Last Saturday, Thoughtful were lucky enough to be invited to two events that celebrated creativity. One was The Tony Wilson Experience held in Manchester, and the other was Russell Davies’ Interesting 2008 in London.

It was a shame they were held on the same day as we all wanted to go to both, but such is life, so we went our separate ways. James and Stu headed off to the bright lights of the capital, and I went down to Urbis where the Tony Wilson event was.

The Tony Wilson Experience

When I first heard that this event was billed as a ‘24-hour conversation’, I was both intrigued, and slightly concerned. If I go to watch a film in a cinema, I'm fine until it goes past the two-and-a-half hour mark. I then get very uncomfortable and fidgety, to the point where my attention is definitely not on what I’m supposed to be watching. So the thought of sitting listening to around 50 people talking over one day, wasn’t really inspiring me to say the least.

The intrigue over the event however, was swaying me the other way. To pull off a 24-hour live conversation would be quite something. The line up of speakers would have to be great to attract people, and most were. Some had stronger links to Tony Wilson and Factory Records than others, but all shared a passion for what the man was about, and how he could inspire future generations.

The 200 young creatives that were invited were labeled as 'The Talent’. The speakers were ‘The Experienced’, and the big idea was to get ‘us’ and ‘them’ interacting, and sharing ideas and discussions. Unfortunately though that didn’t really happen. Don’t get me wrong, the event in my view was a success, but from what I saw, it was just more ‘us’ listening to ‘them’ than ‘all of us together’. It may have partly been ‘The Talent’s’ fault because we were encouraged to ask questions and participate, but in a room full of wallflowers, bright lights and big TV cameras, it’s understandable that not many questions were asked. Still, the other ‘Talent’ I spoke to, were in agreement that there could have been more workshop type segments to the event.

I didn’t make the full 24 hours. Urbis were providing shelter and camp beds for some of the more dedicated attendees, but the schedule got a bit thin in the early hours, with an open mic session billed at 5am, for example. So I took in around eight hours of conversation, and made it back the next morning for some more, from the likes of Tim Burgess, Peter Saville and Professor Brian Cox.

All in all, it was great to be a part of the Tony Wilson Experience. Mr Manchester would probably not have wanted the fuss made over him, but would have secretly liked it. The event was filmed, so may appear on the web sometime soon. For this reason, photography and filming weren’t allowed, otherwise we would have shot some of our own footage and put it up here. If it does end up online, the talks by Mark Radcliffe, Steve Coogan, Tom Bloxham, Jayne Casey, Sue Woodward and Clint Boon are worth looking out for, as well as the speakers I mentioned before. Frank Sidebottom was pretty funny too. I’ll be looking out for the talks that I missed.

One quote that did stick in my head was from Mark Radcliffe who said ‘People who don’t try anything, never fail’.

I’d like to say ‘thanks!’ to Ruth, a music promotor/journalist/band manager, who came over and introduced herself because she was on her own too. Ruth runs a successful fanzine for bands in Doncaster called Doncaster Live, as well as managing a band for the first time, despite having no experience in managing. She couldn’t stick around for the 24 hours, but wanted to hear what Alan McGee had to say the next day. Well Ruth, from me to you, you didn’t miss much really, I think that was due to the host of that talk though.

Interesting 2008

Like the Tony Wilson Experience, Interesting 2008 was jam packed full of speakers from start to finish. It must have been good as Stu and James had to get up at around 3am on Saturday morning to make the trip down, and they didn’t fall asleep once throughout the talks.

Lots of bits on Interesting are already floating around the blogosphere for you to look at, and a great place to start would be Russell’s post here.

The award for pure entertainment value went to Michael Johnson, who blew everyone away with a very unexpected show of talent.

Watch the video here.

And special thanks to Arthur.

Rock on!

Last night Thoughtful travelled up to Newcastle to listen to a talk by Adrian Shaughnessy, organised by Design Event.

Adrian’s talk was centred around the essential attributes of the modern graphic designer.

The audience was largely made up of students with a few designers dotted around, and what was great about the talk was how relevant it was to everyone. It would have been quite an eye-opener for the students to hear that sometimes, being a designer isn’t great, and it can be hard and boring. (We can’t remember being told that when we were at college.)

As a relatively new start-up, we’ve had more than a few tough times already, and it was reassuring to know that someone like Adrian, who’s been kicking the UK design industry’s arse for 20 years has been through it all too.

It’s fair to say though, Adrian is one of the few people who can write about and discuss his experiences without fear of upsetting clients or giving away his company’s edge - which is why his talk was so refreshing.

We love listening to other heavyweights like Dick Powell or Stefan Sagmeister speak but so often these talks only cover their achievements within their respective fields, which can feel a world away from where we are at the moment. Last night highlighted the shared experience we all have as designers, from a self-taught graphic designer who’s been there and written a book about it.

Adrian’s a very busy bunny, but we’re going to try our hardest to bring him to Manchester to discuss his thoughts and experiences about the ever changing design industry.

One last thing, if you ever need a petrol stop, be warned about a creepy little place called Barton Park Services. Their petrol is more expensive per litre than Prada perfume, and you’ll run the risk of actually running out of petrol before you get to it.

On Saturday, Thoughtful had two big AGMs to attend. One was for the Triodos Bank, and the other was for innocent drinks. Unluckily, they were each at the same time and 120 miles apart, so it meant we had to split up. James took the Triodos AGM in Bristol, and Chris and Stu went to innocent’s AGM in London.

Triodos Bank AGM

The Triodos Bank Annual Meeting was this year based around food, and how we meet the challenges of producing enough without damaging the planet we depend on. We also got a chance to discover more about how Triodos has become the UK’s organic bank.

Triodos Bank’s UK Managing Director Charles Middleton and CEO Peter Blom looked back at 2007, and shared their plans for the future. We also got a chance to hear from some of the people who benefit from Triodos Bank finance, including Brigit Strawbridge from BBC 2’s ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’ who spoke with such enthusiasm and passion. She has bought a yellow bus (which she is getting sprayed green) and taking it around the country to people who want to know more about living green but don't know really what to do.

Charles ran the day well for the audience of 400 plus, and said something that I felt was so refreshing coming from a bank, he referred to them as members rather than customers which gives them a sense of belonging. In his opening he also asked the members to let others know of Triodos Bank so we thought we'd put it on our blog.

After a quick chat during one of the breaks I told Charles Thoughtful were going to do their bit and he was only to glad to give us a shot.

innocent AGM

There has been much discussion about innocent over the years, and in particular their tone of voice. Questions have been asked along the lines of ‘How can a company expect us to believe that they’re as nice and friendly as they make out?’, and ‘Surely it’s all a clever disguise to sell more drinks?'. Well, it’d be easy to think those things. No-one can be that nice, right? We’re talking about a company that turns over hundreds of millions of pound a year and plans to put their drinks in every country. Well, we’re glad to report that it’s all true (them being nice, that is). We’ve never met as many friendly, smiley people as the innocent staff on Saturday. One of them walked the whole length of the car park just to say hello and welcome us (thanks Kelly). And we thought she was just going to tell us to move the car somewhere else, the cynics that we are.

The way we were treated makes us understand why innocent are such a success. Apart from having a great product, it’s the small details people remember, and to innocent, they are as important as the big ideas.

When we entered Fruit Towers, we were again met by lots of nice, smiley people and were given a name badge with a fruit on. I was a banana, Stu was an orange, and we got given a quick guided tour by Jo Jo, seen below.

Fruit Towers is a brilliant working space. For anyone who runs a business from a David Brent-style office, and wonders why the staff have a low morale, try and get down to innocent sometime. A good working environment can do wonders. We felt like two 8 year olds in a Wacky Warehouse.

So then the AGM started, and we listened to the three founders, Jon, Richard and Adam tell us how innocent began, and where they plan to go. We then recreated the famous 'Yes No bins‘ story as we were asked to try out two brand new recipes, and vote for our favorite. The one with the highest votes will be on supermarket shelves soon.

The next part of the day was to split up into smaller groups to let innocent know what we thought of them, what they do well, and what they could do better. Here’s Ceri calling for all bananas.

In the banana group, Ceri and Rowena talked to us in detail about innocent’s labels and tone of voice, which was great for me. They were very receptive to our thoughts and ideas, and sent us away with some homework which was to try and write a label for them. Stu got the inside track on marketing innocent by Charlotte’s orange group, which again, couldn’t have worked out better.

Then we ate cake and chatted to more people, before the final part of the day which was a Q&A session, introduced by Rowena, who was natural stand up comic. You can see the videos of the Q&A session here, or you can read the written replies here.

The day ended with everyone being given an innocent goody bag with an annual report, a mug, some tea and an amazing personalised innocent bottle. The excitement must have gone to my head as I picked up the wrong bag and got someone else’s bottle, which wasn’t very clever of me (Sorry Lydia, I'm sending yours back today). Here’s Stu’s very own innocent bottle.

Our thanks go to all the team at innocent who made us feel very welcome (and a bit special), and for pulling off a great first AGM. And to Hannah for doing the running around regarding getting us to the AGM.

Special thanks go to Dan for inviting us down to the event.

You can read and see lots more about the AGM here.

Last night we attended a D&AD President’s Lecture featuring Nick Bell.

He attracted an audience of over 400 people, and it was clear to see why. The work was of an exceptional quality, especially the exhibition work for the Churchill Musueum and the Sellafield Visitor’s Centre, which was very eerie indeed.

He also showed us his thinking into rebranding Manchester United, which was a huge task, but was given a simple execution that for want of a better word, 'united' the many different parts that make the club. Unfortunately, the rebrand didn't see the light of day which was a shame. He also flashed up a shot of Christiano Ronaldo being shown a red card, much to the delight of James and Stu.

Normally, we would have tried to film the event, but D&AD had that covered, so it may appear on their site soon.

Thoughtful also used the event as an opportunity to raise awareness of our friends FRANK Water. Thoughtful and copywriter Lindsay Camp have been working with FRANK on their tone of voice recently, so we were interested to see what a room full of creative types would make of their very honest way of communicating what they do. The responses we got back were really positive, and we know all too well that designers are a hard bunch to please.

FRANK branding by Peter Gibbons.

Our movie clips are back up now, hurrah! Apparently Dan Germain is a popular guy, all the views his movie generated had locked out our server as the bandwidth wasn’t large enough, our webhost told us.

If you tried to view it and couldn’t, sorry, it should be fine now.

One at a time please!

Here’s the talk Dan from innocent did on Wednesday.

If you’re confused about the Borat comment at the start, there was a guy sat on the table in front of Dan who was a Borat impersonator. Dan got a bit worried that he’d rush the stage.

If you’re having a lazy Friday afternoon, this is well worth watching. Click here.

This morning we attended the second day of the Business Northwest event to see Doug Richard give a talk about his career. You may remember Doug for his stint on BBC 2’s Dragon’s Den. He told us he had two Dragon’s Den records. One for the least number of investments made, and one for the most offers rejected by the entrepreneurs.

Doug was nothing like how you see him on TV, he came across a lot less serious about business, he was funny, and most significantly and surprisingly, put most of his success down to luck. That’s why we’re blogging this actually. For those out there who are starting their own studios, or will do in the future, it’s useful to know that luck may play a huge part in your success.

One of Doug’s stories of his early days in the software business (pre internet), involved a man called John. John was from IBM, and had been given an assignment. He was given a year and a bucket load of cash to find someone who develop the technology to digitally morph a picture of a large person, into a picture of a thin person. This was needed for a client of IBM who was in the health and fitness business. They wanted to install the software in their gyms. Back then, this software didn’t exist.

So by chance John walks into Doug’s office one day, tells him what he needs and ‘does he know anyone?’. Doug said ’We can do it, but it’ll cost you $10,000 for me just to think about the problem’. So basically John pulls out a cheque and Doug was left with a dilemma. He didn’t have the first clue how to come up with the software. One night shortly after, Doug’s wife was flicking through the TV channels and by chance an ad came on for a company who could digitally place a new hairstyle on a picture of your head, so you could see how you’d look before you went to the hairdressers. Doug contacted them and asked could they ‘do bodies’ too. They said yes, so Doug bought their software and tells John to get his butt over there. He then supplies it to IBM for a very tidy profit indeed.

Thoughtful are only 9 months old, yet we’ve been in situations in which if certains events had not happened, we wouldn’t be here today. Lady Luck has definitely smiled down on us a few times this year. We’ll save our story for another day.

“...and in ‘94 I was THIS rich...”

This morning Thoughtful attended a breakfast meeting with Dan Germain of innocent, organised by Business Northwest.

We've never met Dan before, and two things struck us:

1. He's tall.

2. What you drink is what you get.

We’re not writing this because Dan might read this and think we’re nice guys. It’s because innocent and their communications are often discussed in our studio.

We really like innocent, but at times we can take a cynical view of their irreverent image, and question if their style of communication feels genuine - especially when you have 100,000 people attending your ‘village fete’.

It would be a fair question to ask if it was all invented, or fake.

But after meeting Dan, listening to him talk, we have to say: it’s all true.

The tone of voice, the village fete and the grass covered vans are not some brand consultancy’s creation, it's a genuine reflection of who they are as people. In a similar way that Rutger Hauer was the embodiment of a pint of Guinness in the 80’s Pure Genius campaign, Dan Germain is an innocent smoothie, with a full beard. And, that's why it works (for them).

Nothing’s changed, from selling smoothies to 100 people in North London, to selling smoothies to 100,000 people at a village fete in Regents Park.

Before Dan took to the stage, he came over to introduce himself and chat. He was witty and charismatic. And, after his talk he gave each and every one who wanted to speak to him his full attention (and believe us, there were lots). He never looked bored or in a hurry to be somewhere else. You really got the feeling he loves what he's a part of. And, when everyone had gone, he came over to shake our hands and say goodbye.

On days like today, you can believe in ‘magic’.

We’re guessing all this comes down to something David Hieatt, co-founder of howies has discussed in his presentations, which is honesty.

When howies feel they've not delivered as a company, they hold their hands up. Then set about putting things right. David believes his customers appreciate this level of honesty, and will have a lot more time for a company trying to do things in a different way.

We’ll be posting up Dan’s presentation later this week.

And if ever you’re giving your details to Business Northwest, make sure you tell them twice, so not to end up with a really silly business title...

Yesterday we told you about Ken Garland’s manifestos talk to the first year LCC students.

We managed to film part of it, which you can see here.

Last Friday, Thoughtful were invited to join a presentation on manifestos given by Ken Garland, to a group of first year students at the LCC.

Despite a few stutterings and James’ sausage fingers, we managed to get through it. Ken Garland on the other hand was flawless.

He did most of his presentation, not from the stage but from the centre isle of the lecture theatre. He was able to move up and down the room speaking to about 200 students, in what felt a very intimate presentation. By far the biggest highlight of Ken's presentation was when he spoke about the Ply-Tech Junior Chair which he designed for Galt Toys.

The idea is brilliantly simple. The chair would be sold to schools and local parish halls where space is a premium. Each day the teacher would come in and ask the children to build their own chairs, and then take them apart at the end of the day...just imagine the scene.

Watching Ken Garland taught us a few lessons in the art of public speaking, and it was an experience we'll always remember. When it came time for Thoughtful to present, Ken Garland sat in the very chair he made an hour earlier.

We don't feel particularly well qualified to talk about Ken Garland, or his work but this would be an opportunity wasted if we didn't make any students (or designers) reading this post aware of his career and his work.

It's fair to say Ken Garland is a legend of design, he is one of the great British designers with a career spanning 5 decades.

He studied art and design in the early 50's at Central School of Art and Crafts where he was in a group of students who would go on to become the second generation of British graphic design. His peers included Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes and Ivor Kamlish among others. Ken was appointed as the art editor of the Design Council’s Design magazine from 1956-62, after which he set up his own company, Ken Garland & Associates, which he continues to run.

Ken Garland has produced many striking pieces of work for political and social causes, such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. As well as designing the corporate identity (and many games) for Galt Toys.

He is best known for writing the historic First Things First manifesto, which he read out at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on an evening in December 1963. A manifesto which met with a prolonged applause and the signature of 21 other visual communicators.

The First Things manifesto called for a ‘reversal of priorities in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication’.

Some of you may have noticed the signatories are in reverse order, alphabetically. Ken told us, this is because he wanted Edward Wright, who was a well-established and respected figure at the Central School to lead the list.

In 1999 the manifesto was redrafted, after Canadian magazine Adbusters had come across First Things First in a back issue of Eye ('There is such a thing as society' by Andrew Howard, no. 13 vol. 4). They felt its sentiments had become 'more, rather than less relevant'. And, jointly published (with 33 signatories) the ‘First Things First Manifesto 2000’, with Emigré, the AIGA Journal, Eye, Blueprint, Items and Form.

To mark the talk, we designed (or un-designed) a poster which Ken Garland individually signed. We think it's a pretty neat idea: a signed manifesto poster.

And, being a young practice keen to show the creative community what we can do, we thought the 'signed manifesto poster' would make an interesting competition entry. But quite quickly after all the 'high-fives', we stopped and took a long hard look at what we were doing. Isn't entering THIS poster at odds with the whole idea of design competitions - given that the speaker wrote the historic First Things First manifesto?

Shouldn't we be using our skills and talents for pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills? Hmmm.

Of course, the answer is 'yes', but on the whole we share design critic and author Steven Heller's view that 'graphic designers can make a big noise, but they have limited power'. That is by no way an excuse for us to avoid self-critique, we just feel it takes co-operation from all sides, Designer / Client / Government for us to produce more worthwhile forms of communication. It also a question of us balancing our commercial work with work that falls into the charity, ethical and cultural sectors, something which isn't so easy to do.

So, would we sign the First Things First manifesto? No. (Well, not just yet.) Not that we don't agree with its message - but it’s easy to sign a document. We think we need to prove ourselves first.

It would appear Ken Garland's First Things First manifesto is doing its job again by igniting a debate (in our studio, at least).

We're very keen to hear your thoughts on the First Things First manifesto and First Things First Manifesto 2000. So whether you're a student seeing this for the first time. Or a designer who thinks nothing has changed for fourty-four years, please leave a comment.

Thoughtful would like to thank:

Anna Gerber for inviting us to talk. Anna is currently developing a new book entitled Another Green World: Graphic Design and Green Issues, to be published by Laurence King in 2009.

Ken Garland for making us think a bit harder our work (and props are always good to have in presentation).

The first year students who attended, especially the five students who stood up and asked some really interesting, and probing questions (please get in-touch).

One last point, for any students attending any future talks or seminars with a speaker like Ken: Walking in late without offering any kind of apology isn’t very thoughtful.

We’ve finally converted the film to a web friendly format. We had to split it into sections as it was just taking too long. Because of this, there may be the odd word missing. Hope you don’t mind.

Two bits of the talk that stuck out for us, was Peter describing how he first met Tony Wilson (Tony had a toy elephant’s head on his shoulder, see Part 5), and the fact the talk was held in Second Life as well as real life. Virtual people were able to ask Ben and Peter questions, which we thought was brilliant.

You can listen to the talk here:

Intro

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Thanks to Pollyanna for letting us film the event.

There was a great talk by Peter Saville and Ben Kelly last night at Urbis, Manchester. Thoughtful took a video camera along, so we’ll try and get something online later.