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Why Good Design Matters: LiveBlogging Portland street flyers
...well, not really. How can you Live-Blog something that you pass by? But I am out on the road and checking in with projects that are in-process, etc., even with me out of the office, and have the opportunity to see some excellent design wherever I turn.
Out on the northwest Coast (Portland, Oregon, to be precise), there is a lot of good graphic design out on the street. Vacations are always a great opportunity to see street design, and Portland never disappoints. We're staying near the hip up-and-coming Alberta Street area of NE Portland, and there's a lot of commerce going on, and a lot of posters, flyers, etc. everywhere you walk (or in the case of Portland, bike. Biking is a bit of a cause here, not just a mode of transit). Nice use of hand-lettering, good sense of white space, and even a few hi-end etched and silkscreened bits here and there.
Denver could learn a lot from Portland, in a lot of areas (greenbelt, anyone? Growth limits, anyone? Better bike accessibility, anyone?) And in the case of street-intended graphic design, Portland definitely has Denver beat. One of the reasons for this is probably that Portland is generally more progressive than Denver, and that Portland has more local business districts, with more opportunities for small merchants/bands/political organizations/yoga studios to publicize via the street. More pedestrians, spread over more business areas, means more competition for peds' eyeballs. And that means the good designs survive, and the bad ones just go away, because they aren't effective.
For any CEO who doesn't think that good design matters, this is a case study in why it does. It's simple: be great, or someone who is great will paste right over your sorry-ass flyer. And they'll get your business.
We're heading south tomorrow, down the coast. Less urbane, but more restful, in some ways. And then we'll head over to Eugene to see some good friends (and fellow designers/photographers) and I'll see how their street design stacks up to the Portland scene. Stay tuned.
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