Beyond Typography

Happy New Year!

Ok, I know we're six days into the New Year, and I know I haven't been blogging for a while. I've been pretty busy. I’ll explain more in another post.

Meanwhile, in these credit crunching times here's some sound advice to Keep Your (Design) Job Right Now. Obviously some of them apply to non-designers as well.

Via SwissMiss

Roundup

I've noticed this week that there are lot of changes in the publishing world, mainly as a result of the march online. The biggest story is that Time Inc is too cut up to 600 jobs.

Gannet, America’s largest newspaper chain, is to make 10% of its workforce redundant by December. They also own Newsquest in the UK.

Sky Creative, the in-house design team at BSkyB, cuts design jobs. A design director, a creative director and five designers are to go. There are rumours there are more redundancies to come.

Mygazines.com, the peer-to-peer magazine site, has closed. Ran out of funds , apparently.

Grazia magazine, the weekly fashion magazine, will be produced out of the new Westfield shopping centre in West London. The Grazia staff will be working in a perspex pod for all to see from 3 November.

The Telegraph Media Group will be publishing videos from The Onion, America’s finest news source.

The Guardian announces editorial changes. It is integrating online and print production teams, a trend being seen in quite a few places.

Whassup?

Remember this? A great ad for a not so great product: 

Reminds me of the greetings on a Friday night in the pub! Anyway, check this out, it's the same guys 8 years later. A great ad for a [potentially] great proposal...

Ad free?

I'm working at our Holborn office today. On my way up to town by train I spotted this excellent ad at Waterloo Station:

The text in the top right reads:

“What’s the first mistake businesses make?”

Excellent. Very effective I think.

I went into the Tube, and what faced me on the platform?

No ads!

Vote Palin!

… er, not that woman from Alaska, but Michael Palin! He has all the necessary qualifications such as well travelled, articulate, educated. The only thing is he's not a US citizen...

Via The Guardian. 

Oh $%*&!!

Apparently there IS a term for the use of non-alphabet characters to indicate swearing. Read here if you want to know what it is!

Interesting sites

A couple of interesting (and useful sites): Redesign:related is a visual listing of redesigns and refreshes. The Newseum is visual directory of the day's newspaper front covers from around the world.

Net Neutrality

What could be a worrying trend for users of the Internet is highlighted here. It discusses the prospect that big media companies, backed by big telecom companies, would like to see the Internet move away from a neutral stance whereby anybody is free to publish to the web. It could end with a two-speed Internet with the big corporations having access to the fast lane and everybody else would be relegated to the slow lane.

A note about this blog

If you have anything to say about any of the posts, pleeeease comment. Just click on the Comments link at the bottom of each entry.

Links to related articles or reference are in bold within the post. 

If you have any idesign-related item that may be interest to other readers (yes, I have quite a few now) please let me know.