years previously. This is a common by-product of a re-design that is transparent and can actually be used by people. The outcome for Telstra was an increase in the number of customers paying their bill on time. And, it won an AGDA Award for Design Effectiveness – I have never heard such a chorus of groans at an awards night.

In 2005 we redesigned Pfizer’s Codral packaging. One of the benefits of testing is that it shows you what needs to change and the best way to make the changes. A result of this is that in terms of structure and layout there is usually one optimum solution. So, rather than producing half a dozen designs and leaving it to the client, who is rarely an expert designer, to pick one, we only ever produce one design. By only presenting the best option you get the best results once a design is implemented. According to pharmacists these Codral labels are among the most easy to use on the market. Pfizer have even had customers call to commend them on these labels.

Obviously some jobs do not have the budget to include testing, however, we try to apply the best practise approaches and learnings developed through testing to all of our other projects. An example of this is for our client Mezzanine, a wine wholesaler who we produce a yearly pricelist for. Initially Mezzanine was a one-man band in Melbourne, but within 5 years grew to a company with reps in every state except Tasmania. Their sales have effectively doubled each year since the introduction of this pricelist. The pricelists are redesigned with a different theme each year, but are also designed to be highly usable by people.

I’d like to finish by saying that in this industry we are not at the mercy of a bad or incomplete brief. We don’t have to continually reinvent ways to describe ourselves like ‘brand experts’ or ‘information architects’. Through testing we can provide evidence-based reasons to our clients for what we do. Testing fills an enormous hole in the design brief by pinpointing what needs to be addressed by the new design. It also provides clues as to how people are using, and expect to use the design. It provides you with evidence that you can base your new design on, evidence that can also be used to help sell your solution to a client and that your client can in turn use to manage its stakeholders. It allows you to make direct comparisons between the new design and the old. And, it leads to design outcomes that you might never have thought of.

TRANSCRIPT OF A PRESENTATION BY ALEX TYERS FOR AGDA TO THE GRAPHIC DESIGN INDUSTRY, KALEIDE AT RMIT, 360 SWANSTON STREET MELBOURNE 28/05/07

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.