The 200 best design moments ever, part 4

151 LIFE, AND THE UNIVERSAL EVERYTHING

With a love of generative imagery and working from his garden shed, digital artist Matt Pyke founds Universal Everything, winning great acclaim for the live concert graphics the studio produces. Even better work is to come with the MTV refresh that Universal Everything contributes to in 2009.

152 THE PARTNERS’ PANTONE MANET

In 1882 Edouard Manet completed his impressionist painting ‘Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère’. In 2008, creatives at The Partners meticulously colour-match Pantone swatches to Manet’s paints and reconstruct the image within a gilded frame. They call it a ‘Mantone’.

153 THE PETER SAVILLE SHOW

The lanky-haired Lancastrian Peter Saville is honoured with an exhibition in 2003 at The Design Museum featuring his life’s work, from his first Factory Records poster in 1978 to the ‘Blue Monday’ cover and his ‘Colour and Form’ identity, for the Museum itself.

154 SAUL BASS PASSES AWAY

1996: A hugely influential graphic designer – and perhaps the world’s first exponent of motion graphics – Saul Bass is best known for his film title sequences with Alfred Hitchcock. But he also designed iconic logos for Bell, Kleenex, Quaker Oats and more.

155 JASPER GOODALL AND ILLUSTRATION RESURGENCE

When The Face art director Graham Rounthwaite commissions Jasper Goodall for the magazine in the late 1990s, illustration is in the doldrums. Stock imagery is becoming the norm, in particular digital photography. But silhouettes, bold swathes of colour and a certain sexiness give Goodall’s work an arresting edge that can turn heads far more effectively than another perfect photo.

156 AUTODESK BUYS EVERYTHING

When Adobe purchases Macromedia in 2005, it brings great technologies like Flash into its Creative Suite, but for many it reduces choice in the marketplace. The same thing seems to have happened in the 3D market with Autodesk – previously the purveyor of 3ds Max and AutoCAD – swallowing up Maya and Softimage in 2006. Luckily the company hasn’t discontinued any major lines, and Cinema 4D and Lightwave 3D are still roaming out on the plains to keep things somewhat competitive.

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157 ABBEY ROAD AND ROBBIE WILLIAMS

Abbey Road, the famous recording studio used by The Beatles in the 1960s, steps into the 21st century in 2000, broadening its scope with Abbey Road Interactive. It works with the likes of Robbie Williams to produce interactive and rich content elements for music DVDs, adding video production, animation, menus, 3D and design to its audio recording heritage.

158 SAVILLE FOR ENGLAND

Peter Saville has become something of a national treasure, so Umbro invites him to submit designs for the England football shirt. In September 2010 he creates a pattern made up of small, widely spaced St George’s crosses in a rainbow of colours. The next thing he knows, the England team is wearing the kit against Bulgaria for the first of its European Championship qualifier matches.

159 COLOUR LIKE NO OTHER

Fallon’s Juan Cabral helps the agency win the YoungGun agency award with his Sony Bravia commercial in 2005. In it 50,000 coloured balls cascade down one of those hilly streets in San Francisco. It requires six takes, with 50 interns collecting up the balls after each one.

160 RAYGUN SHOT DOWN

The last issue of the alternative music magazine Raygun goes on sale in 1999, ending seven years of art direction that explored type and graphic design. David Carson founded and art directed its first issues – once converting the entire text of a Bryan Ferry interview to Zapf Dingbats.

161 OFFSET FESTIVAL

In 2009, Peter O’Dwyer, Bren Byrne and Richard Seabrooke set up OFFSET – a gathering of the world’s top creatives. To date, it’s attracted Sagmeister, Carson, Burrill and many, many more.

162 THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH

The titles for the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough is just one of the projects that CG house Smoke & Mirrors tackles in 1999, when it’s at the top of its game. Formed in 1995, it now bills itself as ‘the original post boutique’ and has studios in London, New York and Shanghai.

163 A STAR RISES IN THE NORTH

Even bigger things were to come from Brendan Dawes when in 1998 he became creative director at Subnet. An expert designer, coder and true visionary, he later becomes CD of magneticNorth, designing some of the most innovative interactive work around.

164 ALAN ALDRIDGE RETROSPECTIVE

Famed illustrator of the 1960s and 70s Alan Aldridge is honoured with a retrospective of his work at the Design Museum in 2009. Read our interview with Aldridge at the time of the show.

165 GRAPHIC THOUGHT FACILITY

Simple, clear and well-crafted design is the forte of London design consultancy Graphic Thought Facility. Its heart in the centre of a house drawn in one continuous line for Habitat’s 2002 rebrand is an inspired piece of logo work, and other top projects include identities for the Design Museum in 2003 and the Frieze Art Fair of 2007.

166 GET DOWN ON YOUR KNEES

Generative art is just one of the many playgrounds of Flash pioneer Joshua Davis and the PrayStation site he launches in 2001 is still a great example of his skills in this area. He uses code to generate imagery for everything from web apps to environmental graphics.

167 ALL KNOWN QUESTIONS ANSWERED

2001: Forward-thinking San Francisco agency AKQA is founded to bring clients a new approach to media with digital at its core. Today there are offices in London, Paris, New York, Berlin and Shanghai.

168 A DROP OF SCOTCH

The typography genius Matthew Carter spends many hours in St Bride Library, London in 1997, researching Scotch Roman typefaces of the 19th century before designing the exquisite newsprint font Miller. It’s been used by the Guardian, The Boston Globe and others.

169 CREATIVE SUITE APPEARS

With Adobe’s individual software programs surging to the top, the company combines them into an uber-package in 2003: Creative Suite. Alongside the Mac, CS is the staple of design studios around the world.

170 THE WILDERNESS DOWNTOWN

Music video director Chris Milk creates Arcade Fire’s award-winning interactive version of The Wilderness Downtown in 2010. The viewer can enter their postcode and Street View imagery of their neighbourhood is integrated with the video thanks to some fancy HTML5 interactivity.

171 WHAT DESIGN IS REALLY LIKE

Kudos to designer and author Adrian Shaughnessy for his 2005 book How to be a Graphic Designer, Without Losing Your Soul. It’s not about pretty images with little or no analysis. It’s not about learning how to design, or where to find the Noise filter in Photoshop. It looks at the real issues involved in setting up a studio, finding and working with clients, plus the creative challenges you’ll face along the way, such as how to cope with the long, hard hours creating a campaign with the sole purpose of getting people to purchase something.

172 ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE 5.5

The latest Creative Suite launches in May 2011, with Adobe changing its two-year upgrade cycle – now there will be 0.5 version upgrades annually. The collection integrates many features that are helpful for those creating apps and using multi-touch devices, such as the iPad. Now for the first time you can use your full copy of Photoshop Extended in conjunction with iPad creative apps such as Nav, Lava and Eazel, exchanging documents via Wi-Fi. InDesign makes publishing documents in the ePUB format smoother, and with Dreamweaver you can now author and test Android apps natively. Despite Flash not porting to iPad easily, CS5.5 is very much a mobile-orientated release.

173 TYPO LONDON

After running in Berlin since 1995, the TYPO conference comes to London for the first time in 2011 – and we’re there. Speakers include Morag Meyerscough, Erik Spiekermann, Michael Bierut, Jonathan Barnbrook and many others. The theme is ‘places’ and the discussions at the centre of the show range far beyond pure typography, covering user experience design, branding and information design. And it seems to have put down roots: the show returns to London this year, and also goes to San Francisco.

174 THE NEW COKE

One of the main reasons for the success of Turner Duckworth’s rebranding of Coca-Cola is the way the agency pares back all the detail that had developed around the drink over the years – from the decorative bubbles that appeared on cans to the use of colour and the shape of the packaging. With the simplified new look in place, in 2011 Turner Duckworth releases a new Diet Coke can that reduces things even more, cropping in on the ‘D’ in Diet and part of the ‘oke’ in Coke. It’s the kind of clipped-yet-recognisable type that David Carson would be proud of.

175 BLUR: THE BEST OF

Artist Julian Opie’s style sums up the era when he creates the cover for Blur: The Best of in 2000, depicting each band member with simple line art, flat colours and minimal detail. Vector outlining soon becomes a popular approach to digital illustration.