In case you missed it, earlier this week a rich fool paid $120,000 at an art auction for a banana taped to a wall. A few days later, an attention-starved “performance artist” invaded the gallery, and ate the expensive banana. The winning bidder refused to pay for an eaten banana. Then someone else bid again […]
Design
Secret: Some Logos are Easier to Design than Others
Some companies are lucky by having the right mix of letters in their actual name. Of the 26 letters in the English alphabet, some letters are blessed with good genes that make them visually balanced and interesting. Other letters are awkward and less fortunate. Who’s ready to nerd-out with me? These letterforms are balanced. They […]
Redesigning Your Logo? 5 Most Common Branding Mistakes to Avoid
Designers can be very pretentious when they talk about their craft. This annoys me, so I am going to be authentic and approachable with this blog. No fancy words or fancy concepts. I genuinely want everyone to understand what it means to have a solid branding system for your company, your non-profit, for your big […]
Designing with Restraints (or) Why Most Cars Look the Same
While on a family vacation over the summer, we took the kids to Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, CA. I was unloading our kids from my trusty Honda Odyssey minivan and noticed a strange sighting: 6 white SUVs parked on the same street. 3 on one side, 3 on the other. At quick glance, I thought […]
Color Trends: “Battleship”
Later in the blog, I want to illustrate a completely unexpected color trend of today–battleship–but first let’s dispose of this idea that 1) color trends are constant and that 2) color trends are predictable. They are not. It was easy to point to color trends in previous decades of American culture: turquoise in the 1950s. […]
The World Agrees: Emojis are the Best / Worst Thing Ever
Today we are overwhelmed with the written word. Websites! Social media! Emails! Apps! Messaging! I’m going to guess an average adult reads 40,000 words each day. All this flying across multiple screens through each minute of the day. This is unlike anything in human history. Because it is impossible to comprehend such a volume of words, we need a new visual language to enhance what we already have. Emojis allow us to quickly grab attention and communicate emotion in a way that we never could before.