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The Perpetual Promise of a Repeat Performance.

Pattern is one of the most under-rated — and therefore often unfairly disregarded — genres of design. All you have to do, surely, is come up with a few elements that in terms of colour, shape, form and size combine well together, and then repeat them ad infinitum, no? This is a common misapprehension of the uninitiated. The truth is that pattern-creation can be as simple or as complex as you choose to make it. And it is something that almost every designer has had recourse to during their career.

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Exhibitions and conferences are among the most popular projects for environmental designers, given their temporary nature and concurrent need for compression of lots of information as well as luring people to particular, possibly competing, attractions. They have to know how to reach the exits, the first-aid centre, the toilets and the canteen, but they also have to decide between various activities, booths or sectors. Obviously, for the sake of harmony, the signage for these should share a visual identity, and if this can reflect the project’s brand — either as a permanent venue or its temporary sponsorship — so much the better. • http://www.idnworld.com/mags/v23n5 • http://shop.idnworld.com/product/v23n5

In this issue, no fewer than 54 cutting-edge interactive designers, apart from presenting their work, were asked to expand on what they consider to have been their most successful efforts so far. And in doing so, they reveal their thinking on the complex issue of how eternal design attributes — the deployment of typography and graphics to the best advantage — chime with the demands of usability.

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As with vinyl records and collectible magazines, it seems that rumours of the death of the printed poster have been greatly exaggerated. Dormant, perhaps, but certainly not dead. And there are practitioners of this art who maintain that a strategically positioned sheet of words and illustrations can make more impact than ever in this digital age.

Of course, if mass circulation and speed of communication is the aim, digital is the way to go. But why not employ both techniques simultaneously? If well executed, the printed poster enjoys a huge advantage over one produced specifically for the Internet — longevity.

And even if you do not intend to actually purchase it — as a souvenir or an artwork in its own right — the printed poster has the innate capacity to hold a viewer’s attention for much longer than a briefly glimpsed screen image.

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How to Express the Inexpressible — Perhaps never before in history has there been such a preoccupation with identity. Everyone wants to stand out from the crowd. And in this frantic scramble to seize what Andy Warhol famously described as everybody’s “fifteen minutes of fame”, we very often become reduced to ciphers by the very popularity of the trends we are following to achieve this, be it the fashions we favour, the tattoos and piercings with which we decorate our bodies, the never-to-be-seen-again selfies we endlessly snap on our iPhones, or the “likes” we strive so hard to accumulate via Facebook and Twitter.

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