Alberta Design Blog

It’s pretty amazing. We’ve had a tremendous run of creative marketing pieces this past 6 months. Redpointers have created some stuff that is pretty darn impressive. We’ve written copy, printed brochures, made maps, murals, and continue to crank out websites. The problem is, most of it hasn’t been published, released or otherwise produced. read more

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OK, so let’s be honest here. Advertising, marketing and design are crafts that constantly drive towards the next “innovation” or the next “big idea”. Market segments are competitive within themselves to attract customers, and these days the holy grail of advertising is a spot going viral. I personally think this is good and bad at the same time – good because you can reach a market far bigger than you can with standard media, bad because the game is that much harder, and innovation is that much harder to come by. Well, maybe not bad – maybe we should just call it harder. But the game remains the same:

1. analyze the creative brief
2. drink coffee
3. shine brilliance upon the problem
4. drink coffee
5. use adept mastery to produce visuals
6. watch viral media do 90% of your work for you
7. drink coffee
8. watch the masses stampede toward your marketing goal
9. receive key to the city, and perhaps a pallet of gold bars as well

Sounds simple. Well here is an example of something really innovative. And I find the best ads always seem so logical and natural and your first thought may be “How was that never done before?”

An ad for the Nissan Sentra does all this an maybe more. A car commercial showing how fun a car can be with no car. So logical, you’d think it would have been done before.  Have a look here:

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The recent Vancouver 2010 Olympics was quite a ride for just about anyone Canadian. We’ve seen an Olympic result that is record setting and hard not to be proud of. We indeed owned the podium. Canadians banded together in a way I’ve seldom experienced – The most notable example of this is the absolute avalache of “Canada” branded apparel appeared on every street corner, office lunch room and crowd shot on TV. I’d like to see the margins that the Bay gained for the last month. The pandemonium at the local Bay store was astounding. I’m pretty sure I got the last zip-hoodie in Red Deer and have been offered money in the street for it.

There is some incredible lessons to learn from the 2010 Canadian Olympic experience. We want to belong – to a nation, a team a sport – to something that inspires us, even as customer of a great company.

So what does that have to do with Graphic Design in central Alberta? A lot when you really get into it. Marketing is becoming more and more “social”, not just the tech kind with tweets and diggs and flickrs, but people want human contact. read more

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I’ve been thinking a lot over the past couple of months about content. All sorts of content, from brochure text, trade show display lists, and website pages. The old adage goes “content is King”, but from the point of view of many projects, actual content is more often the elephant in the room.

I say this from the perspective of a graphic designer who’s often charged with the task of creating something groovy to catch a customer’s eye, or do some fancy information architecture on a website so it is logical to read and navigate. The reality is – we hardly ever write anyone’s content. Oh, we might cut a tagline, or a bullet list here and there, but we rarely speak for our clients. Most often the disclaimer on the quote goes something like this: Client responsible to supply all copy and images. read more

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We recently completed two tradeshow banners for Pink Suede Imaging. They turned out so wonderful I felt the need to blog. Pink Suede is a service that assists women in the area of personal image. Think of them as the What Not to Wear of Red Deer. If Clint & Stacy came to pay a visit I think they would be rather pleased. An awesome  opportunity for central Alberta women to step-up their confidence.

The flirty design was a nice change of direction here at Redpoint. Especially because we were able to use a colour we don’t often choose out of the swatch-book… PINK, and lots of it. With fashion on the brain we decided to create a look that women would be drawn to. We incorporated some girly illustration to play off the looseness of the logo – so much fun! I am a doodler at heart, so it was a delight to be able to create artwork for these banners.

The text creates a curvy female silhouette, which compliments the Pink Suede motto Inner Confidence, Outward Style quite nicely. The words within the image represent Pink Suede and highlight services. The pink scalloped header gives the illusion of a boutique window which ties in the polka-dot pattern in the background. We really wanted to push the detail by adding in illustrated icons and ribbons. The goal was to project a visually compelling piece that targets women specifically.

Check out the banners, and Pink Suede for yourself at the Bower Place Shopping Center on December 18, 19 & Boxing Day.

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Every few months I clean out my wallet. I throw things out, organize, and start fresh. In doing so recently, my eyes were rewarded with some amazing finds. I looked at the mound of gift-cards, bank cards, coupons and the like. A bunch of these items featured hand-drawn typography and illustration – candy for my eyes. I am in love with this. As an avid doodler, I wildly appreciate the originality that illustration brings to a piece of design. This seems to be ‘trendy’ as of late, which is very exciting in my world! I’ve been seeing more design being stretched in a more organic, loose direction. Goodbye stock photo  – hello sketchbook. I applaud the designers  who are making it different, making it original – because nobody’s handwriting is identical. Even a tacky gift certificate can be like a blank canvas – go wild.

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The concept of the creative process is a pretty cloudy one. Shops guard their “process” carefully, larger shops acting aloof and technical, and the smaller shops tend to try and look bouncy and approachable to counteract the larger shops. The client is either being force fed or trapped in endless game of ping-pong. I’m not saying that either approach doesn’t work, on the contrary, both do work. read more

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Passion. Committeeman. Perseverance. Ingenuity. Creativity. Tenacity. Desire.

Words taken from the halftime speech in a Walt Disney come-from-behind football movie? Maybe. Words taken from any one of our clients referring to any portion of their daily routines? Likely.

It’s become apparent to us here lately at just how hard you have to work to get anywhere with marketing and communications. Looking at many of the projects we worked on the last quarter, it’s clear you have to “want it”. Content needs to be written, budgets approved, bosses satisfied and of course, deadlines met. Our clients certainly deserve a hats off for making it happen. Without them, we’d be nothing. Consider that most of our clients aren’t full time design patrons, they already have at least 42 million other tasks more pressing than dealing with the new content manager, or distribution of 10,000 new brochures. But they do it. Amazing.

I’ve always compared logos to wine: you need good planning, resources, and patience to let it lay down and age a bit to let the flavours emerge.

I’ve always compared logos to wine: you need good planning, resources, and patience to let it lay down and age a bit to let the flavours emerge.

From the creative perspective, there is another 42 million ways to scrimp through a project. It’s also become clear that the creative phase of a design project is also one that requires some inner fire on the part of the designer. Creative vision is not easy to come by, nor is the experience needed to pull said vision off. The tenacity and passion required to really solve a design problem is amazing also. I’ve always compared logos to wine: you need good planning, resources, and patience to let it lay down and age a bit to let the flavours emerge.

I think you could compare anything in marketing to wine: brands, websites, campaigns… even a newspaper ad (done well). The projects we’ve done here are Redpoint that are the most rewarding are usually the ones that come after the sweat, adversity, late nights and ever terrifying blank sheet of paper have all played a role. Well, that and the larger, more skilled football bullies (who’s arrogance eventually leads to them losing the championship) and the impassioned coach who doesn’t let his team quit. The results of our commitment are truly rewarding. Football and wine – who knew?

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Today I saw some street signs (handwritten, no less) advertising an event at a hotel. A sale, actually – someone had taken the time to rent a convention room, and set up a clearance for their products. Sounds good. An Industrious, clever and hard working type of idea. So what notable about that?

The signs were on a 3 lane (4 – if you count the left turn lane) road, and all required the viewer to turn ← left. Great. Good Idea, call to action, and done within budget (that’s the handwritten part).

The moral of this story is all the hard work our intrepid advertiser went through is lost on one detail

The catch here is, our industrious advertiser put the signs on the far right → side of the road, giving potential clients about 100m to California Lane change across all four lanes into the turning lane.

The moral of this story, is all the hard work our intrepid advertiser went through to rent the hotel, set up and prepare his bank account for an inflow of revenue is lost on one detail: people in the right lane have no hope of turning left. So if you are telling people to do something, make sure your sign is on the right side of the road!

So applying this to graphic design, you could ensure your direct mail was sent to postal codes that match your demographic, or make sure you have the right colour brochures when you go to a trade show specific to men or women. It just takes a moment to ensure your worthwhile efforts aren’t wasted on missed details.

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Mexico is a wonderful country. They have a flair for life and community that is refreshing. They also have an amazing flair for colour and style in art, design and decoration, and as a culture they embrace ornamentation.

As a designer, I truly enjoy seeing different interpretations of communications. A poster in Spanish still communicates if it’s designed well. One particular design trend I spotted, was their use of type as a graphical element. Often you might see a poster with a nice picture, where the person in the photo was a letter in the headline, or there was a sense of depth in the piece – coming straight out of the type design.

It’s stunning to see the communities of homes – half pink and half yellow, with a further half regular brick (cement is the material of choice in Mexico). Then you can buy weaving or some other craft from an artisan who has been handed down patterns and designs for generations. It’s and inspiration to see a culture embrace design in such a way. And it’s great to reflect on your own work to see what you can learn from others far from your sphere, and hopefully making projects richer for it.

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