totalcontent - the blog.

a great lick.

I don’t want to come over as some sad old stamp geek, but thanks to a long association with Royal Mail Design, I’ve learned a thing or two about this minuscule art form. Strict rules about what you can and can’t do with the look and form of a stamp are gradually being loosened in an effort to attract younger collectors, and the January 2010 stamp issue by Studio Dempsey continues to push the boundaries.

The set features classic British record sleeves, including the seminal London Calling by The Clash, Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, Blur’s Parklife and Led Zeppelin II. I was among of a group of designers and music journalists to help draw up a shortlist for Royal Mail, and I’m glad to see that several of my suggestions made the cut. Mike Dempsey has cleverly played with the form of both the stamp and the sleeve, with a small crescent of record poking out of the right-hand side. Let’s hope the younger audience appreciate what this curious black stuff is.

Personally, I’ll be buying as many Clash stamps as I can get my hands on. The iconic Pennie Smith photo of Paul Simenon smashing his bass still has immense power, and the type design by Ray Lowry – a homage to an earlier Elvis album – creates the perfect frame. Along with his many other achievements – bassist, artist, coolest man on Earth – Simenon becomes one of the first recognisable living people to appear on a British stamp. Until recently, only members of the Royal Family were accorded that honour. To see all the other classic British album sleeve stamps, check the Creative Review blog. God Save the Queen.

new work – Royal Mail.

It’s finally out. The mighty, 64-page 2009 Royal Mail Yearbook represents around four months of Jim’s working life across this year and last – and goes some way to account for the recent dearth of entries on this section of the website.

But flicking through page after handsome page, the effort seems more than worthwhile. This year’s 14 stamp issues included British Design Classics, Mythical Creatures, Naval Uniforms and the Industrial Revolution, and the Yearbook delves into many of their more interesting nooks and crannies. We came up with the title ‘Feed Your Mind – A Great British Miscellany’ because of the bite-size editorial style, which cherry picks obscure facts and stories to bring each subject to life. It also fits in with the slightly unsettling custom-made phrenology head on the front and back covers.

The designers, hat-trick, have done a grand job… they went for a ‘more is more’ approach, scatter-gunning many smaller subjects around a central theme and packing each spread with visual interest and graphic wit. The result is busy and intriguing, a dippable smorgasbord of a book rather than a meaty read.

The results speak for themselves, but the ambitious approach made for a research-intensive project, with Jim needing to get to grips with from everything from the rules of jousting, to the myth of the Giant’s Causeway, to the most people to fit into a phone box, to the Burns poem Tam O’Shanter. And plenty more besides. We’ll be posting more spreads and details when we get them.

This is Jim’s fifth Royal Mail Yearbook, and he’s just been commissioned to write his sixth for next year. Hat-trick will be designing again. You can get hold of your very own copy here.

a nib off the old pen.

It near brings a tear to the proud, fatherly eye.

This is my 10-year-old son Lukje’s latest homework assignment, which was to design an eco-friendly vehicle. It wasn’t so much the concept and drawing as the naming and copy which caught the eye. In case you can’t make out the body text it reads:

‘You’ll be round
the rainforest in
no time with this
solar powered
two seater!’

It has a real economy, rhythm, and an engaging tone of voice. There’s even a nifty bit of alliteration in there. He’ll be troubling the pages of the D&AD Annual before you know it.

That’s my boy.

packaging you can Count on.

Thought this would be the perfect date to share one of my all-time favourite pieces of packaging. I’ve had it quite a few years now, and picked it up at my local Budgens, so I have no idea who was responsible. It certainly makes a change from the usual flimsy string bag – and shows eloquently how tapping into a shared mythology can add character and humour, even to a humble bulb of garlic. The gradiated colour, gothic type and creative folding techniques are great. The die-cut crucifix lifts it into the realms of pure genius.

I’ve just realised the past three posts have all been a tad ghoulish. Pure co-incidence, I assure you. ’Scuse me... just off for a quick pint of the red stuff.

Happy Halloween everyone.

Design Week jury service.

Gown… check. Wig… check. Nose for a winner… check.

Jim will once again be taking his place as one of the judges for this year’sDesign Week Awards. He’ll be working on the Print jury for two days in early December with a brief to take a close look at the overall standard of writing.

It’s always a real eye-opener to take a look back at the year’s best print graphics as a body of work. Having tables and tables of work spread out before you can be daunting, but it’s a rare opportunity to see trends emerging and to measure one piece against another. In these tough economic times, it will be interesting to see whether designers are managing to pull out the stops creatively to compensate for smaller production budgets. There will certainly be no hiding behind extravagant print techniques and fancy finishes. It’s back to basics time – which in some ways is no bad thing.

Other jurors this year include friends to totalcontent like Malcolm Garrett,Adrian Shaughnessy and Sea’s Bryan Edmondson, as well as design industry luminaries including Simon Waterfall, Apple’s Harriet Devoy and Boots’ Jon Turner. You can find full details here, and the winners will be revealed at London’s Hilton Hotel on 2 March 2010.

a window on our world.

If you’ve visited the ‘recently’ section of this website of late, you’ll know that we’ve finally decamped to a sleek new studio directly underneath our previous space (and just a short hop and skip from our bedroom).

As it happened, we also inadvertently created our first piece of external branding for the totalcontent franchise. Look carefully at the photo on the right and see if you can guess where we’re probably beavering away as we speak. The clue’s most definitely in the colour.

our new home.

A new chapter in the totalcontent story. After months of chaos, mess, electricians, decorators, trips to the tip and furniture deliveries, we have finally moved into our shiny new space downstairs. The commute from bedroom to work is now a mere four paces.

With a view of autumn-kissed lime trees and the town’s 12th century church spire, we’re calling it the studio, because we hope our creative juices will get truly fired up in there. The colour scheme – you may not be surprised to hear – is white with bright splashes of orange. Just a few pictures to hang and we’ll be right at home.

Many thanks to the multi-talented Tony, our highly obliging next-door neighbour, for 24-hour tech-support and the all-action photo.

bloody marvellous.

Film title sequences have become a mini art form in their own right, with the incomparable Saul Bass showing the way in the 1960s and more recent exponents like Kyle Cooper breaking new boundaries with his work on Se7en. Budget constraints have meant that TV has been left lagging behind, especially in the UK, where you immediately think of the perennially wet, sloping roofs across Manchester’s Coronation Street or the stock footage of a lumbering tortoise that heralds the opening of ‘One Foot in the Grave’. But True Blood, HBO’s excellent swamp-goth vampire series, has significantly raised the bar. The sublime opening credits, by Seattle’s Digital Kitchen, create an evocative visual tableau that perfectly sets the scene for what’s to follow. Fast cuts of slo-mo snakes and bloody roadkill are skilfully juxtaposed with Pentecostal rapture, sleazy sexual encounters and ancient car wreckage. Decay, blood, religion, voodoo, and the brooding intensity the Deep South, seep through in 65 masterfully edited shots. Jace Everett’s sweetly sinister country song ‘Bad Things’ provides a fitting soundtrack. Catch it if you can – the series starts on C4 on 7 October.

True Blood Main Titles from DIGITALKITCHEN on Vimeo.

keep it simple.

Although I wasn’t exactly sure what rooibos tea was when I bought this, the packaging (designed by the good people at Pearlfisher) made it irresistible. And actually, as it turns out, I really quite like the stuff. Apart from the background being a perfect shade of orange, the anthropomorphic, hand-drawn type has an arresting, child-like quality, which cleverly suggests the tea’s natural, organic provenance. The doodle-like illustrations not only convey energy and fun, but show you that you’re about as far away from a slick, processed drink as you could be. The copy wasn’t bad either, personable without trying too hard:

“Here at Kromland Farm, we’ve been cultivating rooibos since 1902. But that's nothing – South Africa’s indigenous Khoisan people have been enjoying its rich flavour and potent heath benefits for millennia”.

Unfortunately, it seems I won’t be. Sainsbury’s seem to have stopped stocking Kromland Farm.