Septuagenarian David Hockney is enjoying yet more critical acclaim, this time for his new exhibition of East Yorkshire landscapes.

Once again the outstanding style is unmistakeable, unchanged and simply brilliant. The effect that this exhibition is likely to have on the Art World; possibly making landscape painting commercially viable for the first time since its heyday in the 17/1800s when the landed gentry wanted their newly landscaped estates committed to canvas and renderings of mountains, waterfalls and fells were the must have for a well-appointed dining or drawing room, but these for once are not the most notable highlights of Hockney’s latest work.

While the collection contains the expected hand painted canvasses, this time the majority of the works were created on an Apple iPad and produced as large format paper prints.

“Who wouldn’t want one? Picasso or Van Gogh would have snapped one up,” said Mr Hockney when interviewed by the BBC last year before his Paris exhibition.

Well… yes and no.

While the technology is amazing and eons away from the first computer graphic interfaces of 30 years ago, brush and paint it still aint.

Thinking about the David Hockney style in particular I’d be amazed if Apple hadn’t seen the marketing opportunity of introducing the great artist to the high end gadgets – but technology has rules, parameters that sooner or later see individuality take a back seat to what is possible in pixels.

Still these stunning Hockney pictures show that an artist is an artist and the medium isn’t what we should be concerned with; but as an artist it seems to me that we should be striving to produce original work that can’t be produced (or reproduced) through a computer interface.

Piacasso or Van Gogh in big bold colours and almost primitive lines may have loved the iPad but Michael Angelo?

Apple still has a long way to go to match that technique.

I came up with this phrase “Product Drift” (© 2011 me )

It sounded better than “Technology Trickle”

I’m now using it to cover all things from products developed for one industry before being adopted unchanged by another – such as surgical scalpels that have been used extensively in arts, crafts, design and print for at least 40 years. (Who first thought of that? A graphic designer/surgeon?)

The products re-developed from high end to low end such as components designed for aircraft and F1 cars that are re-configured until they are cost effective enough to use in the family hatchback.

The ideas showcased on catwalks in London, New York, Paris and Milan which result in colours and cut filtering down to Miss Selfridge, M&S & Primark.

You know all this – finding new markets for a product without re-tooling, or collaboration between different parts of the same industry for the benefit of a wider public is the way of the World and no bad thing.

What is just as inevitable but also damaging to the branding and marketing of every business is product drift in design software.

It is difficult for most of us to imagine the World without computer technology – probably impossible for anyone under 45 – but back then Graphic Designers had to be able to do things modern designers don’t necessarily have to do – they had to be able to draw.

They had to start with a truly blank sheet of paper – no instant effects or hi res image manipulation, fonts and logos were hand drawn, the hardware then was technique and material that had stood the test of time for decades, in some cases centuries – but the main difference was the division between those who could design and those who couldn’t, the only software being talent, training and imagination.

It wasn’t surprising that it took years to convince the majority of designers to move off the drawing board and onto the keyboard.
What brought them (us) around were the intuitive graphic interfaces, the software that meant you still had to know what you were doing to produce great design.

This is still true but only just: Messer’s Adobe, Apple and Quark have integrated their products so far into the design industry – they almost are the design industry – kids coming out of college talk more about Best Practice, Base Line Grids, Standards Compliance, the latest filters and effects than they do about design.

What they don’t realise is this reliance on technology will eventually put them out of work.

The big software and hardware producers have saturated the professional design industry – there is no more upselling into new products they can offer – just the bi-annual upgrades. With the industry no longer growing they are having to find new markets to sustain their own growth.

So – the software comes out at premium (rip off) prices into the design industry, and our feedback help the developers to improve the software – then the Product Drift starts.

First into partner providers; software developers specialising in particular sectors where pro DTP elements are integrated into third party packages to create templates for on line directories and websites; Photoshop elements built into editing software simple enough for untrained photographers to use to a standard that the general public wouldn’t know isn’t that good without a proper job for comparison purposes.

Now the Product Drift continues; with iPhones, iPads and Androids given slicker quicker processes to carry out tasks which actually take longer to do in the full blown professional versions of the software their apps are based on.

Very soon if not now – professional designers will have to re-establish their credentials as Real Designers – start to show the difference between those who can design and those who can’t; just as we had to do 25 years ago, but with the increasing cynically planned Product Drift and dumbing down of the technology it won’t be who can use the technology that will count – company receptionists the FDs daughter and a number of 5 year olds will have their own versions of the software that will do the same things more easily – the real difference will be vision, creativity, experience of what works – and what is between your ears.

Those businesses who use Real Designers … Real Artists…. need to stand out from the mediocre dross penny pinching business owners will be rolling out.

Maybe if you’re a Real Designer who wants to carry on being indispensible to client companies…

… You might want to grab a pencil.

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We live in interesting times as the old Chinese curse would wish upon us.

Still, it makes you wonder if all the trouble in the World from global rows and civil wars to personal relationships isn’t just all about an inability to communicate, as if different languages and cultures and points of view and individual experiences colouring judgement aren’t enough there’s also the gender gap.

No don’t panic, I’m not going to go there.

Perhaps I am so set in my ways that I can’t adjust to speaking any other way – have I dispensed with subtlety? Do I not know when it’s best to keep the trap shut? Are my explanations so obscure I am the only one who understands me?

Maybe that’s how everyone is. Maybe we are so comfortable in the knowledge that we know what we are saying, the way the meaning is taken by anyone else is just – expected?

It would explain a lot – how many times have you come away from a conversation thinking everyone was in agreement only to find out later everyone else’s understanding of what was meant is different from yours?
Just when you think everything is fine, light, and happy, your perception crashes and burns with just a few words from someone you thought was with you, of one mind, there for the long run.

If you were to get your head around the scarily plausible fact that no one else ever thinks exactly the way you do, and more often than not they may process thought completely differently, then creatively that’s quite exciting – but in every other sense knowing everyone else seems to be better at disguising the differences than you are, and they are not letting you in on the secret that they know you don’t know, it can be quite depressing.

Or is that just me?

The last post was written the day before it all kicked off in Tottenham, and I was so busy that weekend I didn’t see the news until the Monday.

When I did re-join the World, my first panic was for my daughter and her other half who were visiting friends in Tottenham, fortunately I found out later their weekend plans meant they were out of town camping in Dorset.
Another friend was Facebooking pictures from his hotel window of the fires in Croydon. The teenage sister of one of my Godsons just happened to be scheduled for working in a London branch of Boots that weekend and ended up behind a door fastened with chains, scared stiff and not doing what she was there for.

Fortunately, out of the dozen I knew were in the trouble spots, no one I know personally was injured or worse during the mayhem. I only wish everyone could say the same.

A week after the happiest day of the year eh?

As reams have been written and thousands of miles of video filmed (yes I know it’s not on tape anymore) about the so-called English Riots I’m not going to attempt to analyse the reasons for, the reactions to, or the no doubt two wrongs don’t make a right knee jerk reactions which will follow.

But I will humbly offer the following:

When I was a kid there was trouble on the streets, there was when my Dad was a kid and there was when my Grandparents were young – the further you go back the harsher the penalties for crime and disorder were – but it still happened. The difference today is there is no dilution.

Let me explain: When I was a kid, in walking distance, there were at least three youth clubs, two companies of Boys Brigade, three Scout troops and of course the opposite gender Girls Brigade, Girl Guides etc. The local Junior School hosted a huge group of Woodcraft Folk – there were always some after school activities going on – Art, Music and every type of sports team at virtually every school and every Church. In my Dads day they had fewer things going on but they had a little thing called World War Two to keep them busy once they hit 18.

This meant that although there were still gangs, bad people, crime and mayhem the scale was so much smaller, the majority of kids were busy being raised by the whole community – the scale of the most recent flare up had nothing to do with BB Messenger passing the word and everything to do with so many more young people feeling they have nothing to lose, nothing to live for and no understanding of what pain their actions will cause to others. Because no one has taught them the basic kindness they would have picked up naturally by being part of something bigger outside their own, often dysfunctional, families.

If you allow successive Governments and Councils to take away the facilities that keep young, energetic and wasted minds busy – what the bloody hell do you expect? The Devil makes work for idle hands as Grandma used to say.

If your childhoods and families and life don’t bear any resemblance to the attitudes and actions you saw on the street last week – if you don’t understand where they are coming from or think locking them up via what amounts to high speed kangaroo midnight courts; I would ask you to try for one minute to stop thinking how bad these kids are and just how lucky you are that someone somewhere took the time to make sure you were taught, inspired or raised not to be like them.

You were not born with the basic sympathy, empathy and kindness you take for granted or think should be the norm – someone else, probably a lot of someone else’s made you that way.

The kid that gets locked up, you may say quite rightly, this week for smashing a window or arson or nicking a pair of Nike – his family evicted from their council house and their benefits stopped (because thats going to make it easyfor them to stay out of trouble) ?

Maybe he just wasn’t as lucky as you.

Was it last Monday or last Friday? The day someone on tabloid morning TV informed the Nation that that day was the happiest day of the year? The day when most people were going to be happier than any other day?
There was some statistical reason to do with holidays and the length of the daylight hours and the lack of financial pressure and how people were happy because the kids were on their long summer break but school hadn’t been out so long the grownups had got sick of seeing them yet and those who had didn’t care because it was taking them a third of the time it would normally take to drive to work etc etc.
It is like a modern day festival of the equinox – we no longer see great portents in the sky at the longest and shortest days, we don’t sacrifice a goat and beg the Gods to give us a mild winter or a great summer or an abundant harvest – we have the saddest day where we are still giving most of our money to the Government and the days are short and dark and we all suffer from some degree of Seasonal Defective Disorder and there’s now the Happiest day (see above) pronounced over the airwaves by the great Druid himself Adrian Childs (is that is name – my remote finger flicks through the channels so fast I lose track of who’s who – you know the Brummy Football guy?).
Surely if we knew what made the majority of us happy or sad – we’d stop doing or start doing those things all the time – like building schools at the end of every third Road so parents in 4wd monster trucks don’t cause the world to move two thirds slower than it should every morning and every afternoon – we’d spread the holidays more so we could spread the happiness, we’d change the tax system so we had to pay less less often and we’d all permanently move to a warmer climate.
See; Silly Season explained and sorted in less than 350 words.

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