Notes from Notchcode

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

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Notes from Notchcode

7.14.2009

A Ringing Endorsement

Sometimes a negative is a positive, especially when it comes from a company that has an even worse online portfolio than I do! Really, folks, I know my site is still in the stone age, but don't talk the trash if you can't back it up with work we can see (the portfolio section, if you can call it that, was some sort of slow-loading Java thingie that never finished loading, and wasn't branded with the same UX as the rest of their site. C'mon, people! Let's use something better than iWeb to build your own site--especially if you offer web design services!)

The interesting thing to me is that these guys are in southern California (a place where I've never had any clients) and work primarily in the entertainment industry (which, aside from being a DP on a friend's short, I've never worked in or for). Love the birdie photo on the right, especially. I mean, really, WTF? Is this how you promote your business? I have a feeling they pulled my name off a Google search for "creative services denver" (picking Denver at random, perhaps) and plucked my URL from there.

Who knows? Who cares, really? Just another example that the internet may be a great place to find good people who can help you to make your business succeed, and it can also be a place full of mediocrity and Red Bull-filled nonsense.
Labels: b2b, branding, california, humor, underpants gnomes

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5.29.2009

Papyrus

Ah, XKCD, you know us typographers all too well:

Labels: humor, typography

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5.21.2009

How to make your children make your Art Direction Better

Of course someone in the advertising industry would leverage their children to benefit their performance. As for myself, I will henceforth be training my sub-six-year-olds to play the role of the Client as well.

Bonus: TIny Art Director has a book deal!

Labels: advertising, advice, children, creativity, graphic design, humor

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5.08.2009

Friday Fun, in honor of the new Star Trek Film

All I have to say is "Thanks! Now I have the A-Team theme song stuck in my head for the rest of the day."

Check it out on the You-Toob.

Thanks, I think, to Joel Finkelstein for the link.
Labels: humor, mashups

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4.30.2009

Helpful Web Site tells you if you have Swine Flu

I suspect the CDC has a different take, but this one was straight and to the point:

doihaveswineflu.org/

Thanks to @petermeister for the tip.

Labels: humor

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3.31.2009

Even God wants the Old Facebook Back:

From a Facebook Haggadah, by Carl Elkin. Check out the whole thing!

via hgm's twitterstream
Labels: humor, information graphics, interface, social networking, usability

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1.29.2009

Egotist, You little slice of Heavenly-Smoked Goodness

Ever wanted to spruce up your site with some really appealing feature, but didn't want to take the time or spend the money to do anything, er, substantiative?

I bring you cnp studio's bacolicio.us.

See: look what it did for the Denver Egotist.

Spruced up that boring ol' black and white design right there, didn't it?

You're welcome, Egotist, you're welcome.
Labels: bacon, creativity, denver egotist, humor

posted at 3:01 PM Leave your comments here: 1 comments

1.27.2009

Imperfect is the new Desirable

From the perfectly imperfect Cat Ad Girl, her latest.

I think that imperfection actually has more visual appeal than the perfect. But that statement, in and of itself, doesn't rule out perfection; it merely redefines it as something that isn't conventionally "ideal".
Labels: aesthetics, humor

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11.12.2008

Heller on Humor in Graphic Design

This post from Steven Heller over at the AIGA on whether or not there's anything funny about graphic design makes some good points. In general, I find that any creative endeavor turns out better (more effective, more compelling, more "tight") when some humor or playfulness has been applied to the process.

And besides, if you can't have fun while you're working, what the hell is the point?

A short excerpt:

Why are puns necessary in graphic wit and humor? The rules that govern verbal language do not translate precisely into visual language. Thus, The New York Times has no rules governing visual puns. Graphic designers’ canon of usage is different because our means of communication—our language, syntax and grammar—are different.
Labels: graphic design, humor

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9.26.2008

Statler and Waldorf: Pundits

The NYT has an op-ed from those cranky box-seaters, Statler and Waldorf, regarding the election season. Fits my mood today, so I'm posting it.
Labels: humor, politics

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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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7.25.2008

If a Corporation had to design the STOP sign

Clients: don't let this be you. Not only will designers hate you, but the result will be pretty much what you see here. Designers: we feel your pain.

via Kottke.
Labels: humor, process

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6.27.2008

Buy n Large: another great fake brand

Sometimes the best-branded companies aren't even real.

My favorite fake company is probably Hudsucker Industries, the improbable inventors of the hula-hoop ("you know, for kids!"). After that it would probably be Monsters, Inc., notably for the great pains the production team put into making the Monsters Inc. brand believable (they cited Paul Rand and the vision of a postwar industrial giant, fallen on hard times as the thesis of the brand). But the latest is Buy n Large, the company that put humanity in space and off of the garbage-infested Earth, forever, in the new Pixar film WALL-E. check out their website: it's a lovely dash of Onion-like truthiness, recast for framing the backstory for WALL-E. My favorite article in the Buy n Large PR archives is probably how BnL bought the rights to rebrand north. As in, the direction "north".

So, since the weekend is upon us, go see a movie. And stay away from the NANC-E bot...a nanny robot with pincers like that looks dangerous.

Check the lazyinternet to find more good fake brands, too.
Labels: branding, humor

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6.25.2008

Bike to Work Day

If you forgot to bike to work today, with the rest of us, make up for it by biking in tomorrow. You'll still get credit for it in my book. But only if you wear a tie.

photo by Mark Wolff, Rocky Mountain News
Labels: humor, work

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6.19.2008

Animator vs. Animation

Ever thought your Flash animation was actually working against you? Like it knew you were under deadline, and was trying to make you late? Well, now there's proof.

Tip o' the Wacom Stylus to Heather GM for the twitter about it.
Labels: flash, hgm, humor

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5.19.2008

actually, I will point it out to you

Since my earlier scan was so crappy.
Labels: editing, humor

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Can't wait to try the drinks at this place

If there's one reason to hire a good copywriter, or at least one to proof your marketing before you send it off to press, it would be exemplified here. I won't point it out to you, but have a look at the featured drink on the front page of this menu I received in the mail, and see if it doesn't make you throw up in your mouth a little bit.

Labels: editing, humor

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5.17.2008

The Republican Party's new brand has the same tagline as an antidepressant? How, um, ironic.

Since I've been out in the field all week, I haven't been as watchful about branding slip-ups as I usually am. But when I came home tonight, I was relieved to find that Jon Stewart was temping for me while I was away. Kudos to the Daily Show for doing my work for me, by finding another example of why brand research matters.
Labels: branding, humor, video

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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.
Labels: humor, performance

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4.23.2008

ok, so I am working out right now. even as I blog.

Here's a lovely bit of graphic design interpretation from calorielabs.com. Several states are featured, and I can't decide whether or not I like New Mexico's or South Carolina's flag-as-infographic better. What do you think?

My own interpretation of the Colorado state flag is below:

thanks, Cool Infographics!
Labels: graphic design, humor, information graphics, visual information

posted at 9:14 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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.
Labels: agencies, branding, creativity, humor, nonprofits

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4.01.2008

How you know you went to an art school

...when the top posted items in your school's Facebook network are all in Japanese and probably are links to some sort of nifty anime or motion graphics YouTube reel....
Labels: anime, humor, SCAD

posted at 10:14 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

3.25.2008

Yeah, Barack has a posse, and I'm on it.

Just in case you were wondering about my ability to win friends and influence people:

Labels: flickr, humor, photography, politics

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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.
Labels: branding, humor

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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.
Labels: creativity, graphic design, humor

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2.06.2008

memo to clients providing art for your campaign: 72dpi images DO NOT PRINT WELL.

That is all.
Labels: design, humor, printing

posted at 4:00 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

done, and done.

Here you go, mateys.
Via:
Be a Design Group
Form Fifty Five

and the Amazing Shape
But now what I really want to know is:

[cat photo from dark_mephi. Used under a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial license.]
Labels: design, humor, typography

posted at 12:12 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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: accident, branding, creativity, humor

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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: css, humor, IE, visual information, W3C, web design

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