In the last post I wrote about the beautiful tree we bought, which coincidentally came with a house. This is an update.

The keys were dropped off yesterday. We threw some bits and pieces in the back of the car, and spent the night on the hardwood  floor of the empty living room. We woke to birds singing and sunlight streaming through the shuttered window blinds. Nice.

We took a bottle of wine with us to celebrate our first night in the house. We drank the wine from the engraved goblets we were given as a wedding gift by David and Tiff (Nikki’s son and daughter-in-law). The same goblets that we took on our honeymoon road trip. The same ones we use on each anniversary, and the same ones we will use to celebrate every major event in the future.

Nikki loves the kitchen, it’s her favourite room. A new gas stove, a new fridge, and easy-close cabinet doors throughout, lots of them. Un-slammable. Try as hard as you can, they just whisper silently shut. Throw in the Lazy Susan, the double sink and the pantry, and I seriously worry I may never see Nikki in any other room: It’s big enough to put a bed in. Shh. Don’t give her ideas.

I don’t have a favourite room, I kinda like them all. But I am looking forward to taking my first bath in ten years. Showering is efficient and quick, but there is nothing quite as relaxing as soaking in a tub for an hour and coming out pink, wrinkly, and stress free. The bath in this house is deep enough to do that, so I am going to the store today to buy a rubber duck. Maybe the bathroom will grow to be my favourite. Time will tell. I look forward to finding out.

A good advert can stop traffic. A really good advert can make traffic too scared to pass. This, I say, is a really good advert.

Designed for my own company, GYST Services, it gets the message across in a highly visual and effective way. It says that small can be powerful, and versatile, and aggressive. It says we got game. And it says we can hold our own against the big boys, and win. Just like GYST, in fact.

Here, it’s Muscle Car vs Cube. Cube wins. Cube always wins.

And it speaks the truth: Never underestimate the stopping power of a well-placed advertisement. Want one? 🙂

My last post showcased a work-in-progress (WIP) for one of the many companies I work with. For each company I routinely have many folders full of collateral to call upon, and for each I always have at least one WIP. Here’s why.

Any creative brief leaves much room for interpretation.  It’s my role to interpret what is asked for, choose a path to that ultimate goal, and then create something wonderful. It’s on me to make the client go “Wow!” And that brings with it both a challenge and an opportunity. This is all part of the joy of design.

The challenge is to visualize exactly what the client means when they say something like “I want something dynamic!”. That broad concept and what it means to me, may not be what it means to the person speaking. Dynamic can mean interactive, or giving the impression of motion. I have, in fact, seen this very sentence yelled out lout, accompanied by a palm slamming onto a table. I even once watched as a CEO did a little Superman impression complete with accompanying “Whoosh!” flying sound. I kid you not.

Those are the clients that don’t really know what they want, and do you know what? They don’t need to know. They just want me to pull something amazing out of my hat. And that’s where the opportunity comes in.

In the absence of specific guidelines, you need to come up with your own starting point. Make your own design decisions. Choose the direction and the meaning of what you create. Many of my clients want me to come up with all the ideas. That’s fine. I actually prefer it.

I usually begin by asking for two colours. Then I ask for two or three words which encapsulates the message they want to send. That could be about the company itself (Dynamic! Forward thinking!), or about the product they want to promote (Reliable! Innovative!). That’s when I start throwing pixels.

Starting with the base colours provided, it’s sketch time. What do those two or three words say to me? How can I make that message into something visually pleasing that will attract the target audience of Joe (or Joan) public? Is it a sales message? Informational? Who is this aimed at and what do they want to see? What will pull them in?

Starting with a blank page I can spend a lot of time putting together concepts which are ultimately thrown away, because for whatever reason they don’t quite work. That time is not wasted however, since it helps to polish the process, and zones in on the final choice of concepts. Now, some have likened this process to a sculptor starting with a square block of marble and throwing away the marble chips as he works, revealing the finished statue. That’s far too pretentious to my way of thinking, so forget that, but on a practical level it is true that throwing away all the good concepts created along the way would be wasteful. Though they may not work for this particular project, they may be perfect for the next. That’s where WIP folders come in.

The previous post showed one such WIP concept, a car representing a company. Compare that image with the one in this post. Same idea. Different product, different company, different look and feel. But for this company, this concept works.

Many creative artists and designers have also had the unhappy experience of putting their hearts and souls into a project, only to have it dismissed out of hand by the client when they present it. I feel your pain, I’ve been there. I think all of us have.

What I want to say to those on the receiving end is simply this: If you haven’t already, put your cast-off designs into a WIP folder of your own. When you have time, revisit it. You may find another angle, another inflection, another use. If not, you can play with the design, develop it further. Practice. And play.

Play is the oil that keeps the wheels of imagination turning. There I go being pretentious again. But it’s true. Keep on keeping on. Your WIP folders serve as your source of both inspiration and reassurance: When you look back on them you know your work is good.  Use your WIP concepts to reflect on old and new projects, and to get your creative ideas flowing. Often, you will find they serve as a launch pad for new and even better creative ideas.

And that springboard will lift you to new creative heights.

This discarded concept is an unfinished work-in-progress developed for one of the companies for which I design the advertising art.

Yellow and black are our corporate colours. The concept centres around the recurring phrase “If it was a <this> it would be a <that>, where the thing it would be represents either a feature of the software, or spoke to the quality of the product.

The plan here was to roll out a new concept in this line each week using a new tagline to match the updated art. It was intended to make people to look forward to each new ad, and have them watch keenly for every new distinctive yellow and black advert, keeping their interest and building product awareness.

This type of campaign is a good concept, one that I have used to great success on other campaigns. This one, however, didn’t see the light of day. I may go back to it someday to put the finishing touches to it but right now it’s just gathering electronic dust in the WIP folder of my collateral library. Came across it today again while doing my month end backups and reorganizing.

Rather than just keep it sitting on my hard drive I thought I would share it here and let it see daylight. Fire up the engine and take it out for a spin, so to speak. Hope you like!

When I was a boy I spent a lot of time in bars. Specifically, one bar, the Malt Shovel. As a latch key kid I would swing by to meet mom as her shift as a barmaid finished. I would help clear tables, collect ash trays and, occasionally, bat my cow eyes at the stragglers and ask them to bugger off home so I could get out of there.

It is not legal here in Ontario for bars to sell alcohol for take out. In England, back when I was a boy, it was common. Many bars had a separate entrance or window where you could pick up beer without having to actually go in the bar.  It was called ‘out sales’, as in, you take it out.

This was also great for the more enthusiastic drinkers who, having reached the point of being cut off by the bar staff,  would accept banishment gracefully and just take a couple bottles for the walk home, to keep out the cold, doncha know. Very civilized.

Compare that with today. I wonder if that old fashioned style was not a better way. Drunks don’t walk home these days, they drive. That’s not good. Worse, because they can’t get a drink to take out, they stay longer and have those extra drinks at the bar instead. That’s also not good.

So here is my question: Does it make more sense to have out sales, or not? To me, it certainly does. It allows bar staff to move drinkers out without arguments. It makes the roads safer and keeps the patrons happier, since they don’t have to put up with the offensive drunk that just left.

Anyway.  I’m just reminiscing about those long distant days when I stood knee high to a grasshopper and learned far more than I should have from the regulars at the bar. I won’t call them happy days, but do you know what? They were not at all bad.