An apt description for this captivating light show seen on Long Acre, in London’s Covent Garden area.

Created to draw shoppers into an off-pitch side street, the lights cleverly mimic dripping gobbets of molten glass.

Few can pass by without taking a second look and then notice the boutiques within. According to shop-owners the lights exert a hypnotic pull, with many people pausing to snap them on their camera phone. “They’re a lot more sophisticated than the display in nearby Oxford Street and seem to help drive traffic into our street” comment local shopkeepers.

Design that’s worth celebrating!

By Andy Knowles, jkr.

Here, as is now our tradition, is a lovely Christmas image from the V&A collection. And equally traditional, on our last working day of the year, I simply want to say thank you to anyone who has visited and read the Gazette this year. It will be business as usual at the start of January, but over the break we will post a few festive ‘champions of design’. If you missed the link, here is the free book to read.

It seems to be a Design Gazette yuletide tradition to notice and praise Chanel No5 for their seasonal promotion. Ah well, this year’s is another great variation on the theme for the brand. I guess ‘iconic’ status, though a nice thing to have, might be a problem for a fragrance. After all, stature does not suggest ‘the latest thing’, so how does Chanel stay relevant? Aiming for classic status with classically beautiful and understated communication seems to be the answer. Presumably, the intention is to produce work of such style that the recipient of a bottle will not chastise her partner for being a little bit safe and boring. It looks like the real deal, rather than ‘not that again!’.

Anyway, I think the first image of the press ad (as spotted in yesterday’s Telegraph) says it all – the packaging (and the consistent way that the packaging is shot) are so well established that I doubt this even needs a logo. I think it looks beautiful, and is a neat way of making the fragrance and the sense of gift synonymous. The subsequent pages over-egg the pudding for me, overstating the brand’s commitment to understatement, which is a little ironic. But ’tis the season to be jolly, and it would take a Grinch to harrumph at a picture of that nice lady out of Amelié.

Anyway, as pack shots go, I think it’s a beauty and it doesn’t even feature a pack! Nice work.

We make it a rule not to talk about jkr on the gazette, in order to keep things (hopefully) objective. But today’s post is about one of design’s perks – seeing a project you are involved in coming alive elsewhere.

jkr have redesigned the Müller range of yogurts (with plenty more work in progress). Now TBWA have launched their campaign for the brand, which can only be described as a mini epic. Lots of favourite characters from our collective youth (and a few new ones) bring a little sunshine to our grey world. It will probably be used by social historians in years to come to illustrate how the doom and gloom of the downturn was combatted by a feel good culture.

Personally, I really like the witty billboard ads and the smiley rainbow whose style could probably be traced back to the very earliest Micky Mouse cartoons. It’s bold stuff, as one might expect when one of the lead clients is Lee Rolston who was also instrumental in buying Gorilla for Cadbury. Anyway, what do you think? Twitter seems to be giving it a sunny two thumbs up.

We had a little preview at jkr over Friday’s breakfast. Everyone came in wearing blue (the brand’s new hero colour). We looked like a gang of Smurfs. This might sound a little cheesy, but it illustrates my point: working in design has a brilliant perk, in getting to see how our work fits within a bigger (and big budget) picture.

It’s pretty cool seeing one’s packs in major advertising. Even cooler seeing them in most folks fridges and cupboards. This is one of the pleasures of working in the FMCG category – what we do ends up everywhere. I can never understand why design grads would prefer to work in disciplines which are arguably ‘purer’ and ‘cooler’ but where the audience is pretty much limited to a few folk similar to themselves who work in Hoxton. Packaging for household staples might mean designing on physically small formats. But the ultimate canvas is vast.

This morning Müller is all over London’s Metro, the TV and the Internet. Reasons to be cheerful I would say.

I wondered how many ‘iconic’ pack designs would fare if treated in the same way, so I asked the artist to road test a few. He kindly obliged and below are the results….enjoy them as ‘art’ first perhaps, then try and pick out the brands.

Below are thumbnails, where things become clearer…

And here were the original packs….

I had a few surprises – I naturally assumed Coke would reign supreme, but the slightly fiddly nature of the line and script did not survive the test. Kellogg’s though, with its more distinctive shape, fared far better. Colman’s turned out to have little left at this degree of abstraction, whereas Marlboro clearly still reads.

A couple of conclusions: firstly, the brands abstracted look pretty cool as art huh? Secondly, one would assume that putting super-bold graphics through the same filter that was applied to a murky, mostly brown, old master’s painting would leave them comparatively well placed – that this is not always the case suggests they might not all be as recognisable when abstracted as we would have assumed.

And finally, strong shapes on pack prove to offer the best chances of survival of this process to retain recognition. This is interesting if one considers that many consumers are shopping products with impaired vision and no glasses on – it’s quite an illuminating test of graphic equities in a world where packs are ‘read’ at a glance without 20-20 vision.

My thanks to Gary, the artist. You can see his excellent site (and buy very reasonably priced prints) here. Or if you are a brand manager, why not get him to convert your product into a piece of art for your office walls?

The Interweb is adding to the designer’s toy box daily. New ways of presenting and archiving material are allowing us freedoms of expression and scope for exploration at a pace and incline which would make our predecessors’ heads spin. This is obviously a wonderful thing. Trouble is, it is making our heads spin also. And beneath all the technological whistles and bells, is there (in the immortal words of Tallulah Bankhead) ‘less to this than meets the eye’?

The digital world is reducing our ability to edit and focus in a craftsman like way. Once prints were produced by great photographers showing the negatives’ edge. This was a way of showing that the entire image had been framed in camera by the photographer, without even the need to crop. Showing off one’s skill, to be unkind. And of course some still work this way, but for the rest of us, along came Photoshop. And if one looks at the chart below showing the amount of photographs stored on Facebook and how it dwarfs the works biggest libraries of photography, we see evidence that precision and judicious choice is a thing of the  past. The full story is here.

Digital photography is seducing us into an incontinent approach to capturing and sharing images. And by the by, have any older design studio hands noticed how few design college graduates are good at drawing these days? How random is that? (As said graduates might express this phenomena).

I hope these don’t sound like the rants of an over the hill Luddite (although in truth they are, a bit). But I would observe that designers will only maintain a quality of output by playing with new technology rather than allowing it to play with them. It’s a poor workman who lets his tools dictate how the job will be done. Perhaps before hitting the keyboard, having clarity of purpose (say, a pencil sketch) would be a sound approach?

But let’s end on a happy note. Another shiny new toy. Have you seen these still images that subtly move before? They are called Cinemagraphs. The best ones are stunning. And I don’t think the technique is really being applied to graphics yet. Pretty seductive, huh? See plenty more here.

A little schoolboy humour for Friday. It’s funny how branding condoms with famous slogans changes their meaning entirely. There’s a whole bunch of them mocked up to see here – on a site which proves that advertising has a potentially one track mind, and also that there is no end to the random endeavours the Internet inspires in people.

Meanwhile, in a less double entendre  manner, Creative Review is asking for votes to find out the best advertising slogan ever here. The interesting thing to me is that I can see no example in their proposed shortlist that creates a perfect storm: a memorable line attached to an unforgettable piece of branded typography. I wonder, is this because one would cancel the other out? Do great words benefit from simpler expressions?

“Leave only your footprints” runs the sign on many an unspoilt virgin beach. Pop-ups should work in the opposite direction. When they have gone they should leave a lasting impression in the minds of their visitors. Coming to London in September is a new edition of ‘Galleria Illy’. Basically a pop-up setting which also showcases some new crockery designed by David Byrne, Julian Schnabel and suchlike. The space is designed by German Tobias Rehberger and is, to say the least, eye-popping. It’s very much in keeping with the Illy va-va-voom aesthetic and looks unlikely to attract too many members of the WI looking to pop in for a quick coffee and a rest.

I think it’s great, but it did make me wonder why so many pop-up concepts are so flaming dull? In principle they should always be a knock-out; a chance for a brand to marry advertising and design in a temporary and uninhibited showcase of where they are at. Branding that is 360 in a very real sense. But the reality is often little more than a logo, some product to buy, and a bit of ersatz trendy furniture.

The zero temperature Absolut icebar was the last such place I was inspired to visit. Friends with You gained kudos for their very cheerful ‘Rainbow – environmental installation’ in NYC for AOL.

But I can’t think of many others – perhaps I need to get out more. But can any of you suggest some really top quality pop-up branding that made an impression on you? If the best media is ‘earned not bought’ it strikes me that too many pop-ups miss this point and instead try to sell us something, rather than give us a great experience that we will tell our pals about. The best pop-ups are surely embassies whose quality of design and experience convert us all into brand ambassadors.

When brands collaborate with celebrities to create design, one suspects the extent to which the celebrity actually ‘designs’ is pretty limited. Often they have played the role of muse. A new collection of prints for Liberty is an exception. Many of them have actually been designed by the rock and pop stars that have been involved.

They follow a daunting pedigree of collaborations with the brand from William Morris to Rossetti to Yves Saint Laurent and Vivienne Westwood.

The results are actually really good. I particularly like the one at the top by Blur’s Graham Coxon and the bird drawings by Edwyn Collins are lovely. For decades it was a truism that many of our successful musician’s career paths detoured via art school. Coxon was at Goldsmiths. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to find them capable of making a good fist of such a project.

Two thoughts: good for Liberty to get their celebrities to actually design the works (albeit there are still a few exceptions. Florence Welsh chose some favorite designs from the archives. Perhaps she is less handy with a pencil). The whole range is very rich and will appeal to a broad church. Secondly, once upon a time the idea of musicians (or anyone else for that matter) turning their hands to creative work outside the box we have put them in would be met with derision. I think this attitude is softening. Perhaps the web is generally allowing for a more diffuse, less limited view of what we can and can’t all turn our hands to. Which can only be a positive thing…

You can find all the designs here. A quick plug – I found this story on the Creative Review blog. Most of you will be aware of it, but for those who are not, it’s a really good dose of inspiration.

As Harry Potter casts his final spell over the nation, what next for the multitude behind the scene that have all helped make the brand such a colossal success. I don’t think we need hold our breath for Emma Watson but what about the design team?

It looks like we needn’t fear for their future either. A friend of mine was looking for some pictures to decorate her new baby’s bedroom and stumbled across these prints featuring collective nouns in pictures. Being quite particular about her interior design, she wanted something that would appeal to her son but also ‘fit in’ with the overall feel of her home.

What’s nice about these prints is that they have vibrancy, life and fun to appeal to children but enough sophistication to satisfy adults too. No surprise then that they come from Woop Studios, a company started by two of the Harry Potter graphic designers.

Like these prints, the genius of J. K. Rowling’s brand is that it makes children feel more grown-up, without making grown-ups feel like children. That’s quite a clever trick.