Greetings and well met, traveler. It’s time once again for your chance to win fabulous prizes from Shew Design. This month’s contest tests your knowledge of some classic print and TV advertisements. The twist? We’ve replaced the original copywriting with quotes from Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets – painstakingly finding passages that resemble the sense of the original ads.

We’ve tried to design it so everyone will know a few of these ads, but few will know all.  Do your best.

It’s simple!  Visit this link and complete the questions. The reward? The people with the highest scores will receive – as always – a chance to win $50 gift certificate from  Boundary Bay or Amazon in addition to Shew Design’s brand new Fresh Ideas 2012 book. You have until the end of February 2012 to enter. The winner will be announced the first week of March.

Thanks to everyone who gave our January contest a try. We had a total of three people who completed 100% of the answers correctly, including Troy Date, Andrew Pritikin, and Craig Margaret. Additionally, there were a few ‘close calls’ including  Lauralee Carbone and Katie Fleming.

Randomly selected among those that got 100% right was Craig Margaret. Nicely done! We will be sending him a $50 gift certificate go Amazon.com in addition to a set of our hand printed coasters.

Stay tuned for our second contest – titled William Shakespeare, marketing copywriter – to be delivered later this month!

In case you wanted to know the answers, they are 1: The Matrix, 2: The Godfather, 3: Harry Potter, 4: Twilight, 5: The Lord of the Rings, 6: Star Wars, 7: Woody Allen.

Shew Design is by no means an anti-Microsoft company. We have used (and enjoyed) Microsoft products for years. I think Windows continues to get better and better and my Windows based design computers are, despite the occasional hiccup, wonderful, remarkable contraptions. No creative person in the history in the world prior to this point has had access to such amazing tools.

Yet, I have had my fill of some Microsoft products and practices, Office in particular. I basically use 1% of Word’s capabilities, but that 1% seems to be hidden afresh with every new software release. I’m struck by how incredibly large the programs are, the myriad options for customizing them, the constant clutter, the complexity, the cost.

Ultimately, I’m struck that there are other products out there that do the job better. Google Docs has changed the way we develop copywriting concepts. Google Docs uses a super stripped down Word interface and allows a single document to be accessible to multiple people at the same time. Also: it’s easy.

Open Office is a non-cloud based solution. In some ways, it is a “low rent” version of MS Office in terms of visual appeal, but for our purposes it holds its own. It’s free and it can reliably do things like read and write to the Microsoft Word format – a process that it does *mostly* reliably. Open Office has its own version of Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. You could, as we have, install it alongside Word and implement a gradual phase in strategy for the products that work best for you. There are no shortage of options.

In truth, Shew Design has not completely extricated ourselves from Office. The final, probably painful, departure from Outlook will be the last step in the process. However, I think our company will be the better for it. In this era of collaborative creativity and ever dwindling budgets, there are much better ways of spending your money than the endlessly spooling upgrade for software that has essentially stayed still for decades.

Garamond is one of a handful of typefaces that designers of all eras return to again and again.

Apple used the condensed form in the late eighties, and it became the quintessential typographic solution for business communications in the early nineties.

People who make lists of the most readable fonts tend to pick Garamond first.  It is ideally suited for book design. The Harry Potter books were set in Adobe Garamond, as are The Hunger Games books – even Dr. Seuss. It is also a staple for technical documentation for high end technology firms (like Nvidea).

It’s a remarkable thing that a 500 year old design would be perpetually connected with innovation and fresh, modern storytelling. The reason is at heart very simple: Garamond is a masterpiece of form and function. It works. Seen from distance or up close, it is simply beautiful *and* functional.

Designers categorize Garamond as a humanist typeface, meaning that it comes from a human (i.e. handwriting). Upon inspection, you can see how the forms were created by a brush with a wedge tip by a right handed person. If type is like an illustration, what does the quality of line reveal about the person who made it? To my mind, Garamond reveals a combination of intelligence, warmth, and mastery of control. It reminds me of Bach’s music -  particularly such things as the Brandenburg Concertos or the Goldberg Variations.

Yet, there are ways in which the type departs from its humanist origins. In translating handwriting to movable types, type design began to evolve from being about ink to being about metal. In the example above, Jenson – which predates Garamond by only a few decades – is more closely linked with handwriting. In comparison, Garamond seems sturdier, more in alignment with a horizontal and vertical grid. This is the reason why Garamond (and not Jenson) is fresh and relevant today and will remain so for years to come. It is merely a first step in an evolution of type that would unfold for centuries to come – with successive type designers each attempting to reconcile an organic flowing motion of handwriting within an outlying grid.

I’ve read that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos remarked “whoever doesn’t like this, hates puppies” when discussing the Amazon logo. The double meaning of the arrow and smile is brilliant.

The FedEx logo contains an arrow in the “Ex.”

This inspired us to develop a hidden message in the the Interfaith Community Health Clinic logo, as a visual pun combining healthcare (symbolized by the cross) and a community.

The Guild of Food Writers is a visual pun combining a pen nib and a spoon. The interaction of positive and negative space creates many opportunities for using one image to combine multiple symbols.

The Toblerone logo contains a bear.

Though its an open question if this image actually contains hidden messages, beyond a doubt the discussion makes the logo more interesting.

Whatever the album’s creators intended, the messages woven into this piece add enormously to its memorability.

In the design world, adding a “hidden message” is a great way to subtly reinforce a message without adding clutter, and also a great way to reward viewers when they “get it”.

It’s simple!  Visit this link and complete the questions. The questions use the theme of typography dovetailing with writing to create tone and feeling. We’ve taken quotes from popular movies and typeset them in the manner of the posters. The goal is to correctly guess which movie poster the typeface was used in.

The reward? Those with the most correct answers will qualify to win a $50 gift certificate to Boundary Bay, or Amazon in addition to a set of our hand printed letterpress coasters. You have until the end of January 2012 to enter. The winner will be announced the first week of February.

Have fun!

We’ve been thinking a lot about the evolving nature of marketing, adjusting our services and workflows to reflect emerging trends. While I don’t believe that print is dying (or dead), events such as the recent closure of The Paper Zone make it abundantly clear that print is no longer the thing it was.

Today we think of marketing with old vs. new media as an open question, decided on a case by case basis for each client and project. Since cost is almost always a critical element of the discussion, we’ve found it helpful to equate a traditional media cost with an equivalent social media cost.

A modest ad in a weekly publication may cost, for example, upwards of $400 a month. What would it look like like if that same amount was invested in social media?

One obvious advantage is that social media is easier to measure — making it possible to track the impact a post or email has on web traffic, to name one example.  Another advantage is the ability to be more selective in terms of audience or message.

For some organizations, the relatively “hands off” nature of traditional media was a big perk. After a few ads were developed you could easily deploy them for months without much effort or thought. The ongoing, hands on, interactive  nature of social media, on the other hand, amounts to constant, ongoing effort.

Organizations can handle this in a variety of ways – from handing over all social media work to an outside organization to managing all social media internally.

Perhaps a combination of those two are best. People working within the organization create content that speaks to the nuances and intricacies of the goods and services they offer, where an external perspective can look afresh at existing challenges and act as an advocate for the customer’s or client’s point of view.

This is the approach we take with our own social marketing, and I can say approaching it from a process based, schedule driven way has given our company a new, more rigorous view of marketing — old and new and like.

However you think about marketing, I encourage you to think and plan out your marketing using the best features of social and traditional marketing, embracing processes and teams that can evolve with you as you grow.

This issue will unfold for years to come. It is complicated — comparatively easy to grasp the enormity of the cost of the coal trains but difficult for an everyday person to know how to invest their time in influencing the outcome. At heart, it is the type of issue that makes people feel helpless and insignificant.

Our solution began with identifying and delivering “actions” as the site’s core purpose. Amazon made a book store where you could be buy a book in a click. OK. We will do the same thing, but we will deliver actions instead of books. The site is an action delivery mechanism, a project management system of sorts.

Our concept began with the idea of utilizing a group of content providers to “broadcast” actions to various counties and states. Each location would be evaluating and prioritizing the actions based on time, importance, and location. We wanted it be as simple as possible, with only three actions for each location, and with the ability to make the action as simple or as complex as they needed.

Of course, a context would be required to make the actions meaningful. Topical news stories, videos, interactive maps, a document library, etc. would be filtered and broadcast using the same local broadcast concept.

The action oriented site concept helped us think of the site differently, creating an alternative to the more general information oriented sites out there. Additionally, it created a goal that helped us evaluate and prioritize other features, favoring an “action oriented” functionality perspective.

As with all websites, PowerPastCoal.org will be an ongoing process of development and refining. We are very happy with the initial version and look forward to helping our community (and others) Power Past Coal.

‘Design by committee’ is not code for horrible design, but rather bland, unremarkable design — work compromised by being unfocused trying to please too many, while actually pleasing too few.

mouse designed by an opensource development team

Yet, most marketing work is actually designed by groups of people – much of it very successfully. Groups that do it best have some characteristics in common, and below are five of the most important characteristics I’ve noticed over the years.

stability
Successful design benefits from a group of people who are able to participate in all phases of the project, allowing for stable, efficient communications.

variety of perspective
Successful design benefits from collaboration among many points of view. Engineers, for example, are very different than creatives. Writers different than illustrators. Managers different than sales people. The best solutions are to be found by threading a needle between multiple perspectives.

size
There’s a magical moment that takes place when a large group vocalizes the thought that “there’s too many of us to make decisions effectively.” The choice to trust a few in their group to be the ultimate evaluators and decision makers of the creative work can be an essential part of a project’s success.

comfort with writing
Strategic thinking begins and ends with writing. Strong social personalities are often uncomfortable with writing, and rely on multiple, sometime excessively long meetings and phone calls. Effective writing is predicated on shutting the door, being alone with one’s thoughts, and confronting with truth and vulnerability that is unique to the writing process.

trust
At some point, effective leadership boils down to hiring someone to do a job, and then knowing when to step out of the way to let them complete the job. Let your designer (or writer, media planner, plumber, etc.) complete their work without unnecessary or unproductive interference.

Keeping the above five characteristics in mind when organizing a new committee or working with an established one can do much to keep your creative project on track and on budget. You might even be surprised how enjoyable the process can be.

speak friend and enter

A fundamental principal about marketing communication relates to making it easy for the audience to understand what you’re trying to say. A message that requires serious thought is almost certainly going to be upstaged by less demanding messages.

Yet, as I see marketing as the strategic breaking of rules, I can justify throwing the audience a few challenges from time to time.  Executed effectively, this practice rewards the viewer for paying attention, communicating  substance and depth, a sense that “there’s more here than meets the eye.” In addition, the marketing and design both have traditions of using riddles and visual puns, and I like to think our company’s work continues these traditions.

One such opportunity emerged when creating graphics for the  Bellingham – Whatcom County Commission Against Domestic Violence for the Domestic Violence (or DV) Awareness month. Readers of this blog will know that our take on resolving this issue begins with perception. Learning to see domestic violence – as individuals and as a culture – is requisite for ending it.

Form follows function. Seeing the message as a challenge to perception, we embedded a few riddles into the campaign graphics. The first was a visual pun combing Forget-Me-Nots – a flower that for many is symbolic of dv awareness – with a calendar, highlighting event dates with a larger flower. We liked the idea of combining this concept with buttons people could wear, thinking of each person attending the event as a flower.

A second small riddle was a pun in the campaign title “the solution is in sight,” meaning that both the solution was close at hand and that the solution could be found in perception. This was a huge stretch, so we told our client that this message was  something that could be brought up at the events themselves. The graphics, in other words, were part of a larger conversation that included designs, buttons, social media, and vocal performance.

I think the most important part of developing marketing messages with this in mind is moderation – doing it only rarely and making sure that the real message is manifestly clear even if a few aspects of it are lost with some, perhaps even most of the audience.