Then Draw a Thousand

“If the way to motivate someone to put their hand in their wallet is by drawing a picture, then draw a thousand.”
— andyjohno, commenting on a Creative Review article addressing the creative industry’s response to Japan relief. The article questioned certain designers’ motives for selling prints to raise money, whether is was truly altruistic or self promotion.

Are Touchscreen Tablets Effective Design Tools? →

I’ve been wondering this for sometime. They say that tablets and touch interfaces, like the iPad and the new Xoom, are going to be the wave of the future (see Microsoft’s Surface technology), and soon we will all be using touch interfaces. While this has yet to be proven for personal computing, does it hold true for industry professionals like designers?

Smashing Magazine, where the linked article comes from, is an online magazine discussing the more technical aspects of design, often focusing on web design and coding, as well as the way the web is viewed and built on various devices.

Unfortunately, this article addresses nothing about the question posited in it’s title. I was really looking forward to an article addressing the technical aspects of how designers design. I was looking forward to a discussion about how it stands now, including a talk about Adobe’s prospects on the iPhone/iPad.

But what you get is a stylus demo. Should you ever be in the market for one, look up this poorly titled article.

Halfstravaganza

I’m a musical person. I used to play the viola (in grade school), I can play some mean Rock Band drums, and I like to think I can sing (alone, in the car, just like everyone else… but I really can! Really!), but usually I let the professionals handle it. I love the discovery of new and amazing music that I can appreciate now or add to my ever growing library of personal favorites. 2010, so far, has been another great year for music, with great albums coming down the pike every day it seems.

CokeMachineGlow, a music blog I sometimes read, used to have a feature about this time each year called Halfstravaganza, where they would look back at the first half of the year as well as look forward to what the year had left to give. I title this in honor of that, but as this is a design blog, I’ll be noting the album covers that have been coming out that catch my eye. Some favorites of my favorite artists:


Surfer Blood - Astro Coast


The Morning Benders - Big Echo


Vampire Weekend - Contra


Dozens - Dozens EP


Phantogram - Eyelid Movies


Jónsi - Go


Owen Pallett - Heartland


The National - High Violet


Tame Impala - Innerspeaker


Gorillaz - Plastic Beach


Beach House - Teen Dream


LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts, your favorites. I know of only so much music, and this just plays out as a who’s who of a hipster, Pitchfork music (due largely to the fact that I am that target audience… ahem…). So please, what are your favorite album covers?

Bayer Aspirin

I wanted to share these ads to show how a good concept is often more impressive than any dramatic design work. Especially in advertising, getting the point across quickly is crucial. This campaign makes no bones about it: sometimes normal strength is well enough, but sometimes… sometimes you need that extra strength. “If it gets stronger, we get stronger."

Seattle's Best Blood Bank

Full disclosure: I am not a fan of Seattle’s Best Coffee. It doesn’t do much for me, and I feel their ubiquitous presence in Borders’ across the country is, well, weird. Seattle? Why would I want Seattle’s coffee? I’m old and crotchety regarding my coffee it seems. But recently, Seattle’s Best Coffee changed their logo, as companies have a tendency to do.

Changing an established logo is an endeavor that cannot be taken lightly. It is the first introduction you give your customers and it needs to say everything about your company in one mark; it needs to be recognizable, original, and if all goes according to plan, represent where your company stands in the market. Changing this can dramatically change all that, intended or otherwise, for better or for worse.

On the left we have the old logo. On the right, the new. The differences are remarkable, to day the least. It is a drastically modernized logo, continuing with a trend of flatter, less involved logos; I think the Pepsi logo change is the flagship example of this. But where Pepsi succeeded in updating their logo, I think Seattle’s Best’s logo most assuredly didn’t.

Why? Well, for one, it doesn’t look like they sell coffee; if it didn’t say “coffee" in the mark, you would never know. Yahoo! Business reports various opinions on it, one person saying it looks like “Seattle’s Best Blood Bank." It doesn’t feel like coffee much, either. It’s dull and sterile. It reminds me a lot of Target’s Up & Up brand (which, again, does it more successfully), not coffee. The old logo was robust and rich, like coffee. It was bold and warm. Now it’s kind of vague and unfamiliar, not a good ‘first impression’ that I was talking about earlier. Another person from the Yahoo! article quipped that it looks like a “cereal bowl full of tears." A Seattle Times snap poll shows that just over 73% of people think “they should try again."

So what does Seattle’s Best do? I don’t think they’ll do anything. They seem very confidant in their marketing, and as the chain expands this year, we’ll be seeing more and more of this logo. Thoughts?