Vanity Barcodes

I came across this site the other day, and it makes me wish I had a barcode to put on something. If you do, maybe you’ll be brave enough to use one? You can see their full offering here: vanitybarcodes.com. We use barcodes for clients so infrequently that these haven’t been an option…yet. I can’t wait to suggest the underwear shaped bar code… to the appropriate client, of course.

Here are some of my favorites:

WPPI Promotion Winners

We had a newsletter go out to our “insiders” mailing list at the end of last week soliciting volunteers to be the first to get a behind-the-scenes look at Red by Reddoor. We had a fantastic of group of entries, and have chosen our 3 winners. Each had compelling stories and images. You have to check out their blogs to see what they’ve been shooting.

Katrina Wheeler
Jessica Peterson
Micah Dahlberg

Thanks to all of the other submissions. Be sure to come back often to get the latest news about Red.

Thirst Relief Mentor Auction & Volunteers Update

Two important items of business for today’s  post:

1. The Thirst Relief Mentor auction is open for bidding. Tim Holmes, co-owner of Reddoor, is graciously offering his advice, counsel, and review of all things branding in a 90 minute mentor session at the WPPI conference in Las Vegas in March. Bid now.

Thirst Relief Auction Site

//BIO
Tim has 13 years of experience in the professional design world and has a very in-depth understanding of wedding photography culture, trends and communication needs. Tim realizes that his client’s only have one chance to make an impression that lasts, so his work is all about communicating clearly, effectively and beautifully. A shortlist of his Reddoor’s clients in the photo industry include Becker, Jessica Claire, Shootsac, the [ b ] school, Davina, Chris Humphreys Photographers, Mary Jane Photography, Emily Griffith and Unique Images Photography.

//MENTOR SESSION
During a 90min session at WPPI we will take a critical look at the current state at your branding. You’ll send me all your communication pieces a week before the session so I can complete a thorough review. Together we will make an action plan on how to take your brand to next level. This will give you additional confidence to compete in a highly skilled service industry.

Bid on Tim here.

2. Last week we had a newsletter go out to the folks on our “insiders” mailing list requesting three volunteers to be early adopters for our new project: Red by Reddoor Creative. Submissions were closed yesterday evening. We’ll announce the winners in the next day or so. Thanks for all of those who submitted their brands for consideration.

If you’re not part of the mailing list, but want the inside scoop sign up now by clicking here.

Heinz Ketchup Package Redesign

Do you dip or squeeze?

I’m generally a ketchup dipper, if I can get a small paper cup, my ketchup feels completely at home. There is, however, one exception to that rule: Chick-fil-A french fries. They’re waffle criss-cut fries, and they always convince me to squeeze my ketchup rather than dip. I’ll blame a close friend, for converting me to a waffle-fry-ketchup-squeezer. I don’t know what it is, I guess that waffle fry platform just begs to be drizzled in ketchup rather than making the plunge? Well, enough of my personal ketchup confessions.

I was watching the news the other night, and the anchor mentioned the redesign of the Heinz ketchup packet. I had to know more. Has anyone seen or used one yet?

Heinz says: “A true packaging breakthrough, the Heinz Dip & Squeeze dual-function package gives ketchup lovers two ways to enjoy Heinz Ketchup: either peel back the lid for easy dipping, or tear off the tip to squeeze onto favorite foods. The new package holds three times as much Heinz Ketchup as the traditional packet.” Read more than you could ever want to know about ketchup in this Heinz press release.

Obviously, this hand model is a dipper…

And this hand model (I have suspicions that it’s the same one) is a squeezer…

The new Heinz Dip & Squeeze product marks the first ketchup packet makeover for the food service industry in 42 years. Whoa.

Lastly, a shirt for all the ketchup lovers out there

One last confession, my wife actually would put ketchup on her ketchup. She loves it more than anyone I know.

Killer Jellyfish of Graphic Design Favors

This is surely funnier if you’ve ever been asked to do these things. Behold the Killer Jellyfish of Graphic Design favors. For all the photographers… maybe there’s a “Killer Jellyfish for Photography Favors” poster out there???

Came across this poster on Clients from Hell.

See the full size image on Flickr. By the way, this Lunchbreath guy is pretty stinkin’ funny. See more posters/illustrations here.

Basic Rules of Type

We have this handy-dandy little Typography Primer laying around that we reference every so often. Here are some juicy little tips for when you’re faced with basic type decisions for your document layout:

• Long lines of text are hard to read. A line should have ~9-10 words. Try multiple columns to keep your line length down.
• White space on the page makes your document cleaner-looking and easier to read.
• Use bullets and indents to highlight important points. Use headings and subheadings to help your readers find the information they’re interested in.
• Avoid using more than two type families on a page. Generally one serif and one sans serif make a nice mix. Using the sans serif for headlines and the serif for body text is a common and effective formula.
• Use italics or bold to highlight words and phrases, rather than using all uppercase. All uppercase is hard to read.
• Left justification can be easier to read and looks less formal and full justification. Pick the alignment option that matches the tone of your document.
• Graphs, pictures, and charts add interest to your documents and clarify your text. Horizontal and vertical lines can be used sparingly to break up blocks of text.

If you are really serious about brushing up on your typography, click the link below and pour over the whole Adobe Typography Primer.

I’m really serious about my typography!

Making Money vs. Quality Work

Whether you know Saul Bass from his movie title sequences or his logo design for some major corporations, it’s interesting to hear his thoughts on making quality work or making money. As in any creative field there is a tension between doing something well (making it beautiful) and doing it quickly for profit. See what Saul has to say on the subject:

Here are some of his highly recognizable logos:

1. Bell, 1969
2. AT&T, 1984
3. United Airlines, 1973
4. Avery International, 1990
5. Continental Airlines, 1968
6. United Way, 1972
7. Minolta, 1978
8. Girl Scouts, 1978
9. Quaker Oats, 1971
10. Kleenex
11. Dixie, 1969
12. Warner Communications, 1972

Many of these logos have been redesigned, or the company no longer exists as it did when the logo was designed. But as far as logo design in the 70′s and 80′s, Saul Bass knew what he was doing.

Here are a few stills from two of his notable movie title sequences:

How do you describe colors?

Let’s develop a little bit of a color vocabulary today. Please note this is different than a colorful vocabulary. We’ll start by defining three words that are essential in describing color. I’ll try to use examples for each definition with the traditional “primary colors,” which are red, blue and yellow. Class is in session…

HUE
The first of the three properties of color we’ll be looking at today. Hue, typically, is the name we associate with a color (i.e. red, blue, or yellow). The hue describes only the color itself. Describing hue can get you close to the color, but using words alone is an impossible way to describe all colors accurately. You’ll find there have been many systems to developed to identify color, quickly and accurately. Here are the variations between three examples, I’ve tried to get as close to the primary colors as possible in each system:

top–RGB values: (red 255, 0, 0. blue 0, 0, 255. yellow 255, 255, 0)
middle–Behr Paint color names: (red hot, jazz blue, and lemon zest)
bottom–Pantone Matching System: (PMS red 032, PMS reflex blue, and PMS yellow)

SATURATION
The second of the three color properties. Saturation refers to the amount or intensity of the hue in relation to a completely neutral (colorless) gray. Saturation is a sliding scale with fully saturated color at one end, and completely neutral gray at the other end. When you consider paint, desaturating a color is achieved by mixing the color’s complement. For example, mixing green with red, in the proper ratios will result in a neutral gray, demonstrated below:

VALUE
The last of the three properties. Value is a property that describes a color (or gray) that falls between white and black. The lighter or closer to white something is, the less value it has. Conversely, the closer to black something is the greater value it has. When a hue is fully saturated, it has it’s greatest value. (how about that for a sentence using all of our vocab words!) Here is a black value scale compared to a yellow value scale.

Notice that even the yellow at 100% is somewhere near the 10% black. The moral of the story, different hues, when fully saturated, have different values.

Additive & Subtractive Color

What the heck is the difference between RGB and CMYK color anyways? Well I’m glad you asked…

Let’s start with RGB color, or Additive color. The additive color system utilizes LIGHT. So, you begin with black (as in your computer screen). When colored light is added, whether it be red, green or blue colored light, the black begins to lighten. When all three are combined the result is white. You can see the effect shown in the graphic below. Percentages of red, green and blue are used to create color on your computer screen, LED TVs, movie projectors, colored flashlights, basically anything where colored light is being emitted.

Now on to CMYK. The CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) falls under the Subtractive color system. Subtractive color creates color variations by way of PIGMENTS. It’s called subtractive color because these pigments, when combined “subtract” brightness from white. When enough ink or pigment is present, no light will be reflected, and the result will be black.

Think of a painter. They use different color paints to turn a white canvas into something filled with color, the more color you add, the darker the result, eventually: black. I’ve seen this principle at work in my 2 year old’s paintings. She loves to use all of the colors, and loves to mix them all with the same brush. The amateur painter in me wants her to keep her color vibrant and learn to mix the color with purpose, but then I remember to exercise patience and save my lesson on subtractive color for another day… maybe when she turns 3.

Subtractive color is used in anything printed: magazines, photographs, your desktop ink-jet printer, and traditional offset lithography printing. You can see how subtractive color works in the graphic below.

Here’s a nice piece of trivia: The “K” in CMYK is short for “key plate.” In tradional offset (or 4-color or CMYK) printing a key plate impresses the artistic detail of an image, usually in black ink. That’s why we use a K to represent black.  Contrary to popular belief, the K does not represent the last letter in the word blacK.

While refreshing my memory on additive and subtractive color, I came across this interesting graphic. Found on the world wide web. It shows the visible light spectrum, which includes billions of colors. It’s interesting to see how limited our color reproduction methods are in comparison to the actual visible light spectrum. I guess this gives me a good excuse when my camera phone photos turn out so “blah.”

All of this talk about color has got us excited. I think we’ll have at least one more post on color this week. Stay tuned.

Illustrator: Marc Johns

I caught myself laughing out loud to these witty drawings by Marc Johns. These are from his book called Serious Drawings, but he has a ton more on his site: MarcJohns.com. I particularly like his collection of drawings on sticky notes. The last three in this post are all sticky note master pieces. Enjoy your dose of artsy-fartsy Friday inspiration…

Marc Johns website
Marc Johns on Twitter