I thought The Devil Wears Prada had a wonderful insight into the culture of design and the mindset of designers. You may be able tell at a glance that I am somewhat a stranger to fashion, but there was much of this movie I could relate to – none more so than the scene above.

I think the reason I could so easily relate is I feel that, fairly late in life, I made the transition from being like the Anne Hathaway character to being like the Meryl Streep character. I can see this scene from both character’s point of view.

Here’s a design / branding version of the Meryl Streep’s cerulean sweater, and it comes from another “devil” of sorts: Martha Stewart.  In just over ten years, a distinctive type family linked with her personal brand went from iconic status to something nearly despised by some as the “next Papyrus.” Here is how this played out.

Archer back in 2000 when it first emerged. It is quintessentially "Martha."

Archer is what’s known as a slab serif, a type of typography that is industrial in a graceless masculine way. It would be at home in 50s and 40s boy scout manuals, US army paperwork, electronics kits, and hardware catalogs. I speak in generalities because there are many exceptions. Hoefler and Frere-Jones rethought the concept of a slab serif, preserving the sturdiness of it but adding an element of grace. From a type nerd point of view, it was like something totally new under the sun, a brilliant reconciling of two opposites: boiling, frozen water. This was in 2000. The font was Archer, the client was Martha Stewart Living magazine.

Archer is a graceful, beautiful slab serif type family

And it suited her to a T. The typeface was a masterpiece – versatile, beautiful, tough as nails, smart, smart, relentlessly smart – just like Martha. And (so far as I could see) possessed by her and her alone. It was used brilliantly, and part of that brilliance was that it was invisible to all but a few. You’ve doubtless heard of Martha, but this is probably the first you’ve heard about her typography – yet it continues to be a powerful presence in her brand.  Archer is her font.

I coveted it and  searched for it for years until I stumbled on an announcement of its release as a “new” font from H&FJ. Later, I figured it out that type families are commissioned for private use and then often later become available to the public. That was in 2007. There were seven years between Martha’s use of this font and it’s public release.

You can surely guess the rest of the story. Now Archer is everywhere and designers of a certain type are starting to roll their collective eyes in horror of it all. I guess they’re right. Archer has become the go to font that buttoned up organizations are using to create a home crafted, earnest, but still sophisticated voice. Once this goes stale, they will move onto the next thing.

Twelve years later

Enough already

I look forward to that cycle – including the inevitable backlash among the designers – finishing soon. This type family can then enter into a cultural equilibrium, joining the pantheon of wonderful, time honored type families that designers use (and use sparingly) for years to come. This will only happen in the distant, distant future when all recent goings on have long faded from memory. Say 2016.

Maxell

Volkswagen. Original text: “Think small.”

Guinness. Original text: “Have a Guinness when you’re tired.”

iPod, Apple.

Bethlehem Steel. Original text:  “New York. Brought to you by Bethlehem Steel.”

Pepto Bismol

Smokey the Bear. Original text: “Only you can prevent forest fires.”

Keep America Beautiful anti-litter campaign

Marlborough. Original text “Marlborough Country”

Nike. Original text: “Just do it.”

Family Planning Association. Original text: “Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?”

The Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Original text: “This is your brain on drugs.”

Tootsie Pop. Original text: “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? The world may never know.”

Raid.

Ajax

For those of you who haven’t followed the controversy, Komen recently announced they would (in effect) not provide funding for cancer screenings for Planned Parenthood. Public outrage forced them to reverse this decision – at great, probably permanent expense.

Komen represents a more traditional approach to communications. Though active on social media, their efforts seemed like an anemic translation from old media – abstract, dull, perfunctory. It suggested to me a marginalized intern tasked with completing Facebook posts with no real say in the matter.

Planned Parenthood’s communications were more dynamic, interesting, and timely. They used the immediacy of the Komen decision to lend a sense of urgency to the discussion. This momentum fueled a tidal wave of outrage. It was deftly handled, and Planned Parenthood looked nimble and smart.

Compare and contrast two posts from Planned Parenthood and Komen on February 1.

Brevity is ever the telltale sign of mastery of craft. Though Komen has many more comments, the bulk of them are negative – many even scathing.

There are many great analysis of this incident (this piece by Adovcom is the most interesting and insightful I’ve found) and though they vary in the details, there is a general agreement that the Komen, Planned Parenthood incident is symbolic of a profound shift that is taking place in how organizations think about how they communicate. More than anything else, it’s not a matter of being big, wealthy, or famous, but using the tools you have resourcefully and being imaginative and smart.

Even a simple campaign benefits from this approach. Here is a poster we recently designed for Pickford’s unofficial Oscar event.

Our “toolkit” is comprised of

• a simple typeface treatment enclosed in a circle,
• a halftone filter very subtly applied to photos to give it a slight newsprint quality
• a cropping concept of only including portion of the face (this last concept was inspired by the camera work in Rosemary’s Baby, which torments you by hiding critical details from view)

These elements were later used to create a series of screen ads, a few of which are shown here.

By making simple choices, the resulting system plays well with others – in this case Mark Michael French’s excellent photography.

Striking images of local people having a great time, playing with the concept of Oscar in a tongue and cheek way is a far better emotional draw than any logo or type concept. The best design strategy, therefore, is one that supports – instead of interferes with – the story told by the photography.

In this way, consistent use of a few simple elements allowed us to quickly create additional designs that were instantly recognizable as being part of the same event. Additional materials could be easily made that would follow these simple rules. Try taking this approach for your next event. The ability to include both variety and consistency in designs should satisfy any team, from large to small.

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.

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”.

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.