News and views on visual communications from the writers of Creative Review

Special Offer: Creative Review for £4

Patrick 28/11/07, 18:49

This month’s issue of Creative Review costs just £4 (instead of the usual £5.70). It’s a special issue too, following a month in the life of a client - Will Gompertz at the Tate galleries.

Gompertz has kept a journal of his daily activities over the course of a month (read an extract here) while we also have interviews with some of the key contributors to Tate’s visual communications.

James Goggin talks about working with Tate’s famous identity system (and how he subverts it) as well as his thoughts on the branding of museums and the intricacies of working with artists.

Talking of which, that piece is followed by an interview with artist and Tate trustee, Jeremy Deller: “Museums are in love with their identity and logo and brand. And they’ll do anything to put that over a photograph of an artwork. For me that’s an abuse of an image.”

Then Richard Flintham talks about Fallon’s work with Tate and the issue of Tate Modern versus Tate Old ie Tate Britain

And Cornel Windlin, discusses the design and role of the galleries’ magazine, Tate etc

Next up, as a special feature for this issue, Tate commissioned a very young design studio, Europa, to create a poster for an upcoming show: we trace how that process works and how they got on

And finally, head of Tate’s print & design studio, Lousie Ramsay, reveals the delicate negotiations that go on between artist, curator, client and designer to promote shows at Tate

We’ve been doing quite a few themed issues at CR this year. They seem to be going down well - let us know what you think of the latest

Posted in Advertising Graphic Design Art Magazines/Papers

(5 comments)

Well, Patrick, I for one am thoroughly refreshed by Creative Review’s candid insight into the creative industries from both client and designer. At this stage in my career design seems to be the thing I do in between the phone calls, e-Mails, estimates, invoices, chasing of said invoices and the general day-to-day running of a small design business.

Design is no longer just a pretty picture on a page (I refer to the end result and not to the lack of substance), but a series of decisions, arguments, dialogues, and processes that the client and designer go through every day.

This is engaging stuff - maybe not to a graduate fresh out of university - but certainly to me.

30-something small design business owner
London, UK

Posted by Marcus Taylor on 30/11/07, 7:57 pm

If there’s a Gompertz film, can I suggest Bill Nighy plays him?

Posted by Andy Smith on 30/11/07, 10:36 pm

What reads the poster behind Will? Looks interesting.

Posted by Dragos on 01/12/07, 12:19 am

Dragos,
The poster reads:

HOW TO WORK BETTER
1 DO ONE THING AT A TIME
2 KNOW THE PROBLEM
3 LEARN TO LISTEN
4 LEARN TO ASK QUESTIONS
5 DISTINGUISH SENSE FROM NONSENSE
6 ACCEPT CHANGE AS INEVITABLE
7 ADMIT MISTAKES
8 SAY IT SIMPLE
9 BE CALM
10 SMILE

“It is a reproduction of How to Work Better (1991) by Fischli & Weiss (adapted for Tate in 2006).”

I think i’ve broken all those reminders in the last week.

;-)

Posted by Grant on 04/12/07, 1:36 pm

This issue was brilliant. Just finished reading it today (to come home and find the January issue at home another plus about CR as they always get the magazines out early). The client information and the processes that they go through with Europa are brilliant, especially for a student (like myself) who is interesting in finding out about some client + designer relationships. Great issue this one and for those buying from the shops worth the cover price.

Posted by Thomas Wood on 13/12/07, 8:51 pm

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