Last night, James was one of three guest speakers at the D&AD talk ‘Design with a conscience‘ at Urbis, Manchester along with Jai Redman from UHC and Michelle Brand.

Unfortunately, the speakers weren’t given microphones, so we couldn’t record the talk for you. There were some interesting points of view though, and what was notable, was that the speakers didn’t always agree with each other’s opinions. You’d think that a subject such as designing ethically would almost unite everyone who practiced or was interested in it.

Jai, who is a self proclaimed ‘artist first, activist second, and designer third' started by showing us a video of himself and a group of activists stopping work on a new motorway. It was clear Jai’s method of tackling issues was through a hard, direct action approach, and this was the way more companies should operate who label themselves as ‘green’. So, next to our claim that we use energy saving lightbulbs, and use recycled paper, we looked a bit wet behind the ears at first!

But James did a great job in explaining that in Thoughtful, the lightbulbs, recycled paper and similar actions are done as standard, and really, should be by everyone. Thoughtful’s ethical approach to the work we produce, from start to finish is what we really like to highlight. We always aim to steer the clients requests in a 'Thoughtful’ direction. For instance, if a client wants 100,000 leaflets designed and printed, that’s fine, we’ll source recycled paper and an eco-friendly printer. But first we’ll see if there’s a better way of communicating the message. The client wants 100,000 leaflets, but what if their message on a balloon above the city gets seen by 300,000 people? How much paper and ink would that save? It’s this way of thinking that gets us excited as a company.

Jai explained that UHC only works with clients such as campaigning organisations, not-for-profit companies, volunteers and communities. Thoughtful love to work with these sectors too, as more often than not, they’re on our wavelength. But what about the other organisations out there who aren’t doing things as ethically as they could be? Well, our third commandment states that we won’t work with companies who operate solely through unethical practices. But we will work for companies who have the potential to make changes that will help them become more environmentally friendly. Why? Because if we can convince, guide or educate these bigger companies into making better choices in their communications, that would have a massive impact. And it only takes one brave client. That’s another reason why we don’t just work with the ethical sector, because they already believe in working in a better way. We’d be preaching to the converted.

I think last night brought the realisation that everyone will have a different method of designing with a conscience. But as long as everyone IS designing with a conscience, then that can only be a positive thing.

James with Jai, Michelle and David.

Thoughtful would like to thank Sarah Austin from Urbis, Tamsin Valentino from D&AD and Prof. David Crow from Manchester Metropolitan University for putting together the event, and Jai and Michelle for giving us an insight into their companies.

And if there was anyone at the talk who didn’t ask a question but would have liked to, feel free to get in touch and we’ll do our best to help.

As students, we would have cut our right arms off just to hold a new copy of the D&AD Annual in both hands, and we're guessing this is still the case.

Well, if you’re a student currently studying for a career in the creative industries and you believe in creative excellence, this could be your lucky day.

As fully paid up members of club D&AD, we at Thoughtful each get an Annual – we think that’s a bit greedy, so the Thoughtful thing to do is to let someone have a chance to own one of them.

But we don't want your money, you pay with Thoughtfulness.

It could be anything from rescuing a spider out of the bath, helping an old lady across the road, or helping an old lady out of the bath.

Simply take a picture of your random act of Thoughtfulness, and email it to us.

And, to show you there’s no funny business going on, we’ll make the tombola draw live on the Thoughtful website, as well as posting the draw on YouTube. The announcement will be on our site on Monday 10 December 2007 at 1pm.

Two runners-up will each win a 12 month D&AD Student Membership, and a third runner up will win a pair of D&AD Lectures tickets, courtesy of D&AD.

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So, to re-cap:
1. Only students studying for a career in the creative industry can enter, anywhere in the world.

2. Send us a shot (no bigger than 2MB and 72dpi please) of your random act of Thoughtfulness, with your contact details and which course you're currently studying on, to:
youarethoughtful@wearethoughtful.com

3. Enter as many different random acts of Thoughtfulness as you like.

4. Closing date is Monday 3rd December 2007.

5. We may like to use the images for non commercial purposes (such as on our website) so make sure you’re happy for us to do that.
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Thoughtful’s prize draw is supported by D&AD. Registered charity No. 305992. www.dandad.org

Together, we can make the world a more Thoughtful place™

Yesterday, we posted up a piece about logo design, pointing out one of our favourites was for The Mill designed by North in 1999.

After we posted up the blog entry we were told by someone* how the Mill logo had been inspired by one designed by Muriel Cooper in 1963 for MIT Press.

We’d never seen this before but it’s quite clear to see the similarities between the two.
But it’s the way the letterforms of the Mill logo naturally make the shape of a mill, that still earns it a place in our ‘favourite logos list’. Though we read in Michael Evamy’s ‘Logo’ book that the bars actually represented strips of film. There’s no mention of it being the shape of a building.

Using bars to make letterforms doesn’t just stop at these two though. The Mill logo may or may not have been directly influenced by the MIT Press’s, but we’re sure others have been influenced by these two.

Here are a few more logos that bear more than a passing resemblance to them:

Manpower moved the bars idea on slightly by rounding and angling them.

In 2003 Tim Blackburn and Matthew Carter redesigned the identity for The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The institute shares MIT Press’s initials but incorporats a horizontal bar and the dot of the ‘i’ to make their logotype more legible.

This logo for piano technician Mika Ohtsuki was designed by Emmi in 2005. The bars represent piano keys this time (the second bar is an out of tune key), as well as being Mika’s initials.

The piano key theme also works for Matt & Phreds Jazz Club just around the corner from our studio.

And last but not least, Spin’s nice logo for the Haunch of Venison galleries. The letterforms take on an even more abstract appearance here.

We don’t really care who did what when, or who copied who, because we think they all have individual merit. What’s interesting to us is that as a collective, the letters start to form a new, simplistic typeface. And if the bars were made into a typeface, who would blame a designer for using it, even if someone else might have already? After all, how many logos use Helvetica?

Takashi Okamoto from the MIT Media Lab thought the style would make an interesting font too, and he’s made a type sampler based on the original MIT Press logo. You can play with it here.

*We had a go, and wrote the name of the person who tipped us off about the MIT Press logo.

We popped over to Urbis yesterday to have a look at this year’s D&AD exhibition, and have to say, it gets two Thoughtful thumbs up. We really liked the way Urbis has laid everything out, it feels a lot fresher than last year’s exhibition.

Oddly, the first thing your eyes are drawn to when you arrive, isn’t the great work on show, but a collection of giant-sized stationery items.

We’re not sure why they’re there, but we’re guessing they’re meant to compliment the huge yellow pencils dotted around the exhbition.

Each of these pencils doubles as a workstation that lets children come up with their own designs through a set of small design briefs on each pencil. We like the idea of getting kids interested in design and ideas because from a kids point of view, design can be misunderstood, taken for granted, unachievable, not relevant, and maybe a bit boring. If exhibitions like this can spark the next generation of Beattie’s and Sagmeister’s, then we’re all for it.

It’s great to see work in the flesh too. You couldn’t appreciate how good the lenticular cover is on the Draft magazine until you see it for yourself.

The Artois campaign makes a good impact when placed together.

And here’s one of the fantastic posters by McCann Erickson Singapore seen through, you guessed it, the handle of a giant pair of scissors.

Wayne Rooney also makes an appearance. Is this how you feel when you win a yellow or black pencil?

As we were saying before, the exhibition feels fresh. We think this is due to the fact the work isn’t laid out in a consistant way. There are pieces framed, hanging, in lightboxes, pasted on big hexagonal stands and in cabinets.

Well, we had more pictures, but we didn’t want to spoil it for you. The D&AD exhibition is on until February 2008 so there’s plenty of time to see it for yourself before it closes, and it’s free entry.

Let us know what you think.

Three things have prompted this post.

1. We’ve just bought a copy of Logos, by Michael Evamy.
2. Michael Johnson’s recent thought for the week on one of his favourite logos.
3. A logo we've been working on.

Thoughtful love logo design. It's the first page we turn to when we get a new D&AD Annual. And we whole-heartedly share Michael’s view about dying happy knowing we’ve created a 21st century classic.

Our all-time favourites would have to be the Mill logo by North.

And the FedEx logo by Landor.

Being ex-Chase designer’s, we’ve been schooled to deliver the maximum message using the minimum of means – and if you can make an emotional connection too, well, you’ve found the Holy Grail of visual communication.

And, that’s why we love logo design so much, and especially these logos – they have everything:

- the economy of the idea

- the ‘I wish I’d done that’ factor

- works best in black and white

- gives us a great feeling about the company

These are logos by which we judge all others, including our own...

...When we left The Chase we weren't ideally prepared for business. On Day 1, we had no financial backing, no studio to work in, no kit and no clients (but that's a story for another day). So when James said, “my brother-in-law is thinking about setting up his own business – he’s asked if we can help him out” – we were grateful for a job which generated a bit of cash and some work for our portfolio.

The client (James’ brother-in-law) is planning to set up his own courier company.

Our pitch was simple:
Egg-n-spoon
Sameday Couriers
Speed with care.

And here’s the logo we designed for him:

Luckily, the client (James' brother-in-law) thinks this is a cracking idea (geddit?).

We freely admit, ‘Egg-n-spoon’ isn't as beautifully simple as the Mill or as dynamic as FedEx, but we’re happy it delivers everything a good logo should. And it will keep us going as we search for our own Holy Grail.

We’ve just added Naresh Ramchandani’s talk. Click below to hear it.

http://wearethoughtful.com/AP.html

It’s taken a bit longer than expected to get the Applied Green talks up, and we’re still not quite there yet. We’ll be adding a few more later today, but you can hear the rest of the talks by clicking the link below. Enjoy.

http://wearethoughtful.com/AP.html

The Salamander pub in Bath regularly has displays in its main window, allowing friends, local companies and artists to put anything they like there, for about a month each. FRANK Water wanted to use the window to spread their message, and asked us to help out.

Every litre of FRANK Water sold in the UK funds 200 litres of clean water for people in developing countries, so it’s a great reason to choose FRANK over other bottled waters.

We think the message is just right for product and placement.

To coincide with Manchester Literature Festival, our copywriter, Lindsay Camp asked us to release some copies of his book ‘Can I change your mind?’ into the wild. After it had been read (by whoever picked it up first), that person was asked to pass it on to someone else.

We put a label on the book explaining all...

We were keen to see how quickly the book would be picked up, and if it would be of interest to the lucky reader. So we did a little experiment which involved a bit of stalking, and a camera.

We left it at the train station as we thought it’d be a nice treat for a bored commuter, and sure enough, it was gone in less than a minute.

We spotted the person who picked it up, and he genuinely looked pleased with his find, continuing to read it all the way home. Luckily he thought we were just fixing our ‘broken’ camera.

Job done.

When we set up Thoughtful, one of our main aims was to work with other people who are like us. Printers, accountants, paper suppliers, photographers, copywriters, you name it, when we met them, we told them why we are Thoughtful, and how being Thoughtful can lead to great working relationships that benefit everyone. We strive to be punctual, responsive, flexible and fair, and it’s great if others can show similar traits.

Over the last couple of weeks though, we’ve learnt that in business, some people find it much easier and beneficial to themselves to be, well ‘Thought-less’. Well, good luck to them, but we couldn’t look ourselves in the face if we were like that. Maybe we’re naive in thinking everyone can be like us, but it’s been a tough pill to swallow, and it’s cost us.

We’ve learnt we now have to hold on to the people who are like us, that do go the extra mile, people like photographer Mat Wright and writer Lindsay Camp among others. We've relied on their talent, generosity and good spirit to move us forward, and we'd like to say a big Thoughtful ‘thank you’ to you. We'd like to keep them for ourselves, but the Thoughtful thing to do is share them with everyone.

Mat Wright  - mat@matwright.com
Lindsay Camp - lindsay.camp@eclipse.co.uk

We’ve just done another Redesigner brief. This time we were asked to design a promotional piece for a typeface.

Our idea is a font house called Type Specimen that sends out 3D letters in a specimen jar. This specimen is Helvetica 55 Roman and was supplied by Max Miedinger.

Yesterday, Thoughtful attended the Applied Green talk at the British Library. It was a conference where some of the best thinkers gave their views on climate change, and what can be done about it, so it was right up our street. Judging by the price of tickets, we imagined there would have been a lot of people who would have liked to attend, but simply couldn’t.

Well, we don’t like the thought of people missing out, and we think climate change is a subject that everyone should be involved in, and learn from. So we took a camera along to the event and will be posting up a few videos of the best talks, shortly.

I saw that new ad for Barclaycard last night – the one with the two guys from Green Wing, at a vineyard.

Seeing the grapes hanging in a bunch made me think they could make the natural shapes of the countries in which they’re grown.

So, this morning I had a go.

If there’s anyone out there who can take this further, feel free.

Stuart.