JKR

As Huey Lewis so memorably sang ‘It’s hip to be square’. Beck’s Vier obviously think so, and have gone to presumably much effort to deliver their square necked bottle. But is this effort worthwhile?

Becks – Vier from Blink on Vimeo.

I think so. The TV ad recalls for me some of the classic BBH work for Audi, and I sense there is something similarly Teutonic and ‘precision engineered’ in the Vier brand DNA. Further, the four-sided design equity makes sense for a sub-brand called Vier – the stuff a semiotician’s dreams are made of.

You might (but probably won’t) recall me retelling an anecdote about the production design for Alien back in the seventies. The team re-thought every object, imagining a future version. They were going to do a square cup, but decided this was wrong, as the contours of the mouth fit curves, and that would be equally true in the future. Vier, in bottle and glassware pull off a subtle trick, starting with a square and pulling it out into a circle.

Further, the square is becoming a more significant joined-up equity for the brand; from their green square art initiatives (presumably a nod to the White Cube) to the label design.

All in all, physical signatures can be of massive benefit to brands. On a subtle level, when we embossed the Stella Artois can it was hugely popular with loyal drinkers who wanted a sense of premiumness from ‘their’ brand. And more overtly the ‘chalice’ glass we produced for the same brand struggled to remain in stock in bars, as drinkers liked them enough to keep pinching them – a glass half full problem for the marketing department.

For me, the best example of this approach has to be Orangina – with its subtle orange peel texture and a profile that is basically an orange with a spout – all the better to inform decades of famous posters such as those by Villemot below…

Today’s post begins with floods of tears and a major tantrum – these from my little girl when she saw dad was taking her bottle of Crusha to work. A crackhead denied their fix could not have been more chagrined. Yesterday I was writing about design that goes for the gut punch, and Crusha is a great example of this.

Recently redesigned to make the cat mascot even more lairy, Crusha follows a great truth of branding – if you want others to love you, first you have to love yourself.  In other words, Crusha celebrates its garish nature, taking no prisoners and makes no concessions to ‘healthy nutrition’ or other such namby pamby concerns. It is unapologetically a treat, in lurid colours and lurid design.  In the playground of life it is a Bash Street Kid to Innocent’s Walter the Softy.

Effective design is not always elegant design – the new pack was spotted from several miles distance in the supermarket by my kids. They easily recognised it from the acid trip advertising it runs on TV and spent the duration of our time in the Supermarket begging for it  (having learnt its name from the jingle). I think this is called ‘joined-up-communication’. The joining up goes further: a website which must have virtually designed itself off the pack and ad; and pack details such as the long tongue and claws to carry the recycling message – someone had a laugh doing this. I asked my little one what Crusha was and got four carefully considered words: “Cat. Pink. Milk. Sugar.” So ‘message received’ I guess.

Perhaps Crusha got its moxie as a result of a hard lesson learned – a few years ago it produced a ‘no artificials’ range, which consumers rejected in droves, demanding the return of the taste they craved. You have to be what you are – and there is little point in soft-soaping a proposition like Crusha. So hats off to them for not ‘playing the game’ but rather being a turbo charged version of who they really are. You might not approve of Crusha but it appears Crusha is not seeking approval.

Broadly, I would say there are two kinds of design and designer. The first group do lovely, simple, appealing work which goes for a straightforward gut shot. The second type subscribes to Eye magazine, is up to speed on typographic theory and tends towards a more cerebral approach.

Both are great by the way, this isn’t a competition. But as a couple of examples, consider the Norah Jones concert poster above. Witty, charming, not too taxing to appreciate. I love the peacock in the position normally occupied by Snoopy or Lucy. It doesn’t try hard, but has enough appeal to command a high price on eBay. Obviously this is a gut shot.

Then consider the new cover for Clash, which comes from the other end of the scale in many ways, being a tribute to New Order. Creative Review has a longish piece explaining the thinking behind it (essentially it is a pixelation of their record covers, which in turn feels quite factory design in itself). It’s lovely. And smart. I assume Clash magazine is not looking for mass appeal from casual browsers or they would put a big picture of a famous head on their cover.

So to limp to a point. Out there in the world, design has to speak for itself. The gut shot approach will always find this easier. However, in the agency world gut shots are hard to sell to rational clients, and hard to justify a big fee for. So the the intuitive designers work is surrounded with lots of strategic rational. Lots of ‘why’ to clad a little ‘what’.

Meanwhile, the more thoughtful, ‘I can name ten famous Swiss typographers and have read The Fountainhead’ approach tends to be less commercial as it’s typically breaking the rules – ones it understands and wants to play with and challenge. Such designs and designers will see their work selling poorly until their innovation is absorbed into the deign mainstream. Where we all get it at a more ‘gut’ level. I guess of the two approaches the intellectual one is the more noble and worthwhile.

But for the audience ‘out there’ a rose is a rose is a rose whatever you call it. Dressing up gut shots with fancy preambles won’t make them any more or less effective. And rationalising, say, the cover of Clash, makes it no less striking or beautiful. Graphics might be a combination of words and pictures, but it’s a visual, not a verbal medium. Which begs the question ‘why so much hot air’ ? An uncomfortable notion, given I write a daily design blog.

These days there is a lot of strategy and talking surrounding design projects. But there comes a time when the work has to stand on its own two feet and talk for itself. The public then judge if it’s good – appealing and effective – or not.

Here are two very public designs, separated by 60 years. At London’s Royal Festival Hall is an exhibition of the designs from the 1951′s Festival of Britain. It’s a superb collection built around a superb identity. What struck me looking ’round was how so many brands, boroughs and applications from buildings to biscuits adopted the core logo, did their own thing with it, and yet the whole still gelled together. With half a centuries hindsight this might partly be explained by all the work sharing a certain post war visual sensibility. But I also think it’s testament to how, if the core design is robust, it can stand some pretty significant liberties at the hands of various implementers and still look ‘together’.

Abram Games, the logo’s designer, was famous for reducing his work to its bare essentials.  It’s an approach the whole design team seem to follow – the alphabets created for the festival were applied all over the site, but I love the basic simplicity of this litter bin. What a fantastic, minimal adoption of the identity…

When the 2012 Olympic logo was first presented a great many people said it was poor – an ugly piece of design. Calmer (or more informed) designers suggested we should not be too hasty to judge. They told us that the logo was just a logo, but the way it would be applied could potentially be stunning.

Several years on this does not seem to have gone much further than using it in various ‘brand partner’ colours. Above is the count down clock from Trafalger Square. I will leave it for you to compare this to the festival litter bin and to judge which is the more appealing or effective identity…

I went down to London’s Design Museum this weekend to take a look at the Coke exhibition. It’s only little – one big glass box with the bottles through the ages and a few identity manuals. But it was doing a fabulous sales job. In the fifteen minutes I spent there, I must have heard the word ‘cool’  from 90% of the passing audience.

What struck me was the detail from the earliest examples that was put into the manuals. The title ‘Decoration and Design Standards’ sets out Coke’s stall – these are a lot more strident than ‘guidelines’. Here, no distinction is made between rigour for design and rigour for its application through advertising. I guess I am sensing in a ‘media neutral’ environment a certain laissez-faire approach to design standardisation – exacerbated by each communication discipline making a case for not being boxed in by pesky rules. But Coke shows that for truly great ‘media neutral’ communication the detail needs to be positively nailed down.

The document below makes it clear what the optimum angles are to display advertising, while other pages indicate the exact spacings for headlines and so forth. These days, it is received wisdom that very long brand guidelines are often left unread and shorter ones have more chance of being followed.  The success of Coke argues for a more strident approach.

More images after the jump…
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