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.

I had already worked for the festival last year. In 2009, I developed the front cover of the programme, along with some A1 posters that were hung up at the festival. You can see that work here.

Before I began to work with the festival, they did not have any sort of true identity or promotional materials, with most of the posters and programme design being very sporadic each year. With no tight branding integration, the festival was lacking that spark that made it more appealing for people to attend. It was my job to design all of this year’s promotional materials.

The logo

Because 2009’s logo proved to be successful, I decided that instead of starting from scratch, I could use some of the equity of it and update rather than redesign it.

Last year's logo on the front of the programme.

One of the things that was added to the cover last time was Round Table’s own logo, seen above just below “2009″. Because the festival is run by Round Table, I thought it was important to keep this association as part of the new logo as Round Table do much more than host the festival. Eventually, this is what I came up with:

The festival's new logo for 2010.

As you can see, it’s quite similar to 2009’s design, but with some improvements including the integration of Round Table’s logo directly into the festival’s logo. There’s also more refinement in the placement and sizing of all of the type. For those that are interested, the fonts being used are Cheboygan and Arno Pro.

The programme cover

With the logo complete, I moved straight onto the cover of the programme, which would be distributed to 2,000 people over the course of three days. Again, using a little equity from last year’s cover, I designed it in the style of a beer label.

The festival's programme cover for 2010.

I wanted this label to have much more detail than the 2009’s. Last year, I only had a few weeks to put the cover and poster designs together all whilst getting my coursework done as well. This year, as the project began in February for a May launch, I had more time to put something together. With the programme designed, I could then use design elements from it to influence everything else that needed to be designed.

The poster

The first thing that needed to be designed was the poster so the festival could begin its promotion. I started with something simple as the information that was going on the poster was a little scarce to begin with.

The festival's poster, version 1.

Once I had sent this over, it was clear that there was more information to go onto the poster and everything needed to be reworked for everything to fit on including ticket prices and of course where about the festival was being held. As I was struggling for information, I removed the frame altogether and went for something even simpler.

A much simpler version of the festival's poster.

It was pretty clear even as I was designing it that it didn’t feel right. It got across all of the information, but it wasn’t very attractive and it didn’t contain any of the design elements that were present on the programme’s cover. So, I redesigned again.

A reintroduction of the frame with a better layout.

After sending this over to the client, they were happy with it but I felt that there was still something not quite right about it. I felt that the logo was far too small and the dates were out of proportion and it still looked a little empty at the top. So, after another redesign, I ended up with this:

A bigger logo and better use of space.

Widening the top half of the frame meant that I could move the logo up and make it a touch bigger. By adding some feature circles, it reduced the amount of blank space that was causing a problem and I could also make the dates a touch bigger to go with the larger logo. After sending this over to the client, we were both happy with it. In total, there were 8 redesigns of the poster that got me to this version.

The t-shirt

Along with last year’s A1 posters, the client had asked if the design could also be used on t-shirts. Again, at the time, I didn’t have much time to come up with something but what I did come up with was a design that formed a pint glass out of beer-related words. With more time this year, I felt that I could improve on the design and make it look a bit more glass-like, as the previous version looked a little too blocky.

Left: 2009's t-shirt design. Right: 2010's t-shirt design.

The ticket

With three different nights for the festival, one ticket design wasn’t enough. Not only were there different prices for each ticket, but on the first day, there would be two events. The festival also offers all sponsors of the event free tickets and so a ticket design was needed for that too and so in total, there were 5 tickets designed.

Left: Saturday evening's ticket. Right: Sponsor ticket.

The sponsor ticket proved a bit of an issue to begin with. Sponsors are allowed to attend any of the events that are on over the three days. They’re also invited to the special sponsor’s bar and buffet. All of these days and times needed to be on the sponsor’s ticket which meant reorganising things on all of the tickets to allow for more space for all of the dates and times to be written on the sponsor’s ticket.

The back contained a map of where the Festival was, with directions from various parts of the surrounding areas.

The back of the ticket provides a simple map with directions.

The beer card

Having attended last year’s festival myself and actually gone through the process of going to the bar area to get a drink, I quickly discovered how annoying it was carrying around 3cm wide raffle tickets which were very likely to get ripped or simply lost. The client had asked me to come up with a better way of exchanging money for tokens for beer. Initially, I advised that it probably wasn’t worth redesigning the tokens because ultimately, they were going to get thrown away anyway a few minutes after being purchased. However, after a bit more thought, I realised that there was a good opportunity to come up with a better concept of mere tokens.

Since the price of the beer tokens had already been set at £5 for 4 beer tokens, there was no need to have any less than that. In other words, regardless of how many tokens you might want, you always bought in sets of four. With this in mind, I came up with the idea of having a beer card, containing four tokens. This way, the card itself could be designed at the same size as the ticket (A6) on card. This meant no more misplaced tokens or tokens torn because they had been covered in beer. Additionally, instead of giving in a raffle ticket, the customer would give in the card, have it marked by the bartender and then have it given back. The client really liked this idea and so I went ahead and designed it.

The beer card replaces small raffle tickets.

The programme

With everything else out of the way, the programme was the last thing to design. Although the festival began on May 13th, I had to wait until May 1st to design it because there were sponsor adverts and a full beer list to go in it, which weren’t finalised until late on. The design was influenced by the things I had already designed, using the thick yellow and red frame on each page.

Each page has its own frame similar to the poster, tickets and beer cards.

As a final touch, the client asked for a ranking system next to each of the beers as some of the die-hard festival-goers enjoy rating them. Scores were placed next to each of the 70+ beers.

The rating system was placed next to each beer listing.

The festival

With everything now designed, it was now time to look forward to 2,000 people descending into Chester to take part in the festival. I decided to take a trip to Chester myself and see my work in action.

Hundreds of glasses with the programme inside.

As a designer, it’s always fantastic to see my work ‘live’ and to know that so many people are not only looking at it, but using it, picking it up and reading it. It’s a fantastic feeling to see a room full of people all with the above programme in their hands.

Nearly everyone I met read the programme.

Throughout the evening, I took photos of people having a good time. Thankfully I got some shots of people with the guide in their hands.

The festival tshirts, modelled by staff.

It was also fantastic to see the t-shirts that I had designed on sale at the front of the marquee, as modelled by staff above.

It conclusion, working with the festival has been another fantastic experience. I enjoyed my minor role in working with them last year and I’ve enjoyed developing an entire campaign with them this year even more. In particular, I’m very happy with the beer card idea, which was very successful on the night, as I saw many people buying more than one card every time they bought some. It’s also quite an unusual experience for me as a designer seeing someone hand over money to buy a piece of card which is then valued at £5 each.

As mentioned at the start of this post, the festival’s profits all go to charity. This includes charities such as Claire House,  who support families with sick children. Because these types of charities rely so heavily on donations, I decided that early on in the project, I would donate my whole fee to the festival’s fund. I am proud to support the festival for free because I believe that my fee will be put to good use by the charities that the festival supports. It’s also fantastic news that the festival this year raised over £10,000. A great festival and a great cause. I look forward to working with the festival in 2011, should they wish to work together again.

Of particular note are the beer purchasing cards, which were developed upon request as an alternative to using simple raffle tickets.

Over the course of the three-day event, over 2,000 people used the designed material.

Project Testimonial

Phil Robson, Festival Management
“The new beer festival far exceeded our expectations in terms of profit and experience. It has been a difficult journey but we now have a platform to build on. There is a collective sense of relief that our significant gamble paid off and the new brand will continue and grow. I hope your work and attention to detail is acknowledged by the public; all in Table and beyond were very impressed.”

Today, I’m starting a small advertising campaign using Facebook’s advertising system and if you’re here because you happened to click on my ad, then thank you for taking the time to have a look at the site.

As Facebook is constantly being used to promote parties, weddings and gigs, I thought it may be a good idea to focus the advert on designing specifically for these things. For the next few weeks, I’ll be offering A3 event posters designed to your specifications for a fixed rate of £50. Provided that you’re not looking to have something too complex, I will charge £50 for designing you an A3 poster for pretty much anything you’d like. This could be an upcoming gig for your band, someone’s birthday or maybe something a bit more refined such as a wedding. Whatever it is, I will keep my price at £50 for the next few weeks while my advertising campaign is running.

If you’d like to get in touch, please email me at neil AT the workof.co.uk.

The first Round Table was formed in Norwich in 1927. …a need existed for a club where the young business men of the town could gather on a regular basis to exchange ideas, learn from the experiences of their colleagues and play a collective part in the civic life.

Today, Round Table hosts a number of events and has numerous organisations (or Tables) all over the UK. They are also responsible for producing the annual Chester Charity Beer Festival, which I worked on last year. Chester’s Round Table hired me to develop a flyer to promote their 75th Charter Night. A celebration of Round Table open to anyone. In addition to being their 75th Charter Night, it was also a black tie event and the flyer needed to reflect that.

The front and back of the flyer.

Round Table also needed a ticket to go with the flyer to send to those who would be attending the event. The ticket was designed at A7 so 8 would fit on an A4 page, reducing printing costs. Nick  Wheeler, Chairman of Round Table took responsibility for printing.

Ticket for the 75th Charter Night.

Although a small job, it’s always nice to add a touch of design to an event which may otherwise not have any. I hope that it does the job at getting people to the event.

Since January, I have been very lucky in the fact that I’ve had quite a number of people wanting me to work with them to develop some fantastic campaigns, logos and websites, all of which are going really well. I’m really looking forward to some of the projects going live and getting them out there into the public.

In the meantime, please stay tuned and I’ll be posting another update very shortly.

Firstly, I hope everyone is having a good new year. Welcome to 2010. That’s “twenty ten” and not “two thousand and ten” according to the American National Association of Good Grammar (NAGG).

To kick off January, here’s a new identity for Impossibly Stupid, a blog run by Doc O’Leary. Doc writes about many things, but with a particular interest in some of the mindless things that people do that make you think “Well what was the point of that?”. Here’s his original logo:

Impossibly stupid original logo.

It’s not actually that bad of a logo, but it was lacking communication between it and the blog name.

This was a very short project, but one which still required the sketching of ideas between any digital work was done. I started by trying to incorporate the ‘i’ and ’s’ of ‘Impossibly Stupid’ into one solid logo and I think this is where a lot of logo designs start from. Some are fantastic, others don’t work at all. I also tried to play with the idea of taking one step forward and two steps back to reinforce the idea of something being stupid.

Initial ideas for Impossibly Stupid.

That wasn’t really working as well as I had hoped it would so I moved onto something else, playing with the simple equation of 1+1=3. Something so obviously wrong that everyone knows it’s wrong. It was a simple equation, but one which I felt reflected the tone of voice of Doc’s words perfectly.

I tried a number of variations of the equation, trying to design it in such a way that it looked more like a graphic, rather than numbers but I found that the message became too complex, making people look for the connection between it and the name.

Initial ideas for Impossibly Stupid.

I also tried different placements of the equation, including a vertical alternative.

Initial ideas for Impossibly Stupid.

But in the end, I came back to something much simpler – I+I=III

The final idea used for Impossibly Stupid.

Using ‘I’ instead of ‘1′ and using ‘III’ instead of ‘3′ helped the logo to stay unique and relate back to the name. With three ‘i’s in the name, it just gives a little nod, but not so much that it’s too obvious.

From the final sketch design, I then worked in Illustrator to refine it, trying different varations. The final logo:

The final logo for Impossibly Stupid.

I manually kerned the equation using VAG Rounded as a basis for the numerals. I also enlarged the plus/equals symbols and tightened up the words a little bit so that the logo as a whole wasn’t too elongated.

Doc was very happy with the final result and was kind enough to leave a permanent credit link back to my site, which I appreciate.

A quick, but enjoyable project to work on and one which had a very simple solution!