CapsuleBlog

So what's this social media thingie?

There are a bazillion guides to social media floating around out there.

I thought I'd round up some of the best:

Ten steps to helping your business kick ass on Twitter

19 presence management chores you could do everyday (Note to self - Presence management. I like that.)

Ten commandments of social media

Why trust is important in social media

Leveraging social media in regulated industries

Seth Godin speaks about social media

These are just a drop in the ocean, of course, but if you start with them, you'll have a good grasp on what you need to know to get started (or make your current efforts more effective).

All eyes are on your face.

Typefaces are everywhere. That billboard. The tissue box. The pen you stole from the last hotel the company sent you to. Do you know your Goudy and your Garamond? Meta or Trade Gothic? The impact type can have on mood can't be underestimated. To a designer, Goudy is to burlap as Garamond is to silk.

The number of typefaces available is hard to even comprehend. Think truckloads of telephone books. The downside of this abundance is that misuse abounds. Quite sad, considering that type has a major presence and a subtle but potent ability to convey tone and personality. Consequently, an unreadable or inappropriate typeface has just as much potential to distract from a beautiful logo design as it does to enhance it.

So how does the humble designer find the golden needle in the haystack -- ie, the right type for the logo design?

1. Gather the largest library of available typefaces that you can access.

2. Consider what the brand needs to communicate and identify the brand's fundamental attributes.

3. Browse typefaces and select a few that communicate the attributes.

4. Conduct type studies, examining how the type works with the letterforms of the brand name.

5. Consider creating a custom typeface, or adapting one to make it unique to the client.

6. Find complementary typefaces that work as a secondary typeface with the primary selection.

7. Review the typeface and gather feedback from other designers.

8. Integrate typefaces into the logo concepts so that you can show them in the first presentation to the client.

To get up-to-date on the latest in type, spend some time with the I Love Typography blog.

Malcolm Gladwell is either a) brilliant or b) full of it. You decide.

Everyone these days has an opinion on Malcolm Gladwell, author of the wildly successful books The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. If I had this bibliography to my name, I don't think I'd care about the general opinions of me and my writing.

So if you bring him up in conversation at a fancy dinner party you'll cause a wicked divide. On the one side,  you'll hear from an enamored crew who admire Gladwell's ability to bring cultural theory to the masses. You could argue the same thing about Oprah Winfrey. Or worse: Dan Brown. Hmmm. That may or may not be significant. I don't want to insult my readers, so I'll leave that up to you*. I am channeling a choose-your-own-adventure book here.

At the other end of the platter of vol au vents sit the naysayers. "The Flipping Obvious Point!", they'll cackle. Are they genuinely not impressed with Gladwell's insight or merely jealous of his presumably fat wallet? Read his books, if you're of three people in the continental USA that hasn't, and get back to me.

Brandweek.com brings us a tantalizing headline this week proclaiming SCIENTIST: INFLUENCER THEORY IS BOGUS. Ouch. Take that, Mal. Duncan Watts (yes, the scientist in question) proceeds to rip poor Gladwell to shreds apparently because the influencer theory is too vague, too subjective, and not actually capable of predicting anything useful.

Read more here.

 

* By reading this footnote,  you've risked offence. However, I can't not say it. The Da Vinci Code was beyond terrible. There, I said it.

Want to know some of our naming secrets?

Check out Aaron's excellent post over at the Dieline (only the world's #1 package design blog).

Capsule names new Herman Miller chair

Capsule is very proud to announce that we were asked to name the latest chair released by the iconic and innovative leader of furniture design: Herman Miller.

Named one of Fortune’s Most Admired companies, Herman Miller designs to improve the human experience wherever people work, heal, learn and live.

The pressure was on for this one. The new chair follows some of the most successful chairs ever made: the Aeron, the Embody, the Eames Lounge… there was no room for error. According to the wonderful world of Google, we also discovered that every man and his dog has designed and named a chair.

“Naming is one of the most challenging components of our work at Capsule,” said Aaron Keller, Managing Principal. “The volume of names considered and rejected would surprise many inside the business of naming and shock those who haven’t named. It’s an honor to say that Capsule named the newest Herman Miller chair.”

Upon receiving the prototype of the nameless design in our office, we were immediately impressed by the incredibly unique spine and inspired to explore the concept of unrestricted movement.

We delved deep into a range of cultures and philosophies to find out more. In Hindi, the word for bridge is Setu. A bridge allows you to move freely, connects you, and takes you to a place never before possible.

Setu. Simple, visually strong and intriguing. A perfect moniker for an amazing chair.

Using color in design

One of the most important things to know about color is how to make a client think about it rationally. A lot of clients can't help but burden colors with emotional associations. For no reason in particular, one man's burnt sienna is another man's nightmare. When discussing color with clients, let your swatches do the talking.

Once your swatches have spoken their piece, you can move your lips. Ask what the client likes. But more importantly, what does their audience like? What will make the design stand out in the current market? Make sure the client factors in how the logo's color will extend into every facet of business: from overall system color to office carpeting.

Let your client pick a few favorites, then review how each will work with the brand objectives, based on competitors, industry and brand personality. Talk the client through the ways the color gets people talking and buying into the brand. Remember, the rainbow is infinite. Focus the client, or you'll never find the end of it!

If the client wants to build an innovative brand, take some color risks accordingly. Drop names of important brands that have dared to color where nobody has colored before. Cemstone is a great example. The Midwest construction company owns robin's egg blue. Rack your brain for the other company that owns that shade... expensive diamonds, anyone? Tiffany + Co, of course. Here we have a brand perched a million debutantes away from the rugged (manly) terrain of construction. Precisely why Cemstone is so brilliant in its color choice - the vibrant hue busts the brand free from the grey fog in which industry competitors quietly drift off.

The most common mistake in logo design is creating a logo that requies more than one color to retain the original concept. A successful logo needs the ability to present the same concept in one color as it does three. If the logo requires three colors, this could be costly to produce in some media.

Here's a guide to the color consideration process:

- Find a color you can own in your category. It will aid brand recognition tremendously and add to brand equity.
- Understand color's cultural considerations. Cultural meaning varies greatly. Weed out variations and any negative associations.
- Identify a color that consistently comumunicates from chip to ink, toner, the Web, threads, signage and standard paint.
- Understand how electronic file formats affect color in the files. An .eps files won't treat color in the same way as a .jpg file made for the web.
- Color science is always evolving due to new discoveries about the human brain's reaction to color.
- Color impacts memory and contributes meaning to a brand. Proceed with thoughtful discretion and respect for its power.

Want to see how Pantone predicts color trends?

Double Cross Vodka to see national rollout

Seeing our stuff mentioned in prestigious places never gets old. The excellent brandweek.com just featured our design for Double Cross Vodka which is about to be poured around the country after much success in New York and New Jersey.

From the article -

How it was created: The idea was create first, calculate later. “Most clients come to us with a budget,” Adducci said. “They wanted an iconic design, so we had complete freedom. ‘Don’t even think of the cost—we’ll reel you back in,’ they said. It was a great way to create a brand personality.”

Results: The square bottle will roll out nationally. “Look at the Coke bottle and the Absolut bottle,” Wilson said. “We feel the pose our bottle strikes on shelf will become iconic over time.”

We have a weiner...

Congratulations Kerstin Strom! Your comment was selected by a random number generator to win. I'll be emailing you shortly for your contact details - and sending your copy of Design Matters // Packaging by Capsule's Aaron Keller and Brian Adducci.

Keep visiting for another contest soon - thanks everyone for playing.

And have a wonderful weekend!

Who moved my gorgonzola, damn it?

(Or, navigating the navigation - a packaging essential)

Walk into a retail environment and look around. Start counting the brands you can identify and those you can't. If you start to feel like you're counting stars in the sky (minus the romance), you're getting it.

Navigating in the age of pirates and treasure chests involved the challenge of crossing vast oceans. Today, consumers face the overwhelming task of navigating vast megastores instead, stocked with brands and packages from all over the world.

Help the pirate reach your treasure trove by considering the importance of navigation when packaging your product and releasing it to the open market.

What happens when a consumer walks down the aisle? Exactly how is your package happily tossed into her cart? By using design tools, consumer are given navigation clues to reach the destination you set out for them. There are navigation elements that help move them through the category of options. And there are elements that get them to the exact SKU within your display of options.

Navigation involves visual clues like type, color, pattern, words, shapes and anything else visible. Some parts of a package serve to connect it to the larger family of products, while other elements make the package utterly distinctive. The full effect of these elements can only be understood by looking at the category as a whole, i.e. context matters.

And what about the aisle experience? Until you spend time observing and analyzing why consumers do what they do, it may appear that they're behaving quite erratically. Consumer behavior may seem irrational until ideas surface that address the behavior, and then the consumers are rational and valuable to the brand manager who achieves this greater understanding.

To learn more about the other essential factors of good packaging, check out our latest book, Design Matters // Packaging 01.

10 ways to make your logo launch fail

1. Launch a logo design to take attention away from or hide other issues in the business.

2. Launch the logo on the employees, instead of with the employees.

3. Change the organization drastically, but only make small refinements to the logo design.

4. Change the logo design drastically, but only make small refinements to the business.

5. Change the logo design dramatically, but fail to communicate the reasons internally.

6. Fail to set expectations with key people and influencers in your organization.

7. Change your logo design while facing bankruptcy protection.

8. Fail to give authentic reasoning for the change to your external stakeholders.

9. Expect a logo design to miraculously fix all your business problems, and just wait for the healing to begin.

10. Fight the change happening in your industry, and then play catch up with a logo design change and expect that to save your future.

We all know that the current economic state is enjoying a lot of press everywhere you look - doomsayers are using words like "bleak", "irreparable" and "no improvement anytime soon".

Social moods obviously are a key influence on design, and the big boys like Walmart are keeping an eye on the public pessimism. Walmart's refreshed logo is a prime example of effectively matching the logo change to the internal business change. Whatever you think of the company that has truly faced a pr battering in recent years, it can't be denied that Walmart has been valiantly attempting to improve especially in environmental and human resources policy. And I sincerely hope these attempts are, well... sincere. Anyway, on to the logo goodness.

First, the old:

It's not the friendliest looking thing in the world, is it? Dull navy blue and all caps shout at me - and I don't feel enticed to spend much time noticing it at all.

Now, the new;

Ahhh. That's better. The blue is brighter, fresher, and the curvacious typeface speaks more of Bob the next door neighbor than Corporal In-Your-Face used to. I like the sunburst - sure, this kind of icon is pretty common these days, but overall: well played, Walmart.