Archive for May, 2009

A couple of weeks ago I walked into the office ready to ingest my mourning dosage of caffeine only to find out that the coffee pot had been dropped. So I ran across the street to purchase some Starbucks as I was in need of some serious caffeine. I was not until I was waiting in line that I noticed the little instant packets sitting on the counter. Since I am trying to cut my coffee expenses down I figured that getting some would be more economical than getting coffee every morning until the pot was replaced.

It was not until I tried one of the little instant packets that I was hooked. These things taste pretty damn good, and I could store them anywhere the only problem was they were far more expensive than ground coffee. So when I started seeing the advertisements being made by Nescafe about their new Taster’s Choice packets being 400% less than the Starbucks packets I thought it would be worth a try.

I am incredibly excited to announce that the amazing people of Arthouse Films have given me the opportunity to give away two copies of the poster for their new documentary “Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight” (pictured below) along with a copy of Mr. Glaser’s book “Drawing is Thinking.”

Milton Glaser is without a doubt a design legend, and I am sure that Arthouse Films have created a wonderful movie to showcase his talent. The film premiers on May 22nd in New York City (order tickets here) and on June 19th in San Francisco, so if you live in either of these areas I would highly suggest that you attend.

Often times when being approached by small businesses designers have a lot of ability to make a lot of strategic decisions in the benefit of their client. For numerous reasons, this can be both good and bad. A recurring trend I have seen when working with these clients is that often times they are so focused on obtaining new business that they almost completely forget about their existing customers/clients/patients. Usually it takes some persuasion, but the idea of building an email marketing campaign to leverage existing customers is adopted by the small business.

While I normally try to avoid work that is strictly SEO, it sure does seem like it is on client’s minds a lot lately. We have received a number of calls requesting proposals for SEO work, and the behavior seems to be consistent with a neighboring agency. Normally proposals like this would come our way every once now and again, but it seems like they have been pretty steady lately. After talking with these clients, what I have realized is that in all of the cases I could achieve what the client wanted however the results would never meet the expectations.

I have written before to ask the question “How will the adoption of eBook Readers affect designers?” but now I can’t help but think about how it will affect the entire practice of design. Are the fixed dimensions of print design a luxury that we are going to have to let go of? The printed page has been disappearing around us for years, but now more than ever this is beginning to manifest for designers.

Technology is rapidly changing the way the information is received and absorbed in a way that may be even more profound than the widespread adoption of the Internet. Never before has the printing press been challenged so admirably. With the printed mediums being replaced with small lightweight devices that are high resolution and arguably more convenient to use how can we expect anything less?