You want me to draw what?

I had an unusual job drop into my lap recently. A friend of mine recommended me to a co-worker of his that operates a small press. M-Graphics Publishing tends to work within a Russian context: translations, related subjects, etc. A new anthology of religious humor titled Smile from Heaven was being produced and they needed comic illustrations to headline each chapter. Since it's been a bit of a dream of mine to actually earn a living via silly drawings, this was too good to pass up. They'd need full-color cover and nine black and white comics for each of the chapters in the book. I was given a fairly extensive synopsis of the book in general and each chapter with about a month to generate sketches and final artwork. Needless to say, it got hairy here and there, but we were able to pull it off with only one round of revisions to four of the illustrations! Check out the full set in my portfolio and get a sense of what the author meant by "religious humor."

The natives are creative tonight...

It's been a while since I wrote a creative journal blog post; four months, in fact. I started to write one of my usual self-serving and oh-so-pithy comments on G+ when I realized it was actually about creativity. And here we are!

Several months ago, I took what little cash I had stashed in my account and took the girls to the craft store to buy them some supplies: sketch-books, construction paper (a.k.a. destruction paper), glue, tape, and a softball-size roll of string. Admittedly, as much as my girls did need the supplies, my motivation was selfish. The little monsters had been raiding my supplies far too often.

This afternoon, I'm sitting at my desk, making a pathetic attempt to wrap my hands around a legend I've heard of called "progress" when #1 comes around the corner with the big ball of string. She has a big grin on her face as she's unravelling the thin white line.

Daddy, this is going to be so so long! It's going to reach all the way over here and up the stairs and down the hall into the room and across!

My first thought: you'd better consider that you're going to have to gather all that up. My second thought: damn it, I'm going to have to clean that up. My third thought: belay thoughts one and two, jerkwad.

It really does pay to think before speaking. I considered all the times—as I got older and my unsupervised "projects" got more out of hand—that I'd been told to put stuff away, stop wasting time, or just to stop. Because, hey, what's the point? You can't make money doing that stuff. So wrong. Dead wrong. I think of those comments every time I try to break loose from my mundane work to do more satisfying and personal creative work. Every one of those comments laid another brick in my psyche until a wall was built that would take twenty years to break down. With a little luck, it's not too late for me, but I'll be damned if my kids don't get the guidance and encouragement they need to explore their interests.

Any opportunity to encourage a child's creative curiosity should be taken. Having a creative outlook allows people to solve problems faster, not just produce artwork. It always irks me when someone says, "oh, I'm not creative at all." Not true. They likely wouldn't have survived this long if they didn't have some measure of creativity keeping them afloat.

#1, her neighborhood friend, and #2 all run upstairs. They're having a good time and surely up to something that will take time to unravel at the end of the day (pun intended). That's okay. In the quite moments, when they're in bed and all is done, I'm satisfied that they're happy with the creative liberty at hand.

UPDATE: #1 just rushed back downstairs.

Daddy, daddy, daddy! We just made a giant spider web on the porch—come see! We had to tape it all down. Hurry up!

(sigh) At least this isn't as bad as when they paint. I hate cleaning up that mess.

My very first info graphic

Oh, I'm so proud. I've always wanted to make one of these and the opportunity literally dropped into my lap. Behold (not as dense as I would have preferred to present, but there it is):

View the full graphic on Visual.ly

HOW Design Live: Day Three

SUNDAY, JUNE 26, 2011. Cheap Type Tricks with Allan Haley. Graphic design is expensive! Haley was absolutely right about that. When it comes to photography, illustration, die-cuts, printing, etcetera, type tricks are a cheap way to create expensive-looking graphics. Some advice from Mr. Haley:

• “Super-size type.” Play with the size of the type, stroke weight, arrangement. Go big! Look closely at the type and what’s available in the font. Use the fonts that are designed to go big. 
• “Play with punctuation.” Turn it on it’s side, replace a letter with punctuation, use punctuation in unexpected places. 
• “Amaze with initials.” A great way to capture the reader’s attention and draw the eye in to the start of the copy. Can be an initial cap or it can be an echo of initials. Be careful of legibility! 
• “Encourage engagement with engaging typographic tricks.” Invent a game: flip, omit, stack, reverse. Play with the type to reflect the meaning of the message. 
• “Clever crops.” Type interacting with photos or content can begin to tell the story before the reader even begins to read the story. 
• “Double-duty type.” Using type to illustrate or enhance photos in unexpected ways. Create entire faces or focus on parts of photos. 

As an aside, we took a look at “Brian Lawton makes a face.” An assignment for a conference whose theme was ‘monkey business’ and happening in 2008. He was stuck conceptually, left the office and when he returned, approached his desk from a different angle and saw something new in his sketches. He ended up with the ‘eight’ on it’s side over the ‘zero’ creating a monkey’s face. Nice touch.

• “Make a memory.” Underline the message. Ensure action. Build brand. You can make a shape, create your own alphabet, and be provocative. Form a shape from the type, contain the shape in a silhouette, etc. Differentiate! 
• “Use odd fonts.” Or no font at all. Build a message from objects that are particular to the brand and photograph them. 
• “Make your own alphabet.” Create a memory. A font doesn’t need to be a sophisticated, infinitely rendered and kerned masterpiece. It needs to work for the message. Hand-created type might do the trick. 
• “Be provocative.” When possible, be clever, but temper with purpose.

Incidentally, I'm doing what I can at work to push the typographic boundaries. Organizations can easily put themselves in a rut by insisting that the brand identity is this particular type, set in this particular manner. As we learned earlier, brand isn't identity! In this session, the case was clearly made that audiences were savvy enough to be engaged by type without becoming confused. Have faith!

Design Strategy with Rochelle Seltzer. What it is, why it matters, and how to do it. Ms. Seltzer opened by musing about the web site 99designs.com (competitive, spec design work you might not get paid for) and what it means. She shared this quote from a design acquaintance: “I wouldn’t wash a car if I MIGHT get paid.”

In order to use strategy, well, strategically, plenty of up-front work needs to be done. What is the company’s positioning? If they don’t know, help them figure it out. Interview people from the top to the bottom of the company and pinpoint where they are and where they want to be. Develop an information-gathering process, put the intelligence to work. Interview people, analyze current print materials, and communication channels. This groundwork will help the client understand where the design is coming from as well as their own business’s operations. Be sure to tie recommendations to business objectives. Design to reflect the results. Synthesize all the information down to simply define the client’s profile. Consider “strategy” as a separate cost from “design” deliverables (this will define costs better). Gather intelligence, identify business problems, and develop the strategy to execute against those objectives. Determine the creative deliverables, channels, visual cues, etc. Everyone signs off! Strategy should be a part of every engagement, it may not be extensive, but it should be there. Follow up with metrics. Surveys, interviews, sales, web hits, and more are ways to measure success.

With strategy in-hand, refer to it at all stages of development! (Best. Advice. Ever.)

HOW Design Live: Day Two

Matthew Loyd of Method

SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 2011. Creating the Martha Stewart Living Digital Magazine App for the iPad with Gail Towey. Towey began her presentaio with an anecdote about the design of the magazine and her family's life living on the bay and eating food sourced from the bay, very family oriented and communal. She's been the art director of the magazine for it's entire existence. This began her comprehensive presentation of the visual identity of the MSL brand.

"Photography is our identity." The photos connect ideas to the audience. The photographer is a huge part of developing and maintaining the MSL brand. The magazine’s overall direction is sourced from Martha Stewart's background as a gardener and caterer. She spent an inordinate amount of time preparing and presenting tables of food — garden to table. “Bounty of the garden in-hand” is the overall direction for a great deal of the photos. 

“Color is emotional.” A tremendous amount of control is applied when arranging props for the photos. Color is a primary driver in arrangement and how it’s applied to textures. The MSL paint line at KMart and Home Depot, were born of a photo shoot involving chickens. They lay a myriad of colors and forms. This inspired a spread on paints based on the chicken egg colors. Which leads us to:

“Turning ideas into products.” A number of products have spun out of stories in the magazines. Glitter, for instance, had been featured in several applications from decorating to cooking. The MSL line of glitters has sold several tons since its introduction. An extensive library of props gathered from flea markets and antique shops has driven the tableware and cooking utensil business sold at Macy’s.

Once it was clear what the identity of the brand was, Towey presented the two digital forms of the magazine. The use of photography and motion is driving the digital platform of MSL. So far, individual apps such as cookies, cocktails, and smoothies have been distributed and promoted as well as digital versions of the magazine itself. The digital platform has allowed an amazing expansion, conceptually, of how the magazine is put together. As you can imagine, all the included content has been expanded dynamically as often and as creatively as needed. Before and after photos, interactive photos that change at a touch or reveal more info, embedded sound clips and videos, scrolling windows on single pages, panoramic photos scroll left and right, etc. The MSL magazine is beautifully designed in print and digital distribution.

Influence in Business Through Design Thinking with Matthew Loyd. Creative Director for Method (a household soap product) in San Francisco. A green company, sustainably focused. In two years, brand awareness has gone up from 15 to 37 points.

"Using the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s desires with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can produce." In other words, combining empathy, creativity, and rationality. This is what designers do! It can be applied everywhere. Most people don’t think this way. The road to innovation, however, can be followed many different ways.

“Learn to use empathy, rationality, and creativity to share.” Tell information stories. Look to the heroes of information design: people who discern, deconstruct, and deliver information. Try searching: visualizing.org, informationisbeautiful.net, and visualcomplexity.com for some in-depth examples of information design.

Communicate the driving essence of the brand to the entire company: Our (offering) is the only (category) that (benefit). All the employees should understand the brand. THINK about how to do that, how would a DESIGNER do that? Now do it.

“Listen to the needs of your organization.” Method's philosophy on social media is with no social mission there'll be no social media. (Joining is the next marketing — if it’s not already.) It’s not enough that people believe that your product does what it says, they want to believe in what you do. Creating anything is design; creating a community is design. The potential of social media and building a workforce.

“Authenticity. Integrity. Innovation. Applied.” Design thinking can change the way a business does business!

 Click to enlarge

Using the Brand Value Pyramid: Developing More Meaningful Messaging & Stronger Design with Shannon Carter.

A practical workshop on brand definition, building, and maintenance. Carter covered the very basics of his three-day to three-week workshop on branding. A critical first step in brand-building at a company: make sure everyone is operating from the same definition of what a brand is. Some key thoughts from the session:

• Strong brands produce higher returns (up to 18.5% higher than the S&P 500).
• The top brand in the world — no surprise — is Coca-Cola valued at over $27 billion dollars after all tangible assets are discounted.
• Strong brands have inherent value. That’s why a Calvin Klein tee shirt can sell for ten times as much as an off-brand tee.
• The predominant feature of a brand that all companies should focus on is building trust.
  • Consumers have many choices, but little time.
  • Most offerings have similar quality and features.
  • Therefore, we tend to base buying decisions on trust.
• Trust = Reliability + Satisfaction

A brand is not a name, logo, tagline, product, advertising, gimmick, or web site. A brand is what the customer says it is. Brands are defined by people, not companies. Branding is the process of instilling a defined set of beliefs, values, and images into every point of communication.

Turning Your Creative Obsessions into Opportunities with Armin Vit. This was a very entertaining presentation by a design obsessive. Vit has spent a serious amount of time combing the world of graphic design. What follows is his dissection of the world of obsession that has paid off for quite a few people. Some examples of creative obsession to: publication, internet fame, or business.

“Publication.” Collections. Lisa Congdon: A Collection a Day (blog). Very simple, daily, low production complexity. After a year, the collection was put together in a book by a small Canadian publisher. Old Printed Stuff. Damon Murray: Bibliodyssey. This also got published as a book. Skulls. Noah Scalin: Skull-a-day. This also got published as a book. Monsters. Stefan Bucher: The Daily  Monster. A daily post of this illustrator’s monsters became an obsession, then a published book by HOW. It featured stories from the artist himself and eventually users posted stories about what the monsters are doing.

TIP: generate enough content. Variety is the spice of life. Prep your pitch if you decide to look for publication of distribution. Be prepared to answer the question: “If it’s free online, why will people buy it as a book?”

“Internet Fame.” Good taste. Tina Roth Eisenberg: swiss-miss.com — she posts things that she thinks are good design. 900,000 pageviews, 250,000 Twitter followers. She followed up this fame by developing “Creative Mornings,” a series of free talks in the morning. Sharing a creative space with other 'taste' obsessives provided the catalyst for others to attain internet fame. Jessi Arrington: luckysoandso.com — REALLY colorful outfits that has opened the door on several opportunities, not the least of which was a presentation at TED. Arrington only brought underwear on her trip and purchased all of her clothing in the host city. Voila, presentation. “Type and Humor.” Jessica Hische: jessicahische.is — typographic obsession. “Data Visualization.” Nicholas Felton: feltron.com — catalogs information about himself from the year through infographics. “Mashups.” Olly Moss: ollymoss.com — reimagined posters of classic movies and video games. Became an extremely popular gallery show of silhouette portraits in profile of pop figures.

Find a niche. Stick to it.

“Double Rainbows.” Paul “Bear” Vasquez: shot and narrated a video of a double rainbow. Passionately. This turned into a commercial opportunity for the oversized personality for a starring role in a commercial.

“Detail & Style.” Marian Bantjes: bantjes.com — intricate lettering and illustration on products of all sorts. Eventually published a book called I wonder. 37 Signals: 37signals.com — internet design to un-complicate web sites and applications (such as Basecamp). “Letterpress.” Jon Selikoff: voteforletterpress.com — basically an obsession with letterpress type technology. “Packaging.” Andrew Gibbs: thedieline.com — packaging obsession. And, of course, “Graphic Design.” Armin Vit: underconsideration.com — Speak Up blog about design for designers. The Design Encyclopedia followed and next came Brand New about corporate designs. FPO (For Print Only) which focuses on — surprise — print design. A lot of this has become books such as The Word It Book with HOW, Women of Design with HOW, Graphic Design Reference with HOW. Went on to publish their own book called Flaunt. Led to a traveling, one-day conference, and a judged competition.

NUMBER ONE RULE: Look for the opening. Have money in the bank.

“The secret ingredient.” Stupidity. The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity: #3 “A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.” The case for stupid is to be dumb enough to allow your obsession to become breakthrough creativity.