How to design for $149

Yes–you too can learn how to design for just the measly price of $149. Because hey – everyone can be a designer, it doesn’t really take much to do it–right? All you need is a computer and this seminar.

Recently, I received a notice to attend a seminar on design. Usually, I’m very excited about new opportunities to expand my education and learn what ever I can or frankly, just be wowed and inspired by others in the industry and to push myself further. However, this seminar notice that I received, really just ticked me off. It’s a one day seminar that promises to teach you all the secrets of becoming a designer including working with printing vendors all for the low, low price of $149. Now, being a designer with 13 years of experience, a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Northern Iowa as well as being the president of AIGA South Dakota a national organization and one of the oldest professional organizations for design in the country – I’ve learned a little on the way and feel pretty passionately about what I do for a living. I was about to toss this little mailer into the recycle bin and it hit me hard. Darn it – I’ve worked hard to get to where I am today and this seminar promises to make others what I am today in just one day. This compromises the very basic nature of my livelihood. Why should a busines owner seek someone like me or my agency, BKG out over the general person that has a program like Publisher and thinks they can do layout because they’ve taken a one-day seminar? Why – because, this field isn’t something that can be taught in one-day. Design is more than just making things look pretty. It combines economics and strategy and in the end impacts the very way we as consumers act, think and feel. Great design and great business strategy gives your business the competitive edge. So, next time you’re thinking that you need to hire a designer, think twice about their skill set, there just isn’t a 10 step process to making your next brochure, it takes innovation, strategy and creativity.

David Car5on Gets His A55 Kicked

David Carson, one of the high priests of the design world's cult of personality, rose to fame at a time when you could get away with being a prima-donna (the pre-Internet 90s).

Comes now this tasty bit of irony from Be a Design Group that represents an object lesson both for people in the business and for marketers who aren't clear how times have changed: even though Carson helped spur a design revolution that inspired both print and interactive artists, and even though he's hitched his wagon to new media, it's a revoluton in new media that may knock the icon off his pedestal: the pitfalls of social media, or Web 2.0.

[Art by Nate Voss for Be A Design Group, March, 2007 ]

I thought this was brilliant. Of course the comic pretty much speaks for itself. Yes,there are two sides to every story; I'm less interested in Carson's POV than I am what this comic represents: the shift of power from the fat cats to us peons. Check out the post by artist Nate Voss, which gives him -- and me -- cathartic bit of vindication. The comments are hilarious.

Thanks to Nate for persmission posting his comic.

Web 2.0 and the online conversation

Last week, I gave an internal presentation to my agency on Web 2.0 and how it should influence the web sites that we create for our clients. I thought I'd post it here for two reasons: 1) I'm interested in the feedback of Fresh Glue readers, and 2) I benefited from a lot of other bloggers posting similar information and I wanted to return the favor.

After going through the presentation, please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions. Also, if you're interested in having me present this to your group, drop me an email and we'll work something out.

The Bittersweet Paradox

Sometimes violence is healthy: only through a great crash of opposing ideas can you break free from  creative shackles. As in kill your darlings.

Such is the wisdom and rocket fuel of paradoxes; it's a little reminder I just disccovered at Creative Think, a blog by author Roger von Oech. von Oech's post delivers a list of cool paradoxes — ironies? — that are both brilliant and refreshing.

They also remind us that the best creative work is fundamentally a matter of taking familiar things and reorganizing them in unfamiliar combinations.

Check them out and add one to his list.

PS: The logo here belongs to a cool Berkely, CA, design/marketing shop called — what else? — Paradox. This logo is so memorable, it was the first thing I thought of when I read von Oech's post. That's what you call good design, my peeps....

Birth of the Cool

Is there such thing as absolute cool, or is cool a relative phenomenon? Or could it be that cool is like that quantum physics paradox, in which the thing observed (cool) is effected by the observer (cool hunter)?

These mysteries and more may confront you when observing the relatively cool blog of Wieden & Kennedy London, Welcome to Optimism, which reports that it grabbed a bit of non-industry spotlight last week in a BBC documentary called "The Search for Cool."

London adman Martin Cale hosts the piece; you can see a tiny bit of it below and read the blog post here.

Cale makes an observation about WKLondon's work that ought to apply to everything any of us do, whether we're really trying to be cool or not, one that may seem pat in the world of advertising, but bears repeating again and again: "They don’t just invent it out of nothing. They take a product or a company and then they look for things in the world that get them excited. They’re trying to tell something about the shoe or the car that’s sort of true, but also in sort of spicy way…bring it to life in a way that people will find fresh or new."

The WKLondon crew wisely innoculates itself against this cool kiss of death — the badge of cool the documentary bestows — with this bit of self-deprication: "You have to be very wary of doing these things. It's very easy to come across as, quite frankly, a bunch of self-important advertising luvvie twats. Particularly if it's anything to do with being an arbiter of 'cool'."

"Luvvie Twats." Damn, are these Brits cool.

A very un-twattish source on cool is Josh Rubin's Cool Hunting, part blog, part online magazine.

But before you start fawning over Rubin or WKLondon, check out writer/media critic Douglas Rushkoff's brilliant critical take on the subject, The Merchants of Cool. Rushkoff released the piece back in 2001, well before either the BBC documentary, Cool Hunting, or any blogs existed on the subject. Unlike cool, this piece endures. Watch the whole program online here.

In it, Ruskoff interviews Malcom Gladwell to make this point: "The paradox of cool hunting [is that] it kills what it finds.

"By discovering cool," Gladwell explains, "you force cool to move on to the next thing."

Coming back, then, to the force the observer exerts on the coolness he or she observes: to what extent is cool a matter of just telling the truth, and to what extent do we manufacture it? And why are some of us better at it than others? (Josh?)

Subway Pitch Update: agency.com posted a video, and all we got was a crummy t-shirt

http://www.spreadshirt.net/shop.php?op=article&article_id=3404773#top

The one redeeming thing to come out of this debacle (read my last post below) — and the only money that's going to be made on it. Brilliant!

When we mock, we mock big.

Crash Test Smarties

Great fun from VW & CPB at "Crash Your VW," (via Random Culture).

Scores of ad wonks have weighed in on the genius/weirdness/effectiveness of VW's "Safe Happens" campaign, which features a shocking approach to product demonstration (I take my turn in the extended portion of this post). It would appear more than enough prospects have responded. According to RC, VW just launched a crash-it-yourself microsite that let's you see how your Jetta holds up to rhinos, trees and UFOs.

Is it a spot? Is it a game? Is it a product demo? Is it entertainment? Well of course the answer is yes. Have fun.

POSTSCRIPT: My 2¢ on the "Smart Happens" campagin after the jump:

What impresses me about "Smart Happens" is that there’s an entire story arc going on: there’s a clear beginning, middle and end to the vignettes, so in storytelling terms they’re very effective at roping you in, keeping you, rewarding you.

I have to give them props strategically: how often do you see an advertiser demolish their product? This is true, unadulterated product demonstration. But it took serious guts to get there. They’re actually showing off a wreck VW, then enshrining it. And there’s not a single track of music to glamorize anything; the sound you hear at the end of the spot is the raw noise of turntable that rotates the car, along with maybe the buzz of spartan overhead lights.

Then there’s the tag line: “Safe Happens.” I mean, this is special stuff, but in terms of the insight it represent and they way they play it in the spot. “Safe Happens” becomes the antidote to the maxim it satirizes — and so VW technology not only protects us from car crashes, it inoculates us against the randomness and chaos of life. Shit might happen, but so does safety.

So with this one stroke, VW steals with a primal kind of credibility the safety trophy from Volvo, which spend years laying claim to it. Love love love it.

Raconteurs Go Old School

In case you think new school, two-way/pull marketing means you gotta spend boat loads on flashy interactive media, I give you this site for The Raconteurs, the new, buzzworthy project of Jack White (late of the The White Stripes). If you look carefully, you'll realize you're back in 1982.

With a faux DOS interface that requires actual keyboard commands to navigate, you'll feel 24 years younger. This one's fun. And it doesn't rely on glitz and flash, but on a solid, simple idea.

That's big for the entertainment industry — which rarely provides case studies for marketers in other industries. We expect to entertained by entertainment promotions. What can metal fabricators, financial analysts or ethanol producers learn from entertainment marketing? In this case: simple, strong ideas that engage are a good thing. Oh yeah, and less is more.... Have fun.

AT&T Jacks With Great Brand, Bounces Cingular Logo

I was shocked to discover this post (at the ironically named "Strategic Name Development" blog) referencing an article in this week's Ad Age about AT&T's acquisition of Cingular Wireless.

The story covers AT&T's decision to ditch the famous Cingular logo, whose common-held nickname is "Jack", but which one blogger refers to affectionately as the "Cingular Bouncy Guy." According to the visionaries at AT&T, the destruction of the warm, lovable logomark — and, by extension, the entire Cingular brand — is okay because, basically, AT&T has no need for it anymore, according to spokesman Michael Coe.

Cingular has "created a brand that has led to a customer base which is the largest in the U.S.," Coe says in the article. In other words, AT&T gets Cingular's spoils, and that's enough. Under this theory, Jack gets put out to pasture because his work is done — he's provided the 800 pound gorilla its next load of carbs.

And what's the replacement for the bright, friendly mark than helped build the industry's largest  customer base? The cold, ambiguous mark industry types refer to as the "Death Star."

This has got to be one of the most asinine marketing and business maneuvers you could dream up — not including the $2 billion the article suggests it could cost to "explain" the brand change. But then, are we surprised that a Goliath like At&T is capable of anything different? It just reeks of bloat. 

I might point out for the Jackasses (wink) at AT&T two points:
a) Cingular customers chose Cingular over AT&T for a reason, right? What makes you think they want to be AT&T customers now?
b) Identity counts, big time: assimilators often fall to the assimilated. Ask the Romans, the British, Napoleon and the Russians. Cingular customers may now have to live under the AT&T banner — but that doesn't mean they'll like it. Prepare for a mass exodus....

HiFi/LoFi DIY Goes "Underground"

The new DIY ethos isn't going away — no matter how much pain it may inflict on big companies like GM who embrace it. Here's an ingenious example from — no surprise — a group of students.

Perhaps taking a cue from the much buzzed-about animated subway ads that began two or three years back in NYC, Digital Media Class students at the Berlin University of Arts created a brand new medium over winter term and called it "parasite."

"Parasite is an independant projection-system that can be attached to subways and other trains with suction pads. Using the speed of the train as parameter for the projected content, the projection starts with the train moving inside a tunnel."

You've got to see it to believe it. Click low or high and enjoy (bonus feature: music track by Chicago act the Icy Demons).

If these youngsters can captivate audiences and at least one American blogger with a little technology and pocket change, what can you do with the same?