Michael Johnson

If you came to cheeky.cicak's a couple weeks ago, you'd have seen that I was just then discovering johnson banks' (a design studio in London) "Thought of the week". I feel bad I can't attribute to whom I found the link from, but I totally dredged that area in my skull and still came up empty so I'm just gonna have to leave aside some karma instead, in case that piece of memory comes back.

Anyway, I loved what Michael Johnson (the founder of johnson banks) did to the T-Mobile logo. As an exercise, he took the existing logo and "massaged" it so it looks a lot more presentable. If you care about logo design, you would agree that the existing one is a few steps shy of "a-lot-more-presentable" but hey, I've noticed that if you throw enough money behind any crappy logo (oops! did I just imply that I think T-Mobile's is crappy?), it would somehow sustain itself in the free market. Here, you take a look at his LoGoReDo: T-Mobile, and see if you agree.

What I took even more delight in checking out however, is the stamps he created for Royal Mail. The Beatles stamps (top) had irregular edges creating the illusion of a stack of Beatles album covers. Swoon! And one of my favourite themes -- interactivity -- is in the other set of stamps, the Fun Fruits & Veg stamps (above). Pick me up off the floor Double Swoon! This set comes with stickers that you can then customize the fruits and veggies with, so that you end up with different features and characters. The danger with me getting hold of a set of these would be that I will be tempted to play with them and will most probably end up sticking them all over places. Money down the tube but imagine the fun that could be had :-)

Found an interview between AIGA and Michael Johnson from more than a year ago, an illuminating read, if for nothing else other than to let you into the world of stamp design a wee bit.

images via aiga.org