design – Page 7 – FreeAssociates

Some people get it, some don’t

Thank you, Amy!

Newspapers are even deader than you think

One of the podcasts I like a lot is a technical, industry-related one: InDesign Secrets, hosted by David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepción. He’s a renowned author, educator and expert on desktop publishing and, in particular, Adobe InDesign. She’s a world-class Adobe software trainer with special expertise in Adobe Acrobat and InCopy, the word processor that links to Adobe InDesign in publishing environments (which we’ve implemented for some of our clients).

This week, they did an interview with Russell Viers that anyone interested in the future of newspapers (or lack thereof) should check out. Viers is also an InDesign trainer, but he specializes in newspaper publication. And he sees a scenario where even the smaller, local papers — who, until now, have been doing just fine where big city dailies have struggled — will be out of the print publishing business by the end of this decade.

It’s not for lack of interest from subscribers or advertisers. Instead, it’s because of unsustainable printing and distribution costs driven by the more imminent departure of papers like the Chicago Sun-Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and so on.

One analyst says that, if the New York Times stopped printing right now and went solely to electronic distribution, they could afford to give every single subscriber four Amazon Kindles for free. Viers thinks that assumption is probably off, but that the principle is correct. Newspapers have permitted non-newspaper, web-based innovators to decimate their business model. They allowed Craig’s List to steal their classified ad revenue. They allowed Yelp! to steal their restaurant guides. They allowed Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes to steal their entertainment advertisers. Groupon and Living Social are trashing their Sunday coupon business. And so on. Without massive innovation, the newspaper business is headed over a cliff.

Viers is opinionated, sure, but also knowledgeable. Want to hear more? You can download the interview here or on iTunes (search for InDesign Secrets) and listen for yourself.

New Be Green Packaging website is live!

Be Green is an innovative manufacturer of tree-free, compostable packaging. If you’re a CSO (Chief Sustainability Officer) that statement will perk you right up, because you’re charged with finding new solutions to reduce the amount of gunk your company puts into our atmosphere, our water and our landfills. And you’re one of the target audiences for the new site.

When Be Green began just a few years ago, they had a down-home visual style. Birkenstock ads would have felt right at home on their website. But as they grew, they found themselves competing in a corporate world against giant packaging producers for huge consumer product accounts. They needed to look as professional, competent and state-of-art as, in fact, they are. It was actually a natural (pardon me) stage of their development: they had outgrown their old positioning.

Our job was to reimagine their brand without losing continuity. We developed a campaign based around the idea that “sometimes the best packaging ideas are right in front of us.” Then we created a fresh new grid-based style that says “we’re pros” without losing the genuine concern, the humanity and the tactile qualities that characterize their operation.

The site still has a few missing bits and pieces that will be filled in as Ron and Robert, the incredibly busy partners (and their staff), have a little more time to focus on this kind of stuff and add to it. But they’re out changing the world, working with monster brands like Gillette, and opening a brand new plant in South Carolina, so their attention is on lots and lots of exciting developments beside their website. And that’s great news, too.

Take a look. We hope you enjoy learning a little about sustainable packaging. We sure did!

Design making a difference

Disaster strikes, and we think, “What can we do to help?”. The answers are “not much” and “a lot”, and often both are true at once.

T-shirt to support quake relief for Japan

CafePress is giving 100% of the profits from this t-shirt to earthquake relief in Japan

A few designers have created t-shirts whose profits will got straight to Japanese earthquake relief. This one is on CafePress, but Zazzle.com has them, as do lots of other places on and off the internet. Each purchase is small. Each resulting donation is tiny. But the cumulative effect is huge.

As we saw in New Orleans, in Southeast Asia and in Haiti, every little bit truly does make a difference. Simply texting a small contribution (most wireless customers can automatically send $10 to the Red Cross Japanese relief efforts by texting “redcross” on their phones to 90999 — and there are lots of other options) is nearly painless, but can generate tens of millions of dollars in aid overnight.

People are powerful when they design systems that maximize their tiny contributions and turn them into real action. Congratulations to these designers, and to companies like CafePress, for taking these small steps toward a giant effort.

Car of the Future

Techno-geeks unite! General Motors has been pushing the idea of a hydrogen powered car for a generation. Now we’re getting somewhere. True, making hydrogen for fuel cells at the moment uses a lot of energy, but, interestingly, it generates a lot of energy once you do it. Far more than it takes to run a car, for example. If we could harness that extra energy, perhaps the transition to hydrogen as a fuel for vehicles could be well worthwhile. If only because the exhaust is….water vapor.

Here’s a video (thank you, Joe!) of what driving will look like in the (surprisingly near) future.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAIexlT-gkY&feature=player_embedded]

Still vicious, still vibrant: The Threepenny Opera

“Yeah, yeah. ‘Mack the Knife.’ ‘Pirate Jenny. We know….”

But maybe you don’t know that Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill changed the course of musical theater. They brought agitprop to Broadway. Suddenly commercially produced singing and dancing could be used for biting social commentary. Suddenly it could actually mean something. It paved the way for Cabaret, Rent, Chicago and Urinetown. And any other musical that aspires to do more than just entertain.

“As seen through the eyes of two 20th century geniuses, The Threepenny Opera is a revolutionary musical theatre masterpiece, first performed in Berlin in 1928. Brecht’s brittle, sardonic tale creates a world of beggars, thieves and prostitutes in the colorful, exotic musical saga of Mack the Knife, Polly Peachum and the gritty underworld of Soho. Weill’s jazzy, inventive score captures the ironic tone of the lyrics. Derived from John Gay’s 1728 The Beggar’s Opera, The Threepenny Opera creates a stunning, cabaret world that, eighty years after its premiere, remains an outrageous and cunning satire of society.”

And now the highly creative and talented Theatre Department at Santa Monica High School is performing it just for us locals. It runs for two weeks, starting February 24. Tickets are at samohitheatre.org.

(And, yes, of course we created the poster.)

Luscious colors

“Luscious” is the first of a series of videos from Sappi Paper company. We try very hard not to spec colors this way. Instead, we just tell our printers, “Make it look like it looks on our computer monitors back at the office.” They love that.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxTaBD87z7o]

Negativity: not always a bad thing

We designed this logo for The Arthritis Center at Encino Hospital. Negative space defines the afflicted hand, while positive space creates the healthy one.

I recently discovered a nice post on Irish designer David Airey’s blog, Logo Design Love. It’s a collection of 35 logos that make effective use of negative space.

For you non-designers, negative space is the “empty” space within a design. It can create its own shape and therefore can carry a secondary meaning, add interest and sometimes sneak in a subliminal message that makes all the difference in the effectiveness of a logo.

You know how, when someone says “Don’t think of an elephant,” you immediately think of an elephant? It’s a bit like that. The FedEx logo is a wonderful example. At first, most people don’t notice the right-facing arrow formed by the negative space between the “E” and the “x”. But once you see it, you can’t not see it. And it fuses the logo into your brain. (Interestingly, when it was presented to top management, CEO Fred Smith was the only person in the group to spot the arrow immediately.)

That kind of visual interest adds resonance, which is something we strive for in our own brand identity designs.

Typographic treasure

Back in the ancient pre-Mac days, there was a masterful typographic designer named Herb Lubalin. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. He developed a publication for ITC called U&lc which featured some amazing design work and some excellent contributors. I used to love when it would show up in the mail…a big, oversized thing filled with interesting visual ideas and the latest fonts.

Now the fine folks at the Fonts.com blog have scanned the back issues and posted Volume I on the web for your free entertainment and edification. Lucky you. Go take a look.

Crowdsourced furniture and accessories

Savanna Table by Alvaro Uribe from Stylefactory.com

Retailer Stylefactory.com is trying something new: putting the things they carry up for a vote to Make or Drop them, based on prototypes you can view on their site. It’s a nice concept, and, for the most part, the designs are very cool. Of course, if you disagree, you can vote for Stylefactory to Drop the item.

There’s a bit of danger in this approach. People may vote to Make things they can’t afford to actually buy, and which therefore will not sell. And they might want to Drop things they consider too weird and unfamiliar (sometimes new ideas need to grow on us), or that just don’t photograph well. But, overall, it seems like a fun and interesting way to test products in the development stage, and a great way to engage visitors to their site. Check it out.

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