I’ve always found it interesting the way that many people – even small business owners – cannot quite quantify the cost of things that aren’t tangible. For example, if it’s a TV on sale, the price is final and you either buy it or don’t. If it’s a car, you may be able to haggle a little, but still understand you’ll be paying a similar sum to that shown. However, when it comes to design, those rules never quite seem to apply. This post seeks to discover why that is and garner a few responses in the comments from fellow designers but perhaps more importantly, from those who aren’t designers. I’d value your opinions.

As someone who always tries to be professional but down to earth and approachable in my work, it does still surprise me when people are taken back by the cost of design, whether that’s a logo, website or maybe just a flyer. Perhaps the most ironic thing is that my rates are lower than many other designers that offer a lower quality service at a higher cost. With that in mind, the question must be asked: Do clients always go with the cheapest option without regard for quality and service? If yes, are they satisfied with what they get for their money and if they are, is it simply because they didn’t see what they could have gotten by spending a little more with someone else?

The clients that I’ve worked with have all understood that the cost of design is recouped in the extra profit gained through good communication with their customers. Unfortunately, many small businesses see the cost as something that will never be reclaimed and is merely an unnecessary expense and so either choose to go with someone who will do anything they’ve asked for for a very low cost and therefore low quality or, in many situations just simply not bother and continue communicating to their customers through the use of bad design if any design at all.

I believe that a lot of small businesses don’t associate the cost of design with the amount of hours put into it but rather, associate the cost with the final item. Many businesses don’t see the amount of time that goes into emailing, sketching, mocking up, variations and finessing, but rather, just see that one, final logo or flyer that may well have taken you 20 minutes to design, but 20 hours to get to that stage. That’s where most of the cost of design comes into play – the time spent working on your project, not the time spent on the final deliverable.

It is perhaps a little saddening that many small businesses feel this way about improving their image with its customers because there are many out there who could use that improvement and would see a return on their investment in a designer through bigger profits. And that’s exactly what working with a designer is – an investment. An investment does not give immediate returns, but rather, grows over the course of weeks or months, recouping your initial payment plus profit. If more businesses saw working with designers like this, I believe that some fantastic things could happen.

As I said in my opening, I would value the opinions of anyone who owns a small business and has always been afraid of working with a designer. Is it the cost that puts you off? Do you feel as if you don’t have enough of an understanding of what it is you want? Or perhaps you have worked with a designer and it hasn’t been a pleasant experience. Whatever it is, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Over at Daniel Gray’s blog, a simple observation has been made. One which has probably been observed by most of us at one point or another and especially for long journeys – Why can’t I have one train ticket for one trip?

Upon first glance, it’s not a particularly extravagant request. One journey, one ticket. Of course, as we (and by we I mean those in the UK) know, train operators don’t see it this way. If I have three trains to catch in order to get from point A to point B, they see that as three journeys, not one and so issue us with three lots of tickets accordingly. Things get even worse if you plan on returning from your destination as well, as that doubles the amount of tickets! Things get even worse if your travels include seat reservations.

As Daniel points out, it’s absurd. Why can’t I have my entire journey on one ticket? Is that so hard? I’m not so sure it is, but rather train operators have been using the same method of designing/printing tickets for so long that the problems have become compounded as new methods of actually purchasing tickets and/or services come along without any support for them on whatever proof of purchase the operator wishes to give to the customer. In this case, a train ticket.

With the above in mind, I decided to take a stab at what a new ticket could look like. I had a few key goals.

Don’t reinvent the wheel
There are hundreds of trains, stations and ticket vendors in the UK most of which use the same format of ticket. Because of this, there will be tens of thousands of blank ticket stock already printed with the trademark orange trim and Rail Settlement Plan watermark. With public transport already suffering from a lack of investment, no one needs to spend an excessive amount of money getting a new format of train ticket into circulation. Keep the physical ticket that already exists and improve it, rather than starting afresh.

Everything on the ticket needs to be printable
Currently, when you purchase a train ticket, everything besides the orange trim and watermark is printed right there and then. This includes all category headings like “Destination” or “Price”. This means no pre-printed bars/blocks/colours/logos. Why is this important? With more and more people buying their tickets online before they travel, vendors are now supplying all journey-related information on a ticket. This includes a receipt for the ticket and credit card receipt. As time goes on, there will undoubtedly be other uses for the tickets besides the journey itself and it’s important to keep this in mind.

Reduce the need for extra tickets
Again as above, more people are buying their ticket in advance of their journey and that can sometimes mean they’re able to book specific seats and specific trains. Currently, if you do this, you’ll be given a separate ticket for your reservation, along with one for the journey itself. One of the main goals of the ticket redesign is to reduce the need for these extra tickets by including everything on one ticket instead.

Assume all current information is important
It would be easy to discard some information that already exists on today’s train tickets like price (because you’ve already bought it), ticket number (because that’s unimportant to the customer) or the time the ticket was printed. However, one way or another, that information is important at some stage of your journey. It may not be important to you at the time, but may well come in handy for things like lodging a complaint afterwards and being asked to see proof of purchase.

And this is what I came up with.

The new ticket design. Information is easier to see at a glance and all on one ticket.

Now, you might be thinking “It doesn’t look much different”, but as I said, my aim wasn’t to reinvent the wheel. It was to solve the main problem of reducing the need for multiple tickets and I believe this does that.

Features

One ticket for one journey – Single or return
This ticket allows the customer to go to and from their destination when purchasing a return ticket, even though there’s only one departure/arrival station. When the customer is asked to present their ticket going to their inital destination (in this case London Euston), the inspector ticks off the arrival station to show that the customer is indeed on the way there. On the way back (in this case to Liverpool Lime Street), the inspector ticks off the departure station. The ticket then has two ticks on it, showing full use.

Most important information at the top
On current tickets, information is spread out in no sensible way. This changes things by placing departure/arrival stations at the top, along with the validity of the ticket.

Multiple seat reservations now on one ticket
Even if your journey has five different trains involved, this ticket will allow you to view your seat reservations for them. If some of your trains don’t have reservations, then that train number has a dash instead of a seat number.

Information moved out of the orange trim
I believe that the orange trim should stay clear as this is a border, not a margin. With that in mind, printing information (along with price and ticket number) have been grouped together, finishing off the ticket in a nicer way.

Works just as well for single journeys
Since some journeys aren’t as complex as a 5-train nightmare, here’s an example of how the ticket would look for those on a single ticket.

The ticket works just as well if the journey is only a single.

This time, validity is one day only instead of a range of dates with the return. It also shows a zeroing out of all train reservations. This particular ticket would be more likely to be used on inner city train travel, where train reservations aren’t a requirement.

Although this doesn’t introduce anything new from an eye-candy design perspective, I do believe it starts to address the main problem that many people have of too many tickets for a single trip. In fact, the only thing I’ve done is rearranged the information and added one category (train reservations). Everything else is already present on today’s tickets. Granted, I’ve used Univers for the typeface which isn’t going to be available for ticket printing machines, but again, even with the correct typeface being used, I believe this moves one step closer to solving our train ticket problems.

See also: Tyler Thompson’s attempt to redesign a plane boarding pass.

The front cover of Polly M. Law's book "The Word Project".

Almost a year ago now, I decided to help fund a small project on Kickstarter. Its name was The Word Project.

“The Word Project seeks to capture the more elusive words that roam the world and introduce them with whimsical detail and colorful fanfair.” – As writes Polly M. Law, the project’s creator. “Each piece will get its own spread accompanied by its meaning, pronunciation & an example of use. Since 2002 I have been raiding the attics, basements and dusty  cupboards of the English language in search of intriguing, odd &  obscure words for my Word Project. I’ve been encouraged to publish my work, and it has made the rounds to a number of publishing house and while recognized for its merits, no investment was made. I’d like to change all of that with your help.”

The project sounded fantastic and so I decided to help fund it. Polly asked for $4,000 to help her produce her book. The project proved so intriguing that she managed to raise $5,899 from backers.

A year later and Polly has managed to not only send copies to all of her backers, but it’s now available on Amazon for those who simply want to take a look at this fantastic little book.

My copy of The Word Project arrived a few weeks ago and the illustrations for each unusual, rare word are brilliant. What makes Polly’s characters so interesting is that they can’t even be classed as illustrations, really, but rather dolls, as they’re all made from a range of materials including buttons, coloured paper and string and then photographed. The result is something that would look right at home in the imagination of any child or storybook. It’s clear that every single one has been well thought out and developed with love and attention.

Beautifully created, Polly uses a range of materials to develop her characters.

The book contains over 100 of these creations, each with a definition of the word and an example of how to use the word in conversation. Memorising all of these words would certainly expand your vocabulary!

It’s great to see that Polly’s unique idea gained the funding of over a hundred backers, raising more money than she needed to make the project a reality and that it’s now selling copies on Amazon. I would fully recommend that you go and buy yourself a copy and see the full range of these fantastic pieces of artwork.

Cark (v) Worry or obsess.

The problem with this competition is that it’s “spec work” or work without guarantee of pay. It promotes free labour and exploits students who may not have the business experience to know that these sort of competitions only benefit the company and not the entrant. Spec work is looked down upon by the majority of the design industry including AIGA, the professional association for design along with popular designers such as David Airey.

Many companies don’t realise what they’re doing when launching competitions such as this and use the excuse of it being called a competition to justify the exploitation of those entering. Regardless of what it is marketed as, it is still spec work if you are asking people to submit work without recompense.

Spec work is not only bad for the designer, but for the client as well. Design is about communication. Client/Designer communication is imperative to meeting the needs of the brief. Without a good rapport between the two parties, good design is difficult.

In addition to Stoves promoting spec work, another example cropped up from sustainable paper company Domtar. They asked designers to come up with an advertising campaign to promote their paper. A competition, where the only winner is Domtar and the designers who chose to enter are not fairly paid for their work. After a backlash from the design community regarding this example of spec work, Domtar have now retracted the competition and issued an apology for which they’ve gained a lot of respect from designers. Stoves would do well to do the same thing.

So, if you come across competitions that invite you and potentially hundreds of other designers to develop work for free, say no. Such competitions are unethical and unprofessional and the sooner those outside of the design industry realise that, the better.

After two years, it’s time for a change. An evolution. The Work Of relaunches.

The site has been designed with the aim of less clutter and more work with all project images now larger than before. There’s also a more consistent branding over the range of all of The Work Of’s materials whether online or in print – as it should be.

Feedback on the new design is greatly appreciated. Drop me an email: neilATtheworkof.co.uk

I have two fantastic friends who, after quite a long time of being engaged decided to finally tie the knot this year on November 27th. As part of their celebrations, they asked me to design their wedding invitations. You can see the final invitation here.

There were a few key requirements for the invite. Firstly, what it must contain. This included some way to RSVP, an invite to the wedding itself, an invite to the evening reception and a poem chosen by the couple.

As the budget was very small, the invite needed to be small enough that it would fit on A4 so they could be printed without any trouble. However, they also liked the idea of using a square format with a gate-fold and with this in mind, I came up with the idea of using a four piece suite of invitations all housed by one larger container.

There were also some requirements as to what the invitations must look like. It needed to have a baby blue theme, must have swirls and must somehow incorporate a butterfly or butterflies. The bride gave me a very simple example of a graphic she had found online as reference. This was the only thing I had to go on but I was confident that I could deliver something that the couple were happy with.

Although not a requirement, I felt that it’d be nice if the invitation had some sort of logo and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to incorporate the couple’s initials – C&D – into it. My first port of call was of course plenty of sketching.

One of many pages of sketches.

After a number of sketches, I finally came up with a potential way of how to use a C and a D to form a butterfly. It certainly wasn’t going to be as easy as I first thought, however. Currently, it didn’t look anything like a butterfly. More like a strange insect with very large antennae.

The initial concept.

After experimenting further on paper, I felt that I would be better scanning in the above logo and creating it in Illustrator.

Scanned and cleaned up.

I started to tweak the initial sketch, working on just one side of the illustration and then mirroring it to create a perfectly symmetrical graphic. The problem was that the tail of the ampersand was getting in the way and in the end, I felt that it worked better without it. I also shortened the antennae and tried to harden the outside corners of the two characters. Eventually, I ended up with this:

The first draft of the logo.

I wasn’t happy with what I had come up with by a long shot and I didn’t feel that this was elegant enough to warrant a place on a wedding invitation. It needed to be softer, more rounded and much more butterfly-like!

This is where many iterations began. My aim was to make the characters look more like wings but retain enough legibility that the characters weren’t lost altogether. I also sought advice on how to refine it to a point where I was happy with it.

The many evolutions of the logo.

It took a while but I eventually got to where I wanted to be.

The final C&D logo.

I felt that this logo worked the best because although other iterations looked more like a butterfly, I felt that this one looked like a butterfly and C&D equally.

Once the logo was finished, it was time to work on the invitations themselves.

As mentioned, one of the requirements of the invitation was that it must contain swirls of some sort. With this in mind, I went on a hunt for some interesting flourishes to take reference from and ended up finding an excellent collection of swirls from All Silhouettes.

A great selection of swirls to choose from.

A handful of swirls chosen from the collection.

And then the painstaking process began of duplicating and placing all of these swirls over the whole of the page to create a unique pattern and one which had as little repetition as possible. This meant placing each of the swirls individually, rather than copying and pasting whole chunks. It took quite a whole to cover the entire page, but eventually, it was completed.

The whole invitation laid out.

The first draft of the front of the invitation.

Above is the entire invitation laid out and a crop of just the front of it. I wanted there to be something special on the front as there wouldn’t be able to be anything central on the back due to the way the invitation opened. By using two of the swirls I had already chosen and enlarging them, I was able to form a heart and in it, place the first draft of the logo. I stuck with this idea for quite some time. However, after a while, it felt as if there was something not quite right about it. I felt that although the heart was a good idea, it wasn’t allowing the main element – the logo – to breathe enough and so eventually, the idea was scrapped and I came up with something much lighter. Something with more room to breathe.

The final design.

The new front of the invitation.

Instead of the heart taking up too much space around the logo, I reduced it right down and instead, used it to house the date of the wedding. I also tweaked the colours so they felt a little more vibrant instead of rainy day and I felt that things were now coming together enough to then move onto the four-piece suite that would be housed within the container.

For each of the pieces of the invitation, the couple had already given me the text including a poem. However, some of the words didn’t quite match the tone of voice of the invitation and I suggested a change, which worked much better both visually and logically when reading. The new text was able to be bigger and a little more spaced out. Some of the invite has been omitted for privacy in these shots.

The main invitation, using the original text.

The reworded invitation.

From here, the rest was plain sailing and all came together really well. The last thing to think about was what the invitation could actually be posted in. Luckily, there’s a fantastic site called Square Envelopes which has a fantastic range of, well, square envelopes! Their range happened to include the exact size I needed put one of the invitations.

The finished invite, peeking out from a perfectly sized envelope.

Upon showing Claire and Dave the invitations, they loved them. I feel really lucky and pleased to have helped in some small way to making their wedding a success.

I wish them the best of luck for life.

This Is The Order

Inside was a magazine. A magazine that was rather thick and could quite easily pass as a softbacked book. This Is The Order. Issue 03.

For a few minutes I wondered why I had received this book. The quality of its design proved that it wasn’t just a random mailshot. And then, having taken a look at the following pages, I realised it was from the makers of Relentless. Yes, the energy drink. I remembered that I had signed up for something on their website months previously about receiving a magazine. I expected a few pages of token information about their products with some half hearted stories about something to do with energy. I was quite clearly mistaken.

The front cover itself was enough to pique my interest.

Raised bars on the cover help provide a tactile feel.

As the introduction on the first page explained, this issue was all about sound and to promote that, their cover employed a series of raised bars that, when someone ran their fingernail over them, produced a sound that reflected a different music beat.

Each column of bars represents a different beat.

I can’t say that the bars truly reflected any sort of beat you’d hear with actual musical instruments, but certainly the experiment and the implementation of the cover made me smile and made me explore the magazine further.

As mentioned, the first page details the front cover, while on the opposite page, there is a fantastic illustration, complete with gold overlays.

Fantastically detailed illustration. One of the first things you see when you open the magazine.

Relentless’s style is one of exaggeration. On all of their marketing materials and indeed on their drinks cans themselves, it’s always designed with a sense of “You are everything. This is amazing. We are beautiful”. I’ve never really been able to tell if it’s tongue in cheek or not. Whether they’re serious about or not, the design and tone of voice they employ is fantastic and I’ve always been a fan of it.

Throughout the rest of the magazine, the design changes according to whatever is being discussed on that page. It doesn’t feel like the magazine has an overall style, but rather, has many styles suited to the content on that page. Usually, I hate this because it makes everything feel disjointed, but when the magazine is all about freedom and expression, I can understand how and why it works here.

Another great piece of artwork, this time 3D.

Nowhere in this magazine is Relentless mentioned. In fact, the only way you can tell this is produced by them is their trademark serif typography and overexaggerated style. Nowhere in this magazine do they refer to anything product-related or anything that gives you a sense that they’re trying to shift a few units of their products. Instead, the magazine focuses solely on what their product is meant to stand for.

Digression

Businesses seem much more open to doing this in the last few years with the likes of Nike now a lifestyle, not a brand. My favourite example of this sort of “values before product” advertising was earlier this year in the form of a short film by Spike Jonze, funded by Absolut Vodka entitled I’m Here. At the heart of it, it is a simple story about what you will do for someone you love more than anything. It doesn’t promote Absolut or feature the product. The only place you’re likely to find any sort of branding is a small footnote at the bottom of the film’s website.

At 30 minutes long and with a top director, this isn’t just a quickly whipped together production to cash in and sell some vodka. While Jonze can be credited with actually making the film look as it does, Absolut can be credited with wanting to spend such a large amount of cash on something that doesn’t tell people to buy their product. Instead, it tells people to buy their lifestyle. Their values. In other words, you don’t need to tell someone to buy x product. If you can get them to believe in your values, they will always choose your product over another.

End digression

Promotion for "Lives of the artists"

Throughout the magazine, their are double page spreads promoting “Lives of the Artists”, a documentary produced for Relentless about people with a creative passion. The shots they use to promote the documentary are fantastic.

With the full page photos and designs comes the smaller, less often noticed page devices. Like the larger pieces of design throughout the magazine, these smaller pieces seem well thought out and really add to the overall experience of reading the magazine.

Small page devices help make the magazine stand out more.

The same can be said of some of the typography used throughout the magazine, with its less often used ligatures.

Rarer ligatures in use.

My favourite page in the book is towards the middle. While the preceeding page is an article, the page after is a fantastic double page spread of an amazing ceiling. Because its full page with full page, you can really appreciate the beauty of the ceiling.

My favourite page.

As mentioned, the magazine does a really great job of presenting information in a readable, but visually appealing way, using extra background textures and details to frame the content.

Information is laid out legibly and still manages to be visually interesting.

Visually appealing without the need for paragraphs of text.

The emphasis on exploration of sound is found on one of the later pages in the magazine, which attempts to map London by how quiet a certain area is.

The silent map of London.

Additionally, there’s also pages which try to visualise sounds in different ways.

Visualisations of sound.

Visualisations of sound.

The last few pages of the magazine are dedicated to a short comic, beautifully drawn, that details the story of Paganini, a violinist. It’s a really nice way to end the magazine and it feels as if it’s been thoughtfully added, rather than tacked on at the last moment.

The Paganini comic spans the last few pages of the magazine.

The last frame, on the last page of This Is The Order.

This is the Order is a fantastic magazine, one which certainly caught me by surprise. I’m looking forward to receiving the next issue.

Hi Neil

It’s Neil Martin.  I thought your Neilz Beanz tinz were brilliant.

Can I buy one?

Look forward to hearing from you.

Best,
Neil

Now, as you might imagine, being Neil Martin myself, I found this email to be quite odd. It’s not every day you get emailed by a Neil Martin. I have to admit that I was a little suspicious at first. I thought perhaps it was some sort of spam, scraping my name from somewhere on my site, but the email had an attached signature, identifying Neil Martin as the “Research Degrees Coordinator” at Middlesex University. The email address also had a Middlesex University extension. Curious to find out more, I replied and sure enough, I got a human response from Doctor G Neil Martin asking again for some tins. Three to be exact. I asked how he had managed to stumble across my site.

In a typically narcissistic, Google-driven way, I sometimes search for any new comments on my books and papers (if you type in neil martin and psychology/middlesex in Amazon/Google, you’ll see what I do) and came across the Royal Mail stamps designs and then got the the actual website.

I explained to Neil that although I was more than happy to send him some tins, the labels and postage actually cost more than the beans themselves! He was very happy to reimburse me for this, though and so I went to the post office with three tins of beans, ready to post.

The last time I posted the tins, I posted six of them, all at once to different design agencies. The postage was attached to the bottom of the tins. Although I got some funny looks from the cashier, they were happy to let me send them as is and so I thought it’d be fine to do the same this time as well. Not so it seemed. In fact, I had to 20 minutes while the manager of the post office called up Royal Mail HQ to ask if I could send them as is. The ultimate answer was no. This really disappointed me as they were happy to send six previously! Reluctantly, I stuck them in a box instead and sent them that way, although it took a while to peel all of the stamps back off the tins!

Thankfully, Neil received all of the tins with no problems. He was even kind enough to send me a photo of them:

Neilz Brain with Neil's brain!

An hour ago, I had need of an A4 envelope for a CD and I didn’t have a template to hand. I had a quick search online, and found the tutorial to make a CD envelope out of an A4 piece of paper, but no templates with exact dimensions of each section once folded. So, I made my own. Since I had a need for it, perhaps you do too.

If you do, click here to download a PDF of an A4 CD envelope template.