The above headline is a Ben Folds Five gag. Which categorically proves that my music taste is having a senior moment. But unqualified as I am to opine on where the “edge” might be in matters of music, it’s clear that Apple is enjoying a rare moment of dissatisfaction for its new product and design. Ping, Apple’s sort of music + social network site, is getting slated by those who care passionately about such things as being little more than a glorified iTunes shop, rather than something truly social. There are two clues that point to some truth in this. The first, Apple’s own blurb “music just got more social”, which is not the same as getting really social. Presumably that’s where Spotify comes in. Secondly, the Ping brandings integration of Apple’s new iTunes logo. And this itself is being moaned about by the online armchair review panel.

This is the interesting bit for me – most folk support the move away from the out-dated CD device. But there is consistent criticism of the icon’s styling – all those glossy vignettes and bevelled edges. “Such cliché” wail the critics. Tend to agree, but then this style was pretty much pioneered and certainly popularised by Apple in its apps, refreshed Apple logo etc. The styling is, at a pinch, an Apple visual equity, or at least a familiar house style for the brand. So, is the criticism the bell calling time on the style as passé? Is it a reflection on Apple’s style being a victim of its own success, where what was once proprietorial is now simply generic? And if so, is this more fool them for creating a style anyone could copy? Either way, it would be nice to think that this now hackneyed look is poised to be swept away by some fresher style that will bring a nano-second’s novelty into our humdrum lives.

Final thought on iTunes revamp. As journalist Andrew Harrison noted, while dropping the CD makes sense, why not take the opportunity to also drop the ‘tunes’. After all, as this is now an App, TV, film etc. store, so isn’t the very name a bit limiting?

Macy’s Thanksgiving parade will this year feature characters Kaikai and Kiki designed by Japanese pop artist, Takashi Murakami. They follow in the footsteps of other notable artists’ contributions to the famous parade, such as Jeff Koons and Keith Haring
.

Really cool of Macy’s to bring art to a popular and mainstream event. The New York Times asked Robin Hall, the parade’s executive producer, if they were worried that the characters might spook kids. The response was either the driest PR cover for design I have ever read, or the world of trending has just got out of hand: “Fangs are very hot right now, if you’ve missed this trend. This is an excellent year for Murakami.”

I really hope Hall’s tongue was lodged firmly in his cheek, but it is worrying that we live in days where so much is validated as being “on trend” that it’s impossible to tell if the statement was ironic. Perhaps we are all talking about and de-constructing design too much and failing to simply appreciate it for what it is.

So Mad Men is back on BBC4 tonight. Lots more stylish clothes, great lighting and smart one liners. Clearly there is plenty to relish in the characters’ anachronistic behaviour, even if one has nothing to do with marketing. But I wonder if it is especially popular with creatives for the nerdy reason that Don Draper gets to have a dramatic flash of inspiration about once a season, where he emotes on a pitch idea in a way that would be laughable in our real world.

Season four focuses on the Lucky Strike account. As Draper puts it, “This is the greatest advertising opportunity since the invention of cereal. We have six identical companies making six identical products. We can say anything we want.” Ahh, if life was that simple. Still, those were the days when actors dressed as doctors flogged the product. But perhaps the Sterling Cooper process was right – a few stiff drinks and sit around waiting for the thunderbolt of inspiration. It sure beats an “interim tele-conference” where the agency’s biggest challenge is dancing ‘round the fact they have no work they want to show yet. Perhaps we should just get better suits and ties. Anyway, to play up the then and now theme, here are some production shots, courtesy of Rolling Stone where modern times weirdly and wonderfully seep into Mad Men’s world. You can see more here.

Does this ad look so much worse than many you encounter? The New York Times reports that BETC Euro RSCG has developed software that can produce basic advertising, spitting out quick solutions when given data on brand, target, insight and strategic objectives.

Cue howls of wounded anguish from creatives, and attacks on the results. Even the software creators are not sold…“After this first reaction, they get a little scared when they see that a software program can create the same (mediocre) results in just 10 seconds as several hours of strategic meetings and production” the RSCG executive creative director said. For now, it is being presented as a tool to explain what’s missing when the creative spark is absent. But the company is covering bases, claiming that further development could make it a really useful tool.

I say why wait? There are plenty of clients who are only comfy talking strategy and insights. And only happy to green light work which did ok in the kind of research aimed to ensure that the creative won’t startle the horses. Why not let them use this software, leaving the real creatives more time to be really creative for like-minded clients. Similar software, once developed, could no doubt do much of packaging design’s donkey work (global language conversions and outer shippers etc.). Again, this is a good thing if it frees up creative budgets for creative endeavour.

The real concern is not new software, but a generation of clients trained to always and only value insight over inspiration. Design without strategy is like advertising without a message. But design without a unique and unformulaic idea is never going to make a real difference. Alexey Brodovitch, art director of Harpers Bazaar, famously instructed new recruits to “astonish me”. Tell that to a computer.

Peter Saville’s design for the England shirt came out to play against Bulgaria last week. They look white, but close up one can see multi-coloured crosses of St George. Creative Review has all the gen here. It’s taken a bit of barracking from the terraces (looks like a sprinkling of hundreds and thousands, can’t see it from row z etc.) Saville stands by the work, believing it to be “potent…a vehicle of cultural provocation”.

What do you think? For me, the “reclaiming of the cross of St George” is not massively original, and seeing our full union flag re-interpreted in various colours is something of a cliché. But at least it’s designed to make a point. More iffy was pundits theorising that criticism would occur because it was “over the heads” of the typical fan. I know sweet F.A. about football, but many of the fans strike me as complete label queens, alert to the smallest sartorial nuances and detailing. And plenty are politically well informed. Perhaps they just resented being asked to fork out for yet another “official” shirt?

Whatever, a less is more approach is here having the power to get talked about online. And understated branding certainly has power. A dapper client flipped open his suit jacket in a meeting last week, flashing a very cool logo featuring a bowler hat and crossed umbrellas. A quick Google search later, I now know this is a device used by Hackett, but it’s all the cooler for not being plastered across their website. As Mies van der Rohe is attributed as saying, “God is in the detail” (e.g. whatever one does should be done with rigour – a fair message for the players one thinks). So good for Peter Saville to attempt something at a different pace from that typically seen in shirt graphics.

Supermarket own label offerings are increasingly being seen as “true brands” in their own right (with essential Waitrose leading the charge). Nevertheless, the passing off approach of imitating lead brand’s equities shows no signs of stopping. M&S were getting flak just last week for the structural similarities between their own vitamin water and the one spending a fortune promoting its distinctively branded bottle.

I hear that one – ahem – discount supermarket has a specific process to avoid litigation: copy the leader, but design in seven points of difference. So that in front of m’learned friend the colour, typography, shape, etc. can each be shown to differ from the source material (although the end result still looks close enough to trigger the desired associations in consumer’s minds). This will avoid the serious transgression of trademark infringement (though an obvious intention to design a pass-off can still be censured).

With this information, brand managers could, of course, follow a counter strategy where their own seven ingredients are all so distinctive in their own right that they baffle the copycats’ attempts to emulate them. I think this is the wrong answer. If you have seven elements that you believe constitute your equities, it’s about four too many. Because seven ingredients make a fairly complex soup, one which can be easily imitated not to the letter, but to the same broad recipe – voilà a successful passing off. If, on the other hand, you limit yourself to a simpler design (say Coke Classic’s flat red, script font and line), it’s much harder to produce a copycat, because the simplicity of the source material makes it more distinctive. Kellogg’s Corn Flakes is really hard to copy since they got the design’s mojo back and focussed on the rooster. Try ripping off our Guinness can design, which is little more than a colour and emblem.

Being legally protectable isn’t the be all and end all (appetite appeal, relevance cues etc. will all need to be considered), but if you can boil your design down to its essentials, not only will you stand apart from the wannabes, you will also be closer to a (pardon the term) “iconic” expression of your brand.

From a design agency point of view, it’s always great to see one’s work put at the heart rather than the periphery of the communication idea. So it was with glad hearts that we saw Strongbow’s “most refreshing pint” webpage, featuring our new glass design for the brand (see below). The creative, by Lean Mean Fighting Machine, is brilliantly simple – a giant pint which slowly drains as cider drinkers click on it, taking virtual sips by hitting refresh. Their motivation – the chance to win prizes with each click. The simplicity of the idea matches the straightforward and unfussy personality of the brand – nothing too tricksy.

It’s crazy, really, that the brand in the hand (as Martin Grimer describes it) is so often ignored in comms. When the artefact and idea can be joined up the results can be very effective – as evidenced by the fact that Strongbow’s glass is now unequivocally empty, bringing the promotion to an end, a million clicks later…

All designers create work by appropriating things they admire, and the good ones convert their influences into something new. If they tell you otherwise, they are remarkable, delusional, or dishonest. In simpler, pre-internet times, there were fewer famous designers, and the pool of influential work was remarkably small. Brody at The Face, or Carson on Ray Gun did their thing and thousands followed their lead (much to the leaders’ chagrin).

But in our age of over information there are so many leaders and styles in play that it’s hard to pick out any one in particular. Business Week listed 27 designers most influential on our era. The list has some obvious choices, but some I am embarrassed to say I have never heard of. And, of course, debate then raged about why so many had failed to make the list. One can’t keep up with the endless stream of thought leadership from the stage of Ted. And where once there were a small handful of books covering the history of design to be plundered and inspired by, now if one wants to find anything no matter how obscure, it’s all there online.

All in all, the depth of choice and resources makes for a landscape richer and more diverse for plunder than ever before. But it’s hard to see the wood for the trees.

Of course, one can see this is brilliant, as it throws up more eclectic designers and fewer sheep. But movements can be good things too – individuals clustering around a few leaders, borrowing and building a style which defines an era and adds something to culture. We live in a time when it’s harder to see such movements catching fire, faced as we are with so much choice. Does this make for more spirited individuals, or blander overall results? One could argue that, say, the punk era saw more creative, independent and vibrant fashion than we get today, with everyone dressed more or less the same by the same brands, despite a tsunami of trend information posted daily.

There is no particular point to these observations, but we are operating in interesting times. Talent imitates, genius steals (as Picasso supposedly said). The influential designers of tomorrow will perhaps be those most capable of filtering all the information. Because finding the rough diamonds which can be held high for us all to admire is a skill in itself.

The wonderful image of Devon’s Racing Rams was taken by Rick Turner. I hope he does not mind me appropriating it.

The new design for the UK passport will be issued from October. When the current passport moved to a floppy burgundy cover from the previous hardback black version we presumably saved money but lost a little dignity. These designs redress that a tad, I think. The inner pages are currently a rather generic and repetitive bank note pattern. These are changing to feature complex “engravings” which celebrate our weather, landscape, flora and fauna in a bucolic Betjeman-like manner.

One can anticipate some carping that this approach is anachronistic and twee – that we should use our passport as a canvas for the most progressive design we can produce. Personally, when it comes to something which represents my national identity, I want a solidly old fashioned document rather than a shrill “Cool Britannia” alternative (or one with an image of the Gherkin).

It’s uncommon to find contemporary official documents with soul, and a joy to find ones that make an effort – the craft and care invested here is presumably a pre belt-tightening exercise, and to my eyes give us something we can proudly brandish at foreign borders. Sometimes a traditional approach is appropriate, and I think the choice of images here will do a good job of making weary travellers think of home with affection. Some half-remembered lines by Wordsworth came to mind when I saw the designs…

I travell’d among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

‘Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.

This story and images via the Creative Review blog (which interestingly saw something prog rock in the blue cottages etc.)

Just hitting the shelves, our design for Budweiser ‘66’. Lightly carbonated with a touch of sweetness for a smooth, easy taste, Budweiser ‘66’ offers consumers something new and different. The design objective was to deliver a great “badge in the hand” through a contemporary take on an iconic brand.

Budweiser is an amazing brand to work on – the master brand’s famous design has been tweaked but hardly changed in over a hundred years. So this was like being given the keys to a Cadillac and asked where we might want to take it for a spin. The challenge was to deliver something fresh without diluting the classic ingredients, to retain the authenticity which is central to Budweiser’s appeal.

‘Keeping it simple but credible was the main objective; not trying too hard to be cool while also feeling like a classic, confident American brand. The shape (derived from the brand’s iconic bowtie) creates an impactful and distinctive label.  The strong angle creates a dynamic arrow which points to the copy explaining the beer’s proposition.  The oversized logo and contemporized AB seal combined with the off centre graphic give it a laid back feel’. Sean Harvey, Design Director, jkr.

And here’s some examples of the latest advertising activity going on around the brand – great to see jkr’s hometown of Camden wallpapered…