On 26 January, the YouTube account ‘ChuckaChucka2012′ uploaded a video titled ‘Coming Soon’ It features Matthew Broderick (Ferris Bueller) opening the curtains saying “How can I handle work on a day like today?” over the top of one of the main songs from the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986). It stimulated a lot of excitement around the internet and even I, personally was really excited for what could be a second Ferris Bueller Film. The video has the date 2.5.12 which is the 5th of February in American format. This date is also the day of the 2012 superbowl. Eagerly awaiting the unveiling of the full trailer, I then came across this video today which will no doubt go viral within the hour. Right now, it’s at 307 views. It has been uploaded by Honda and is the full length version of the previous 10 second trailer. Straight away my heart sank as I realised there was no new movie coming out; just another advertising strategy that is benefiting from viral campaigns.

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The blogs of That Design have been looking a little sparse of late, but don’t worry! We’re still here, just working a lot harder than usual at the moment as we all prepare for our first major hand-in of our final year at University. As with most students, we end up working right to the last minute, but I like to think it’s with the intent that we can get the best of our work out and available with the only thing stopping us being time itself.

I’m planning on creating some seasonal graphics for That Design in the next couple of weeks which you will get to see soon as well as some designs for 2012 coming soon!

For now, have a watch of this well-made music video from an 8-piece crew of School Pupils TA9 that is sure to go viral over the next few days. I saw this earlier and it only had 645 views but as I’m writing this it has 2,198 views. I think it definitely has essence of the Mac generation of bedroom creatives. By that I mean, the type of people who have become well skilled in a creative processes such as music and video and have been able to create a well polished piece in a not-so-professional surrounding.

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BERG, a design studio based in London have today announced a product they’ve been working on for the past year called Little Printer. “Little Printer lives in your front room and scours the Web on your behalf, assembling the content you care about into designed deliveries a couple of times a day.” Running on a new cloud service called BERG Cloud, this little device has the ability to print out some of your most important and fun daily activities that you would usually use your smartphone for. Things such as your daily agenda, news headlines and even fitness statistics from Nike+. It looks like a really unique opportunity to return to having printed media for many daily tasks that are now occupied by our digital selves on the morning commute. Being encapsulated in a small format means that each daily printout can be stuffed into a wallet or maybe stuck on the fridge for all to see.

Here’s how it works:

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I came across this amazing project on Behance recently and I thought it was definitely worth sharing with everyone. At first glance, you may take a look at the photos and think, ‘Wow these are some pretty slick chalk illustrations!’ But then when you look further into the project and watch the video that goes with it you’ll see how it’s taken to another level altogether…

For the 15th anniversary of VIB, a life sciences research institution based in Flanders, Belgium, the creative studio Coming Soon took control of branding the whole event that they were holding in a truly creative manner. Using nothing but chalk and a huge blackboard they were able to create a really striking and informative design throughout the whole collection of media and signage. I absolutely love the detail of the chalk drawings and the precision that they have achieved with their typography and illustration. I personally, would really struggle to wash them off the blackboard based purely on the fact that they are massive pieces art individually, yet the team at Coming Soon seem to get on with the task at hand without hesitation (though they do have a handful of beautiful photographs documenting the process and finished pieces). The style of using chalk drawings on a blackboard may be classed as a bit of a cliché when paired with an educational and research based organisation but I think in this particular instance it work’s exceptionally well for the brand.

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That Design has been around for a couple of months now, but our website was always *Under Construction* and still very much in a testing space which is why we took the decision to make an official launch as a way of saying “We’re here and we’re ready!” Along with that, we also each made a poster that would commemorate the date of November 11 2011. You can view the launch page and posters gallery by clicking on the screenshots below.

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The screen printed version of the poster was handed out at the talk, designed by DixonBaxi printed by Dan Mather.

Last night I attended my first Long Lunch talk, thanks to Tom Actman of Mat Dolphin, and I can definitely say it won’t be my last as I heard and met some really interesting people. DixonBaxi gave an insightful talk on the way they work and presented a wide range of their projects. They have both worked in large agencies but after finding previous Creative Director roles to be pulling them away from creating the work and more towards managing the work they now firmly believe in ‘The power of 2′, and work together on everything. Simon (Dixon) and Aporva (Baxi) sit opposite each other, working in an office with no one else and whilst they frequently enjoy collaborations with various other designers/animators when necessary, it appeared that their work is mostly passing back and forth between them both. They showed a range of work, which was more moving image than I had initially realised. Their F1 work was a particular highlight for me, especially the Graphics System branch of the work. Also their work for international TV channel ’13th Street’ was a personal favourite, I really love how they’d used type so strongly throughout all areas of the brand, and the story they’d created behind the idents. 13th Street is a crime channel, and the idents basically focus on the moment where crime happens. DixonBaxi also developed characters for the idents so there is a sense that in some ways 13th Street has been treated as a programme rather than a channel, providing a sense of depth to the idents.

They spoke about having the confidence to say no throughout the talk, and one of the questions from the floor afterwards was “You’ve worked for large clients and companies, do you have to do occasional small projects to pay the bills?” Simon Dixon replied that they no longer did those jobs, and that they both prefer to work longer, harder and deeper on big projects rather than doing the small projects. This was because previously they found themselves to be working on the small projects too frequently and not getting round to larger ones. They seem to have it perfectly balanced and I think it’s fairly unusual to have this set up, a small agency working on huge international brands. It’s clearly obvious that they both work extremely hard and love what they do which was really inspiring, and other than the fact their work is great, it’s probably that which has got them to where they are now. Another thing that I was really inspired by was their working relationship with each other as it appears so fluid. In short, I’d love to one day be in DixonBaxi’s seat having met a creative soulmate working on large projects for big clients in a spacious but small office.

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Quite possibly the funniest lecture I’ve ever seen about anything typographical or design related came from the great New Yorker, Chip Kidd as he closed TYPOLondon 2011 in the Logan Hall.

I’d never seen a talk from him before but had seen pieces of his work online and in books. I would never have guessed just how brilliantly eccentric and ‘fabulous’ he would be though! Opening with a story of his new mantra which he acquired from an overheard conversation in a lunchtime queue at KFC in New York. “I was standing in line at lunchtime, in the Kentucky Fried Chicken off Union Square. I was in the back of the line, at the front there was this skinny little guy who was ordering – I would like 3 buckets of 21 piece original recipe chicken please.” “The woman behind the counter snapped – Is that for here or to go?!” “Excuse me? How the HELL would I sit here and eat three buckets of 21 piece original recipe chicken. Here. By myself.” To which the woman behind counter did not miss a beat and said “BITCH. I DON’T KNOW YOUR LIFE!”

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With his font foundry ‘Virus’, Jonathan Barnbrook took us on a tour of his work and the thought process that he has developed within the typography side of his business. Having set up shop in 1997, it wasn’t until 7 years later that Jonathan first started selling his fonts to the world. “Style is a virus. If we didn’t need style, we’d only have one typeface”. It is quite clear that the fonts in the Virus collection are made by Jonathan for Jonathan. He is not someone who is driven by money or by political correctness and this is totally apparent in his type design. Having named a particular font after a serial killer and created a series of letterforms that represent this, it is no surprise that he has received his fair share of complaint letters over the past few years.

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As I mentioned in my previous post, I was on my way to TYPOLondon for Saturday’s events at the University of London thanks to a free ticket passed on to my tutor from Colin McHenry, which I am massively grateful of! This post is going to be a roundup of all the posts about the lectures that I went and saw as well as some background information on the designers themselves.

TYPOLondon was a collection of lectures held over the three days (Thursday, Friday and Saturday) from the 20-22 October of this year, “featuring A-list speakers from the world of typography, information, graphic and digital design, brand experience, film, animation, publishing and education.” It’s been held in Berlin for the past few years and this was the inaugural event for London. I was only able to get a ticket for Saturday’s events, but from what I have gathered from the people I have spoken to; Saturday was the favourite day of events so I’m glad for that fact that I was able to enjoy everything on offer. Logan Hall, in the Institute of Education at the University of London is pretty sizeable lecture theatre and appeared to max out with the seating on almost all of the lectures that I saw there.

TYPO will be returning to London next year as well as also having conferences in Berlin and San Francisco. Stay up to date with their Twitter.

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There was an actual real life King at TYPOLondon. Yes, a King. There had been quite a following generated over Twitter for this event and was predicted to be one of the most popular lectures of the whole series. It sure was indeed! Packing out the Logan Hall, Julian Zimmermann and King Bansah put on a brilliantly hilarious show. I didn’t quite know what to expect before it all started but Julian set the scene well with an opening 10 minutes about who the King is and what he did, before the King himself came out onto the stage.

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