Keep It Simple: Design

“The Bulletin” has been re-designed. As part of a stable that boasts the Catalan daily “dBalears”, which won an award for its makeover, the result of this re-design should be positive.

The “dBalears” revamp was contemporary in one very strong regard. Its look owed and owes much to internet presentation. It is perhaps an irony of digital competition that the print media should ape this competition, though it is not a surprise. Good layout on a screen demands clean lines and appearance; the same principle applies to whatever format.

There is, however, design and there is design. No, make that that there is design, design and design. Design that is simply no good, that which is good, and that which is good but completely misses the point.

I was in a bar the other day (the Jolly Roger). There was a poster on one of the wooden posts. I looked at it and I continued to look at it. I had to go back and look again. Finally, someone (Grizz) came in and without asking pointed at something on the poster and announced that a complaint should be made. There it was. What I had been unable to see. The date.

If you are going to have a poster for an event, in this case a horse spectacular in Alcúdia, one fairly basic requirement is that you clearly communicate when it’s taking place. This poster does nothing of the sort. The reason for my being unable to locate the date was how it had been designed.

The problem with the design was that the date was not only to the left, it was also vertical. Its positioning and style broke two fundamental rules. One is that the eye tracks to the right, unless you’re an Arabic reader and the eye goes the other way, in which case you will have just read “daer tsuj evah …”. While the main visual look of the poster, that of a horse, strangely enough, grabs the attention, it is the information that needs to be communicated which is as important, and being informed as to when the show is happening is far from unimportant.

Just as the eye tracks to the right and not to the left, so it also, or rather the brain, needs to adjust to a vertical visual and more specifically text that runs vertically. It’s why I couldn’t see it, even though it was literally staring me in the face.

There is nothing wrong with breaking rules, but design which may be good (and to be honest the overall poster design isn’t that good) has to keep to the point. Which is to communicate.

In Mallorca, there are an awful lot of designers. It seems, at times, as though whole school years leave education armed with a design qualification. There are hordes of them, armed with Photoshop and Illustrator and with innovation firmly in mind. This has spawned some remarkably good graphic work. The standards of Mallorcan design are high, owing at least something to an artistic heritage on the island.

However, the craving for innovativeness can get in the way of the message. Similarly, a lack of appreciation as to audience can also obscure what it is that is meant to be conveyed. I’ll give you an example.

A few years ago, the Pollensa autumn fair had a visual that was meant to be some sort of agricultural tool. You could have fooled me. It looked more like a sex aid. I was completely baffled by it. While it may have meant something to the local Mallorcan population, it meant nothing to anyone else. Too much promotional material suffers from a failure to communicate in different languages, but when the visual imagery misses the point of its audience, or potential audience, then any innovation becomes pointless.

Simple really is often the best. Take design for restaurant adverts. Tedious may be the almost default style of advert which shows a terrace or an interior, but it is actually important. It was a message that came over when someone was analysing different designs as a tourist. Those with shots of what the place looked like were more meaningful than something more arty that didn’t. The message was very powerful, because the very audience the adverts were being intended for was being influenced by one of the most powerful things a restaurant has to sell – its look.

And look is everything. Adverts, brochures, newspapers. And simple is also very often everything.

N.B. The re-design of “The Bulletin” is from Saturday, 30 April. This article, forwarded as usual for reproduction in the paper, would appear to have been vetoed on the grounds that the design team responsible for the re-design might be a bit “touchy”. Can anyone explain why? Given that this article had been knocked out earlier than would normally be the case, as with a now alternative, in order to help them out for their grand re-launch (at a time when I don’t have a lot of spare time), I feel I have every right to be a tad pissed off. Perhaps sensibilities towards contributors and remuneration might be as strong as that afforded to a bunch of designers.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Have I Got Videos For You

“This week’s odd-one-out round. Paul and Jon, your four are Harold “Hype” Williams, some happy slappers from West Bromwich, the MKTGONLINEIB and the Iberostar Alcúdia Park hotel, Playa de Muro, Mallorca.”

“Is it the? What did you call it? The Muckt-gon-lee-nee-aye-bee? Is it the only one who looks like a robot which looks like it could do with getting out more?”

“No, actually it’s the Iberostar Alcúdia Park hotel, Playa de Muro, Mallorca. Shall I tell you why?”

“No thanks.”

“Well, I’ll tell you anyway. It’s the only one that doesn’t make videos, but has videos made of it. In fact, there is one about it that appears at the top of the list of other videos to watch on YouTube next to this edition of ‘Have I Got News For You’, assuming you are watching S40E01 extended parts one to three and probably also assuming that you are watching it in Playa de Muro.”

“And why’s that exactly? Just because you’re watching this particular show and because you’re in – where’s that place called again?”

“Playa de Muro. It’s in Mallorca.”

“Is it really. But that doesn’t answer my question.”

“I’m not sure why.”

“But you play Sherlock Holmes, you should know why.”

“They didn’t have YouTube in my, erm, in Holmes’s day. I think it’s to do with intelligently figuring out the location of the user or something like that.”

“Intelligent!? But if you’re in this place, whatever it’s called …”

“Playa de Muro. It means the beach of the wall.”

“In the beach of the wall, why would you want to know about a tourist hotel? You’re not going to stay in it, if you’re already there.”

“That’s a very good question.”

“Yea, I know. That’s why I asked it.”

“In fact, the video is in Spanish as well. And I don’t think this show has many Spanish viewers.”

“So it’s not intelligent at all, then.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t.”

“So, why did you say it was, then? And this MKTGONLINEIB, how do we know it’s a robot?”

“We don’t. In fact it’s probably a person.”

“A robot’s a person!? What is this? The return of the Borgs or something?”

“It’s the name that appears under the video. The poster I think you call it. Or him. Or her. Anyway, shall we move on?”

“Yes, let’s.”

The above is of course made up, but is intended to raise a question about promotional videos and the like that are placed on the internet. Why would you, if you were in Playa de Muro, as in I was when I was watching the “Have I Got News For You” video, or anywhere else for that matter, be interested in a tourist hotel that’s just up the road? I assume the video was placed because location was detected. But what’s the good of that?

And this, if you’re interested, is the video in question.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Great Steak Wars: Really real in Playa de Muro

“Real steak.” Not real as in a Spanish football club, but real as in “real” – genuine, authentic, English. When is real steak unreal, do you suppose? When it’s not steak probably. The “real” moniker makes something of a change to those alternatives, especially authentic. Authentic (typical) Mallorcan cuisine, authentic Indian cuisine, authentic, authentic. I wish a restaurant would promote itself as being unauthentic. I might go then.

There is a real steak war emerging. A real steak war as in both the steak being real and there really being a steak war as opposed to a pretend one; well, sort of. The real steak war is also being fought out over real historical claims. Since 19–, apply your own numbers. The steak war is in Las Gaviotas, the area of Playa de Muro that no one really calls Las Gaviotas, if they happen to be a tourist, as equally no tourist really calls it Playa de Muro because they think, or are told, that it is Alcúdia, which it isn’t.

The restaurant S’Albufera has a chalkboard sign outside, declaring the reality of its steak and the years of really having been a steak house. 30 years, it would seem. Why has the restaurant made this move? It is, it would appear, an escalation of the war against a newcomer to the steak battlefield. Where would we be without them? The Dakota restaurants.

Almost next door to S’Albufera and its thirty years of steaking claims is a new Dakota, but not only a tex-mex Dakota. This is a steak house Dakota. A large sign says so. Steak House in big letters with some steak, some flames and a grill just to make sure everyone gets the message. Everywhere a steak house and everywhere a picture of some flaming grill. Flaming on fire and not flaming as a euphemism for “damn”. The flames of the damned though, as the great steak war hots up.

Steak houses have taken over. They are the new, well, tex-mex, except they’re not new, just that everyone seems to want to be a steak house and everyone is promoting steak credentials. It had never really occurred to me that S’Albufera was a real steak house, as it’s always been plain S’Albufera. But when the war is joined, so some realism is chalked onto a blackboard. And when it comes to the Dakotas, the longevity is, how can one put it, rather open to interpretation. Unlike S’Albufera which had also not previously boasted about its generation-plus existence. Or maybe it had; just that no one had noticed.

Do people really want all this steak? Real or not. Maybe they do. There are steak houses, kids newly on blocks, that are doing a roaring and flaming steak trade, albeit mingled in with kebabs and whatever else fills out the menu. Steak house, like pizzeria, has become something of a catch-all. Restaurant We Do Everything. And it’s real.

We should really have a competition. Where is the most real steak? Which is the most real steak house? I can’t honestly help as I rarely eat steak – rare or well done. A friend once said that Los Tamarindos in Puerto Alcúdia did the best steak he had ever eaten. I confess it wasn’t bad. The solomillo at Satyricon in Alcúdia was magnificent, but that’s hardly somewhere you might classify as a steak house. Boy in Playa de Muro’s steak and meat come in the size of a cow, deliciously marinaded, but it calls itself a grill, as does Los Tamarindos. No steak house for either of these places, but they are, just as much as those which say they are real steak houses or steak houses with no statement as to being real or otherwise.

You cannot avoid steak. Whole herds of beef cow cut, sliced, flavoured, spitting, roasting, grilling. And all of it real. Unless it happens not to be.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Joy To The World

The tourism dignitaries have gathered in London for the World Travel Market. Today, Balearics Day at the trade fair, will see the premiere of the new Rafael Nadal advert for the Balearics. Let joy be unconfined.

What does any of this achieve? The World Travel Market is, in no small part, a set of shop windows for the industry, one that already knows about Mallorca and the Balearics. The same applies to corporate advertising, of the Nadal style. Not everyone may know about the Balearics, which does of course beg a significant question, but they (the consuming tourist public) know about Mallorca. Both the trade fair and the advertising act, at best, as a means of putting Mallorca in the “front of mind” of the industry and the consumer. But so does that of every other destination.

In “The Sunday Times” at the weekend there was a double-page colour advert for Andalucia. Some of the advertising for this region of Spain has been sensational. Its TV advert, luscious colours, dramatic scenery and vibrant flamenco chill music, was outstanding. But it was still an advert for a region. Just as advertising, of the Nadal variety, is for a region. It may all create attention and therefore, possibly, some action, but that is all it does. 

In the case of the Andalucia advert, there is a scrawled blurb across the two pages: “I want you to share my energy, my happiness, my strength, my warmth … A thousand monuments beyond compare. And just one question: When are you coming?” This last bit, the question, is the only good part of this. The rest is utterly ridiculous and pretentious. An attempt to make personal the impersonal, supported by a photo of a beach at sunset and a church in daytime. Whatever good it may achieve is undone by a small logo at the bottom which refers to “Junta de Andalucia”. Someone might have pointed out that the word “junta” has negative connotations where the British are concerned. 

Be this as it may. Advertising for Andalucia, for Turkey, for Egypt, for wherever you may care to mention, it all follows the same pattern. Mediterranean destinations tout the same things, the same sorts of images; they display warmth, sun, sea, culture, people, scenery. There is no differentiation. It is why much of the advertising is questionable. Its main purpose is to be there. In other words, it would be conspicuous by its absence. 

This advertising is part aspirational and part image-making, but it fits a particular aspirational class and one attracted by a specific image. For all that it is intended to promote the whole gamut of a destination’s offer, it does nothing of the sort. Holidaymakers are not a homogeneous group. They differ in all manner of respects. For this reason and for all the attention that gets paid to the Nadal-style corporate advertising (by the media and letter writers), it can only ever act as a starting-point (if that) or as a reinforcement to those already familiar with the island. 

How do those who sanction this promotion believe that the process then works? Do they assume that there exists a hierarchical decision-making system? At the top comes Nadal, then there is a series of moves before the holidaymaker chooses a specific resort or hotel. Is this how it is meant to work? If it doesn’t, and I don’t believe it does, then what’s the point of the thing at the top? This is how it used to work, back in the days when the family would be assaulted by Boxing Day adverts, opt for Mallorca and then head off to the nearest travel agency and pretty much have the choice of resort and hotel made for them.

Consumers take more or less as read the elements of a Mediterranean destination, be it Mallorca, Andalucia or wherever. They do so because the advertising and the images are essentially the same. As much as some consumers may work down from image advertising, they also work upwards, if not more so, in making their choices, without necessarily specifying a destination. And they all have different priorities, the satisfying of which is made in no small part through the informal channels of the internet – the forums, the blogs, the this, the that. The choice of a Turkey over a Mallorca lies largely with word of mouth, with a critical mass of recommendation, with a curious incuriosity that is the consequence of somewhere having become the latest in-place, and with a sense of “oh, let’s give that a try”. And much of this is predicated on price, on hotel (often all-inclusive), on specific offers, on what there is for the kids and all the rest. It is with the very detail of the holiday that the decision lies, not with the broad sweep of a Nadal on a yacht.

The tourism chiefs have singularly failed to understand the new dynamic of holiday decision-making or to appreciate the subversive influence of the internet; subversive in that, though these chiefs see the immense value of internet promotion, the internet acts independently of the corporate advertising. The real challenge lies in attempting to formalise the informal, of working this subversive element so that it favours a particular destination, and not just an island or a region, but a resort or even a particular complex. These chiefs need to cotton on to the reality of how consumers function on the internet, through social networks and so on, and to exploit these subversive factions themselves. If they don’t, all that lavish spending on corporate advertising is a waste.