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Read These
I got this book when I was in first year of college, practical and full of useful advice. Great for someone who wants to learn a little more about the reality of design rather than theory. – Youssef
While working at EdenSpiekermann in Amsterdam, I was lucky enough to work along side of Erik Spiekermann; so I bought his book to learn more about him. Simple, thought provoking book. – Youssef
Behind WhiteInk
This website has been set up by two graphic designers based in Dublin, Ireland. It serves as a joint output of their thoughts,
projects and feelings. They hope you find it useful and that by sharing their ideas and thoughts they can learn from one another and their readers.
Youssef Sarhan
Currently studying at The National College of Art & Design, Ireland. I enjoy what I do. Read some articles to get a feel for what
I’m about.
Tim Phelan
Graphic Designer and illustrator. Currently studying in the National College of Art & Design. I have a strong passion for illustration and photography.
As it currently stands, Irish Design has no form of unified representation. Irish Design practice is growing at an expeditious rate and with this we should take every measure to establish ourselves as major contributors to the international scene. I am a final year Visual Communications student at The National College of Art & Design. As part of my degree show I am planning to gather and develop an Irish Design Database. I hope that with the cooperation of Ireland’s design community together we can make this vision a reality. The database will include images of submitted work as well as related information involved in the creation of said piece. This is not a portfolio site but rather an online annual of top quality Irish Design work.
I was left laughing a few hours ago by an even cheaper ad and web campaign from Eircom to undermine the ‘Red Door’ advert for fixed broadband and landline’s by Vodafone. Debating the back lash from Eircom, it seems to raise more issues concerning national consumerism and ultimately the protection of the Irish markets rather then a cheap stab at Vodafone.
An article on Design by Youssef Sarhan ON 18 September 2009
For the most part, as graphic designers we spend our working lives satisfying the fine relationships and implications between typography, image, colour and layout; at the very least it can be an arduous task. Yet occasional something special happens at a time when we least expect it and the problem is instantly solved. This is a true moment of inspiration, everything becomes clear and you understand. This degree of inspiration is not conjured up by design inspiration blogs cataloging lists upon lists of the ‘Top 47 Vaguely Design Related Internet Trend’; but rather usually found in the most unlikely of places, by chance or after extensive exploration of ideas. Sometimes accidents result in answers, exactly the answers you are looking for.
A few months back I was trying to decide what Internet browser I should use. Both Safari and Mozilla Firefox were acting strange and crashed, I am not exactly sure what the problem was but during one their spats they created a fantastic image on my screen that described the moment perfectly. For whatever reason the two toolbars overlapped resulting in neither of them serving their original function but in the process they created something perfect. The only word left untouched was Help, it was perfect and this inspires me.
On the 22nd of June my very welcoming internship in why not associates began. So far I’ve been here about 2 months and its always difficult to properly assess just how much I’ve learnt. When you think about how fast you assimilate into a working environment, the underlying learning amounts to infinity. Even while working on something and passively listening to a phone call or aware of a meeting your forming a collective of just how a company organises itself, the manners in which people communicate ideas and the freedom that each designer has to question a project decision or make a quick phone call to clients. Tea is offered intravenously and a game of fouzball never goes a miss. A particularly colourful yet nostalgic collection of soap boxes exists in one corner of the room, a reminder of just how far back this company goes.
From my experiences and conversations here I soon came to the realisation that the studio dynamic in why not is a huge rarity. Due to their reputation and long standing success the designers have quite a lot of freedom. Surprisingly enough, the freedom to be able to deal first hand with the client at all times, something that I assumed was always a given. Amongst other things, they’ve never had to promote themselves for work. So how did this come to be?
An article on Typography by Youssef Sarhan ON 8 August 2009
While taking Dublin’s Light Rail Tram System, the LUAS, I was looking at the font of the LED information panels. There are a few on each tram; they are the only live information displays on the trams. The current system uses a 7 line high dot matrix but it seem as though sparse consideration was taken into account on the type selection. The problem is that the current typeface tries to incorporated upper and lower case letters, which means descenders. It is pointlessly complex, it impairs readability and does not lend itself well to this sort of display.
Too many letterforms are obscured from their expected form which only leads to poor legibility. For instance, the descender of the lowercase ‘g’ currently sits on the baseline but by keeping it uppercase it becomes far more familiar and instantly recognisable as the letter ‘G’. There is no logical room for descenders, it makes it very difficult to read. Bare in mind the text is nearly constantly moving, it needs to be neat, clear and large, passengers need to know when to get off. I have tried to improve legibility by giving the letters more presence, big counters and simple strong lines to compliment the simplicity of an LED display. There is no room for flimsy letterforms, they need to be bold and accurate. They need to be sure of what they stand for.
An article on Design by Youssef Sarhan ON 18 June 2009
A few years ago I flew with Lufthansa Airlines and apart from the quality service what really stuck with me was their branding, it is highly consistent across all platforms, it’s orderly, you can tell that each time the logo was used it was well calculated and advised, it is treated with respect, exactly how branding should be by definition. The crane in flight, was created by Professor Otto Firle in 1918, it has stood the test of time and in some way has set a standard for how airline logos look today.
A short time ago I was cycling around Amsterdam when I spotted the offices of Surinam Airways and invariably their logo. I stopped the bike to take a closer look at its resemblance to the Lufthansa logo. A couple of weeks pass and I see another airline logo, this time it’s Air India; once again it had characteristics of the Lufthansa bird. After this I began to think more about familiarity within design, there are predefined rules and expectations for nearly every single piece of design out there. When these expectations aren’t fulfilled we can easily feel lost and uncertain. If we are going to change convention it needs to be replaced with something better. There is a very fine line between hitting the right visual note or succumbing to tiresome solutions or in some cases direct copying. I cannot stand plagiarism, it is totally inexcusable; however in this article I am discussing the influence of convention as opposed to stealing. Personally I find many of these airline bird logos to be highly generic and very forgettable. Design with the expectations of the end user in mind is crucial, if it is a box of cereal it needs to look like a box of cereal. On the contrary preconceived notions and ideals can easily play too much of a role in determining the final solution all the while forgetting about innovation and creativity.
It is important for a logo, particularly in the service industry to communicate the service of the company. Birds fly, as do planes, it’s an obvious connection which communicates exactly what it needs to. At what point does designing by convention or common rhetoric become a lazy or boring solution. Design conformity is something that I struggle with on every single project I work on, convention makes it very had to try something drastically new or different, we need and want to feel familiarity. Trying to change convention can easily result in confusion if we’re not careful. If The New York Times decided to change it’s title header type it would no longer be The New York Times. It’s possible to dramatically change things, so long as the change is for the better, but as usual change will met with resistance.
