You Can't Miss: blog

This week on Noisy Decent Graphics, there is a posting about Pantone's new line of colored handbags. The slogan is "Pantone: coloured by you."

This was an interesting post because I had no clue that Pantone even sold merchandise like that! It kind of struck me as odd though. Why is it that so many companies nowadays have to sell so much "other" stuff rather than the product they are known to sell. Does is really help revenue, or can it hurt it?

After looking into it more, Pantone has a whole big line of fashion-related merchandise. I couldn't believe it. I might just be overreacting, but I just don't understand the money-obsessed motives of today's companies. It's only about money and how much one can make. We can't just sell one thing anymore, can we? I think I'm ranting instead of making a point, but let me know what you think!

Critique

This week I am critiquing my experience as a designer for Global Journalist. I was assigned a 3-page story about China's troubled press and the restrictions the Communist party has over journalism in China. It was a very interesting story, so it was hard to design because neither I nor the editor wanted to cut any of the text (we knew we had to cut some though).

I had a fun time designing for the magazine just because it was very laid back and I had a lot more say in how I wanted the pages to look. I wanted to add color to the front page, however I am so bored of just coloring a headline, so for a little twist I decided to have someone translate our headline "Out of control" into Chinese and I put the Chinese characters behind the head in red. This was great to get to slightly play with the title. Everyone seemed to like it and I think it will make a great clip, even though the following two pages of the story are extremely text heavy.

The nicest part for me was that the editor I worked with, Katie, was so nice and we really sat down and discussed the story and I even helped pick out photos with her. At the end, she was so happy with the piece that she said she wanted to request me if they have a May issue to design! What a compliment. That's why I like designing...to see the faces of the people I am designing for when they are happy with the way I have presented their material.

I'll try to post a photo of it later (for some reason the blog won't recognize the photos).

Response

I really liked designing the logos for the Convergence sequence. Although quite a few of them are REALLY CRAPPY, I almost feel like I work better when I have a few crappy ones in the mix. We're all human, right?

To me, logos are soooo important for a company (or sequence in this case). If you don't get the logo, I feel like you're losing consumers immediately. Unless the design is just so cool that a consumer has to know more, I think logos should be as simple as possible. It really is amazing to see how some of the most popular companies in the world have a logo that is just text, nothing more. I think that says something about society and the way we perceive things. We don't want to have to have a big long "about us" section. It should be blatantly obvious what is going on.

If you all are interested, there is a really cool website where people vote daily on their favorite logos and it even gives the design history of some logos (like Coca-Cola and Puma). The site is called Goodlogo! (www.goodlogo.com) and it is a pretty cool site. I found a lot of great insight from viewing some of the most successful logos out there.

I wish I would have had a bit more time, but then again I always want more time to work on things!