So what makes a good design anyway?

At the heart of any piece of good design is a good idea. And the best ideas are usually incredibly simple. But keeping it simple is actually very difficult, which means that good ideas are rare. And because they’re rare, they’re memorable when brought to life through design.

It takes on countless forms and means different things to different people, depending on everything from culture to context. Here are just a few examples of top class design in hard-working commercial action. Meanwhile, down at the Brazilian Institute for Oriental Studies, one fears that

Graphic Design


Do you remember from your days as a youthful philatelist those wonderful first day covers produced by the Royal Mail? Well, in 2007 Royal Mail commissioned a special stamp to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Passchendale.

This design twists the use of the famous poppy symbol, using it as the backdrop to the almost hauntingly silhouetted figures of the infantry troops, 140,000 of whom died in capturing a mere five miles of ground. Lest we forget.



Packaging Design

The Absolut brand has long believed in “the message as the medium” - in other words using the bottle (itself an iconic design shape) as the vehicle for its communication.
Absolut continued that theme with Absolut Disco, which was used in 75 different countries including the UK, Germany ,China, USA and of course Sweden.

The idea is simple and brilliant.

When the vodka is finished, the bottle inside is removed and then the packaging can be hung from the ceiling to glitter like a mirror ball. Eat your heart out John Travolta.



Book Design

That business about not judging one by its cover is fine as a metaphor, but shouldn’t be applied too literally, especially when something quite so clever as Sculpture Today is involved.

The aim of this book cover was to present the book as an authoritative overview of contemporary sculpture, and the three-dimensional use of the title letters does just that.


Product Design
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, once said ‘’Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works’’ and, with a 3.5 inch widescreen display, five hours of video and 22 hours of music on one battery charge as well as fingertip access to the internet, he has a point when it comes to the iPod touch.

It is 8mm thin (not thick, you’ll note), includes wireless technology and is available in 8gb and 16gb models. But never mind all that. What really matters is it looks great and makes you look great, too.

There’s an old saying that if you design by committee you get a camel, but the committee of 13 people (including Jobs himself) involved in this design put the lie to that and leave both the dromedary and the bactrian wishing Jobs had been on the job when the bible began.


Brand Identity Design

If you remember the iconic love heart logo that spawned dozens of imitators and millions of T-shirts you would be forgiven for thinking that NY was sorted when it came to brand identity; but no.

There may only be one NYC but there’s no one New York City, but rather five boroughs,191 neighbourhoods and more than eight million people speaking more than 138 different languages.

So when creating a new brand identity for NYC the designers sought to reflect this kaleidoscopic quality through a melange of images capturing the diversity of the cultural mix and the colour of the city.




Dangerous Design

But some design just gets it wrong. We may never know what the Computer Doctors were thinking of when they agreed to go with this particularly unfortunate design, although we have a fair idea of what was on the designer’s mind.

Meanwhile, down at the Brazilian Institute for Oriental Studies, one fears that there might have been a pre-occupation for Ugandan affairs which influenced this extraordinary offering.

At Semaphore we do our own small bit to encourage young talent offering work placements and exhibitions to local design and art students not just out of altruism but because we really believe that design matters and helps uild businesses.