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Archive for the ‘Design’ Category

Logorama wins Oscar

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

The landscape is dotted with Malibu trees and MSN butterflies, and your AOL friends walk down the sidewalks while Michelin Man cops cruise the streets. This is the world of Logorama, the 17-minute film that took home the Oscar for Best Animated Short on Sunday.

Directed by French designers and filmmakers H5, Logorama features approximately 2,500 logos. When Adrian Shaughnessy of Design Observer reviewed the film in January, the heavily branded world depicted in the short caused mixed emotions:

I was struck by how many of the logos on show are rather wonderful — fine examples of the art and craft of graphic design. But this only served to reminded me of the essential conundrum at the heart of being a graphic designer; namely that the job is to create seduction and allure for our clients regardless whether it is a true reflection of reality or not.

Check out the world of Logorama for yourself to see how many of the logos you recognize thanks to our branded reality. It’s currently available for sale on iTunes, and you can also watch a preview on YouTube or Vimeo.

Tags: branding, logo, video
Posted in Design, News | No Comments »

Design for Women’s History Month

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

Rosie March is Women’s History Month in the US, and the Design a Poster About Women’s Issues contest from GOOD and The Daily Beast is a great way for designers to get involved.

The goal of the contest is to bring awareness to three critical issues facing women across the globe — human trafficking, childhood marriage, and childhood obesity — through public-awareness campaign posters that use design, photography, illustration, collage, or typography.

All entries must be emailed by midnight (PST) Friday, March 12. Winners will be announced on Monday, March 15 and featured on Good.is and The Daily Beast. For more information, visit GOOD’s contest website.

Tags: contest, Design, poster
Posted in Design | No Comments »

Winterhouse Awards for Design Writing & Criticism

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

AIGA has announced its call for entries for the 5th Annual Winterhouse Awards for Design Writing & Criticism. A program of AIGA, the Winterhouse Writing Awards provide an opportunity for both professional and student designers. The Awards were founded to recognize excellence in writing about design and to encourage the development of young voices in design writing, commentary, and criticism.

There will be two awards granted, the writing award and the education award. The writing award is open to writers, critics, scholars, historians, journalists and designers and is given for a body of work (three separate works of writing). The education award is open to high school, undergraduate or graduate students and is for a single work of writing about design.

Writing entries can be about any design discipline or form, including architectural, environmental, fashion, graphic, industrial, information, interactive, product, and strategic.

You must be a US citizen and under the age of 40 to submit entries. The submission deadline is June 1. For more information, check out the criteria, submission guidelines, and FAQs.

Tags: AIGA, contest, Design
Posted in Design, Writing | No Comments »

Student perspective: Design jobs

Friday, February 26th, 2010

If you are a student or just starting out in your career, then you definitely need to check out the Design Jobs series from Andrea Zagata.

You might remember Andrea as the designer behind the creative leave-behind we featured last fall. Andrea is also a journalism senior at Michigan State University, and she recently shared her perspective on searching for a design job in a four-part series.

First up—putting together a design application packet from cover letter to clips. Need help choosing your best work? Andrea shares how to cut your clips in part two.

Once you’ve sent your application packet to potential employers, it’s time to get ready for interviews. Andrea offers insight from her experiences as both the interviewer and the interviewee.

The series wraps up with a guest blog from MSU alum and freelance graphic designer Daniel Thai on networking, showing how connections made face-to-face and online can lead to freelance work and valuable contacts.

The Design Jobs series offers a lot of valuable advice, even for non-designers, so be sure to check it out along with the rest of Andrea’s I Shot the Serif blog.

Tags: Design, interviews, jobs, networking, portfolio
Posted in Career, Design | No Comments »

Vote for your favorite “Let’s Save Michigan” poster

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Voting is now open to the public for the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) and Let’s Save Michigan poster contest. The 60 finalists were selected by the DIA and Let’s Save Michigan for best representing the spirit of the contest.

You can vote for multiple posters, but only one vote per poster per day. Voting closes at 11:59pm (EST) on March 15, so vote for your favorites today.

Winners will be announced in March, with a grand prize of $1,000 and a runner-up prize of $250. All finalists’ designs will be on display at a special reception in the spring.

Tags: contest, DIA, Michigan, posters
Posted in Design | No Comments »

The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (TheJUMP)

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

If you’re a student doing digital writing projects for class, check out The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (TheJUMP).

thejump

Launched by the Digital Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, TheJUMP will feature students’ work and promote discussion on the rhetorical decisions made in the creative process.

No longer are the best multimedia works from our undergraduates doomed to fade to oblivion, doomed to be lost forever in digital storage, filed under the archival category of “class-projects-never-to-be-heard-from-again.” They can now find scholarly home at TheJUMP, which will showcase the digital and rhetorical talents our students develop in courses across disciplines, from coast to coast, and which will give rise to a discursive community committed to examining and exploring the potentialities for multimedia rhetoric in the digital age.

The first issue will be published in March, and TheJUMP is currently accepting digital video projects for the second issue. This is a great chance for students to share their work with a larger audience and see what others are doing with multimedia. To get involved, make a submission and join the discussion.

Tags: digital, journal, multimedia
Posted in Design, Rhetoric, Technology, Web | No Comments »

MSU abandons logo change

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Michigan State University Athletic Director Mark Hollis announced today that plans to redesign the Spartan helmet logo have been abandoned.

Criticism erupted last month after news leaked of a brand redesign scheduled to launch in April. At the time, the official statement from MSU was that the new helmet logo was “a single element of a comprehensive brand and identity project” conducted with Nike.

In today’s statement, Hollis addressed the concern over cost of a redesign, saying the university did not have to pay for the service. Hollis then responded to the criticism about redesigning an already powerful brand identity:

The recent disclosure of an updated Spartan logo from a trademark registration process has resulted in a flurry of concern and discontentment among some of our students, alumni, and fans. [...] Our primary objective is to achieve a strong and consistent Spartan brand, but rest assured that, as our mission statement attests, bringing Spartans together is one of our fundamental values.

Our identity and branding process is nearing completion and is on schedule for a complete rollout in April. The elements and applications of the brand design will be unveiled collectively at that time. After careful consideration, we will use the current Spartan logo design, first used in the late 1970s, to build our visual brand identity.

Right or wrong, the fans got the last word after all.

Tags: branding, logo, MSU
Posted in Design, News | 2 Comments »

DIA poster contest: Let’s Save Michigan

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) and Let’s Save Michigan have announced a poster contest to inspire Michiganders to revive their state. This is a great opportunity for artists, illustrators, and graphic designers to show off their talent and Michigan pride.

The posters should be a call to action to rally citizens to help revive the state and must include the phrase “Let’s Save Michigan” in the design.

The hope is to highlight the actions and assets that are critical to moving the cities forward, whether that is renovating historic homes, planting community gardens, extensive public transportation and bike lines, public art, or whatever the artist believes will carry Michigan through the 21st century—and beyond.

Ideally, the new posters will be in the fashion of Works Progress Administration artwork of the 1930s, which is the subject of DIA exhibition, and depict regional, recognizable subjects—ranging from portraits to cityscapes and images of city life that remind the public of quintessential American values such as hard work, community and optimism.

The deadline to submit poster designs is February 15 via the Let’s Save Michigan website. Judges will choose 25 finalists and then voting will open to the public. Winners will be announced in March, with a grand prize of $1,000 and a runner-up prize of $250. All finalists’ designs will be on display at a special reception in the spring.

Need inspiration? Check out the DIA “Government Support for the Arts” exhibit, and find out more about the Let’s Save Michigan campaign at letssavemichigan.com and on Facebook.

Tags: contest, DIA, Michigan, posters
Posted in Design | 2 Comments »

MSU brand redesign sparks criticism

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

When Tropicana redesigned their packaging, customers protested. And when IKEA changed their font from Futura to Verdana, both fans and designers lamented the switch. These are just two recent examples of people making themselves heard with the help of the internet, with mixed results.

So imagine the reaction when news leaked yesterday that Michigan State University (MSU) plans to launch a redesign of the Spartan brand this April.

Current and redesigned helmet logos

News of the redesign, which was a two-year collaborative effort between MSU Athletics and Nike, spread quickly thanks to fan sites and social media. It wasn’t long before angry Spartans joined the Facebook group “JUST DON’T – No new Nike-influenced Spartan helmet”.

As fans took to the internet to give their opinions, news outlets tried to get more details about the redesigned logo. MLive.com and Detroit Free Press quoted MSU Athletic Director Mark Hollis and Director of Athletic Communications John Lewandowski, respectively, saying the new helmet is “a single element of a comprehensive brand and identity project”.

This isn’t the first time the MSU helmet logo has changed — the most recent was in 1983. But whether this branding strategy is about changing a single image or revamping everything from colors to fonts, there is a question that has yet to be answered: why?

Not only is the Spartan brand already a powerful identity, but MSU announced in October a plan to restructure in light of the state’s poor economy. Included in the plan was the elimination of 13 master’s degree programs and 16 undergraduate degree programs. While it’s still unclear how Nike’s involvement with the redesign factors into the overall costs, this brand project will cost money to implement. How is a major re-branding effort part of the plan to cut the budget?

My guess is that MSU isn’t happy about the premature timing of this announcement, but I hope the surge of criticism encourages them to examine — and explain — the logistics behind the redesign. And who knows? Maybe the fans will get the last word.

Tags: branding, logo, MSU, social media
Posted in Design, News, Web | 4 Comments »

Branding redesigns: Minute Maid vs. Tropicana

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

It has been a year since Tropicana’s branding redesign by parent company PepsiCo. In an attempt to “create an emotional attachment”, the company’s design failure resulted in a loss of customers, and they quickly reverted to their traditional look. But it was too late — sales dropped and Coca-Cola was there to pick up the market share with its Minute Maid brand.

Now, Coca-Cola is hoping to benefit even more from Tropicana’s failure, this time in lessons learned. Minute Maid launched its new look in the US in mid-November and will launch globally during 2010.

Based on extensive consumer research, the new visual identity was created to enhance brand preference, improve shelf stand out, drive cost efficiencies and create consistency across a world-leading family of juice brands and products.

minutemaid-redesign

The modernized design builds on elements of the Minute Maid visual identity, including the black rectangle and white logotype lettering while adding a green horizon mark, refreshing fruit photography and natural imagery to underscore the juice brands as a source of delicious fruit.

While I wasn’t able to find any sales numbers post-redesign, Tom Farrell, design director for the Coca-Cola global design group, told Brand Packaging that retailers and consumers are responding positively. I think this can be taken as a good sign given that Tropicana’s customers spoke out with their wallets immediately, causing the brand double-digit losses in just one month after the redesign.

Personally, I like the Minute Maid redesign and think the in-house designers did a thorough job of updating the brand while staying true to its roots — unlike Tropicana’s move to a more generic look with an awkward “orange” cap. What do you think: has Minute Maid won the juice rebranding war?

Tags: branding, packaging
Posted in Design | No Comments »