As designers it is our stock in trade to bring an experienced eye to our clients’ identities. We seek to present a clear message for them. We deploy our Visual Communication skills to show them in a confident, poised stance. Their goods, whether books, music or widgets made sparkly and their services reflecting their best qualities.

Look at me! The graphics cries. I’m shiny, appealing, loaded with character. Desirable, charming company you can enjoy doing business with. My shelves are bursting with must-have goodies. A veritable wizard’s quiver of skills and talents. Resplendent in cool, sharp livery and clearly the dog’s dangley bits in their field.

We have listened closely to our clients’ problems and aspirations. We have compared the competition and teased out what makes them special in our minds and performed our voodoo on the Mac.

We designers bring focus and objectivity. And hopefully some fun too!

But what about our shop windows? I reflect on this as I have just re-vamped my website www.day-ellison.com. Frankly it is torture! Andrew Butler at DesignCredo calls it The Cobbler’s Shoes. Personally, I can’t see the shoes for wanting to strip out the cobblers. All your inner conflicts rush to the fore like anarchists at the barricades. Is this piece relevant? Am I being vain? Are SMEs as well represented as the celebrities? Should I make something more prominent? O, the human condition! One minute a carefree Creative Director setting out a succession of successful projects, the next taunted by the Demon Doubt, asking if you know how to re-organize the deck-chairs on the Titanic. Physician, heal thyself!

If you have dallied on my Blog before you will know that I love the English language. Marvelling at its power for clarity and delighting in its potential for whimsy and unruly playtime. But not on my website! I don’t want boastful adjectives and purple promises traipsing through with their out-sized muddy boots. I mean, I must think the better part of my work is good or I could not, in all conscience, release it to any the fab folk whose tags adorn this blog. But I certainly don’t want to lather the pages with sales-pitch. It’s just not me. But do I hamstring my own sales efforts in so doing? Arrrgghh! The Demon Doubt again. Fact is you are not there to apply the same cool-headed objectivity that is your normal daily stock in trade. You are trying to deftly negotiate that minefield of hopes and fears. Alone. With Arvo Pårt doing his level best to be a calming voice through the speakers.

So you try to be as objective as you can and ask other people’s opinions. And listen. Then act on what seems the best advice to you. I am grateful for advice from Joanne Jacobs in particular.

I have worked with a lot of great people and the site shows a good selection. And I have kept it simple. It is tailored to the iPad – that seems the way to go. I am working on a WordPress bridge between the website and this blog. That will have a database where youcan search by client/author/title etc.

Could I have your help too? I would love it if you would leave comments/feedback below.

Have a look here: www.day-ellison.com

What do you think?

You cannot live in a rural community, as I do, without observing what an all-encompassing interest horses are to many. Not only racing but riding, owning, grooming, breeding and showing. The equestrian fan is totally absorbed by their pastime. Quite an industry too. It’s not my specialst subject – only ridden twice, once on the Guinness Estate as a guest (good), the other in Algeria (bad). Amazing creatures though. Equine athletes. Limited expertise here. Must say I prefer Delacroix to Stubbs. But do check this stunning volume, Horse by Yann Arthus-Bertrand and Jean-Louis Gouraud. The sheer beauty of the animal does not escape me. Also the fertilizer is very impressive for the garden.

And I do enjoy reading a good thriller . . .

. . . Who could not help but be gripped by the extraordinary events at Newbury Race Course last weekend? In the viewers’ enclosure several of the race horses suddenly became extremely distressed. And two died instantly. Ghastly, even on the radio. Possible cause is suspected to be an electric shock from an under-turf source. Not only was it an attention-grabbing news item but I was struck by how many reporters said the event was ‘like a Dick Francis novel’.

A select few authors become synonymous with a sport. Norman Mailer on boxing leaps to mind, but more often than not it is sport as a major strand of popular culture that inspires the novelist, rather than sport per se. Short story writers, however, do favour the activity. But I digress. So you see why I value great writers so highly – for their skill and craft eludes me.

Dick Francis was a serious achiever in British National Hunt racing before he started writing about that world. He won over 350 races, becoming champion jockey just as Noddy was entering my consciousness. He quit racing as the result of a serious fall. His most famous moment as a jockey came while riding the Queen Mother’s horse, Devon Loch, in the 1956 Grand National when the horse inexplicably fell when close to winning the race. Wikipedia just told me that bit. ’56 is the year I acquired a hyphen.

At Pan Books Dick Francis sales were cantering along nicely. But the feeling was that he should be read beyond his devoted fans in the horse-racing fraternity. “Whether you followed the gee-gees or not they are a good read” they said. And we need covers for his books that stretch his appeal to include them. I was skeptical (the description of jockeys as dwarves dressed as clowns always tickled me) but gave it a shot. I read a few. They were right. He writes at quite a clip. Fast paced, accessible, one sitting reads. All made credible by his wealth of insider knowledge. So the challenge was to package his novels without overt equine imagery to keep the thriller appeal wide as possible. OK marketing peeps.

The design shown is about nefarious deeds with counterfeit vintage wine against a racing backdrop. I designed two dozen or so with photographer Colin Thomas. A few are shown above.

A graphic design snippet for you: See the bubbles on the meniscus? When photographing drinks you need to be able to control the bubbles. Especially with wine. Too many will appear oxidized. Too few looks flat. And, whilst there is some settled wisdom, opinions differ on the ideal size and number with the wine producer. An air-filled syringe is a time consuming option and as bubbles burst they splash colour on the perfect glass. Solution: you can buy plastic bubbles in unlimited configurations to drop into liquids. They pick up the colour by reflection. Life before PhotoShop.

Thrillers are often referred to as ‘electric’. Maybe that was the cause of the Newbury tragedy? Time, and Clare Balding, will tell.

Will they ever find Proof?

Italy at its very finest. Emiligia Romagna, Tuscany and Umbria in June. I have been lucky enough to be taken along as a pal and support vehicle driver by Greg Hart who is competing in the Modena Centro Ore Classic, Edizione 5a. Greg is racing a 1964 Lotus Elan and winning nearly every event until the diff is killed by an over-zealous marshall at a hill start. The particular moment I want to take you to is a break in a road race stage at an unfeasibly beautiful restaurant in the Umbrian countryside. There is languid heat and hurried linguini for lunch (the race cars tend to arrive at food stops earlier than a Mercedes Van full of equipment and tools! Outside are parked the highly-strung petrol-fed stallions. I am beside a Ferrari 275 GTB. A mechanic listens closely, like a surgeon to the tick-over of its V12 engine. That engine has 300 Horse Power before it ever sees a spanner. A low brooding rumble. Now hold that thought . . .

London a few years earlier, working at Decca as Creative Director. Shaking up classical music packaging a bit. The Partners had laid great ground-work on the design front. In-house art director, Ann Bradbeer, in particular, is embracing our drive for more adventurous commissioning of photography and illustration. I am enjoying bringing in good creatives like David Smart who went on to spend so many successful years there. But I am having to spend much too time throwing open the windows on working practice, scaring the natives and re-organizing my departments; Art, Editorial & Production. Missing more hands-on creative work.

 

Some of you will have seen this recent job at the Like Minds Conference, Exeter 2010. Or in the club. Partners Scott Gould and Drew Ellis wanted to upgrade the quality of the magazine and appointed me as Art Director on a continuing basis.

They were aware that the magazine needed to make a step change, an upgrade in quality to match their organisation’s growth. But how? Drew’s brief was to make it look like Monocle. Aside from my being naturally allergic to looking over the shoulder of the boy on the next desk, this was unworkable. Let me expand to explain. Monocle is information dense, has regular features with sections themes (Affairs, Business, Culture, Design, Edits, Travel) It is intensively researched, cross-referenced, has a couple of dozen staff and 200+page editions. Like Minds had commissioned great articles but had no other sophistication in its editorial structure. Maybe one day. For now it had a target of 72 pages, with only the assistance of a copy-editor who did not materialise. Another brief was the direct opposite direction of ‘lots of white space’.

Hmm. Of course this wasn’t the first muddled brief and it won’t be the last. A little thoughtful archeology was required. If the the content was a series of articles, without that rich info-graphic density, it was best to address the client’s aspirations instead. Amongst a plethora of Social Media outfits Like Minds wanted something classy, a touch cool. Something to be proud of. Understandable, and this art director has experience of how to produce a quality ‘look and feel’ from limited resources. The editor had asked Peter Stephens to provide Exeter photography. I love the image (above) of the bench. Great example of the photographer’s eye instinctively understanding the industrial designer’s concept. The other images were to come from iStockphoto library. A low cost option but I found if I selected carefully and cropped well, they fit the bill. I devised a 3 column grid using cross-heads, drop cap intros and picture sign-offs. I recruited my beloved Baskerville, for the text. Justified and leaded it provides the clean, readable feel that I knew would work if I counter-balanced it with a clinical sans-serif font. In the right weights Helvetica Neue cuts the mustard. At an early stage, I tried it for the headlines on a hurriedly assembled dummy, using Like Minds colours but it resembled Orange literature and was rightly binned. Instead I opted for alternating Baskerville with the LikeMinds font, Asbuka and that gave me a good balance of classic and fresh.

There was a problem when the contributing authors’ biographies came in. They varied wildly from one line to two pages (no, I won’t tell you who’s that was!). But I remembered that the editor had told me about the use of QR codes projected onto the side of of a store in Japan, long before we worked on the magazine. I knew he was itching to use QR codes somewhere. So, when we hit this problem, I proposed we used QR codes to resolve the biog-inconsistencies – and add an element of innovation that seemed to fit the magazine’s audience. The editor readily agreed and directed the code to the LikeMinds alumni page. A brand tether, no bad thing.

Initially the cover was left open to me. Then the editor wanted it reserved for a head-shot of a major retail expert. A coup – but it didn’t come off. So it was back to me . . . I had an idea. As you do. Mark Jennings, of Freshnetworks had shouted out the work of Johanna Basford, on Twitter, earlier in the year. Amazing line artwork. Exuberant, elegant, lush. I yearned to use her work one day. Aha! Now was my chance. With no time or funds I asked if she had any existing artwork we could re-use. Johanna kindly offered several. A star. There was a really wild one that I would love to have used (and spot varnished too) but it was not to be. However we agreed on the drawing above. Splendidly entitled ‘A Tree of Monkeys’.

With less than a week to press the magazine was at 72 pages including 10 pages of advertising. But there was a 3 page hole. Big headache. I volunteered to write an article to plug the gap and Drew was relieved at that. Knowing my neighbouring articles were by smart Social Media savvy pros, I worried into the night about how to come up with the goods. Until the penny dropped to just write a simple, personal account of my experiences of Social Media to date, rather than any self-promo puff. Rather fun writing direct into a Quark layout. Still waiting to be found out as an author but noodling away until such time. Feel free to comment on that!

With the deadline upon us enough of Drew’s anticipated advertising evaporated, making the magazine uneconomic. The final version had to be radically cut. Articles from many luminaries were regretfully lost. My article’s retention in the truncated magazine was a pleasant surprise since it was an emergency filler. I wasn’t hired as a writer! Happy to be able to help, and thanks.

This frantic, last minute re-structure threw up several issues but had one positive outcome that stood out to me. In a three-way Skype call I pointed out that our final cover now had a gap in the nice neat rows of author names. Any of you who work with me will know I think credit attribution is an important principle. Scott suggested that our cover artist be included on the cover. That kind of generous instinct is key to Like Minds future, in my view, and I applaud you, Scott.

But too much had been left to the last minute and an irritating casualty was a missed lo-res scan spotted on press by the helpful Ashley House. Rapidly fixed. But a lesson to us all: Skipping a wet proof is always a false economy.

Just under the wire. And looking quite spruce, considering. Anybody need a magazine Art Director?

Some times you deliver a job and never hear another word. This can be disconcerting. One minute you are intensely focussed on a mission. The next you are alone watching your child cycle off, without the trainer-wheels, suddenly redundant.

Other times it is very different.

Last week a finished copy of The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films arrived. The next day the author, Doug Adams, arrived in England. We had worked together so intensely over many months. Often under serious pressure. A mutual respect and friendship had developed. Would meeting in ‘real life’ be the same? And the mighty composer, Howard Shore who had gathered three Academy© Awards for his Tolkien Movie compositions. The next day would be the UK Publication Day and I was about to find out . . .

The venue was Chappell of Bond Street, which is in Wardour Street. Of course it is. Chappell’s is where you go to buy serious musical instruments from people who know one end of a Tuba from another. Downstairs is the sheet music section. As one often to be heard muttering darkly against the cloned retail outlets in our cities I feel I should, by turn, celebrate the very existence of such specialist havens of expertise, knowledge and craft. Thrilled they survive the relentless steam-roller of the bland. And I do.

Picture this. Pitch black 7pm on Monday and we could barely get in the shop. Strands of the disparate tribes of Tolkien Fans, Movies Fans and Music Fans threading together in an eager queue to hear Doug Adams and Howard Shore discuss the project and sign some their treasured books. We oozed through the throng, slid to the wings and lurked behind a speaker. And listened to the presentation as the poised, humble young author chatted carefully and informatively with this soft-spoken Canadian composer. Shore has worked with many of my favourite directors. Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Peter Jackson . . . Blimey!

Then I can only remember a bit of a blur. Doug recognised me from the inflated version of my avatar which is the reality and called me to the front for introduction. I got a round of applause! Hell, often the best you get is to be told is that the Sales Director’s mum thought you should have done it in green. Applause! Real applause from real readers who really care. Really. I bowed to the maestro and Doug and I hugged. On their gentle but firm insistence I said something about the design approach into the mike, Lord knows what, and we three signed many copies of the book – together.

The devil makes me do things sometimes at very proper events. And, later, I found such demonic possession commanding me to proffer the Susan Boyle Songbook to Mr Shore to sign. Fortunately he is a gracious man and there was much laughter.

It seems I got away with it as those very nice people from the distributors, Alfred Music, took us all for supper at The Langham Hotel, opposite what I think of as the British Embassy, BBC Broadcasting House. Conversation pinged from noise-cancelling headphones to Lennon & McCartney, from Radio 4 to the graphic beauty of music. Teenage cassette compilations, Thom Yorke, file-sharing, Apps and beyond.

Next morning, while Howard took rehearsal we had promised the morning to showing Doug and his lovely girlfriend, Jill Smith a sample of the delights of London. On the steps of St Paul’s Doug told me the news that the book had sold out on Amazon in UK & Germany on Day One. We took The Millennium Bridge to The Globe Theatre and Tate Modern. Chicagoan have stamina, I am here to testify, and love their coffee is infinite. The original instruments in The Globe exhibition were of great interest to Doug. And I love that it is just 50 yards from Joseph Beuys.

All good. And then it got better. Remember reading that a pianist that used to accompany old silent movies? Frantically fingering the keyboard as some hapless heroine was tied to the railway tracks by a nefarious villain? That night, in 2010, we were part of a sell-out audience at The Royal Albert Hall to witness the spectacle of a full screening of The Return of the King. Technicians kept the Voices and the Sound Effects but stripped out the Sound Track Music. And beneath the screen The London Philharmonic Orchestra plus male choir, children’s choir and soloists, some 250+, performing the full score live to screen. It blew my socks off!. My inner sceptic always wriggled at some of the most sentimental moments of the movie. But with the full impact of perfect live vocal presence the swell of the music transformed the saccharine to sweet moments. And I have to tell you that, at The Lighting of the Beacons, my heart filled-up with Shore’s Music, Alan Lee, John Howe, the Movie and the project with Doug in ways that any attempt to describe would only invite a cackling of derision from the cynical reader. And the tears rolled down my face.

At the Interval all I could do was stand and look around the impressive venue, vast audience, massed performers and just marvel at the epic scale of the whole thing. (Then we had Ben & Jerry’s – Chocolate Chip.) After the performance, and rapturous applause, Howard Shore & Doug Adams signed books into the night, The line stretched from Gate One to Gate Six. I had been asked to join them signing but it seemed strangely inappropriate and we slipped into the night. Tired, emotionally drained, happy with my wife, Sandy Nightingale.

This creative director may not have the most cash in the world. But sometimes life makes him feel very, very rich.

(Continued from Part One . . .)