This week's show reverberates to some light jazz and the clatter of ice in a cocktail shaker. Our hosts raise a v-shaped glass to the late, great Sir Roger Moore.
The chaps return to talking about education and the best way forward for people looking to further their design education. The martinis don't help them make their minds up. Or much sense.
This episode is bookended with recipes from dead celebrities. Jon wings it with one of Linda McCartney's Vegetarian Country pies. Like her singing, it's not very good.
If this week’s North V South sounds a bit tinny at the beginning, don't worry, that’s just Rob’s medicine being opened. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world*, Jon hunts a Gruffalo and rescues a rabbit†.
We look forward to newly launched magazines: Pressing Matters and Typenotes. Rob wonders if Ryan Gosling’s new Blade Runner will deliver the Golden Goose’s egg or perhaps a pickled egg? Judge Dredd is coming to TV. Will they get Mega City One right?
NVS met up earlier this week and saw Paula Scher deliver a fascinating talk at the Royal Geographical Society in Knightsbridge. She was promoting a new book on her life’s work by Unit Editions called Paula Scher: Works. Hear the chaps discuss what they made of it.
Rob scoffs a Higgidy Chicken, bacon and mushroom pie while Jon chomps his way through a delicious rabbit and bacon pie. He is not happy with the new label for Timothy Taylor’s Landlord.
TTD
† Jon later enjoys a rabbit and bacon pie. These events are not connected.
Another episode that’s as painful as a tooth extraction. Which is exactly what Mr Turpin has been though this week. Jon drinks a beer so strong that it explains his subsequent descent into gibberish.
News this week includes a farewell to the creator of the Bash Street Kids, a map identification schematic and a grouchy gripe about digital content ownership. Ordanance Survey we’re looking at you. From behind the tumulus.
Our hosts then talk about process versus creativity. Can one exists without the other? Can either be taught? Why is Jon talking about medieval misericords? Listen on to find out more…
Both pies are from Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference range. Jon’s Chicken and Ham doesn’t taste any different to chicken soup. Rob’s Chicken and Porcini could do with a grind of the old mill. He’s never far from heavy industry that lad.
Sit tight for the next hour and a half (you ‘eard) of regionally-opposed design-related discourse: It’s the 50th episode of the podcast that is and isn’t about design.
This week’s special edition looks at the A-Z of typography. Our two presenters are hardly the font of all type knowledge but they’ve been bold and taken a pica into the wonderful world of type.
It's 11am. Rob eats a truffled pie washed down with a beer. Jon has a freshly baked custard tart and a cup of coffee. He’s not an animal.
Self doubt in design
This week North V South looks at self doubt. Self doubt can be crippling but it also drives some designers and artists to produce great work. How can you find a healthy balance in your working life? Is it possible? Do you need to be a superstar or work for the biggest brands to get satisfaction in your work? Who knows. What we do know is that there will always be pies. Listen on, dear listener…
Like the Kleeneze man, North V South turns up unannounced at random times in the day and then outstays its welcome.
This week the guardians of the drifting space hulk HMS NVS listen in to faded radio waves from the motherworld about a man correcting grammar on the streets of Bristol, photographs of stranded ships and Jean-Michel Jarre's French Bulldog-shaped speakers.
Rob and Jon then have a gander at their three favourite pieces of graphic design. Jon, as usual, questions the question and slides further into self doubt and paranoia. Rob drinks a couple of excellent German beers.
Pies are of the pork variety. Oh, and would you like to buy some magic dusters?
Whether it’s a new series, season or the hiatus has just an extended break, North V South is back. The clamours for the return of the podcast that is, and isn’t, about design have been relentless. If by relentless I mean entirely lacking, then that’s exactly what I mean.
Our good gentle hosts prattle on about what they’ve been up to over the last five weeks. They then furkle through tidbits of news they’ve kept at the back of the fridge.
It’s a good week for pies. Jon would like to adjust his score from a six to a seven. To find out more you’ll have to listen to the podcast.
In the final episode of this current series North V South catches up with the presenters’ own personal projects and they ponder upon why it’s so hard being your own client.
Rob and Jon look into the continuation of the 2016 pigment wars, Google’s Blade Runner-ish image technology, McLaren’s Trump-coloured car and Ian Livingston’s return to writing Fighting Fantasy books. Jon uses the phrases “anal fistula” and “shout out”. For this, North V South apologises.
Pies are quite good this week.
See you in a few weeks!
News this week includes David Hockney’s strange Sun newspaper collaboration, filter out the bad stuff with The Good News Network and an introduction to nanography, whatever that might be.
This week North V South looks at design for good.
North V South has reached its first birthday, the very existence of which is an utter miracle.
The duo sit, wrapped in their Space Wolf furs, droning on about drones, Barnbrook, IKEA’s latest award, Lego Life and Peta’s recent bonkers broadside at the futuristic world of Warhammer 40,000.
Rob and Jon abandon their monochromatic homelands and go on a quest for a fabled colour utopia. Along the way they talk about colour perception, colour management, colour archives and why choosing colour is so damned hard.
Listen on to find out if canned pies can indeed taste nice, and why the term gluten free should never be applied to pies.
Hello and welcome to 2017. We're a bit late off the mark due to illness and business, so we start the year with an apology. Which is probably apt, given the state of the world at the moment.
The chaps catch up post-Christmas and look forward to what's in store for each of them in 2017. In amongst that is some news about Wacom's new sketchy gadget, tech trends, the new Star Wars film (SPOILER ALERT!) and The KLF.
Chicken pies are served. Only one of them may possibly have been made by Her Majesty. The other one died in vain.
It’s Christmas time. There’s no need to be afraid. It’s just NVS in its Janus mask. That’s Janus, so stop your sniggering. We look back over the year and try to find positives in a sea of bad ju-ju.
Pies in space: No, not one of Rob’s less grubby fantasies, but a reality thanks to the Wigan World Pie Eating Championships. Who said British endeavour was dead? Other news includes a new skyscraper for London, 2000AD coming to a tabletop near you and a rather expensive bottle of whisky that comes embedded in a tree.
This week the podcast welcomes its first ever guest: Mr Aled Lewis. Aled is an illustrator and designer based in London. Aled talks about his career so far and how he got started in the creative industry.
There’s not much time for news this week but the boys look at the end of the Pick Me Up show, Jessica Hische’s automated response generator and the BBC program about the graphic designer with Parkinson’s. Is it dusty in here? There’s something in my eye.
Christmas presents: What’s on the wish-list, what not to buy and what the chaps think are great gifts for your loved ones (that deep down you secretly covet for yourself.)
Pies this week came from Betty’s in Yorkshire, courtesy of the very lovely Hannah Wilson. North V South records the world’s (possibly) very first Mince Pie Consumption Simulcast™.
Rob clings to a glass of port in a stormy week, while Jon sips Early Grey from porcelain, pinky aloft, monocle firmly clenched in his roving eye.
As Pebble plummets into the ocean of redundant tech we wonder if smartwatches are actually not that smart. Jon’s hair is ruffled by Google’s wind-powered server farms, while Rob’s syrup stays in place with a dab of Bostonian molasses.
This week the gents ponder over the pearls of wisdom they would cast upon their younger selves. If only they would just listen…
Pies are mincey. It’s nearly Christmas after all.
This week’s episode is filled to the brim with mince. That’s enough about our hosts and, so, on with the show.
News this week includes stuff about Manhattan, Grayson Perry, Wetransfer, The Smiths and Mr Bill Drummond.
The chaps talk about scheduling work, worrying about the cliff and what they do to try to bring order to their work.
It’s December and so begins our intrepid explorers’ hunt for the UK’s best mince pie. Rob’s off to a strong start and Jon had to nip to Co-op because he’d forgotten it was December.
North V South doesn’t let British rail and broadband providers’ ineptitude get in the way of producing another show that is and isn’t about design.
In episode 38, news this week includes a look at the Frankenstein’s monster of Apple’s new festive ad. Rob asks whether the new Hockney windows at Westminster Abbey are going to look out of place? And Jon asks if VR is going to change the art world? (Answer: no.)
Today we climb on board the USS Palomino and journey into cultural black holes. There’s a difference in approach between the known unknowns Rob) and the unknown unknowns (Jon). Rob fares better as Jon couldn’t figure out what the unknown unknowns were because he didn’t know.
Pies are then reviewed.
North V South is full of love this week. This week we explore the ifs, whys and wherefores about loving design. Listen to the chaps turn a simple question into an existential primal scream.
We’re back. Before you even noticed we’d gone. The world may have changed inexorably in our absence but we’re still banging on about the same old rubbish, so listen on, dear listener…
News this week looks at Toblerone’s gap in the market, Kingsmill bread and a Lego Yellow Submarine complete with Fab Four Minifigs.
The chaps then talk about their pet hates. Get ready for a moanfest.
Ding dong. Rob gets all Christmassy this week with his pie. It is November after all.
In this special Hallowe’en episode we fail to mention Hallowe’en once. Spooky!
This week the all-seeing eyeball roams over Hogarth’s Gin Lane reimagined, Somerset House’s fillip for artists, Vine’s demise and, finally, rants over a rash of pretentious Kickstarter campaigns. Frenzied!
Rob explores the ins and outs of selling your own work as an illustrator. He uses words like monetise. Shocking!
Pies this week include a vegetarian pie from a butchers. Horror!
“Communication let me down, And I’m left here.” So said Spandau Ballet. It was about the only time they ever made any sense. Good video too. Where was I? Oh yes, this week the chaps are talking about how they communicate with clients – or not as may be the case.
Yo! News this week includes a Japanese-themed rebrand for the UK-based sushi chain. A truck with video screens built in to reduce road deaths. And a snappy new logo for Kodak predictably plucked from the archives. But what packaging!
This week’s pie was sent to us by Mike Sullivan, top designer and top chef too, it turns out. The venison, skirt, onion and mushroom pie scores a whopping 19 out of 20. Sensational. He’d even put fancy lattice bits on the top.
