The 200 best design moments ever, part 4

176 ILOVEDUST, AND BIKES

Set up in 2003, ilovedust now has studios in hectic east London and the tranquil Hampshire town of Southsea. Working in a mix of styles from cartoon, street-inspired mash-ups to clean, modern designs, the creatives are never too far away from a customised fixed-gear bike.

177 THE ALL-NEW COMPUTER ARTS SITE COMES TO A SCREEN NEAR YOU

Maybe we did let our hair grow a bit long before sorting it out, but things are knocked back into shape emphatically in 2011 with the redesign of the Computer Arts website. Now you can plug into our articles online quickly and efficiently, and alongside a ready supply of technique tutorials, features and interviews, details of the latest inspiring projects from around the design universe regularly appear on our blog. Our lovely visitors just keep coming back for more.

178 TOURETTE, EXOCET, MORON, BASTARD

These are all font titles from Virus Fonts, the foundry set up in 1997 by Jonathan Barnbrook and Marcus Leis Allion. Many of its fonts have confrontational names, since the designers want to explore how letters and words are used expressively in language.

179 SILHOUETTE DANCE TEAM

Apple – its logo, in essence, the fruit in silhouette – launches its iPod in 2001 with a brilliant ad campaign overseen by Lee Clow from TBWA. The unforgettable ads feature dancers in silhouette on bright backgrounds, with telltale white earphone leads connecting to their heads.

180 CHANNEL 4’S LATEST REFRESH

TV branding is always evolving, and Rudd Studio’s 2010 refresh of Channel 4 more than maintains the broadcaster’s reputation for considered design. The Channel 4 logo remains the same, with its constituent forms moving together and drifting apart, constructing and deconstructing, as they have in the past. The nod to deconstructionism this time is aided by lines bisecting many of the images, seeming to refract the numeral in interesting ways. Through the four itself you see images relating to programming and themes on the channel, so that the brand continues to adapt. Clever.

181 HONDA GRRR BY SMITH & FOULKES

After it comes out in 2004, no other TV advert wins more awards than Honda Grrr, created by directors Alan Smith and Adam Foulkes at Nexus Productions. It’s dubbed ‘the ad of the decade’ and is unforgettable, with Honda’s new engine floating about like a butterfly across a landscape filled with cute and highly colourful creatures. “If every single commercial was like Honda Grrr, then that would be the norm,” says Smith. “It would almost be too much. You wouldn’t know what it was all about. It has to sit in a world of fairly straightforward commercials to actually stand out.”

The pair joke around a lot, and like many creative duos, one often completes the other’s sentences in conversation. When they’re in their flow, the way they collaborate is based on evolving ideas and bouncing things back and forth, rather than making hard and fast decisions. After all, they reason, when clients review their work they are bound to suggest some changes, so the Smith & Foulkes creative process takes this into account. It’s almost as though the client is part of the collaboration.

“We are doing a job for somebody – not just the agency but the client, the client’s dog and beyond. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone pushes it into a place that they want. We’ve done jobs that we thought were really good and had the client say, ‘Well, it’s not working hard for our market.’ So we’ve had to change something to suit a request for something else. Everything is a compromise in every commercial job you do.”

182 FWA FOUNDED

The Favourite Website Awards are conceived in May 2000 by Rob Ford, and no other website awards since has been anywhere near as successful. The website racks up 140 million hits by July 2011, and rewards a top site daily, monthly and annually. On top of being a great destination thanks to the sites it showcases, The FWA always has a none-too-shabby design itself, making it doubly inspiring to visit. So, who has won the most Site of the Day awards? Well it’s B-Reel of Sweden, with 64 to date, followed by Firstborn and Big Spaceship in New York.

183 FIRST COMPUTER ARTS COLLECTION

In 2011 our high-end sister magazine launches, with a bi-monthly schedule and groundbreaking design aesthetic that includes special papers, inks and finishes throughout. Issue one focuses on graphic design, and features the talents of Angus Hyland, Planning Unit and more.

184 MAYA FOR THE MAC

If one thing is missing from the Apple Mac’s repertoire early on, it’s a high-end 3D animation, VFX and compositing package. The best in this category is available on high-end PC workstations, but this changes when Maya arrives for the Mac in 2004, giving designers the opportunity to have Hollywood effects on their desktop.

185 RUBBERDUCKZILLA AND CACTUS KID

London agency Mother proves it has mastered the off-beat, viral-esque approach to advertising in 2009 with its TV work for Oasis drinks featuring the invasion of Japan by Rubberduckzilla, and the Cactus Kid saga in which a woman runs away with a man who is half-cactus.

186 FULL OF HOT AIR

If an image of the world as a hot air balloon is etched into your brain, you can thank the identity agency Lambie-Nairn, which comes up with the concept for the BBC’s idents featuring balloons over the British landscape, and overseas, in 1997. They run until 2002.

187 ‘ALL IS FULL OF LOVE’

Designers around the world have found inspiration in Chris Cunningham’s 2000 video for Bjork’s ‘All is Full of Love’. Featuring a white, futuristic crash test-style mannequin that comes to life, it wins a D&AD Black Pencil for RSA/Black Dog Films in 2000.

188 HAPPY 50TH, HELVETICA

How does a typeface blow out the 50 candles on its birthday cake in 2007? With a film featuring some of the biggest names in design who’ve used the font, plus a poster design mash-up contributed to by every great designer with the slightest modernist tinge.

189 COMPUTER ARTS GRADUATE SHOWCASE

After publishing Computer Arts for one year, we begin our initiative to promote and foster new talent in 1996 with our first annual Graduate Showcase, which looks at top creative courses around the world and the work of some of the hottest graduates.

190 STUDIO 8 AND ELEPHANT

With a growing reputation for clean, clear and well-crafted design work, Studio 8 works with the Dutch publisher Frame on the first issue of Elephant magazine in 2009, which looks at the creators of art and visual culture on a quarterly basis.

191 THE THIRD PLACE

Usually third place is a bronze medal, but Hi-Res design consultancy comes up with The Third Place in 2002 as an online branding proposition for the PlayStation 2 – the idea is that the games console is a gateway to another world. When the product launches, visitors to the site explore a 3D world. It’s the ultimate design escapism – selling escapism.

192 THE END OF PRINT

Going by its title, you might expect a book about digital design. But the 1995 publication is actually a challenge to 500 years of printing, layout and legibility conventions similar to Raygun, the music magazine David Carson had previously art directed. There are essays on Carson’s design philosophy, though it could be said they are there to look at rather than to be read, along with his eclectic mix of beach culture, handpainted signs and other relics of street culture, all layered together digitally using a Mac.

193 THE RENDERDRIVE RD5000!

Raytracing is at the cutting edge of 3D design in 2000, but it requires serious processing power, such as the RenderDrive RD5000, to create imagery quickly. This kit costs £17,500. Sure, it does radiosity, HDRI, motion blur, area lights and depth of field too, but in-software rendering comes on a long way in the next 12 years.

194 MY PET SKELETON

With keen Photoshop and web design skills, Canadian creative Vincent Marcone launches FWA-winning site My Pet Skeleton in 2000. He turns haunting imagery into a living, making videos for alternative bands such as Mushroomhead, Jakalope, HourCast and more.

195 JULIEN DE REPENTIGNY

Working with Moment Factory and Cirque du Soleil, Julien De Repentigny art directs the captivating motion visuals that herald the Xbox Kinect at the huge games industry expo E3 in 2009. More than just an animation, the show is an experience for those invited. That same year, he builds a neon light sculpture for the cover of issue 181 of Computer Arts. He has also created everything from installations at art exhibitions to milk packaging. This French-Canadian designer, who now lives in London, is a man to watch.

196 IDENTIKAL DESIGNS ANGOL

Nick and Adam Haynes are the dead ringers of design. Yes, they’re identical twins – hence the name of their studio. Starting in London, and fascinated by typography, their typeface Angol sums up their playful approach and, indeed, each letter has a bit of an angle to it. Type is just the beginning for the duo, who move to New York in 2003. Their lettering is often part of illustration and graphic design briefs and, always hungry to explore new areas of creativity, more recently they have been exploring motion and photography.

197 ALEX TROCHUT AND DISAPPEAR HERE

In 2008, Alex Trochut creates a deliciously decorative headline reading ‘10 ways to get a job’ for a feature here in Computer Arts. His thick, parallel line type oozes with creativity and confidence, and he goes on to illustrate an Estrella Damm campaign that is seen nationwide, as well as create his Neo Deco typeface and work on numerous magazine front covers and book covers. Perhaps the most iconic typographic image he crafts is for the first issue of Disappear Here magazine in 2009 – it’s a big gold and black statement that reads: ‘50 Things We Love’.

198 FIVE, FIVER AND FIVE USA

In 2008, London design studio Dixon Baxi gives Channel 5 its distinctive look and refreshes it the following year, bringing elements of the UK channel’s strongest programming – The Mentalist, CSI and The Gadget Show – into the idents.

199 HELLO TADO

In 2004, Mike and Katie of Sheffield-based studio TADO begin cementing their positions as the king and queen of cute with their Fortune Pork Mini Plush character range of soft toys. They go on to create everything from cereal boxes to gallery exhibitions, such as The Littlest Savage, and take part in events like Pubscrawl.

200 THE DESIGNERS REPUBLIC

Ask a top designer like Michael Paul Young who inspired him when he started his career, and high on the list will be The Designers Republic (tDR). Founded by Ian Anderson in Sheffield during the late 1980s, the studio worked for clients more varied than people often remember – from bands including Pop Will Eat Itself, to electricity companies and Japanese brands like Sony. After designing the graphics for the original PlayStation game Wipeout in 1995, tDR is at the forefront of Britain’s young, can-do design scene, and appears regularly in Computer Arts. Sadly, it closes its doors after 23 years in January 2009.

Part 1: 1-50 | Part 2: 51-100 | Part 3: 101-150 | Part 4: 151-200