Category Archives: graphic design

graphic design is a critical element in successful communications strategy

designing for variables – involve, evolve

2011/09 Chris Bangle of Chris Bangle Associates from Creative Mornings/London on Vimeo.

Our speaker at the August 2011 CreativeMornings/London was Chris Bangle, formerly design director at BMW Group and now running Chris Bangle Associates. (chrisbangleassociates.com/) The event was generously hosted by Buro Happold (burohappold.com) and Sense Worldwide (senseworldwide.com). Breakfast was provided by the amazing folks at L’Eto Caffe (155 Wardour Street, Soho) and Vantra (11-13 Soho Street, Soho). Finally, a big shout out to ‘Femi T for providing her photography services on the day.

CreativeMornings is a monthly breakfast lecture series for creative types. Each event is free of charge, and includes a 20 minute talk, plus coffee! You can currently join us in New York, Zurich, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. (creativemornings.com)

A big thank you to Nick Culley (nicecreation.co.uk/) for filming and editing the talk.

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chris bangle presentation promotes design accessibility

This provocative August, 2011 Creative Morning/London presentation argued the benefits of extending the design decision loop beyond the purely economic realm of client-designer, and the potential effects a new style of style and design involvement could have on driving societal change.

CreativeMornings is a publicly available series of short hosted seminars and presentations that take place monthly in cities around the globe. Founded and administered by Tina Roth Eisenberg, best known for her SwissMiss design studio and blog, CreativeMornings brings fresh and original insight on design’s role in our daily lives. If you’re lucky enough to live in one of the cities served, you’re already aware of the very high content quality. If not, the second-to-none production quality on the videos is the next best thing to sitting in the audience.

product design hits and misses

Fast Company Cries Foul

since you put it that way, what was erik thinking?

Who says you can’t beat that dead horse? Fast Company compares Ulysses to Barcolounger! Whoop! Buell gets a posthumous dressing down over on Fast Company’s Design channel. Their current pictorial serves up a night and day visual of the role design plays in the consumer acceptance cycle. Message? I guess you know it when you see it. Screw around too much and you’ll pay the price: see iPod vs. (M.C.) Hammer clown pants over on the United States of Design for rock solid proof of usually avoidable consequences based on (bad) taste alone. Which is why the t.v. audience for Boise State home games will never exceed friends and family.

business needs rich media pr talent

manship prssa class of 2010

Mark Ragan’s PR Daily post by Arik Hanson highlights perfectly the growing demand for well rounded PR practitioners in the Twin Cities, a need that’s extendable throughout the country.

In it, Mr. Hanson cites employers scrambling for capable content providers or, as he phrases it, media producers. To me that translates into photojournalists, storytellers, videographers and to a lesser extent verbal audio specialists. Add to that list basic graphic design awareness.

facebook’s not enough to make me look

When I visited LSU’s Manship School of Communications (above) as a guest portfolio reviewer for the PRSSA Class of 2010, I was surprised that the current generation – fluent in texting, IM and facebook – was by and large incapable of producing a rich media story on their own. Continue reading →

temp tattoos from tattly

no committment, no worries

Tattly, the latest effort from talented designer and founder of Swiss Miss graphics blog Tina Eisenberg, offers witty, low cost personal entertainment and a tempting opportunity for powersports brand and marketing managers.

The collection of expertly designed messages and icons includes “knucks,” the answered prayer for every personal injury attorney who enjoys masquerading on weekends as a Sons of Anarchy patchholder. Add fighting rings and you’re done.

newsletter marketing: old dog, new tricks

designing for success

When the Tampa Bay chapter of PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) parsed the results of a 2010 member poll, one tool that stood out as a bulwark against membership drops that could also be used to attract new sign-ups: the bi-monthly newsletter. (Download your copy here.)

Overshadowed by the online glamour of social media, just the word “newsletter” seems like something out of an era of television before cable. In all too many organizations the newsletter is treated as a neglected stepchild before being thrust upon a skeptical public, doomed to languish in the backwaters of committee paralysis rather than being deployed as a dynamic marketing tool on the communications frontline. For more newsletter production tips read my Top Five Digital Newsletter Basics.

Continue reading →

tim tebow: just do it just got better

here’s how viral’s done

There’s not much Tim Tebow does that I don’t like. Actually, there’s nothing he does that I don’t like, and a whole lot that I do. His new web site timtebow.com has a fresh look, his YouTube collection’s growing, and he’s keeping his head above water in the Denver altitude.

If this ad was built around anyone else, it would be a laugher. Instead, it just brings a smile to my face. Role model? It doesn’t get any better.

my (really big) kodachrome moment

scale of enlargement? try 12,000 percent

In the mid-’70s a client wondered if the new design trend utilizing large format color prints could be adapted for the welcome center to a golf course subdivision on Florida’s West Coast. One of the labs I used at the time – Dallas based Meisel who then also had a lab in Atlanta – was actively promoting the concept, including some of my own stock.

It was only when the finished size required was measured against the original media used to produce the image that eyebrows raised. My plan: shoot the scene, an early morning dew drenched landscape of a green framed with Spanish moss, on 35 mil transparency. In my mind it was simple: load up a Leica factory loaner with K25 and fire away.

Today, December 30, 2010, is the last day a roll of Kodachrome will ever be processed. It is the end of an era, the end of a very large chapter in the history of photography. Read more of my story here.

dunlop wants you to know

download dunlop online magazine

Dunlop’s 68-page Download Magazine is their most recently distributed PDF contribution to online publishing. This issue includes features on the Isle of Man, Robbie Maddison, the Barber Motorsports Museum, X-Games, and a conversation with Elena Myers—the first woman in history to win an AMA road racing national.

Visuals are gorgeously done – showing that print and digital can play well together.

Want more? There’s some interactivity; links include archival access for a look back, videos, product comparisons and the team moto web site upgrade.

fresh twist in online ads

Got caught up reading a link from Poynter Institute’s Daily Beast RSS feed and noticed this tasty fresh approach to presenting online advertising – note the word wrap to the ad’s outline.

For all I know this technique’s been around awhile but it’s the first time I’ve noticed. End result: eyecatching integration and another step closer to replicating print sex appeal in an increasingly flexible online framework.

why i do what i do

Tough to pick a favorite role model from this trailer for Art&Copy, an ad shop darling with an ’09 Sundance pedigree now making the rounds of art theaters and video conference rooms across the land. I’ll go with George Lois; predictably profane and absolutely dead-on in his assessment of what trips peoples’ triggers.

Next would have to be Lee Clow, unforgettable for his “1984” breakout for Apple which easily established the viral category long before there was one.

As the discretionary border between creative wow! and God-awful crap continues to erode, self absorbed ceos, lacky beancounters and DIY afficianados “who think they can” really should stop and think: if your creative skills really are that golden, why hasn’t anyone other than you paid you for them? Come to think of it, where the hell is that beef everyone once talked about?