Ceri Musings	art, graphic design, popular culture, professional development
A Visit to the Design Museum
It was lovely to take time out after a client meeting in London to visit the new Design Museum. The stunning new development on High Street Kensington is something to behold with both permanent and temporary exhibitions exploring the history of design. We visited the thought-provoking "Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008-18" as well as the permanent "Designer – Maker – User" display where it was interesting to find out more about the thought processes of the world's greatest designers. Our favourite was the display wall of product design classics including telephones, record players, clocks and computers. The point being that we now carry all of these with us thanks to them being incorporated into a single pocket-sized device.
Ceri Musings	cardiff, infographics, popular culture
Cardiff back to square one
A very interesting Sunday morning spent at the Cardiff Story Museum on the 90th anniversary of Cardiff City FC winning the FA Cup. This was the first cup final broadcast on BBC radio, club historian Richard Shepherd revealed in his talk. To help commentators describe – and listeners picture – the action, this diagram was published in the Radio Times.
What a great example of an early infographic. It was so simple to understand and really useful to both "client" and "customer". It was also possibly the origin of the phrase "back to square one".
Ceri Designworld Article	graphic designers, popular culture, printing
Print's Not Dead
People still have a desire to own tangible things and print is part of that. Even in this increasingly digital world, just look at the resurgence in sales of vinyl records as proof of this. Sales hit a 25-year high in 2016 with LP sales up by 53% on the previous year [1]. Though it seems everyone has an electronic device glued to their hand, when it comes to reading people still want to curl up with a printed book.
A Nielsen survey this week reveals that in the UK while ebook sales are falling, sales of paper books grew 7% in 2016. The most popular reason given was "I like to hold the product." [2]
So is print too old-fashioned for businesses? Does it have a damaging environmental impact? Can businesses just assume that they just don't need printed brochures, leaflets or catalogues any more?
No, there is still a massive role for print to play when it comes to business-to-business communications and as a business owner you ignore print at your peril. As one of our clients said last week "print is far from dead". More
Ceri Musings	art, popular culture
Everyone's a critic
Confirming the old adage about taking a horse to water, a trip to Barcelona proved that you also can't make a 12-year-old boy look up from his phone for a moment even when you're in the beautiful galleries of the Fundació Joan Miró in front of one of the great artist's masterpieces!
Luckily, more attention was paid to those other great artists – Messi and Neymar – later on in the weekend.
Ceri Musings	popular culture, typography
Typography of Stranger Things
There's a lot for a designer of a certain age to get excited about with this summer's Netflix TV sensation "Stranger Things". But in amongst the retro 80s posters, the big hair, the throbbing synth soundtrack and multitude of movie references, literally the first thing to catch the eye is the title typography.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the series creators put a lot of thought into the opening titles, drawing on the covers of Stephen King's early 80s paperbacks to decide a glowing red outlined form of ITC Benguiat. The font's creator, the legendary font designer Ed Benguiat, wasn't aware of the use until The Telegraph contacted him for this article. One of the founders of International Type Corporation, Benguiat (the man) designed Bengiat (the font) in 1978, but he has given this use his seal of approval and is quoted as saying "It's rather appropriate… It lends itself to the feeling of the titles."
We have been designing professionally for over 25 years, so it's fair to say that we have used Benguiat on more than one occasion. It even appears on some of our sister company's typographic wall art, just showing that we can still keep ahead of the graphic design curve!
Find out more about the life of Ed Benguiat in this Telegraph article.
Ceri Musings	cardiff, popular culture
Things you discover in the summer holidays (Pokemon special)
A visit to the studio by the kids during the school summer holidays was greeted with more than usual excitement as it turns out that Temple Court is actually more than just a beautiful office space with great facilities and wonderful staff – it is actually Pokestop in Pokemon Go. This – apparently – is the best thing ever! Who knew?
Ceri Musings	graphic designers, popular culture
18 Shades of Grey, Blue, Red… a different kind of bedtime story book for graphic designers
Not sure if we'd call ourselves designer geek parents, but we do love this new book designed just for little kids which features the Pantone colour range so beloved of graphic designers everywhere.
It's an oversized board book which aims to introduce kids to the ranges of colour within the broad titles of yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, blue, green and brown. Plus there's a page of grays from white through to black. Each of the colour variations within the swatch is given a name which is understandable to kids such as peacock blue, cherry red and bumblebee yellow.
Now Pantone may not officially be giving their colours cute names but who wouldn't prefer telling a client that their logo is "Shark Grey" rather than PMS 7544. For the sub set of designer geek pedant parents there's a UK version available which spells "colours" correctly, but sticks with the American "gray" inside!
It's not going to replace The Gruffalo as the bedtime standard in our house any time soon, but it certainly a lot of fun for us designer types. It's available now from Amazon.
The Pantone colour book for kids. Just don't get me started on Bluebird Blue