Category Archive: Uncategorized
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Sustainability in print design
Comments Off on Sustainability in print design>The concept of sustainability is thrown around a lot. Especially in the design professions, we read and hear a lot about how to make our designs sustainable.
There are some really obvious decisions one can make when planning print collateral including whether or not the paper we print on is recycled or is sourced through environmentally friendly means, or inks and finishes are low impact (water or soy based). We can look at the print vendor we’re using: are they located thousands of miles from our door and is the shipping from the plant to our threshold offsetting any benefit we might have gained through using other sustainable resources?
I’ve encountered a number of projects recently where the long-term viability of print media is challenged by many factors; changing information is a constant factor in these situations. Companies merge or a rebranding makes collateral obsolete. Hours of operation change, or a major product category is introduced or eliminated.
One of the big things I try to get my clients to consider is sustainability beyond their paper and ink choices. What can we do as a team to help create pieces that will result in little waste, have flexible use, and long-term viability? What are ways that we can make sure that we’re not sending 100 or 1,000 or 100,000 pieces to the recycling bin?
Case in point: One client of mine recently launched a new brand. We had their business cards printed on make-ready stock which actually intervened before scrap was sent to the recycling bin: their job was ganged up on press with another unrelated job. This was an extra step and wasn’t the cheapest option but reduced waste on another company’s project. This was something small that could be applied on a master scale, without a lot of effort, that over thousands or hundreds of thousands of companies could make a really big impact. Virgin stock wasn’t sacrificed in the name of vanity.
It makes me wonder: what other ideas are there for reducing the environmental impact of print pieces and what can be done to improve the sustainability of the pieces that are produced? Ideas, anyone?
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Keep Calm and Carry On
Comments Off on Keep Calm and Carry On>
I‘ve seen this popping up all over the place; turns out it’s in the public domain and many people are producing and trying to profit. But now there are other responses, some of which are better executed – visually and verbally – than others.
Here‘s a little article from the New York Times on the topic. -
Web Type – advancements coming soon?
Comments Off on Web Type – advancements coming soon?>Firefox 3.5 is out and that means support for the CSS rule @font-face.
What does this mean? That a designer can specify the use of a typeface not on the viewer’s machine!
This has been done before (albeit unreliably) with some technology that Microsoft developed, but this is within a CSS specification which means it’s not a hack! And eventually (at least in theory, even if it’s 5 or 10 years from now), it will work across the board in future browsers.
A few good reads on the topic:
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/06/beautiful-fonts-with-font-face/
and
http://craigmod.com/journal/font-face/
(Pardon the dumb punctuation in this 2nd one. While it really doesn’t bother me too much in web typefaces, when I see it in another face it doesn’t look so hot.)I wonder how long it will take to get all of this working
Thanks to Mike Essl for the links and the info that FF 3.5 is out.
(BTW, Turns out Safari has supported this for a while, since v 3.1. How didn’t I know this?)
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Good SEO Advice from Seth Godin
Comments Off on Good SEO Advice from Seth Godin>I only started reading Seth Godin’s blog a month or so ago; I really like his approach and happen to think he really know’s what he’s talking about almost all of the time.
I was reading through some entries of his from before I added his RSS feed to my reader and came across his entry ‘How to make money with SEO’.
This is exactly the kind of advice I give people when they want to hire me to help them with SEO. I do not offer smoke, mirrors, red pills or blue pills, special effects or any other magic to help a client’s website perform better in search engines.
What I do is make sure we’re using the right technologies (that don’t impede search engines from understanding content) and covering our bases while looking into ways to be findable. I didn’t invent the term findability, but when I had a conversation with a prospect who wanted to be #1 for their industry even though their market share did not make this a likely situation, I had a moment of clarity that helped me to clearly communicate what I could help them with: I would help them make their business findable so that someone who caught wind of their company – even if they didn’t recall all of the specifics – could find them online quickly and easily.
It is rare that a business creates a new market in a region but it does happen. When we opened Dozen Cupcakes nearly 3 years ago, there was another cupcake bakery opening at the same time. I knew that it was unlikely that people would, upon hearing that the cupcake craze had come to Pittsburgh, remember the name of the bakery their friend/coworker/newspaper told them about. But I was confident that many people would go online and search for “pittsburgh cupcakes” or some variation.
We set forth creating a network of inbound links to the site, built our site using properly structured code with the right semantic mechanisms, and crossed our fingers that our competitors would not have the same savvy. They did not. I am confident that this was one of many factors leading to our success: within the next month or two we will have two more stores opening for a total of four locations.
For a business the opportunity to be in this kind of situation is rare. But even so, it was findability that put us at the top. I took an educated guess at people’s searching behavior and it paid off. People found us because we made ourselves available.
When I work with a client, I remind them to think about how their constituents will find them (sometimes the result is that we don’t need to do anything to their website because their constituents won’t be using it). But if their target is online, I help them keep it simple and do their best to speak to the customer in a way that will _help_ them be found and be understood. Successful search engine optimization sets the stage for better things.
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Ecoxera launches their new website & blog
Comments Off on Ecoxera launches their new website & blog>
Ecoxera, a client of mine who specializes in green business strategy for the retail industry, has launched their new website and a new blog.
The team that makes up Ecoxera includes industry leaders for green practices, with an expert for each of four major channels to help improve the environmental practices of organizations in the retail industry (from banks to hospitality to superstores; including manufacturers, suppliers, builders and the retail organization itself).
Ecoxera’s unique take – that being green can also be good for the bottom line – helps an organization evaluate the opportunities to improve their practices in a way that will also make them more profitable.
They focus on Operations, Materials, Building/Design, and Communication… to check out the business, go to ecoxera.com and visit ecoxera.com/blog for their growing collection of resources for those in the retail industry.
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Seth Godin on designer/client work
Comments Off on Seth Godin on designer/client work>Seth Godin has a great blog with a lot of well written entries on all topics.
His latest post talks about two different kinds of designer/client working modes and I think is a great, short read for clients and for designers alike.
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Design Matters turns 100
Comments Off on Design Matters turns 100>This is a little late but nonetheless Designworthy:
Design Matters with Debbie Millman hit 100 episodes last week. What an awesome milestone for a great show and a wonderful person!
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William Drenttel lecture, Tuesday April 21
Comments Off on William Drenttel lecture, Tuesday April 21
This is happening tomorrow. Don’t miss it!
6:30 pm doors, 7:00 start at the Warhol. Full details here.
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Design-LESS
Comments Off on Design-LESS>Design-LESS is the theme of this year’s DesignInquiry, a conference alternative event I’ve attended a few times.
I now sit on the board and was asked by design writer/editor/educator Peter Hall to write an article about this year’s theme. The piece was accepted to be published in AIGA Voice and it went live a little over a week ago.
Go check it out! -
Context: AIGA Pittsburgh’s annual juried show
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This Thursday, March 26, 2009
Doors open at 6:00 p.m.
Awards ceremony at 8:00 p.m.937 Liberty Avenue (Third Floor)
Pittsburgh, PA 15222Admission: $20
AIGA members: $15
Students: $10
Student AIGA members: $5Context is AIGA Pittsburgh’s annual juried show, a celebration of design excellence and effectiveness resulting from creativity, inspiration, skill, experience, intuition and discipline.
This year’s show is juried by Elliott Earls, Mike Essl and Nancy Skolos.
More information at pittsburgh.aiga.org.
