The Partners have a knack of coming up with award winning ideas, so for their latest Summer BBQ posters, they decided to burn one (amongst other things). We caught up with Kevin Lan, Design Director at The Partners, to find out more.
Hi Kev. Thanks for the taking the time to speak with us. In true Partners fashion, no corner is left unturned when it comes to ‘branding’ The Partners’ annual Summer BBQ – with invitations, posters, signage, decorations… Does it get harder each year to come up with fresh ideas?
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Yes totally. We’ve had a summer barbecue at the Partners for as long as I can remember. Over the last few years we’ve changed the format a little – it used to be just for employees, an opportunity for us to let your hair down in an over elaborate way (ridulous fancy dress). The last three years have been a little more sober and we’ve opened it up and invited our friends and families along to enjoy the fun. Naturally as soon as you start sending invites out to other graphic designers – things start hotting up a little bit…
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Our brief is quite simple, produce the branding theme (ususally an invite and posters/decorations) for the barbecue. Because we want to maximise the amount that we can spend on booze and grub, our aim is to spend as little as possible, so there’s no fancy foil blocked mailers – it’s all about the idea and communicating that idea as simply as you can.
How did you come up with the idea? And how difficult was it to convince people that this was a sane thing to do?
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Funny you should ask that. We have a Friday meeting at work – called the crossed cow (the name of our blog infact). It’s an opportunity for everyone to get together and catch up on any news and events that might have happened in the week, while having a few beers and a bit of a laugh. If I remember correctly, the date was announced at this particular 2c’s and my brain, lubricated with a couple of becks, spat out the idea of burning designers’ objects. I told Greg (Quinton) – the Partners’ Creative Partner, and he loved the idea. So that was that. Then I had to work out how the heck we were going to do it…?!
You mentioned on The Crossed Cow. that burning the stuff was really dangerous, any good stories to tell?
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It was completely unexpected – we didn’t have a clue what was going to happen. We had a whole list of items that we were planning to barbecue and a very small pink barbecue – the kind that you can buy from Argos for about £10. We had a couple of paper based objects that we guessed would just go up in flames; an old Pantone swatch book and the Partners ‘bible’: A Smile in the Mind. We started cooking them and just let the barbecue do the work really. The heavier objects were a little bit more uncertain. We had a damaged iMac that had been sitting upstairs, an old Macbook Pro (that escaped the flames in the end) and a couple of other ‘designer objects’ that had been lying around the studio (pencil shaped awards etc). We put them on one by one and waited… and waited… and waited.
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Of course you soon realise that an iMac, made of aluminium and glass isn’t exactly going to burn so we thought we’d help them along a bit with some lighter fluid and a mini blow torch. Yes, it was super toxic and not exactly the most eco-friendly of things to do, the iMac made all kinds of cracking and popping sounds as it was heating up. Anything could have potentially could have come flying out. But luckily no children, animals, or designers were harmed in the making of these photographs – we got some truly stunning objects out of it, and set about photographing them.
Did you really burn a D&AD pencil?
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It wouldn’t have been a designer barbecue if we hadn’t have burnt the real things!
To view the posters in high-resolution, and for more information, visit The Partners’blog – The Crossed Cow.
Add Share
13th Sep 2011
9:46 am
Lovely. A great idea and brilliantly done. Only fair of D&AD to award it a pencil to replenish the stock!
Now you’d better get thinking about next year…
®
Jan
13th Sep 2011
10:05 am
Stupid!
Rob
13th Sep 2011
11:21 am
why burn a book? and a computer? (i’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s broken). Not big or clever is it.
Jennie
13th Sep 2011
11:37 am
If you bothered to read the article you would know that it was broken.
Great idea once again from TP!
Tom
13th Sep 2011
11:50 am
I get it and I like the finished posters. But it’s just typical of a design industry, if it’s old or broken chuck it away. The computer could have been fixed, given to a student placement or to a local college or a community center who would have put it to good use. It can barely be 3 years old!!!
The pantone swatch book could have been given to a college or again, a graduate or auctioned off – they ain’t cheap!!!
And to burn a pencil is just cockey.
So much for make do and mend.
Sean
13th Sep 2011
11:50 am
It does mention in the article that the iMac was broken, I’m assuming the Pantone book is an old one, and The Partners have an abundance of Smile in the Mind’s…
As for burning a D&AD pencil… Madness! But typical of TP, going that extra mile.
Tom
13th Sep 2011
12:37 pm
So if a computer is ‘broken’ it can’t possibly be fixed so it should be burnt?!
Sorry Sean and Jennie but that’s just a bloody stupid way to think.
Dom
13th Sep 2011
12:51 pm
Succeeds perfectly in getting \"designer bbq\" across, and the posters are great visually. But I can\’t help thinking it\’s outweighed in the lack of thought by burning things people could get benefit from.
@seanboothy
13th Sep 2011
12:53 pm
i think these are great.
So what they burnt an old broken iMac – it’s their Mac, they paid for it and it was gathering dust so it’s gone to some good use I say. An old Pantone book is near useless and as for the pencil – it’s The Partners pencil.
I think I might set fire to the 3 G5s we’ve got lying around in our office
Sean
13th Sep 2011
1:07 pm
Tom, I don’t think The Partners are in the habit of burning things whenever they brake down.
To spell it out for you, the Mac, and the other objects were burnt to create these posters to advertise & invite their friends in the design industry to their BBQ.
If anything, the poster has given the dead Mac a new purpose.
Ben
13th Sep 2011
1:20 pm
I can\’t believe how sensitive people are about burning things! The K Foundation burnt a Million Quid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Quid
The mouse poster is ace.
Andy
13th Sep 2011
1:30 pm
Why are people saying “the computer could’ve been fixed”, that’s like saying to a James Bond Director, don’t blow up the Aston Martin, it’s a waste and I could drive it…
Plus, the Mac was free to burn, and would cost money to fix. Therefore it was cheaper to burn.
AlexPiercy
13th Sep 2011
1:58 pm
This is a great concept, and executed brilliantly!
As for burning the mac / pencil / book… Get over it. Its a small sacrifice for a great idea.
It would be interesting to know which award winning project they sacrificed the D&AD yellow pencil for though.
Kevin
13th Sep 2011
2:05 pm
I can understand your frustrations about the ‘aimless’ burning of what may be deem as a perfectly good computer. Don’t worry, the iMac in question had already stripped of all it’s useable parts – the logic board was trashed and the screen had been replaced with non functioning one. The fact that we ‘resused’ this iMac for a purpose other than filling another landfill site gave it another life, if only for this debate.
Sean
13th Sep 2011
7:40 pm
Thanks for clearing that up for us, Kev.
Andy Russell
14th Sep 2011
5:17 pm
It’s cool, get over it…
Jid
14th Sep 2011
8:46 pm
Much more heinous things have been done in the name of design than burning a broken computer and a used Pantone book. Nice work.
Robbie
15th Sep 2011
12:26 pm
Was the booked trashed too? No ones mentioned the fact that setting fire to an expensive book is stupid. It’s stupid.
Jonathan
15th Sep 2011
1:58 pm
I’m not getting into the debate on the rights and wrongs of burning stuff I will say though visually they look beautiful. I would of liked to of shot them, nice work.
Samuel Michael
16th Sep 2011
5:00 pm
Makes me feel uneasy – it’s a barbecue… a gathering of people for a company who obviously have money to burn. send some work my way…
Stephen K
17th Sep 2011
2:09 am
This is not a cleaver idea, it’s designer w*ank.
AlexPiercy
20th Sep 2011
12:29 pm
Your right Stephen, it’s not a cleaver idea… it’s a clever idea.
oscark
20th Sep 2011
1:53 pm
Firstly, well done AlexPiercy on picking up Stephen’s spelling mistake. You clearly are a cleaver ****!?!
Not a particularly interesting idea. Screams of a 1st year student trying to cause controversy with his/her tutors. Good posters but a company of their quality should be able to do this with their eyes closed.
D.Kyle
22nd Sep 2011
12:32 am
I like the concept but I don’t like the finished piece. Don’t understand how posters work as an invite but I take it there is more to the design.
I have had the book, ‘A Smile In The Mind
’ and if I had to choose a book to burn, which isn’t something I would normally do but if I had to it would be that one. Its a good witty book but it is one that got ruined from tutors ramming it down my throat.
I think people are being a bit touchy I think the concept and outcome reflect the agency which seems to be the nature of the project, but cant help notice how small and silly the barbecue looks. It looks teeny.
Paz
6th Oct 2011
7:33 pm
An “idea” that sums up perfectly everything that’s wrong with this industry. I sincerely hope they breathed enough of the toxic fumes.
Bull
7th Oct 2011
11:40 am
Come on folks, this is one of the few times when graphic design has actually approached becoming art — something designers are constantly whining about.
The act of destroying the paraphernalia of a given culture is how a lot of great art is born, as Ben mentioned above (K Foundation). You might say the same of Marcel Duchamp, who claimed his piece ‘The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even’ was only complete once it had been accidentally smashed in transit. Michael Landy destroyed all his possessions as a live art installation, including pieces by Hirst and Emin.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1162348.stm
The point to be made is that on the surface the BBQ thing is a novelty and makes for some pretty posters — however, I put it to you, good people of FFF, that these posters represent an all too infrequent assault on the ‘stuff’ that we as designers tend to value, and which ultimately get between us and what we so frequently strive and fail to achieve.
I also agree with Ben’s other contribution, the mouse poster is frikkin’ BOSS
Andy
7th Oct 2011
1:57 pm
Don’t ceramic artists basically burn toxic things in the name of art? I don’t see how this is any different. Why is it so terrible that these guys created some really interesting objects with the magic of flame? That’s what ceramists do every day, and I, for one, love wood fired ceramics. I think most people can appreciate that, so why not this?
Laura
18th Oct 2011
8:39 pm
geeze guys… like no one else would take the awesome opportunity to burn this kind of stuff… Pantone books are only good for about a year, and a broken computer is a broken computer. That award, well it is one hell of a conversation starter now. Super awesome posters! How fun. Kind of wish I could have burned something….. stress relief right there!