Baltimore Dollar Bills Y’all
The Baltimore Green Currency Association has been working to design and print BNotes—a new and exciting way to support local commerce. In the Spring of this year, through fund-raising, the BGCA were able to print enough $1.00 and $5.00 bills to make a strong local currency.
Business + Design
AIGA Baltimore and Orange Element Design present Business + Design. A casual discussion on creativity, client relationships and enjoying the balance between business and design. Spend an evening with AIGA Baltimore and Orange Element and learn how to start your company, how to deal with clients, where great ideas come from, and more. This is a [...]
Michael Bierut: 5 Secrets to Problem Solving
How does the designer solve a problem? Michael Bierut of Pentagam says that he doesn’t consider himself creative but he is someone who people come to for solutions to problems. He works out these problems in his notebooks, which are filled not with paintings, or cartoons but problem notes, requirements and free-flowing ideas. After 86 notebooks [...]
Your Brain on Logos
Every minute we are inadvertently bombarded by images and marks that represent brands. Just sitting at your desk you can probably count far beyond a dozen around you. Rarely do we think twice about the significance of these marks but we may be taking them into consideration more than we are consciously aware of. According to a [...]
Judge A Book
‘They’ always said you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover – but ‘they’ probably never took into account a site like http://www.judgeby.com. This new site allows you to literally judge a book by the design of its cover, and compare your rating with the actual Amazon rating. It’s surprisingly difficult – I found that most [...]
What A Difference A Brand Makes
There’s no question that a strong brand identity is crucial to building a brand in the mind of the consumer. This is something that we always stress with both clients and prospects of our firm. It’s a topic that I never mind discussing at length as anyone that reads this blog often can attest. However, [...]
AIG Reminds You To BE HONEST
The current situation with the global financial markets is not pretty. Even here in Baltimore today, Constellation Energy, a Fortune 100 company, has been sold to a company out of Iowa. We can only hope this all resolves itself in time and that we all learn something in the process. As marketers, I think we [...]
I’m Talking About It, Too.
Last week, Microsoft (along with its ad agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky) debuted the first television commercial in its $300,000,000 quest to upend Apple in the battle of the computer behemoths. Watch the spot here: I missed the spot when it originally aired but knew within minutes that I had missed it because my Twitter stream [...]
The “Baltimore” Sun Redesign
A little more than a week ago, The Baltimore Sun launched a “reinvention” of their newspaper which included among other things a fresh new look. I’ve been meaning to comment on this but to be honest I truly hadn’t physically held the print version of the paper until just this past weekend, so I didn’t [...]
2012 London Olympics Identity
The new identity for the 2012 Olympic Games to be held in London, England has been released and I’ve posted it above. Unfortunately for the IOC, the $800,000 logo has not been met with much acclaim since its reveal. In fact, as ABC News reports, the criticism has been downright rabid. Here’s an excerpt from [...]
Your Thoughts On Giant Food’s New Logo?
Giant Food, a local grocer with stores in Maryland, DC, Virginia and Delaware, has recently undergone a long overdue brand identity refresh. Their old identity had become stale and quite dated – not nearly as impressive as some of their closest competitors, many of which had recently undergone brand redevelopments of their own: Here’s what [...]
Olympic Opening Ceremony…Wow!
It’s Monday, and aside from missing our favorite blogger and marketing director, Garret, the first thing we all had to talk about was how amazed we were after seeing the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony Friday night. If you haven’t seen it yet – there aren’t many videos that do it justice online yet but here’s [...]
Branding That Doesn’t Live Up To Brand Experience
As brand marketers, we always seek to find businesses and organizations that have solid business models and a true unique quality that makes them better than the competition – and allows them to deliver a great brand experience. This makes our job much, much easier because we believe that a brand cannot survive on great [...]
It’s Coming…Big Brother?
As marketers it’s always our goal to connect a brand with a qualified, highly targeted audience. We do this by focusing our creative concepts in a way that will resonate with the target, as well as defining a media mix that ensures the message is heard by the right demo/psychographic. Technology companies are aiming to [...]
Sunk Costs :: Let It Go…
I just read a great post from a blog I often read called Thought Gadgets and the author, Ben Kunz, was talking about a concept called “sunk costs.” He goes on to explain that this is an economic term that refers to past expenses or decisions that can never be recovered. The common logic of [...]
One Huge Chicken
Check out this recent work by Leo Burnett Chicago for McDonalds. It’s a billboard shaped like an egg that opens gradually from 6:30am to 10:30am announcing that McDonalds serves “Fresh Eggs Daily” during that time period. When breakfast is over, the egg closes right back up. It was put up just outside of a McDonalds [...]
Weird Direct Mail Strategy…
As a design + visual communications firm that still does quite a bit of print work, we tend to be very strategic in crafting direct mail strategies for our clients. We want to first ensure that the purpose of the piece will be accomplished by our creative work, meaning that our advertising objective is met [...]
Dub Dub Dub Dot Blah Blah Dot Com BACKSLASH Blah Blah
While doing some design work for one of our clients yesterday we noticed we had been passed some copy that had a URL with a www.____.com\___ instead of a www.____.com/___. Subtle difference, but only one of them will lead you to an actual Web page. It got us into the discussion about how when people [...]
Design Process
As the marketing director for design and communications firm that does work all over the country, I work to extend our brand to clients and prospects every day. In doing so, I see part of my job as making these clients and prospects understand that great creative work isn’t the result of pushing a few [...]
Role of Design In Social Media
Social media is an explosive new medium that is changing the way consumers interact with brands. Wikipedia defines it as: various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. Among the countless examples of social media popular today are MySpace, Linkedin, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, bulletin boards, Wikipedia, blogs, [...]
Environmental Graphics Are Important
In a world where brand marketers are so busy looking for the next “hot” medium to help extend their brand, many need to look no further than their physical environment. Based on our experiences, environmental graphics are one of the most often overlooked marketing mediums from a marketing strategy standpoint. Wikipedia defines environmental graphics as [...]
Giving New Life To A Brand :: Brand Refresh
As a group that works creating and communicating great brands every day, we’re keenly aware when a brand needs help. These brands have become somewhat stale, are insignificant, or are just dated. This often happens when brands have been around for a while, regardless of size or industry. Factors could include: aggressive competition, becoming ‘lost [...]
Branding Vs. Brand Development
In marketing communications there are so many terms and buzzwords thrown around that it’s easy for even professionals in the industry to get confused from time to time. And with the advent of social media and popularity of blogging, there are even new terms being created nearly every day. As a matter of fact, HERE’s [...]
Is The Message Getting Lost?
As someone with a background in and love for advertising, I have always been a fan of the “big idea.” The idea and process of coming up with one driving concept for a campaign has always fascinated me. Having been involved in this process on numerous occasions I can honestly say that it is increasingly [...]
May 14, 2008 | Categories:Blog Posts | Tags: Advertising, Commentary, Thoughts & Analysis | Leave A Comment »