February 2013 (#210)

Characters and clients might seem like something of a good cop, bad cop affair. The former: mischievous, cute, playful, colourful, free from restraint and full of personality. The latter? Demanding, thunderous, unrelenting, inflexible.

This is a completely unfair stereotype, of course. For as this month’s cover feature attests, creating characters to a tight commercial brief can result in fresh directions and some stunning creative work too.

This month we also kick off a new series exploring niche creative disciplines that boast highly skilled, trained practitioners – but also have their fair share of experimental dabblers who try their hand whenever the brief demands, or the fancy takes them. First up, it’s type design – a discipline in which a graphic designer might craft a one-off display font in a matter of days, while a type designer can agonise over a fully fledged typeface for a year or more.

Oh, and for anyone who thinks freelance life might be easy, read our interview with Darren McPherson, to whom 17-hour days and temporary blindness are all just part of the job.

Next month, we explore the burgeoning trend for ultra-minimalist logo design. From Microsoft and eBay to WeightWatchers and SodaStream, everyone’s at it – but what are the creative challenges of a back-to-basics rebrand? Make sure you pick up a copy to find out. Until then, enjoy the issue…

Nick Carson Editor