totalcontent - the blog.

word of the week — ‘antipatico’.

Italian lesson... shared tastes, better results

So here it is, totalcontent’s very first foreign ‘word of the week’. Even if your Italian’s a bit rusty, you’ve probably figured out that antipatico* means roughly the opposite of simpatico, a word that’s become common English parlance over the past few years. I say roughly, because actually it means “unpleasant, odious, unsympathetic or crabby”. But then, if someone fits that description, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be simpatico with them.

Recently I’ve been finding that in a work context, like-mindedness is a real blessing. Of course you should be open, co-operative and respectful, whoever you’re working with. But if you share similar interests and cultural reference points, it’s a real bonus and will only make for a better working relationship. It means you can develop a deeper understanding more quickly, you’re more likely to enjoy each other’s company and be thinking along the same lines.

But if you’re antipatico, you simply won’t be ordering from the same menu.

*Thanks to Paula at Form for introducing me to the word on Wednesday.

a real draw.

Damon Albarn clearly has his hands full collecting lifetime achievement BRIT awards and preparing for Blur’s Hyde Park show to mark the closing of the Olympics this year. (Or maybe he’s hastily booking some singing lessons.)

Anyway, it’s good to see Gorillaz collaborator and comic-book artist Jamie Hewlett is keeping the wolf from the door too. We particularly loved his quirky, inimitable London-thru-the-ages Absolut Vodka bottle design (available exclusively from Selfridges). And you can be sure my eldest will be saving his pennies for a pair of these limited-edition Gorillaz Converse All Stars. The business, if we may be so bold.

awards – a chew and a gulp.

Most of the time, you complete a writing project and that’s the end of it, your words disappear off into the ether… but occasionally it’s good to know they’re out there actually doing the business for someone — quite literally.

Two brands we worked on a couple or so years ago fared well at this week’s DBA Effectiveness Awards. Chewits won a Silver in the Interactive & Digital category, while Bottle Green struck Gold in Packaging.

Read on...

word of the week — ‘loaded’ (ˈləʊdɪd)

Port or starburst? You decide

While there’s been a recent a boom in niche independent magazine publishing, it appears to be ‘time gentlemen please’ for the so-called ‘lad mag’. Loaded, which epitomised the 1990s phenomenon, reported a 30.2% year-on-year drop in sales, down to a paltry 34,505. At its height, 20-odd years ago, the title was selling over ten times that amount, at around 450,000 copies a month.

Read on...

new work – Crabtree & Evelyn.

Mind your own biscuit... retrotastic packaging from Crabtree & Evelyn

Better late than never. Here's a project that I worked on with the wonderful Kate Shaw, Global Creative Director at Crabtree & Evelyn quite a few months ago. The words I contributed are pretty minimal, but I love the mad abandon of the packaging. Those flying Highland cattle on the shortbread pack in particular. The design was by Smith & Milton, but if the imagery looks familiar, that's because it had been used before back in the 1980s. This was C&E reestablishing its heritage by delving into its rich visual archive.

word of the week – ‘score’ (skɔː).

From Mark Farrow to Peter Saville, two designers from the same Factory. In the light of this week’s shenanigans at the FA, I though it would be worth revisting Saville’s recent redesign of the England football shirt. If you recall, the former Creative Director of the City of Manchester took the bold step of introducing some colour to the national team’s traditionally pristine white kit.

Read on...

word of the week ‘restraint’ (rɪˈstreɪnt).

I don’t know how Mark Farrow does it. Year after year, he produces standout graphic design, sweeping young pretenders aside in his majestic wake. If anyone wants a lesson in immaculate modernism, they should look no further than ‘Format’, his latest collaboration with pop stalwarts Pet Shop Boys.

Strip off the old block... Farrow pulls another rabbit out of the hat

A collection of obscure B-sides and rarities spanning 1996 to 2009, Mark has used the coloured spines of the original release formats to inform the stripy illustration on the cover. A graphic device, of course, that harks back to previous PSB releases, notably 1998’s ‘Introspective’ and 2008’s ‘Yes’.

(By the way, there are some great song titles on ‘Format’ — ‘The Truck Driver and his Mate’, ‘Sexy Northerner’, ‘We’re All Criminals Now’, ‘I Didn’t Get Where I Am Today’, and ‘Gin and Jag’.)

Like Peter Saville at Factory Records or Vaughan Oliver at 4AD, a long-standing, hugely productive relationship has helped Mark develop a formidable house style for PSB. But it’s his perfectly judged graphic restraint and ferocious attention to detail that always sets the work apart. Design critic Adrian Shaughnessy believes Farrow was “the first record sleeve designer to master the art of designing for CD”, a bold but justifiable claim.

I was lucky enough to get to know Mark in the 1980s, just after he’d come down from Manchester and was working in a small studio above a shop in Neal Street, Covent Garden. At the time, he was working closely with restauranteur/entrepreneur Oliver Peyton (still a client) on press ads for Sapporo Japanese lager. It struck me that Mark’s work is like sushi – delicate, dextrous and extremely tasty.

back to black.

After a 20 year hiatus, I’ve invested in a new needle and some cleaning fluid, and started buying vinyl again. The first thing you notice is the sky-high price — around £20 for a new album, as opposed to £9 for a CD or £7 for a download. But you forget how much richer and more satisfying the whole experience is.

The vast expanse and beauty of the sleeve; the ritual of undressing the black stuff and placing it in the turntable; the indulgence of listening to a whole side as opposed to the usual fickle flicking from song to song. You actually listen to the music rather than consume it. You give it more attention, approach it with far more generosity of spirit.

And I’m lucky that there’s a half decent Oxfam Books and Music store near me. Last week, seemingly waiting for me, were two of my favourite-ever albums — Stevie Wonder’s ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ and ‘Innervisions’. I’ve never owned them on vinyl before, as I didn’t have much opportunity or cash to buy records when I was at school.

Written discreetly in biro inside the gatefold of ‘Innervisions’ is a date — ‘3 March 1975’. There’s something terribly touching to know that this physical artefact meant something to someone out there, that there’s a story attached to it. It’s been very well looked after, I can tell you that much.

Have a think about that next time you download 89p’s worth of soulless music data from iTunes.

Wonderwall... what goes around comes around

word of the week – haggis (ˈhagɪs).

It was Burns’ Night on Tuesday, so here are some musings on haggis.

South of the border we’re all a bit sceptical… we have a suspicion that these grungy-looking brown balls contain something vaguely intestinal. Perhaps they’re distantly related to a black pudding.

Or so we thought. In fact, haggis ignorance runs far deeper. A 2010 survey by takeaway service Just-Eat.co.uk revealed that 18% of Brits believe haggis is a small beast which roams the Highlands. Another 15% hazard that its a type of Scottish musical instrument, while 4% plump for a Harry Potter character. Some 800 of the 1,623 people interviewed were Scottish, and 14% of them had no idea what a haggis was either (oh the shame).

A flavour to savour... if you’ve got the stomach for it

In fact, the venerated haggis is a concoction of sheep’s heart, liver and lungs minced with onions, oatmeal, suet and spices, all stuffed into a sheep stomach. As the 2001 English edition of the Larousse Gastronomique puts it, “Although its description is not immediately appealing, haggis has an excellent nutty texture and delicious savoury flavour”.

And it is utterly Scottish — unlike a few other national icons we could mention.

I researched and wrote the following for the 2009 Royal Mail Year Book, and it appeared in a celebratory chapter on Burns (although the last sentence didn’t make the final edit):

THE REAL MCCOY?
There’s nothing more Scottish than whisky, is there? It’s called Scotch, after all. Actually, whisky was originally invented in China, and was distilled by 15^th-century Irish monks before finding its way to Scotland some 100 years later.
And get this… kilts, tartans and bagpipes may not be entirely Scottish either. There’s some evidence that kilts originated in Ireland. Tartan cloth was unearthed in Hallstatt, upper Austria, some of which date to 1200 BC, while 3000-year-old tartan-wearing mummies were found in a Chinese desert. Some historians believe the first bagpipes came from Sumaria.
Recent genetic studies show that the mutation for red hair may have originated in Central Asia too.