Notes from Notchcode

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Notes from Notchcode

8.29.2008

Corn Dogs and Ice

Corn Dogs and Ice
Originally uploaded by notchcode
It's Friday, so get yourselves out of town and enjoy life! The Colorado State Fair is happening down Pueblo-way, with all the cotton candy and corn dogs you can eat. C'mon, you know you want some!
Labels: advice, photography, typography, vacation

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8.28.2008

George Rorick interviews Charles M. Blow

From the world of infographics:

George Rorick interviews Charles M. Blow: "You can't miss this interview. George Rorick, the creator of the weather map of USA Today on the early 80's interviews Charles M. Blow, the man who made the infographics deaprtment of NYT the most respected in and out the walls of the newspaper. The topic is Blow's new job as visual columnist of The New York Times

One of Blow's 'visual nuggets'

And if you still want more, check the new Charles Blow's blog on nytimes.com, called 'By the numbers'

Via Update"

(Via Infographics news.)

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8.27.2008

For all the Trekkies Supporting Obama...

My friend Joysa brings this to my attention:

via the Wandering Hebrew
Labels: humor

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In Protest of a Longmont Ad Club

The Longmont Egotist announces a new Longmont Ad Club. In reply:

As a Wheat Ridge resident and business-owner, I am annoyed at you northern urbane Longmonters. I’ll have you know the Wheat Ridge Ad Club and Grange has been active since 1863, when a former miner won fifteen racks of woodtype and fresh-off the boat-from-Europe Clarendon type-sets. Did he choose to locate his soon-to-be prosperous business in Denver City? In Longmont? In Cripple Creek? NO! Wheat Ridge was the place for him. It’s the place for me, and it’s the place for any creative and success-oriented marketeers and visual entrepreneurs who want the pristine vistas, carnation greenhouses, and sweet Clear Creek water that we, as educated and righteous folk, DESERVE! Longmonters: throw open your doors, then walk out of them, southward, to Wheat Ridge!
Labels: humor

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Packaging that both reminds me of the old generic packaging of the mid-'80s, and at the same time looks fresh.

BVD: "

Nice packaging deign from BVD
"

What makes it work for me is that the product is what creates the texture needed to offset the otherwise rather bland (on purpose) type.

(Via The Serif - Your daily dose of design inspiration.)
Labels: graphic design, packaging

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8.25.2008

Travel Posters for Intra-solar system Tours

Steve Thomas in Minnesota has created some fanciful travel posters for many lovely tourist hot-spots of the future, right here in our own solar system. They borrow from the styles of travel posters from the '20s through the '50s, and are a lot of fun. Check them out, and buy one, if you like one.
Labels: advertising, graphic design, illustration

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8.22.2008

Coors Aims Its Silver Bullet At Women

News from the Coors front:

Coors Aims Its Silver Bullet At Women: "Coors is in the process of launching a series of products aimed at women.It is a bold attempt, which many have tried before.The brewer has set up a separate business unit code named 'Eve' and will introduce a beer called "Blue Moon"...

I mentioned in my comment to this post up at 5 Blogs Before Lunch that, um, Coors already has a beer called Blue Moon. In fact, they have a lot of other beers branded within the Blue Moon sub-brand architecture. So, what will they do with this already well-selling niche-marketed belgian whitbier and its progeny? Can it?

(Via 5 Blogs Before Lunch.)
Labels: beer, branding

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8.21.2008

Read the Stupid Brand Manual

It's always, um, interesting, to see a brand you've nurtured for so long slide down into the muddy swamp of unintegrated messiness. I am talking specifically about the Women's College at the University of Denver, although it should read as a cautionary tale for any in-house (or hired gun) agency that is working with an established brand with a comprehensive brand identity--especially one that is part of a larger brand architecture.

When DU revmped its brand, moving away from the hundred year-old University Seal to a red and brown square "D" (designed by North Charles Street Design, In Maryland), it was indicating that they were something more than just the traditional, old-school private university in town. DU wanted to be "new west", rather than "old school". So North Charles Street--after a lot of revisions, with the client rejecting some ideas incorporating the mountains which I really liked--created the D. It's nice, I suppose, but in any case it was rolled out, and the firm created a brand identity manual for the new visual identity and brand architecture, and as the in-house brand manager, I had to make it work.

DU has a lot of sub-brands within its organization. Of course, there's the undergrad program, which is the main school, but then there are several graduate schools, the Women's College, University College, the alumni association, and the athletics department (both the sports team segment and the administrative segment). And scores of supporting programs and departments, some of which were large enough--or had a market substantially differentiated enough--to warrant a segregated space within the brand architecture.

Now I have seen this in other areas of DU's brand architecture, so I don't mean to pick on the Women's College. In fact, one of the best clients we had was the Women's College, with a staff and administration that "got it", and understood the need for the marketing positions we were recommending. That said, the online ad I saw today for the Women's College drove a stake into my integrated marketing heart. Here it is:

"What's so wrong with this?", you might say? Well, nothing really obvious, at first glance. But take a look at how DU's main visual identity should be represented:

Now, this is just for the University, generically. Since the Women's College is its own entity within the university system, it gets its own brand element, notably a subheading-type line below the big "DENVER", as in this example with the Graduate School of International Studies:

...or the Daniels College of Business:

...which as you can see makes the name of the college more prominent (since Bill Daniels pretty much fully funded the program and the new building for the school shortly before his death in the late '90s).

After North Charles Street delivered the main visual identity and the brand identity guidelines, they departed. That left the in-house staff to create visual elements for the various graduate schools and colleges within the brand architecture that needed an identity. We created a variation on the DU identity for the Women's College, and used it in a number of pieces. It looked very similar to the above examples for the Graduate School of International Studies and the Daniels College of Business. But after I departed DU, University College, Daniels, and the Women's College also departed--from the identity guidelines, that is.

I understand these colleges' needs to differentiate themselves from the rest of the university ("we offer classes just for working professionals/women/businesspeople/etc.") but in moving away from the brand architecture so carefully created for them, they also distance themselves from the marketing capital created by the University brand and all of its associated marketing efforts. So an ad like the one at the top for the Women's College, while getting the point across about an open house certainly doesn't allow the positive association of the University as a whole to fully shine through.

Why did the Women's College divert from the standard brand architecture? It's only (informed) speculation, but I would guess that their dean wants to show how different they are from the "rest" of DU. I would argue that there are a lot of other ways one could do that: copy, tone, imagery, overall design, targeting, and so on. Your brand is the last place you want to start being "different" from your parent organization. If the revised version of the Women's College brand, as shown in the ad, is so effective, why does "The Women's College" have to be repeated in the ad, in the green bar below the logo and the photo?

So, Women's College: get rid of the line between the DU identity and your name. And get rid of the red, italicized typography. Go back to the architecture of the brand, and--trust me--your pieces will perform better, and be more effective.
Labels: branding

posted at 5:31 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

Colorado Design Firms: Send me your info!

I edit the Colorado Multidisciplinary Graphic Design Firms category for the Open Directory Project. It's a great way to get to know your fellow designers, since the position requires me to check out all sorts of design firms' websites--most of which are actually pretty cool! The Open Source Directory is used by all the major search engines in their "Directories" section listings, verbatim, for people who are looking for a particular type of service, company, or website. Needless to say, if you want to promote your firm online, a listing in the DMOZ Open Source Directory is an essential (and free) component.

I would like to have a more complete listing of graphic design firms in Colorado in this category. So if you or someone you know has a studio to suggest, submit their info using this form. I'll then check out the site, edit the description for consistency and clarity, and send it on up for posting within the directory.

I would bet that the majority of firms represented in the AIGA/Colorado membership would be excellent candidates for a listing in this section.

Here's a description of the category:

The days of zipatone, press-on lettering, and blue pencils are behind us; indeed, it is rare to see an established design firm practicing only print-based graphic design, these days!

Consequently: a category for multi-disciplinary graphic designers and firms. This category contains listings for multidisciplinary graphic design firms in Colorado. Firms in this category often offer services in print, web, brand identity, experience, and information design.

Business listings contain information on the types of design services offered, their location in Colorado, and a listing of what can be found on their site in the way of contact information, portfolios, company information, and so on.

Info for submitters: Please be brief! List your firm's areas of practice (print, web, experience, etc.), your location (by city), and the categories of information you list on your website (portfolio, contact information, etc.). We will edit your description for clarity and consistency with the other listings in this category; the goal is to be informational, not promotional--we know your site will do a good job with that ;)
Labels: design, seo

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8.19.2008

Simple things any design firm can do to help their client's search engine ranking

These are pretty obvious, for anyone who has spent even a minute around a good SEO professional. But here they are anyway, from the 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization. So don't just take it from me, your great graphic and web designer, take it from them, too.

The best, best thing you can do? Put your relevant keyword in the title of your web page. Duh, I know, but sometimes people don't pay attention to the simple things....

Here's the link.
Labels: advice, seo

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8.18.2008

Damn right your dad drank it

Check out the excellent period-appropriate typography, color palette, and imagery used in Canadian Club's latest print ad:

The colors are pulled straight from the main image, and the type is dead-on for what you would see in a Mid-'60s ad. Even the copy style is stylistically correct. The only thing that probably should be in there, that isn't, are periods at the ends of the title and subtitle copy blocks; I have seen a lot of those in the older print ads, and they aren't as in vogue these days.

Here's a detail:

via 5 Blogs Before Lunch.
Labels: advertising, graphic design, typography

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8.15.2008

W-E-E-K-E-N-D

THat's right, it's the weekend again, friends. So get away from your offices and enjoy yourselves. Some suggestions:

the 20th Anniversary concert of Reggae on the Rocks, featuring Pato banton, DJ Logic, and the Wailers.

the Olympics. Since youdon't have to go to work for the next couple of days, stay up late and watch the track cycling finals, and such.

learn to cook. Generous Servings has some nice classes, up in the Highlands neighboorhood. And they make the best Vietnamese Iced Coffee this side of Alameda and Federal.

posted at 4:38 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

5,000 masterworks of Photography

If you can stand wading through the german language of this site, you'll be rewarded with over 5,000 masterworks of photography, organized by photographer.

Image: Chartres Cathedral, by Edouard-Denis Baldus.

via Metafilter.
Labels: photography

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African Kings: Portraits by Daniel Lane

Daniel Laine’s African Kings:

NYIMI KOK MABIINTSH III

King of Kuba

D.R. Congo

Check out the whole series of images, each with a historical and biographical summary. Great portraiture.

(Via Design You Trust™ - Design Blog & Community..)
Labels: africa, photography

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8.13.2008

I think I'd be a little afraid to be Friended by him:

I'm glad, actually, that I only have one mutual friend on Facebook with this guy...and he's the one I'll be checking for the Dark mark later on.

Labels: social networking

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8.12.2008

Photography as a Weapon

Errol Morris has an interesting conversation with Hany Farid, a Dartmouth professor and an expert on digital photography. The conversation centers around the doctoring of the Iranian missile test photos printed (as authentic) in many newspapers around the globe last month. Here's one of the best bits, from Faird:

you don’t need Photoshop to editorialize. We can go back to Mao and Stalin and Castro and Mussolini, and all these guys. All the dictators doctored photographs in order to effectively change history. So why is this a big deal? Is it because of the power of visual imagery, the fact that it resonates so much? Maybe that will change with the next generation. Maybe this new generation will be thinking about images differently. There is a savviness about what technology can do. Kids now are growing up in digital age where they routinely see doctored images in their mailboxes, in the media, on television, and so on and so forth.

Lazlo Molhoy-Nagy, the bauhaus photographer, told us way back in the 20s and 30s that visual literacy would be the most important tool free-thinkers and informed people of the 20th century could have. And he was right. Visual literacy is still important today, and knowing how to put it into context with visual disinformation and other factors is something that we 21st-century citizens need to master.
Labels: photography, visual information

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Downing Street has a new address

...on the web, that is. The British Prime Minister's office just updated their site, and it looks nice. My guess is it's either Joomla or Drupal-based, too. Either one would be perfect for a large staff to update the PM's site with ease, while maintaining an easy-to-use interface.

The overall layout is definitely designed to get information out to the masses. It's not fancy, but does provide a navigable front door (if you will) for information relevant to Number Ten's audience. Visually, the palette is neutral, with a little slate blue to call attention to section headers and menus. I wish the site designer had been able to match the "10" from the iconic address a little more closely, especially in the main header, since it also includes the "10" graphic from the PM's front door. Something to shoot for later on, I guess.

From a content perspective, there's a lot of aggregation going on, which makes this site a vast improvement, say, over the White House's less interesting site (sorry Yanks, it's dull, without much to offer in terms of aggregation or interactivity): flickr, YouTube, and Twitter are all here. A secondary sidebar has some more static info...an interactive tour of the residence, a bio of Churchill, and a guide to the new site. The majority of the space is for press releases and news.
Labels: politics, web design

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8.11.2008

Making Time to Make: 43 Folders's series on creating

When he isn't a pottymouthed twitterer, Merlin Mann writes some other interesting things that we like over here in creative-land. He has a three-part series on making the time to create, which all us creatives, as we know, need more of.

Read it here:

part 1

part 2

part 3
Labels: advice, creativity, productivity

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8.08.2008

Suggestions for the weekend

The week is nearly over, so here are some suggestions for what to do to stay away from the office for a couple of days:

If you live in the Denver area, check out some of the great Jefferson County Open Space Parks just to the west. I recommend Flying J, near Aspen Park, and White Ranch, near Golden. Both offer great hiking and mountain biking. If you want to get closer to Boulder, Walker Ranch is a good challenge, especially if you ride the loop clockwise.

Staying in town? The local pub near my old place, Billy's Inn, up on 44th and Lowell in NW Denver, just reopened. 5280 gave it a favorable review. Lots of good beer on tap and a nice NW Denver vibe. And a picnic at the grammatically-incorrect Commons Park is a good idea, too. Stop by 15th and Platte streets at the Savory Spice Shop and get some (reasonably priced!) fresh spices as long as you're there.

Need a road trip? Alamosa is underrated, although a quick survey of real estate there indicates it's the next Salida. Eat locally-produced pork sausages and brats or excellent lamb, washed down with craft beer, all at the San Luis Brewing Company, in the old bank building downtown. Then head over to the Sand Dunes and pretend you're Lawrence of Arabia.

Ok, so now you have some suggestions. Whether you act on them and live a little, or just stay in your office, miserable and grumbling about your workload, is up to you.

See you Monday!
Labels: friday, travel

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8.07.2008

Sean Adams of AdamsMorioka: the AIGA/Colorado talk

I went down to the Denver Art Museum last night and attended Sean Adams's talk on fear. Adams is a great speaker, and had a lot of interesting things to say--both in his capacity as president of the AIGA, and as half of a very successful design firm.

I took a few notes, and for those that missed his talk, you can get the gist of it here. This was the first of AIGA/CO's scheduled talks from nationally-recognized designers for the 2008-09 season, and I encourage you all to attend the rest of the season's talks.

...

So: Fear. Fear comes out of wanting to protect something. Your job. Your income. Your reputation. The status quo. Some designers or clients fear change. This is a big one.

...

When the work starts to suffer, it's time to let the bad clients go.

Adams had a good example of a client that accounted for a large portion of their business, and they had fun in the past doing the work, year after year, for this client. But eventually the client started to implode, and the effects carried across to their relationship with the design firm. After a while, Adams was greenlighting any change the client suggested, because they wanted to protect their relationship with the client. It resulted in a horrible design.

They realized that this was antithetical to growing themselves as a firm: a bad piece reflects badly on your firm, hurts future business, and is demoralizing to boot. So, they gave the client the "you and I aren't in the same place, baby. I think it would be better if we saw other people" speech. And they parted ways.

...

So what's worse: Foolishness, or Fearlessness? It's pretty self-explanatory:

Foolishness results from any decisions based on ego, and pride.

Fearlessness is making smart decisions, with guts.

...

Importantly, you should execute your work with a sense of joy. It comes through in the work, and the client can tell. And, as Adams says, "it plays much better than uptight and constipated" does with clients. It should not only satisfy your clients' aims, but your own as well.

...

What happens when you run out of ideas? Trust yourself. Go with your instincts. Adams showed a case study on this with the work they did over the years for the Sundance Film Festival. After several years of working on it, Adams truly felt like he had nothing new to offer (one of his later concepts included a cross-section of a snowball. Yeah, I know.). Fortunately, his client ( a certain Robert Redford) trusted his designer. He said "forget about what we want. What would you do if you were doing this with no input from us?" And Adams came up with something that broke him out of his block. He trusted himself, went with his instincts, and created a successful design identity for that year's festival.

...

Afraid of criticism? Who isn't?

Just do what you do. It leads to good things.

...

some resources:

AdamsMorioka's website

AIGA/Colorado's website

An interview with Adams from the Denver Egotist

So, As I said at the top, this is just a loose summary. I am sure others have more to add (and please do, in the comments, if you want!).

Labels: advice, aiga, design

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8.05.2008

(Lil) Green Patch on Facebook: what if it could do protein folding?

Like about two-thirds of my Facebook buddies, I send out "plants" to "gardens" of friends using (Lil) Green Patch, which uses sponsorship revenue from advertisers to make donations to the Nature Conservancy's Adopt an Acre program. For each plant you send, you save a little bit of rain orest. Cool, eh?

This got me to thinking, however: what if you wanted to develop an AIDS vaccine, or cure Parkinson's, or even cancer? Right now there are programs out there that use distributed computing to help researchers create complex models of how proteins interact --which in turn helps them to understand how a vaccine, for example, might fend off a virus or allow a gene to be expressed (don't ask me about the specifics, I'm just a graphic designer, after all).

In any case, in distributed computing, you allow your computer to process a portion of this protein modeling problem and then pass the results back up to the master computer at a research center where the work is being done. The processing cycles used by the program are only taken when you aren't using your computer (out to lunch, on a coffee break, in a meeting...it adds up). So there's no downside for your computer's performance when you need to use it.

So, knowing that distributed computing is out there, and knowing that people want to get together online at places like Facebook to help the planet, etc., why not develop an application that runs a little bit of programming on your computer whenever someone gives you a little virtual gift, as in (Lil) Green Patch? Admittedly, it would be more invasive than (Lil) Green Patch is, since you'd have to run something on your computer rather than just accept ad revenue from someone, but maybe you are actually paying an organization to use CPU cycles on a larger computer somewhere else using the same ad revenue donation model (Lil) Green Patch uses?
Labels: fundraising, nonprofits

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8.04.2008

Guy Kawasaki on Innovations

From an interview by Guy Kawasaki with Dan Roam:

"Becoming comfortable with and confident in our visual abilities--improving our ability to look at complex information, see important patterns emerge, imagine new possibilities, and clearly show those discoveries to others--is going to become our most valuable asset. Looking just a short time into the future, visual thinking will significantly alter how business gets done in three ways:

Help us make better decisions faster. Within the next few years we will see most business analytics delivered in immersive graphic formats that allow for simultaneous manipulation of individual numbers and visualization of complex interactions and outcomes. There are many companies out there now like Tableau and Business Objects building these tools, and even plain-Jane Excel has enormous potential given the graphics processing capabilities of even the most basic business personal computers.

Help us communicate our decisions and visions more effectively. As more businesspeople become more aware of the power of pictures as a communications tool, more tools will become available to help create meaningful charts, diagrams, timelines, maps, and flowcharts--both alone and as teams. The great issue here is to first understand what we want to show and what our audience is willing to see and only then boot-up the machines.

Help our teams execute those decisions more efficiently. Project managers have always known the power of a visual timeline to ensure everybody knows what they're supposed to be doing when. The problem is that the product manager was the only one who knew how to understand the chart they created--to the rest it looked like a wall of hieroglyphics. Several companies are now working on interactive, team-created timeline tools of infinite scalability. Such tools will allow for globally distributed groups to be in instant visual contact with their project and each other and to monitor whatever needs to be happening at the level of detail that matters most at that moment."

(Via Cool Infographics.)
Labels: advice, visual information

posted at 1:30 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

Poster/Exhibition Display Design for the Colorado State Fair

Here's some recent work done for the folks at the Clear Creek Watershed Foundation and the state of Colorado's Division of Reclamation, Mining, & Safety, promoting the 150th anniversary of the discovery of gold in Colorado, slated for 2009:

It's an 8 foot-tall display, about three feet wide, and is designed to generate interest and drive people to the anniversary event's website. it will be seen by over 60,000 people down at the Colorado State Fair this year, in the Natural Resources Hall. We had a lot of fun researching the typographical history of posters created in the 1860s, which informed the mixed use of typefaces as well as sizing, layout, and spacing. The type is from Adobe, sourced from their nicely-cut set of woodtype families. The illustration was previously commissioned by the anniversary committee, and the paper texture was sourced from flickr's vast creative commons-licensed trove--an invaluable resource for any cash-strapped client (although I would argue that you usually get what you pay for).
Labels: advertising, display, graphic design

posted at 10:43 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

PYREX branding: they still got it.

My wife picked up these Pyrex food storage containers to replace our worn-out, semi-reusable Glad and Ziploc storage containers. When I used one of the new containers, the typography of the brand reminded me just how great a well-executed visual identity can be:

The interesting thing to me is how this typography, when it is so strong, differs from Pyrex's main brand identity for baked goods glassware in north america:

Labels: branding, typography

posted at 10:28 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

Another great billboard for Denver Water

I was out at Lamar's Donuts getting some tasties for the family early Saturday morning, and saw this going up in the parking lot:

I once again tip my hat to Suckle Advertising for the excellent work on this campaign.
Labels: advertising

posted at 10:19 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

8.01.2008

Quark 8: Just like Shatner's latest Album

Quark just released it's long-awaited update to Xpress. From TUAW:

Quark 8, the William Shatner of page layout software (old, bloated, sweaty, and desperate to stay relevant), allows you to create content for the web using HTML and Flash without writing any code. This has been a feature of Quark since QuarkImmedia and Quark Interactive Designer, but now appears to be fully rolled into QuarkXPress, to the abject horror of web designers everywhere.

Also, a new feature: A measurements palette. That's right, it's 2008, and they're adding a measurements palette. Also: east-Asian language support and hanging punctuation. Wow. Well done, Quark

I am so psyched! Now that Quark has a MEASUREMENTS PALETTE I am definitely switching back from InDesign. And I think it's a great idea to create a tool that turns a print design into something that shows up on the web. Because, you know, people interact with print and online media in exactly the same way.
Labels: design, software

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