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Monday, May 4, 2009
Last month I gave away some special bonuses for people who either follow me on Twitter or are a part of the 36 Point group on Facebook. Well there's no such thing as too much love, so I'm doing it again! In addition to the same goodies from last month (ie: this iPhone wallpaper:
And this iChat/AIM/Buddy icon…)
… I also wanted to go ahead and give you a real, live, full-size Paper Dummy of Conrad, the Wandering Design Ninja himself. So, unlike last month, when you click on this image you'll get a link to the actual PDF and you can build your very own Conrad to watch over you at your desk, and threaten you with deadly ninja moves when your logo is the wrong size.
 
Monday, April 20, 2009
During tough economic times, many businesses big and small have tough choices to make. Often some of the first programs to be cut are marketing and design services, despite proven research to the contrary. Call it "protecting the core," if you will; focusing on your key business practices while stripping away excess in order to sustain a viable company. While this can be a sound economic strategy in some cases (cutting back on office supplies and employee perks, for example), it can be disastrous in the case of marketing and visual branding. (If no one knows about your company's products or services, no one can pay you for them!)
This line of thinking has been gaining traction in American businesses for the past several months after studies have shown companies who promote their way through a recession often come out the other side in a stronger market position than they went in with. But this still raises the question: "How do I pay for this work when money is so tight?"
Problem One: Your business needs a new logo or an updated look to attract new customers. This problem surfaces a lot with startups and relatively new businesses who have been struggling to make it to the next level. It is not uncommon in these cases to put together a temporary company logo — something like a placeholder — to get the job done until you can afford to do it right. But now that time has arrived, and you've read enough articles to understand your need for better brand positioning, but there's no money to hire a design firm.
Problematic Solution: Hold a logo-design contest or utilize a "crowdsourcing" website. Guaranteed to always sound like a good idea at the time, logo-design contests can seem like a low-risk, low-cost way to solve your identity crisis. They're ubiquitous enough that everyone knows the drill: You put out a call for entries and entice them with a snazzy prize, usually a couple hundred bucks in cash or services that your company provides (own a mall or a store? how about gift-certificates?). Then local artists go to work and send you tens if not hundreds of options to choose from. You pick your favorite, trade the prize for the artwork, and off you go! What problems could there possibly be?
First, thank you for continuing to read the article despite the last paragraph's glowing picture. Logo contests and crowdsourcing, although different in their approach, both yield similar enough results that we can look at them as a singular problem. The potential downsides are clear-cut, and some can even be devastating to your business: - Craftsmanship: Anyone entering a contest knows they are working only for a chance at winning, not for a guaranteed paycheck. As such, the Risk vs. Reward ratio on the project is high on risk, low on reward. So it does not make sense for them to spend a lot of time on it — and the same goes for crowdsourcing. At the end of the day, this leaves you and your business with an identifying mark that was rushed through the design process. Even if you have a hard time distinguishing between a polished and a rushed logo, your customers' subconscious reaction will pick up on the missed cues and lack of attention to detail in your logo, and begin to associate them with how you do business.
- Craftsmanship Part 2: Professionals vs. Amateurs. The vast majority of professional designers wouldn't touch what they call "Spec" (speculative) work with a 20-foot pole. For them it is a professional discourtesy to ask them to give away for free a process of design that they have built a viable business upon. Many see the very thought of it as damaging to their profession. But who cares? If you can get the same quality product, let's say pencils or other office supplies, for a cheaper rate, why not? Simply put, because your company's main identifying face — its logo — is not a commodity. There is a big difference in both quality and longevity between professional and amateur design that comes from a learned process, not to mention the hours and hours of research and planning that generally come with hiring a professional. So in the end, if all the professionals are staying away from your contest, who do you think is going to be left applying to create your logo?
- Originality: Designers who frequent crowdsourcing websites know the only way to turn a profit is to enter as many Call-for-Submissions as possible in hopes of striking gold. As even a halfway decent mark can take hours to create, it doesn't make sense to them to create something wholly new and original for each contest. From their perspective, entering the same design several (possibly hundred) times with a different company's name attached gives them more chances to win. The end result here is that your company's logo has nothing at all to do with your company, your goals, or your position in the competitive market. A logo shouldn't be a brochure for your company, but if it doesn't pay attention to those three key factors, it's a waste of your money and could potential sink your business.
- Originality Part 2: Image Theft. A somewhat new phenomenon in this game is the advent of cheap, affordable stock art and illustrations from websites like iStock. The problem for you is that legally many, if not most of these websites do not allow the artwork on sale to be used in company logos. Problem is, this can be very difficult to identify, and if you accidentally pick a winner based on a royalty-free stock image you're going to wind up in legal hot water when the owners of the image come knocking. Some crowdsourcing websites have policies against this, but again, it can be a very difficult thing to police, and the policy is in place more to protect them than to protect you.
Beneficial Solution: Find an experienced professional designer to work through your logo with you. By working with a designer or design firm with experience in company identity design you can avoid all of the potential pitfalls listed above. If you don't know anyone with more than three-to-five years of experience, find local companies with great logos, whether they are in your industry or not, and ask them who they hired. Or, visit a local AIGA chapter's website and ask them.
Be sure to contact at least two or three designers either by phone or by e-mail and let them know the basic particulars of you logo project, and ask them about their pricing structure. If their prices turn out too high, ask either about ways to reduce the cost, or if they would recommend someone in your price range — most designers would be happy to do so. Be sure whoever you choose to work with has an established professional reputation and samples of their previous work available for you to see on their website. Meet with them in person at least once, if possible, before beginning the project.
Do be aware that asking to "see some ideas" before committing to the project can turn a lot of designers off. In their business, their creativity is their product, so asking to get it for free is basically against their business model. Instead, use their past work examples to get a feel for what they can create for you, and be sure to ask a lot of questions until you feel comfortable.
Most logo-only projects will take a short few weeks to complete and you should see a few rounds of in-progress work along the way. In the end you can be confident that you have paid a fair price for the perfect logo for your new company, one that will be attuned to your business's goals and future, and built to last for years to come.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
My main man Donovan Beery and I were interviewed on the Making Creative Matter website for their 29 Questions segment. Usually these are written stories but they decided to leap into our world and record it — what follows is a tables-turning take on our lives as designers, what fuels us, how we approach our work, and how we stay creative. It's a little zany, I will tell you it gets more than a little nerdy when they start asking about what old-school toys and video games I'm into. They also get us to give actual, serious answers to the question: who's the best designer in Omaha? The answer may shock you!
We also talk a lot about our lives over at 36 Point, and what goes into both 1PT.Rule and The Reflex Blue Show. Big, big thanks to Justin Ahrens and the folks at Making Creative Matter and Rule29. Hugs —
Thursday, April 2, 2009
First thing's first — that there above image is a freebie wallpaper for your iPhone or iPod touch, so grab it while the grabbin's good! And while we're at it, if you like the iChat or use forums a lot, I made you a little Newton avatar, too:
These are all for a set of giveaways on 36 Point for people who can now make small donations, for any amount they choose (yes, even 1¢), to help the site stay on top of hosting fees and other associated costs of running the site and the world's best graphic-design webcomic and podcast. I also made a Paper Dummy (our name) of Newton that builds into a 4" toy with only cutting and folding, no glue! The full-res PDF — as well as the desktop wallpaper in a myriad of sizes— is only available here, as a thanks to people who support 36 Point. HUGS.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Well it's about time! The comic hardly anyone knew I was working on is finally finished and up for your reading pleasure at sister-site 36 Point.
I script a lot of my long-form comics like this, the left-hand page was used to tool around on the panel layout once the basic dialog was worked out.
So here's the pencil form with the rough text overlayed. You can see some differences here and there to the final comic where I felt like the panels needed to change a lot (or a little).
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Since last October (2008), I've been writing and illustrating 1PT.Rule, a thrice-weekly webcomic, at the design-entertainment site 36 Point. At the time of this writing I'm nearing 60 strips, which feels like a lot, until you look at Penny Arcade or PVP who have ten years under their belts.
The process of creating the comic usually takes about 2 hours, though it is longer when I add an extra row (or five), or color. Originally the strip started out in full color, but even at only three strips a week that workload was more than my life allowed. After a brief stint in two colors, the strip settled into black and white, where it remains, comfortably, to this day.
Here's how a strip gets started:
Sometimes I will, actually, just jump right into Photoshop and start typing, but when there's time I find things work out the best when I drop it into a sketchbook first. Above, you can see my notes as I tinkered with the number of panels in the layout, eventually settling on two half-length panels to establish characters and handle long dialog over three panels, with the middle left open to draw out the timing.
The dialog is just scribbles at this point, but you can see little numbers next to each chunk. I do this when scripting so I can easily reference where each bit will go in the final panel without wasting time writing it out over and over. Then I open up my Photoshop file and start typing. I have a template file for all of my strips that I open and "Save As…" with a new number. I work at full size, 300 dpi, and then flatten the image at the end, resize to 72 dpi (900 pixels wide), and Save for Web. I always keep my high-res file, because I think all webcomics creators want to make books someday, and low-res screen graphics won't cut it for that.
 Once the text has been typed in and roughly placed, I use my Wacom Intuos tablet (the 4.5" x 6.5" model) to start roughing in characters. Sometimes I get a little caught up and spend too much time here. That's great in the beginning, especially if you are trying to get used to your tablet. But if you're like me and you spend a few months drawing the same characters nine to twelve times a week, you'll tend to develop a shorthand here that can save you time. On this strip, since the characters move very little, I duplicated most of the elements in the Roughs layer from panel to panel to save time.
Then it's time to ink. Digitally, of course. I set my Roughs layer's opacity down to about 20%, or whatever feels right, so when I draw over it on a new layer titled Inks, I can clearly see which is which. In this strip, the table, Munnys, and art supplies don't change, so I duplicated and repeated that artwork from panel to panel.
Occasionally I'll be so strapped for time that I'll duplicate character art, but this is only in extreme cases of me running long for some reason, or having too much real work on my plate. Some artists get away with using "sprites," or pre-drawn libraries of character art they can drag and drop into their strips. I find that repellent — if you don't want to draw your own strip, either hire an illustrator or just write funny blog posts!
To do the inks I use an elliptical brush in Photoshop, set at about a 45° angle (about 1:30 on a clock). I hated my artwork in the strip until I started using two weights of brush, 10 pixels and 20 pixels, which you can flip easily between on your keyboard using the "[" and "]" keys. Now I use those weights for all the character work and sometimes drop into larger brushes for foreground and background items. Here's the finished inks:
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Recently I was contacted by a company to produce a handful of scenes of life for a group of college students. I had a limited amount of time on the project, so the illustrations were kept kind of loose.
This project gave me a lot of opportunity to have some fun with color, utilizing a bright, energetic pallet and conveying, in some, the overall mood of the scene (this is really evident in the happy/sad illustrations that mirrors each other). Thought it went fast, it was super fun to illustrate. Bonus that the client was very nice and easy to work with. We always love that!
If you'd like to see these larger, check out my Work Page.
   
Thursday, February 12, 2009
 Please listen in this Friday, February 13, on Voice America Business, as I guest host Design Matters with Debbie Millman, featuring special guest Joe Duffy of Duffy & Partners, Minneapolis. The show will be available in the iTunes Music Store a few days after the boradcast.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
36 Point got a Twitter this morning, you can follow us here or check it out at the top of the page on 36 Point. We're going all the way down to Fort Smith, Arkansas to judge the ADDYS this weekend — so keep up to date with where we're at! Also, it gave me a chance to do this little guy for the backdrop: 
Monday, January 19, 2009
 This weekend Donovan Beery and I are traveling to Fort Smith, Arkansas, to judge their 2009 ADDYS. As a former member of the AIGA Nebraska board of directors, I've seen my share of competition judging from the side of the organization behind them. Passing judgment myself? Also not a new experience. (Ha!) It's a very exciting thing to be involved in, but there is also a large amount of responsibility. Judging can be tough. You only get a few seconds to spend with each piece in which to assess its communicative value. Spend too long on one and you'll be shortchanged on others. Don't spend long enough and you may miss the vital key that takes a message from "clever" to "mind-blowing." You'll be able to keep tabs on us during the trip by visiting 36Point.com. Wish us luck!
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