I really wonder if out there there are some of us that never had the frustration of a rejected work.
Lucky few guys!

For the rest of us Matt Gustavsen and Justin Hastings created Project Never competition.

It may be true that a lot of design concept gets rejected for (probably) a good reason, but many times worthy ideas are condemned to oblivion just because: “Ehh…this is good, but this is not what we had in mind” or : “we’re not going in that direction”.

Very frustrating.
Although this could be the obvious end of a poorly defined Design Brief (always be aware and take care of this point!) it is also true that sometimes it happens that customers don’t have any idea at all of what they want and we end up that we have to throw away our work and restart again.

Here it comes Project Never, which aims to give to all discarded designs all the fame they deserves.

Let’s summarize:

• award is open to all print and and web design concepts developed between January 1, 2007 and December 1, 2008;
• to all countries (but obviously they have to be presented in english);
• deadline is 1st december 2008;
• winner will be announced on 1st march 2009.

All rules and details are available on the website of the competition, the only fee is the willingness to be slapped in the face once again. ^__^

PROJECT NEVER
Rejection never felt this good.

When in 1970 John Pasche designed the famous Rolling Stones logo he was paid only £50.
He got 200 more two years after from the band as a bonus, so much they were pleased with it.

That logo, created for the album Sticky Fingers released in 1971, made music history and now Victoria and Albert Museum in London has bought for £50,000 (which means 92,500 USD) the signed original artwork sold by author with an auction.

Pasche says that he took inspiration for the logo from the rebellious spirit of the band and sexual connotations of Mick’s mouth. He designed it in a bold graphic style so that it could stand the test of time and he wanted it in an easy to reproduce shape.

Increasing success of the logo led, in successive years, to copyrights issues on two fronts:

• the mark needed to be registered worldwide because other business started to use it for their own products;
• a further agreement needed to be drawn between designer and the band for the merchandise.

The designer continued to create artwork extensively for the band until 1974.
This led him to work for Paul Mc Cartney, the Who and many other artists.

Actually this logo is one of the most famous in the world, a real icon of the pop art culture.

Ever since I was a child I’ve always loved it.
So colorful, so powerful, so direct.
But, most of all, it really was, (and still is) “ONE” with the band itself, a perfectly merged symbol.

From today on, each Sunday, I’ll list my 10 favourite websites of the week.
They may include articles, video and portfolios.
Let’s start.

• Most Comprehensive is Your Rights as a Photographer by Tutorial9.net: a complete and extensive guide about commercial and legal rights when you use your fotocamera, there also are two downloadable samples of models releases;

• Most Creative is A little something to remind me… by CR Blog that shows how photographer Michael Hughes renew the concept of tourist attractions in his new book Souvenirs, where he take a shot of a postcard of them, skillfully merged with the real view;

• Most Outrageous is Shavethepussy.com. Yes, as the name says, you have all the tools to shave a pussy and get a score to win the foam/moisturizer set. Honestly, I didn’t understand if this site was made to really promote the set or the amazing mastery of the flash design, but one thing for sure it gets noticed!!;

• Most Funny is Make my logo bigger video on YouTube. How often customers obstruct us from doing our work with request of the kind: “I want my logo bigger”, “All of that white space is wasted”, “I want more colors”?. Well, it has been created a new set of tools right for this purpose.

• Most Useful is How to Write An Effective Design Brief By JCD Blog. Starting from the definition of design brief itself it analyzes what goals of design could be, then it draws a roadmap through target market, design specifications, benchmark and deadline.

• Most Interesting is Typographic Nostalgia: Bell Centennial by Speak Up. This article talks of the creation of the typeface Bell Centennial, used for the AT&T telephone book, as an update of old Bell Gothic. A lot of good pics of the rare booklet that illustrate the process.

• Most Beautiful is The beauty of old maps by Design Daily. I just love vintage photos and illustrations. Period.

• Most Inspiring is Twenty-eight ways to be a better designer by design feeder. Design Feeder is one of my favourite blogs. Some renowned designer share their views giving some tips. This post is definitely a must read.

• Most Valuable is 10 Timeless Business Tips From 10 Millionaires by Quick Sprout. From venture capital to savings, from starting a business to investing in ourselves.

• My favourite portfolio: Philipp Zurmoehle at http://www.phillennium.com/ is a fine and creative graphic and web designer from Norway.

It must be some kind of “universal law”, I guess.
As you say his dreadful name you can see around you horrified, astounded, disgusted faces, wondering if you’re serious or if you’re only joking, when you’re talking about including it in your project (none of two: just testing the law :-D).

Every graphic and web designers in the world agree in hating poor dear Comic Sans.
Even those that use Microsoft Word to layout books, booklet and brochure.
Even those that use Photoshop to project a logo.
Even those that use Dreamveaver to write a post because they’re not able to hand-write a tag directly in Wordpress.(*)

All of them, however, have one certainty: Comic Sans is ugly and despicable and everyone that use it and/ or denies it is as crappy as it is.

I wonder how does it feel about it that poor guy, Vincent Connare that created it in 1994.
Who knows… it could be he uses Oscar Wilde philosophy “I don’t care of your ill talking… as long as you keep on talking”.
But since he is a big professional and he probably makes big laughs of all this fuss…

Let’s say it.
Where does all of this hatred for Comic Sans comes from?
My opinion is that Comic Sans is a good font (I don’t fear to be considered crappy if I deny the universal truth!).
Good leading, good kerning. And it is nice and suitable for its destination: comics.
PERIOD.

My opinion is that truth lies somewhere else.
For years this font has been used and abused A LOT in web and editorial projects from “wannabe” designers (which it means that it was appreciated!) in an improper way, and I think that this is the real reason that lead to such saturation.

It has even been created a website, BanComicSans.Com that has started a petition to ban Comic Sans because, it states, “it threaten to erode the very foundations upon which centuries of typographic history are built”. There also is a section where you can download all kind of comics fonts to use in your project to make you stop using Comic Sans (what’s the sense of this?).
I don’t understand if the intention of this website is serious (oh my God!), controversial, or just a joke (I hope so).

Banning a font?
Ridiculous. Bad designer would use something else.
Why this makes some people upset?
After all bad allows to good to stand out, isn’t it?

(*)
YES! I’ve seen and read about people doing those things. Really.

After last year successful guerrilla street campaign, Orbit is coming back.
New advertising poster has a beautiful vintage style (of those I love) and features a group of cannibals while preparing a couple of (human) pyres for their forthcoming snack.
In the foreground, a packet of Orbit whit the headline “After any meal”.

How daring! Humorous, engaging, and most of all so beautifully illustrated.
Ad was made by Agency Mark BBDO under the direction of creatives Leon Sverdlin and Martin Charvát. Brilliant copywriting was and idea of Pavel Sobek, art direction of: Daniel Kurz and (let me tell it again) wonderful illustrator was: Lucie Štamfestová.

Regarding last year campaign I just mentioned, if you don’t know it yet, faces were painted around street irregularities, with attached a simple note: “Dirty Mouth? ORBIT.COM”.
Very Impressive!

Campaign was planned by agency Energy BBDO Chicago, under the creative direction of Marty Orzio, art direction of Frank Dattalo, copywriting by Mike Roe. The artist that painted faces was Karen Tisel and the Christian Petersen-Clausen. Producer: Liz Miller-Gershfeld.

It is possible some readers will find this argument rather basic, however I’ve heard very often typographer I know complaining about a lack of fonts and colors management in files they receive for printing.

A good rule of thumb, especially if you’re starting to collaborate with a new typographer, is always to ask first how he prefers files to be prepared.
My favourite file format is PDF, however you can have some problems with it if typographer has an older version of Adobe Acrobat than yours (it is possible file won’t open at all or, worse, a black blob will print where you put transparencies), so most of times best solution is to go with EPS, a hybrid “container” format that incorporates both images and curves.

Problem with EPS is that if your composition has some text, and the font you used to create your paragraph is not installed on the computer that will open file, your text won’t display nor print as you intended, but system default font will be used.

To solve this issue you have to embed the font in the EPS when you save file.
However, even if EPS files can contains either images and type they are placed in a page layout as images. Font and style attributes are saved within the EPS file when it is created - such as by an illustration program, and simply embedding font cannot always be a solution.

Other than font embedding there are a few other ways you could deal this.
You can:

1. Provide the fonts along with the job (assure first if any licensing agreement applies)
2. Convert all the fonts to curves in the EPS file (but the text will no more be editable)
3. Deliver two versions of the EPS file:
a) A master version with editable text;
b) A copy with text converted to curves.

Next detail you have to take care of is the color model you are using.
Is the job going to be printed using spot color or process color?
Let’s assume you have to print a two-color job - for example, blue and red. If some objects were marked using process blue (a mix of cyan, magenta, yellow and black) and the text in the page layout file was marked using a spot color depending on colors used, four or five plates may be output instead of two (three to four for the process colors and one for the spot color).

Furthermore, it is a good idea to ask for a laser proof to your typographer to check your output before sending your composition to final production.
The reason is that the service bureau’s equipment uses PostScript. By printing a proof using the equal page-description language, you will be able to obtain an accurate replica before the files are committed to high-end output. EPS and PDF files must be output to a PostScript device for them to print the right way because their instructions are written using PostScript.

As a final recommendation I would say to avoid to save using JPEG compression, neither for EPS nor for PDF, because it is a quality loss format (probably you won’t notice much difference on display but once on paper you’d really regret your choice) and you lose quality each time you re-save your document.

It took almost three years and three designers to develope it, but now is here and it has a whole website on its own.

Front page of website immediately announce: “The most influential sans serif of the digital revoulution now has a serif companion: Introducing FF Meta Serif“.

All through the 90’s designer Erik Spiekermann had tried to create a complementary face for his successful FF META. Many times happened that he was asked what could be the best serif match for it and he realized that he just had to create it.

He finally asked collaboration to designers Christian Schwartz and Kris Sowersby.

Development of the new font started both from the original META for the body (which, in its uniqueness, is heavier in the center stroke, while the two end strokes are lighter) and from Antiqua face to take inspiration for serifs.

In website there is the whole thread of eMails exchanged between three designers during the period of creation to present the story of the font, which shows the great love they have for their profession and the great care for details they had all the time.

We can buy both font in various combination of packages, and if we use FF META SERIF in our designs we can also submit our work to be featured (if selected) in the gallery and enter the competition to get a FONTBOOK.

David Butler, who now is vice-president for design, joined Coca-Cola almost five years ago, receiving what he calls “the Post-it Note mandate: We need to do more with design. Go figure it out.” He then had soon written up a 30-page manifesto setting out a design strategy for the company.

Here it is how new Coca-Cola design course started.
With new approach, instead of developing new concept that probably would have never seen light, the design team had to concentrate on problems and issues that could be fixed by design.

‘How can we make the can feel colder, longer?‘
It has been from this starting concept that the new aluminum bottle and the new generation of coolers are born.

Aluminum is more modern, less expensive to produce, it has a re-sealable cap, and yes, it gives to customers the perception of being more cold. In addiction, it is manufactured using recycled material and is itself recyclable.
Coca-Cola aims, too, to reinforce brand installing new designed coolers into stores. And for those stores that don’t want to invest in a new one, a set of panels has been created to attach to old cooler to give it the look of the new model.

There are few brands in world as famous as Coca-Cola.
However in last decade it really seemed struggling with competitors, everyone fighting to add the more sparks and ribbons and bubbles and splashes and so on to their designs.

Coca-Cola classic brand redesign decided to invert this [messy, in my opinion] tendency and get back to basics.
The redesign of the logo removes all the unnecessary stuff and leaves a clean logotype over a red background.
This update brought Coke’s home the Cannes Lions Design Grand Prix. Good job!

This is the LESS IS MORE I love.

Tate Liverpool has announced an upcoming event starting from 29th May to 13th September 2009 addressed to all graphic, fashion and interior designer.
The exhibition Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today will show role of color in these main areas of desing from post-war to nowadays.

Taking the commercial colour chart as its point of departure, the exhibition emphasises a radical transformation in the post-War Western art that is characterised by the departure from such notions as originality, uniqueness and authenticity.

Colour Chart celebrates a paradox: the beauty that occurs when contemporary artists assign colour decisions to chance, ready made source, or arbitrary system.

Colour Chart is really the first major exhibition devoted to this pivotal transformation and offers an alternative survey of mid to late twentieth-century art, emphasising the significance of colour as an indicator of shifting conceptions around art, commodity and creativity.

Exhibition has been organized by Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) of New York and will feature more than forty artists, including Ellsworth Kelly, Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Frank Stella, Yves Klein, Richard Serra, John Baldessari, Dan Flavin, Damien Hirst, David Batchelor, Jim Lambie, Angela Bulloch and Cory Archangel.

Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today was curated by Ann Temkin, Curator of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. At Tate Liverpool the exhibition is organised by Christoph Grunenberg, Director, and Sook-Kyung Lee, Exhibitions and Displays Curator.

You can read the complete press release of the presentation of the event HERE
or
visit Tate GallerY Official Website HERE.

While we’re waiting for this event to happen in Old Europe, we can watch dedicated space (a flash website you can preview in pic) of the exhibit that already took place in New York 2 March to 2 May 2008.
To go to Color Chart MOMA website and preview artist featured click HERE

Some years ago I made a set of four advertising (I realized both visual and copy) for a branch of a press agency that deals technology and computer gadgets.
They all (but one) were two pages wide and were going to have nationwide diffusion (for those who don’t know I am in Italy).

The reason I am writing about this is that few days ago I was leafing through a technology magazine when it happened, to my great surprise, that I saw one of those old adverts (and to be more exact, the one you can see a detail in the pic above).
As far as I’ve always known all advertising campaign have their life cycle: customer gets attracted and interested in products thanks to the freshness of the message, than desire and acquire (you know … the old good A.I.D.A. formula …).
So, when customer already knows your visual and he is already accustomed to it, your message higly risks to get unnoticed.
I am pretty sure the result of each campaign has always been benchmarked by that company so, if they keep on publishing that advert it can only mean one thing: IT KEEPS ON SELLING.

This whole story inspired me some insights that I want to share in this article.

• Good Design Tells a Story.
  Design IS communication, and spending your hours with your tools just to make a composition look better or to refine your tecnique is useless. No one of the element of design should be gratuitous, everyone of them must convey your message. It doesn’t? Discard it. Never forget the old rule LESS IS MORE.
• It all starts by the definition of a “concept”.
  I know of a lot of colegues that when they are going to start a new project brainstorm by jotting down everything comes to their mind then refine in a second time. I work in a different way. I start defining a creative concept that should describe client and product. Something daring that I want to hook the customer. Something different and new.
  The case in example was particularly challenging: how many online technology and gadgets shops already exists? How could I been able to compel customers to get there?
  To make things even more difficult target audience of adverts were a lot heterogeneous because they were going to be featured not only on business and high-end tech mag, but on newbies magazines too.
• You got to reach your customer “emotionally”.
  Best feature of the client was that he offeres often rare to find tech gadgets and solutions, so, the starting principle of all four adverts I developed was the he provides products that make life easier. As a plus, to contrast with “cold” technology I wanted my message to be strongly emotional.
  Watch in the pic above and you already know the direction I took. I choose a photo of a happy grandfather and child, imagining the first whispering to the second about a secret place where he would have bought some unique and rare to find gift.
  
• Colors have to be active element of your composition.
  They never-ever have to be casual. Colors communicate as much as visuals itself, I’m of the opinion that every designer should learn the power of a correct use of color. I often like to desaturate the scene and leave color to the element I want it to have emotional impact, but this is not a set rule.