Type is present in essentially all marketing communications. Other than color, perhaps no other visual element plays a more crucial role in building a consistent presence across multiple forms of media. Yet, type is something few businesses use effectively, with even large established companies continuously making arbitrary choices with type. Those choices undermine their long term ability to differentiate themselves and detract from the professionalism and credibility of the materials they create.

As is common for our industry, part of Shew Design’s branding process is building a type palette in much the same way as a color palette, usually a combination of typefaces designed to work with one another for years to come.  As designers, our tools and processes put us in an ideal world of sorts – one that makes it easy to follow our own guidelines. Not so with others, and with good reason: technology and the marketplace create so many barriers to managing type easily and effectively.

Here are some strategies we’ve used to help clients harness type to create an effective brand presence.

Documented standards that are accessible, understood, and observed

Standards can address which typefaces to use and how to use them, but standards are useless if they can’t be easily accessed, people don’t know how to follow them, or if no one is responsible for enforcing them. As a general rule, we encourage a division of labor where people who create content are different from the people who approve content.  We always make standards available online, through printed manuals, and when appropriate, as stylesheets in programs such as Microsoft Word.

The PDF format

Adobe’s PDF (Portable Document Format) can embed most fonts, allowing people to deliver documents with branded typography without requiring the viewer to purchase fonts [???]. In addition, form fields can use specific fonts and can be used to make templates for report covers, CD labels, and similar pieces that can be modified by anyone without requiring a purchase or special skills. These templates can be combined with preprinted materials to create attractive materials that are completely branded and easily changed using free software.

discounts on type purchases

If cost is the primary reason against using type consistently, savings can be built into the branding process by selecting type families that can be purchased in bulk or by buying cheaper versions of established typefaces. As with most things, you get what you pay for but there are deals to be had. For example: older versions of Freehand and Illustrator would often come with hundreds of type families free. A person who is willing to invest a little time could purchase several hundred dollars worth of type for only a few dollars.

Consistent use of default type

A two tier type strategy could use more interesting branded type solutions for marketing applications while using standard type (i.e. Times and Arial) for everyday use. The disconnect between the two materials can be softened by using assets such as logos, preprinted materials, graphical headers, style sheets, etc. to maintain consistency.

An attitude of restraint

Given the wealth of free decorative fonts and effects available, it’s possible to endlessly tinker with designs without significantly improving them. Before beginning the process of exploring type, we recommend you considering focusing more on content and less on formatting, picking simple solutions will hold up for multiple projects. Simple choices almost always work better for long term solutions.

Having just completed the installation of the new version of Office, I was struck by the new default appearance of good old Microsoft Word. Documents now appear with a very minimal, non-graphical interface at the top of the screen, and a nondescript blank page below. The message of this design choice is clear: the application is about writing instead of the technology of writing – about filling a page with words instead of filling a screen with dashboards and buttons.

Even if it’s only on a screen, I like the blank page and the limitless freedom it provides. “Once you make a mark on a page,” a person at a drawing group I attended once told me gravely, “You’re doing serious business.”

I would add it’s a business that is powerfully, sometimes invisibly affected by the tools you use.   For example:  formatting controls may help you plan out the appearance of the document you’re making or may just distract you with meaningless choices that interfere with the writing process.

The distractions from thinking seriously about the process become greater when technology becomes the focus… especially when building websites. Thinking in terms of technology alone can lull a person into emulating others by rote. Contact page? Check. About us page? Check. It’s possible to build an entire website that follows a form, perfectly, but still says or does nothing interesting or useful.

This is a hazard everyone faces today, and I think the solution comes from thinking seriously about the project at hand before flipping on the computer. It means thinking beyond daily posts, tweets, and updates, but rather of the deeper challenges of communicating something valuable and relevant. And, more often than not, it begins with a blank page.

Your best friends

Where many think that creativity and criticism are opposites of one another, I’ve long believed that honest criticism is an inherently creative act. Certainly, the best critics love what they criticize, and the act of engaging in honest criticism is, at heart, a striving to make things better. The best creative people often surround themselves with the best critics they can find, and the resulting dialogue between both perspectives is the fuel that propels the work forward.

Great work bears the results of this exchange. Conversely, otherwise quality work that has not withstood this rigorous process seems somehow broken, indulgent, and untrue – worse than mediocre. “Lilies fester worse than weeds.”

I encountered a bizarre example of this while reading “A Seat at the Table,” by Marc Miller. The central premise of the book is that the best salespeople operate not by pushing a particular product but by understanding and strategically solving the needs of their clients. A good book, I thought, until I reached the middle section in which the author sidestepped his core idea and started promoting – you guessed it – his own product, touted as the “coolest invention ever.”

The middle section was so out of step with the rest of the book that it could be separated from it as easily as you would unscrew a light bulb. Its presence was baffling because the author was otherwise smart and on message. It seemed to me the book was an object lesson in how even a gifted person can be momentarily led astray and let themselves forget their core message. A good critic would have made a big difference.

I left this book reflecting on how my critics – clients or colleagues – have improved the outcomes of my own work and I reminded myself to strive to enter the creative process with humility and to appreciate the many people who help make it better.

"This is not a pipe." René Magritte, The Treachery of Images

I had coffee with a friend this week who asked me for my thoughts on a brochure draft. The purpose of the brochure was to encourage people to donate to an organization that protects communities from a mechanical failure that can result in enormous harm and loss of life.

The writing was straightforward enough, but the graphics struck me as odd. A picture of an explosion filled the entire front panel. Below it, a logo highlighted the word “trust” featuring a symbolic depiction of the faulty equipment in fire engine red. This pattern was repeated throughout the entire piece.

I told my friend that I thought the piece was crazy, literally. Where the verbal message was about creating confidence and security, the graphic message was about the exact opposite. The result was a brochure that was difficult to understand or believe in. It was fundamentally compromised as a fund raising tool.

My advice was to frame the piece within one message, and to make the graphics and words support one another so that the resulting piece could be easily understood by the audience. Instead of the explosion overwhelming the entire panel, it could be framed – contained as it were – by text describing the organization’s purpose.

Creating consistency between the verbal and visual parts of a message is a great rule of thumb. If more people used it, it would keep a lot of bad marketing safely out of sight. Obvious culprits include things like the aforementioned images of disaster to sell safety or peace of mind, or stereotypes of used car salespeople or criminals to sell the importance of trust or reliability.

The exceptions to this rule are many, often necessary, and occasionally brilliant. It sometimes makes sense to show overweight people to sell the importance of exercise, for example, or a deforested landscape to talk about the importance of ecology.

And sometimes saying one thing and showing another is effective marketing, particularly in political messaging through words like “peace keeper” or 1984’s “Ministry of Love” which was essentially an instrument of torture. It’s a bizarre human truth that you could stick the name of something onto its opposite without raising eyebrows. Here in Bellingham, Washington, the “People for Progressive Transportation” are essentially arguing for dismantling a bus system in favor of cars. Such is the power of names.

My recommendation is to be mindful of the distance between words and the visuals that accompany them. Make sure they match one another unless you have a specific reason for doing the opposite. If you are promoting a solution to the problem – especially an abstract problem – be especially careful about depicting the problem. Consider “containing” the problem so that the problems and solutions never comingle and become one in the minds of your audience.

yearning - by William Steig

For the past few months, I’ve been exploring a powerful tool that has exerted a subtle but profound influence on my professional life. Google Insights has become a backdrop for our strategic work, and truth be told, a bit of a fascinating toy as well.

On a technical level, Insights is a free search engine analysis tool, and it’s extremely easy to use. It breaks down search engine results by time and location; it also provides feedback about trends related to the terms you query.

In terms of my own use, I think of Insights as a window into the desires of the Internet’s hive mind. Its obvious uses are powerful indeed. One client, for example, provides a service available from multiple sources in our community but with limited availability in BC, just north of their location. Insights pinpointed one community – Surrey – in which this particular service saw over 5,000% growth. Wow.

I challenge you to invest 30 minutes exploring terms related to your own business or occupation without experiencing a shift of perspective. In time, you can sculpt your queries to ask very nuanced questions. I recommend paying particular attention to the related terms that appear on the bottom of the search.

Its less obvious uses are even more fascinating to me – particularly as they relate to the viral quality certain ideas, words, and behaviors have. I’ve been exploring slang, jargon, pop culture, and misinformation of all kinds. Climate change vs. global warming vs. global warming hoax? Even our collective shift from coughing into our hands to coughing into our elbows play out in interesting ways in Insights.

Where even I wouldn’t claim that this information is always useful, I can’t help but think that use of this tool has given me a new perspective on marketing and a new insight into the ideas that are top of mind, both today and yesterday. If you’re in the business of capturing minds at any level, I think you’ll find that it’s an indispensable tool.

Google Reader

This application lets you efficiently monitor any number of blogs, which can be conveniently categorized by topic. Blogs are a great way of researching specific industries, technologies, or people. As an online tool, it can be available from any computer or mobile device.  Other than a search engine, it is the most powerful research tool I use.

Media Monkey

iTunes is great in many ways, but it suffers from significant flaws.  It’s a resource hog, filled with ads, uses a proprietary format, and surreptitiously  imposes a lot of controls  about who owns the media you’ve purchased.  Media Monkey  has none of these issues and it works great – particularly for having a single media library be accessible from multiple machines via a small network.  It is also compatible with mobile devices, including iPods.  I use it for listening to audio podcasts, audio books, and music.

Miro

Miro is a great tool for monitoring video podcasts.  It runs in the background, gradually downloading content. I use it for learning about drawing, technology, and social issues.  Without a doubt, my favorite podcast is TED — an amazing and inspirational series of lectures about a variety of social, technological, artistic, and cultural issues.  Also free.

For the rest of us, type doesn’t have to be complicated.  A few simple “common sense” rules can help you create more attractive, easy to read documents. Here is one such rule.

Years ago, the Apple II had a very simple game in which you thought of an animal, and it tried to guess what it was. The opening question was always “does it swim in the water or live in the land.” The corresponding rule with type is simply: “was it created by a human hand or by a machine?”

“Made by hand” means part of a typographic tradition closely aligned with handwriting. In most cases, this means type with serifs and with a stress. Take an “O” and make it huge. Does it look like a circle made by a machine or does it lean slightly to the left? Does it  have a stroke that gets thinner or thicker as if it  was written by a right handed person? This one observation can tell you a lot about a font, and how to use it.

According to this approach, Times New Roman is by hand; Arial is made by machine.

time and arial - machine vs. person

If it was created by hand, then simply treat it as  handwriting… meaning: used mixed  caps, be very sparing with bold and underline, and colors, and don’t reverse it (meaning white text on a black background), and don’t justify or letterspace it.  Basically,  just keep it simple and use default settings.

If  the type was created by a machine, then it will be much more accommodating of the permutations listed above. The type is designed for flexibility. Think of it as putty that can be stretched and molded.

Of course, there are many exceptions to this rule but this provides a very helpful guideline for creating documents that are attractive and easy to read.

A recent survey by ExactTarget indicated that 70% of Facebook users don’t want marketing to be incorporated in social media applications – even when they opt to become fans of a particular business.

Of course. Given the choice, few people would claim they want to be marketed to, ever – regardless of the medium. It’s a bit like asking if they want a headache or a pebble in their shoe.

Yet, Facebook is obviously filled with people cheerfully engaged in all sorts of marketing activities – downloading coupons, answering polls, signing petitions, benefiting from discounts, playing games, earning badges. Companies are providing many of these activities, and of course they are marketing themselves.

It’s a matter of how a word is perceived. “Marketing” as the hard sell, the interruption, the phony friendliness, the lackluster product with a glossy polish is clearly not what Facebook is for. This is how many people perceive marketing today.

“Marketing” as an envolving form of communication – a free resource, a clever idea, an insightful observation, and the occasional promotion, gimmick, or self congratulation – is clearly at home at Facebook.

I’m curious to see what comes next. Facebook will eventually be replaced, almost certainly because the commercial aspects of it will overwhelm the other content. Will our perception of the word  “marketing’ shift as well? I wonder if it will always have a negative ring to most people, and if it will be something whose obviousness makes it seem a thing of the past. Most importantly, I wonder what will replace it.

I think it’s an exciting trend to watch and participate in, and with Facebook’s 300 million users, the effects are going to be far reaching indeed.

Some people separate risks into different categories – physical, social, monetary, etc. – where others think in terms of high or low involvement.

A low involvement choice is a product like detergent, gum, or paper towers.  These sorts of decisions are quickly made on the basis of cost,  convenience, recognizability, and familiarity.  There is little risk involved.

Low involvement marketing materials don't involve a lot of trust or risk. Standing out is hugely important for the success of these products.

High involvement choices evoke  a higher decision process because of greater of risk. The decision is much more thought out, possibly more emotional, less subject to being driven by  price,  convenience, or similar considerations.  For obvious reasons, health care is almost always considered  a high involvement message.

High involvement marketing is much more reliant on trust and understanding, and a brand  functions to create a connection between the organization and the client.

When developing high involvement marketing materials, we often use inclusive language (”we,” “you,” “us,” etc.) to address a relationship, and we respect the audience by providing them with  the information they need to a make an informed choice.  We position our client as the organization that helps solves the audience’s problems , relieves an anxiety, or creates an opportunity.  Design in these circumstances is minimal and uncomplicated, created to calm and frame content without competing with it.

The excessive formatting of this ad is just one of the things about this ad that make it untrustworthy to modern eyes.

If your proposition is high involvement and  your materials are cluttered, busy, or inconsistent, you may want to consider the corrosive effects these qualities have on your audience’s ability to extend their trust.  The perceived need to “stand out” is usually the culprit, taking a potentially simple message and ornamenting  it with extraneous formatting, effects or clipart.

Better to focus on a simple message  that differentiates you, use creative concepts that speak to that message.  It’s been my experience that focusing on a message opens the door to more interesting, creative concepts because they were born out of a real need and won’t change every time there’s a new project.  Over time, these choices will make it easier for your audience to understand, value, and ultimately trust you.