Fresh Impressions on Brandmarks (from my 5-year-old)

I think it’s really interesting that his daughter hits not only on the brands that she (presumably) has direct experience with (e.g., Disney and Pepsi, which she refers to as the ‘pop from the pizza place’), but also products that she isn’t a direct consumer of (e.g., Starbucks and BP). It really is impressive that more often than not she either knows the brand name or the category it falls in. It seems to me that the ones that really stick in her mind the most are the simplest, which goes along with what I’ve always believed—simpler is often better. On some of the more complex logos (Boeing, for example), she doesn’t really know what it’s for (I’ll admit that I didn’t know what it was, either), but she just kind of says what she thinks it is.

I appreciated that when she sees the McDonald’s logo, she knows what it is right away, but she also adds something in that I never considered. She says that McDonald’s ‘M’ looks like it’s made up of french fries, which is a connection that I am sure I would have never made. It’s really amazing to see how young minds work sometimes, isn’t it?

My favorite part of the video, hands down, is when she IDs the Greyhound, Jaguar and PUMA logos each as ‘a cheetah,’ one right after the other. I never really thought about how much alike all of those logos looked.

Fun video…hope you liked it.

It’s awards season. In the past month or two we’ve seen the Grammys, Independent Spirit and Academy Awards shows all come and go. I didn’t win anything.

Awards aren’t limited to the entertainment industry, though. There is also a local award called the Ruby Award. It goes out to like a dozen or so local people who are all making significant contributions to the community. I didn’t get one of those, either. And I never will because it’s only for people under 40 and since I am turning 43 in a few weeks, I am ineligible. Forever. I’m 0-for-always in Ruby Awards. Was it because I don’t make a significant enough contribution or did I just not have enough under-40 years in Bay City? For the record, the award givers weren’t exactly knocking down my door in Denver, either.

On top of all of these awards which I will definitely not be winning, there are numerous graphic design and advertising awards—hundreds of them, maybe even thousands—and I won’t be winning any of them, either.

Do I feel bad about it? No, not really. I just got thinking about it because almost every day I get another mailer from another organization reminding me of the deadline to enter a design in this contest or that. Some of the awards are legit—I’m looking at you Clio, Addy and Communication Arts—but some are not. Well, it isn’t that they aren’t legit, but many of them come from organizations you have never heard of before. And every year there are more and more of them.

It’s not that I have a problem with recognizing great work, I really don’t. I look over the design annuals to see what other designers and artists are doing, both as a source of inspiration and self-loathing (there are some fantastically talented artists out there…and I hate them). What bothers me, especially with the flavor-of-the-week awards is that the business of charging people to enter design competitions in return for an award is becoming a very big business. It’s starting to remind me of the Who’s Who scam…you get a free listing in Who’s Who in Animal Husbandry or whatever. And for just $15 you can include a photo. $25 more and you get a copy of the book. It’s the pay-to-play aspect that I don’t care for.

If you go to many designers’ sites, you will to see them trotting out their awards. And I don’t blame them, they’ve earned the awards. Moreover, they paid for them. With entry fees running anywhere from $35/piece to $85 and sometimes more, it gets expensive pretty quickly. That’s part of why you see the bigger agencies winning more awards—they can absorb that cost in their overhead because it’s a much smaller percentage of their budget. Even a couple of entries a month would be a big chunk for me—realistically the $150 covers my electric and internet bills for a month.

Let’s just say, for example, that I decide to start the Midwestern Advertising League Design Awards competition. I’m an upstart organization, so first-year entry fees are reduced to $50/piece. I submit my competition to trade magazines and websites, maybe put together a nice flyer and send it out. Let’s say that I get 1,000 entries. Do the math…that’s $50,000 with very little overhead. A couple of nice prizes, some plaques, some certificates and SWAG and you’re still way, way ahead of the game.

Don’t get me wrong, trophies are nice to look at, but does anybody really pay attention? If you go to a large ad agency, one of the first things you see when you walk in the front door is the trophy case. At Integer we had a big case filled with Addys and Clios and so forth. It makes for a nice show if you’re doing the dog-and-pony thing, but does anybody really know what these trophies are? Maybe I should just go to the thrift store and buy a bunch of old bowling trophies and just put them up on display in the studio.

I only mention any of this because if you are looking to hire an award-winning designer, I’m not your guy. 989 Design is a small studio and while shelling out for a few entries isn’t going to break the bank, but I don’t see that the benefit outweighs the cost. I’d rather just keep doing good work and doing our best to keep our overhead low. Our goal isn’t to be a cheap design studio because that isn’t what we are, but keeping our overhead low gives us a little flexibility when it comes to pricing our projects. And I suppose that if someone were hiring a designer based on how many awards they’ve won, they probably aren’t the right fit for 989 Design, either. Seems a little uptight and that’s just not my style.

If a no-cost competition comes along, maybe I will send something in. Until then, I’m sticking with George C. Scott. Keep your damn awards, I’ll just keep doing great work.

After several meetings and a little bit of research, I am very happy to announce that his new website, MidMichiganLaser.com, is up and running. Please take a minute to look it over. It’s pretty brand new, so we are working on developing more content, but the basic information is all there.

And if you are anywhere in central/mid-Michigan and are considering laser surgery, making the drive to Mt. Pleasant is worth your time because MidMichigan Laser uses state-of-the-art equipment and procedures. Dr. Allan runs a medical practice, not a spa, and will consult with you about realistic expectations and results of various treatment options.

If you have questions about Botox, treatment of acne scars or wrinkles, hair removal and more, give Dr. Allan’s office a call at 989-772-1213 and one of the members of his staff will be happy to answer questions for you.

MLive.com Super Bowl Ad Panel

They used a handful of my comments in the piece, but I thought that I’d go ahead and include my full commentary on the ads below.

The game is done, the Giants and won and I have watched a lot of commercials. After watching all of the ads—some of them 2-3 times—and I come away feeling like a lot of advertisers just phoned it in this year. There were a couple ads that really worked, I think, but none of them really blew me away. You’d think that when you’re spending $3.5 million (not including the cost of celebrity endorsers, ad production), you’d really want to swing for the fences.

Best Ads:

Chevy apocalypse – 1st Quarter
Finally! I was beginning to lose hope on this year’s crop of ads. Not a home run, but it was fun and they managed to get their jab in at Ford. I also noticed the two conspicuous product placements (Big Boy and the Twinkie at the end). A new trend, maybe? It happened again later when the GE Turbine ad included Budweiser.

Lexus GS – 2nd Quarter
The ad didn’t blow me away, but I felt like they were at least going for something here. Not necessarily to copy Apple’s 1984 ad, but going for that sort of feeling. Plus, it’s a Has a very nice looking car

VW Beetle – 2nd Quarter
After the success of last year’s “Force” commercial, VW wanted to come up with another ad people would be sharing on Facebook for the rest of the week. I thought the ad was cute for the first 40 seconds or so, but it seemed pretty tame. And that’s when they cut to the Mos Eisley cantina from Star Wars with another appearance by the Dark Lord of the Sith. Very funny ending to the commercial, will probably be the favorite of most people.

Ram/Dodge/Jeep/Chrysler – Halftime
In this follow up to last year’s successful Eminem/Imported From Detroit, we have Clint Eastwood giving America a pep talk, using Detroit of an example of how things can get better. Outside of Michigan folks, I don’t think it will have quite the same appeal as last year’s (not because it’s not a great ad, but it’s so similar in theme to last year’s ad that the familiarity softens the impact a bit).

Budweiser through the years – 3rd Quarter
I think this was the most visually interesting ad (with the NFL evolution ad being a VERY close second). Bonus points for including the Al Michaels 1980 sound byte and the Cult guitar riff from “She Sells Sanctuary.”

Honda CRV – 3rd Quarter
After everthing Ferris was able to accomplish in his day off, I really thought he’d drive a cooler car. Nevertheless, this ad which was the worst-kept secret in advertising lived up to the hype, delivering something like two dozen visual and verbal references to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

MetLife – 3rd Quarter
Fun ad with a TON of cartoon characters from days gone by. It was cool to see characters from so many different studios in one piece. Forget the animation, the licensing must have taken forever! The big surprise, though, is that apparently Daphne finally got tired of waiting for Fred to get a real job and she showed up in the back of Richie Rich’s limo. I went back and watched it again and, sure enough, Velma is riding shotgun in the Mystery Machine with Fred (and he’s still wearing that stupid neckerchief).

Worst Ads:

All of the ads for GoDaddy.com, etrade.com, careerbuilder.com (notice a trend here?). I don’t know why the dot-coms seem determined to just keep trotting out the same ad over and over and over again. The etrade and careerbuilder ads weren’t terrible, but the GoDaddy ads are awful.

Bud Light Platinum – 1st Quarter
Bud Light spent a lot of money to run two ads that only serve as a reminder that the Bud Light you’ve been enjoying for the past 20 should have been much better.

H&M David Beckham – 2nd Quarter
Awful for the same reasons as the GoDaddy ads. The only difference is that it was at least on point, I just don’t know that we needed to watch 30 seconds of David Beckham in his underwear.

Sketchers – 2nd Quarter
An ad that combines two things everybody loves—dog racing and Ton Loc. Oh wait…those are two things that almost nobody loves. People do like anthropomorphic animals, I guess, but a moonwalking dog? Terrible.

Century 21 Realty – 3rd Quarter
The combined power of Donald Trump, Deion Sanders and Apollo Ohno aren’t enough to save this ad from being just another ad with celebrities jammed in there to garner attention. Completely forgettable.

I used to love working with them. I’d either drive or ride my bike into downtown Denver…their offices were on Blake Street, if I remember correctly. Above what was something like their third store. I’d meet with their IT & Marketing guy, his name was Oscar and he was a very nice guy. And whenever I’d leave the meeting, Oscar would be sure to slip me a couple of coupons for free burritos. I would have ridden my bike for a meeting every single day as long as Oscar kept giving me free coupons.

Qdoba is one of my favorite restaurants and the day they opened one in Saginaw was a very happy day, although if I ate there as often as I’d like to eat there, I’d probably weigh 300 pounds. Qdoba Mexican Grill is  a great example of building a brand through the consistency and high quality of your product. The interesting thing is that all the while they were building their brand, they didn’t even know what their brand was going to be.

When I first started eating there, they were still called Zuma. After a few years—around the time I started working with them—they had changed their name to Z-TECA. Around five years after that, they settled on Qdoba. So even though their brand name kept changing, they kept delivering on the promise of great food and trusted that if they made the food the focus of the brand, that they wouldn’t have to worry about the name. And here we are, however many years later and their strategy worked great obviously, because they’ve got 600 stores!

Congratulations, Qdoba! I look forward to copy and pasting this entry when you get your 700th, 800th, 900th and 1000th stores open.

The AMA isn’t talking about plain, old sloppy Photoshop work like this Katy Perry ad. (Can you spot the bad Photoshop work here?)

No, what the AMA is talking about are ads where women’s bodies are drastically altered to a point where they make the original proportions of the Barbie doll seem realistic. They’re right, advertisers do use Photoshop to create bodies that do not occur in nature. I know this for a fact because I was a part of the problem a few years ago when I worked for a big ad agency. Our number one client was one of the biggest beer companies in the world and we used women in a LOT of our work. Most beer ads feature women because beer drinkers, by and large, are men. So it stands to reason that an attractive spokesmodel is going to get the attention of the guys who are drinking the beer.

In the advertising industry, when you see a photograph of a woman, you can be sure that it’s been gone over pretty carefully with Photoshop (Katy Perry photo notwithstanding). Photos are retouched and have blemishes removed, color is enhanced, flaws in the photo are corrected and so forth. But often, it doesn’t end there…especially in the summer ads where many of the girls are shown wearing bikinis. I can remember getting marked up photo sheets asking to have a woman’s waist reduced, arms and legs “tightened up” a bit, cleaning up shoulders, etc.

So you’d bring this photo into Photoshop and you’d start off by making the standard color and blemish fixes. Then you broke out your clone stamp tool (the Photoshop equivalent of a surgeon’s scalpel) and start chiseling away. I will admit it’s fun work because you are basically creating something that isn’t real and the challenge is to do it in such a way that millions of people (or tens of millions) are going to see it and you’re not going to leave any fingerprints behind. It’s a challenge. In the end, you’d end up with something like the photo below (I could have used a more graphic example, but many of them involved scantily-or-less-clad women, so I went with a family-friendly alternative).

At first glance, what you notice is that the color is much better in the second photo and that the models skin is lightened and blemishes removed. Now look a little closer. Notice on the original photo that her collarbones really stand out? Well, this would never do so let’s just go ahead and airbrush/clone stamp it a little to make them less noticeable. Now what? How about that little bulge on her right side. I know that it’s just her rib cage jutting out a bit from the angle the photographer has her standing at, but I think we should shave a bit off there. So now, instead of going down and cutting inward, it’s a more gentle slope. And to wrap it up, let’s trim her left side, too. As it is, she already looks skinny, but you know what they say about cameras adding pounds? Let’s shave a couple of inches off the left side just to smooth her about a bit. Abracadabra!

This sort of thing goes on all of the time in the industry and it happens with guys, too, but it’s different. I once worked on a big campaign which featured wresting superstar Bill Goldberg. They had all of these intimidating shots of this HUGE guy, but we had to go through and fix those photos too. Not with his physique, though, we had to retouch the grey in his beard. I don’t think the vanity came from the Goldberg camp, though, because if you look at his promo shot below, there’s plenty of grey. I actually believe the creative director on the project thought the no-grey look made him look cooler which meant we’d sell more beer. I want to meet the guy who made his beer purchasing decision based on the lack of grey hair in Goldberg’s beard. To him, I offer a hearty, “You’re welcome, buddy!”

So what’s the answer to all of this? I guess I come down on the side of Photoshop here because it’s one of the most powerful tools in the modern graphic designer’s arsenal (sorry for the mixed metaphor). And like any tool or weapon, they can be very useful or very dangerous in the wrong set of hands. I think that we, as a society, are very quick to point fingers and we spend time looking for someone to blame, but this isn’t Photoshop’s fault.

Cheese or Font?

Head over and give it a shot.

So what I am going to do is the same sort of thing, but with corporate logos which gives me a lot more to work with. There are a few different ways I can do this and I’m still sorting it out, but I’ll get it started either next week or the week after. I know this isn’t a terribly exciting post, but I wanted to mention it just so that nobody thinks I completely blew it off. Stay tuned.

Point one: this was not a brawl or a riot, as I’ve seen it called on a couple of media outlets. It was a fight that spilled into the street. I’ve seen the same thing at several other bars on the street. It’s a sad-but-true fact of life that people fight in bars. Why do they fight? Because sometimes it is important to show you that I am, in fact, way more awesome than you. Speaking of bar fights, there is one bar on the street (not one of the bars that plays dance music, by the way) that has had a fight 2 out of the past 3 times I’ve been in there (in the past 3–4 weeks). One of the fights even spilled out onto the sidewalk. Where is all of the hand-wringing over that fight?

Come to think of it, the last fight that I can remember that got this out of hand didn’t happen at one of the dance bars either and involved mostly white guys, if I recall correctly. And in the case of that fight, it stemmed from a wedding reception and they actually did some property damage (which Saturday night’s fight didn’t do, I don’t think). Again, where was the hand-wringing? Where were the calls to shut down wedding receptions with country music?

There weren’t any, of course. Why not? Because Saturday night’s incident involved a bunch of black guys. And that brings me to this…

Point two: It makes me sad to see the number of comments with racist undertones (and some not-so-subtle comments) regarding this fight. Not just this fight, either, but with the overall neighborhood the past few months. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone make a comment regarding the neighborhood “getting a little dark at night” and I’ve also heard the n-word dropped more frequently over the past few months than I’ve heard in years. I’m hearing these thoughts and worse from people who you’d be pretty surprised to hear it from.

As far as comments on Facebook and the forums on mlive.com, connectmidmichigan.com go, I don’t even know what to say. It’s embarassing how poorly educated and ignorant people are sometimes. What do you think all of those comments about Bay City turning into another Saginaw or Flint are? Do you think they’re talking about crime rate? No, that’s code for black people. One idiot even suggested (jokingly, I hope) gating the city. What a douche.

Point three: Is Midland Street dangerous? No, it’s not. Somebody asked me today if I thought it was getting more dangerous and I rejected the question because it’s not dangerous down here. There have been more fights the past five or six months, but only a couple that have gotten really out of hand. And I’ve seen more fights involving white people than anything else, but we have to make a big deal out of this one? The problem on Midland Street on Saturday night wasn’t that they were black, it’s that they were drunk. If you don’t think that’s the truth, then why wasn’t there an uproar over the wedding party fight?

Point four: The Westown is taking a lot of heat, which is not entirely fair. Westown is the only nightclub (I use the term loosely, mostly because it’s the theatre I saw Footloose in, but it’s as close as we’ve got to a real nightclub), but they are hardly the only bar playing dance/hip-hop music. And they’re not the only bar who draws a crowd which includes African-Americans. I keep reading quotes how nobody is pointing the finger, but when I see people saying that they aren’t pointing the finger? Guess whose marquee is behind them on TV? And guess whose photo they choose to run on mlive.com?

Point five: This is an issue for ALL liquor-licensed and late-night businesses. Just because you don’t play dance music doesn’t mean that you’re not part of this, too. I know that when it comes time to talk about paying for additional security, there are going to be some bar owners who are going to pitch a fit over it and try to pass it all off on Westown and maybe a couple of other establishments, but that’s a joke. I’ve heard people in other establishments making comments about the number of black people (that’s not the word they used) on the street. I’ve heard the people working in these same establishments making the same comments. And I’ve heard people make  under-their-breath, racist comments out on the street. How long until that turns into a fight? Maybe you don’t own the powder keg, but you’re handing out books of matches pretty freely.

I think the city and the liquor-license holders—all of them—have a shared responsibility here. The problem is that you can’t get the liquor license holders to agree on anything. Lots of egos in the room and lots of bickering. The bars who cater to the sports-and-a-beer crowd don’t feel they should have to pay extra because some bars have a different crowd, but the fact of the matter is that the more people who are down here, the better it is for everybody.

Point six: The city needs to do more. I know that they’re crying bankrupt, but something has to be done. On Friday and especially Saturday nights, Midland Street is the highest concentration of people in Bay City. Add in youth, add in alcohol, add in a racial mix and how can the BCPD turn a blind eye to it?

I am not an expert on city finances or anything like that, but I know that the budget is stretched way past thin. The police have a police reserve that they use for crowd control during big events. Can a combination of officers and reservists walk a beat? I think there should be a police presence late weekend nights anyway because this is a highly trafficked area at that time, so it would make sense that this is where some police should be. Maybe you have to pass on any additional cost on to the late-night businesses (I don’t know that it’s fair to pass it on to the many businesses who aren’t open at night).

It’s important to note here, that you can’t blame the police, either. In the past, some bar owners told the city (at Midland Street District meetings) that they didn’t want too heavy of a police presence here because it might scare people away.

Point seven: Kevin Novellino is a friend and I support his right to say what he wants and I genuinely understand his anger, but as a neighborhood business owner and a city commissioner, I think he had better ways to handle this without giving people the impression that Midland Street is dangerous. I share Kevin’s frustration because, like Kevin, I want our neighborhood to make everybody feel comfortable and I think it’s reckless to just put a video out there on Facebook.

There was supposed to be a meeting last week with district business people along with Kevin, the chief of police and somebody else in city management, but Kevin wasn’t able to deliver on his assurance that he’d have the chief of police and city manager there. Not only that, but he didn’t bother to show up himself. So to say that nobody is listening is pretty disingenuous.

Point eight: Finally! Something to get people all riled up about on local news! Thank goodness for the local news. Winter is still at least a few weeks away. If it weren’t for this story of danger lurking in our friendly bar district, what ever could we use to scare the citizenry. Better stock up on bread and milk, everybody, there is a band of marauding hooligans waiting to get you!

In summary: This is a problem, but it isn’t an unsolvable problem. It might not be easy to come to a solution, though, because there are so many egos involved. At some point, all of the interested parties—neighborhood businesses, property owners, representatives from the city and police—need to sit down and talk about what can be done to improve safety on the street. Whether that will happen or not is the real question. The glacial pace of progress in Bay City is really not going to do us any favors, that’s for sure.

I feel like I probably didn’t say everything that I meant to, but I do feel better after writing it. Thanks for reading.

So as you can see from the graphic above, for over 20 years the Gap had the classic Gap logo. Then last week they decided to spring a new logo on the world. The new logo, officially announced on October 8, went over about as well as the new Coke recipe back in the 80′s. People hated it and the internet was awash with critical tweets, Facebook posts and blogs (including this one).

A few days later, the Gap saw the light and killed the new logo and reverted to the original. There was actually an interesting in-between announcement when someone from the Gap (I can’t remember who and am not curious enough to look the name up) made the announcement that the new logo was just part of a process and that they loved the feedback from the public. They loved it so much, in fact, that they wanted crowdsource a new logo. Hey, everybody’s a designer! Send us your ideas for free and we’ll use it. Here’s a Gap gift card for $50. Thanks!

The only thing professional designers hate more than bad design is crowdsourcing. It completely devalues graphic design as a profession. I’ve written about it before and I probably will again, it’s just a way for companies to get something for nothing while turning design into a commodity. Naturally, the internet lit up again with protests from designers about what a stupid idea it was.

In the end, Gap made out okay from all of this. While not everybody knew about the logo change, they were one of the most hotly debated (not much of a debate, I guess, when everybody hates what you did) topics on the internet, even making their way into print and broadcast media. Suddenly, everybody was talking about the Gap. The chain received an overwhelming amount of feedback at no additional cost and were able to pull themselves back from the bring before it cost them a fortune (unlike Tropicana who took it in the wallet with their package redesign-and-reversal process). And in the end, Gap relented to popular demand, which gives people the feeling that Gap really does care about their customers.

It’s been suggested by some that this is all a PR ploy, but I don’t think so. Why not? Two reasons. First of all, if they were trying to pull something off, I think they’d come up with a better fake logo. This logo was too bad to have been done on purpose, I think. Second, the whole crowdsourcing thing. If they were being advised, that would have never come up.

I just think it was a very large company exercising very poor judgement. It happens.

Anyway, welcome back Gap logo, we hardly missed ye.