Oh, there you are. You've managed to find Perez-Fox.com, featuring the portfolio and blog of Prescott Perez-Fox. For commentary on the world of branding, advertising, national identities, the Internet, and graphic design in general, read on below. If you're interested in some of my work, check out the portfolio page. Got something to say? Leave a comment on the blog or get in touch by other means.
There is a debate on in Britain about whether or not graphic designers should be certified in the manner of other professions. “The Chartered Society of Designers has filed an application to the Government to approve a system of professional certification for designers.” according to an article in Design Week.
The scheme hopes to add credibility to the graphics profession, in a similar manner to architects, accountants, lawyers, and other “chartered” professions. For example, once the designer has received their CDes badge, they would, like other chartered professionals, be obliged to undertake mandatory annual continuing professional development training. But will regulation save the graphic design trade?
While famous for so many things, London [still] lacks a unifying, cohesive graphic brand identity under which all sectors can co-exist. The Mayor, and other officials, sought to bring together the previously branded elements of transport, tourism, government, the Olympics, and other public programmes with the creation of a new branding effort.
Back in September, I wrote about London auditioning design firms in an effort to create an all-seeing, all-knowing identity to define the city. To recap, the whole thing has become a fiasco, with design industry folks sniping about the process, the fees, the secrecy, the whole notion of free pitching, and the dubious need for such a project in the first place.
One of the main criticisms for the whole effort to was the fact that only a handful of design firms were allowed to bid in the first place. You could almost name them before the competition started. City officials determined a minimum standard of size, billings, compliance, insurance, health & safety, and other criteria which immediately ruled out so many of the very-talented 3-person agencies in the UK. (For example, how many design firms have a policy of community outreach for LGBT people, or have calculated their carbon footprint accurately?) Two firms were rumoured to be finalists, but that proved to be just a rumour, and the true winners has emerged in a recent article in Design Week.
I was a little surprised to find myself quoted in the article, having submitted a comment to a previous post on his blog, posing this very question.
First-year students should be put through a rigorous programme of calculus, economics, history, composition, and public speaking. The goal would be to produce first a thinker, a professional, a businessperson, and an educated individual. Only then will traditional design “training” begin. And yes, a lot of people would drop out. The phrase “in the real world” would be banned — this school would be very much a part of the professional world.
While the requests for improvements do vary a great deal, there are some recurring threads: more professional involvement including industry-practicing professors, exposure to live briefs, client contact even before graduating, and better training for pricing and running a business. There is also a desire for web design training, presumably from qualified instructors.
What are your thoughts? What are d-schools lacking in their curriculae and what changes would you make?
If there is one area of design where I have grown and expanded over the last five years, it is in typography. I look back on past projects, even the work I did in grad school, and I cringe at the type. Not because my old work is bad, per se, but because of how much I’ve grown over the years. It’s like looking at my old math books from the era before Calculus — an entirely different practice.
Type is what separates the men from the boys, it’s what certifies a professional design against an amateur, it’s what gets noticed (and yet doesn’t), it’s what communicates, it’s what matters.
I do, from time to time, admit to the holes in my informal education and how those holes have [negatively] affected my career. Perhaps the only aspect of actual design — from the wrist down — is in typography. I wish I had learned the finer points sooner.
But here we are, so let’s enjoy it.
Lately, I have stumbled upon a host of great sources for typographic influence and fonts. Here are just a few. Gawk. Sigh. Enjoy.
I Love Typography – favorite fonts of 2009 Font Squirrel – resource for high-quality free commercial fonts, many of them Open Type format Commercial Type – vendor of lovely fonts. HypeForType – UK-based type vendor with exclusive fonts Daily Drop Cap – blog feature a new custom drop cap, by type designer/illustrator Jessica Hirsche AmpersandAmpersand – a daily blog featuring ampersands in different typefaces
If you’ve had an ear open to advertising/design-related chatter in the past year or so, you’ve probably heard about Please Feed The Animals and Lemonade, the short documentary illustrating inspiration stories of folks who had been laid off from advertising jobs, and subsequently transformed their lives.
I just watched it on Hulu. It’s incredibly inspirational! Go watch it now. That is all.
And if you’re in New York this week, try to join us for a screening. It’s full now, but there’s a waitlist.
This afternoon, in a fit of frustration, I sat down and remade the website for UPS as I would like to see it remade. That is, how it should be remade to best serve the principal need of the customers.
Creating this little monster took about 5 minutes, but quickly spread around the web design community via Twitter with a little help from popular blogger Brian Hoff and the community site Smashing Magazine. So I thought it fitting I actually blog it so it becomes “permanent” and maybe directs people back here.
Someone keen already pointed out that I included a scroll bar. I admit, that’s just a vestigial feature left over from the screenshot process. Perhaps I’ll take care of that in a later revision, and actually tackle the logistics of having a site that is more minimal than Google, if you can believe such a thing. For example, I should probably have a link to switch languages, and some place to log in for general use. And the copyright info, etc.
But this is a philosophical redesign, so it doesn’t have to make complete sense.
So if everyone loved it, why did it die? Simple: the brand wasn’t clearly focused. The management and editors at I.D. had wrestled for years as to whether the mag is a trade publication, aimed at designers and those in creative professions, or a consumer mag, serving as a bit of eye candy for the general magazine-reading public who may not be so concerned with the behind-the-scenes of how it all was made.
This duality was the kiss of death. Brands that can’t focus are doomed — or as a Russian-born friend of mine put it, “a little bit of everything is usually a whole lot of [fucking] nothing.” It makes everything difficult, especially selling your brand as the blank blank blank in your field, and not just half-blank and half-blank in two fields.
Perhaps I.D. will be reborn as two different mags, each with smaller circulations, more defined readership, better targeted ads, and more appropriate editorial content. Shit, maybe I should start one.
