Japanese Graphics Now! – Taschen design book review

As i might have mentioned before, i’m not a big fan of modern art, nor am i a supporter of societies driven/ruled by technology. That’s the main reason why i often get a claustrophobic feeling and a general unease whenever i think about Japan or watch photos/videos of that country. From an outsider’s point of view, who’s never been there, it feels like an overly crowded bee hive, where people live and work like small robots, while ever changing futuristic technology is slowly replacing centuries old traditions. A land where herd mentality meets strange customs or prejudices which surely don’t make sense to westerners. A mind boggling environment in which you’ll find the elegance and simplicity of past millennia next to swarms of brightly (almost abrasive) colored Harajuku girls and anime graphics. If i were to trust some of my friends’ opinions concerning this country, I’d have a hard time making up my mind: some are loving every minute spent there, while others have sworn to never return again.

Yet, despite all these clearly negative reactions to the Japanese society, i have to admit that there are aspects of it which intrigue and inspire me. That’s why i was more than curious when i saw “Japanese Graphics Now!” in one of the local bookstores from my hometowns. I had seen several page previews on Taschen’s website, but other than that, i didn’t know much about the book, and being  a sealed copy meant no flipping through. Still, i had a good feeling about it. Plus, the price was  more than decent, given it’s size and the quality I’ve grown to expect from this wonderful publisher.

As  my recent work revolved largely around package and graphic design, I’m constantly looking for valuable sources of inspiration in these areas. Although i was able to find some interesting websites related to them, i keep coming back to the books that i love. Unlike checking out a website, while I’m turning printed pages i can totally immerse myself in the experience without having to worry about emails, twits, feeds or direct messages distracting me.

“Japanese Graphics  Now!” is a perfect companion during those times when you simply want to get away from your work and refuel your creativity.  It’s part of the lovely 25 Anniversary collection, which already recommends it as a great value for money item and, at 350 pages, it has a great variety of examples. Originally released in 2003, my current 2006 edition feels as relevant today as I’m sure it did back then. Just so you don’t get the wrong idea, there’s hardly any text in it besides the short introduction at the beginning. It’s a colorful showcase of full/half page visual samples accompanied by titles and designer names placed discretely on the pages so they don’t distract from the visuals. The lack of descriptions can also be a blessing in disguise because it forces you to take a closer look and spend a little more time analyzing the minor details of each design if you truly want to get the most out of it.

The whole book is structured into three main chapters: “Packaging”, “Posters & Ads”, “Print”. The reason why i think it still works, more than half a decade later (given its type), is that most of the chosen designs have a timeless quality to them. The great variety of styles and the lack of any easily recognizable trends, keeps it from being boring or outdated. It’s a collection of great designs, which just work in getting the message across in an elegant and effective manner. If you were indeed to pinpoint certain dominant traits, you’ll probably realize that most items revolve around one of these two extremes: subtle minimalist design and bright bubblegum extravaganza. As far as visual themes go, there’s a mix of traditional organic motifs mostly inspired by nature, naive or cartoon styled drawings and elegant understated futurism.

The Packaging chapter has roughly 100 pages and it’s mainly focused on several type of products: food, beverages, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Without necessarily counting them, I’d say most samples are bottle (and similar recipients) designs followed by less common boxes, (plastic) jars, bags and other types. You’ll find examples of  both inexpensive, everyday products and high end, luxury goods, which is often appropriately suggested by their look. Strangely enough, there aren’t featured any technology related package designs which might be due to their often quickly antiquated look.

Posters & Ads it’s the largest chapter of the book and its nearly impossible to describe, given the incredible variety of styles. Based on my personal taste, and taken out of context, I’d say there are quite a handful of these printed ads which look more or less like crap. However, no matter how far they stray away from conventional beauty, these pieces are very well put together and you can learn a lot about how to effectively use ugliness and the shock factor. It includes everything from minimalist black and white, typography based posters to rainbow colored chaotic cartoons.

Print is the last and shortest chapter of the book and  somewhat expands on the previous one with a collection of visual identity and stationary designs, book and magazine covers, brochures and other printed promotional items.

From my personal perspective, the only thing that might put me off buying this book, if i were to do it all over again, is the cover jacket, as shallow as it may seem. The two graphics on the front and back simply don’t bring justice and actually might give you the wrong impression about the wonderful material contained within. Of all the Taschen books that i own, this is one of my favorites and i really enjoy revisiting it every once in a while when i need a quick creativity boost.

The Fashion Photography Course – valuable guide to a succesful shoot

Several years ago, I was just starting to seriously learn about the requirements and technical aspects of professional photography. Back then, I would browse glossy magazines, looking at portraits and saying to myself “how hard can it be?’. My naivety at the time, fueled by a serious lack of experience and in depth knowledge, was making me believe the age old misconception that a good photographer is all that’s needed to take good pictures. In other words, you either got it or you don’t. While it’s perfectly true that a real artist will have its way even when the odds are against him, I know now that this line of work is as much about talent as it is about knowledge, creativity, effort and the list could very well go on.

The “you and your camera” myth might apply to spontaneous photography as is the case of amateur landscape, tourist or street kinds. Yet, once you venture into portraiture ranging from fashion to artistic studio shooting or consider getting into commercial work used in advertising, regardless if your subjects are people, animals or products, the rules of the game change dramatically. That’s when you transform from a simple button pusher into a thinking machine.  Once you turn pro or have a desire to achieve pro results, you have to consider a plethora of things, which can make or break your photo shoot: location, both natural and artificial lighting, wardrobe and make-up, selecting the right equipment, keeping an eye open for minor details. Still, what will really make a difference in the quality of your shoots has to do both with technical and artistic knowledge as well as experience gained through extensive practice.

About a year ago, in between photo trips and reading reference materials, i got a wonderful book called “The Fashion Photography Course” as a birthday present. It came as a bit of a surprise, since i wasn’t really that much into taking portraits. My main interests lie with landscape and street photography as it gives me a chance to capture the environment as natural as it is. On top of that, I’ve some of the most critical views when it comes to fashion. Among other things, I find it extremely shallow, mostly of questionable taste and incredibly overpriced for the value it offers back to the customers. Yet, since it’s a business based almost entirely on quality imagery, the bar is set so high that you can proudly consider yourself an accomplished photographer once you master this type of work. That’s why a good book on fashion photography breaks the boundaries of the genre and will help you understand plenty of things from lighting, composition, management up to postprocessing and general workflow.

“The Fashion Photography Course“, written by Eliot Siegel and published by Thames and Hudson in 2008, follows the same pattern. At a little under 150 pages, you could think it’s just another good looking item in your library without a great deal of information to support the visual examples featured inside. Yet, when it comes to reference materials, size is not always a proof of quality and not even quantity for that matter (take overused white space for example). This book manages to offer a lot of concise, practical information packaged in a nice, easy to read layout where neither words nor space are wasted.

Upon browsing it, you will find a total of 9 sections: Inspiration, Tools of the Trade, The Studio, Working with Natural Light, Working with Manufactured Light, Creating Great Pictures, The Team, The Portfolio and Going Professional. Each one will get you up to speed with their respective topic, offering more than enough information to get you going in such a manner that allows to apply it right away in real life. Without being the definitive resource in fashion photography, it provides an amount of knowledge that can help you get a sense of place, if you want to (and you will) explore certain aspects even further. As an example, you can easily find illustrations of lighting setups online, but you wouldn’t really search for them if you never knew why you should.

Inspiration will pretty much walk you through the various options you have in defining your own photographic style: the various sources of inspiration, types of photography you could get involved in, various aspects of magazine and advertising photography along with the implications of specializing in one particular type of fashion. Even at this early on, you’ll get to see tiny icons next to the photos to explain different settings.

Tools of the trade is the type of chapter that’s pretty risky to include in a photography book, mainly because the photos as well as the information is subject to rapid changes and can easily appear as deprecated or obsolete. Still, they manage to get a neutral presentation by mentioning those general things which have remained current and relevant over the decades. Basically, you will read about the differences between small, medium and large format, various type of lenses available, tools used for metering, tripods, digital enhancements and more.

As far as actual photo taking is concerned, the two chapters about working with natural and manufactured light are probably the most useful of the whole book, especially for those who are just starting up. To be honest, it’s been years until I became aware of how to take advantage of the existing lighting conditions in a conscious manner. It took me even longer to realize just how much more i could achieve with proper, well placed lighting than the pathetic pop-up flash. First, you’ll get to know how to deal with direct sunlight, backlight, diffusion, shade or indoor ambience. Next, there’s one of my favorite parts of the book where you get an idea of using strobe lighting both indoors and outdoors without also forgetting about continuous lighting as well.

Creating great pictures deals with more subjective and artistic issues such as composition, content, attitude, movement, framing and managing a shot. As mentioned earlier, these are all topics which deserve more in depth attention and in fact are each covered extensively in other books. What’s great about this chapter is that it makes you think about all these issues prior to taking your shot. Besides that, it offers some valuable tips for those lacking previous artistic training, pointers which by themselves can substantially improve the quality of your work.

I’m still a bit unsure why the chapters dealing with the studio, the team and going professional are not back to back, since they are normally quite connected in real life. While you won’t have to consider these three elements until further up on the road, you might also be interested in working as an assistant, which makes them a nice introduction for such a job. Also, it helps by giving you a general idea about certain management issues to consider if you ever plan on running your own photographic studio or even choosing this as a career in the first place.

Another chapter which i found to be very useful, mainly because it’s something most hobbyists tend to overlook, is that about the portfolio. It includes information about the stages of the editing process and teaches you how to view it as a storytelling device. By picking photos which are more or less related in some way and which allow for a certain flow, will elevate your portfolio from just a collection of good looking shots to a timeline or themed showcase. It will be very much alive as it allows the viewer to have a connection with the materials.

In the end, despite being somewhat targeted to an entry and intermediate level, i found “The Fashion Photography Course” to be a valuable resource as well as an enjoyable read. Besides the things mentioned earlier, i also found the various exercises spread around the book to be very useful in stirring up my creativity and making me aware of all the little things that would normally add up and affect the end result. While it might not have the breathtaking samples you’ll see in a photo album type of book, it has a broad range of quality images suitable for illustrating the ideas presented within. This isn’t the coffee table book you flip through while relaxing. It’s a well put material meant to offer a comprehensive overview of the challenges and experiences you’ll encounter while getting involved in fashion, advertising or any other type of portrait photography. Hope you’ll enjoy it just as much as i did!

Ogilvy on Advertising – the book that changed my life

Back in high school, there was this craze about advertising among teenagers. The whole media was coming of age, and the agencies were booming. As a result, at that time there was a huge leap in terms of quality as well as quantity in the ad world. Unfortunately, what i was about to find out a couple of years later, when i started going to the university, was that most of those “passionate” about it, were in fact craving for the money and the lifestyle they perceived as the natural spoils of war from the brand battlefield. Even those mentioning creativity from time to time, were still more interested in the awards, fame and bragging rights than the actual job they would eventually be hired to do. It’s almost ten years since then and the things have only gotten worse. For example, I went from admiring a funny, flamboyant, yet smart creative director to working with a cretin, man-child web planner who had issues understanding basic Internet terminology, both of them part of the same agency. But i guess I’ll have to cover that in another post.

Today it’s all about a wonderful book, that literary changed my life: Ogilvy on Advertising. Funny enough, this was my first marketing related book, which i got as a birthday present from a very good friend of mine.  If i remember correctly, is was also one of the very few, if not the only serious advertising books you could get your hands on in my country at the time. It was just before the whole avalanche of quick money publishing tumbled over the bookstores: marketing, branding, self help etc.  Yet, a decade after reading it for the first time and more than a quarter century after being published for the first time, I feel it’s just as relevant today as it was back then. It succeeds because it follows a very simple principle: as an advertiser your job is to sell not to put on a show.

To bring it justice, as I’m writing this, I’m also browsing its pages, just to consciously remember some of the things that influenced my perception of the whole marketing process. As far as generalities go, this is a medium sized book, with a little over 200 pages. The copy i got, which i suspect it’s quite a common version, has a clean layout with beautiful typography and plenty of white space. You’ll find an extensive amount of visual examples, each ready to prove the points stated in the text. In just the same way, you could also see it as a short history of clever and effective advertising from the second half of the 20th century. It is written in an informal tone, with enough real life stories to keep you going and clear explanations of why some things work, while others don’t. Along its twenty chapters you’ll get to read David Ogilvy’s take on things ranging from getting a job in the field, running an agency to praising research and questioning America’s top spot. While there are a couple of chapters that seem a bit out of place, they are still equally entertaining and informative.

Unlike more recent material, which suffers from delusions of grandeur or promises to give you easy recipes for success which only work on paper, this is the real deal. But in order for it to work you have to approach it with an open mind. After all, you might be taken aback just by reading the first few paragraphs, if you’re a fan of Hollywood styled ads. It works by giving you a series of general principles and workflow advice that as much as it is common sense, it’s also just as commonly ignored or discarded as antiquated nonsense.

The first few chapters will put you up to speed on how to produce advertising that sells, what are/were the jobs you could go for, some information on how to run an agency and the means in which you can get clients along with some useful tips for the client in search of an advertiser. These are all great at clearing the bullshit and the legend surrounding this line of work. Yet, criticizing creativity for its own sake is most obvious when speaking about print ads. If you are to take a look at current samples of this kind, you could easily find a generous amount of design extravaganza suffocating the product or its selling points, as designers are too busy building impressive artwork portfolios. For example, one priceless snippet compares the general layout of news stories with that of ads from the same publications, clearly pointing out the latter’s most common readability mishaps.

While you won’t have to deal with TV commercials, foreign travel, charity events or even take Procter & Gamble head to head, there’s still a lot to learn from these chapters as well. As with the rest of the book, it helps you adopt a clean and correct mindframe. This allows you to focus on selling by learning to ignore the false goals and destructive behavior.

Because a history lesson never hurt nobody, towards the end, it talks about what the author regards as “six giants who invented modern advertising”: Lasker, Resor, Rubicam, Burnett, Hopkins and Bernbach. It would be foolish to think that their experiences are directly applicable today, as even David Ogilvy doubts it at times. Yet, they act more as a source of inspiration for the newcomer who can employ the new media possibilities in much the same way as those forerunners did with a young market in the first half of  the 20th century. The book ends with a list of 13 predictions concerning changes in the advertising industry. A quick glance over them reveals that most have in some way or another came true.

All in all, if you’re serious about working in advertising or any other form of commercial communications, then you should definitely read this. While it might be slightly demoralizing for those who fancy themselves as artists rather than salesmen, it has the great merit of bringing them with their feet back on the ground. In fact, I’m sure that if just a part of those young blood “creatives” of today read this, then this field will enter a brand new age. Instead of the visual freak show or the subliminal programming, we could focus on clear selling points and useful creativity. If anything, you should give it a try just for the pure entertaining value. After all, the man was among other things a professional copywriter.

Logo Savvy – clever mix of branding, naming and identity

If you were to judge this book just by reading the “Contents” page you’d have a hard time finding reasons to buy it. At a little under 200 pages and just over 40 case studies you could think it’s not too much bang for your buck. At least not when comparing it to those index type publications which feature examples in excess of several hundreds up to a thousand and more. If you were to do that you would be quite wrong.

To be honest, Logo Savvy was the book that jump started my new found love for printed design resources. Last year, back in autumn, i was in a somewhat creative rut, knowing i could do so much more but not really sure how. Of course, i could turn to the endless string of websites showcasing design examples of all kinds. Still, there were a couple of issues which i knew would hinder my success. First of all, most of these sources of inspiration follow more or less the same pattern: several paragraphs of general talk followed by a bunch of screenshots supposed to express the general idea of the article. While that’s OK if you’re in a hurry, looking for something to quickly spark your imagination, it doesn’t really get you very far if you’re trying to learn at a deeper level. The second aspect, is that while you can find logo examples galore, that doesn’t translate into the same amount of information about the naming process, branding and identity.

Right now, you could say that in most cases the brief will include an already named product and for the most part you won’t have to come up with a whole branding strategy. And you would be correct. There’s plenty of money to be made as a designer just for slapping around some flavor of the week design motifs (such as arrows, leaves, gradients etc) next to a nice free font. After all, that’s what most low to moderate budget clients tend to request from us, acting more like frustrated rappers in a never ending race to outbling the competition. Are they to blame? Probably not. After all, these are things you learn in time if you want to or you don’t. As a designer your job is to facilitate the best visual communication for your client’s product or service, rather than selfishly build your own flashy portfolio.

If you’re willing to go the extra mile in hope that one day you’ll play with the big boys, let’s see why this book is a great resource.

It starts off with several small chapters about the whole branding process, describing what seems like a common sense workflow. There’s information about how to name your products, the major directions you can choose from, how they fit with the general strategy and rounding off with some legal considerations you should be aware of. You’ll also find some quick templates to use during the process.

The rest of the book contains campaign examples distributed into 7 sections such as: acronym, descriptive, metaphorical, playful etc. While there are over 30 contributors from 10 countries, there is also a wide array of industries ranging from pharmaceuticals, food and beverages, apparel to arts, travel and telecommunications.  As with other books of this kind, the information is mostly presented in a light and informal manner, easy to read and understand. Thankfully, it strays away from boring neologisms or fancy words for which you need a dictionary to get their meaning.

Fortunately, it’s more story driven, guiding you through the main stages of the branding process. As a results you’ll often see intermediary sketches made during the design process, alternate versions which were rejected along with the main motivation behind the final choice. You’ll find out why some clients decided on a name variant over the others, as well as the shapes and colors used for the logo.

As any design book worth its price, it features extensive photography examples. Because of its focus on brand strategy, you will find more than some basic stationery samples: real life packaging design, point of sale design, outdoor displays and more.  All of these will help you get a general idea of all the possibilities that results from a single, well conceived identity.  If there was a thing which annoyed me at this point, was that some of the quotes and captions accompanying the images were taken straight from the text. This meant reading some things twice.

At the end of the book you’ll also find the list of all contributors, complete with their contact information. Starting from there, you can hit the Internet and check their websites for even more examples.

Coincidence or not, a week or so after I’ve finished reading it, while working on a couple of logo projects, i managed to get some really nice ideas which helped me finish them sooner than expected. All in all, i think this book is well worth a place on your shelf. Yet, if you’re on a tight budget, you might consider going for the paperback version, since the hardcover one, at least at my local bookstore cost about 30 bucks more. The size and print quality is the same so you might spend that extra money on something else.

Hope you’ll enjoy it and don’t mind recommending me some similar items.

Websites vs. books for design training and inspiration?

The natural and easy answer would be “both”. That’s because rather than thinking they are competing against each other, you could see them as training resources that go hand in hand. Of course, each has its own pros and cons and based on your own preferences/knowledge you could be leaning towards one or the other.

After quite a long time spent believing the web was enough, I’m now going through a book phase which i have to admit I’m enjoying a lot. There’s something unique about flipping pages, which you cannot simply get from browsing a website. You feel it right there, it’s real and at the end of the day it looks better by a consistent margin.

So, getting down to the boring, yet conclusive (some might say obvious) stuff, let’s see what are the pros and cons that i can come up with for each of these two wonderful ways to showcase information.

Let’s start with the benefits of online resources:

• first and probably the most sought out aspect is the fact that they’re mostly/usually free or very cheap;
• the quantity or articles is growing at an ever accelerating pace;
• they’re easy and fast to find and browse;
• most of them are easily searchable either by using their own internal engine or through Google;
• the content can be updated regularly, as soon as fresh information becomes available;
• often the community will increase the quality and quantity of the materials;
• at times it can provide access to high resolution photos/vector resources which you can use directly in your projects or learn from them;

What about the downsides of using websites as your main source of information:

• the content’s quality as well as its presentation varies greatly and you don’t always have the certainty that what you’re reading is correct;
• there’s a lot more content targeted towards beginners as it’s easier to create. This means there are more duplicates/redundancy and they won’t help you as much once you go past a certain level;
• there’s no guarantee that the content will be online forever. Websites come and go all the time, so you might find one day that the article you’re looking for it’s no longer there.
• due to the technical limitations imposed by the computer monitors, reading extensive blocks of text is both tiresome and is associated with health risks such as permanent eye strain;

Now let’s see why books are so special:

• the information presented in them goes through a lot of filtering and checking which means they’re more reliable and better than their online counterpart. This also means that visual examples are a lot less subject to fads and last year’s fashion trends.
• great books are focused on a certain subject. This makes it actually faster to find what you’re looking for than having to go through pages of search results and then hunt through dozens of websites.
• design and photography books in particular are usually true works of (modern) art in their own right. Their overall look is maybe as important as the information they provide so a lot of time and effort is put into designing them. They will even act as livings examples of publication design.
• They are a lot friendlier to your eyes than their electronic versions.
• Information is persistent. Unless it goes through a flood, fire or a nervous breakdown you’re pretty sure it’s going to last you a lot of years from now.
• You can carry and use them anywhere (weight restrictions apply of course) without the need for Internet access. Picture reading about Greek inspired typefaces on a Greek island.

Still, the books have some faults of their own:

• all the eye candy comes at a price, which can range from the so called “steal” to more prohibitive values. This is usually an issue for self taught young designers breaking into the industry. Best way is to see it as an investment in yourself.
• while trying to find information, you’re at the mercy of those who designed the books. Even the best publishing houses can drop the ball at times and make you burn the pages from to much flipping while trying to find something.
• there’s no way to search faster and the index (which might be included or not) can only get you so far. That’s why you’ll probably have to take notes and slow down if you’re planning to revisit the book anytime in the future;

E-books seem like the logical compromise between these two. However, as far as the arts go, they’re still in their infancy, with not many publishers offering PDF versions of their print catalog. Ideally, you would have the paper version on your shelves for those moments when you can take it one page at a time and also the digital version on your hard drive for easy access.

Hopefully, in time, i’ll be able to turn this into a more extensive rundown of the benefits and issues you’ll have to face when selecting between websites and books as your main source of informal design training. Yet, as mentioned in the beginning, the point is to mix them in order to get the best of both worlds. While websites will keep you up to date, ready for whatever’s fresh in the industry, books will provide you with a more laid back approach where you can just sit down, relax and enjoy that wonderful texture and scent.