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.

A recent New York Times article discussing print vs. e-books for children suggests that even many avid Kindle and iPad digital book readers prefer printed books over digital for their children. The experience of flipping through a printed book is inherently more personal and unique. Paper thickness and texture, colors, page sizes and bindery can communicate an instant message in a way that a digital screen image cannot.

The same can be said for business printing. While every medium has its advantages, the mere fact that printed pieces and mailed pieces are becoming less common makes it a great opportunity to take advantage of the unique quality of ink on paper. A brochure sized to fit inside a common no. 10 envelope, but folded on the short edge makes use of the extended landscape design surface. This is a proportion unlike a iPad or monitor screen, making it stand out more.

The feel of a heavy sheet of textured coverstock with a letterpressed image pressed into it is memorable. The below notebooks for Benefits Growth Network contained outlined notes and workbook pages for a business workshop, as well as blank notebook pages to take notes in.  The unique production quality makes clients hang on to them longer. Even if workshop pages are removed, the BGN brand is reinforced by the debossed logo on the cover

Looking a the two invitations below, which event would you rather attend?

Before ruling out printing because of expense or production time, first take into consideration the possible increase in response to a printed piece. How much is a new customer worth? An attendee at a fundraising event? Planned correctly, it is an investment that pays off in the end.

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.

We recently completed a series of ads for Chocolate Necessities. They not only make some of the finest chocolate you’ll ever taste, but they offer some very unique truffle flavor combinations you won’t find elsewhere. The ads below were designed to highlight some of these flavors.

Another goal of the ad series was to focus on the unique qualities of their chocolate and the tasting experience.

There are many benefits to indulging in their chocolate just for yourself, or giving it as a gift.

To make sure the messaging was on target, much chocolate tasting was involved before, during, and after the creation of these designs.

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.

"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.

I think no other aspect of a designer’s work is more telling than their use of type.   It shows their understanding of culture,  the subject matter, and the audience in very subtle but important ways.

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.