In the beginning, God created the Internet, and saw that it was good. And God made the fonts of the Internet according to their kinds and all of the characters that creep upon the web according to their kind. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the documents and designs, and let the fonts multiply.” But they didn’t. For twenty years the same 12 fonts knocked around together wondering where in the hell the party was.

Public transport is not glamorous. Buses and trains do not usually inspire design monologues, but neither are they entirely devoid of art and culture. James McGoram explores the concept of a civic brand from a new angle, the view from his morning train.

To accept the premise of the AUT advertisement is to accept that we are in conflict with information. Designers are the chief strategists in this conflict.
Prior to what we now call Web 2.0, it was a battle fought mainly by competing businesses, vying for our attention, loyalties and ultimately, our money. That made it easy to understand. Curiously enough, user-generated content, file-sharing and social media have shuffled the deck, and the war is now being fought largely between businesses and, well, everyday consumers.

There was a time, and god knows it’s receding quickly, when I thought I could master design. I thought this way about a lot of things. It’s a contagion of youth, the earnest desire to be better at something than anyone has ever being, to seek new frontiers and map them for the human soul. You realise as you mature that there are some things in life you’ll never master, such as, for instance, the espresso machine that you bought last year. It lurks on the kitchen counter-top of your ostentatious studio, silently mocking your ineptitude.