PUBLISHERS NOTE
SYNERGY IS THE NEW PARADIGM
Advertising and marketing executives have declared "Outside The Box" to be the most annoying buzzword used by creative professionals today, barely edging out the likes of "Synergy" and "Paradigm Shift". This insight into verbal irritants comes courtesy of the specialized staffing folks at The Creative Group, a rich and gracious resource for the creative community and a new every-month contributor to our enewsletter. Check out the Take Five! Career Tips column below, especially if you want to "Grab The Low Hanging Fruit"and "Take It To The Next Level."
— Gordon Kaye
HOUSEKEEPING
GDUSA's American Inhouse Design Awards, which recognizes the vital and often unheralded contribution of inhouse designers, is currently open for entries. Email us at awards@gdusa.com for a hardcopy form or visit http://www.gdusa.com/contests/aida2.php for a download. And while you are at gdusa.com, take a look at the Current Issue with our newly posted People To Watch feature.
LATE BREAKING NEWS
Miami FL: The look and feel of recently departed Super Bowl XLI was the result of some exceptional special teams play led by five players: Infinite Scale Design Group/Salt Lake City (creative masterplan and design), subjectMATTER/Dallas (project management), C Dall Brown/Dallas (lighting design), Vision International/Salt Lake City (production) and Roe Fabricators/Philadelphia (installation). The team was coached by NFL VP Executive Creative Director Michael Capiraso, Event Manager Jill Rothstein, and Art Director Shandon Melvin. The theme — One Game. One Dream. One Champion. — extended to 14 venues.
www.infinitescale.com
Long Beach CA: Patty and David Jensen have changed their company name from Jensen Design Associates to JDA. They explain that this is more than a name change: it comes with a new identity, new logo, stationery and website, as well as a clearer strategic focus on what they do best which is designing for retail. Hence a new tagline — Retail Ready Design.
www.jda.retailreadydesign.com
Rochester NY: R. Roger Remington has been named the Massimo and Lella Vignelli Distinguished Professor in Design at Rochester Institute of Technology. Massimo and Lella Vignelli have influenced the world of graphic and production design for more than 40 years, and are longtime supporters of RIT's School of Design. Remington has been tasked with raising the exposure of RIT's design programs on a global scale.
Philadelphia PA: AAMCO's merger with Cottman Transmission created a significant expansion in the well-known automobile aftermarket brand. Hanson Associates was asked to rebrand and resposition AAMCO by targeting new markets and a younger demographic. The project has included a more contemporary image while maintaining the familiar red, white and blue hexagon; a consistent design applied across all locations and materials; and newly refurbished stores.
www.hansondesign.com
Seattle WA: Hansen Design Company has developed wine labels for the release of Icicles ice wine from the DASH Wine Family of Heaven's Cave Cellars The graphic design firm has done extensive work with the Make the Dash Count Foundation, and wine sales go to support foundation's mission of helping children and educating the next generation of philanthropists. The Foundation name refers to the "dash" between ones birth and death on the gravestone.
Austin TX: Atlanta-based graphic design firm, see see eye, opens a new office in Austin. Headed by Jeanie Flohr, the new location is meant to better serve companies in the Sun Belt. Current see see eye clients include Coca-Cola, Delata Air Lines and UPS.
San Francisco CA: HudsonYards, a provider of pre-media services for graphic arts production, opens a new facility in San Francisco. Located in center of the city, HudsonYards San Francisco provides creative re-touching, pre-media production and customized workflow solutions for ad agencies, designers and inhouse departments. Headquartered in Manhattan, the company also has operations in Nashville and Birmingham.
Greenwood IL: One Zero Charlie, a design firm headed by Michael Stanard, has renamed and rebranded Chicago Executive Airport. The project reflects a continuing involvement in aviation marketing. Stanard, founder and creative director, owns and works out of Illionois' Galt Airport and flies a restored 1957 Piper Apache twin. The firm has also developed it's own identity based on it's aviation heritage.
www.onezerocharlie.com
Ann Arbor MI: Communication materials for the Childtime Learning Centers integrate the homelike feel of the centers with the sense of exploration and wonder that children can experience. The new campaign was created by re:group, a brand communications firm.
www.regroup.us
Oklahoma City OK: S Design and creative director Sarah Sears involved the community in it's annual charity donation with a holiday card that invited recipients to visit their website and vote for the non-profit of their choice. More than 1,000 visitors did just that, resulting in gifts to Postive Tomorrows, Regional Food Bank, Oklahoma Children's Theater, and more.
 TAKE FIVE! CAREER TIPS FROM THE CREATIVE GROUP
When it comes to describing creativity, people may need to ge more... well... creative. Advertising and marketing executives surveyed by The Creative Group cited the following five phrases as some of the most annoying buzzwords in the industry:
1. Out of the box
2. Making it pop
3. Cutting-edge
4. Breakthrough
5. The big idea
The Creative Group is a specialized staffing service providing creative, advertising, marketing and web professionals on a project basis. Find more examples of lingo that's lost its luster at www.creativegroup.com/PressRoom.
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TRENDSPOTTING
Celebrities and Sports: Round the world, the belief is that men watch sports and women don't. But this turns out not to be true. More and more women are watching the world's top sporting events, according to research from Initiative Sports Futures. It's so much the case, in fact, that they're actually a good part of the growth in the top events and sometimes account for more than half the viewing. Just why is also interesting: It appears to have more to do with celebrity than sports, as the world's rich sports stars enter the realm of popular culture. The hoopla concerning David Beckham's recent signing to play for the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team is a perfect example. "Rather than just being about the pure competitive elements of it, the personalities off the field are becoming as important as the technical skills on the field," says Kevin Alavy, head of analytics for Initiative Sports Futures.
Privacy and Personalization: The number of consumers willing to provide demographic information in exchange for a personalized online experience has grown dramatically over the past year, increasing 24 percent to a total of 57 percent of all respondents. This according to The 2006 ChoiceStream Personalization Survey, which also finds that the number of consumers willing to allow websites to track their clicks and purchases increased 34 percent from the previous year. Esther Dyson, an advisor to ChoiceStream, states: "Consumers are... increasingly willing to let vendors know more about them in exchange for the convenience and relevance of personalization... For this model to work, it's critical that the vendors make it clear what's going on, so that the personalization feels friendly..." The survey reports that interest in personalization is also spreading to consumers's television and mobile screens.
Mini Me: Pushing the personalization envelope is Mini USA, which has begun to deliver custom messages to Mini Cooper owners on digital signs the company calls "talking" billboards. The boards are programmed to identify approaching drivers through a coded signal from a radio chip embedded in their key fob, and the messages are personal, based on questionnaires that owners filled out. One example: if Joe is a chef, the message might read "Hi Joe, the special of the day is speed." Guinea pigs for the experiment are more than a thousand Mini owners in New York, Miami, Chicago and San Francisco who have signed up through a direct mail promotion./invitation for what the company calls "an ever-changing array of unique, personal, playful and unexpected messages." The program was first suggested to Mini a year ago by Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners, a San Francisco ad agency.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Now-February 25: The College of Saint Rose Art Gallery presents "Woody Pirtle Visually Speaking," a graphic design exhibition featuring posters, collages, symbols, logotypes and assemblages by the acclaimed artist. www.strose.edu
Now-April 28: The Society of Illustrator 49th Annual exhibition, showing winners of the juried competition, at the organization's Manhattan digs. www.societyillustators.org
February 8: AIGA San Francisco presents THROB, an art auction to benefit Joey's corner and Heart to Heart. Hundreds of artists from the Bay Area have donated their designs, with a heart in mind, for the auction. www.aigasf.org
February 13: Keeping Print A Vital Medium is the focus of a joint luncheon at the Yale Club between P3 and the Advertising Production Club of New York; Jim Mikol of Leo Burnett USA is the speaker. www.P3-ny.org
February 17. Coed dodgeball Arizona style, via the first annual 2007 Dodgebowl Tournament brought to you by AIGA Arizona and Ad 2 Phoenix. www.arizona.aiga.org
February 20: South Dakotan straight talk, uncensored, down and dirty, for students about the reality of work at AIGA Student Day in Sioux Falls SD. tanya@aigasd.org or www.aigasd.org
March 9-11: Schools of Thoughts 3, an AIGA education event at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena that looks at the power of Southern California design and media, and explores what belongs in a graphic design curriculum. www.aiga.org
March 10: The 40th anniversary of the Graphic Design Department at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia is celebrated with a daylong series of terrific speeches and events. www.uartsgd.com/GD40
March 14-16: The Design Management Institute holdes its 11th European Design Management Conference in Copenhagen. The theme is all about measuring design's role in business performance. www.dmi.org
March 15-17: The Dallas Society of VIsual Comunicatinos hots a National Student Show and Conference each year, and expects more than 500 educators, students and sponsor attendees. www.dsvcstudentshow.org
March 15: AIGA Raleigh presents Jakob Trollbäck to discuss cutting through the clutter and make room for the individual to take in the message in an intelligent and personal way. www.raleigh.aiga.org
March 16: The AIGA Atlanta Chapter sponsors this casual Friday even stroll and drinks event themed Art & About: Castleberry Arts District with a 7:30 kickoff at Slice. www.aiga-atl.org
March 23: Advertising Club of Buffalo hosts the 6th annual ADDYs, the premier awards competition for Western New York advertising. Dress is creative black tie, and tickets include open bar, awards show presentation and a light supper at the Statler Towers Ball Room. johnevans@SterlingSommer.com or www.brainstormbuffalo.com
March 29: Graph_Comm 2007 is an intensive day of symposia, seminars and exhibitions for print and media specifiers, sponsored by the Printing Industries of New England and taking place at the Boston Marriott Copley. www.pine.org
April 12: Picturehouse, which brings together buyers and sellers of stock visuals in an intimate setting, returns to the Chicago Cultural Center for a day of images, food and fun. www.picturehouse.org
PRODUCT NEWS
Free print samples from HP Designjet printers are available for GDUSA readers. The printers have a built in spectrophotometer that analyzes color and calibrates it to match the medi used. www.hp.com/go/graphicdesign11
Try a Wacom pen today and get a gift of four DVDs that showcase the work of leading creative professionals. www.i3easy.com
Gotham Round, the newest cool type from Hoefler & Frere-Jones, is inspired by signs on buildings and the lettering of engineering. Its a celebration of the workmanlike "draftsman's alphabet". typography.com
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. dell.com
M-Tools is a user-friendly way for designers to build websites without having to know code. Integrated functionality such as a shop, calendar, newsletter module, poll, search engine, forum and more is included. mm-tools.us
 LOGOLOUNGE 2007 CALL FOR ENTRIES
Take your place among the most influential logo designers of our time by entering the competition.
The competition: Enter unlimited logos for only $100, which includes a full year's membership to LogoLounge. A prestigious panel of top identity designers from around the world will be selecting this year's winners.
The deadline: March 31, 2007
The link: http://www.logolounge.com/bk4_call.asp
The buzz:
Miles Newlyn, juror, LogoLounge Vol. 3
"LogoLounge is the only up to date resource for one of the most significant contemporary art forms—the logo. It's like a gallery where you get to see all the hottest shows on their opening night. If only I could find the bar."
The site: An indispensable tool at your fingertips:
• Comprehensive searches of more than 40,000 logos, with new logos added daily.
• A real-time look at the trends that are shaping our industry.
• Weekly identity news updates, guest columns and articles on featured designers.
The book: Winners of this year's competition will be showcased in LogoLounge Vol. 4, featuring 2000 international identities from leading designers.
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