When our Associate Creative Director, Nolen Strals, is on the hunt for creative inspiration he often turns to his books to find it. From pop artists to Scandinavian crime fiction, his collection of 300 books (and counting) offers a wide selection of content. 

Of course, many of his books are related to graphic design, typography, lettering and design history. We’re sharing some of his book recommendations for creative inspiration and why they’re worth your read:  

1. Reasons to Be Cheerful
   Author: Paul GormanThis is a monograph about the life and work of Barney Bubbles, an influential music design legend. Nolen’s biggest lesson from it is to never be beholden to a style. Instead, always be searching for a creative and unexpected solution that captures the spirit of your client. The book is a constant source of inspiration, offering a chance to see something new every time it’s opened.
2. Newspaper Design
   Editors: Javier Errea & Gestalten 

   Showcasing editorial design from all across the world, this book captures how certain design motifs and rules are universal. Nolen says the physical book itself is a piece of art. Beyond just designing for the printed page, it shows how the newspapers translate to the web. There’s lots to learn from how they clearly lay out rich, complex content even when designing for digital spaces.

3. Don’t Call It That
   Author: Eli AltmanThis book is written by the Creative Director of One Hundred Monkeys, a naming and writing studio in Berkeley. It’s a workbook that provides simple, clear and thoughtful ways to approach one of the most inscrutable parts of creative work: giving a name to a new product or company. Eli also has humorous (and important) lessons as simple as this: “How to Ask Friends. Don’t.”
4. Brick Index
   Author: Rick PoynerThis recommendation displays the full spectrum of brick types and more importantly, the typography on bricks. This book, along with others published by Centre Centre covers the outer edges of graphic design, focusing on the small forgotten graphic details of life. Nolen recommends checking out all other books published by Centre Centre. Their books have reminded him that there’s beauty to be found everywhere: under bricks, on the walls of small town clubs, in the design of punch cards that were used to run early computers, in northern England wrestling costumes, and everywhere else.

“As visual designers, nothing you can do is more important than constantly and closely observing the world around you,” said Nolen. When seeking creative inspiration, be open to new ideas and changes — and dive into these books if you get the chance. 

Tele Trends and Insights Night

Consumers today are embracing life loudly, and Telegraph is listening up.

At Tele Trends and Insights Night, we discussed our teams’ predictions for marketing trends in 2022. Below, we’re featuring some of those predictions and why we see them in this year’s forecast.

Bold Colors & Patterns

Telegraph predicts bold colors and patterns will dominate 2022, no matter the industry. 

We viewed examples of everything from the colorful brand guidebook for Glaceau smartwater to vibrant packaging from Lush to bold patterns now found on building exteriors. 

We also explored the fascination of “Y2K” and why inspiration is found in its bright and fun clothing. At the turn of the century, the year 2000 began a new era. A current nod to Y2K symbolizes a new era for consumers today stepping back into a post-2020 world. The future is bright, and we’re excited to see colors back in the spotlight. 

Psychedelia & The 1970s 

The ‘70s are back, and the psychedelia trend is grooving on a broad spectrum. 

We’re seeing the hipster revival everywhere from country music to fashion to typography. Viral tutorials on Tiktok and Youtube can teach you how to dress in 1970’s inspired styles. Typefaces that feel smokey and acid-dipped are being used in unexpected places. Even cereals, like Magic Spoon, have boxes with psychedelic designs that further speak to the bold colors we’re predicting this year. Grab our bell-bottom jeans? You don’t have to tell us twice.

Mascots 

Anthropomorphizing means to give human characteristics to something that isn’t human. To Telegraph, it also means to make things trendy. 

Mascots are on the rise along with objects displaying human-like characteristics, thus bringing the word anthropomorphizing into our discussion and vocabulary. Brands like M&M’s and Pringles continue to modernize their classic mascots, while brands like New Belgium Brewing have more recently adopted a consistent character appearing on products.

We referenced lips designed on a coffee mug and our rebranded logo for Birmingham Orthodontics that shows a tooth with its own smile. Though these aren’t actual “mascots”, They’re ordinary objects with human characteristics. A brand’s biggest goal is to connect with people, and the one thing people connect with more than anything is the image of a face. We’re looking forward to more face time with brands and objects as this trend gains momentum. 

Mushrooms

Forget baking banana bread. This year, we predict the trendy DIY project will be growing mushrooms.

“Six months ago all the hippies I’m friends with were posting on Instagram about growing their own mushrooms”, said our Associate Creative Director, Nolen Strals. More recently, he noticed MeatEater published how to grow mushrooms, and his light bulb went off (literally– mushrooms are grown in the dark).

The trend of growing mushrooms ties in with plant-based food popularity and the pandemic craze of growing our own plants. We think this trend will stick as mushrooms are low maintenance and growing kits are easily purchased on Amazon. They remind us of the ‘70s, psychedelia and the plant we forgot to water this morning.

Our insights, combined with insights from Pinterest and Hubspot, inspired conversation as we analyzed these trends and many others. We believe optimism is the overarching theme driving all of 2022’s trends. When we say our future is bright, we mean it in more ways than one.

Brands We Love

Brands are our thing. We notice them, we remember them, and we get inspired by the ones we love. Below, we’re sharing some of our favorite brands and why they get the Telegraph Team’s bolt of approval.

Southwest Airlines 

Whether we’re browsing, purchasing flights or recalling a brand we love, this airline comes to mind. Maybe it’s the heart in their logo. Regardless, Southwest’s personable and friendly tone make the brand uniquely approachable. David Hildebrand, Creative Director here at Telegraph, put it best when saying they “humanized air travel” after rebranding years ago. They take pride in putting the customer first, and that’s definitely something we’re on board with. 

Karbach Brewing Company 

We’ve heard everything is bigger in Texas and that includes the personality of this craft beer brand.Their designs keep people on their toes, and their tagline, “Crafted for Fun” speaks right to our heart. Unironically, the beer lived through its taglined purpose when it found our design intern, Levi Sanford. While having fun at a baseball game in Houston, the brand caught his eye, and he has since turned to them for inspiration. Their focus on quality beer, inclusivity and hospitality has us admiring the brand’s take on a glass half-full mentality. 

Halfway Crooks Beer

We’re pouring over this quirky beer brand. The brand’s cultural references are often obscure, the art is lo-fi and the copywriting is poetic, even though it seems as if it was written by a machine that only just learned English. It gives us an “old-world-European-meets-graphic-dryness-through-a-post-ironic-contemporary-lense” vibe. Our Associate Creative Director, Nolen Strals, said once he began to understand that they were doing their own weird thing, he came to also understand the inscrutable beauty of it. In the heart of Atlanta where many brands are so highly polished, this brand stands out— and to that we say, “Cheers!” 

Fifty-Nine Parks 

Fifty-Nine Parks is a brand with a print series that gives back. On posters and other merchandise, illustrations paired with type capture the distinguished beauty in each of our National Parks. Savvy Meek, Telegraph Graphic Designer and collector of 59 Parks merch, pointed out the brand’s unique use of modern typefaces with a more vintage style that elevates classic prints. The brand unites artists under a common goal as part of the poster sales go to The National Park Service. With a purpose just as beautiful as its designs, this brand is a breath of fresh air. 

At Telegraph, we appreciate even the smallest details that add up to fully characterize a brand. We love brands that come to life, and we’re obsessed with bringing our clients’ brands to life every day. 

Perspective: noun

1. the art of drawing solid objects on a two-dimensional surface so as to give the right impression of their height, width, depth, and position in relation to each other when viewed from a particular point.
   “a perspective drawing”
2. a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view.
   “most guidebook history is written from the editor’s perspective”

Perspective is something we have to think about each day in our business. The perspective of the consumer. The perspective of the visitor. The perspective of the viewer. And now more than ever, perspective also lends itself to the visual stories we tell, whether online, in print, on film, or experienced first hand.

Last week our agency had the opportunity to attend Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience at the BJCC here in Birmingham. This traveling exhibit unveils the story of the Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh as never before told – in his own words through correspondence with his brother Theo. Through these letters we were introduced to Van Gogh in a new way, not as a world renowned artist but as a poor man who struggled to find his place in the world.

The highlight of the exhibit is an immersive room where 3D projection mapping brings to life Van Gogh’s paintings, words and dreams sweeping across the walls, floor, columns – even the visitors – all set to music making it a full sensory experience. The perspective shifts each direction you look and from which angle of the room you are standing. We were told by one of the attendants that he had seen the looping video in the room at least seventy times and each time he saw something new and different.

Much of Van Gogh’s work is familiar to us all, none more famous than his pièce de résistance, The Starry Night, which depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. I had a poster of it in my room growing up and I’m pretty sure a poster of it is hanging in the art room of my girls’ elementary school right now. But as an Art History major at Auburn University I fell in love with Van Gogh’s unique style and his use of texture and color – and the fact that we share a birthday. I’ve stared at his work for hours, memorized certain brush strokes and wondered what he was thinking as he created hundreds of masterpieces over his relatively short life. But perhaps most fascinating to me is that in his lifetime, Van Gogh only sold one painting. He never lived to know people liked his work, much less that he would become one of the most famous artists in history. Add time to the list of things that can drastically change perspective.

For me, what I enjoyed most about the Beyond Van Gogh exhibit was that it was a new way to experience something I’ve loved for so long. His paintings all have such movement and feel almost dreamlike, and seeing them come to life in actual motion, surrounding you as if you’d walked into them, is how I imagine he felt while painting them. Experiencing a Van Gogh painting in real life and letting your imagination run wild has always been a pretty immersive experience. Now it truly is, and has given me a whole new perspective on his work and how to approach mine.

An Experimental Time for the Streaming Supreme and What it Could Mean for the Future of Content

Just over a decade ago, the world was consumed by a new wave of streaming. Platforms like Netflix and Hulu began delivering content straight to our TVs, laptops and phones, and streaming quickly became an everyday thing. Now it seems every major broadcasting company has managed to slap a “Plus” onto the end of their name and add another $6 to our monthly expenses just to give users the ability to stream their own content. Netflix, once considered a tidal wave in the streaming world, is now just one breaker in an ocean of streaming platforms. So how does Netflix become another tidal wave? Their answer: games.

Just last week, Netflix quietly launched a series of mobile games that are downloadable through the app. The games are completely free (with your subscription), no in-app purchases, and no ads. While most are just variations of previously existing iPhone games, there are some, such as an 8-bit Stranger Things game, that are specifically catered to Netflix’s original content. This comes after Netflix  acquired Night School, an independent game developer, and hired an executive whose resume includes notable gaming companies Zynga and Electronic Arts. So you could say they knew what they were doing. But regardless of how enthused you are about the potential for a 8-bit Squid Game mobile game (would we be surprised to see this in two months?), what business does Netflix have in gaming? 

According to an article posted by the Harvard Business Review, this business maneuver is referred to as an adjacency growth strategy. It’s defined as a strategy in which growth (both organically and through acquisitions) is achieved by departing from the core product or service and exposing themselves to newer markets. Similar to how Nike expanded into various sports markets and Apple moved into other communication devices like the iPod, iPad, and yes, even AppleTV+. In other words, it’s a strategy for Netflix to stay above the competition and defend the current core. By offering new benefits to existing customers at no incremental charge, Netflix is hoping to offset the steady decrease in new subscribers.

So what does this mean for streaming platforms and content creators? For one, rough waters if Netflix’s leap into the video game industry proves successful. It will show that sharing content and putting it in front of our audience isn’t going to be enough anymore, signaling a gradual shift from passive to active engagement. According to Nielsen data in 2018, 45% of consumers are on their phones or a second screen while watching TV. So if you think about it, of Netflix’s 209 million subscribers, roughly only 113 million of them are fully engaged in their content, while the rest are probably scrolling through their phones or computers, peaking at the screen every once in a while. On the other hand, a Nielsen study showed that upwards of 71% of millennials between the ages of 22 and 38 actively participate in gaming of some sort, often for several hours a week. That is valuable time consumers have to learn, understand and form a relationship with the content they are interacting with. Seems like it would be an effective way to make sure your audience is seeing your content. You can’t just put a shiny object in front of a consumer anymore—you have to make them engage with it.

But will people want to toggle between different types of interaction on the same platform? Netflix is the epicenter of our sit-and-do-nothing days. We sit for hours, binging the newest season of Stranger Things or rewatching the last season of The Great British Bake Off, and now they’re expecting us to play games too? It seems like a small  yet cumbersome task for those expecting to be lazy throughout the day. The brain has a hard time switching between active and passive, and when a company’s core audience is comfortable in the latter, it becomes increasingly more difficult to get them to switch. Maybe this transition serves as a cautionary tale for those looking to diversify their content.

Whether Netflix is successful in the video game realm remains to be seen. It may catch on and become Netflix’s next greatest achievement, or it may fizzle and fade. Regardless, the move is a wake-up call for content creators to find ways to re-think and expand the ways their products are distributed. When you’re in a wave in a sea of other creators, you have to turn the tides to be a standout success.