Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

I love design. Whether in architecture, product or interactive design, the best solutions come from function and form symbiotically playing off each other. The most beautifully designed building is useless if it doesn't meet the functional needs of its occupants and conversely, a functional, but unattractive workspace brings down productivity and morale. Thinking about design in relation to function may cost more up front, but can differentiate your product, improve usability and increase demand.

Recently a story on NPR's Marketplace, "Hospital Design Promotes Better Healing," examined the new evidence-based designed Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego. Sharp was built using effective pre-studied design principles as well as input from staff to promote comfort and healing for better outcomes for patients. Being so new, the results are not completely in, but anecdotally, these design enhancements have reduced infection and patient relapse. How many millions of dollars could be saved if all hospitals were designed like this?

With everyone more budget-conscious than ever, it's easy to cut corners in the design process, but if you are considering using the red pen on your design budget, keep in mind how this will degrade your end result. Design is more than just making something "look pretty," it creates an emotional, visceral connection. When well combined, form and function together yield powerful results.

Web safe? Web safe!? Curse the Web and it's lack of typographic variety!

Imagine a Web where beautiful typography is unlimited (with out the use of Flash).  Imagine how it would differentiate a design or a company.

But every Web designer has had it beaten into their skull that they should limit the fonts in their design to Verdana, Times, and a few others. While most hate it, many have embraced the limitation and relish the challenge. Others like the continuity it provides. Either way, the reason we do this is because nothing else works.

But the answer is not so simple, or nearly as boring.

There is a CSS property called @font-face that allows you to use any font you wish. It's not universally supported in current browsers. There are also different font formats for Internet Explorer (imagine that). Harder to solve is the issue that you can't take any commercial font and put it on the Web for everyone to have.

So technical and legal limitations killed Web Typography from taking root. But things are changing. CSS3 is on the way. The ranks of good, free, unlicensed Web safe fonts are growing. New license schemas and services like TypeKit and Typotheque for font usage are emerging. Now Firefox has released a new cross platform font format.

Keep an eye on this. I sense a growing trend.
 

Note: If you’re a design snob, you’re going to hate this post.

After 28 MTV has updated their identity http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=142017,

and I’m a little disappointed. It looks like a serious designer got a hold of it with an attempt to add more credibility. It’s not a huge change, just more fussy. I was never a fan of the station’s mark. In an attempt to be au courant in 1981, it seemed dated the millisecond it was launched.

Nevertheless, That got me thinking about other identities that work hard, get embedded in our culture but are so visually unappealing they’d curdle milk.

 

Texaco

The iconic American brand’s 1903, five-pointed star and T referenced the lone star state and…uh…TEXACO. Get it? Texaco starts with a T! Logos are always best when they tutor our spelling. This logo worked so hard that when the oil giant updated its corporate identity in 2000, they decided the star symbol no longer needed the word “Texaco” below it.

Goodyear

In 1900, the rubber pioneers decided the wingfoot of Mercury embodied the characteristics of the company. Inspired by a statue of the mythological god found at a meeting in the president’s home, the Goodyear mucky mucks quickly agreed that was the new logo. I’m sure subsequent committees and focus groups were formed with a final report due any day now. If that meeting happened at my house, the symbol for rubber around the world might have been dogs playing poker.

 

 

Vans


I couldn’t find a reference to this logo’s origin. But given the company started by taking shoe orders in the morning and making the shoes that afternoon, I imagine the logo also has an unpretentious beginning. Regardless, its clunkiness works. 

 

 

Wrangler

I know this identity goes back to the 1940s but I found no insight into its origin. It’s probably the worst logo ever made but I love it. 

So, MTV, you’re in some good company. Good luck with the new change. Long live the hard workin’ uglies! 

I constantly hear sentences like "users want such-and-such." I cringe every time. This might sound strange coming from a user experience designer.

Users are not vague outsiders. To misquote Charlton Heston, users are made of people. They're specific types of people, with names and lives. And consciously or not, these folks have to decide whether your product helps them accomplish their goals.

So, you need to know them intimately.

 

Let's role play.

Pretend you have a recipe Web site. Think your "users" are people who want recipes? Nope. They're people like Mary.

 

Mary is an unmarried mother of two. She works double-shifts when she can and is studying for her GED. She needs to feed her kids a cheap, nutritious dinner in under one hour because she has to study from 9pm to 12am.

 

You can picture her right? She might sound like someone you know. You can empathize with her deeply. And since you now know her, you can make informed decisions on her behalf.

 

Building for Mary.

So back to the recipe site. Assuming people like Mary are your priority, you might decide to:

- Build your database around easy-to-prepare meals.

- Show ingredient substitutions, in case she doesn't have something on hand. Help her minimize trips to the grocery store.

- Add a "Find recipes that use..." search tool, so she can find recipes that use ingredients in her pantry.

- Allow recipes to be filtered by total prep and cook time.

- Write a series of articles called "One Pan Dinners."

- List nutritional data with comparisons to daily allowances.

- Let her scale ingredients by the number of servings.

- Create a tool that scrapes Kroger's sale items and emails her a customized weekly menu, replete with shopping list and coupons.

 

Furthermore, this newfound focus helps you decide what not to invest in. Knowing Mary, you might not:

- Spend time adding recipes that use squid ink and other Iron Chef-caliber ingredients.

- Court advertisers like Viking ranges, Le Creuset or Whole Foods.

- Build a MySommelier app for recommending wine pairings.

Here's the point.

Real people use your product, not users. If you can't describe them like they are your next-door neighbor, then you can't design for them. Get to know them intimately and banish the word user from design discussions.

 

Need more convincing?

Sam Farber saw his arthritic wife struggling to control a carrot peeler. With this person and her situation in mind, he started prototyping kitchen utensils that were singularly focused on ergonomics. After testing and refining with real people, his work became the OXO Good Grips line. By considering real people deeply, his kitchen utensils redefined a household commodity and created a new market.

Now go read OXO's story.

I have a confession. I am a mac-junkie. There, I said it. No need to leave it in the comments, I've put it out there on front street. 

But also, I have become a penny-pincher over the last couple years. As I am constantly bombarded by news of layoffs, foreclosures, recessions and mounting debt I have found myself spending less and paying off any debt that I can. Finally after 18 months of thriftiness (other than my mortgage and car loan) you wont find any debt on me! 

Unfortunately, these two personality attributes don't play well together (mac addict and thriftster).  

Today might be the day that I resign myself to fall off the thrifty wagon. I have spent the last hour of my life viewing of the engadget liveblog live from the Apple 'latest creation' event. What is this event about? Ha. I scoff at your lack of foresight! 

Today Steve Jobs unveiled the almighty iPad! It is essentially an iPod touch with a 10" screen (Wi-fi and 3G are built in). All the apps created for the iPod touch will work on it, and more. I won't go into all of the details, as you can view them here with pictures.

What I do have to say about today's unavailing is that the New York Times app looks phenomenal! It actually looks like a newspaper, not some computerized sterile web-safe version of the newspaper. Call me nostalgic but I am AMPED UP for this! Even better than the aesthetics of a New York Times app that actually looks like the New York Times of my childhood (back when print copies were laying around the house), this new app features videos embedded in the articles. Right there on the "page" where there are photos related to the articles, you will also find related videos. Just hit play. That is awesome.  

There are many plusses to this device: 10 hours of continuous playback on one charge, a month of charge on standby, a $15/month data plan, iWork apps, email, photos, music and movies... oh my! This device could kill the portable DVD player and B&W Amazon Kindle markets.  

So what falls short? This device is made for the everyday consumer, not the designer or illustrator. The iPad is much like the iPod touch in that you cannot install third party software, only Apple tested and approved apps. This is not an open OS. There isn't much customization. This means my dream of Apple releasing a touchscreen, pressure sensitive tablet that will allow me to draw onscreen into Flash, Illustrator and Photoshop just got crushed. Oh, and there's no multitasking. Wow, really? Apparently, there are still no two apps running at the same time. Bummer. 

Oh well, there's always the $1,700 modbook. (Modbook is a custom laptop/tablet running Mac OSX off of a Macbook with Wacom tablet technology built into the monitor. This would allow me work onscreen in Flash, Illustrator and Photoshop). I was really trying to avoid dropping close to 2k on that....

http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=modbook

This past weekend, I traveled to Memphis to judge the Memphis Ad Federation's Addys. For the judging, I was joined by Gianfranco Arena from BBDO in NYC and Jeff Mahar from Cannonball in St Louis.

On the first day of judging we were handed our charge. The charge included some sobering language reminding us that the decisions we were making over two days were going to affect people's lives. Some people would be elated, some disappointed; some would decide to change their profession, some would ask for a raise. With a heavy sense of responsibility, we began our work.

We evaluated roughly 600 entries and made decisive decisions. Though we could not discuss our thoughts during judging, we were able to speak freely at the end of day two as we decided the Best in Show awards. We were pleased to discover our votes were similar (on many things). There were no easy choices and we had healthy debates. Since the judging is anonymous, we still don't know who was responsible for each piece.

The work was solid. I was inspired by several of the items I reviewed. I found it interesting that the city of Memphis seemed to influence the work. Overall I found everything creative and approachable with a bit of funky added in - this is a great recipe for effective advertising.

I can not discuss the work that we evaluated, but I can tell you some of the highlights of the trip:

• • Meeting all of the fabulous people at the Memphis Ad Club
  
• • Eating: Ribs and barbecue at Rendevous, Fried chicken at Gus's, Burgers at Huey's
  
• • The all inclusive trip to Graceland with Kelly
  
• • Seeing the ducks at the Peabody hotel
  
• • Watching Pam talk her way out of getting towed
  
• • Hearing Dan's monkey story - it's one of the best I stories I have ever heard

We were supported by a great group of volunteers from the Ad Club. They took our needs seriously and made sure we had what we needed to make decisions. I don't have the names of all the volunteers but we were able to spend some quality time with the current board: Sally Baker-Brenner the association manager, Susan Ewing from inferno, Marcia Anthony from ABC 24 WPTY, Pam Branham from Running Pony and Dan Barron from Entercom Radio.

Many thanks to Pam and Sally and all of the volunteers at the Ad Club. I hope to see you in Memphis again soon. And to James, I hope you had fun interpretting my messy handwriting.

For those of you competing: Good luck and congratulations on creating great work. I recommend sending a slam-o-gram to your competitors. 

160 character text messages. 140 limit Twitter updates. Speed-typing to manage eight instant message windows. The result: expeditiously exploded day-to-day use of acronyms in communication. As a college student, I see a growing phobia in academia on the future of grammar. Many class syllabi now address email professionalism and stress the gravity of whole words. Is this fear justified? Is the message lost or skewed when we over use daily acronyms?

A more productive question is "What opportunities present themselves through the use of acronyms?" The widespread use of communication shortcuts is more than a growing, benumbing dot COM bugaboo. Rather than fighting the trend, we could be experimenting to find new ways to capitalize on it.

People have good reasons to not use acronyms for certain communication goals. Yet this does not mean that acronyms should be treated as derelicts. Acronyms should not be excluded from the conceptualization process in reaching design and communication goals.

I'm not saying if your copy doesn't fit you should go about replacing all the "you"s with "u." But, maybe these acronyms can be used to improve the message itself. What if Internet slang could help your piece relate better with its targeted demographic? Could integrating acronyms in your display type create a stronger composition? It would be unfortunate to assume that this trend cannot be used to produce strong and profitable communication solutions.

What do you think? Could we utilize this Internet tomfoolery in design? Is it ethical? Is it appropriate? Where can we find successful examples of acronymic use that already exist?

Everyone with sight knows Shepard Fairey's famous "Hope" image of Barack Obama. It was everywhere during the campaign. That image is now smack in the center of a three-way copyright spat between the artist, the photographer and The Associated Press.

I fell in love with Fairey's work through his Obey campaign. The boldness of his work rises out of skate and hardcore culture developed from extensive use of stenciled appropriated images and collaged intricate flourishes. The images are conceptual, compelling, entertaining and super tasty.

The Associated Press is suing Fairey for copyright infringement of their Obama photo taken by Mannie Garcia. Fairey actually sued them first. That's another story. Fairey has said he used the shot as reference for his image. He claims fair use for artistic expression. This is not new. Andy Warhol made a fortune this way. "Webelieve fair use protects Shepard's right to do what he did here," says Fairey's attorney.

Mannie Garcia, the original photographer, was on assignment at the press club to cover George Clooney who was sitting beside then unannounced candidate Obama. Garcia says he shot hundreds of photos that day and didn't even know "Hope" was based on his photo.

"I've been on the campaign for twenty-something months says Garcia, "I would see the artwork, I would photograph it, and think what is with this image? But it didn't snap. It never occurred to me it was my picture…It's a really cool piece of work."

Okay here's the deal. Fairey used a commonplace image to draw from. Certainly if you put them side by side you'll see the reference. You'll also see the difference. With respect to Mr. Garcia, he shot hundreds of photos that day and thousands over the course of the campaign. This image could belong to anyone that happened to sit in front and slightly below Mr. Obama.

While there remains uncertainty on how this case will affect future intellectual property issues, one thing is certain. Shepard Fairey's work is about the art of appropriation. The medium is the message. This street artist, known for being arrested 14 times, now has historical work in the National Portrait Gallery. He'll inspire a group of disenfranchised apathetic design students to pursue the career. His credibility will grow with his audience. This whole brewhaha just makes his work more noteworthy and him more cool.

My colleague Ben Requena found Pepsi's new rebrand design strategy online. I didn't hate the rebrand until AFTER I read the document. This is the kind of BS that makes companies hate agencies. Like watching a tribute band, I was both compelled and repulsed. It was deadly interesting in its irrelevance.

I'll break down the highlights. God, there are so many.

• Historical Pepsi brand ethos creates a new trajectory forward

• The vocabulary of truth and simplicity is a reoccurring phenomena

• Strategy is based on 6000+ years of shared design philosophy, making an authentic "Constitution of Design"

• The Pepsi DNA has origins in the "dynamic of perimeter oscillations"

• Pepsi single-handedly reinvented 2500 years of mathematics, geometry and physics (I'm paraphrasing)

Capstrat has several major rebranding projects clicking right now (granted, none for Pepsi). I would be so busted if I uttered a word of this drivel. C'mon! Perimeter oscillations! Is this document for real?

I just read a happiness study on global wellbeing. This University of Michigan study measured countries' attitudes about economic growth, democracy and social tolerance. Ranked at the top of the happiness heap is Denmark, whose prosperity and democratic systems are the keys to its contentment.

That Danish giddiness must be contagious too. Seven of the top ten happiest countries are European. Ronald Inglehart, a political scientist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research noted the bottom tier was rife with unrest. "It strongly suspect there is a strong correlation between peace and happiness," he said. To which I say, "Duh!" Almost all the least happy countries have struggled with decades of authoritarian rule and widespread poverty. The bottom of the list is Zimbabwe with its soaring inflation and continuing political crisis, unsurprisingly ranked 99th.

I thought it would be interesting to plot this on a map. A happy map if you will. At Capstrat we love to look at data in fresh ways. I learned that happy countries have happy neighbors. Unhappy countries are stuck with other sourpuss neighbors.

Click to see the full map

The United States — the world's richest nation — ranked 16th. China, at number 54, is responsible for one-fifth of the world's unhappy population. And Russia at number 89 is the largest, unhappiest land mass on Earth with well over 17,000,000 square kilometers of great wide open gloom.

Despite the credit crunch paired with rising fuel and food prices, Inglehart's study says we’re getting happier. Researchers say that compared to a similar survey twenty years ago, everyone is a lot happier. I guess that's good news.