Back to The Drawing Board

If my life had taken a few different turns, I might still be painting portraits of the gifted and famous (not always mutually exclusive) instead of playing with gadgets, waving my arms around in front of an audience and helping to design the future. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be writing this.

It doesn’t hurt to imagine an alternate reality from time to time so I thought I’d consider what I’d be doing if those two worlds had collided. If I’d turned right instead of left and continued on my path to artistic infamy, yet maintained a healthy interest in all things digital. More about my past creative endeavours in Face Time.

Where does one start? I didn’t want this to be a long drawn-out process so I’m not writing full technical reviews of each device. This is about the artistic and emotional rollercoaster, not screen resolution – you can follow the links for more info!

My plan was to test a variety of hardware, from the smallest and simplest to the largest and most complex. Each had one thing in common – a stylus of some kind, but they all use different methods to communicate with the surface or screen.

All but one device is manufactured by the industry-leader, Wacom. First-up is the Inkling £84.95.

A small black box clips to the top edge of a sheet of paper or pad then monitors the movements of a hybrid stylus/ink pen as you draw on the surface.

In theory, this sounds like a superb way to retain a natural drawing style whilst digitising the results. In practice, it’s actually quite remarkable. Once your sketch is complete, you plug the black box into your computer via a USB cable and download the results to the supplied software. This displays your artwork in staggering detail with the option to export as bitmap or vector files. You can even save an animated movie of your illustration in progress!

I love the freedom and the lack of compromise when drawing. I’d like to see a wireless transfer or real-time screen rendering option at some stage but for the relatively cheap entry point, this is a superb product for preliminary sketches.

Jot Script Evernote Edition £49.95 / $74.95 (plus an iPad!)

Making use of the iPad’s Retina screen and a fine-tipped bluetooth-connected pen seems the perfect combination. It so nearly is, but there’s a fraction of lag evident when using apps such as 53’s Paper (not Facebook’s!), Procreate or Evernote’s own Penultimate. The lag can be overcome by using your finger instead of the stylus, but I’ve never been big on finger painting and the pen’s lag just highlights the shortcomings of this compared to ‘real’ art materials.

Wacom Bamboo (now Intuos Pen & Touch £169.99 / $199)

I wanted to refresh my memory of working with a basic tablet and Wacom’s Bamboo was a cool looking device, with bright colours, interesting textures and a material label at one end to hold the stylus when not in use. My view remains unchanged – I’m still not a fan of the disconnected pen and screen. It has always felt unnatural to me when the result of your input is displayed so far away from the tip of the stylus, despite the fact that I’m perfectly comfortable with a mouse in similar circumstances.

Unnatural or not, here's one I made earlier...

I started this process a while ago and the Bamboo has since been replaced by the Intuos range, a more sober look but it sits comfortably with Apple’s current visual approach to hardware design.

Wacom Cintiq 24HD £2,499.99 / $2,999

Wow. This was my reaction before I even manhandled the Cintiq onto my desk. This really is the big daddy of the digital art world, an enormous 24” multitouch drawing board where the image you create is rendered directly under the stylus, just like a real drawing board or easel.

The large drawing area immediately encouraged me to (quite literally) think big, to take large unrestricted strokes and adopt a freedom of creative expression that required less image zooming than other devices. It all feels right and I’m glad I saved this beast until last as it finally convinced me to plunge back into the art world.

I took my alter-ego as inspiration and created a quick illustration of Apptain America, using a wide range of brushes and materials. Having stepped away from my portraiture for nearly two decades I admit to being tempted to pick up where I left off thanks to the Cintiq (and the Inkling). Wacom offers a smaller mobile version but I’m not interested as they’ve been hobbled by Windows and Android operating systems – they’re not allowed to use Apple’s. I’m a creative so It’s Cupertino kit all the way.

So, do I miss the artistic life I rejected 20 years ago? I miss being able to offer a simple answer to the question “what do you do?” I’m still part of the team that creates amazing things but I’m less ‘hands-on’ than I ever have been. It makes me sad that my wife and children aren’t impressed by what I do and it doesn’t make them proud.

I’d like to change that, so maybe I’ll find more time to sketch and paint in a digital world. I have a hunger to bring faces to life again so I’ll start making my hit list to add to my previous scalps, whoever they may be...

iPod Bless America

If you know me or read my blog, you'll probably be aware of the fact that I'm no stranger to portraiture. The power to capture a fleeting moment of a lifetime's personality is a skill not to be taken lightly. Get the glint in an eye or the slant of a mouth wrong or a mis-angled eyebrow inflection and suddenly, the portrait is of someone else entirely.

This pressure to bottle the essence of an individual then apply the visual entity to canvas holds no greater importance than when the subject is the leader of the free world. When Brandwidth were given the opportunity to work with the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC we naturally (but reverentially) jumped at the chance.

So, how do you approach a project about America's figureheads without going over ground already covered by a number of other iPad apps? Well, we weren't keen to take the route of many whereby they regurgitate Wikipedia entries, shroud them in an uninspiring digital interface then spit them back out into the App Store. Others cater directly to the education market and dress the information appropriately – i.e. they appeal to kids, rather than the wider audience.

We knew we had unique (and official) access to a stunning collection of portraits, original supporting documents and artefacts. This wasn't going to be an exercise in creating 'the ultimate resource of all information about the US Presidency ever'. We wouldn't be using this as our catchy headline.

Instead, we tackled the artwork head-on, literally allowing the audience to get closer to every brushstroke in a Retina environment reminiscent of the gallery itself. This isn't a book, it's not a reference guide, it's a virtual visit to the gallery. Head straight to your President of interest or browse the full collection via the gallery's walls, delving further to discover the First Lady's portrait, historic documents, the contents of Abraham Lincoln's pockets, FDR's fireside radio broadcasts, 'Portrait in a Minute' video interviews or images of the Presidential pets.

But it's not all brush strokes and gilt frames. We took a light-hearted approach to learning about the facts behind the faces, with some interactive fun in the Games Room: test tantalising trivia, place the President with the quote and even play Presidential pairs by matching the leader to his First Lady. It's a fun way to learn and as we'll be adding more facts with future updates, the content will stay fresh. In four years, we'll even add another President!

But don't wait for another election, you can take part in a popularity contest via the app! We thought it would make an interesting feature to give you all the opportunity to vote for your favourite portrait so we gave each work of art a 'vote' button. The Leaderboard is illustrated live in the app and votes accumulate on our Facebook page to show the outside world if Washington, Lincoln or Kennedy's portrait is flavour (or flavor) of the month.

Our visit to Washington last month for Barack Obama's Inauguration gave us the perfect opportunity to launch the America's Presidents microsite so I'm not going to use any more pixels here when you can find out more there and download here for the promotional launch price of $4.99/€4.49/£2.99 to Celebrate President's Day.

It's great to finally write about a new app but you'd be forgiven for thinking we've been sat around with nothing to do for the past 12 months – our public launch (i)pad has been decidedly empty. Not so, we've been shut behind a wall of NDAs with some stunning clients and partners from Disney and Warner Music to Apple and Intel. There's a busy year ahead for Brandwidth and the wider technology industry and it remains entertaining and frustrating in equal measures as tech pundits speculate about the 'next big thing'.

Perhaps our next app should be The Vatican's Popes as that seems another hot topic right now...

Making (micro)waves with F:sh

It’s my daughter’s sixth birthday today. Olivia was born in Banbury hospital as I sat in the delivery room working on my laptop on a pitch for the Guinness World Records account. You could say I was a considerate parent preparing her for life with a workaholic. You could say a number of less complimentary things.

At the time of the GWR pitch, I was running the London creative agency Fijit with the very talented Neil Mathieson. One of our specialities was character creation for the likes of Jim Henson, the BBC and the Discovery Channel. F:sh was one such project kick-started as a showcase for potential cartoon fun.

Nothing became of this single illustrated concept and it languished in our ‘what might have been’ pile. Time and concepts passed, with thoughts turning away from the potential for an animated series to the possibility of a printed children’s book. Another nice idea but one without the time available to bring the plans to fruition.

Fast forward to 2010. The iPad launches and Brandwidth is at the forefront of pioneering app development for this new large scale iPhone ideally suited to digital publishing – the perfect platform for children’s book characters.

If you think that making apps is simple, then the chances are you’re just making simple apps – not successful ones. There has been a lot said about apps in the past six months such as “don’t spend a lot – you’ll never make your money back”, “don’t let developers tell you apps are a complicated business” and “there’s no future in apps, what’s next?”

Let me counter those statements by describing the way we approached F:sh as a project:

“Don’t spend a lot – you’ll never make your money back”

​We dedicated about three weeks of artworking and programming for F:sh to function universally across all Apple devices – iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

It’s true that we wanted F:sh to be a showcase of our in-house talents and there are a number of additional features and effects we could have included. We made the conscious decision to use this app to showcase not just our creative skills, but also our strategic and organisational abilities as well as strict time management and cost control.

The feature-set is as much about what we left out as what we put in. Many children’s book apps include a bewildering array of interactive elements that seem to have come from a client’s wish list, with every box checked. We avoided unnecessary colouring activities, games and digital distractions. Every interactive feature within F:sh is there because it adds to the narrative rather than detracting from it.

The focus remains on storytelling as F:sh takes advantage of the digital format by introducing a continuous journey through the book where the reader scrolls from left to right, or up and down at one stage to reveal the next part of the story.

The main characters move seamlessly from one ‘scene’ to the next following the narrative and introducing more characters and situations as the story progresses. At key stages the reader is prompted to interact with various elements and in some instances a specific activity such as shouting at the screen prompts the story to continue.

We added a simple yet effective feature to the app – virtual water, where the surface of the sea tilts to match the angle of the device, with the characters bobbing around as if floating within the screen. We built the F:sh website to take advantage of the same accelerometer control and act as a preview of the feature when viewed on an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch.

Printed children’s books have always encouraged the reader to add their own name to the first page, for that personal touch. With apps no longer constrained by ink on paper, a child can not only add their name but also their photograph – either directly on iPad2 or iPhone, or from the photo album on iPad1 or iPod Touch.

For F:sh, we extended this feature by taking that picture and adding it to the story where the photograph from the introduction page makes a surprise reappearance in the final scene as Groober pilots his submarine into view with the child’s face looking through the porthole. Change the photo over and over to keep the book feeling fresh and encourage repeat reading, with the end scene as a reward for completing the story.

“Don’t let developers tell you apps are a complicated business”

With three weeks to develop the app, it wasn’t the build that proved complicated. The meticulous planning and creation of each screen ahead of scheduled production is where many more hours are dedicated. The attention to detail and thought behind the app is where the genuine value lies. With all illustration, design, writing, music and narration generated in-house, we haven’t just repurposed an out-of-copyright classic.

Neatly sandwiching the development is the post-approval targeted promotion of the app via social networks, traditional PR channels and ongoing support via established relationships with Apple and other key players.

“There’s no future in apps, what’s next?”

What’s next? A missed opportunity if you’re not on board. If you still think apps are a passing craze then apply your twisted logic to the music industry. The digital music file is here to stay in much the same way that the app will be around for many years – it’s the hardware that will change, not the format. The way to keep ahead is to be on board now, not standing by the sidelines hoping the app train will pull in at your station.

Publishers are witnessing the erosion of their territory by developers who are grasping apps by the balls and just getting on with it. F:sh is one such example.

I clearly have a very understanding family and they have endured many long working days to get this far but I hope F:sh stands as a visual testament to their inspiration and support. Happy birthday Olivia.

Originally published on The Literary Platform July 7th 2011

F:sh is available on the App Store or via iTunes

Face Time

Whenever I lecture on design career paths and take a journey along my own creative timeline, I find that behind the twists and turns there are no regrets. Each new choice has resulted in a fresh set of challenges, life-lessons and opportunities.

Before focusing on graphic design, I had a calling to be an artist. Yes, one of those easel-munching, brush-wielding, weirdy-beardies but before I had a chance to sign up for a fine art degree, it turned out that my original calling wasn’t shouting loud enough and my practicality gene kicked in.

I realised that my enrolment into higher education should result in more than a piece of paper qualifying me to sit in a loft painting priceless masterpieces in exchange for soup and soap. Graphic design would become my friend and provide a sensible wage to supplement cars, gadgets, a wife and children. 

This was the early 90s and the cult of celebrity hadn’t quite become the all-consuming monster it is today. Simon Cowell wasn’t yet selling a dream of fame for fame’s sake so I decided to launch a parallel career whilst at college studying the art of typography, branding and page-layouts. Never one to give up on a dream, I would paint celebrity portraits under the professional guise of ‘Artistic License’.

The fact that I had branded myself as a serious contender opened more doors than a smock and beret ever would. Having worked on a newspaper before starting college also helped, with a group of entertainment journalists (and their contacts) at my disposal.

The first portrait I ever tackled was born from a series of photographs taken of ‘Little Eagle’ – a genuine Sioux chief living and working in... Cornwall. 

This one painting focussed my creative style and began a partnership with guache, pencil and card that would last for the next three years, resulting in commissions for a diverse collection of extraordinary characters, including Chris Eubank, George Melly, Patrick Moore, Michael Douglas, Tiff Needel, Bernard Cribbins, Robert Hardy and numerous leaders within the business and sports communities.

So why didn’t I carry on? Well, the cult of celebrity eventually caught up and PA’s were no longer willing to give the same level of access I had previously enjoyed. At the same time, I had graduated and needed some focus – graphic design won.

This is the point where I usually explain to eager students looking for some direction that each stage in my career has enriched the next. Running Artistic License as a company provided invaluable financial, operational and social experience when it came to starting my creative agency Fijit.

The ability to translate creative thinking into creative communication is a useful skill that has followed me from job to job and I still believe passionately that a designer should always be able to focus their preliminary thoughts into effective imagery. Dexterity with a pen or pencil should always precede the digitized phase on a Mac.

I now struggle to find time to get as ‘hands on’ as I used to. The last portrait I tackled was Tim Burton’s, as featured in my blog entry Gone For a Burton. I am however looking forward to more illustration work in some of our forthcoming Brandwidth iPad apps with innovative storytelling and games. 

I will always look back fondly on the celebrity portrait world and I intend to write more on the challenges, rewards and antics at a later date. Accusations of wrong eye colouring by Bernard Cribbins, xylophone lessons with Patrick Moore or blocking Michael Douglas into Leicester Square with a taxi thanks to our late film premiere arrival – all part of a designer’s rich career tapestry!