Graphic Design

Contextual Studies

As part of graphic design contextual studies I researched into The Design Museum in London. It was founded in 1989 and is situated by the Thames near tower bridge. Looking specifically at the Designs of the Year 2012 award "'the Oscars of the design world’, showcase the most innovative and progressive designs from around the world, spanning seven categories: Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Furniture, Graphics, Product and Transport"

Design of the Year 2012
London 2012 Olympic Torch
Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby
Commissioned by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG)

The olympic torch won the design of the year award this year, which is no surprise really considering how historic the event has been, especially for Britain. Interestingly The Olympic torch which was made from aluminum was created by Barber Osgerby of UK design studio. It is marked with around 8,000 holes which stands for each of the torchbearers. Which is something I wasn't aware of until reading up now on the olympic torch. Personally think the torch is really elegant looking, and when it's lit I think it looks really quite stunning.

The graphics award was given to the Nokia Pure font by Dalton Maag. "Nokia Pure was launched in March 2011 as part of Nokia's brand refresh to accompany the launch of its new range of smartphones. Its aesthetic origins are in the clean lines and pure design ethics of Finland. It aims to be a font that speaks with simplicity and yet over-flows with character, but is also effortlessly functional in a digital world. The font family is designed and engineered to work on the small screens of handsets, as well as printed in the real world on paper and billboards."

I think it's really interesting to think about what goes into designing a typeface. It's something I don't personally put much thought into when looking at well know brands like Nokia. Your familiar with it's type and it's readable, it aesthetically looks pleasing and that's about the extend as to how you think about it. Nokia has a dominant visual identity already with it's original font so altering that has to be a hard task. Doing some research I found Dalton Maag's website and found this case study onthe design process of Nokia Pure http://www.daltonmaag.com/news/177.html . I found it really interesting to read about all the things that needed to be considered to create the above. Such as it needing to support different languages.