I love reading magazines. I think they convey so much more about who a person really is than the books they read. Likewise, I think a magazine is a great example of judging a book by it’s cover-with just a glance you can tell what they’re about, who they’re trying to reach, what they’re talking about, and why you should generally care. At least, that’s what they should tell you.
A few weeks ago I was given a pile of magazines from an office in Montevallo, mainly about things and houses in the Birmingham area. At the bottom of the stack was the December 2010 issue of b-metro, the magazine of metro Birmingham Living. Nice, heavy/glossy paper, good choice…but I have a big issue with this cover in general.
First off, I get no impression of the nature of the feature article about Morgan Murphy, a southern-bred gentleman who has a knack for fixing Cadillac, an outstanding record in the Naval Reserve, plus a book deal in the works. The catch is, I gleamed none of that from the cover. Instead of any signifigant description, I get a photo of a pinstriped Murphy with a fat cigar in his mouth, doing his best L.A. Reid impersonation, the headline directly below him reading “Facebooking the Afghan War.” Now, that headline will get you a reaction, I’m sure-I doubt it’s the reaction you’re going for.
Don’t try to be something you’re not. If you’re the successful Naval Reserve gentleman from the South, be that. The only impression I received was that Morgan Murphy was a smartassed tycoon that I could confidently bypass with my hard-earned newstand money.
Speaking of impressions, there is a lot of text on this front page. Too much, in fact. I get you’re trying to tell readers what’s in your magazine, but you can accomplish this with only a few lines and better type placement.
Play with your text. If you’re this modern, hip magazine about Birmingham, be that, embrace that. Do that with your type. Text should not just sit there on top of your image, text should live within your image. It should layer itself into the main image, it should move; type is energy-it is what informs and ultimately sells your reader.
Text can be huge. Your reader can usually figure out the sentiment without seeing the whole apple; it’s Gestalt, but with words instead of patterns.
Reference colors throughout the photograph-the maroon of the tie, the white of the collar. Use these colors in your text. These show the viewer everything belongs together.
Flow with your image; just as the typography lives within the image, so too does the image live within the text. It’s an organic process.
Get a photo that shows the personality of the subject, but also ties into the article. This includes the header you use. My surrogate Morgan Murphy looks a little confident, but he’s still adjusting his tie, like he’s backstage, about to step out into a larger spotlight. The headline behind him tells you where he’s going, but this is the moment before.
Text doesn’t have to be solid. Production processes have come so far in such a short time, image tricks such as overlays are now reproducible. Bonus-You see more of a good photograph.
Remember, the cover is your handshake with the rest of the universe. Do it justice, or else the readers won’t give you the time of day.
(Special thanks to Andrew Rennis and his amazing Creative Commons photo sets on Flickr)
Face off is a new bi-monthly column on Browneagle Studio where I take a design and critique it. Without discussion there can be no progress.
A few months ago, when I was asked to design the mission patch for Greater Alabama Council’s second Powder Horn [high adventure skills course], I thought it was just another routine design job-one item, maybe a week to make, simple enough.
A few months later, and this is the most intimately involved with a project I’ve been since I first worked with the BSA, helping join the two Junior Leader Training courses Allohakasin Challenge and White Fire into what became the National Youth Leader Training course known as Nendawen Journey. The Shoals Entrepreneurial Center Mural might be a distant second.
Working with the BSA is interesting from an output standpoint, since you’re usually designing something that’s going to be translated with threads and embroidery than some fancy detailed printer.
That was routine MO for me. I got more involved when I was shown the collateral from the original Powder Horn, this brochure with tons of colored text and….text. I decided to change that, as well.
The promotions for the course were stairstepped, sort of like movie promotions. I wanted a campaign that kicked you in the balls and let you know it was there, everywhere you went in the council.
The next trick was getting the forms to be interactive, letting participants have the choice of whether to mail it in, give it to their Commissioner, or email it directly to the course. That was something that was absent from the first course.
It sounds hokey, but I always love seeing the finished part of a design.
Monday, I found the Anchorage Outdoor Family Network on Twitter, and they really needed a logo. Well, here you go!
I was originally going to do a really formal logo-hand drawn mountain, sans serif text underneath it, what-have-you-but that didn’t fit the vibe of them, now does it?
I was playing with typefaces, and I came across 42, a really playful typeface, and it sort of reminded me of Boy Scout summer camps, and in that mindset I cocked the mountain to one side of the text, sort of like a ranger hat.
I’m still waiting for them to OK the color scheme, and it’s a bit goofy, but I like it. What do you guys think?
DRUMMMMROLLLL!
The Coffee Wanderer is finally here! Check it out!
In David Foster Wallace’s amazing (and amazingly long) book, Infinite Jest, we no longer live in a society that dates years with mere numbers anymore. No, no, there’s too much marketing potential there. Rather, the years are corporate-sponsored, meaning that rather than, say 2012, you are now living in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment.
While we have not, thankfully, devolved to an age where consumerism takes over the very age in which we live in, at least literally, I almost felt the same rationale forced upon me in this very young year of 2011. I noticed the fringes of it in 2010, when Apple recreated the icon for iTunes 10. Fast forward to this year, and everyone from Starbucks to Sears is in the motions of recreating themselves. Let’s take a look at who’s doing it right and who can potentially do better.
First off, what is branding?
I always tell my students as well as my clients that a brand is a lot like a person. When someone sees your logo or walks into your store or place of business, they should immediately get a sense of who you are and what you stand for. It is your handshake with the world at large.
PBS and Doug Pray created a really great documentary in 2009 titled Art and Copy that took a behind-the-scenes look at the advertising agency, looking not only at great firms like Chiat-Day but also successful campaigns such as Got Milk? Budweiser and Apple’s 1984 commercial.
Around the middle of the film, there’s a really great dialogue segment from a couple of creatives that really sums up what I think a brand should be:
Ponder that for a moment.
Without copying blogs such as Brand New, every week one of my posts is going to be dedicated to taking a hard look at these new brands and rebrands, and seeing what works and what doesn’t. Some are clear-cut, others are not. Let’s take a look down the rabbit hole and examine this currently changing face of consumerism.
I think I have an obsession…..
Art school staple, hipster standby, hip hop icon, Converse All Stars have been my footwear of choice for almost a decade now.And it shows. Almost none of them purchased new, my fave find is still the suede Farley All Star oxfords. Still haven’t found any like them before or since.
And this doesn’t even include the fake ones-the oil and spillproof ones I use for barista-ing, or the pinstriped ones Old Navy sold for a while….
At this rate all these shoes are going to outlive me.
(Note: I know I’m a week off with writing on here, as well as launching the Coffee Wanderer. Without going into too much detail, last week was a VERY crazy week for all accounts. However, look for the promised twice-a-week postings from now on!)
Last week I talked about Dr. Bronner’s 18-in-1 Pure Castile Etc. Soap. Speaking of which, how is Dr. Bronner?
Look out, boys and girls, Batman must read my ramblings! There he goes……
Maybe he’ll share a cell with the Riddler. What a pair!
As well as general (and amazing) cleaning, it also has a list of uses on it’s enormous label. The label has precisely ten uses, tanscribed here in verbatim:
Such enthusiasm!
I’m not much for experimentation (neither is Beaker); however, this stuck in my mind and had to be explored. I had to know if such a utopia of cleaning existed.
Last week, I mentioned there was enough in here to do more than a few entries. Which leads us to the question…..
It really depends on how you define “mouthwash.”
The suggested usage boils down into distilling a couple of drops of the soap in water, as well as a few drops on the brush for toothpaste.
In the morning, as I was brewing coffee and warming the shower, I obediently dropped a few drops onto my toothbrush and put it into my mouth.
Brushing with a non-foaming cleaning agent is a strange sensation, especially when one of the ingredients is peppermint essential oil. You know that cool burn feeling when you’ve used too much Gold Bond? Picture that in your mouth.
Eventually, though, I zoned in on the fact that I was brushing my teeth with soap, and, in much the same way a cut doesn’t hurt until you look at it, I didn’t notice a soapy taste until I thought about it, after which my senses were invaded by an overwhelming bitter taste and I was forced to spit it out.
The mouthwash part was very similar. The warm water in a paper cup creating a pleasant-smelling, slightly foamy blue solution, which I proceeded to swish in my mouth for thirty seconds, just like actual mouthwash. As with the toothpaste, near the end of using it, I experienced an extreme bitter taste, and the mouthwash solution had attained a foamy consistency, almost as if I had filled my mouth with peppermint-flavored whipped cream and Dawn. Spitting the solution out required me to rinse my mouth out several times with water, and even then it afterwards left a soapy aftertaste in my mouth for close to an hour.
Dr. Bronner’s is interesting. While not ADA approved for obvious reasons, it’s still better than nothing, which could explain why ultralight backpackers love it. Funky aftertaste notwithstanding, my mouth did feel noticeably fresher for a few hours, which means that it could be a viable freshener for the afternoon workday, especially after downing more than your fair share of fajitas before you have to stand in front of students…
But as part of a hygiene routine, not recommended. Or, as my dentist put it a few days later, “you used WHAT as mouthwash?”
Look for more posts next week, as I get back in the groove of blogging!
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Kicking Horse Coffee is interesting. For one thing, they’re Canadian, so that explains a lot.
For another thing, their packaging is damned eye catching, which says a lot, especially because I bought my pound-in-a-can from EarthFare grocery, a place known for, amongst other things, recycling and conservation, usually featuring companies that take an innovative approach to how they package. And therein might lie why I noticed this package. While other companies package theirs in bags that disintegrate after a week or paper bags, this one is in a can. Yes, you can recycle it, but it almost demands a spot on your countertop.
The Face Off
The package is a very clean, modern design. There’s not a stray line or shape out of place. The coffee blend’s symbol (a climbing knot) as well as the Kicking Horse logo sandwich the name of the blend as well as the roast it is (medium). Straight down from the logo is the type of coffee (whole bean), as well as the producto of Canada and required retail information, and fanning from that is the Canadian Fair Trade Certified and Organic certified logos. Beyond that, nothing else.
The back of the can presents stories about the coffee, as well as the organic and Fair Trade qualities of the coffee, and the recyclable ability of the can itself. What might throw people off is that, rather than presenting information dually in English and Spanish, it is instead English and French. This might distract some consumers, but it’s a requirement in Canada ( John Candy found out the hard way )
The text is a very clean, sans-serif text, with the only thing to add emphasis is a bit of bold text on the back, as well as icons referencing what they’re talking about. This makes it easy to follow, because you can simply skip what you don’t want to read, and find out information about what you do want to know.
Cans are color-coded by blend, with different merit badge-style icons playing into the name.
Kicking Horse Coffee reaches back to a long-lost art that America rarely taps into nowadays-making a package that is compelling. They accomplish the job of telling you about the contents, and they do away with any frivolous details in an almost rigid, totalitarian way, creating a simple, yet elegant package that deserves to be seen by all who enter your kitchen.
Place it next to your high design espresso machine. It’s a pretty sexy coffee can.
Look for my review of the actual contents coming up this week on the Coffee Wanderer blog!
Dr Bronner’s Magic Soaps 18-in-1 Hemp Peppermint PURE-CASTILE SOAP (as the label introduces itself) is a staple of backpackers and hippies everywhere. This soap has a bigger cult following than Bruce Campbell and Buffy the Vampire Slayer combined! If you search for it online you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting sites dedicated to the many, many uses of the soap. The label itself mentions the stock eighteen uses, as well as a few other things…
Bronner definitely lives up to his classification as an eccentric. While most of the rants about “moral ABCs” will probably differ casual buyers, it sort of fits in with what was probably Bronner’s mindset when he first formulated his soap. As the story goes, Bronner emigrated to the United States from Germany in the late Twenties, pleading with his parents to escape the then-ascending Nazi party that was gaining power. The last communication Bronner received from his parents was a postcard that simply said, “you were right.” Bronner’s life as well as mindset were the centerpoints of a documentary about him. The man genuinely cared for humanity and professed that love and hope on every label of every product, something his family maintains, at least until the state department regulates that they legally have to remove it.
That being said, DAMN if Bronner himself doesn’t look like a mad scientist!
I’m sort expecting Batman to drop down and lock him up in Arkham Asylum or something.
The soap itself is fairly impressive. Free of literally any manmade products, including foaming agents and preservatives, it’s a highly concentrated substance. The consistency of it is sort of like pancake syrup. The most obvious part of the formula is the pure peppermint essential oil, which is so sharp it’s almost self-aware.
There are so many purported uses for the soap that this review is actually going to be a series of reviews, from how to use it as mouthwash and toothpaste to how it fares as a replacement for an entire travel bag of stuff over a weekend.
As a soap, this feels sort of like the miracle product that Oxi Clean always claimed to be, except you can use it for food stuffs as well. I used it to clean a French Press that was a few days old. A few drops and warm water produced a blue foamy mix that smelled very much like Crest Mouthwash.
The amazing part came when I let the gritty, dirty press parts of the carafe soak in it. The water didn’t quite cover the metal disc, so I rotated it after about a minute. The side that was soaked in the solution was completely clean. I’m not talking “nothing solid.” I’m talking “factory fresh with a slight minty smell.”
I tried this solution on a few products, and they all have basically the same effect: let it soak for a few minutes, rinse, and be damned if there’s any mess left stuck to it. Everything from an old coffee mug with sediment in the bottom to my soap-encrusted safety razor went up against Bronner’s, and they all look factory new and squeaky clean. And the minty-fresh smell is a bonus.
If only Billy Mays had created such a product…..
Dr. Bronner’s MAgic All-One, etc. etc. etc. looks like a very promising substance. The hippies might have been right about this one.
Next week: how does Dr. Bronner’s fare as a mouthwash?
