Archive for March, 2009

As I have mentioned many times before, twitter is great for creative ideas. Today was no different. Thanks to one of my newest followers, Chuck Swanson, I was led to find an incredible collection of advertisements that are over-the-top creative, and one can only assume, effective as well!  Below are my favorite two:

Honestly, I could not stop laughing when I saw this one. Although a bit ‘out there’ mixing gum (a product invented in 1906) and a t-rex (circa 210 million years ago), I am head over heels in love with it. It is a totally clever ad for gum, and one that even those of us without 10 inch teeth can relate to…

An advertisement should stop you in your tracks and make you look twice. This one would make me look at least that many! But, I guess even a fabulous ad can’t save you if you have sub-par service and customer service (sorry Cingular, but you did…)

Have you seen an ad that you think deserves to be recognized?

Although a bit tongue in cheek, this list (Pointed out to me via Twitter, can be found at nheerdesign, and originally put together by someone on facebook) is the ultimate list of ‘ways to know you are a graphic designer. Although my career is not 100% a graphic designer, I definitely had to shake my head at a few of these. Oh, and I added a little surprise at the end (no fair scrolling to the bottom first!).

• You have bags under your eyes so big you’d have to check them in at Heathrow Airport
• You watch the Superbowl just for the commercials
• You can spot bad typography from 100 yds away
• You are pro-facebook because 95% of the myspace accounts burn your retinas
• You can name more than 200 fonts in under five minutes
• You are completely immune to subliminal advertising
• You look upon a well-designed project with either: sympathy OR extreme jealousy
• Your hand is permanently stuck in the shape of a mouse
• You tell stories of exacto-knife inflicted wounds with grizzled sort of pride
• You practically take caffeine intravenously
• You have an appreciation for everything unique
• You’ve been spending three days non-stop on a project and it still looks like shit. You find yourself overcome by Deathlust.
• “You find your pulse increase at the sight of a lovely ligature, glasses steam up when an unusually elegant arm, leg, or tail comes in view, and a well-kerned paragraph is apt to make you break into a sweat with excitement.”
• “You know you’re a Graphic Designer when… you buy a CD or DVD for the artwork, even if you have no idea what the actual music or film is like”. (even worse, you don’t actually watch or listen to it, just stare at it for hours and hug it in adoration)
• “You know you’re a Graphic Designer when… you look at the clock and see it’s about midnight and think ‘I’ll go to bed now’… and you actually go to bed about 2-3am”.
• “You know you’re a Graphic Designer when… you need someone else to point out that you’re sitting in a room in front of the computer with all the lights off, and haven’t noticed”
• “…when you know what “kerning” is and you really, really like it.”
• “… when you wear two [ke] [rn] pins on your bag, and only you know what they mean. To others its probably a band of sorts..”
• Forget the boy-wonder and the man of steel; your heroes have names like ‘Tibor Kalman’, ‘Stefan Sagmeister’, ‘Paul Rand’, and ‘Paula Scher’.
• You don’t wear black to look cool, you wear it to hide the gauche.
• You have a thing for chairs. You don’t know why.
• You giggle whenever you use the colors F0CCED, EFF0FF and 44DDDD
• You’re in the sun and you look around for a Drop Shadow to sit under.
• You give your relatives a lecture about color spaces and profiles when you email them your vacation photos.
• Seeing someone use Lens Flare or Comic Sans adversely affects your blood-pressure
• You maintain a grid system for your refrigerator magnets.
• You organize your CD collection according to the Pantone chart.
• You sit at work for eight hours straight just looking at your monitor, waiting for a spark of inspiration that doesn’t come.
• You’re up ’til 5am because you came up with the best idea ever while brushing your teeth.
• The hottest dream you ever had was “Trace contour… Find Edges… Pinch… Extrude… Smudge Stick… Motion Blur…. Sprayed Strokes…”
• You know Lorem Ipsum by heart.
• Your kid knows Lorem Ipsum by heart.
• The preschool teacher complains your child won’t color inside or outside the lines – only indicate colors on a separate sheet.
• Activating your entire font collection makes your computer crash
• You deliberately butcher your perfectly cross browser compatible site in IE by placing a “Too Cool for IE” banner on it.
• You prefer a Layer Style of 50% Opacity (or less) on your wife’s Satin.
• You spend $200 on a font for your personal website because “it’s the only one where the lower-case g is just right…”
• Looking at a menu make you go “hmmm, ITC Baskerville italic” rather than “mmmm, lunch!”
• And when you finally order, you go for Layer Based Slices with Grain Texture…
• You use words about fonts you dislike that other normal people reserve for fascist dictators and serial killers.
• cntrl+Z is the first thing that goes through your mind if you drop and break something.
• You refer to colleagues as Strict, Transitional, Loose and the Future Unemployed.
• You refer to your privates as “the Magic Wand”.
• You know that rivers are more than just water.
• Your best friends are all employees at the local print shop
• The only people who seem to know what you do for a living are other Graphic Designers (ex: Graphic Design? What’s that? You’ll never be able to make a living being an artist!)
• Kerning and leading on your shopping list actually matters to you, and you don’t see a problem with that.
• Several South American economies suffer noticeably any time you try to give up coffee, or even cut your consumption of it by half.
• You know that “bleeding” doesn’t hurt.
• when your significant other/ friends have threatened to never speak to you again if you point out one more font to them.
• when you know the difference between fuchsia, magenta, and maroon.
• If you could go back in time you wouldn’t go back to see the rise and fall of civilizations, you’d go back in time to destroy comic sans and papyrus.
• ….You can understand everything on this list.

Ahh the lovely world of creativity and graphic design.

Now, to make it even worse, here are 5 great graphic design sites you must check out!

1. Amazing seamlesss patterns for the backgrounds of whatever it is that you want to design.
2. Photoshop actions for really cool images (or more professional ones).
3. Photoshop disasters (because we have all had one…)
4. Increbible textures to use on any surface (ohhh, imagination is starting!)
5. Ahh fonts, fonts and more fonts (maybe someday we can get a petition to remove comic sans from existence!)

Did I miss one? how many of the “you know you’re’s” did you agree with? What is your favorite graphics site?

No one cares about your stupid product as much as you. It’s about them feeling badass when they use it. – Chris Brogan at the SoCal Action Meetup

So then – how do you market your product without shoving it at people? Don’t I wish I had the answer!

From what I know from being a consumer, and my experience with marketing, the best way to market a product is by giving people the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) and then letting them sell themselves on it. But, that can still be shoving your product down their throat if it’s not done tactfully and honestly. So back into the conundrum of marketing without marketing we go…but this time I am bringing along backup. In my arsenal (also known as my rss feeds) I found some great articles with advice on marketing without marketing:

Roy H. Williams of Wizard ads has a great post of ‘Never’s’ for advertising…

Oliver Blanchard (The BrandBuilder) covers a few pointers for account exec’s or “sales guys”…

Mary Schmidt, marketing troubleshooter, covers the difference between “M”arketing and “m”arketing…

Ari Herzog gives us 20 advertising and marketing strategies…

Chris Brogan reminds us to be careful what message we send…

Steve Woodruff (StickyFigure) analyzes Burger King’s  ‘daring’ marketing…

Adrianne Machina, CVO of Tornado Marketing, reminds us about consistency in marketing…

and lastly, one from my own arsenal, I ask you to question who your marketing is really for…

So, now that you have a bit of ammo of your own, do you think you can try marketing without marketing? Am I missing a great non-marketing article? Feel free to share it!

This morning I was reading a post about spring cleaning your website from my friend Kyle Reddoch. He is currently helping me to code the new design of my website and it got me thinking back to when I first started this site. Initially, I started it for 3 main reasons:

1. I was frustrated with having to stifle my gorgeousness and creative spirit to design simple marketing campaigns
2. I needed an outlet for my writing
3. I was hoping that it might lead to freelance work and extra $$

Now that I have been working on it for 9 months, I thought about why I was still doing this blog, and here are those reasons:

1. I am happy with the fact that I am helping others find their creative environment
   
2. I have an outlet for my writing and others have a resource for creative ideas
3. It has given me a small stream of freelance work (I’m not totally selfless, sorry)

The biggest difference is I am no longer doing this just for me – I am doing it because of my readers and for everyone who needs a little creativity in their day. But it was definitely not an easy task to get to that point. I remember one of my first posts, about creative marketing campaigns, and what it was like to write the post and hear crickets chirping. Honestly, sometimes I still do. What I try to remember is that if I give even one person a better creative idea or a new way to look at something, then I was a success.

Tell me a little about your start and where you are now with what you do (either with your blog, your career or for fun). Are your reasons for starting something the same as they are for continuing it? Is there something you have stopped doing that you would want to do again?

One final note – thank you to all of my current and future readers. You guys are amazing and I really do appreciate all of you, even the ones that just lurk in the background.

WOOO HOOO!!!!! Yup, I am just a little bit excited! And why shouldn’t I be?

But, why keep that excitement to myself?

I want to know what YOU are excited about too!

Sharing excitement with others is natural and healthy. Being excited gives you endorphins, and makes your day better. But, it doesn’t always have to be just the big things. So shout from the hilltops and write it in the comments – share why you are excited today. Even if it is something as little as hot coffee when you got into the office, be excited, and let us share that excitement with you.

We’re sunk. Going down. Headed for disaster. Immediate thoughts when an event, a phone call, a date, an anything, goes completely wrong. We’ve all been there. The feeling of dread, mixed with embarrassment and worry. Even worse if people were counting on you and you are going to have to let them down. But who says that failure is the only option when problems arise?

“The conquering of adversity produces strength of character, forges self-confidence, engenders self-respect, and assures success in righteous endeavor.” – Richard G. Scott

Yes, it can be difficult to pull yourself up and try to figure out a solution when everything looks bleak, but there are a 4 simple steps that you can take to lead to towards *hopefully* a new solution.

1. Take 10 deep breaths before you react. Many times situations are made worse because someone reacts on impulse. You over correct, trying to protect your dignity, or someone else’s. Often, all that you need is to make some small changes and the situation can be saved, and no one needs to have egg on their face. Take a breath and think before you react.  Don’t make a bad situation worse by having a mini breakdown.

2. Call in reinforcements. So the location for an event fell through, your fliers didn’t get printed on time, or your computer crashes the night before a huge presentation, life is not over. If my involvement in twitter has taught me one thing, there is always someone who can help, but you have to be willing to ask. Maybe a friend has connections with a venue that can hold your event? Maybe you can find someone who has the ability to print fliers for you? Or maybe, like I did with @MatchesMalone two weeks ago when his computer crashed, you can find someone to lend you a 250GB external hard drive.

3. Look at it from a different angle. I am sure many of you glanced at this picture and saw a sinking ship. Reality? The boat isn’t actually sinking, it is the angle of the shot. Captured at just the right moment, it just looks like the back end is under. It’s not really a disaster, it just looks like one. Next time you feel like something is crashing down around you, see what other angles you can look from – you may be surprised what you find.

4. If all else fails, be honest. If at the end of the day, nothing can save the event, the date, the whatever…just be honest. Don’t sit an complain about how everything fell apart, but do tell people what happened. People appreciate honesty, and understand that we are all human. Last week, Chris Brogan wrote about a mistake he made – sending an email to 17,000+ people – and how the power of apology works. Of course like anyone, he was embarrassed and wished it would just go away, but he knew that he needed to address it. And by doing so, he not only showed that he was a stand up guy, but probably saved a lot of his business relationships.

What do you think? Any other great ways to try to solve a problem? I would love to hear your stories!

How many times have you just felt like today is just a little too serious? Today, I was reading through some of my favorite blogs, a strong mix of business and humor, and ran across an image that I couldn’t help but share:

Although I know that creativity and math smarts are not always ‘have one or the other’, but for me, they were. I was never the math whiz, so luckily, they explained the problem below. I would love to see the faces of the Verizon rep that opened that check and had to show it to their supervisor. What would they do? Is it a valid check? More than likely, he was required to send another check, I can’t help but be impressed at the creativity of Mr. Munroe.

Would you accept the check? Looking for a bank person’s answer as well – would this be considered valid assuming the math problem was correct?

Creativity can come in so many forms and ways of expression. I have talked before about creativity in home design, but this takes the cake (or should I say feather?).

Created by Shawn Lovell Metalworks, I can only imagine the thoughts and dreams that one could have in this bed.  Add a few brightly colored fake birds (unless you want to wake up with a surprise!) and this would be a centerpiece for conversation in any bedroom. Although, the $15,000 price take may make it a little hard to swallow, it definitely brings a new meaning to “let me show you my bedroom”.

What do you think of the bed, would you want something this intricate in your bedroom? What if it was just a table or a chair in your living room?

Creativity is not to be taken for granted, it is not something you ‘have’ it is something that you must work at, and practice, to keep strong. I practice my creativity daily, by writing, twittering, designing and researching. I am always trying to find new, unique ways to practice my creativity. One of my favorite ways is to pick a photo from flickr, and create a marketing campaign for a product, using the image. I don’t do it for work, or because I have to, but because it helps my mind to stay sharp and think outside of the box. So, I figured I would let you all try it with me today. Here is the image that I chose:

And here are the questions you have to answer:

1. What product would you use this image for
2. What would the tagline be for the product
3. Where would you promote it (web, billboard, tv, etc)
4. What would you expect people to visualize when they saw the image
5. What other colors would you use with the image
6. What fonts would be great to use with the image

Please leave your answers to any or all of the questions in the comments. I will be interested to see what you choose to use the image for, and what you can picture!

*photo courtesy of Flickr – mandj98

Today at work, I got a card in the mail that blew my mind. One of the people that followed me, @Enthusem, sent me this card instead of a silly auto-dm. Not only was it delivered in a pretty cool envelope, it definitely caught my attention. I honestly hadn’t realized I was even following @enthusem (sorry Steve) but once I got this card, I took a look. Basically, it is a customized card with my actual name (not my twitter name), addressed directly to me, that introduces Steve and his business, Enthusem Cards. His goal, as you can see from his twitter profile, is to prove that postal mail has a place in social networks. Inside of the card was a note to me that asked for my review of his site (as it is still in Beta) and I wold get a few free credits to send out similar cards as a thank you for my review. But it didn’t sound like he sent it to everyone, as it was personalized for me, included notes about how I use twitter and was not just a generic ‘check this out’. Now, I am not a fan of junk mail, but his product wasn’t junk mail. It was so well put together, and so creative, that I had to ask him more about it.

The following is Steve’s explanation of Enthusem, how it came to be and where it is headed in the next year:

About five years ago, I developed a system for creating and managing personalized URLs (PURLS) and personalized microsites to tie direct mail programs to online content. That system – prospectLINKS was a great tool for larger companies who wanted to tie large volume direct mail campaigns into personalized online content. It was one of the very first commercial PURL platforms and I had a blast developing it but I accepted an offer from Printable Technologies and sold it in Jan of 2007.

After selling prospectLINKS, I had too much time on my hands. I began thinking a lot about the future of printed mail and how it was being changed by all of the cool stuff that was happening online. Although a lot of people were saying that direct mail was falling out of favor I couldn’t help thinking that it was just being done in a way that didn’t sync with the way things were changing in our super connected, ultra aware world. For example, most direct mail is still done the same way it’s been done for decades. You get a giant list of people and you mail a gazillion pieces of hopefully relevant but never personal mailers to them. Sure mailers these days can look more personal but for the most part people are way too smart to believe that any of those message were truly intended just for them. The other thing that was bugging me was that everyone in the direct mail industry was using the term “one-to-one” but that was never really the case – it’s never one-to-one if you’re mailing to a list, no matter how many data fields you merge into the message.

About the same time I was obsessing over the non one-to-one reality in direct mail, I started getting into the social networking stuff. There was such a contrast; online it seemed people loved connecting and communicating with other while most direct mail was considered a waste (and rightfully so) or just plain junk.

Then one day I was talking to someone who was telling me about a greeting card they’d gotten from a friend. She was noticeably enthused (I had to know I’d use that word someplace ) about getting that card. But, she mentioned that it seemed like people don’t send personal written communications anymore but that it used to be a lot more common. At first I wondered why and then it hit me, people hadn’t stopped sending truly personal communications they’d just moved them online.

That’s when I really started obsessing over the question that we’re trying to answer with enthusem. That question – is there a place for printed communications in the world of social networking? I thought the answer was yes but I couldn’t find anyone who’d linked the two so I thought it fun and challenging to try.

We got a small team together (four people initially) and we made enthusem our full time focus – that was sometime in later 2007 (I think, exact dates should be on our blog). We got a very early (and very buggy) version up and running in February of 2008 but most of the early beta testers said it was mildly cool and some even said it stunk. So, we scrapped the first version and decided to rebuild everything from the ground up and we released the second beta version (the current version) in June of 2008. This release got much better marks from our beta users and so we rolled with it.

Since then we’re gotten thousands of new users and on busy days we mail upwards of 10,000 cards. The original thinking was that it was going to be a business tool that would allow any size company (even a company of one) send truly personal direct mailers that link back to online content. We’ve got a lot of business users but we also have a lot of people sending personal cards. For example, baby announcements with a picture of the baby on the front and a link to a YouTube video of their new bundle of joy.

We also started using enthusem to contact people we follow on twitter and other social networks. I don’t really know where enthusem will take us at this point because it’s too soon to know if it really will be something that tons of people like and use. So, until then we’re just having a lot of fun developing it and we cross paths with some of the really smart people out there who might have an idea(s) on how enthusem should evolve. We’ve already receive a ton of great suggestions like making it simple to add personal video attachments, which we’re working on and making the API’s open which is also in the works. Our next major release is about to go into live BETA in the next 30-45 days and a lot of our users will see some of the stuff they’ve been suggesting so to some degree it’s taking on a life of its own.

I definitely think that Steve has a great idea and I am interested to see what happens in the future! If you are interested in finding out more from him, you can reach him at steve(at)enthusem.com…and tell him I sent you