92 year old Mr. Harman, of hi-fi equipment Harman/Kardon fame, recently purchased Newsweek for $1. Well and the $50 million in liabilities that come with it. Most of us have heard the story over past weeks. Last weekend, the New York Times released an interview with Mr. Harman that gives an insight on what he is planning to change about Newsweek as the new owner of the money-losing magazine. The first thing on Mr. Harman’s list, quoting the New York Times, is a change in its graphic design:

He thinks the magazine is “dull to behold, dull, dull” and wants its graphic design to be “as meaningful, as imperative, as the written expression.”

To us, this is a very significant statement showcasing the understanding of the importance graphic and brand design has gained with corporate veterans over the past years. It also signals that the marriage of design and content is seen to indeed create a more successful message delivery. While changes in staff and editorial views would be on top of the list for most newly appointed owners at this significant turning point, for Mr. Harman it seems to be the creation of a distinct and harmonious Brand Atmosphere in order to compete and win in an industry that is on the verge of collapse.

A smart move. In this day and age of content source overload, a news publication needs to create a product that differentiates and convinces through its design. We can’t wait to see the changes come around, maybe on Mr. Harman’s 93rd birthday?

I was thrilled to see a full page in yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Edition being dedicated to depicting the world cup to date. Being spoiled by the beautiful trend of seeing not only useful, but also extremely creative and conceptual information graphics these days – a trend that was definitely fed by Good Magazine – I was ready to analyze. Too bad I did not get very far, as the designer of this page clearly designed in color, which then got translated into a greyscale chart, with a gradation from dark to light and right back to dark again, making the chart impossible to accurately decipher and quite hard on the eyes. It surely is an unfortunate mishap to happen on a full page within the New York Times on a Sunday, but lesson learned: Design according to the medium and the restrictions from the very start of the assignment, because, like in this case, the medium is the message.

When I designed a calendar for the year 2000 for several european companies, who ‘private labeled’ it to use as a corporate gift, I focused on the symbolic meaning of the numbers that represent each month to coincide with the switch of the millenium. Yes, back then we were all freaked out about ‘numbers’.

I illustrated or photographed each piece and was in desperate need of a great looking old wheel for the calendar’s cover. Down the street from where I lived in Santa Monica there it was, in a shop window. A strange shop it was as it was never open to the public and no one really knew what exactly was being sold. I caught an old man opening a side door and that’s how I met Parke Meek. A remarkable man who worked with Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles and Ray Eames, and who let a young Mr. Geyrhalter shoot his props for that calendar and shared his stories with me that fine day.

Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times announced that the little shop, Jadis, will be open today at 11:00 AM to the public to sell its vast inventory of curiosities, which were mainly rented by studios as props. In true fashion it was not yet open by 11:45 AM when I swang by to see if I could purchase that wheel as a memory of Parke Meek, who passed away in January at age 86. Thanks to the LAT write up, people lined up around the block. So instead of being in line, I opted to share this article about a great man, and some shots of my 2000 calendar with you:

Link to the Los Angeles Times Article

Pictures of the shop

Why is it that the more prestigious the design competition, the more it costs to enter?

Prices for a single entry can be around $120. But once you are selected to either receive an award, or be published in the awards annual, which after all is part of the exercise, there will be an additional fee of $280 – $400. And that is for just one single entry.

Sure, we play along. Sometimes. As we see fit, and for projects we feel deserve to be honored. But we too draw the line.

Let’s not forget that we are an agency, we have a PR budget and cash flow. How about all the students, freelancers, micro design firms, nonprofits and other entities that may have the big, creative, genius ideas that we should all be drooling over? The ideas that really look different because they come from folks that may not have ‘corporate’ breathing down their necks, or they do it for free, out of passion and just for fun? Isn’t that often when truly great ideas happen? They will never be in any of the ‘big’ award books showcasing the best, the brightest and most amazing ideas. The books that design students get for christmas, that turn into their text books of what they ought to measure their own creativity with, are lacking to showcase just that, the unconditionally best creative endeavours. More »

March 15th I was attending a concert of the amazing jazz pianist Keith Jarrett at the equally stunning Walt Disney Concert Hall. I went by myself, since my wife was not interested in seeing him again and going solo for this experience felt like the right thing to do. That day I received the book ‘Rework’ by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37 signals in the mail, so I had a great companion.

Glued to the book, I intuitively used the ticket stub as my bookmark and as Mr. Jarrett started playing, I thought of the emotional connection that bookmarks have with the time, the space, the moment in ones life when a specific book was being read. But once the book is put to sleep on the book shelf, that memory is buried, indefinitely. Quite different to a piece of music which can reach your ears unsuspectedly at a gas station, a bar, a restaurant, the car radio, yet it has the same power of almost instantly catapulting you back to a particular scene of your life. The book on the other hand is simply ‘filed away’. I thought it would be great to create a simple web site for anyone to upload their otherwise ‘bookshelved’ bookmarks. Great to have them archived, fun to share and even more fun to peruse other people’s books with their unique or fun bookmarks. Who knows, if a good number of people start using it, we might want to add social components to the site in the future.

The book I was reading, ‘Rework’, has a chapter in it that talks about not trying to produce a finished product, but rather launch it in a bare bones state. If people like it then change the good product to a perfect one (‘Launch now’, Pg 93). Good is good enough. It also declares death to procrastination (‘Start Making Something’, Pg 38). Funny as I run my company in many of the ways described in the book, and many of the others are big aspirations for this year. So here I was at an inspirational concert, an inspirational setting, reading an inspirational book and I had a quick idea.

More »

It took me a while to get here, and it has only been a week since I can say that besides 3 weekly Production Meetings, and the necessary face time between employees as well as clients, I fulfilled my goal of running Geyrhalter Design by simply opening my browser. I used to rely on lots of programs to handle the different operational tasks at hand, but now I just have tabs in my browser and I can start conducting all aspects of my business from virtually anywhere. As finding the right way of working did not come overnight for us, and I am very happy with the results, I want to share the way I run my company via a browser with you. Maybe you can benefit from some pieces, or the entire workflow.

1. E-Mail & Calendar

We use Zimbra, an open source  E-Mail and Calendar solution that let’s us easily sync to our iPhones, which allows me to stay up to date on meetings and e-mails, even while being on the road. I can make appointments and write e-mails from wherever I am and my calendar and Inbox will always look identical, may it be on my phone or my laptop, saving plenty of time in itself.

2. Project Management

Geyrhalter Design relies on Basecamp to be the hub for all our projects, internal as well as client projects. We create timelines, keep deadlines (‘Milestones’) and exchange project specific information as well as files. We even use it to house internal company information such as a contact database, printer trouble shooting tips and log in information that might otherwise be a big pain to search through your inbox once needed. More »

We are excited to share details on our just launched re-design for California based Evolution Fresh, the independent and family owned juice company, run by chefs and master juice makers. The 98 labels for the popular, all-natural, Evolution brand, and its mirrored private label ‘Harvest’ juice line, is being sold in over 500 stores along the West Coast including Whole Foods, Pavilions and Gelsons. Celebrated as the freshest juice available, Geyrhalter Design, together with the owner and marketing director of Evolution Fresh, took on the challenge of giving the brand a fresh and clean new look while staying true to its independent and free spirited roots. We focused our effort on creating a consistent brand image. By introducing a revised red identity to go along with all-red caps it enabled the brand to stand out from direct competitors such as Naked and Odwalla. The label stock was changed to matte laminated finish, which created a semi-metallic effect when refrigerated and added to the fresh feel that was sought after. While creating a uniform look, a unique color was picked to compliment each juice, giving it a visual flavor and making it easier for the customer to identify a specific juice on the crowded market shelves. The whimsical illustrations were carried over from the original design to make it easy for customers to recognize their product and keep the home-made feel that is so important to the product.Besides illustrating around 50 vegetables and fruits for the back label, the biggest challenge was to find appropriate colors for each flavor that work with the brand mark red as well as differentiate enough from the other SKU’s. It started as a clean-up initiative of the former labels, and it really opened a whole slew of layout concerns, leading up to this re-design. We are now working on strengthening the brand further through social media initiatives, shelf talkers and a new web site. It feels great keeping this wonderful brand ‘fresh’ for nearly a decade now. For us it was a unique labor of love, Evolution being one of the companys’ first clients, who enabled Fabian Geyrhalter to move the operations from a garage setting into an office space, which in its beginning was shared with Evolution’s marketing team, 9 years ago.

This is an update to an entry that got erased during a server problem. We added images and a link to a full write up to the post:

 A while back, I shared a project I was about to undertake for Art Center College Of Design’s designmatters department with you. Time has passed, and about a month ago we travelled to Mexico City to launch this student effort during the 62nd Annual United Nations DPI/NGO Conference.The Vato Verde campaign is a design intervention for civic disarmament that includes environmental, print and multimedia components, which provoke us to take a close look at the complex problem of gun violence in mega cities such as Los Angeles and Mexico City.Vato Verde aims to reach a generation of children and tweens who are at risk for gun violence and often over-exposed to the glamorization of guns in mainstream media. My students decided to work with Claymation for the first time and the campaign has received great interest from educational leaders to be included into curriculums in Puebla, and maybe other states within Mexico.

You can now read an updated essay about this campaign as well as view the videos on Art Center’s designmatters site.

Or is it just the recession talking? Or maybe he says this to everyone and not just us?

One thing is for sure, we will follow up and find out.

A job applicant like him deserves a little bit of lovin’….

A while back Geyrhalter Design started re-using every single piece of paper used at the office, unless of confidential nature of course. It was a past GD Designer’s fetish, and soon we all caught on to it, and now it became a company policy. It started with creating company note pads made out of 8 1/2 x 11 sheets cut in half. One side was the note pad and the other was the pre-printed side. A great thing to use something twice, of course. But it also started a trend of re-feeding used paper into all company printers and going through junk mail to grab all US Letter sized material that was re-usable on one side, before waving it good-bye to the recycling bin. So we are saving the world, or at least are feeling absolutely amazing about what we do, but this practice also has a nice added benefit. Each backside tells a story of our company’s past. Failed design ideas, funny internal feedback notes, long forgotten projects, colors that could be used for a current project, people we have been out of touch with for too long, or just the pathetic junk mail mixed right in. Now we live by it, and I believe that most of my team is as excited about peeking at the back side of each page, as they are about taking notes and sketching new ideas on the front side of their pads.  Try it – good karma that’s (paper-)tons of fun to do! And hey – it helps team building as well.