Podcast
Communication Untangled
Listen and subscribe to our new podcast
Join host Sue Keogh and guests from the worlds of design, communications, and behavioural psychology for the podcast that explores the many facets of communication that influence our behaviour - but often go unnoticed.
From menu design to motorway typography, from brand guidelines to the colours that make us click, we’ll shine a light on techniques you can apply to get across critical messages in your marketing, business and brand.
Episode 1: Untangling Brand
Designer Harry Pearce from Pentagram tells us about the visual identities he’s developed for V&A South Kensington, Liberty and Moth drinks – and why brand guidelines are critical in keeping everything beautifully consistent across print, packaging and digital formats.
We also take a look at NASA, and how their Graphic Standards Manual shows the brand evolution from a meatball…to a worm.
-
About Harry Pearce
Having studied at Canterbury College of Art, Harry co-founded and ran Lippa Pearce Design before becoming a Pentagram Partner in 2006.
He has devised identities, installations, posters, packaging, books for; Liberty, Thames & Hudson, Guggenheim, Royal Academy of Arts, Phaidon Press, Pink Floyd, Shakespeare’s Globe, PEN International, and the UN. Since 1993 he has been an active member of the advisory board for WITNESS.
Books; Typographic Conundrums and Eating with the Eyes.
See Harry’s full biography on the Pentagram website
Show notes
Harry works alongside so many creative geniuses on these projects, including designer and Pentagram partner Marina Willer, who created the Young V&A identity work.
Writers on the overall V&A project were Naresh Ramchandani and Ashley Johnson.
Inspiration
And here are some interesting things to have a look at!
• Creative Review article on the new V&A Museum branding and visual identity
• Pentagram case study: Liberty LBTY
• Pentagram case study: V&A South Kensington
• NASA Graphics Standards Manual from 1975
Episode 2: Untangling Menus
Sean Willard from The Menu Engineers joins us to talk menu design. What big shifts are we seeing in this post-pandemic era? How do the fonts, colours and material they’re printed on affect our choices? And why should every restaurant offer something that lets you blow the budget?
Plus! How does Netflix use idleness aversion to keep us endlessly scrolling through their menu? Listen now…
-
About Sean Willard
Sean Willard is a seasoned Menu Engineer dedicated to assisting restaurateurs and hospitality operators worldwide in the creation of optimised menus.
His approach melds the precision of science, the finesse of art, the insights of data, and a wealth of industry experience to empower restaurateurs in crafting menus that not only bolster profitability but also elevate the overall guest dining experience.
With a distinguished academic background from Cornell’s prestigious Hotel School and an extensive tenure within the restaurant industry spanning over two decades, Sean brings a wealth of knowledge and practical expertise to the realm of Menu Engineering.
His journey into this specialized field was cultivated under the mentorship of the late Gregg Rapp, a luminary in the discipline who laid the foundations for many of the methodologies and principles still revered today.
Get in touch with Sean via menuEngineers.com, on Instagram or LinkedIn.
Episode 3: Untangling FORMS
Iain Boyd and Adam Robertson from GOV.UK Forms at the Government Digital Service join us to share best practice in designing online forms to capture information efficiently and ethically.
Plus, discover the dark patterns on the web which set out to trick us.
-
Online forms. They’re either so intuitive you hardly notice you’ve filled them in. Or they take so long to complete that you just lose the will to live.
Or maybe you’re the one creating the form and trying to gather the information. People just don’t fill them in properly! How can you work with data that’s incomplete?
An organisation dealing with this issue on a massive scale is Government Digital Service, who are behind GOV.UK, the website for the UK Government.
The goal is to make digital government simpler, clearer and faster for everyone.
More than 13 million people use GOV.UK each week, and there are more than a billion transactions completed on the site a year – things like applying for a driving licence or filing a tax return or renewing your passport.
GDS are introducing their new Forms Builder tool and it’s designed to make Government forms more accessible and easier to fill in. They’ll be faster to process too, with fewer errors.
Our two guests on this episode are both from GOV.UK Forms at Government Digital Service. They share best practice in designing online forms so that not only do more people fill them in – but you get accurate data too:
Adam Robertson, Senior Product Manager
Iain Boyd, Engagement Lead at GOV.UK at the UK Government Digital Service and Iain Boyd from GDS
And in complete contrast to this ethical, transparent approach, you’ll find out about dark patterns on the web, and why Amazon, Google, Meta and the makers of Fortnite are being fined millions of dollars for bad practice and tricking users into doing things they simply never set out to do.
And who’s clamping down on nudges and sludges, biased framing and confirmshaming once and for all?
Show notes
GOV.UK Forms builder tool: “Create an accessible online form in minutes without needing technical knowledge”
Government Digital Service service manual. Accessibility, measurement, research, good design practice…it’s all in here!
GDS blog: How we’re opening up access to GOV.UK forms
GDS blog: Making it easy to create and publish digital forms on GOV.UK
About dark patterns
Visit Harry Brignull’s website, Deceptive Patterns for a full description of the term and some pretty horrifying examples in the Hall of Shame!
UK regulators target dark patterns
National Law Review: FTC report shows increase in dark patterns
About your host
Sue Keogh is a communications specialist with an extensive career in broadcast, print and digital media, from BBC, ITV, Yahoo, Aol, Magic FM and GOV.UK to local newspapers and community radio.
Forever fascinated by the many different and ever-changing forms of communication, in this series Sue gets to untangle it all in the company of expert guests who are specialists in their fields.
Read the blog | See Sue’s full bio
Produced by Rob Birnie from Made by DBM
Coming up
Untangling Colour, with author and behavioural psychologist Nathalie Nahai
Untangling Reviews, with Trustist Founder Nigel Apperley
Untangling Signs, with transport expert Mark Ovenden