Logo feasting–all night long

September 16th, 2011 | Blah Blah, Creative | goodevil | 0 comments

Truth be told–I hate designing logos. I know, that sounds like a chef saying, “I hate cooking.” And why the heck would you want to eat something from a chef that hates cooking? Confession: logo designing is challenging. When I design logos, it’s about that spark of inspiration, and trying to get that spark to ignite on demand (say, on a client’s timeline), can be stressful. One step of the process is finding inspiration from other logos. And “finding inspiration” is not a euphemism for copying (shame on you!). My process used to involve combing through multiple books, flagging and xeroxing the ones I liked. As much fun as it was to take a break from staring at my iMac screen, it wasn’t something I looked forward to.

Then yesterday as I flipped through my 2008 LogoLounge book, I happened upon a short paragraph written in 8pt text that said I could go online to http://www.logolounge.com to search over 100,000 logos. Whaaaaa???!

Long story short, the LogoLounge website is my new best friend. Membership cost money, but I’m totally happy to pay for it so I can say good-bye to my xeroxing process. Why didn’t anyone tell me about this earlier? Anyway, my good design deed of the day is passing this tidbit on to my fellow logo-loathing designer (don’t pretend you all “love” making logos—you know who you are).

Since we’re all being honest here, I’ll also like to confess that I love watching Storage Wars. Barry Weiss, if you’re reading this, call me.

Do you love color? Us too.

November 16th, 2010 | Blah Blah, Creative | goodevil | 0 comments

You don’t need to be some, square-glasses wearing, artistic fool to love great color combinations. If you’ve ever color coordinated your throw pillows to your lampshades or your shoes to your messenger bag, you’ll appreciate this Colour Lovers Website (and no, I’m not British, that’s how the URL is spelled).

Get lost in color trends for your wedding, home, fashion, crafts… whatever. It’ll make you want to get up and repaint the living room. Ok, maybe just buy some new curtains and bed sheets, but still!

The Facebook Business Trap

October 26th, 2010 | Blah Blah, Marketing, Technology, The Web | goodevil | 0 comments

There was once a time when it was cool to have your own website address on your advertising. You were progressive. Cool. Hip! Of course, this always leads to “the next cool thing.” Apparently, the next cool thing is currently Facebook. “Check out our Facebook Page!” companies herald on their print advertisements, brochures and on 50 ft. billboards. That’s cool. Just be aware that Facebook is a trend and like all trends, it could end at any time.

Don’t think that your shiny new Facebook Page replaces a good, old company website. It doesn’t. And here are the main reasons why:

You don’t own your Facebook Page. Facebook owns your Facebook Page. According to Facebook’s user agreement, Facebook asserts rights to the content you post on your Facebook Page.”In addition: For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”).”
Facebook can terminate your Facebook Page at any time. If your company relies heavily on Facebook as a marketing tool, just know that it could be terminated at any time and you have no recourse.
Not everyone is on Facebook. There’s still an “admission fee” to even get through the door at Facebook. Granted, the “fee” doesn’t cost any money, but it does cost some amount of privacy. And not everyone is willing to pay this “fee”. Subsequently, they won’t be allowed into the new, hip social club called Facebook. If you’re operating the majority of your marketing tactics on Facebook, be aware that you are alienating a segment of your customers.

I’m not a Facebook hater. You’ll see that I check Facebook almost daily. But two of my four closest friends don’t even have Facebook accounts. Facebook provides a great opportunity for marketing growth, but do not fall into thinking it is some magic bullet that’ll hit all your marketing targets.

With that said, go nuts on Facebook! But don’t neglect your real website because in the end, your real website will alway be there for you. Facebook? Maybe, but who knows.

Business Card Printing Sale – Satin finish

August 26th, 2010 | Blah Blah | goodevil | 0 comments

For a limited time, save $50 to $80 on Satin-finish Premium business card printing. Your cards will be 2-sided, 4-color, offset printed on quality coated stock and then fully coated in a luxurious, satin finish. So soft and smooth to the touch, your fingertips will say, “oooh la la”.

250 cards – Regular: $174 / On sale: $119
500 cards – Regular: $204 / On sale: $139
1,000 cards – Regular: $234 / On sale: $154

Design not included. Shipping is an additional $10 to $20 depending upon final destination. Sale ends 9/9/2010.

Got my Sean Kane button!

August 8th, 2010 | Blah Blah, Creative, Fun | goodevil | 0 comments

Illustrations make me happy. And one of the biggest advantages to being an Art Director is having an excuse to be acquainted with totally talented illustrators, like Sean Kane. Another thing that makes me happy is free stuff. And the fact that Sean was giving away free stuff with his work on it, well, sign me up! (Not to mention that I love smart promotional ideas.)

One e-mail and a week later, I got my free button! Happy day! Thanks Sean!

Sean Kane creates his beautiful illustrations from his studio in Canada, and we’ve never met in person, but he’s always been extremely kind, friendly and sharing– much like his work.

Say no to Thesis Theme

July 20th, 2010 | Blah Blah, Technology, The Web | goodevil | 0 comments

Wow. If you’ve heard of Thesis Theme on WordPress, you need to listen to this interview. I can’t believe how extremely arrogant and obnoxious Thesis Theme (DIYThemes) owner Chris Pearson is. If you’ve given money to Chris by purchasing Thesis, now you know who your money is supporting. I almost bought the Thesis theme a few months ago. Thankfully I didn’t. Now I believe that there are hundreds of other great WP theme developers that deserve our money more than Chris. I am extremely thankful to the WordPress developers and the WP community for creating such an awesome product – a product that would never be what it is today without GPL (Matt, I love you!… oh, I mean I love your work..). We only support WordPress themes and plug-ins under GLP. Hooyah.

Click below to listen to the entire Chris Pearson – Matt Mullenweg interview

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Make movies without actors or cameras

July 17th, 2010 | Creative, Fun, Technology, The Web | goodevil | 0 comments

I already don’t have enough time to splice together family vacation footage in iMovie, and here comes along an extremely cool (and potentially HUGE time sucker for me) new service call Xtra Normal. What is it? Well, have you ever had a great script idea, but no friends willing to act it out for you? And forget about multiple camera angles because you don’t even have a video camera. Problem solved (sort of). Welcome to Movie Making 101 with multiple camera angles and built-in actors (some of them are very cute too).

The service is currently bogged down and runs a bit slow (probably due to recent influx of traffic), but the possibilities blow my mind. If any of you aspiring filmmakers try this out, please share! I’d love to see what you come up with.