Heros

I went to see The Soloist last night. The main character in this movie, Nathaniel Ayers, played by Jamie Foxx, is a schizophrenic classically trained musician who talks about his heros, famous classical musicians, through out the movie. At one point he asks the character, Steve Lopez, played by Robert Downey Jr., if Steve thought about writers, like he thought about musicians? Steve Lopez, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, replies that when you're a writer for your career it's different. It occurred to me as a professional designer I don't think about my design heros like I did when I was young, and in school.

When I was in school my design heros were Milton Glaser, best known for the I Heart (Love) New York logo and campaign and Saul Bass, who I remember as the designer of the sixth AT&T logo (1984) but he also designed the Bell System Logo (1969). He's also known as the master of film credits because of his work on Otto Preminger’s movie, The Man with the Golden Arm.

These days I don't think about my early heros, or new heros, of design. Sure I look at what's current in design, but it's the design I look at, not the designer. Is Steve Lopez right, it's different when you do it as your career, or as adults do we find inspiration in sources closer, more personal, to us, or are designers becoming so specialized that standing out in the larger design world is increasingly difficult?

That's a question for someone smarter than me, but for me the next time I see a design that really inspires me I'm going to take a second and try and see who is behind it, and maybe find a new hero.

Pantone rebuilt their bridge?

(This is a little off what I normally post about, but I felt it was really important)

Just a little note to all my designer friends, and those who care and feed them, about changes to the Pantone Color Bridge.

Remember how useful you thought Pantone's Color Bridge was the first time you used it, you know the Pantone swatch book that shows you the Pantone ink color on the left and the CMYK equivalent on the right. You could finally see what happened when your Spot Color was converted to a Process Color. (If you have no idea what I am talking about, don't worry, this is the reason you use professional designers). Well as it turns out Pantone thought they would be helpful and changed the CMYK numbers for us to make the colors even closer. Closer is good, though it does make me wonder if Pantone is being helpful, or just decided sales on the Color Bridge swatch book were off and needed a boost? Who knows, but Adobe CS3 decided it was important enough to change the CMYK equivalents in their programs, and this is where the problem lies. You no longer use your normal Pantone Pallet to match the new Pantone Color Bridge colors. So who cares, if I have an old color bridge and I use my old color pallet, I will be fine right? Well maybe, unless you assign Pantone colors and your printers RIP separates the color into CMYK for you. What version is your printer using? Color is hard enough without leaving it to chance, you really have to be on top of this if you want see what you expected coming off the press.

Let me give you an example:

I recently did a logo, the Pantone Color was 368. The normal pallet I use in Adobe Illustrator is Pantone Solid Coated, the CMYK value in Adobe Illustrator's Pantone Solid Coated pallet for Pantone 368 is C:57, M:0, Y:100, K:0, But the new Pantone Color Bridge book, the one my printer uses, says C:63, M:0, Y:97, K:0 for Pantone 368.

I know what your thinking, Great I have a customer that has to have that green match the most perfect Kiwi fruit they saw once on vacation, now I have to go and adjust all my colors by hand or maybe tweak it on press, aaarrrrggghh. Settle down, deep breaths, you just need to use a new Pantone Pallet in Adobe CS3. Adobe decided to help us out and put in a new pallet that matches the new Pantone bridge. This is good, though it does make me wonder if Adobe is being helpful, or just decided sales on the CS2 suite were off and needed a boost. Who knows, but the new pallet to use is Pantone Color Bridge CMYK PC for coated stock. There are three Color Bridge pallets, EC, PC, UP , and the best I can tell from what I read is it has to do with the type of Paper trying to be simulated. For the US coated paper PC is the correct pallet. EC is Euro, and it does not list UP, but I assume it is uncoated.

Click here to see what Pantone says.

A side benefit of this is, now you can use the same color pallet in all your Adobe CS3 programs to achieve the same results, you do not have to have one Pallet for Illustrator and a different one for Photoshop.

I am glad the companies that produce tools for designers are always striving to improve them for us. I just wish they would shout about it a little more and not wait for us to stumble onto it.

Thanks to Troy at Litho Flexo for being on the ball and pointing this out to me.

If you would like to read more about color and Adobe CS3, look at these:

There are some interesting new color tools in CS3.

Where are the color pallets now?

One Line Marketing Wisdom

As a person that needs to keep up on marketing trends I read a lot of things, books, blogs and articles. Some of them are good, others not so good, but sometimes I run across things that make me think.

I ran across a blog called A New Marketing, by Matt J McDonald. He challenged marketers to come up with one concise sentence about what marketing is to them, One Line Marketing Wisdom.

Here is an excerpt:
It’s amazing how much insight and information can be packed into one line. So I emailed the bloggers I read, and asked them to submit one line about marketing.
Matt J McDonald of A New Marketing
“Forget everything else—marketing is about making a connection.”

It is interesting to see what marketers think about marketing. They're generally a pretty clever bunch. You might want to read it.

Because I am a graphic designer and art director my thoughts center more around branding. Also I have always felt humans are emotional first and intellectual second, so all things marketing, and branding need to appeal to people's emotions first.

So what is my one line about branding and marketing?

Your brand is your company’s image, designed to create the desired emotional response from your customers, marketing is how you deliver that message.

So think about it, what is your one line? If you think hard, you just might come up with something exciting that you can use to market your business.

Thinking Outside the Inside of New Technology Boxes

General Electric’s award-winning One Second Theater commercials target digital video players and MySpace users. Basically, G.E. is hiding commercials within commercials that you can’t see unless you have a digital recording device that will let you view the video file frame by frame.

The invention of digital recording devices, and to a greater extent downloading TV shows, has made it difficult to get people to see (let alone watch) television commercials. I think G.E.’s approach is fun and creative, getting them a lot of attention, but only time will tell if it works.

So, why am I mentioning it here? Because what it really does well is take advantage of new technologies. In today’s advertising market, companies that reach out with new technology look tech savvy and, by association, intelligent. When companies use new technology early and well, they appear as the leader in their industry.

Taken from Myers Media Innovation and Creativity Awards: Grand Award Agency Winner article: Description of G.E’s goals and strategies of the program.
GE once again proved its “Imagination at Work” by launching “One Second Theater,” an innovative new media campaign that, according to a New York Times article “explore[s] media beyond conventional commercials and print advertisement.” The campaign shows humorous scenes from commercials re-edited for digital video recorders, MP3 players and the Internet. The cornerstone idea included DVR users pausing a GE commercial to enjoy the aforementioned content - a commercial hidden within a commercial!
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Taken from the NY Times article: Got a Second? G.E. Has a Quick Message.
DECADES ago, General Electric and its agency, BBDO Worldwide, joined to create a half-hour weekly television series, “General Electric Theater.” Now, in a move that underlines how giant marketers are seeking new ways to reach consumers, G.E., BBDO and two other agencies are introducing an elaborate campaign centered on a version of the series that is 1,799 seconds shorter than the original.
Read More

So, think outside the inside of the box or technology. Digital recorders/players, iPods, SmartPhones, variable data printing with targeted mailing lists, and a world of other technologies can get your message right to the customers you want.

Google is giving away opprotunities

Google has a knack for giving away opportunities to make money on the internet. There are many possibilities to set up websites to do things automatically, provide information and just plain have fun on the web.

I have recently been involved in two such projects. One is a site that gathers all the information about Industrial supercomputing into one concise site so you don't have to, if your into industrial supercompters Industrial Supercomputing Forum is a great site for you. The other is a really fun idea that gives information about restaurants anywhere in the US. The site is called The Big Fork and it lets you look up restaurants in your area, or an area you will be traveling to. You can look by cuisine, zip code, name, ranking, what ever you want. I think the really cool thing is you can see what people think about the place, or tell people what you think about your favorite restaurant.

Now both of these sites are trying to make money with their respective ideas, but the cool thing is Google made the technology to do it available for free. Got an idea? Let me know, I have people that I work with that can make it a reality.