Perhaps it’s just the Christmas wind-down, but I am pretty much out of opinions for this year. So instead I will share a very brief anecdote. Creative Review reports that some of our classic WW2 propaganda posters are now available as an App. Not too sure why, but it’s probably quite handy as a teaching aide. Anyway, amongst them is my favourite for the ATS, to drive recruitment. It was designed by Abram Games.

Mr Games came to lecture us at college and revealed that this was a controversial work, in the eyes of the men from the ministry. Why? Because the woman was too sexy. As sexy as the lady seducing secrets from these gentlemen shown below I guess, and thus setting the wrong tone.

Nonsense argued Games. What do you want, a battleaxe and no recruits, or something that’s an effective and aspirational image? He prevailed. Recruitment went up. The girl was nicknamed ‘the blonde bombshell’. We won the war. Good work then and good work now will always hover over the bin. It just needs the right kind of argument to preserve it.

I think the title above was something Bob Dylan said, and he knows a thing or two. Provenance is clearly a key way for a brand design to show some charisma. The yoghurt above is interesting because it wears its provenance lightly. It has exported its brand vibe to the UK, but on a green level, not the actual product. It’s less about where it’s from, than where it’s at.

For me, provenance should be a springboard to a creative expression. The Hill Station brand (above) aimed to ‘both reminiscence the essence of French Indochina days while standing independently as a contemporary identity’ according to The Dieline.  To my eyes however , this expression of provenance offers a slightly less exciting approach – I can’t quite get where it’s from or where it’s at from the design. But that might just be me.

Then there is Helios. Organic, Norwegian and groovy since 1969. I think these are a near perfect example of marrying where a brand is coming from (they look bright and broadly Scandinavian in design), with where they are at (kind of funky in a contemporary 60s sort of way).

And to come back to Dylan “He not busy being born is busy dying”. Again, Helios plays on its roots, but it seems like it’s looking towards its future.

Sometimes pictures speak louder than words and this POS idea really speaks for itself. What a simple impactful idea, as found by a colleague on a store visit in Toronto.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great piece about how Grey Poupon mustard became a hit in America by defining itself as the posh one. You can read it here.

In Poupon’s old advertisement, two gents in the back of Rolls-Royces pull up alongside each other to courteously exchange a jar. Not very subtle, but effective.

This Maille design is equally unsubtle in its message, if clearly quite playful. But long after you have binned the bow tie I suspect its message will linger in the back of your mind… this little jar is a little bit special. Nice work. Love the poster below as well!

Iconic branding involves a distinctive graphical or stylistic property, which symbolises values and creates a charisma that surpasses a brand’s need to explain itself literally.

Bit of a mouthful that, but it was my best attempt! Anyway, in confectionery, Toblerone would be a pretty good example of this ‘rule’. But this is not a universal principle –  I bet you can name the brand shown above, despite its somewhat generic shape and devoid of its graphics. Wrigley’s are a fine exception to the rule, as befits a product long associated (by generations of advertising) with charismatic outsiders and teen rebels.

Last week, Simon Gulliford shared his undeniable truths with us. One was ‘In the long-term, price goes down’. If we accept the reality of free markets, then we have to accept the reality that prices go down in the long run. He illustrated this with the cost of colour TVs which are now a fraction of their original cost. The erosion of margins force us to increase efficiency.

I would humbly propose a counter truth: ‘Very cheap things inevitably get ambitions above their station and pursue more sophisticated markets’.

Gum certainly seems to illustrate this point. We see the success of the Wrigley’s 5 brand. And the more boutique Peppersmith brand with its papers to dispose of your gum socially (an innovation whose leap is a little dampened by the existence of Wrigley’s foil all these years).

We also see it in the new advertising for Orbit with copy that always calls to my mind Mrs. Merton’s sardonic catchphrase “let’s have a heated debate’.

Either way, it’s nice to such a humble product that is also powerful enough to illustrate a couple of principles all of its own. But perhaps humble is the wrong word. If you are ever in Chicago, check out the beautiful and mighty Wrigley’s HQ building. It’s mind blowing to consider how many sticks of gum must have been sold to bankroll such stunning edifice…

Browsing in Lidl Hamburg this week (I go to all the best places), my eye was drawn to this Duplo packaging. The window showing the sticks of chocolate within achieved two things – it told me ‘lots here’ but it also had massive stand-out. The various inner packs, turned at various angles, created a really impactful visual ‘buzz’ and looked like quite a funky abstraction of the basic branding.

The technique was used by other brands, but with much less visual energy (below)  – I guess the less distinctive designs cannot pull off the trick as well.

Returning home, I saw this rather wonderful biscuit musical box that M&S are selling for Christmas. A really good use of windows in display (on the other hand, it’s great to see M&S’s proud promise of ‘no plan B’ when it comes to over-packaging, is still alive and well).

I think my favourite example of the creative use of a window comes from the tights packaging Lewis Moberly produced for Boots some years ago. It’s a trick they played again for Waitrose (below).

The above and Duplo packaging are good examples, I think, of how something that might be briefed as a marketing necessity can be used as a creative opportunity – which tends to be where all the best answers hail from.

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…