Today we went to Johnson Banks and spoke to Michael Johnson. I immediately spilled a glass of water all over the table but lucky for me designers are human too and he didn’t get mad at me. His company does a lot of work branding and re-branding other companies. They created a new logo for Save the Children, for example, that was based off typefaces created from children’s handwriting. They also created a new logo for the British Film Institute that followed the idea of a flexible corporate identity. This makes it easier to use the logo because it is not as static and can be placed a lot of places. My favorite piece they showed us were the stamps they created for the British Postal Service using vegetables that could have stickers added to them in a Mr. Potato-head-esque way. Michael Johnson whipped out his guitar when he was done talking to us and played for a while. He also walked around his office in socks the whole time. I hope I am in a position to walk around in my socks all the time one day.
After leaving Johnson Banks, we headed over to Peppertree for a Thai lunch. Living on Sainsbury’s yogurt since we arrived in London had made me very hungry so being exposed to so much food was great. I had chicken satay, pad thai and then the best part was dessert. We couldn’t decide so Martin and I shared the yellow bean cake and white chocolate ice-cream. SOOO GOOD!
After lunch a group of us headed to meet John L. Walters at Eye Magazine, although not before a quick stop into Harrod’s to stare at the cheese counter. Once at Eye the fire alarm sounded which sent us scurrying into a nearby park where we all sat in the grass and had the meeting. John was really interested in how our minds work, and our feelings on modern design forms overlapping. It was nice to get to talk to each other for a change, recently we had been doing a lot of listening.
(Images are of Michael Johnson playing guitar for us, John L. Walter's holding up a copy of Eye after the fire drill forced us outside, and a cool spread from one of the issues of Eye that had a nice use of typography.)
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