Podcast
Communication Untangled
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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.
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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…
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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.
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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
Episode 4: Untangling Colour
Nathalie Nahai, behavioural psychologist and author of the book Webs of Influence, explains how colour shapes our decisions and affects our buying behaviour. And what it is about red that makes it the winning colour?
In this episode we’re talking colour psychology and how you can apply these techniques to your own website and branding.
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Visit Nathalie Nahai’s website where you can buy her books, listen to her podcast and discover useful resources.
About Nathalie Nahai
Nathalie’s background in human behaviour, web design and the arts offer a unique vantage point from which to examine the complex challenges we face today.
Her best-selling book: Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion has been adopted as the go-to manual by business leaders and universities alike, and her new book, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience, has been described as “One of the defining business books of our times”.
A popular speaker, consultant and facilitator to Fortune 500 companies, Nathalie also serves as a behavioural science advisor and helps organisations to ethically apply behavioural science principles to enhance their business.
Having lectured at some of the world’s most prestigious institutions, Nathalie's ability to ignite conversation and offer tools and strategies with which to harness human potential, has helped countless organisations transform how they approach business online, with clients including Google, Accenture, Unilever and Harvard Business Review, among others.
Having co-hosted the Guardian Tech Weekly, Nathalie now hosts the popular podcast, Nathalie Nahai In Conversation, which explores our relationship with one another, with technology, and with the natural world.
She is also the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change.
Episode 5: Untangling REVIEWS
Why do the thoughts of complete strangers have so much influence over our buying decisions? Trustist Founder Nigel Apperley explains the power of good reviews in your business, how to seek out ‘moments of delight’, and why a 4.7 rating is the sweet spot when choosing a restaurant.
Plus! How Ryanair mocks customers for their bad reviews – and still makes more sales.
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In this episode we meet Trustist founder Nigel Apperley. He has two decades of ecommerce expertise, at places like Slendertone and Waterford Wedgwood Royal Doulton. It was when he was Director of Ecommerce at Kwik-Fit that he really started to see a link between customer reviews and sales.
So he ran an experiment. He gathered up Google reviews, and showed them on the website and on screens in stores. And saw an average increase in revenue of over 50%.
Bit of a lightbulb moment!
So in 2014 he set up Trustist, a customer review platform which pulls together reviews from lots of different sources to give you stars in Google search results. Which leads to more clicks – and more sales!
Listen to our conversation and discover:
The power of ‘moments of delight’ and ‘review gating’
The right time to ask for a review?
Why a 4.7-star rating better than 5 out of 5
The impact of reviews on your conversion rate (and how to deal with bad ones)
The right question to ask for the most positive and useful response
Show notes
Read more about Nigel and the story of Trustist.
Find out how you can use Trustist to get more stars in Google search results, drive traffic, reach more customers, and streamline how you display positive reviews of your business.
See pics from the Ryanair we refer to and see Martha in her pink flamingo!
Episode 6: Untangling SIGNS
How do we tell people where to go? Author and transport expert Mark Ovenden joins us to talk about legends of design Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir and the critical role they played in the signage we see on motorways and airports today.
You’ll find out how patterns in the tiles on the London Underground were designed to help people with low literacy head in the right direction. We also take a break in the middle to find out why Sydney leads the world in wayfinding for people who are blind and visually impaired.
Oh, and look out for a woolly mammoth and a cow named Patience.
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Picture yourself, walking hastily through a hospital in a town you’ve never been to before, anxious and worried, trying to find the ward where your loved one is being treated.
Or it’s the middle of the night, your hotel is being evacuated, you’re half asleep, and it’s only because of the green lit symbols that you know which direction to run to get to safety.
At the centre of these critical moments in our lives are signs.
And I think we have a strangely intimate connection with them. Our minds are on much bigger, more urgent things, but it’s these signs that we are completely dependent on, even if just for a few seconds.
My guest on this episode is broadcaster Mark Ovenden, specialist in graphic design, cartography and architecture in public transport. He’s the author of some brilliant books including London Underground by Design, Transit Maps of the World, and 50 Iconic Metro Maps. He’s a mine of information on this subject.
Show notes
Find out about the City of Sydney’s wayfinding and signage for blind and visually impaired people here.
About Mark Ovenden
Mark Ovenden is an author, broadcaster and lecturer whose book sales on cartography and design are approaching a quarter of a million.
His 2017 one-hour TV documentary on typefaces for BBC4 was watched by 400,000. Mark brings “joyful insight and accessibility” to what might appear as technical subjects. Mark's infectious enthusiasm “enthrals audiences” in broadcasts, podcasts or lectures. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society with a social media following.
Born and brought up in London, Mark lived and worked in France and the USA. Before returning to his love of cartography in the early noughties, he worked as a presenter and producer for the BBC and commercial radio stations. As a kid, he built miniature TV studios out of Lego, set up a home radio station, collected old maps and explored abandoned train lines.
Mark became a newsreader/presenter for Manchester’s Kiss102 in 1994; joined Radio 1 in 1998; became a music programmer for MTV in 1999; then a producer at Atlantic252. In 2000, Mark moved to Ministry Of Sound Radio, then went back to TV.
The books came next: Metro Maps of The World, London Underground by Design, Transit Maps of The World, Metrolink: The First 25 Years, a guide to London Underground architecture and Metro Maps of the World. He fronted a documentary for Radio 4 in 2018 and produced a book on Airline Maps, followed by one about Underground Cities and a guide to Paris Metro Architecture.
More programmes, lectures and books are in the pipeline.
Connect with Mark at markovenden.com
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
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