providing graphic design, branding, photography and marketing expertise to denver and the world

Quote of the Week:

All solitary dreamers know that they hear differently when they close their eyes.
-Gaston Bachelard

Notes from Notchcode

1.28.2008

Double-Take

I had heard that this happens. But it was the first time it happened to me.
I am currently developing a concept for a client of mine who designs lighting. Engineers. Very cool folks--I have a couple of engineer uncles and more than a handful of scientists in the family, so it's cool to create a vision for bringing the fruits of engineers' brains to market. They needed a brand for their product. So I did a little market research, listened to the story of the product, and began to make a visual mark for this light.

The logo was a little round thing, with orange and white and a sans-serif typeface. Perfect for the identity of this particular product. The client agreed, and we set off to create a product booklet based on these visual themes.

A few weeks later, we meet to discuss revisions to the booklet. After going through some standard stuff ("let's use more arcs and less circles...let's include more technical illustrations....etc. etc."), they say "there's one more thing." They take me back to a computer and type in a URL. It's for a new competitor's lighting product. I look at the brand:
  • It's orange and white
  • Sans Serif typography
  • Circles everywhere
  • oh, and it has the same NAME as the client's product.
Wow. I actually grasp my head between my hands in incredulity. How did we miss this? Who made this? When did they make it? Why does my head feel like it's about to explode.

I had heard that this happens. But it was the first time it happened to me.
Of course, this is making us refine the brand for the client a bit. And it will be better than it is now. That's the bright, shiny side of the coin. I am telling myself, as my client told me, that this means we came up with a really great idea that expressed the universal gestalt that exists in the lighting products branding universe at this moment, and we should be proud of that (and they say my version is way cooler, by the way). So it's not a bad thing. But daaaaaaaang. I still have trouble believing that it's not some sort of prank being pulled on us by the lighting industry.

Labels: , , ,


posted at 8:28 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

1.24.2008

Songs for this week

Columbus Burning Spear
Stagolee Mississippi John Hurt
Moonshadow Cat Stevens
Blue In Green Miles Davis
You Can't Blame the Youth Bob Marley and the Wailers
Come Rain Or Come Shine Bill Evans Trio
Waiting For My Lucky Day Chris Isaak
Young Americans [Single Version] David Bowie
Pump It Up Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Everything's Got 'Em Harry Nilsson
Opus De Funk Horace Silver
Carey Joni Mitchell
Lève-toi Et Rap MC Solaar

Labels:


posted at 8:24 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

1.22.2008

Once again, the New York Times does Information Graphics Right


The folks over at the New York Times always seem to do visual displays of any kind of information the right way. From graphics showing deaths in Iraq to the US elections, their illustrators manage to pack a lot of information into a compact, understandable package. The latest case in point: Analyzing the January 5th Democratic presidential debate transcript.

The amount of words for each candidate, the moderator, and video clips are displayed as blocks in a chart. Run your mouse over the candidate's name, and their blocks are highlighted. It gives the reader a sense of the pacing of the exchanges between candidates, and allows them to see who talked the most on which topics. Run the mouse over a block, and the transcribed debate text appears in a box to the right.

You can read the entire debate this way, look at just the statements of one candidate, pick out the long passages of speech, or look into the snipes and jabs exchanged between the speakers. It's one more example of why the NYT is so good at conveying information to a broad audience.

Labels: , ,


posted at 8:16 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

1.17.2008

Songs for this week

Crazy Rhythm (Coleman Hawkins All Star Jam Band) Various Artists
But I Like You Bert And Ernie
In A Mist Bix Beiderbecke
Are You Sleeping? Harry Nilsson
Spring Is Here John Taylor Trio
Hot Rod Monster Jam Len
Sumthin´Sumthin´ Maxwell
Dark As A Dungeon The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Various Artists
Jazzin' Babies Blues the Queen City Jazz Band
Tumbling Dice The Rolling Stones
Boogie For Layette Various Artists
Wild Honey Pie The Beatles
Night Of The Living Baseheads Public Enemy

Labels:


posted at 10:20 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

See what your grandparents saw, in color.

Not blogging much this week due to the new baby, but something caught my eye that related to the photography side of what we do here:

The Library of Congress has released a large number of images (but still a tiny portion of their overall visual catalog) onto the internet, via Flickr. favorite set so far is the 1930s and 40s in color. Think everything was black and white back then? Then (aside from not knowing your photographic history) you are wrong: check them out and see some amazing kodachrome snaps from the era. Then go get your grandparents to check it out and have them reminisce!

Since I do HABS/HAER work on occasion, I actually have some images in the Library of Congress archives. But this stuff is way cooler than mine, because it's from (from my perspective) long ago, and shines a light into our recent history.

Labels:


posted at 10:04 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

1.16.2008

Notchcode's newest employee

I am pleased to announce the latest addition to the notchcode creative staff, Pearl Lee Bucknam. She's only about six days hours old and 20 inches tall, so if she mistakes SWOP for Web, or RGB for CMYK, or branding for potatoes, please cut her a little slack.

I'll be training Pearl for the next week, and will be generally unavailable until the 18th. If there's a marketing or design emergency, please do call me and I'll get back in touch with you ASAP. For other things, make a list and I'll tackle them once Pearl is settled in.

Labels:


posted at 7:53 AM Leave your comments here: 1 comments

1.08.2008

Xerox's new brand: something original, or just a copy?

The New York Times has a summary of today's most interesting branding news: Xerox has changed its look. Long gone are the days where Xerox called itself "The Document Company" (it ended that tagline in 2004); now it's young, plucky, chunky lowercase "xerox"! With a playful little 3-D red "x" ball next to it (to represent the connection of "customers, partners, industry and innovation", according to the article).

Xerox (or is it now "xerox"?) hopes to distance itself from its roots as a document duplication company, even though they still create hardware that is essentially document duplication (printers, imagers, hi-speed publishing devices, etc.) and focus more on this synergistic approach that the X-ball --oops, I mean "x-ball"-- embodies.

I will reserve judgement (mostly) for now, on the new look. An all lowercase name does have some benefits (more approachable, more casual), but it is somewhat of a trend, and don't know if xerox does itself any favors by moving with the pack. The 3-D x-ball is a little too internety, and reminds me of the AT&T death star ball that company just rolled out (designed, by the way, by the same company that just created the new xerox logo). Of course you can expect to see it animated online, and in commercials, too. Which is fine, up to a point. I worry that one can take logo animation too far, and overuse it to the point that it competes for attention when used in practice, taking away from the power of the other information and marketing elements that the brand image will share the stage with.

So what do you think? Is this a good idea for Xerox? Or just good money thrown after bad? And if that's the case, what should they have done instead?

Labels: , ,


posted at 9:04 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

1.05.2008

Songs of the week

Some of the most popular songs from last week:

The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill The Beatles
Gloria's Step Bill Evans Trio
Walk On By Cake
I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry Johnny Cash
Once Is Enough Lyle Lovett
So What Miles Davis
Columbus Burning Spear
Look At Miss Ohio Gillian Welch
John Saw That Number Neko Case
Slavery Days Burning Spear
Old Marcus Garvey Burning Spear
Stornelli Amorisi Claudio Villa
Second Balcony Jump Dexter Gordon

Labels:


posted at 8:37 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

1.04.2008

The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web


If you are someone interested in hiring a designer or team to create/improve/reimagine your web presence, you owe it to yourself to know what the term "user experience" means. Sure, it means, basically, "how the user sees what is on the screen", but it's really a whole lot more involved than that.

I would recommend to anyone who touches a website project (from designers, to writers, to illustrators, to programmers, to clients) the book I'm reading now: The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web by Jesse James Garrett. Good info that you can go back to time and again for reference or additional understanding of underlying concepts. The diagram here is by Garrett (a snippet of a larger whole, which can be downloaded from his book's site) and is the basis for the idea that spawned the book. Check it out, and if you are intrigues in the least by what is there, buy the book. You won't be disappointed.

Labels: , ,


posted at 10:40 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

Philip Pullman and working in a shed

Rodcorp has a nice little snippet about how the author Philip Pullman goes about his day, and the role working in a shed (we here in the states might call it a "detached home office") has in his daily routine. I post it here in the hopes that Alex over at Shedworking sees it and links to it (or at least reads it) over at Rodcorp and, if he finds it useful, posts it over there for his audience (and why not just message Alex? Well, blog reading is a nice passive leisure activity, and I don't want to bother him with some sort of seemingly purposeful info in case he's either already read the Pullman piece, or doesn't really find it relevant).

In any case, it is of interest to me because we are planning on moving the office out of the basement of the current location, and into a purpose-built structure out back. Lots of advantages, but Pullman raises the issue of it "...being down at the end of the garden, especially on rainy days." Well, no real issue for me, in Colorado, where a graphic designer looks forward to about 300 days of sunshine a year. But if I were about 1 percent lazier, I could see the point, even here.

How about you? Do you work (even part of the time) in a detached home office? What are the benefits? The issues?

Labels: , ,


posted at 10:25 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

1.03.2008

It's funny because it's true

This, from The Net is Dead, via Heather G-M:
The sad thing is this is (mostly) true. You can, actually, do anything a table can do in CSS, but there is a lot of tweaking to make things look lovely in all the browsers your client might require. The bit about Internet Explorer is completely true, and probably under-reports the amount of time we spend making any site work as expected in IE. The folks in Redmond follow their own laws. It's like they are vigilantes in an old-west movie, strutting into town while the marshall is out catching cattle rustlers, occupying his office and saying, "law? Law? Ma'am, we are the law, now."

Labels: , , , , ,


posted at 10:35 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

1.01.2008

So what inspires you?

The Wall, 1/1/08 04:45 PM

Here in Denver, I am constantly inspired: we have beautiful mountains to look at and play in; a nice-sized town (Denver) and a nicer-sized small town to live in (Wheat Ridge); great graphic designers (yes! just check out the Open Source directory of Graphic Designers in Colorado--which I happen to edit for DMOZ--and see for yourself); great places to ruminate on the nature of the universe over a tasty beverage; and a sense of wide-open possibilities that the wide-open range seems to give us.

So what inspires you?

posted at 4:55 PM Leave your comments here: 1 comments

What made us work last year

In 2007 we listened to a lot of music. It was pretty retro, though, but moving. Here's the "official" playlist from last year:
  • Make Me A Pallet on Your Floor, Mississippi John Hurt
  • Nine Pound Hammer, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
  • The Ghost of You Walks, Richard Thompson
  • Halfway To Dawn, Billy Strayhorn
  • The Candy Man, Sammy Davis Jr.
  • By The Time I Get To Arizona (Whipped Cream Mix), The Evolution Control Committee
  • The Pointed Man, Harry Nilsson
  • Jump in the Line, Harry Belafonte
  • Swingin' For Julie And Brownie I, Flip Phillips
  • Mah Na Mah Na, Sesame Street
  • Houses In Motion, Talking Heads
  • Waysid / Back In Time, Gillian Welch
  • Richland Woman Blues, Mississippi John Hurt
  • Rebel Rebel, Seu Jorge
  • I'm the Grumpy Old Troll, Dora the Explorer
  • Wabash Cannonball, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
  • Get Up Offa That Thing / Release the Pressure, James Brown

And the top 12 most played songs in the Notchcode office in Denver:
  • People Get Up and Drive Your Funky Soul (Remix), James Brown
  • All That We Perceive, Thievery Corporation
  • Cissy Strut, The Meters
  • Marcus Garvey, Sinéad O'Connor
  • Firebrand, William Orbit
  • Vampire, Sinéad O'Connor
  • War, Sinéad O'Connor
  • Downpressor Man, Sinéad O'Connor
  • Holographic Universe, Thievery Corporation & Gunjan
  • You Know Too Much About Flying Saucers, William Orbit
  • Red Dust, Zero 7
  • Autumn Leaves [Take 1], Bill Evans Trio
Now you know what music makes us creative. Please send us suggestions for more listening!

Labels: ,


posted at 4:15 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments


Business Blog Top Sites
Subscribe with Bloglines
View Alan Bucknam's profile on LinkedIn

Add to Technorati Favorites