GRAPHIC DESIGN USA NEWSLETTER | DECEMBER 2006
IN THIS ISSUE
Publisher's Note
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Special Promotion
Trendspotting
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Quote of the Month
GRAPHIC DESIGN USA NEWSLETTER | DECEMBER 2006IN THIS ISSUE
Publisher's Note |
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PUBLISHERS NOTECorporate self-regulation is often the right thing to do for consumers and society, and the best way to keep the empty suits in Washington from over-regulating. This principle clearly has been noted by McDonald's, the only restaurant that is a charter member of the new Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative developed by the Council of Better Business Bureaus and the National Advertising Review Council. Describing it's participation as "another evolution" in the effort to market responsibly to children, the chain will devote at least half its advertising and design efforts to messages that encourage healthy diet and lifestyle choices and, says chief marketing officer William Lamar, this encompasses all domestic outlets. We're lovin' it. Two other reasons I feel fondly toward McDonald's: the Egg McMuffins have been particularly tasty of late, and the company is showcased in GDUSA's 30th American Graphic Design Awards Annual, a 330-page supersized edition to be served up around December 15. LATE BREAKING NEWSCarlstadt NJ: Pantone launches a new brand identity that is a milestone in the company's history and signifies the color expert's evolution from professional design tools to include inspiration and services for consumers as well. The identity, a contemporary interpretation of the iconic Pantone chip, was developed with G2 Branding and Design. Minneapolis MN: Public Radio International has it's first-ever brand campaign, staking out its unique place in the media landscape. The ad agency is mono and it's creative director Larry Olson says: "While everyone else races to to cover either George Bush or Brad Pitt, PRI takes a slightly less beaten path... Four print ads are headlined "Hear A Different Voice." Boston MA: In the "it helps to be an octagenarian" category, the Design Management Team of the Year goes to Teague and Philips Design. Longevity is the key to this year's award given by DMI: Teague was founded in 1926 by Walter Dorwin Teague, and Philips Design has also been at it for 80 years creating for Royal Philips Electronics. Philadelphia PA: Everyday glamour is the theme of a striking new 160over90 print advertising campaign for Nina Footwear. Ads reposition the brand through snippets into the lives of self-assured, fashion forward females. Are there any other kind in the ad world? The creative director is Darryl Cilli. Washington DC: The Humane Society of the United States has announced its coveted Design Against Fur 2006 student prizes. Grand prize winner is Maria Rhodes Castro of Milan (Accademai di Communicazione) and People's Choice Winner is Yu-Tzu Chung of New York (Pratt Institute). New York NY: Chip Tolaney of WestGroup Creative is art director and designer for the New Dance Group's new graphic look. The goal: an image that communicates the nurturning environment of the group and its supportiveness for the artist. Logo, Stationery, brochure, website, print, direct mail, posters and flyers are involved. Creative director is Marvin Berk. New York NY: Print buyers are an integral part of The Industry Measure's annual Printing Forecast, and here are two interesting new nuggets: a robust 30% of graphic designers expect business conditions to be excellent or better than the past year; and, even in a digital world, 76% of graphic design firms cite "collateral print projects" as a top sales opportunity up from 74% six months earlier. CREATIVE EXPRESS/SPECIAL PROMOTIONCreative Express offers quality, selection and value you won't find inany other subscription service. Get access to more than 100,000 exceptional images from collections like Photodisc, Digital Vision and Stockbyte. Download up to 50 per day. Pay one low price. And for a limited time, save 20% on your subscription. Just enter promo code D2KPC46N when you visit gettyimages.com/c-exp. Offer expires 12/31/06. TRENDSPOTTINGStolichnaya vodka, looking to oust Absolut as the top vodka in the gay and lesbian market, has commenced a year-long series of programs on the Logo cable channel. Stoli's campaign begins with a one hour, advertising free documentary that it produced. Stolichnaya looked beyond traditional advertising to market "in a culturally relevant way," says Adam Rosen, senior brand manager. "Because of the nature of the community as trendsetting, they are heavily marketed to and very skeptical of advertising. These consumers have a high disposable income: an expected $641 billion in spending this year says the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Says savvy a global media venture capital investor Jeff Bocan of Beringea: "Social networking sites like Facebook.com and MySpace.com bring media, entertainment and information together in a format that is one-part playground and one-part watercooler... [I]t's a perfectly positioned audience that allows for one-to-one messaging, which has always been the Holy Grail of advertising... It's a very exciting time to be an advertiser, but not a great time to be a traditional broadcast network or billboard owner." The mail-in rebate, often purposely made complicated for consumers, is at the beginning of the end. Besides being unpopular with shoppers who have to assemble receipts, codes, and coupons, retailers and manufacturers are unhappy, too, because the displeasure reflects badly on them. OfficeMax, the No. 3 office supplies store, has cut rebates out entirely, and Best Buy says it will eliminate them completely by April. HP and Dell are among those also considering retiring the tool. Further blurring the lines between media, ad agency and marketer, NBC Universal is offering key advertisers the services of its digital studios to produce ads and promotions. A direct relationship between networks and marketers could threaten the ad agency and design firm's middleman role. Beth Comstock of NBC is quick to point out that these marketing efforts are primarily "adjuncts" to existing campaigns and often involve the outside agencies as well . The unit is called NBC Universal Digital Studios, and it is a first for a Big Three network. While mainstream newspapers face falling circulation and shrinking ad revenue, college papers are hot. Driven by research showing that about two-thirds of the 6 million full-time U.S. undergrads read campus papers, corporations and advertisers are turning to the student-run publications. One example: a subsidiary of MTV bought College Publisher, a company that runs web sites for about 450 college papers. "There's no more local paper than a campus paper," says Dina Pradel, general manager of Y2M, which founded College Publisher in 1999. Prescription drugs and children's food ads are expected to receive scrutiny with Democrats gaining control of Congress. Drug advertising has been an issue for Ted Kennedy and he has co-sponsored legislation that would impose a two-year moratorium on advertising a drug after its approval. Kennedy has also criticized the FDA for not giving consumer-oriented pharma ads enough scrutiny. Tom Harkin has been critical of food advertising and will chair the Senate Agriculture Committee. In the House, John Dingell, incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is very interested in prescription drug ads and privacy issues. EFI PROOFING GUIDE/SPONSORS MESSAGEEFI COLORPROOF XF with Best Technology gives you absolute color consistency without all the tweaking. With minimal training, new technicians can achieve flawless accuracy and consistency; saving time and money. To learn more about the world's most consistent color proofing system, download the ABCs of Proofing guide now. www.efi.com/colorproofabc/ UPCOMING EVENTSDecember 6: The Art Directors Club of New Jersey joins nearly a dozen other marketing and communications associations in a Joint Holiday Networking event at the Park Avenue Club in Florham Park. December 7: Cocktails With Creatives, a monthly AIGA Minnesota networking event, bring business cards and a designated driver. At Martini's Lounge in the Millennium Hotel. December 7: The STA holiday party, including a presentation by the marketing folks at Goose Island Brewery and other festivities. December 9: AIGA Atlanta is entrusted with archiving and photographing the historic Oakland Cemetary's beautiful stained glass. A working trip to the graveyard lasts until midnight. December 9: AIGA Las Vegas Holiday Party is called "Deus ex Machina.". Open bar, lavish hors d'oeuvres, and spontaneous performance art throughout. Sounds like a typical day at the GDUSA offices. December 13: Philly Ad Club hosts a workshop on how to make internet marketing/advertising work, with insights from Brad Aronson of AvenueA/Razorfish. December 13: Nate Morley of Deutsch Inc. speaks on the Art of Creative Opportunity at the Salt Lake Art Center. December 13: Seattle Graphic Artists Guild holiday event takes place at the Columbia Tower Club with a traditional display of member work, special guests, door prizes and more. December 14: Moira Cullen, design director, Coca-Cola North America, visits Kansas City for Breaking Down the Silos, a lecture on the importance of brand collaboration. December 14: Peabody Essex Museum and AIGA Boston host Hill Holliday's Tim Cawley, the man behind the new Dunkin' Donuts campaign and others. Donuts served. December 14: Opening of the AIGA Annual Design Exhibition at the national offices on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. December 18: The Third National Design Triennial at New York's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum features great design that has shaped the American culture from 2003-2006. December 18: Art Directors Club of New York holiday party is scheduled for 6 pm. December 21: Society of Illustrators, New York, Annual Christmas Party. PRODUCT NEWSMasterfile has implemented Tag Clouds on its stock visual site. They display the most popular words and compound phrases used by clients to arrive at a particular image. The bigger the font, the more popular the word. Explains marketing vp John McDonald: "Tag Clouds can reduce the amount of time you spend thinking of keywords to filter large generic searches... Xerox has completed the acquisition of XMpie. It becomes a standalone software unit within Xerox that will help graphic designers and other marketers develop creative customized digital print and direct mail, email and customized websites. Dell and Adobe are partnering to offer great pricing deals on Dell Workstations and Adobe Production Studio standard and premium software for graphic designers and other digital content creators. Quite Software are experts in PDF, PostScript and Adobe Acrobat plug-ins. They have worked closedly with Adobe to quickly develop important plug ins for the newly released Adobe Acrobat 8. You can get free samples, swatchbooks and other information from companies mentioned in the latest GDUSA magazine by visiting our website. QUOTE OF THE MONTH"The next battleground for companies designing and manufacturing scanners is productivity. The company or companies that offer better productivity to the consumer will capture the majority of the scanner market. I predict we will see more productivity in scanners through better ease-of-use, faster scan speeds, larger batch scanning, and more useful software bundles." — Parker Plaisted, Product Brand Manager for Microtek Lab, on the announcement of the soon-to-be-released ArtixScan M1, an affordable combined flatbed and film scanner, explaining that scanner resolution has been the primary specification for communicating scan quality because it is easy to communicate, but that resolution has reached such a high level that claims of higher resolution alone will not provide more value to the end user. |
