Patrick Burgoyne: "Cheap & Nasty"

Right now, Butcher's Hook is sitting in front of Burgoyne, editor at Creative Review. As we mentioned before, Burgoyne visits Kingston University every monday. This week, he talked about "The £25 Logo"...

Type "Cheap Logo Design" into google and you get this:

119,000,000 RESULTS.

These websites offer "priceless, quality, custom-made logos designed by seasoned professionals". For £25...?

It goes without saying that for many, if not all of these websites, the saying "you get what you pay for" applies. In the same way that the Metro, (a free London newspaper offered to anyone and everyone), keeps many commuters happy, we imagine that a lot of the '£25 Logo' sites keep their clients content: why else would there be nearly 120,000,000 competitors?

This is not to say that we do/don't condone the new, ever-rising and developing world of internet-based crowd sourcing. In fact, we've even been following one of them (www.blurdesigns.com), just to see what they offer. On one hand, crowd sourcing benefits young, aspiring designers who want to have a shot at otherwise unaccessible briefs. On the other hand, vast amounts of the briefs are essentially open to anyone with a Mac and an internet connection.

We think that the internet pioneered in accessibility to countless resources and opportunities, and continues to develop it's repertoire to help the world's increasing jobless population. Which is why the growing debate over crowd sourcing's usefulness can't be answered without taking into account the Internet's responsibility, not to mention Apple and Adobe's coalition to make everyone a creative.

BH agrees that offering a quick turn-around on £25 logos has no justification as Graphic Design. In the same way that stock photo websites, such as Shutterstock have almost abolished the stock photo trade as it was once known, crowd-sourcing websites are slowly penetrating the established, traditional, process-based and honest-hard-working world of Graphic Design. "Graphic Design is not about generating shit logos for £25, over the internet. Graphic Design is about a deep thought process, human interaction and actively-built relationships, sophistication and strategies, intelligence and understanding". There is a difference between easily throwing together conventional elements of a logo and calling it 'top-quality / custom', and a refined process in which a client's value is extended through their visual identity.

Either way, read up on Mat Dolphin's story, where he found out exactly what £25 gets you:

The £25 Logo: Mat Dolphin

Guaranteed a great read.

More from us:


TOMORROW:

• D&AD so far
• New Studio Space - 'The Barn'

WEDNESDAY:

• Dan Jones: "About Me"

THURSDAY:

• More from Patrick Burgoyne
• D&AD update

Current Work

Here are some clients we're working for at the moment! Exciting work to follow soon.

New line of boxers - coming soon.

New (much needed) Identity - coming soon.

New ltd. Edition bottle - coming soon.

Apart from these slightly bigger clients / jobs, we're also contributing to our local community (who have been very grateful and offered us favours in return!) :

- Eflyer (who gave us unlimited free hire for a year!)

- Business cards (thanks for the Apple cinematic display screen!)

Dan Jones

As mentioned in our last post, we are pleased to present Dan Jones. 

Dan will be initially joining us to take on a D&AD Student Awards brief. Dan, like Benio, is a Kingston University Graphic Designer, in his 3rd year. This introduction would never be written to appropriately describe Dan, his work or his achievements.

So, we thought we'd let his portfolio do the talking for now..

WWW.DANIELMARTINJONES.COM

D&AD

On Wednesday 11th Jan 2012 Butcher's Hook went down to Creature of London's HQ for a meeting with the D&AD people. The day consisted of a meet&greet, introductions, talks with industry professionals (on how to answer a brief), followed by a split into groups, a workshop / 1hour brief, topped off with a presentation and 'speed dating session' with the industry pro's!

How did we fit that all into one day? Through perfect timing, organisation and on-the-spot problem solving from D&AD / Creature. We'd like to start off by saying a HUGE thanks for the experience!

The talks included people from the D&AD Student Awards' sponsors, like Microsoft, Special Moves, DLKW Lowe, Moving Brands and of course Creature.

Here are some useful tips, concerning "how to answer briefs" :

MICROSOFT // Andrew Spooner, Creative Technologist:

1. Focus on the user.
2. Don't let the tech BE the answer / situation.
3. Make friends with the Tech.
4. Context - 'Where will the user be when they use the tech?'
5. Challenge the tech, but don't break it.

SPECIAL MOVES // Caroline Taylor:

1. Know what matters, don't get excited.
2. Break down time.
3. Immerse yourself, Don't ever question or judge, then take a step back.
4. Get involved, PUSH IT.
5. Let loose, don't play it safe.

DLKW LOWE // Jonny Watson:

1. Trash the brief.
2. Make it your own.
3. Interrogate the brief.
4. Stay TRUE to the brief.
5. Recognise dead ends.
6. Proposition is GOD.
7. Sharpen the brief.
8. Wear lots of hats.
9. Don't just say... DO.
10. Smack it.

MOVING BRANDS // Jon Hewitt:

“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.”

- Eliel Saarinen


CREATURE OF LONDON // Stuart & Ed


"Every design should be made in three breaths" 
"My best idea is always my first" 


The following list shows titles of steps in the answering process, from Creature. It was a great presentation, so in the future we'll explain these points, but for now.... let them intrigue you.


1. Samurai test.
2. Chinese food test.
3. Irritation test.
4. Chuck, Shag or Marry test.
5. Forehead Slap test.
6. Oh boy, is Rover going to get it tonight test.
7. Honesty test.
8. Delete or Forward test. (we called it the 'facebook like' test).
9. Camden Market Tshirt test.
10. Probably most importantly, the BILL HICKS WAS WRONG test.


We'll leave these notes up here, in case anyone wants to ask any questions about them / so that we can go back and use them! Great advice from some amazing people.

After the five minute talks, we split into groups. BH was set up with some great people in their group, who were from institutions all over the UK. It was a great experience - we learnt so much from people we had never met before, collaborated with them and went on to answer a brief really well! Once we've tracked them all down on the internet (online portfolios), we're planning on showcasing some of their work on here, and hopefully in the gallery in the future!

ALL THIS ASIDE, WE ARE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT BUTCHER'S HOOK ARE ENTERING THE D&AD STUDENT AWARDS THIS YEAR, WITH AN ADDITIONAL MEMBER, WHO YOU'LL ALL MEET IN OUR NEXT POST! #WATCHTHISSPACE!

Rebecca Wright / GraphicDesign&

Rebecca Wright, (Academic Director Communication Design, Course Director BA (Hons) Graphic Design / BA (Hons) Graphic Design and Photography) - I know! In short, Rebecca is Benio's tutor. Not only is Rebecca a great mentor and leader, she also runs 'GraphicDesign&':

"Taking the Bliss Bibliographic Classification system as a framework, each GraphicDesign& book, event or exploration connects graphic design to another subject area. From philosophers to chemists, anthropologists to economists, psychologists to theologians, every GraphicDesign& output is a bespoke collaboration between graphic designers and experts from other fields. 
GraphicDesign& is the creation of Lucienne Roberts and Rebecca Wright. They are an unusual combination. A pessimist and an optimist; a practitioner and design educator; one rooted in typography, the other in image-making. Both are idealists, but not unrealistic, and passionate enthusiasts for their subject."

Rebecca gave Benio a green light on Butcher's Hook becoming one of his main projects for his third and final year. This has given us a real boost to get going - it means he'll be getting expert advice and opinions from his tutors (other highly respected professionals, of whom we'll blog about a bit later). It also means that we won't be working as much overtime, trying to mix Uni, BH and work!

Thanks Rebecca, we're looking forward to your professional input!

We're back!

We hope anyone who's followed us (and everyone else!) has had a brilliant Christmas Holiday / New Year's celebrations.

For most of us, this means back to work / education. We're not too upset about that; this being our first annual (and possibly our most exciting) year as a unit! So, without further ado, here's what we've been up to over the last month:

SNOW BALL

We massively enjoyed Snow Ball in the 13th of December. It was full of (over 200) students and friends of the up-and-coming art industry! We saw this as a great night out, with the perfect chance to start networking with potential future partners / clients / customers!

We produced business cards to re-enforce the vibes we sent out:

HUUUUGE night! We ended up saving tens of contacts, of whom we'll be introducing at a later stage. Many thanks to The Hippodrome, Kingston. Also, congratulations to Benio's Graphic Design class (Kingston University), who set up the night as a fund raiser for their end of year show!

Going Commercial

We had a very productive day today - building our business plan portfolio and working on

some new briefs to keep the studio atmosphere going - and to keep the goodies coming in!

Great day for us all, a proper 10 hour session. Here's our make-shift studio... 

And a cheeky hello for the ladies ;)

More from Patrick Burgoyne, Tara Hanrahan and Rebecca Wright (meeting on friday) soon!