We receive an e-mail about our business cards every day. Potential clients who want ‘the same card’, designers who want to re-create them for themselves, or publishers and collectors who want to publicize the card. What is new to our collection of admirers is a company that seems to have build a business around our card. Utilizing a near-replica of the card I designed 6 years ago, they proclaim it is ‘the hottest thing on the market’ that will enable you to ‘set yourself apart from the competition’. Maybe it is finally time for ourselves to re-design our cards so we can set ourselves apart from followers. Ah, the beauty of the media. Thanks to my former student Strahan for the great detective work. Hey, were you trying to print your own GD-cards?? ; )  

As a nice follow-up to yesterday’s music packaging entry, the New York Times today features a very interesting article confirming that the recently introduced new packaging design for Tropicana will be exchanged with…the old one.

Why? Consumers hate it.

How did PepsiCo find out? Via Twitter.

How will that change the job of brand-, advertising- and design agencies?

They will listen.

Again.

…maybe the newly launched Pepsi branding effort will be scrapped next? Surely everyone has been complaining. The money that could be saved by using 2.0 technologies prior, during and after major re-branding efforts and the idea of the resulting success is just imminent.

I taught a class at Art Center College Of Design with the focus on creating Brand Atmospheres™ for an artist or a band. I am very passionate about music, design and branding, so the outcome of the class was a big success for the students as well as for myself, which most often is the case when you put passionate people to work together.

Based on us just having spent 3 months designing for music as a group, it was reassuring to see today’s digital music fans being very opinionated, and also quite savvy, about design and brands that are being built around their favorite artists as new albums are being released.

Three of my favorite creative collaborators, Depeche Mode, U2 and Anton Corbjin, sparked this blog entry. Depeche Mode’s soon to be released single design to the upcoming ‘Sounds of the Universe’ album is, well, let’s face it ‘wrong’. I will not bash it more then others have already done before me, but it is amazing to see fans’ mock-versions appearing online when the single will not even be released until April 6th. As a bonus I throw in the design of the full-length, just so we all understand the depth of the design issue at hand. Anton Corbjin is the backbone of the visual re-launch of the Depeche Mode brand in 2009, and it shows that an amazing creative force with a unique vision for the moving image, does not immediately make a good graphic or brand designer. Or typographer of course:

The mock ‘remix’:

The full length album design (NOT a mock-version):

U2′s just as eagerly awaited full-length feels like the opposite to me and I was taken by its beauty and modern simplicity, yet the equal sign disturbed me mainly because of Coldplay’s very apparent and frequent use of the ‘trade fair’ symbol. Yet, as you can read here, fans of photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto and U2 had their own strong opinions.

And the ‘trade fair’ logo as seen in tattoo form:

The power of brand building, seen in one of its mass market – and most competitive and critically viewed – forms.

On that note I salute our friends at Audiolife for having launched their web site recently. The power of music and design, displayed in a visual language that, we hope, shares common ground.

Barneys catalogue, Winter ’08…

…meet BCBG catalogue, Spring ’09:

I hope you two get along.

Looks like you might, since you share the same style.

At least on first glance…let’s see what happens when you actually get to know each other a little bit.

If I recognize this on a plain ‘consumer’ level, I just wonder if anyone else does as I won’t be the only household receiving both of these within months of each other. Peculiar.

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.

The great illustrator Christoph Niemann shares his Lego Graphics on the New York Times Blog. My former employee Evelyn shared it with me, and voila, as times are busy, I am relying on second hand inspiration : )

Click here for the full Legomania.

Ahhh, the beauty of visual language. Not quite politically correct, yet quite hilarious. I know nothing about this campaign, not even if it is a real campaign (or a real beer therefor), so if you know more about this good communicator of a campaign, please comment. Enjoy:

Thanks to Geyrhalter Design Alumni Cum Laude, now Full-Time Googler, Evelyn for sharing.

Nice collection of some bestsellers of the last year. A ‘nice read’ for type nerds, designers and interested clients alike.

Not to continue my rant (see my post of March of last year), I’d rather like to see it as a very early 2009 update. I had an applicant post the following comment on, well, this very blog. It read like this:

Not to talk badly about anyone seeking a position at our wonderful firm, but it is just a rather strange way to try to do it publicly via a blog comment post. Especially if there is a typo involved.

On the contrary, and to set a great example, what a small personal touch like the logo-replica in html can do to stand out from the bunch:

In times like these it takes special attention to detail and I hope that we will see more of it this year. Time to go back to being grammatically accurate and polite in tonality, yet time to look ahead for new ways to create everlasting impressions like Job applicant two has done here. Eventhough we do not have an opening at this current moment in time, kudos goes out to you for the well crafted e-mail and the role model you might become for some looking for a job in ’09.

A little sarcasm never hurt anyone, especially when times are rough…

Original source unknown, but thanks to Dany for the heads-up.