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

5.12.2008

Re-taking the I love NY trademark back from the masses

In today's New York Times, Anthony Ramierez writes that New York is trying to reclaim it's hold on the iconic I (heart) NY brand, designed for free (yes, as in beer) by Milton Glaser in the 1970s.

This is why you don't let iconic trademarks expire, folks. When the mark was allowed to lapse in the 1990s, people assumed it was in the public domain, and the result is having the logo show up on everything from teddy bears to ties to t-shirts.

Parsons School of Design Semiotics professor Marshall Blonsky is doubtful that the logo will be able to regain its former glory, stating that it:
is now an empty signifier, nothing in it, no communication, zed, zero. It moved from poetry to banality, from red to pink, like a coin that has been rubbed smooth from so much usage.

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5.02.2008

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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4.30.2008

How the psychology of friendship can apply to building a good brand

Hello, class. Tonight's assignment:


  1. Read this post over at the Happiness Project about Eight psychological terms to help you strengthen your friendships.

    AN excerpt:
    Triadic closure. In a phenomenon called "triadic closure," people tend to befriend the friends of their friends – and this is very satisfying. Friendships thrive on inter-connection, and it's both energizing and comforting to feel that you're building not just friendships, but a social network. I now make much more of an effort to help my friends become friends with each other, and to befriend friends' friends.

  2. Think about how these principles apply to building a good brand relationship with your audience. You do want your brand to be a friend to your audience, don't you?

  3. Discuss.

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4.28.2008

Twitterized


Yeah, I am doing that thing, now, like everyone else. It seems that six months ago it was all about Facebook. Now it's Twitter. Next thing you know we'll have webcams installed in our necks and will stream it all to our circle of friends and voyeurs.

If you want to follow me, you can catch the twitterstream here. But I swear if you are a fracking robot I will boot you, then reboot you after wiping your nvram, then hunt down your robot children and take an electromagnet to their innards.

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4.16.2008

Boom Dee Ah Dah

Nice branding ad from the Discovery Channel. Almost makes me forgive them for dropping their sponsorship of one of the best pro cycling teams the US has ever seen.

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4.11.2008

White Gold: No, it's not cocaine


I just caught this campaign for the California Got Milk? campaign, created by San Francisco's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. It's got a heavy dose of Spinal Tap, but the irony is turned up to, er, 11 (one of the main props in the campaign is a milk-filled guitar). They've hit the internets with a MySpace page, a heavy YouTube presence--even t-shirts for the band (!) and a lot of chatter from the various nonprofit marketing and mainstream blogs.

It's a lot of fun to see an idea as silly as this fleshed out as completely as this, and have it work as well as I think it does. The proof will be in the pudding, though--specifically, in pudding made with milk, located in California.

So where's the Denver creative crew at, for stuff like this? I mean, we have the creativity, but this is more than that; this actually looked like it was a hell of a lot of fun to do.

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3.15.2008

Luck o' the Irish, or good brand extension?


IMG_2317
Originally uploaded by Barack Obama
Whilst other campaigns are having a bit of an identity crisis, Obama's is clearly brand-savvy. Check out the special "O'bama" signs they made up for a St. Patrick's Day parade in Scranton, PA. Props to the branding team (again) for making use of the versatile "O" emblem; this one has, appropriately, a shamrock in place of the rising sun motif.

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3.08.2008

Way bad branding: Another example of why you need a brand manager

I was rolling around the merchandise stores of the main presidential candidates, Republican and Democrat, and came across this t-shirt from the Hillary Clinton Campaign:


And it reminded me of another bit of political branding I saw all over the backs of large SUVs for the last 4 years or so:




Now, there are a few differences. But not a whole lot. White text on black. Initial used to brand the individual. I know that Clinton's brand managers aren't nearly as on their game as Obama's, but this is a bit beyond comprehension. Political preferences aside, when you are running on a platform that theoretically positions you 180 degrees from the incumbent, you really should have zero visual similarities in your branding with him. Or think about it this way: if Clinton was Pepsi, and Bush was Coke, this is equivalent to using red and white packaging on your cans instead od blue white and red, and deciding that the Coke swoosh would look nice under the words "Pepsi". It doesn't mean that what's inside has necessarily changed, but it sure will have people associating you more with your competition than with your own identity.

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2.16.2008

More great street art, and another well-designed (unauthorized) campaign poster

Steven Heller has a nice roundup of unauthorized campaign posters from past years (mostly the late '60s and early '70s) over at the New York Times this morning, in response to the Shepard Fairey "Obama" poster sensation. While he has some nice examples in the piece, he glosses over the phenomenon of Obama street art that has cropped up in the last few months. All sorts of folks, not just graphic designers and poster gods, have been designing campaign posters, graffiti, and other forms of what we in the business call "outdoor display advertising" for the populist candidate of the moment, Barack Obama. You can see some great examples of the genre over at GoTellMama.org.

Here's another example of a great campaign poster design, thoroughly unauthorized, executed very well. It's by Ray Noland. It speaks not only to the fact that Obama is the change agent, it speaks to him being eager to be in there, making it happen. It also shows off the fact that he is an unreconstructed street basketball player from way back. All of Noland's and others' work was on view at the GoTellMama! Show in Chicago this past week. You can see samples of work featured in the show here. A cryptic message on the site mentions that they may be taking the show on the road as well, so stay tuned.

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2.14.2008

If we had ambitions to be a large ad firm,


We'd aspire to be Barkley. Largest employee-owned agency in the US. Not in NYC or LA. A great client list. And they've got a rocket ship--a thirty-five foot tall ROCKET SHIP--on top of their building.

Don't stop looking over your shoulder, Barkley. As soon as I can bill $467 million more a year than I do now, you're gonna have some competition.

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2.04.2008

Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?

That's exactly what Noam Cohen at the New York Times asks this morning. The article offers a nice analysis comparing the design/branding stylings of Hillary and Barack's websites. I (and probably a lot of other designers out there) prefer the Obama over the Clinton--at least as far as the branding goes.

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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.

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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?

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