Music notation
THOSE UNFAMILIAR WITH WRITTEN MUSIC tend to regard scores as an impenetrable mass of dots and lines. But it’s really quite straightforward: it’s just a graph of time (on the horizontal axis) against pitch (on the vertical axis). Here’s how the beginning of the main tune from Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus would look if written out as […]
Six chord trick
WHILE YOU CAN PLAY MOST SONGS with just three chords, you get a lot more flavour if you add the relative minors of each of these chords. These are chords three notes below each of the main three. The relative minor of C is Am (the notes are A, C and E); the relative minor of […]
Three chord trick
EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT MUSICAL you’ll have heard people pouring scorn on bands like Status Quo, who appear to know only three chords. But why those three chords? What’s special about them? Let’s say you’re playing in the key of C. The scale of C can be played entirely on the white notes of a piano. […]
That’ll do nicely
ONE OF THE MOST MEMORABLE television commercial series of the 1970s was for American Express, created by Ogilvy & Mather. In the first commercial, first aired in 1975, a businessman rushes up to an airline check-in desk with the words “I’ve got to get back to Bahrain tonight”. He produces his American Express card, which is […]
Advertising slogans
IN MORE GENTLE TIMES, slogans always included the name of the product. Guinness is good for you. Ah, Bisto! All because the lady loves Milk Tray. Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet. Don’t be vague, ask for Haig. This approach is now seen as somewhat heavy-handed, and a subtler approach is considered more appropriate. We’ve […]
Spear carrying
THERE ARE MANY WALK-ON PARTS in Shakespeare’s plays, especially those produced with a budget large enough to pay for the actors. Watching a production of Julius Caesar, I was distracted by a spear-carrier in the background. He had no lines, and his only duty was to hold the spear and look like a guard. But he […]
The ballet problem
SOME YEARS AGO I was taken to a production of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Albert Hall. The performers managed a laudable interpretation of the fight scene in which Romeo slays Tybalt, and the balcony scene was delivered with an appropriate amount of passion. But when it came to Juliet visiting an apothecary to […]
On the horizon
ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL MISTAKES many people make when creating a scene is incorrectly placing people at a variety of sizes. Sure, people further away appear smaller, but how do you make them all seem to be in the same scene? This is the sort of situation you frequently see: It’s a clumsy arrangement, and all […]
The right multi-tool
SWISS ARMY PENKNIVES are very cute and make great birthday presents for 13-year-olds, but they’re much too clumsy to use as serious tools. Far better are multi-tools of the Leatherman/Gerber style, which incorporate a strong pair of pliers (the most useful tool of all). All multitools come with screwdrivers and knives, and most have a woodsaw […]
Go cordless
THERE HAVE BEEN MANY OCCASIONS in the past when I’ve wanted to do a simple job, such as drilling a hole, sawing a piece of wood, or using a glue gun to join two objects. I have plenty of power tools, but the hassle of finding an extension lead, plugging it in, trying to avoid getting […]
Tools: start cheap
WHENEVER I NEED a new tool of a kind that I haven’t tried before – a table saw, a pair of pliers, a hack saw – I always start with the cheapest one available. After a few days’ use you can figure out what to look for when buying a better model. When buying a table saw, it turns out […]
Instruct, don’t humiliate
NO CHILD LIKES TO BE TOLD what to do, especially in public. If your child has a habit of eating with their mouth open in restaurants, then drawing attention to it – especially if it means doing so in front of grandparents and other children – will simply make them feel bad. Instead, try a subtle gesture, such as pinching […]
Distraction beats anger
ONE OF THE MOST FRUSTRATING behaviours for an adult to cope with is a child’s tantrum, especially in a public place. They’re embarrassing for the adult, and the recourse is often to get more and more stern until you end up with a yelling, furious adult and a screaming child. Tantrums may be a bad experience […]
Stick to the point
WHEN TRYING TO PERSUADE an adult to do something they have an aversion to, we try to come up with as many reasons as we can why they should follow our instructions. It doesn’t work that way with children. Here’s a typical series of instructions: Eat your dinner, before it goes cold. Eat it now, it’s […]
Why is spam illiterate?
I GET A LOT OF SPAM. You probably get a lot of spam. Email in-boxes around the world are overflowing with spam. But is it all as slapdash and rushed as it seems at first glance? Here’s an email I was sent, reproduced exactly as I received it: From: Henrietta Frazier To: Steve Caplin Payment […]
Why buy a Mac?
IN THE LATE 1980s, in the early days of what was then known as desktop publishing, you needed an Apple computer if you wanted to run the software that would enable you to take part in the communications revolution. It became the norm for company computers to be split along partisan lines: Apple Macs for […]
The iPhone problem
THE iPHONE IS PROBABLY one of the world’s most popular technological achievements. It revolutionised the mobile phone industry when it was introduced in 2007, and I strongly recommend you take the time to watch the inspirational and charismatic Steve Jobs making its introduction. The iPhone is a fantastic music player, movie player, camera, web browser, […]
Walking in, walking out
SHOW SOMEONE WALKING from one side to the other in a photograph and you have the potential to tell a story. But the story you tell depends on their position in the scene. Place the person on the far left (assuming they’re walking from left to right) and we can see how far they’ve got to […]
Left, right and centre
AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHERS will almost always frame their pictures so that the subject is dead centre. is is almost always a bad location, as it’s very static and inactive. Better to place people to one side, which not only makes a scene more dynamic, it also offers a better view of the background. If you photograph […]
Printer’s jargon
WHETHER IT’S A SIMPLE FLYER or a multi-page magazine, at some point you’re going to have to deal with a printer. Every word of jargon you use will knock a bit more off the quote, and that’s because they’ll be more confident that the file you give them will actually be printable to your specification. […]
How much is a million?
WE USE NUMBERS like million and billion every day, without really thinking about what they mean. Apple sold 70 million iPhones in the last quarter. There are 13 million people living in Tokyo. But a million is such a vast, unwieldy number that few of us have a real grasp of what it means. So […]
How music works
ALL MUSICAL NOTES ARE PRODUCED by vibrating air. That vibration can be caused by a plucked string (in the case of a piano or a harp), or by wind bouncing off the inside of a tube (a clarinet or a trumpet), or by a stick hitting a resonant object (a drum or a xylophone). The […]
Serif or sans?
SERIFS ARE THE SHORT STROKES on the ends of letters that guide the eye along the line. They originated with Roman stonemasons, who carved them at the top and bottom of letters before carving the letters themeselves, to prevent the deeper strokes from splitting the stone. “Sans serif” letters are simply those bereft of serifs, […]
Caution: design ahead
IT TOOK ME A WHILE TO FIGURE OUT why the designer of this sign in a Shrewsbury hotel chose to set the A in ‘caution’ in upper case, at a larger size, and in a different colour. Look closely: there’s a tiny red exclamation mark inside the A. Get it? It’s intended to resemble one of […]
Web leaks 2
IF YOU’RE DESIGNING A QUICK SIGN, then it makes sense to grab an arrow off the internet rather than going through the laborious process of selecting the Arrow tool in Word. But this isn’t an arrow. It’s a web button. Are we supposed to press it for more information?
Patient disservices
THESE TWO NOTICES appear on adjacent walls in University College Hospital. Both say the same thing. Note how the amateur version goes to great lengths to try to make the text stand out: it’s set in capitals plus bold plus underline, all in an attempt to create extra emphasis. But if it’s the only text on the […]
Flushing in style
CAN A LAVATORY FLUSH ever be beautiful? Yes, when it’s as elegantly understated as this one. No words are needed: the large and small buttons express their purpose without text, and so without any coy euphemisms. Compare the simplicity and sophistication of that flush with this awkward mishmash on Brittany Ferries. The button should be obvious […]
Upper or lower case?
THE TYPOGRAPHIC TERMS “upper case” and “lower case” refer to the wooden boxes in which typesetters stored the individual letters. Today, these terms are used describe capital and small letters. Beginners will frequently use upper case lettering for posters because they think it stands out more. This is rarely the case: UPPER CASE TEXT IS USUALLY HARDER TO […]
Brown’s Bldg’s
MAYBE IT WAS THE SIGN WRITER’s day off, and his work experience assistant did the job. Or maybe he’d had a heavy lunch and was suffering from indigestion. But can there really be any excuse for the misplaced apostrophe? And why didn’t they just make the sign bigger, since the space available is easily wide enough?