Bring in da Noise…Take out the Funk.

Late last night I was working on a slide template for a client/friend for his presentation. The design needed to be at 1600 by 1200 which is one heck of a presentation (perhaps running in Times Square that week?). So I added some gradients and his branding I designed a while back and BLAM!!! instant branded template. Should only be about an hours job or so and then I could move onto critical things like standing in line for Grand Theft Auto 4 with a bunch of other videogamers. But low and behold he noticed something I didn’t. The gradient was color banding when zoomed in. Not something you’d see at a smaller resolution, but this was definitely noticeable at this higher resolution. I racked my brain trying to get the gradient to smooth out even adjusting my bit color depth in Photoshop to 32bit. I ran some surface blur filters and gaussian blurs and those helped a tiny bit but still the band played on. Cursing the Adobe gods and their cruelty to designers, I decided to try running a noise filter to add some visual noise at about a .4% setting to see if that would help. BLAM!! perfect gradient resulted and now the client is happy. Didn’t you hear the choir sing? Here’s an idea Adobe, why not just do that by default so the gradient is perfect to begin with and I don’t feel tempted to install Corel Paint (gasp!). So my 1 hour job took over 2 hours and It turned out the line was so long for Grand Theft Auto 4 that I just went to the Meijers instead and picked it up in 10 minutes. So I guess I should actually be thanking Adobe for saving me time from waiting in line.

This is what the template would look like…. If you were flying above it in a plane at 2000 ft.
 

 

 

 

Cool hip package design can make the sale.

Over at Shuellers books in East Lansing there’s a small gift area I like to browse before I begrudgingly pay $50 for a design book. I can often find a few stocking stuffers there the night before Christmas or on a frantic rush for a last minute Valentine’s day present.

They always have some unique gifts that catch my designer’s eye. In particular there’s some great items from a company called BlueQ and it’s not so much the products themselves which is usually just an average assortment of lip balms, mouths sprays, soaps, and air fresheners, but it’s their stunning retro package designs and their edgy sense of humor that really makes them stand out from other gift ideas.

I personally love vintage style and retro designing and these are some great examples of it. It just goes to show that packaging design can sell if you do something unique and creative when given something ordinary to promote. Now if I can just fine someone willing to pay me to design them some Totally Awesome 80’s cologne packaging. “Smell like a 1984 Camaro’s interior after a summer BBQ. Cut-off Quiet Riot shirt not included.”
 

 

Branding is made of people! It’s people!!

Marketing and specifically branding has been greatly misunderstood. A common misconception is that branding is just the logo. I’d say a logo is probably the easiest part of making an effective brand but is only the visual identifier. A brand is an idea and perceived value by it’s intended audience based on a company’s culture, products, and services. It’s not what you are saying about yourself it’s what other people are saying about you. In a way your brand is an like a person with both a face, muscles, heart, and bones that your customer interacts with.

The “Face” is the visual things you see about a brand. It’s the logo, the colors, font that are used, even the language of your marketing efforts. Your website’s design, your printed marketing materials right down to how you design your fax cover letters look needs to have a consistent visual identity so that people recognize it immediately and associate it to your business. That visual identity takes on a life of it’s own it represents your organizations character.

The “muscle” is the quality that goes into your service or product. How well does it perform? Does the design of the service or product reflect who you are and how you want to be portrayed. Apple excels at this portion. The level of attention they give to every component of their products design is scrutinized down to the tiniest level and they’re known for that.

When you get to the “heart” of branding you get down to the core culture of your business and the employees attitudes in how they interact with each other and their customers. A main principle is a company’s ethics and morals. Are they being honest about who they really are? The importance of being honest and consistent can’t be understated. Without honesty your hiding behind a mask that the customers will see through. You’ll set yourself away from others competitors when you talk honestly with your customers.

Finally there’s the ”bones” that give strength to rest of the the brand. These are really the unseen factor to a brand but are just as important. Bones are the business structure consisting of a company’s processes, policies and procedures as well their systems and tools they use to do their job effectively. 

When you are developing your brand or revising it, a good approach is to develop a sense of amnesia about who you are currently and get feedback from your customers and community about how they perceive your current identity. You maybe surprised that how you’d like to be known or what you currently think of yourself aren’t matching up with public perception. Figure out who your target audience is and market your brand towards them. 

 In summary you should continue to strive to better your processes and quality, be consistent and honest about who you are and let your branding build from what your customers are saying about you. Don’t spoon feed them some marketing jargon that glosses over what the core is of who you are. Be precise and work hard to make sure it’s what you want them to say about you.

 

Microsoft’s new platform – Mesh?

Microsoft is attempting to tie all our data together on a single new platform across multiple devices like cell phones, mp3 players, laptops, desktops (yes including my Mac) and have it exist in a “cloud.” Okay I’m a little confused by how this thing is being marketed but the potential is definitely there. It’s sort of extends the permissions on a file folder into a virtual web zone that you can subscribe to from different devices (unfortunately meaning yet another thing to download to your individual machines to get it to work). Other people can subscribe to it as well and you can track changes in the folder through feeds. Like getting twitters on your documents that reside there and being able to access them anywhere from any device. What makes it interesting is that it can potentially extend to other services so I could take a picture with my iPhone then it automatically goes to my mesh and is sent to my flickr account automatically. I’m not sure Microsoft has a way to get a lock on this type of idea as many other companies and services are already bridging the gap between desktop, web services, and portable devices but it’s good to see some them batting some new ideas around. Check out their demo at www.mesh.com

Bring the Thunder

Hey all. This is my first post on my own blog site. I’m a graphic designer/creative writer in East Lansing in the cloudy state of Michigan. I’ve been running a movie review site for about a year at www.dchighway.com but wanted a place to talk about things more personal to my daily life both home and at work. So I’ll be posting some designs that I do along with great technology articles I find across the web and other design resources. Basically the stuff I’ve been twittering about but have had no room for my own take on things. So we’ll see where this goes but mainly I want to have fun with it and hope you stop by to check it out.