Via Adland TV

To anyone who’s read my previous posts it will also come as a surprise that I would be praising a rail company, but believe it or not here it comes…

Just before Christmas I had to make an urgent trip from London to Essex. I arrived at Liverpool Street station, checked the departure time of my train, shovelled a big wedge of cash into the ticket machine and just as my tickets printed out the automated departures and arrivals board lit up in a frenzy of flashing lights as one-by-one the trains changed from ‘On Time’ to ‘Cancelled’, ‘Bus Service’ or ‘Delayed’. Mine was cancelled. The tickets, still warm from the printer, cowered in my clenched fist.

I then embarked on the most excruciating train journey of my life. Both the outward and return journeys were subject to cancellations, delays, lack of onboard refreshments due to a broken boiler, overcrowding and general displeasure.

On my return I set about drafting a letter of complaint to the train company responsible, National Express. Seeing as there has been a lot of talk of will they/won’t they mergers with Stagecoach recently I wasn’t holding my breath in getting a positive response to my request for a full, and immediate, refund.

As Christmas set upon us I received a letter from National Express to inform me that they had read my letter and would attempt to come back to me within 6 days. Actually, it was more like 15, but hey, it was Christmas and who’s counting? I was stunned to receive another letter the other day profusely apologising for the ‘unforgiveable’ experience I had had to endure that day on the train, and explaining the reasons for the delays/cancellations but in a tone that was more apologetic and responsible than blame-ridden and bitter. Neatly tucked in the folded letter were vouchers for rail travel (on ANY network in the UK) for not only the full return fare but for the full fare + 25%.

Now, I’m not too sure whether it should be a big cheer for National Express per se, or a big cheer for the cranky insistence of a grump like me, but regardless, I thought the communications tone, and the ‘above and beyond’ value of the vouchers were a great example of a brand’s ability to create a positive experience out of a bad one. Well done National Express.

But there is another category of films – films that are so bad, they’re good. To celebrate these ‘car crashes’ of celluloid, we stupidly decided to set up a club – a bad film club – an opportunity to have a drink, a laugh and revel in the acting horror.

Each month we will be showing a ‘special’ screening. Our opening film was no exception having become an internet and cult legend. Here is our resident film boffin, Robert Ball‘s assessment of what has been described as ‘the ‘Citizen Kane’ of bad films‘: The Room…

You are tearing me apart Lisa!

The Room (2003)
There are films during which you can feel the obsessive precision of a master craftsman at work. The films of Kubrick, David Lynch or Hitchcock. The Room is their terrible dark twin. Whereas truly great films are perfect in every detail; framing, pacing, screenplay, visual and sound design, The Room is monotonously, heroically unperfect. In every last detail. All of the time.

The star, producer, director and probably caterer of this meandering debacle (Tommy Wiseau) gives himself the plum role of Johnny – a benevolent, teetotal philosopher and adopter of street kids. He is misunderstood, betrayed, and cuckolded in turn by those around him. He cuts a tragic figure. In fact it’s possibly the most tragic screen performance ever committed to celluloid. Imagine Christopher Walken wandering lost after near fatal electro-shock therapy in one of Cher’s old wigs reading a pile of Clinton Cards through a mouthful of cold porridge.

The rest of a central love triangle is, quite literally, rounded out by a femme fatale (shot from such consistently harsh camera angles and in such cheap dresses that she looks like a pound of pork sausages spilling out of a Christmas cracker) and the handsome best friend (A walking piece of MDF with a beard). And talking of cheap furniture, The Room looks like it was filmed in an MFI showroom. During business hours. Which perhaps explains the characters that randomly appear out of nowhere only to look confused and and wander off again without serving dramatic or expositional function.

So, take some terrible acting, a screenplay written by a horny teenager (two stomach churning sex scenes occur in the first ten minutes that feel about as erotic as watching a giant snail trying to fondle his sister), cheap sets, a handful of stock footage, production values that would shame a school nativity and this is the result.

And I’m just scraping the surface. A thin veneer of mere awfulness covering depths of ineptitude studded with pearls of unrewarding crap just waiting to be discovered. The worst film ever made? Perhaps. I’d give it six out of ten.

Nokia viNe Brand Design from James Temple on Vimeo.

The Partners has once again teamed up with Richard House Children’s Hospice, heading back into the City to flex their fundraising muscles with another fantastic event, the Richard House five-a-side football tournament.

Aimed at naturally competitive City workers the idea highlights the rivalry that exists in the office and encourages them to bring that to the pitch. In total 20 teams competed with Baker McKenzie becoming the champs in a stunning 3-0 win.

The Partners has designed a logo, posters and other promotional material for the five-a-side event.

Last Sunday was the annual WPP 5-a-side Charity tournament, held at the hallowed ground of Wembley (well, Wembley Goals). It was our opportunity for Logomotive-Crossedcow, AKA the Bulls, AKA the Partners, to flex our leg muscles against the finest teams that WPP had to offer.

After a summer of no training, a man down (GregB had decided that ‘holiday’ was more important) and with NO supporters, still we arrived early in high spirits and with bananas in tow. Things began well, with a promising, yet rusty, 3-all opener against field marketing company Headcount, then even better with a 3-0 win over The Farm (who didn’t turn up and so lost automatically). But like Sven managing England, the good times were soon a distant memory. We lost a hard faught battle against The Union Bag (2-3), then were obliterated by the eventual winners of the cup, Team Ohal (0-5).

Team Captain, Michael Paisley said; “We battled hard, were unlucky, but ultimately a distinct lack of fitness, skill, touch and organisation let us down.”

Oh well, there’s always next year.

The team were:

Michael Paisley (c)
Sean Rees
Jim Prior
Martin Rowlatt
Kevin Lan
Samuel Hall
Sam Griffiths

After the success of our make-it-yourself catalogue for last year’s Jerwood show ‘an experiment in collaboration’ (featured in the Creative Review annual, Design Week Awards runner up and winner of a Platinum award at Graphis) we were asked to make a catalogue for Jerwood’s latest show: Laboratory.

The Laboratory is an experiment: three artists take over the gallery and, starting from nothing, build a show as they go – a totally unpredictable process, with no way of knowing what the work will be like from one day to the next. Everything they do exposed to scrutiny and comment, from the resident writer and photographer to the public and press.

With an experimental show that is one big work in progress we set out to make a catalogue in the true spirit of the show: unpredictable, exposed and experimental. We decided not to design a catalogue. Instead we designed a process,  a way of creating a catalogue that we couldn’t predict and couldn’t control, a way of gathering and documenting everything that happens in the show in real time, built, like the show, in the gallery itself, and only finished as the show closes. We’ve just let it unfold…

Blog
The process started with the Laboratory blog. The artists, curator, writer, resident photographer and designers posted real-time updates on the show to the blog which also automatically draws in related content from external sites like twitter and flickr. Each post has a print option which we use to output content in real time for the printed catalogue. Every post prints the size it appears in the blog, so no two pages are alike.

Catalogue
Each day’s posts are added to the catalogues which are on display in the gallery so you can see the them growing as the  show grows. Posts are joined vertically to make one continuous chronological document. The catalogue kept growing right up until the moment the laboratory closed its doors.

We’ve seem our fair share of dramas unfold from our view on Morton Street in the last year, including two plane crashes (the most recent with a less happy ending than the first, unfortunately), a faked Airforce One fly-by and more beautiful sunsets than you can shake a stick at.

It’s hot and humid at the moment in NYC and this brings with it some pretty spectacular storms. This is one from Friday afternoon: watch New Jersey disappear (complete your own joke here).

Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles
For anyone bored to tears with the same 10 typefaces we use for everything, a veritable cornucopia of typography.
Beautifully produced and fearsomely obsessive: the ‘Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles’. And yes, this is only Volume one.

Volume two is available on pre-order from Amazon now.