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.

Hidden messages, conveyed through optical illusions, puns, subliminal messages, riddles, and in jokes, have always played a unique role in visual communications. They raise questions that are fun to ask, but often impossible to answer. More than anything, they appeal to a childlike delight we all share in finding  in things ‘hidden in plain sight.’

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”.

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.

The Power Past Coal website was conceived to be a media hub around the coal train issue impacting the Pacific Northwest. For the unfamiliar: the issue is about a coal terminal proposed to be built at Cherry Point in Whatcom County. If built, this would create an enormous influx of trains carrying coal – and with it a tremendous health and economic cost to dozens of communities in as many as five or six states states.

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.

“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.

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.

This is an enormous jar; when full, it will probably contain several thousand dollars.

I like the design on the front. It made me want to throw in a few dollars, which I did – happily. This design breaks tons of rules, including:

• numerous technical errors
• no mention  of the speaker, timeline, contact info, or other similar details
• no production quality – just a wrinkled piece of loose leaf and some tape

This makes me think with fondness of the pure love children have of animals, the fascination they have with money and with giant things (which this very sizable jar must surely be  to the person who wrote the note).

Thanks to Avenue Bread for supporting local animals. Why not stop by and throw in a few dollars to support a worthy cause?

Thinking about where I invest my time and energy, I look at other artists and see what I can learn from the decisions they’ve made. Without a doubt, the best creative people I know are people who have made a life choice of doggedly exploring new ways of working and thinking about their craft – whatever it happens to be. As I embark on middle age I see the need to safeguard myself from complacency in the form of relying on doing the same thing over and over. The work we produce will be a public testament of our success in achieving this goal.

By and large, most experiments don’t work… at least not initially, so the cost of experimentation is coming to terms with failing. A lot. In terms of our professional work, exposing our clients to ongoing experiments would be bad marketing for them and us and is obviously unacceptable. Therefore, we’re obliged to roll up our sleeves and – like any self-respecting mad scientist – take the syringe of our dubious speculations and plunge it deep into our own skin, making our own company the unfortunate subject of our own investigations.

And, honestly, it’s totally fun. Here are two recent experimental projects we’ve completed here at our Shew Design office.

both sides, now

As you may know, letterpress printing takes a three dimensional plate, covers it in ink, and presses it deeply into the paper, creating an impression that is very similar to debossing. Where one side of the paper has a nice crisp impression, the other appears unsatisfyingly hazy and imprecise, “blurry” to the touch. People using this medium often design around this outcome, treating the back side as something to ignore by not putting any information on top of it.

the "crisp" side

In thinking about the invitation to our open house we gave ourselves the task of designing for the ugly side of impression. We tested the concept using plates we already had, combining it with laser printing, and creating a design that played to the idea of seeing the same thing from two points of view.

the other side of the same piece of paper, with far less crisp impression

The results? Partial success.  I had reservations about the design but the feedback we received from people we showed it to early on was very positive. Ultimately, I would agree with the bulk of letterpress printers out there who simply design around the backside. However, given the right project, this approach could still work out quite well.

tablet technology v0.1

We wanted to explore options for creating our own customizable oversize graphics in the office, but we wanted to avoid  spending hundreds of dollars each time we wanted to swap them out. A matrix of clipboards (45 in all) provided a perfect solution, making it possible to produce signage on our own laser printer. Swapping one “sign” for another takes a few minutes.

an initial experiment of using the clipboard matrix

The results? Very successful. The clipboards are the first thing you see when you enter the office, so it will be nice using it to set a scene for events or special  meetings. In addition, learning what designs translate well into this format will give us a new insight into anticipating how things look on screen vs. how they appear in reality. In terms of our own company’s marketing, I like how the display communicates how our company’s sense of innovation and adaptability play into the work we produce.

Developing an identity for the Bellingham/Whatcom County Commission Against Domestic Violence raised some challenging questions about design and marketing that we hadn’t encountered before.

The Commission works with a variety of community partners to detect, prevent, and help people recover from domestic violence issues. Their identity needed to reflect the organization’s role of understanding domestic violence in an abstract way (i.e. through statistics) while still being emotionally present in the human impact this issue has on our community.

The balancing act between rational and emotional is inherently tricky, and adding to that challenge was the powerful, extreme nature of domestic violence – a thing which by its nature is usually hidden from view.  In our explorations of the material, suggestions of violence usually came off as maudlin, corny, or voyeuristic where outright depictions were  blisteringly negative – probably the worst thing to show for an organization devoted to stopping violence. Can you draw a picture depicting the absence of domestic violence? Neither can I.

My comfortable little life of art books, typography, cats, and chamber music seemed utterly inadequate for the task at hand. Even my language seemed lacking, even darkly, comically, perverse. This was not a subject you could “take a stab at” or build a “killer app” for.

Divide and conquer, indeed. Our first major step forward was thinking about creating a solid, believable foundation for the brand. Fontfont’s Sanuk seemed a perfect choice. The handwriting based, endoskeleton of Sanuk seemed smart, precise, and slightly feminine to me, and its streamlined look made it look perfectly suited for a government agency.  Used in everything from reports to posters, Sanuk would help create a controlled presence for the organization that would stay fresh and relevant for years to come.

Sanuk, an elegant, versatile type family integrates all of Commission's materials

By itself, Sanuk would be coldly rational… too much so. A collage system would act as ballast to the type, contrasting the fluid precision of the letterforms with a rougher, imperfect, more colorful illustration style. Effects applied consistently to each would impose a coherent look among drastically different photos, helping them read more as symbols instead of actual things.

collage component: intervention

Our content selections were guided by four emotional touch points we identified: control, loss, intervention, and community – with the last concept envisioned as the culminating, positive  step of a sequence.

collage component: community

As a system, these pieces could be combined and recombined in a variety of ways to make covers for reports or other assets, website graphics, or other applications, creating a stable, but adaptable platform the Commission could use in its materials for years to come.

collage application - report cover

For the past year or so, our company has been gradually using more web-based applications as part of our daily work. So far, the process has been an unqualified success. Cloud computing not only allows us to work more efficiently but it has given us new resources that open the door to a whole new way of thinking about creativity and collaboration.

Google Documents is my favorite web based application because of its simplicity, flexibility, and safety.  We use it in place of Word as an online library for tracking task lists, process documents, and similar information. Because documents can be changed (and changes tracked), they can be used by groups to coordinate checklists, sign off on forms, and coordinate content development and revisions.  The files behave like familiar word processor documents; they are easy to learn and can grow and evolve if they need to. Also importantly – we can back up all of our documents locally in just one step.

The new workflows have transformed the way we coordinate projects, both internally and with our clients. It’s helped us have more focused, streamlined communication with our clients and helped us focus on the creative elements of our work. I anticipate a future where all of our work takes place “in the cloud,” until then, I’m appreciative to have such a powerful, easy to use suite of tools available free. Thanks, Google, for another great project.