My site has crashed into the Top 40 of the Design Charts, it’s great to be in such illustrious company as Jonathon Harris (disclaimer - the charts change every week so I might not be there anymore when you look).

Also another boast is that I’m going to be speaking at Liverpool Design Symposium, brought to you by D&AD and some other folks. For all interested parties Matt Pyke from Universal Everything will be there also.

It has come to my attention that the title of my blog does not really describe the content, so I’m about to make an effort to address that before Trading Standards pop round.

‘eat me’, ’shake me’, ‘hello, I am made of lovely juicy good stuff’, ‘ooooh I am sweet and funny’, ‘put me in the recycling please, as I’m just a little harmless product’.
Yep we’ve all heard it, we’ve all smiled inside at the innovative and engaging ways brands are talking to us now, happy to be a part of the new world consumer order. Low impact? High enjoyment? We’re all friends together, you and me. Me the fab cool greenish product, you the smart moneyed consumer.

But something is sticking in my throat today… something not quite feeling right. When I read those words on the websites, on the products, on the hidden surface of the thing I’ve just bought, telling me how much they ‘loved’ making this thing something feels wrong. What that thing is I’m going to try and set out here because for me the end of the nicey nicey brand is looming large on the horizon. I have been wrong about a lot of future trends (the coolness of comic sans being one) but I think this one is only a matter of time.

There has been a massive increase in this general niceness on the part of brands for the last 5 years, with probably Ben and Jerrys being the ancient precedent for this current vogue of all copy written like a cosy exchange between two happy people. Would you like a nice cuppa? Oh go on then you harmless git.

The happy friendly copy was a breath of fresh air for me especially in a world where we are cowed and swayed by names and corporations barking their messages in the manner of machismo, professionalism and science. The nicey nicey was a bit of light relief in the everyday, conversational and warm, making me feel a little bit closer to the lost past of local shops and local produce that I don’t think I ever really knew.
I liked the charm, and the idea that the people who made the product were all thoroughly decent people who care about me.

But now as the clouds of recession loom on the UK horizon and as we wish that Kirstie Alsop had been a doctor instead of a fffffing presenter we begin to understand that property is not property but in fact peoples HOMES, we begin to understand that credit is not credit but in fact DEBT, and we begin to understand that the climate is not warming up our summers a bit but generally wreaking havoc worldwide. Ahhhh when I was a wee lass we actually had discernible seasons, when it was cold in Winter and hot in Summer instead of perma-April.

So in my current headspace if someone is going to tell me they made something with love, that something better not be a soft drink or a disposable razor or a 2.zero web offering for better networking - what it better be is something a little bit more important.

But brands have never really been the answer to environmental and financial disaster but when the UK populace is edgy, nervous and skint it annoys to have this cloying familiar chat from brands who are without a doubt part of the problem. When the reality bites I can’t abide those who continue to harp on about ‘loveliness’ when I know only too well that I only believed in their loveliness when my life too was lovely. Now I find it all a bit tired, irrelevant to my life, like reaching adolescence while your parents still pat your head as you think “Don’t they know the shit I’m dealing with, why can’t they see what the world is like”.

I’m not advocating branding like Death cigarettes here, but if brands are to have any resonance with the people their message cannot be one of unending niceness and childish talk. If I see one more ‘ooooooh hello’ on a bit of packaging I will light the bonfire.

We all need good companies to make stuff that is worthwhile but don’t lay it on too thick folks because we know you still live or die by your bottom line and this time our bottom line is really at the bottom.

For me and my current work on tone, brand messaging and communications in general I’m going to reign back from the baby talk and remember no-one likes a Polly Anna, if you want to come over as out of touch and oblivious keep on speaking to your customers like they are two, if you don’t then straighten up and fly right as Bob Fossil might say.

Here’s the latest work for the release of Eurora by Fjordfunk with Blackbelt Anderson and Brennan Green mixes.
Out soon in one of those old fashioned record shops.

I have worked in interactive design for nearly 9 years now, which means that it was last century when I started out doing web design. Internet years are a lot like dog years, there’s maybe 7 internet years in every calendar year. So I calculate I have been working at the coal-face for 63 internet years now.

Well what conclusions to draw? Mmmmmm lots, and here is not the time for a reverie or a ‘back in the day’ load of nostalgic bullshit, because let’s face it, it weren’t back in the day, it was only 9 years ago and the internet is an infinitely more interesting landscape now than it used to be.

In reality the dot com bubble had already burst by the time I was flexing my wacom pen and FLASH was all bright eyed and bushy tailed. Full of animated 3-d logo promise. The publications TWEEN SCENE and TRACE BITMAP MONTHLY were popular round my house. Possibly out of print now.

So this is my current headspace on ‘web design’ or ‘interactive design’ or ‘interaction design’ or ‘digital’ or ‘new media’ or whatever name you want to call it. Mostly it’s just online communication we are talking about here, prosaic as that may seem and of course this is only from my point of view.
I think Josh Davis once said that web designers were the new rock stars. Ahhhh those halcyon (read deluded) days of promise and excitement… but that was before THE FEAR. Now web standards and best practise (which were things we desperately needed to underpin the work we made) sadly become the work we’ve made. What I FEAR stalks me now. What I LOVE is fading.

1 - FEAR OF the words ‘end user’.
What are they at the end of? Their tether probably if the people who design for them think of them as users. As industries grow up and become professional, certain terminologies pass into acceptable usage which does not necessarily make them right or useful.

LOVE OF ‘people’ and ‘audiences’ and not imaging everyone who is on the internet is ‘using’ it. The concepts of using and consuming have become so powerful we reduce everyone to pure demographics. For fear of sounding a bit right on… whatever happened to ‘people’?

2 - FEAR OF ‘information content’.
We have been consistently lectured on the importance of information on the web, ease of finding it, ease of reading it, best way to lay it out, best way to write it, most concise way of editing it, best way to make it usable on the web, best way to navigate through it. STOP! PLEASE, my head hurts.
I believe the information content that exists on the internet is a lot like an iceberg, two thirds of it is below the water level, it is NEVER seen or read. And you know why that is? Not because the designer did it wrong or the best practice content layout manual had been burnt by the cleaner but because THERE IS TOO MUCH INFORMATION OUT THERE! THERE IS TOO MUCH CONTENT (the irony of me writing lengthy prose here is not lost on me so please don’t pull me up on it). All this information cannot be made sense of by us, it becomes overwhelming, we can’t process it. Let’s not base all our communication on information, that’s just a part of it. Information is literally only a slice of the online pie, there’s other stuff too, let’s not go ffffffing crazy on information. If you’re really mad for lots of useless information, get a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records.

LOVE OF ‘illustration’. No not the pictures silly, but the idea of illustrating something. Let’s illustrate ideas and bring them to life not get lost in presenting more information than the world can ever hope to see. More signal, less noise.

3 - FEAR OF big fonts.
I’m in a Gullivers Travels version of the web, I swear fonts are getting bigger and more rounded at every turn. Our collective stupidity is mirrored surely by the craft of our handwriting. When the monks made the Lindisfarne Gospel, do you think somebody stood over them and said “that illustrated letter is illegible and your calligraphic script will have to be turned into Helvetica rounded 12 points at least, possibly 13, because we like to patronise everyone”. On the internet everyone is patronised with a toytown landscape and a candy bevelled gloss on everything. Now this is a ‘word’, you can make this WORD ‘BIGGER’ if you like.

For everyone currently effervescing with rage at the thought of an internet inaccessible to visually impaired people, THAT’S NOT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT. Indeed there must be a suitable and particular way for the visually impaired to enjoy and access the internet but we must remember (see fear 2) that the internet is more than just seeing or reading information, it is where we play out our cultural lives now, and if we whitewash the whole landscape with a uniformity of design then we reduce the whole to a basic incapable of supporting the myriad of works and culture that should exist online. Fonts should be released from the tyranny of the rules, at least on the weekends.

4 - FEAR OF design robots.
There exists in the world companies that offer services that analyse the colour contrast between text and it’s background, they do this mathematically in order to say whether that particular colour combination is in fact legible enough. Hey up, isn’t that my job? The human designer, designing for other humans. Making the decision what to make legible and what not, admittedly I have made a lot of text illegible in my time, mainly because it wasn’t very good, and it was definitely in everyone’s best interest.
Anyhow who these companies actually are is vague, how they have harnessed this power is basically by claiming it and offering it to nervous clients. Much like feudal land owners and credit reference agencies they only exist because they say so. For me they are shadowy opportunists ready to bamboozle the gullible with some stats and facts and the obvious superiority of an algorhythm over the human mind.

Love of INSTINCT
Don’t fight it feel it.

More platitudes to come folks.
Over and out.

Here’s the new artwork I’ve made for the Mungolian Jetset versus Mari Boine release. This is shortly to be released by Luna Flicks on N.E.W.S

Special shout out to my genuine Viking mask bearer, thanks, no-one could be more ‘ain’t necessarily evil’ than you!

He wears : Mac - Electric Eel eyeshadow, paper mask, neon headband - models own.

Yo The World! Did you know that sometimes garden gnomes get all fresh and jiggy with digital media? Probably not.
Well they do, and when they do they become Webby Honorees.

This is a project I worked on at magneticNorth so check out the full story at this hot url www.magneticN.co.uk (hey there’s even a stop frame video of me painting the little fellas someplace).

There were 11 of these gnomes all customised and broadcasting bluetooth messages around Leeds last summer (2007), this one is called Rod because he’s a hot rod gnome… of course!

Karina Lax is my friend, she’s also a brilliant artist and photographer, amazingly these facts aren’t mutually exclusive as I have ‘lots’ of friends who aren’t brilliant or artists or photographers.

Here is the logo I designed for her. I’m making a site for her too (soon).