How to Create the "Word's Ugliest Color"

Pantone 488 C has officially been described as the world's ugliest color. The Australian government have chosen the color for its plain cigarette packets in order to discourage smoking (yes, color can influence how the viewer feels—a post for another time).

"Back in 2012, the Australian government hired research agency GfK to spearhead the new package design for all tobacco products. But instead of the marketing firm's usual goal, they had to accomplish the opposite. Every carton had to look as unappealing as possible." —House Beautiful Website.

All colors look a bit different when viewed on different monitors, different printing papers, or created in different programs, so you might see slight variations in the coloration in this example, but the principle is essentially the same for any color: mixing colors together results in new colors, and sometimes to our surprise.

This ugly color can be made using traditionally favorite Christmas colors, red and green (depending upon the exact hues involved and amount of each color mixed together). In this case, I have selected a warm red, dark green, and mixed the two by adding an overlay to the red of a 77% tint of the green.

The resulting mix creates the "world's ugliest color" made from one of the world's favorite festive color sets. In Subtractive Color, red and green are complements of one another. The complement, or opposite hue of any color, when mixed into its partner color will create a continuum of color variations and hues depending upon how much of each color is added. The color of the lesser amount is called the "polluting color," and you can see why in the gif animation shown below; the green "pollutes" the red to approximately create the Pantone 448C color.

Note: The primary colors of Subtractive Color, such as paints and inks, are traditionally: red, yellow and blue (now magenta, yellow, and cyan). The complementary sets are: red/green, yellow/violet, and blue/orange. Mixing each set together equally always results in neutral gray providing the two colors in the set are exact opposites. Mixing all three primaries results in black or dark gray.

The primary colors of Additive Color, such as a monitor displays, are: red, green, and blue, and have very different mixing properties, e.g., when adding 100% green to 100% red, the result is pure yellow; mixing all 3 primaries at 100% results in white.

Advertising and News Pratfalls Through the Magic of Technology

Powerful digital technology has given us some pretty great things.

But, like driving a car, pretty much any idiot can be behind the steering wheel of technology*—and often is. There's something worrisome about a 4,500 pound vehicle hurtling through the city at 40-80 mph, driven by someone with a red rubber ball for a nose. Likewise, there is something disconcerting about massive digital power hurtling through our lives at death-defying speeds, being directed by the same clown.  

The following are odd (but harmless) ways that advertising and news stories are appearing lately, thanks, I suppose, to automated "design," lack of professional standards, and just plain goofy "thought leaders."

From Facebook:

I know my first reaction upon learning that thousands of snow geese have fallen dead from the sky in Idaho would be a hearty, "Yahoo!" But unless you do something about it, the first image on the webpage link you enter into your FB post is the one that appears by default on FB, so this logo must have been the first image (there are worse possibilities). And all those poor geese came in second place.

How can you do something about it? http://preview.tinyurl.com/otrdj7v [Open in new window]

From an online news service:

It's difficult for me give the story the gravitas it deserves, and also empathize with the injured victim, when I see a photo of a generic ambulance floating in space during what appears to be the final moments of the ill-fated planet Krypton. I thought for a moment that this might be an ad for a mobile ice-cream vendor.

I think the victim deserved something—anything—better regarding the event that left her in critical but stable condition... even if it's nothing more than a picture of the boring old ambulance that actually took her to the hospital. Everyone on the planet has a cell phone camera, for god's sake. Now that we have endless access to cheap instantaneous photography, this news service is buying generic photos of "the news."

Care to ski Paris in the summer?

That's right, this ad implies a Colorado ski lodge in the Champ de Mars (park) in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France... 4,997 miles away. On a lovely summer day. But I definitely want to stay at that lodge, since you get a two-for-one: skiing Colorado and a tour of Paris.

Stock photography; take a closer look:

To read their submission rules, you'd think they haul in the U.S. Cavalry to evaluate the quality of photographers' submissions before accepting any image, but apparently no one noticed this young lady is happily knocking on a door that has a padlock the size of her head not 3 inches from her nose. At least Photoshop it. Probably nobody's home (so to speak).

The solution:

There may be very little we can do about it—the news will continue to display irrelevant stock images in an effort to grab your attention, bizarre or inappropriate images will continue to appear above headlines, FB will continue to snag the first image out of the chute when you link to a web page, and oddball images will appear among the countless stock images we have available to—as the Apple Dictionary defines it: "...add graphic pizzazz to your desktop-publishing project."

But if the driver behind the wheel will take off the rubber nose, and put on a thinking cap, some of these absurd advertising and news pratfalls might go away, and advertising and news might become better for it (providing no one is actually reading the stuff—but that's a comment for another time).


*Those behind the "steering wheel of technology" are NOT the programmers. They are the same crowd that have always given the orders, made the demands, taken the bows, reaped the rewards, and left a quivering mess in their wake. You probably know one.

Artist's/Writer's Block

Artist’s/Writer’s Block is one of my favorite topics. I don't much believe there is writer's block as we perceive it to be, and I dread it much less than I dread hypergraphia. Mark Twain reached a "block" while writing Huckleberry Finn, and simply put the book aside for a number of years-- and wrote other books! I believe it took him seven years to finish Huckleberry Finn. So his "block" was with regard to only one book. And keep in mind, he didn't worry about it-- "Ideas will come in time," he said.

As an artist, graphic designer, and occasional writer, I find that we can't always afford the luxury of being at a standstill by writer's block. We have deadlines to meet.

What I tell my students, and myself, is: "This is only one speed bump, but you have a whole life around you. Get on with life, and the work will come in time-- in fact, you're still a writer (artist) even though you are creating NOTHING!—even if you can't get out of bed that day—because everything you do makes you a better writer (or artist, or designer).”

Let me say that again in italics: everything you do makes you a better writer (or artist, or designer).

When you're stuck in bed, you experience the sensation of bedsheets, sunlight or moonlight filling the room, there are blankets to see and touch, a sitcom to watch, analyze, or criticize, a kitty to pet, or an insane wind coming up just outside your window. Sometimes you have vomiting to get through, or congestion, or chills and fever for hours: these are ALL sensations and observations that, whether you try or not, will remain with you and contribute to better creative work.

When there's no time to create-- when your day job demands overtime, when your kids need attention, when the trash has to go out, the grass has to be mowed, and tax forms must be completed-- when there are no more hours in the day, the week, the months... you are STILL becoming a better writer/artist.

Why? Because writing or art like many endeavors, is centered in who you are. So consider the difference between a teacher down with the flu, and a writer down with the flu: each will be affected and changed by the illness, and each will come back stronger in who they are because of it. The teacher will filter the illness through his teacher core. The writer will filter it through her writer core. Same illness, different filters.

My paintings get better (to me) whether or not I paint, because I get better: Every experience, feeling, discovery, observation, event in life continues to be filtered through my writer/artist core, and moves my art forward, whether or not I'm actually painting.

Writing and painting are mechanical skills. Of course each requires practice. But both are more than a skill-- they are also the ability to process our world through the mind and senses of our creative core.

When you reach what you imagine to be a writer's block, then set aside skills, put your book or painting away, and attend to the world; you will be growing as a writer/artist the whole time, and you will come back better for it. You will come back changed.

Will it solve your "problem" of being blocked? If you "believe in" writer's block then probably not. But the chances are very good that a new energy will come when you spend some time experiencing the world, solving puzzles, or come up against a deadline, but don't look for this to be a solution or cure for what ails you; it's giving necessary attention to the essential resources that fuel your creativity.

A Problem with Creativity

Who really designed the new Yahoo logo typeface?
 
I know who designed the typeface; the question should be: who botched up the typeface? If you read CNN's news story on the new logo, reporter Heather Kelley states that the typeface "...is a new sans-serif typeface created by Yahoo."

The typeface is not new, it is "Optima," designed by Hermann Zapf between 1952 and 1955. Optima is used for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, as well as the font to be used for the names of those who lost their lives in the September 11 attacks, carved into bronze parapets, at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Hardly new.

TypeRight.org, the type designer's rights advocates, states that "To have originated a typeface design, you must have created the design and not copied it. If, on the other hand, you set out to duplicate the style of an existing typeface, then you are creating a revival. And if your typeface is based on the outlines from another typeface then you are creating a derivative typeface (also known as "remix")."

So the typeface used for the new Yahoo logo might be considered a "revival," or a "derivative" since it duplicates the style of an existing typeface, is based on outlines from Optima, but with some changes that offer "something 'new' in today's typographic palette."

But I said it's "botched up."

Not botched up in a way that the average viewer might notice, but certainly in a way that a professional typographer or type designer would certainly notice. At this point, I should say that "botched up" is a subjective evaluation. It's possible that some professionals (or non-professionals) would disagree with my conclusion. Fine. But here is my reasoning:

Optima is a very traditional "double weight" type design, straight out of the Roman Empire, but with the revolutionary feature of merely a hint of serifs. So it's a sans-serif with the feel of a serif. Technically classified as "sans-serif humanist." And a double weight roman style type face has two weights (hence the term): thick and thin.

The ratio of thick to thin can vary from one typeface to another, and humanist typefaces tend toward the lower contrast (pretty thick thins, so to speak).

The "Y" in this logo has lost its thin stroke and appears to be a single weight. The "A" has a thin cross bar, but the verticals are both equal in weight. In a roman face, since they are derived from letters drawn with a pen held at a constant angle, letters always have the thin stroke in the line that angles from top right to lower left; take a look at a proper roman typeface and note the capital A, V, M, and W. The H and the Os are fine in this logo, and the exclamation mark is simply from the italic style of the family, so not sure if it should be considered a standard character in the "new typeface design" or not.

Does this matter?
 
As I said, the average viewer probably won't notice. Professional type designers will, though some will think it's clever and witty.

But the problem is, I'm seeing a little too much "creativity" in the design world lately that is not creative at all. It's uncreative. It's unimaginative. It's crummy stuff. And quite often, it's someone else's work badly copied or mimicked. Thank goodness they didn't credit Hermann Zaph with this mess, but why not simply use his typeface, correctly, and credit him properly, rather than botch it up and claim it's "new"?

The End of Mentors

Designers who don't know don't grow.

A lot of changes have taken place in graphic design since the first desktop publishing software came onto the scene in 1985* and began replacing traditional mechanicals and production art in advertising agencies, newspaper and magazine offices, printing companies and freelance design studios.

The myriad changes that have evolved in the graphic design industry since 1985 have been thoroughly discussed, debated, and mulled over endlessly. Well, not endlessly, since all the discussions and arguments will eventually go silent once the previous generation of designers, the "traditional" designers, are gone. Times change, and just as we seldom encounter heated debate or even nostalgic reminiscences about the transition from horse and buggy to automobile, we will soon find discussions of changes from traditional to digital graphic design and production limited to history buffs and aficionados.

But the one discussion I seldom hear, the one that no one brings up unless it's me, the one that concerns me most, is the problem of the disappearance of mentors.

Traditionally, the business of graphic design has always included a formal or informal chain of mentors for new designers coming into the business. Mentors—not teachers—who are there working side by side with the novice designer, including art directors, creative directors, typographers, illustrators, skilled and experienced senior designers, production artists, and even copywriters and editors. Typesetters and color separators, too, have been in the stream of mentors that have helped to improved designers' skills, though not generally working side by side on a daily basis, or even in the same shop.

As more and more people have become "graphic designers" due to the accessibility of publishing software, the design industry has changed. Whereas graphic design jobs were once limited primarily to newspaper and magazine offices, advertising agencies, printing shops, and design studios, all of which had some number of mentors, today, a staggering number of companies, small to large, have an "in-house agency." In-house agencies were another traditional source of employment for designers, but few company managers had the budget or the inclination to hire media buyers, copywriters, designers, and other specialists (illustrators, typographers, photographers, letterers, etc.), and provide them with studio space and specialized tools and equipment. In-house agencies were few and far between, but still, they generally had a number of mentors on the team.

Today, publishing software has made it possible and cost-effective for any company to set up an in-house agency, often employing just one individual who is expected not only to be a graphic designer, but to also fill the roles of copywriter, photographer, typesetter, web developer, and other specialists. For isolated designers in these companies, there are no mentors. None for graphic design, and certainly none for all the other special roles the designer is nowadays expected to fill. These beginning designers know more than anyone in the company about design, yet know very little, and there is no one to move them up to the next level.

With access to limitless sources of information, such as Wikipedia, countless social media groups, and focused sites such as deviantart.com, are mentors still important? Can't everything that needs to be learned be learned from these sources? A good deal can be learned from these sources, and indeed a great deal of information has always been learned from outside sources such as advertising clubs, books, magazine articles, and biographies of the best. But, as was pointed out on Twitter, @genrelibrarian writes: "Google can bring back a hundred thousand answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one."** Likewise, the Internet can bring back a hundred thousand facts and comments, but a mentor can offer the right one. New media is simply more and faster, but this does not equate to mentors.

A mentor is someone who reacts and interacts on a real-time basis with the designer and his or her work, providing answers that evolve and change with the work and the reasons behind the work. Mentors bring years of experience to bear on the project at hand, and to the needs of the beginning designer.

Surprising numbers of new designers now work in total isolation, without the benefit of art directors, senior designers, or others to guide and direct, and to add the missing bits and pieces that make a beginning designer eventually a great designer. More and more graphic design appears to be less and less professional, let alone creative and game-changing.

Mentors are not available in books, or videos, or online. They are individuals that stand right beside the designer, interacting as the work develops.

With all due respect to those people online who have a great deal to offer, one generally gets a lot of pretty bad information from the loudest and most ignorant and arrogant voices online. Andrew Keen in his book, "The Cult of the Amateur" writes, "Out of this anarchy, it suddenly became clear that what was governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the Internet was the law of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and most opinionated."

An excellent example of this is evident in the typography argument regarding the use of one or two spaces after the period at the end of a sentence which appeared on the "Slate" web site:

http://www.slate.com/id/2281146/pagenum/1

One can't help but notice that there are 1,827 comments (and growing) on this very small matter, and many commenters blathering about it just to attack the author and see their handle in print. Many of the comments come from people who don't know the difference between typesetting, typewriting, and (seriously) the English language. At least one person blithely states that his personal preference is every bit as valid as 500 years of industry development by professional typographers (even claiming that the whole 500 years of professionals never cared about the reader). An amazing argument, yet not uncommon to the usual crop of ignorant and arrogant who cannot see anyone beyond themselves in the audience they purport to be addressing, and believe that they are suddenly experts in any topic they care to discuss.

Imagine this type of discussion—argument—for every tiny bit of trivia that designers must deal with from center of interest to color separations and from abstraction to subjectivity.

However, it is not merely a long list of dos and don'ts that new designers need in order to grow. Graphic design is subjective. That is to say, it's art. Art director/designer George Lois once famously roared that "Advertising is not a fucking science!" Nevertheless, teachers quite often are not permitted to give subjective grades to design students; it would "not be fair." Unfortunately, because design is art, subjective analysis and criticism is essential to improving the designer's ability to do great work. When a mentor says, "Make the line heavier," or, "There is too much red," this subjective response (others might disagree), is the sort of thing that can lift a design from ordinary to classic.

Not everything needs to adhere to classical rules and limits; of course we want to see evolution and progress, creativity and change. But mindless mistakes, irrational arguments, and just plain rampant ignorance is not the same thing as progress and creativity. Mentors help to prevent ignorance becoming the de facto standard in any industry.

After four years of objective grades (student met deadline, student used correct color space, student had no typos, etc.), new graphic designers often hit the job scene with a portfolio of "A" work yet not even the slightest idea of how to create professional work, let alone great work. Mentors provide the priceless real-time knowledge, expertise, and subjective criticism that new designers need. Unless there are no mentors.

-----

* The original programs were MacPublisher and Aldus PageMaker, both of which were designed to run on the Apple Macintosh. In 1987, Aldus released a version of PageMaker for PCs running Windows 1.0.
** January 18, 2011

Learn to read and write—please.

When computers started overtaking traditional methods of advertising design and production art, there was a kind of anticipatory enthusiasm—technology was going to make our jobs a whole lot easier! Imagine being able to "ink" lines perfectly no matter how complicated, or to align objects with razor precision with the click of a mouse, or to adjust the tracking or kerning in text in 100ths of an em! (Pardon?). Adjust kerning and tracking. We designers had never had to do that. We hardly even knew what it was, so we were forced to asked our neighborhood typesetter, who was packing his equipment into cardboard boxes and taking down his shingle even as we asked. Our former "supplier."

The machines and software that were supposed to make our jobs easier actually made our jobs at least five times harder: we had to learn color separation skills, typesetting, pre-press prep and trapping, halftone highlight and shadow dot control based on type of paper and press, and a myriad of other bewildering technologies, not to mention learn computer basics and maintenance.

I had always worked with typesetters that had been in the business longer than I'd been alive. I worked with color separators that had learned their trade in the printing capitols of Ireland and Switzerland. I had people that did nothing but pre-press prep all day, every day. I worked with local giants and wizards of print technology. And relied on them. I trusted these people to make my work look great, time and again.

Almost overnight they were gone—retired, moved on, passed away, and certainly of no use whatsoever in the new age of one-computer-can do-it-all technology. They went out of business. They never returned.

Very well, so be it. My dad had to know how to groom a horse because he rode a horse to school. Times changed, so I was spared that particular learning curve. So too, in graphic design, times changed and we all had to know five disciplines rather than the one we loved in the first place. Those of us that stayed in the business set aside our ruling pens and X-Acto knives, and accepted the new challenges.

I've been teaching digital design and production for as long as computers have been the tool of choice for designers. And I've made my students learn a dozen disciplines because that is the new way to succeed as a designer. (Yes, Web design has added several more disciplines to the list that "visual communicators" must master.)

But one discipline or skill no one could have prepared us for eventually demanded our attention. I had worked for years with copywriters and editors. Suddenly, because of the one-computer-can-do-it-all mentality, I had to be a copywriter. When I was growing up, artistic kids were not even expected to be able to spell—that's left brain stuff, like math and biology. Yet here I was having to write copy, proofread ads and brochures, know my sentence structure and grammar, and actually write something interesting! Compelling.

If my design work is bad, I get the blame. If my color images come out muddy, I get the blame. If my job is a royal pain to print due to poor production, I accept the blame. And if my headline is misspelled, or my copy is wrong, boring, or unclear, guess who gets the blame? There are no more copywriters in most "design departments," just one lonely visual communications specialist sitting in front of her computer wondering what copywriters were. Designers are expected to be literate now.

Except they don't know it. They don't get it. Of all the demands I've placed on my students over the years, the one thing that brings tears, anger, and threats of "complaining to the dean," is holding them accountable for spelling, punctuation, grammar, word usage, and sentence structure—they despise me for it. One student filed a complaint that I am "worse than an English teacher." Another raged that I said I would not take more than ten points off for spelling. I replied, "You had 102 spelling and grammatical errors in a three-page paper. Three double-spaced pages." I offered to let him write the entire paper over, or take the 20-point loss. He very wisely took the loss.

The tragedy is not that designers can't be good—even great—copywriters and editors, it's that they so often have never learned to read and write proficiently. They don't know the difference between their, there, and they're, or then and than, or between accept and except. The only verb they appear to know is "impact." I've gotten sentences like "The impact impacted everyone." Design students (and professionals!) trip over it's and its, or who and whom, and kludge together "compound" words like nevermind, alot, and alright, while snapping tapeworm, today, and nevertheless into pieces.

I recently ran across this in Chicago Style Q&A online:

"Q. I’ve gotten into an argument online with a person who said that The Chicago Manual of Style states that it is okay to use the word, “alot.” I find this hard to believe because, “alot” is not a word, but I was unable to confirm or deny this on your site. Furthermore, he seems to think that all spelling rules are flexible and a matter of personal style, and he again uses The Chicago Manual of Style to back his position up. Could you shed some insight onto this situation?

A. Tell your friend that CMOS says he is full of baloney, and if he doesn’t believe you, give him the URL for this page."[1]

The United States is somewhere between 21st and 49th in literacy in the world, depending on the criteria of different surveys. Putting it in the kindest way possible, today's young designers were never taught to read and write. It's not their fault.

Okay, so get over it. Learn to read and write.

As a designer, it's your job—indeed, your responsibility—to be literate. You work in the publishing industry, and whether in paper and ink or multi-media, your work demands that you be able to read and write on a professional level. You're the last person to see your brochures, signs, direct marketing pieces, and web pages before they are published. Be prepared to accept the blame if your client is "Open to the Pubic," or "Excepts Credit Cards." Literacy is the 6th discipline that advertising designers had to accept in those changing times.

Learn to read and write—please.


Photo: MSNBC Countdown with Keith Olbermann.


[1] University of Chicago Press, "Chicago Style Q&A" online

Thinking Outside the Box

"Think outside the box," probably the most cliché creativity admonishment of all time, typically means to think about a problem in a new or different way, and to avoid the pitfalls that continually eventuate in the same unsatisfactory solutions or dead-end answers.

However, whenever I hear a client, thought-leader, or teacher encourage with this timeworn phrase, it sets off a strobe light in my head that reminds me to avoid even the appearance of creativity if I want to succeed under this individual's mundane yardstick: uncreative people seem to stand up and salute this stale advice, and hide behind its apparent significance.

Nevertheless, the phrase "think outside the box" suggests a more subtle bit of good advice for designers: "box" is a common term for "computer." The phrase "think outside the computer" has important ramifications for graphic designers and, I'm sure, for others. So, what is meant by "think outside the computer" and why is it important?

All creative thoughts take place in a mental space that is clearly limited. Sometimes, a thinker may deliberately limit creative options, (e.g., only concerned with those solutions that involve water if working on an ad campaign for bottled water that requires fantastic or incredible water images), whereas other thinkers might be limited by available resources, while still others are limited simply by their lack of knowledge, experience or initiative. Both intentional and unavoidable limits can increase creativeness. Limits are essential to creativity: without limits, possibilities quickly spin out of the range of usefulness and demand more and more unnecessary creative thinking (e.g., an irrelevant requirement to invent a new kind of hammer before you can build a house).

Today's up and coming graphic designers often get trapped in the belief that they must use a computer in order to be creative. Or that they can't be creative unless they use a computer or special software product. This artificial limit has led to a slew of predictable and trite graphic design solutions in recent years. In fairness, this belief is the only refuge for those who might have been better off in a non-creative field: cool imaging filters are simply not the same thing as creative. Granted, there will always be a market for unimaginative graphic design work, but this should not encourage designers to aspire to mediocre work.

Thinking outside the computer means more than merely avoiding burying oneself in Adobe Photoshop or Flash during the creative process, it also means avoiding the pitfalls of limiting creativity to only those concepts that can be proofed on a letter-size ink-jet printer using a sheet of white paper. Try designing brochures with unusual sizes, proportions, shapes, papers and textures. Design brochures that incorporate foil stamping, die-cuts or embossing, instead of the typical CMYK Getty stock photos. Try creating trademarks that show up well in granite or sandblasted glass, rather than being limited to use only as full color printing or Web display.

And consider this: Abraham Lincoln said that "to a hammer, all problems are nails." This particular creative trap is self-destructive. When designers believe that "to a designer, all creativity requires a computer," then the pursuit of imaginative, original, innovative, and inventive ideas becomes narrow and often hopeless.

An old tale, making the rounds years ago, involved a manufacturer asking three advertising agencies to submit proposals that would increase sales of their toothpaste, makes the case for thinking outside the computer (or in earlier times, outside the drawing board).

Each agency developed a plan to increase sales. Two of the agencies, predictably, presented slick proposals for a new trademark, updated contemporary package design, television commercials with bouncy jingle, and witty print ads. But the agency that got the account—the third advertising designer—simply unscrewed the cap, displayed the tube to the members of the company, and said, "Make the opening larger."

Hours of fussing around with Adobe Photoshop filters, computer generated color palettes, and state-of-the-art font packages would not have resulted in such an elegant and appropriate solution—the solution was so far outside the box that there was no box.