“1000+” should be a familiar number for Google Reader users. My RSS feeds have been neglected in past months. Emails from AdAge.com, Creativity-Online, and links from friends go unread and unclicked. I’ve just been running 100 miles per hour at work. This is not to slam my current employer (because I truly like working here), but more of an observation.
If we creatives are always so busy with projects, and never take the time to look up, take off our headphones and find inspiration, our work will suffer. Our work will stagnate. Our work will suck.
So this is a reminder to myself (and to other creatives) to take a bit of time each day to remain inspired. Surf the web. Watch TV. See a movie in a theater. Listen to new music. Read a magazine or a book. Go to a bookstore. Go to a museum. Go hiking.
Eric Baker spends 30 minutes every day scouring the web for inspirational images. He shares them regularly on Design Observer.
And I’ve started to try to gather images and links that delight me in a couple of Tumblr blogs (ELT and ___ is awesome.)
This is also a reminder to managers of creatives: you must let them play. You have to structure your organization and processes to allow creative folks time to recharge and get inspired. Google’s 20% time is a great example of how structuring some R&D/inspiration time can yield results. The Scotch Tape and Post-it Notes were invented by engineers at 3M during their 15% time. Or taken to the extreme, Stefan Sagmeister closes his studio every seven years for a yearlong sabbatical to get inspired again.
Now how can I get someone to pay me for a sabbatical?
JESS3 created this video for an AIGA Baltimore lecture. I found the content very fascinating. Two nits in an otherwise excellent piece: 1) the pacing could be better with more interesting transitions between the different subject matter, 2) use correct apostrophes!
I went to the first post-Apple era Macworld on Friday and spent a couple of hours in the exhibit hall. This year it was only in the North Hall, much smaller than it has been in past years. A lot of the big names—besides Apple—that were anchors in previous Macworld Expos were not there: Adobe, Filemaker, Canon, EPSON. Microsoft, HP and others had smaller, toned down booths. The floor was packed with a lot of the smaller players and had a substantial area dedicated to iPhone apps. I found that I had to pay attention to the small exhibitors.
In terms of my show picks, here they are.
TypeDNA: This is a series of plug-ins for Adobe CS4 that helps you preview and make decisions about your typeface choices. The innovation is that it analyzes 62 characteristics of every one of your own fonts to build a local database. From that database, it will allow you to search by styles, classifications and even find pairs of typefaces that go together. All this is based on scanning the letterforms, not checking the font name. Pretty incredible. It’s not out yet, but should be shipping in the next month or two.
Topaz Labs Filters: This was the first demo that caught my eye. The speed and accuracy in which the ReMask plug-in works is incredible. Much easier to use than Photoshop’s native Extract tool or onOne Software’s Mask Pro.
Inklet + Pogo Sketch: I’ve always been a Wacom tablet user. I just find that for Photoshop work, it’s invaluable. Inklet is software that allows you to use your MacBook Pro’s multi-touch trackpad as a tablet. Combined with the Pogo Sketch stylus, it’s like a mini-tablet built right in!
My Beatles fanaticism has been re-ignited recently with the remastered box set. I’ve been going through the albums in the order of their release and am just floored by the clarity of the sound. It’s definitely like hearing all these songs for the first time again.
Because of the remasters, I’m sure the Beatles have enjoyed a renewed interest from audiences old and new. Which brings me to the “Hey Jude” flowchart and this infographic gem: Charting the Beatles. There are four great charts at that link. Apparently it is the start of an open collaboration project and includes a Flickr pool.
But Guillermo’s experiment also reminded me of how awful the typography was of those opening crawls. The original Star Wars opening crawl uses two different typefaces (three if you count “A long time ago…”), is justified without hyphenation, and thus creates obvious rivers and awkward tracking.
Opening crawl from A New Hope as grabbed from the DVD.
As the subsequent movies came out, the typography was all over the place. The Empire Strikes Back dispenses with letter-spacing altogether. Return of the Jedi overcompensates for the failure of the previous two crawls by using too much letter-spacing.
Opening crawl from The Empire Strikes Back. What happened here? I can drive many trucks through those spaces.
Opening crawl from Return of the Jedi. Standbackafewfeetandtrytoreadthatlastparagraph.
The absolute worst though was when ILM matched the style for the Star Wars prequels. At least there was more tracking in the original 1977 version. The 1999 version of the crawl that appeared in The Phantom Menace lacked any letter spacing whatsoever and created huge holes between the words that made the crawl barely readable. (No offense to special effects god and Photoshop co-creator John Knoll. He’s great with FX but he’s not necessarily a designer nor typographer.)
Opening crawl from The Phantom Menace. Shit in = shit out. It’s a tragedy that they used Empire as the model.
I set out to do a quick experiment—to see if I could redo the crawl any better. The first thing I did was to standardize on one typeface. The “A long time ago…,” title and body copy are all Franklin Gothic. Then I tried a version where I kept the justified alignment but decreased the type size. The copy becomes much more readable, but feels too small and loses that epic quality George Lucas was probably after.
Then I simply tried centering it and I think it works. I am able to keep the type size large without creating large gaps between words or letters. Although the very straight sides are lost, I think the intended dramatic effect is still there.
And of course I had to whip it up in After Effects to really test the design.
There’s been a lot of chatter in recent weeks about how so-called “digital” agencies are or are not ready to be the lead for a campaign. But I think the question is a little off.
Instead the question should be “Why are clients splitting up campaign work based on tactic?”
Despite the maturing of digital agencies such as Razorfish (for whom I work), R/GA and AKQA, today’s clients are still sending digital work to digital agencies and traditional work to traditional agencies. And equally bad is having a third company plan and buy their media (sometimes there’s a traditional media agency and a digital one). Why is this bad?
OK, the end-zone is down that way 50 yards! Make sure you talk to each other along the way. Now go! [View larger | Download PDF]
I’ve seen it time and time again: if you want an integrated marketing campaign, how could you possibly brief all the companies and hope they work together and come back with something good and cohesive? The agencies will pay lip-service and say they’re collaborating, but there’s only so much collaboration that can happen in reality. Each agency is moving fast and really has no time to talk to the others. Plus there is always unspoken political jockeying for protecting the work each agency does have and trying to steal more business from the others. I strongly believe that this model is inefficient (money and time), makes agency people insane, and creates less-than-stellar campaigns.
What should instead happen is the client needs to brief one agency who will create a singular idea and execute on that idea across different tactics and mediums. Therefore the messaging, art direction and strategy for the campaign are cohesive.
Let the one Agency bring in specialists as needed to serve the idea. [View larger | Download PDF]
Agencies should not be labeled “digital,” for digital is only a tactic. I’d say the same with “traditional.” What clients should ask for is strong strategic work that drives results. Let the agency—regardless of its label—decide on who to sub-contract to if necessary.
When we see clients trust their agency and its vision, we witness great work all around:
FEED 2009 has now been released and I feel privileged to have been a part of this one. If you haven’t already checked it out, please do so. The report and findings are very compelling and eye-opening. [Download PDF]
I wanted to share a little bit about the process we went through in designing the new report.
When my friend and colleague Garrick Schmitt first approached me, he already had an editorial direction in mind. He realized the data was so profound that the usual packaging of articles around the report would actually take away from it. So he wanted a smaller format with less content. He referenced books by Marty Neumeier: simple layout, large type, lots of infographics. The theme for the book came down to “customer engagement.” The data shows that when brands engage with customers in an experience of some kind (like an event, contest, etc.), ninety-six percent (96%) of their customers are more likely to consider, buy from or recommend that brand. Ninety-six percent. You never see a number like that in a survey. (To get that number, add up the sometimes/usually/always percentages for the consider, purchase and recommend results.)
So the answer was obvious in my mind. The design had to be simple (and elegant) but it really had to have an organic touch; it’s about the customer after all. I started thinking about Darwin’s journal and his observations and drawings of animals. I toyed with having the whole book typeset in a font I could make from Garrick’s handwriting, accompanied by scientific drawings of consumers. As soon as I thought about looking at illustrators who had a realistic style, someone immediately came to mind. Earlier in the summer I worked with a freelance copywriter named David Fullarton who was also a talented illustrator/artist. His work combines collage with portraiture and witty copy. His style would be the foil to the business-speak and myriad bar graphs and pie charts. He was perfect.
When I briefed David, I gave him a draft of the report and some loose direction. What he came back with was sheer genius. Because of his copy in conjunction with his art, the illustrations became another layer of commentary about the state of our industry and even our hyperconnected society. Yelpers are not only reviewing restaurants, but also doctors and schools. It doesn’t seem far off that they might be reviewing police officers in the future.
Meanwhile, I took another look at the nameplate for FEED. Last year’s design element of the small rectangular bars was inspired by the holes in computer punchcards. This year, I took the idea a little further by incorporating the actual shape of the punchcard and making the name a part of that.
Garrick and I also talked a lot about the format of the physical book. He liked the idea of putting it up on Blurb for anyone to order their own copy. The small 7x7 size felt right for the amount of content we had. In addition to Blurb, we have also offset-printed 2,000 copies of the book. For this I chose a natural white cover stock for the interior pages which alludes to Moleskine sketchbooks and fits well with David’s illustration style. And we even made temporary tattoos of the back cover illustration.
At Razorfish most of my days are filled with high-level, large-scale strategizing or pushing tiny colored squares around on a screen. It’s always nice to work on a small project and make something that can be felt, picked up and even smelled. I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I have enjoyed making it.
I recently got on the True Blood bandwagon. The first thing I noticed of course was the stunning main title sequence designed by Digital Kitchen. If you haven’t seen it, watch it below (or in HD) and then see how DK made it. I will sit through the main titles every time. It’s beautiful, haunting and mesmerizing.
In the age of digital and social media, and in the age of realtime marketing, what matters more? The big idea or the smaller idea and execution?
Many digital agencies have been experimenting with new ways of working to try to get at those ideas and executions that a traditional agency couldn’t dream of. I was working at Organic when we rolled out the “Three Minds” initiative, meaning that for every brainstorm, we needed to have at least three people from three disciplines in the room. This is similar to what Big Spaceship has been trying to do by throwing together teams of creatives, strategists, technologists and production.
Digital agencies think that this is a point of differentiation. They think that online, social and viral are so complex that they need all this brainpower to figure it out. What ends up happening when you put a technologist and/or producer into a room with creatives? Executions. It’s a natural and inevitable thing. And I believe it’s a distraction from getting to a better and bigger idea.
I believe that when you add in people whose jobs are to make things (technologists build, producers produce, etc.) too early in the creative process, before the idea is baked, you shortchange the idea. The idea becomes smaller and less compelling.
Creative teams go there all the time too. Too often do I hear an art director or copywriter say “OK, so the idea is a game within a banner.” No. That’s not the idea. That’s an execution. What’s the idea?
People may argue that the mass audience doesn’t care about the idea; all people will remember is the commercial, billboard or Facebook app (no one remembers banners). I disagree. People remember the campaign which was essentially that story dreamt up one late night in a conference room by a creative partnership.
In the traditional advertising agency model, the two-person copywriter and art director partnership is designed to tell stories. The idea isn’t a TV spot, a print ad or a billboard. The idea isn’t a banner, a microsite or a Facebook app. The idea is a story. It’s a story with a hook, that draws people in, makes them feel something and act on that. And as humans, we love stories.
I believe that for digital agencies to compete with the traditional ones, they need to be better at developing compelling ideas. A big traditional shop can always farm out a digital execution, but digital agencies can’t farm out the idea generation.
Although he has been designing since the seventh grade, Roger Wong officially began his design career in 1995. He is currently a creative director at PJA Advertising + Marketing in San Francisco.
This site is an outlet for his musings on design, advertising and culture.
