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

4.29.2008

Break Free from the tyranny of the clock


Zen Habits has a little post on something I've been practicing ever since I left my last corporate job and started my own firm: Leave the clock behind.

Now, before I get started, let me state that there are times for clocks: Need to be on-time to a client meeting, or (even more importantly) keep a meeting focused and on-track by limiting its duration? Have a court date? Other professional obligation? In those cases, yes, yes, YES, clocks are your friend. They keep us in sync with the rest of the world, keeping the trains running on time, metaphorically.

But this isn't about those cases. It's about the other 90 percent of your life.

In the rest of your life, ideally you don't need a clock. Your body tells you when you are sleepy, when you are ready to awake, when you're hungry, and so on. And your finely-honed sense of professional duty and personal passion for what you do tells you when to get to work (right? right?). So what's the clock for?

Now, yes, yes, YES I know: I am not chained to a cubicle, with a nefarious middle manager lording their supposed superiority over me. I am fortunate to run my own spread, and work with people who are responsible enough not to need much in the way of a clock, either. I'll give you that. But I've got to tell you, there's a lot to be said for waking up when you are no longer sleepy; eating when you are hungry; working when you need money (which, in the face of $4 a gallon gas, is pretty much every minute I'm awake).

My point is that if you live without a clock telling you when to do things, you are letting something else tell you when to do them. Like your body, or your mind, for instance. And I think that's a good thing.

Creatively-speaking, what does this do for you? Or for your clients? Well, if you're not clockwatching, then your are more likely to be actively engaged in your work. You are more likely to be thinking, and not just doing (which is to say: you will be doing your doing better, since you'll be paying more attention to it).

And as your ruler-toting nun teacher (or in my case, sharp-tongued and eagle-eyed philosophy teacher) would say, "if you're paying attention, you're learning." And isn't half, or more than half, of what a designer, marketer, copywriter, or artist does simply listening?

I posted on this topic a couple of years ago, relating that back in the 1600s, the village blacksmith didn't sit at his forge for eight hours, then go home. He worked when there was work that needed doing, or when he was feeling particularly inspired--whether that was at noon or at ten at night. The rest of the time he was, you know, being human. which is to say: having a life.

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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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4.09.2008

Good Times


I did this sort of thing everyday, once upon a time. Now, with my practice focused more on branding, design and interactive experience, it's a treat to get into the photo studio when I can.

This shoot was a day-long affair for a client of mine. They are a small skunk-works operation made up of obsessed lighting engineers. They have a new product coming to market, and asked us to create a product booklet, brand, and shoot the images for the piece as well. They are a fun crew to work with, because they are so passionate about their work, and are obsessive in their attention to detail. At the same time, they are very open to collaboration, new ideas, and new perspectives. This is a great combination: obsessive and open.

In any case, I spent a day with Kevin from the group, and two sets of freshly-minted fixtures, down at Camren in their large studio. We shot digitally, and reviewed our shots in realtime, making it easy for a film-boy like me to make decisions on tweaking lighting positions, intensities, and so on. Needless to say it's also a bonus to have a lighting engineer on hand to look over your shoulder as you figure out how your strobes are going to refract through the product's diffuser, say. All-told, we had about ten set-ups, and shot about 200 exposures that I kept. All this for about seven final images for the booklet and their website.

I had a great day; great enough that it makes me want to do more work like this. So: you need some photography? I might know a guy.

P.S. Once we get the booklet out, I'll post some of the shots from the shoot. -a

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4.01.2008

What Makes a Great Designer?

Adrian Hanft over at Be a Design Group has a nice post on the Five Uncommon Attributes of Good Designers this morning. It rings true not just for the designer in me, but the brand communicator, the photographer, and the marketing consultant as well. Hanft concludes thusly:
At the end of the day, designing a logo is relatively easy. Being a good person is the real challenge. I believe that it isn't enough for a good designer to just do good work. A good designer must also be a good person. What are some virtues that you believe help make a better designer?


Read the whole post. It's worth the time.

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3.31.2008

Who Works Late?

My guess is: everyone.

Is working late the norm for you, or is it at least expected of you? I only ask because on my Basecamp site I notice a lot of clients--clients with different backgrounds, working in different industries--post responses far outside the normal "9-to-5" working hours. Most of the late--or early--posters are either in non-profit, internet-based, or startup businesses, but even some _governmental_ folks work odd hours.

What is your work schedule like? And do you work those hours because you are expected to, because you are more creative then, or because you get more done? Or is it just insomnia?

For me I simply have more time to do really creative work; I have always been on more of a musician's schedule (due to formative years spent in coffeehouses, sketching, I think) and so there's simply more creativity for design, even photography, late in the evening.

photo: Late Nights by djloche

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3.28.2008

"Design is Dead", says Starck. Oh reeeeealllly?

Kottke turned me on to this little bit o' nonsense for the evening:

"I was a producer of materiality and I am ashamed of this fact," Starck told Die Zeit weekly newspaper.

"Everything I designed was unnecessary."


my favorite line is that "design is a dreadful form of expression." Yeah, you're totally right about that, o' design god/huckster. That's why, oh everything people ever made was designed, in one form or another. If you criticize design, you're criticizing a large chunk of civilization's accomplishments (large and, more importantly, small), and the people who made them. 

Seriously, though, I think the point he is trying to make is that there are things more important than a well-made chair (although don't knock a comfy chair). The AFP article closes with him saying that the thing he needs most is the "ability to love." I would posit that any well made thing, whether a product of a designer, writer, artist, or sunday casserole-maker's output, contains love. And if you don't put a little of that in everything you do, you aren't making it as good as it could be.



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3.21.2008

Simplicity, and Beauty in the "Mundane"


Piper photograph - 2
Originally uploaded by notchcode
A few photographers have said this better than me, but here it is anyway:

Look for the beauty in what is around you, right now. Questing for it elsewhere just makes for a longer trip.

Piper, my four year-old daughter, took this image. With all my training, I couldn't have done better.

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3.20.2008

Why cropping can be bad, and why failure can be good

Two items of linklove for you guys:

Matt Soar: Fail Again, Fail Better, in the Design Observer

"Jonathan Hoefler says, 'Increasingly I think about the work that I do not so much as a directed effort, but as the ability to recognize accidents and interpret them productively. Even failures have their place, since without them there’s no progress: anything that’s truly 'experimental' has to run the risk of failure.'"


Cropping: A Duh Moment, in the Online Photographer
(referencing this amazing image)

"Once you start cropping, why stop? You've entered context-elimination mode; you're engaging in the activity of denying information to the viewer; why not take it a little further, and then a little further than that?"

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2.25.2008

The 8 Types of Creative Directors

Tom Fishburne sends out pithy branding/advertising-related cartoons every weekend. This one, featuring the 8 types of Creative Directors, showed up in my mailbox this past Saturday. Check out the entire cartoon and see which one you identify with/aspire to be/loathe.

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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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11.23.2007

Analogs do digital video transitions via trampoline tech

For all my physical acting and film grad student friends out there, See it and believe it:


All done in one take. My favorite part is the painted progress bar at the bottom.
via the Panopticist.

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11.21.2007

Color


If you ever need some color inspiration, check out ColourLovers.com, an online community devoted to sharing ideas about color, color palettes, and trends. It's a great place for getting some inspiration, and if nothing else, an idea of what other designers out there are using.

Here's a particularly nice, cool, bold palette from deus that caught my eye this morning as I was searching for some inspiration.

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11.20.2007

iterative


Have you taken your design at least one step past where you feel comfortable with it today?

Iteration: it works.

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9.18.2007

Today's Musical Notation: In The Country


eMusic turned me onto a scandanavian jazz group, In The Country. Part Bill Evans, part Thelonious Monk, part Philip Glass, this trio rewards both the casual and serious listener. In other words: perfect for creating to, and to relaxing to. Some people might find In The Country's pieces too nontraditional, but their layered atmospheric musicianship is a winner for me. Original and great! You can listen to some samples on In The Country's MySpace page, or just check them out on eMusic.

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