Category Archives: graphic design

graphic design is a critical element in successful communications strategy

Business Card Synergy

A professionally designed business card makes a big difference in image and reputation.

Ready to punch up your brand? Contact Siebenthaler Creative for a fresh look that stands out.

Business Cards Pack Big Punch in Small Package

“Do you have a card?” Before the internet, before desktop publishing, before offset printing, before area and zip codes, business cards helped form the cornerstone of corporate communications, serving as a convenient method of introduction and an essential part of networking.

“Thanks for stopping by. Here’s my card.” Business cards were a required component of print basics that included a letterhead and a #10 envelope. Together, they formed a three-part package used to communicate with the market by every business from General Motors down to the village office supply.

“Would you like a card.” Harking back to a time when brick and mortar addresses formed the backbone of corporate and commercial customer interaction, today’s business card 2.0, still measuring only 3.5” x 2”, survived the digital transformation and remains a mighty addition to any communications toolkit.

Freed from the limitations of crude by today’s standards basic letterpress reproduction, these mini-billboards combine multi-color art, an infinite choice of typefaces and a rainbow of inks, a mind boggling selection of paper stock — not to mention a wide variety of other mediums including wood, metal, and plastic — and imaginative finishes including engraving, embossing, and laser etching and cutting, to create miniature masterpieces that are uniquely memorable.

“Workplace” — Office Design Before Covid

R/GA founder Bob Greenberg had no idea then that just four years later COVID would become the pandemic few foresaw coming and that no one had a plan for.

R/GA Documentary Ambushed by COVID

Documentary filmmaker Gary Hustwit’s examination of global agency R/GA’s decision to consolidate their New York City headquarters in Workplace couldn’t have been more prescient. Released in 2016, the movie explores the creative push that resulted in the open concept, two-floored new home to hundreds, in the world before Covid.

Hustwit’s reputation for delivering award-winning quality insight into the intersections of design and type with culture and society is unique. Workplace joins Objectified, Rams, Urbanized, and Helvetica in shedding considerable light on how our immediate environment influences our shared experiences.

Until there’s a real social or political revolution, the office will be a feature of global capitalism for a long time to come.

Is #WFH a Permanent Address?

In Workplace, Hustwit examines the thinking behind R/GA founder Bob Greenberg’s ideas for a unified office atmosphere that can physically drive creative inspiration, the agency’s lifeblood. The architectural firm Foster + Partners is tasked with delivering a functional concept that solves both the physical and psychological needs of one of the world’s top digital agencies that showcases technology and fosters collaboration.

Along the way, you’re introduced to euphemisms like huddle rooms and floor plate, as Hustwit covers the journey from existing quarters to imagined outcome through move-in day. Continue reading →

WYSIWYG Cloud App Makes CSS Simple

Gridlover CSS type

Gridlover CSS Type Styling App

File this one under the header of why I love the web. Gridlover’s simple, powerful, and free app lets you style your site CSS for type directly in your browser, and the WYSIWYG user interface make the experience pleasant, fast, and easy.

Typically, CSS type coding for your web site or individual page requires imagining what the results will look like, and that’s not always easy. Switching views back and forth in Dreamweaver can be tiresome, and introducing variables like line height, scale (between tags), and font size tend to get bogged down, if not impossible when you’re dealing with thousandths of whatever metric you prefer – pixels, ems, or SCSS.

What About Web Fonts?

Web fonts? Previewing the results typically requires updating the code and previewing online, which isn’t exactly elegant. Seeing the end result in Gridlover simply requires pasting in the HREF link and you’re there.

Try it yourself and see why using Gridlover to set up your type style sheet is a no-brainer. It puts the fun back in designing your site’s typography, instead of a chore that has to be dealt with.

Saul Bass — America’s Designer

Saul Bass — Contemporary Graphic Design

In the latter half of the 20th century, nobody was busier – or better – than graphic designer Saul Bass when it came to movies, TV, print, and corporate branding.

His title design work for the movie blockbusters of the day — films like North By Northwest, Anatomy of A Murder, The Man With The Golden Arm, Vertigo, and many others — is still revered for its attention demanding content and arresting concepts.

Saul Bass was the graphic force that single-handedly changed the look and feel of American popular and corporate culture. His signature style was applied to virtually everything that had to do with print, film, or television, long before branding became a thing.

West Side Story — A Masterpiece That Stands Alone

The prologue intro and title for West Side Story is perhaps the single greatest movie title ever designed. Taken together, the two components are 10 minutes long, and set the stage for the film epic to follow.

Adding to the impressive design is the fact that at the time, there weren’t any multi-plex cinemas. When you went to the movies, you watched in an auditorium with 600 or 700 other viewers, gathered together and gazing up at a screen designed for viewing wide aspect CinemaScope or PanaVision stretching to the ceiling.

Before Apple, It Was All Done By Hand

Students today should be reminded that his complex and complicated movie title sequences were conceptualized and produced long before digital design software could even be imagined, let alone implemented. Then, accuracy was measured with a wooden ruler, a stopwatch, a film cutter, and some tape. A minor note, he did all this without Google and YouTube for reference.

His unique approach to title sequences was a spectacular break from the cookie-cutter template marketing methods cranked out by studios that had evolved little from the early days of film. His dramatic style used static design elements to convey mood, feeling, and focus to what had been traditional for the sake of tradition — and it worked.

Today, two-plus decades since his death, his work from a half-century ago remains vital, and is itself a continuing source of inspiration across a variety of media.

Logos to Trademarks—Masters of Their Craft

Chermayeff Geismar & Haviv Set The Bar

60 Years of Logos: Chermayeff & Geismar from Dress Code on Vimeo.

If you watch television, use the post office, have a checking account, buy gasoline, or enjoy modern art, you’ve seen their work. Driven by both research and pure instinct, the duo is responsible for a library’s worth of abstract marks and recognizable logotypes that continue to withstand the test of time.

In one short (~3′) video, design legends Ivan Chermayeff* and Tom Geismar discuss their founding, the early days, what makes a mark memorable, and how they’ve planned for their iconic firm’s future in a global environment of design on demand, ranging from crowd sourced adventure to template driven desperation to cattle call design auctions that start at the bottom and usually progress downward.

Two Legendary Designers On Memorable Careers

In this video the unassuming pair go on record about the formative years, their staying power, and what they bring to the highly competitive table of corporate communications and graphic design. Whether you’re a client or a designer, what they have to say is invaluable in charting a communications course.

Born in London in 1932, *Ivan Chermayeff died in December, 2017, at age 85.

the 1st amendment, defined

“Dear Donald, Americans are frustrated and angry and scared.” More in today’s Daily Heller https://t.co/bfSH5L0BRK pic.twitter.com/fIXA7SpEOR

— Print magazine (@printmag) July 20, 2016

Designer, CEO Team Up to Deliver A Powerful Political Statement to Nation

In today’s hypercharged political atmosphere there’s a lot of talk, often uninformed, about the Constitution’s Bill of Rights and what the First Amendment means, depending on the point being conveyed.

One citizen’s bold response to the Republican’s damaged nominee for President.

This is an example of civics and citizenship that combines freedom of speech and freedom of the press in an elegantly crafted statement regarding the Republican party’s 2016 nominee for President of the United States. An important component in the process was the cleanly Spartan design of the full page advertorial.

Agree or not, this private citizen took the time, and wrote a very sizeable check, to participate in a thoughtful, non-commercial attempt to influence public opinion.

the forgotten paper cabinet

Paper Cabinets A Relic Of Times Past

As a freelancer for most of my career and an agency and publications creative director on several occasions, having a paper cabinet wasn’t just an item of convenience. It was a necessity.

Cabinet wasn’t a euphemism either. More carpentry than not, they were close to one-offs assembled out of board stock and covered in turn with a premium stock, intended to house that company’s product line. My favorite for functional storage was from Zellerbach, then a Mead company, that served as home to a wide variety of samples from various manufacturers.

When it was time to present, the swatchbook (and a couple of alternates) was pulled from the cabinet and joined the comps at the conference table, along with PMS swatches in a separate pile. All in all a formidable display of design competence.

Paper reps called on a regular basis, loaded down with their employer’s latest sample swatchbooks that needed a home in your paper cabinet. They plied you with gorgeous printed spec, and swayed you with stacks of examples that were often graded by sheer weight and mass.

Coated, uncoated, text, cover, specialty, premium – these were just part of the extended lexicon of labels that described the various functions of unique products produced by a number of paper manufacturers both domestic and imported.

Pick Paper First, Then Design For Effect

From basic newsprint to duplex card stock, creative directors, art directors, and designers would often reach for their samples box first, then design a project to match the latest product.

Champion Colorcast and Kromekote were two such unique surfaces that in turn dictated a design that could best address the visual properties of the paper. It wasn’t quite cart before the horse, but close enough.

One metallic coated paper I wanted to use wound up being printed as a spot color using a silver metallic ink to good effect.

A side benefit of the competition between what were then independent paper manufacturers was the deluge of design aids in the form of spec books filled with examples of an endless variety of techniques to enhance the paper used for demonstration.

It’s Time To Pitch

When it was time to present, the swatchbook (and a couple of alternates) was pulled from the cabinet and joined the comps at the conference table, along with PMS swatches in a separate pile. All in all a formidable display of design competence.

And then came digital, and web ordering, and overnight shipping, and print-on-demand. Today’s paper cabinet like this version from Neenah is a nifty app – technically superior, but lacking the warmth of tactile feedback.

Ideas and progs are these days mostly presented digitally (PDFs) – faster, cleaner, and ready to finalize. Physical comps are themselves more a vestige of bygone days, having given way to the export from a close to final design document of a ready for approval two-dimensional screen display.

Most of what’s printed today – defined by ink on paper – is arrived at without the messy necessity of one-time, handmade comps created by pros.

Desktop publishing’s local democratization of the process has dumbed down the workflow to a couple of barely considered steps: crappy, template driven layouts, cheap looking overused fonts with applied effects, and a couple of paper choices. Presto! Everyone’s an expert!

Truthfully, I wouldn’t want to go back to the way things were. And truthfully, I’m glad I was around for the experience.

converting ms word glop to dreamweaver html

in Dreamweaver, edit>paste special

How-To: Copying Word Docs Into Dreamweaver HTML

Dreamweaver isn’t the worst environment for composing long copy, but it’s far from being the most comfortable. Text editing programs, including BBEdit, Text Wrangler, any plain vanilla text or word processing application, OpenOffice, and the most user installed editing app, Microsoft Word, are usually better suited to the task.

While Word is my least favorite creative application, it’s the one I usually turn to when composing long copy for my web sites.

I’m not interested in Word’s clunky “styling” gimmicks or to-be-avoided-at-all costs so-called HTML coding. I’m just looking for a comfortable writing environment and for that Word works out okay. (I’ve recently made the jump to Scrivener, which if you can navigate the well documented learning curve is absolutely the best environment to work in for writers everywhere. When finished, it compiles your work into a Word doc.)

On the other hand, Word’s formatting and styling quirks are a major pain if you try the most direct route of copy and paste to transfer the content into Dreamweaver. One reason is all the overhead metric garbage that comes along for the ride in a typical copy and paste scenario. Here’s how Dreamweaver solves that problem. (Word to InDesign uses an entirely different workflow: copy/paste, drag/drop, place. Lynda.com has a good intro tutorial here.) Continue reading →

need social visuals? hire a designer!

Effective Design Doesn’t Happen Without Talent

I can say with full confidence that every list ever posted promising content tips for improving your social media message, including blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, will include a requirement for “great visuals”. This post is typical, recognizing the need without acknowledging the talent required to produce art that motivates.

It’s not a heavy lift to reach that fundamental conclusion. It’s the how that usually ends up badly, as simple lip-service from the aesthetically challenged on what constitutes professional graphic design begins from a standpoint of basic ignorance of the subject.

Real guidance on achieving that lofty goal gets murky real fast. There’s very seldom a follow-up discussion on how compelling art is actually created, or how to make the subjective design judgements that are the essential DNA of an art or creative director’s job description.

One good place to start is with an appreciation for the differences between an illustrator and a designer. These are not interchangeable, even though they often overlap, and expertise in one area is no guarantee that talent carries over to the other.

It’s as if those great visuals so easily referenced as the mother’s milk of social media marketing are created with the wave of an intern’s magic kittens and string GIF wand, or by HR invoking a binding PNG spell, aided and abetted by Word’s draw extension.

The reality? Effective art isn’t an off-the-shelf commodity. It’s specialized talent that knows there’s never, ever a time to use Comic Sans if the goal is to be taken seriously. Or that Bevel and Emboss with Texture, added to a logotype of sorts sourced from an obscure MS Office font, doesn’t so much sing gloriously about brand originality as it cries out in all to painfully obvious embarrassment to everyone about the creator’s shortcomings.

Invest in Original Graphic Design for Great Results

Your friends won’t tell you, but I will: ugly doesn’t improve with time.

Within the context of social media, visuals are usually derived from photographs, illustrations, or a combination of the two. They can be used as is or modified, combined, or sampled and combined with type elements and shapes. This series of PRSA event promos I designed illustrates the point.

Colors can be shifted, shapes and objects distorted. The best visuals are unique to their specific environment, not warmed over leftovers. From social cover art and profile badges to press release supplements and web site assets, creative visual is not only desirable, but essential.

The Difference? Superior Engagement Versus Abandonment

And where are the sources for that exceptional visual content everyone is looking for? Begin with a creative director for concepts and execution. Art directors turn an idea into a finished product using various visuals, distinctive styles, and element arrangements. Pick a copywriter for a well turned phrase or snappy tagline that can catapult a campaign. Graphic designers. Illustrators. Photographers. Typographers. All play a strategic role in creating effective content of value.

So while everyone pretty much understands the role of visual content and what it brings to a message, greatness is achieved through actual talent and training, not just by proclaiming the task done and hoping for the best.