Companies have many options to consider when researching what type of establishment to use for their graphic design needs. Many turn to independent design houses that focus on high-end strategic design.

Resilient companies maintain their industry lead through effective marketing and excellent design.

Personally, I have used my 16 years of experience to develop a strong team of outstanding business associates; we design everything from logos to catalogs to e-commerce websites. Our clients receive exceptional quality design services, resulting in unique and effective products every time.

Throughout its life span, a company invests large amounts of money, time and research to create a solid company identity and its components, including logos, websites, catalogs and all other marketing collateral. An investment in good design creates strong customer confidence and instant company credibility with existing clients, potential clients and competitors. Cutting corners on quality design inhibits customers’ confidence by raising questions about a company’s stability. The price companies’ pay in an attempt to recapture customers’ confidence far outweighs the costs of doing it correctly the first time. Resilient companies maintain their industry lead through effective marketing and excellent design.

SEO SERP is a great plug-in for Chrome. The plug-in allows a user to type in a keyword or phrase and check to see which position their website ranks in Google organics. This is a heck of a lot more efficient than clicking through the first 50 pages of results only to have missed your website listing on page 2. While none of these tools are 100% accurate, SEO SERP still gives you a pretty good idea where/if your site is listed.

A couple years ago, I had the pleasure of working with David and Mariah McIntyre on the brand development for their new stylish restaurant in San Diego called Crescent Heights. After meeting with David and Mariah and discussing their vision for their new restaurant, I immediately had a clear idea of one of the logo options I wanted to present to them.

David is very much an artist and his new restaurant was going to be contemporary in its look and feel, but I wanted to also capture the artisan touch of the chef. To best accomplish this visually, I decided on contemporary type married with a brush stroked monogram done by hand.

So there I was, at my desk, with my brush, ink, and a few sheets of paper ready to knock this logo out.  As I began, it didn’t take long to realize, it wasn’t going to be that easy and I was already far from the point of “knocking it out”. After the first 25 or so throw away monograms, I was thinking to myself, “that’s ok, these are just some warm-ups” but by the time I was at somewhere around 150 throw-aways, I felt as if I were 2 more failed attempts from karate chopping my desk in half. Needless to say I was ready to move on and had just told my wife that I thought I was going to have to find another direction. As I said this to her, I absently drew one more monogram while barely looking at the paper. Wahla! There it was.

The lesson I learned on this project was that creativity comes from the care-free part of all of us. But when we become too structured, ridged, and have a narrow vision of the way things are “suppose” to be. We put up walls against our self, which ultimately keeps us from reaching our creative goals.

Original Scan

Final Logo Design

For each ubiquitous logo, there is often a quiet designer behind it. I’ve always admired the Maersk logo for many reasons. Primarily because it is clean, simple, and modern, even when it’s painted on the side of an old rusty shipping container. In 1973 Danish designer and architect Acton Bjørn created Maersk Line’s seven-pointed star logo. It’s initial goal was to signal the build up of Maersk’s new business era. Today, it is nearly impossible to miss once you have noticed it for the first time.

image courtesy of transpressnz.blogspot.com

The Designer…

Acton Bjørn studied architecture and urban design and began working as a designer during the Second World War. In 1950 he founded together with Sigvard Bernadotte design firm Bernadotte & Bjørn Industrial A/S . One of Scandinavia’s first consultants for industrial design. The head office was in Copenhagen with offices in New York and Stockholm. Cooperation between Bernadotte and Bjorn lasted until 1964. During that time, created many design classics such as stainless steel cookware for Modernum (1954) and plastic bowl Margrethe of Rosti Bakelite Factory (1950), which is still produced. For clients belonged among others. a Husqvarna, Bang & Olufsen, Facit, AGA, General Electric, and Electro-Helios .

In 1965, Bjørn opened his own office in Copenhagen, specializing in household appliances, office furniture and packaging. The same year he designed a transistor radio for Bang & Olufsen, Beolit 500. The design represented a simplification of the radio using comparable to the phone. 1966, Bjørn a Danish design award for this work. Acton Bjørn managed to combine practical function with a simple sculptural form.

Direct mail has become easier and more affordable than ever before. With traditional direct mail, businesses were required to either have or purchase an address list, purchase postage (approx. 28¢/piece), purchase a permit, and have your marketing piece printed.

Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) simplifies the entire direct mail process. EDDM gives businesses a lot of control to where their mailings will be distributed. You can choose your mailing areas by zip code or by specific mail routes. USPS provides an online tool that display’s specific mailing routes and data for the number of residential and business addresses that your mailing will go out to. Not to mention postage starts at just 14.5¢/piece.

EDDM offers a great opportunity to businesses since it enables customers that would have never tried direct mail to take a test without significant risk.

From the USPS website:

Now you can tell the whole neighborhood what your business has to offer.

With Every Door Direct Mail® service from the U.S. Postal Service®, you can reach the market that matters most to your business: nearby neighborhoods. Postage is as low as 14.5¢ per piece – and you don’t even need to know names or street addresses. You simply identify the neighborhoods you want to target, and your printed piece is delivered with the day’s mail to every address.

Choose the option that is best for you.

• Every Door Direct Mail – Retail™ - Most local businesses choose this service. It’s our simplest, most cost-effective option. Every Door Direct Mail – Retail lets you send up to 5,000 mailpieces per day and doesn’t require you to purchase a postage permit. What’s more, you can take your mailings right to the front counter of the Post Office™ that serves the neighborhoods you want to reach. You can pay for postage with cash, check, or debit card.
• Every Door Direct Mail - This option is designed for businesses that want to send larger mailings. You submit your mailing at a Business Mail Entry Unit (BMEU).

What Every Door Direct Mail brings to your marketing efforts.

• Reaches consumers in their homes. With Every Door Direct Mail, you can saturate an entire neighborhood with your message, and your mailing gets directly into the homes and hands of consumers.
• As much or little space as you need. Every Door Direct Mail offers a flexible range of sizes – making it ideal for anything from a quick sales announcement to an in-depth product story.
• Helps your messages work harder. With Every Door Direct Mail, you can include coupons, menus, event calendars, store maps, and more – all of which can help bring customers to your door.

How to get started – use a local printer or do it yourself.

Many local printers offer Every Door Direct Mail. They can help you produce, print, and submit your mailing to the Postal Service™.

I discovered customink.com the other day and decided to give them a shot at printing a t-shirt for me. For those of you not familiar with CustomInk…in a nutshell they print low minimum runs of promotional products such as t-shirts (obviously), hats, mugs, bags, etc…check out their site.

I ended up just purchasing one shirt and it cost me about $25 with shipping. There are less expensive places out there, but I read good things about this company so I decided to spend the extra few bucks.

As for the design. In middle school and high school I use to find tons of cool shirts in small record shops, many of them promoting old punk bands. More often than not the shirts would be printed in just single and maybe 2 colors. I’m assuming because it was cheap and easy to do for bands to print and produce. So I thought it would be fun to go for this same look. I decided resurrected an old pinhole photo I used for a promotional poster we used a while back. The contrasty image has an old 70′s punk/rock-n-roll feel, which I thought would work great to have printed on a black shirt.

Overall, I’m pretty darn happy with the quality of the shirt, printing, the customer service and ordering process with CustomInk. They are worth giving a shot, if you want to print a shirt or two for fun.

WARNING: This is painful to watch.

As good design cannot be measured in a finite way he set about expressing the ten most important principles for what he considered was good design. (Sometimes they are referred as the ‘Ten commandments’.)

Here they are:

FULL ARTICLE HERE:

1. Good Design is Innovative
2. Good Design Makes a Product Useful
3. Good Design is Aesthetic
4. Good Design Makes a Product Understandable
5. Good Design is Unobtrusive
6. Good Design is Honest
7. Good Design is Long-Lasting
8. Good Design is Thorough Down to the Last Detail
9. Good Design is Environmentally Friendly
10. Good Design is as Little as Possible

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