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

5.08.2008

Nick, if you don't watch this, then your education in physical theatre is not complete

Really:



I mean, how do the Dell 'Arte students get into their pants in the morning?


I am watching this at least twice more before I go to bed, so I can smile again and again.

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posted at 9:05 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

5.07.2008

Digital versus Film: Like comparing the Avs to the Red Wings at playoff time (and we all know which is best, right?)

I have a client who has asked me for some on-location photography of their staff, in a remote location. I recommended large-format film, because they want to use the images on large exhibition display graphics. For the resolution required for such a display, you'd have to use a 22.8 megapixel camera to get the needed pixels per inch. There is one available, by the way, for about $27K, and if you want, feel free to buy one and send it to this address.

With large format film, you get a functional resolution that (still) beats digital (for now). Notice the caveats? And if you were only ever going to use the images online or in a smaller printed piece, like a brochure, well, digital is fine, in most cases. I think that black and white film has higher fidelity over color-sensor-based digital cameras, so there's that caveat in the other direction. But I am fine (from a commercial standpoint, anyhow) advocating for whatever option fits the project best.

Apparently this client is having to listen to other competing photographers gripe about the large format requirement. I can almost hear them saying "It's sooooo heavvvvyy! And you have to take all this tiiiiiime to set it uuuuuup!" Well, I've been shooting with a large format rig for nigh on 20 years, and I can setup and shoot a scene in about 2 minutes, which is hella fast, at least in the large format world. But there are other reasons to shoot large format film...aesthetic ones, ones which relate to previsualization, that I won't go into here, because this is a discussion about the pragmatics of large format vs. digital. And like I said: if anyone wants to buy me the digital Hasselblad, please please please, send it over. I'll convert immediately.

Except for my personal work of course, in which case you'll have to pry my Deardorff from my cold, dead hands.

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posted at 8:50 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

5.05.2008

Mann vs. Isaak



So, Internets: Who should my wife, friends and I see at the Denver Botanic Gardens concert series this summer? Aimee Mann (with Marc Cohn) or Chris Isaak? Isaak's concert is TWENTY BUCKS MORE EXPENSIVE.

I saw both of them on the same bill back in about 1987, at the Coors Events Center up at CU/Boulder: Til Tuesday AND Chris Isaak opened for the Thompson Twins....how ironic is that? Although the Thompson Twins' t-shirt was pretty kick-ass.

We were also thinking of the Richard Thompson / Loudon Wainwright III double-bill, but we can't make our schedule work for it....

Send your possibly opinion-swaying input here.

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posted at 10:00 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

A cellular or stained-glass view of the tanking economy, and how it affects the consumer

Amanda Cox over at The New York Times online has a nice interactive graphic of "All of Inflation's LIttle Parts." It shows a snapshot of the average consumer's spending on basically everything, from cable tv to heating oil. Roll over each of the segments to get data on increases or decreases in costs for that item.

What I like: Since we all spend a finite amount of money on everything, it's a closed system; therefore a circle is a good way of representing the whole. What makes this different from a typical pie chart (and better, I think) is that there are main sections (like housing and utilities, versus clothing, for example) and then many little categories within those sections, that we can view here.

Now, you could group your pie-chart slices up and show it that way, but I think this makes the smaller categories easier to view and inspect, especially online. Have a look and let me know what you think of this vs. a pie chart.

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posted at 4:35 PM Leave your comments here: 1 comments

5.03.2008

Hitting the big time

I just noticed that our humble blog has cracked the top 100 blogs for business over at Blogflux. Yay, us! The ranking is fairly dynamic, so I am sure we'll be back down in the cellar tomorrow. But we'll take what we can get.

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posted at 10:54 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

You want me to bug all my friends into loading your crappy Facebook application before you let me use it?

Yeah, it sounds pretty stupid, from a marketing standpoint. Basically, a lot of the newer apps posted over on Facebook take you through the activity involved in the application, then before they let you see the result of the activity, they make you select 8 or more friends in your network to spam about the application. Only then can you see the results.

Hmm. Well, I see how it results in increasing the speed at which your viral application spreads, but at what cost? At some point people will decide their friends are worth _not_ spamming with a new app every day or two. Hopefully, at that point, the viral software distribution model will adjust to make it more, well, friendly. Which is kinda the point of a SOCIAL NETWORK, right?

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posted at 10:48 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

5.02.2008

I'll be heading out to Southeast Utah in a few weeks...

...for a photo shoot near Lake Powell. But not close enough to Lake Powell to actually enjoy it. Anyone have any good ideas on where to go and what to do near Blanding, in my spare time? Not that I'll have much (the Canyonlands and Moab are probably out of my range)... send me your fun-in-the-desert ideas and if I do them I'll post a photo here.

photo of typical Blanding activity by takeitez

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posted at 10:30 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

Making a case for good marketing...even when the economy stinks

Oh, Closet Entrepreneur, you've just made my morning. Their post from yesterday warns businesses not to skimp on

  1. advertising,

  2. Website development and design, and

  3. Freelance services.


It's like they built the yellow brick road right up to my office door.

If you're in the market for any or all of these items, it just so happens that notchcode offers high-quality branding, marketing, advertising, and website development and design. And since I'm not part of your staff, I guess I qualify as a "freelance service" as well.

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posted at 7:30 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

5.01.2008

The Designer as Chef

Khoi Vinh's site, Subtraction, has a nice post about the virtues of smaller-sized design studios. He argues that it's impossible to have 100% excellence/creativity/wonderfulness in a large design agency, since
This craft, and whatever pretensions to art it can pull off, rests so much on the efficiency of transferring ideas from the brain to the hand. This means that in its ideal form, it works best when practiced by a single person. The perfect design staff is a single designer who can conceive of and execute an idea from start to finish—a straight shot from the right brain to the wrist—maintaining the same coherent creative vision throughout.


My comment on his post is worthy of cross-posting here, since it's a metaphor that I use all the time with my clients:
I always give clients who are leery of working with a small studio (or a lone designer) a metaphor for the small shop/single designer experience:

A designer is a chef. The client is the diner.

Diner tells chef: make me a four-course meal.

Chef and diner then discuss what they'd like that meal to be, what the diner's tastes are, how it meshes with the chef's style and competence.

Chef goes to buy ingredients (sometimes the diner comes along, or has already brought the ingredients with them. Interesting restaurant, eh?)

Chef retreats to kitchen. Cooks.

Presents meal.

Diner eats.

If the chef and the diner have chosen each other well, then the diner should leave satisfied.

Perhaps a strained metaphor, but for me, the content are the ingredients, and the designer is the chef who puts it all together to make something palatable.

And we all know the old saw about too many cooks. If you want a (perhaps) more predictable meal, go to the Olive Garden. Or Burger King. You'll get served faster, but your meal will taste a lot like the one served at the next table. And it won't be made just for you.

photos by ericmcgregor and katayun

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posted at 8:35 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments


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