design – Page 8 – FreeAssociates

Magazine and annual report twofer

As many of you know, AbilityFirst is a wonderful non-profit agency serving children and adults with developmental disabilities — autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and other conditions. They provide education, training, housing and employment throughout Southern California, and the work they do transforms people’s lives every day.

After months of hard work, they have just launched their new magazine! (Designed by us, of course.)

The publication primarily targets donors, but also their clients and partner agencies. It’ll be published at least semi-annually; perhaps more often. Reaction from the first recipients has been overwhelmingly positive and we’re excited that it’s getting out there, telling powerful stories in a compelling, approachable, warm and very human way. Take a look!

Karito Kids rock at FoxBusiness.com

"Lulu" from the beautiful Karito Kids world collection

This has been quite a week for our clients getting video coverage! The latest is the upstart toy manufacturer KidsGive, and their line of Karito Kids dolls, books and accessories.

Their concept is simple — and wonderful.

When kids buy these gorgeous dolls, a portion of the sale is given to Plan, the international children’s charity. The girls get an activation code that takes them to karitokids.com, where they get to direct their portion of that contribution to Family, Food, Home or Health. It gets children immediately involved, and they learn they can make a difference in other kids’ lives.

On the site, they also get to play games to earn World Change “coins” that they can apply to give even more. They learn about giving back, and they learn about the world.

The dolls have won literally dozens of industry awards since they launched three years ago, and KidsGive has expanded the line to include small soft dolls, jewelry, and more.

Laura Rangel is co-founder and CEO. She’s absolutely amazing — more smarts, optimism and energy in one place than just about anybody I’ve had the pleasure to work with. She talks with the team at FoxBusiness.com about the company and the concept.

I love Wordle

Wordle.net makes the nicest word clouds. Here’s one from this blog (it must have been reading from a couple of posts ago.) Look at the way the letterforms fit into each other.

Awesome web toy.

19th Century engravings come to life

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.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/7354877 w=500&h=400]

Thanks, Wendy, for sending this!

Consumers buy products, not packaging…maybe.

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.Read More

Our new site for OPI is live!

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.Read More

The joys of abstraction

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?

Science, Awe and PowerPoint

Sunday night I went to a fascinating event: a presentation called “Awesome” about the intersection of science, beauty and magic. It’s part of an ongoing series called Categorically Not! put on by L.A. Times science writer K.C. Cole. The speakers were quite a collection:

Curator and historian Daniel Lewis whose award winning exhibit “Beautiful Science” showcases scientific ideas that changed the world.
Art Benjamin, professor at Harvey Mudd College and mathemagician extraordinaire, who blew us away with feats of mental calculation that seemed like sheer magic to us mere mortals. And…
Adam Frank, astrophysicist at the University of Rochester, who talked about the common ground between science and spirit. He explores the subject in his new book, The Constant Fire: Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate, which Publishers Weekly praises as “light years beyond the stale standoff between uninspired scientific materialism and unscientific intelligent design.” Frank talked about the experience of spiritual awe that’s embodied in the magnificent photos taken by the Hubble telescope, and in discovering the tiny, elegant structures of the simplest creatures in nature.Read More

Secret ingredient: Joy

A nice quote from Paul Annet’s enlightening talk at SXSW: “Oooh, That’s Clever!”

At SXSW (South by Southwest for those normal folks in the audience) Paul Annet gave a wonderful presentation on delight. His focus was on web design. But his point applies to virtually every area of product –and even service — design.

Our job as marketers is generally to convey information and motivate action. But a truly important part of what we do — and the part that makes so much of the rest work — is to create delight, excitement and joy for our audience. Read More

No-budget design

One of the challenges I love is designing for clients who have virtually no budget. And no expectations. It’s a chance to be creative quickly, because they can’t afford for me to spend a huge amount of time on the project… and I can’t either. It’s a chance to see something come to fruition with a minimum of fuss, and often maximum impact compared to what the client is used to.

One recent project in that vein was the identity and promotional material I created for the Santa Monica High School production of 12 Angry Jurors. The play is an adaptation of Reginald Rose’s classic 12 Angry Men that includes both sexes.

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