First, the good news. The votes have been counted and independently verified and I'm pleased to announce that this months Design Excellence Award goes to…
Philpott House – Sam Haffar/Adam Wood/Fiona Mackie
This is an excellent piece of work, successful because of collaboration and communication. Stylistically, it's on brand but also relevant to the subject, the clarity of information is strong, the choreography and storytelling something we can all aspire to.
The clip can be viewed on Sky News' design site here:
Unfortunately the trophy won't be ready until next week and the vouchers are still in the post, but they are both coming!
As to the rest of the week:
The output of design this week has exposed a fundamental truth; when we are busy, we forget the basics.
It's actually been a fairly slow news week, but this has a tendency to make design areas busier and when we are busiest, we should fall back on the basics:
- Focus on the information
- Maintain clarity
- Make it simple
If we attempt to over-design, we lose the attention in all of these areas. Take the Music Sales graphic:
All of the information is there, but beyond background image/foreground information, they could be 3 different graphics.
Three competing styles of text, change in the area of focus make this messy.
Imagine how much more successful this would have been had we treated it like the Eurovision graphic from a month ago:
Same amount of artworking involved. Simple, clean, clear, crisp, on brand.
The Pandas graphic suffered similar problems. It's mixing illustrated style, with cut-outs, then real backgrounds and blended flags. Find a treatment and stick to it. At least be consistent within the same graphic. It is also confusing on the last frame; a China flag representing everything except China.
For me, this story was crying out for a simple graphic style. A simple script rewrite would solve the endframe issue.
The Planning reforms 3D was actually very good, but like all of our good things, it can be improved. We've found a beautiful, clean, simple treatment in the black and white style with 3D buildings, but just because it's successful for one, doesn't mean we can't explore further.
The design could have retained its simplicity, but acquired more focus and brand with the addition of just a little colour. This would also help to target the animations.
Another option would have been to treat this as more of an experience. It's about building; create a bluprint and grow the model.
Lastly this week, a question: is a dossier as outdated as a typewriter?
We wouldn't use a typewriter font or the sound effect on-air (unless dateable), so why do we continue to use a paper folder whenever we are graphicising someone's 'file'?
Presumably, all this information is kept on computers now, so don't we look out of date?
The answer is, it's not that simple. There are times when it is relevant and pertinent to use this style and times when we should explore something new.
Two examples from this week below, together with a possible new approach.
Celebrate Design Excellence
Chyaz
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