The new Ramona Falls video “I Say Fever” from Barsuk Records is amazingly well done. Check out all the subtle attention to detail in the movements, eye blinks, cigarettes dangling. This is no Terry Gilliam/Monty Python concept. There’s some beautiful understated stuff going on. Awesome.
Thanks, Wendy, for sending this!
In the slug-fest that is retailing during a recession (coupled with an interest in green packaging) some of our clients are thinking a lot about their brand identity in the store.
Me, too.
But in a few commoditized categories, there’s an underlying doubt at work. For these manufacturers, research indicates that consumers don’t pick a product on the basis of who makes it. Instead, they are swayed almost entirely by the design of the product itself. Who made the sheets on your bed, for example? The towels in your bathroom? Your socks? Many people have no idea. They just liked the pattern or the color or the feel of the fabric.
If that’s true, why spend money and energy on branding in those categories? Here’s why: Because there are other decisions you can affect and other audiences you’re communicating with that matter. A lot. Keep reading →
I recently saw this little blurb in Ad Age:
Caribou Coffee bows first national TV effort
Caribou Coffee, the country’s second-largest coffee chain behind Starbucks, today will launch its first national TV ad campaign. The creative by Colle & McVoy seeks to poke fun at Starbucks loyalists by portraying them as marionettes.
©2009 Josh Freeman
As a Starbucks, Peets, Coffee Bean and even local café customer, this made me bristle. And I bet it’ll do that to other coffee lovers, too.
Caribou is not Apple, and Starbucks is not Microsoft. I’ve been to several Caribou Coffee stores, and they’re nothing to bellow about. They’re fine. Pleasant. But they don’t inspire, they aren’t highly innovative, and their coffee isn’t in a class by itself. So slamming people for buying coffee in a place that is innovative, that works hard to keep its experience fresh and relevant, and that transformed an entire industry, seems questionable.
Keep reading →
We just got the word that the brand new site we created for Outsource Partners International has gone live, and we’re excited to share it with you. OPI is a top finance and accounting outsourcing company, with operations on three continents and an international clientele. Their target audience is primarily CFOs of major corporations.
As part of a comprehensive rebranding program, the site had to strike a balance between the high level of professionalism required when one company is trusting its most sensitive financial data to another — and the warm personal relationships that are necessary for insightful partnerships to develop. We balanced the immediacy of black & white photo journalism with a highly organized clean structural grid. Touches of bright color keep things lively and give users an aid to navigation, helping them stay oriented through a large and complex site. Keep reading →
What a week! I started in Boston at BAI’s annual Retail Delivery Conference and Expo (for which we’ve created the campaign and graphic theme for four years in a row — more on that in separate blog post), and ended up at the Opportunity Green conference at UCLA over the weekend. To quote from their website, “The world can no longer afford business as usual. Opportunity Green emerged to confront this challenge and bring together the brightest innovators leading the growth of the new green economy.”
A few highlights of the conference — at least for me:
The original line of Karito Kids, now joined by their little buddies, Travel Charmers (see below).
We are incredibly lucky to have so many clients who do amazing things for the world.
Some raise money for women’s cancers. Others provide education, housing and support for developmentally disabled kids and adults. Still others support young athletes, build homes for working families, or create state of the art programs for seniors with dementia.
It’s a hell of a group, and we’re thrilled to be on their teams.
One of our favorites is the amazing Karito Kids.
My theory of the day: Going green is the next World War II.
It looks to me like global warming will be the huge economic push that will get the whole economy moving at full steam again. (Pardon the pun.) As the oceans rise, as the land becomes parched, as cities flood, as the populace migrates, enormous opportunities will also open up for companies with enough awareness to see them.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about where we’re all heading — as a company, as a country — and what we can do about it to help make things better.
Michael Bungay Stanier is a business coach in Canada devoted to helping companies and individuals do Great Work (as opposed to just Good Work). He sent out a link to this terrific little video. I thought I’d share it with you.
It addresses some of the things I’ve been pondering, and it makes me happy to know there are lots and lots of people out there who are thinking along the same lines.
Maybe you’re one of them. Enjoy.
Patricia and I just got back from a couple of weeks of traveling, mostly in England. We got to spend a day with two good friends: the artist Terry Cripps and writer and consultant Susannah Finzi at their gorgeously restored and remodeled old home in a tiny village in the Gloucestershire countryside. After years of working as a commercial illustrator and photographer, Terry is now doing what he truly loves. He’s painting abstract images.
We picked the fresh vegetables the couple grows in abundance, which Terry and Susannah cooked brilliantly, along with the spectacular aged lamb they had helped raise on a neighbor’s farm. We ate, drank and talked. And, after two years of having promised ourselves we’d do it, we finally bought a couple of Terry’s pieces to bring home.
Our conversations about Terry’s paintings led me to an interesting question about design. Why do so many people think that the things we create have to be instantly recognizable?
I know, I know. I’m becoming a GTD nerd. (At least I’m in good company!)
As as designer, though, I couldn’t stand looking at the many kludgy charts around to guide you through processing the stuff in your “In” box. So I designed my own to use as a desktop background (“wallpaper” in the Windows world). I’ve posted them in the GTD section of this site. If you want to see them, just click the GTD tab at the top of this blog and download them to your heart’s content.
Meanwhile, if you’re not yet acquainted with David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”, do yourself a favor and check it out.
