February contest results
Congratulations to Alec Strand for winning Shew Design’s February contest! It was tough competition, but he was the only one to correctly identify Bethlehem Steel as the answer to Q5 and that put him in the top position! Close behind were Shelley Calissendorff and Christina Wright and Tina S. Maxell Volkswagen. Original text: “Think small.” ...
Komen and Planned Parenthood
The public feud between Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Planned Parenthood is an object lesson in successful strategic thinking. It’s also a sign of what is to come in terms of captivating and motivating an audience. For those of you who haven’t followed the controversy, Komen recently announced they would (in effect) not ...
February 2012 Contest
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 ...
an open love letter to Garamond
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. ...
design by committee (but in a good way)
“A camel,” the old saying goes, “is a horse designed by committee.” ‘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. Yet, most marketing work is actually designed by groups of people – much ...
the hidden value of hidden messages
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 ...
forms follows function
“I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.” — Mark Twain The process of developing meaningful content for websites is sometimes a bigger challenge than the technical construction of the website itself. One reason for this is there being essentially no limit to need. The freeform nature of the ...
