Articles from August, 2009
When a news story is centred around a list, it’s hard to make your coverage stand out. That’s the problem we faced when Triple J ran their Hottest 100 of All Time earlier this year. Given everyone had the same list of one hundred songs, how do you add your own angle?
The real thing
After the comparison of logo evolutions of Coca-Cola and Pepsi, Businessweek’s profile on Coke’s ‘Creative Excellence’ department makes interesting reading, particularly where it covers the internal battles of their startlingly simple packaging redesign. They seem to be sticking with the simple packaging too: witness their summer-themed cans.
Good morning
‘CreativeMornings‘ is a monthly morning gathering of creative types in New York. Each event includes a 10 minute lecture, followed by a 20 minute group discussion. The New York Times’ Khoi Vinh recently spoke about his early life as a designer and the lessons that he learnt.
Talking re-design
Designers Prem Krishnamurthy and Rob Giampietro talk about their online design of Tablet Magazine, and the different places they found inspiration to shape the design. Interestingly, during the audio slide show, you get a quick look at the intial three directions they took.
Kill your darlings
Print magazine talks to eight book cover designers about rejected designs, including this quote from Gabriele Wilson which every designer will identify with: “Editors sometimes need to see what doesn’t work, in order to figure out what does work.”
Behind the cover
Photographer Peter Belanger’s timelapse video of creating a Macworld magazine cover is mesmerising to watch, and reveals just how much effort goes into the seemingly simple cover photo. Think of it as the photography equivalent to Mike Kus’ slide design time lapse video, which tracked the process of designing a presentation earlier this year.
A dubious sweepstakes
Michael Sokolove’s article “What’s a Big City Without a Newspaper?” in the New York Times Magazine tells the situation facing the US newspaper industry through the story of Philidelphia’s own papers, including the possible ignominy of being the first major US city without a daily paper.