August 30, 2009

IKEA & Verdana as you’ve never seen them before

IKEA and Verdana masthead

I recently noticed that traffic to my blog article entitled IKEA is Coming to Utah and My Logo’s On It! increased, so I investigated why. I found it was because there was raised interest in IKEA based on this Time article The Font War: Ikea Fans Fume over Verdana published last Friday.

IKEA has always been one of those places that has been pretty clear on their brand. Buildings with their strong blue and yellow palette on the outside lead way to the inside where everything is labeled with unfamiliar names in a customized version of Futura. But all designers, and lovers of fonts are surprised to find out that IKEA has changed its catalog font to Verdana. Yes, VERDANA. (Oh the shock and horror of it!) Verdana which was specifically designed in 1996 to be readable at small sizes on a computer screen, it seems was never meant for print in the eyes of true lovers of type. It’s a ‘web’ font that’s clunky and outdates, especially in our new CSS world.

I for one (among many) mourn the loss. I understand that there are probably more issues involved (such as localization) that I may not know about, but Verdana in print? It’s a sad day for typography everywhere. And for corporations everywhere, note the outcry and remember that when you make the effort to develop a brand, your customers care.

IDSGN Article: IKEA says goodbye to Futura
Petition: Online petition against the change
TIME Article: The Font War: Ikea Fans Fume over Verdana

July 19, 2008

My Bloglines – links to branding, design and usability resources

For those of you who don’t know what Bloglines is, you might as well go and check out the link. But in short, it allows you a one stop place to monitor all your RSS feeds. There are a quite a few tools that do this (even your portals like Yahoo and Google), but this one was the first one I was introduced to, and you know how that goes. (They won me!) Which one do you use?

But it seems lately that I’ve clicked so many of those “Keep New” boxes that I get overwhelmed with posts I want to read further into every time I go to see the new ones. So I thought I’d post the links here. (I’m moving quickly today, so I’ll have to put little one-liners to go with them later.)

But hey! You got a new post. (Something that’s been lacking for a while from the Daily Brad… uh, Yearly Brad is more like it.) I do have a excuse, as my latest project of flipping a house has kept my creative interests outside of work “offline”.

Here’s the links:

Branding:

Design

Usability

Now my Bloglines looks much cleaner, but with the links here I can refer to some of my “come back and look at later” articles. Thanks to the websites who’ve put these together (you can notice that there are quite a few that come from the same websites.)

January 30, 2008

It’s going to be a hot birthday. (I read it in the news)

2008 is one of the first years in a long time that I’m not taking a trip to celebrate my arrival to this world on January 31st. For those of you who know me well, you’ve already been asking, “where are you going for your birthday?” This year I decided to stick around town and enjoy this snow we’ve been having instead of lying on a sandy beach somewhere. Years past have been gloomy, gray and cold and it has been nice to escape to Florida, Cancun, Acapulco, Hawaii (all trips in years past). But while this year we’ve had plenty of the cold, in contrast to years past, we’ve also received plenty of the white stuff. I mean lots! It’s a nice change – I love the snow!

So to take advantage of the white stuff, I’m going snowboarding. Yup, hitting the slopes this weekend. I typically head to Brighton, but I’ve also talked about trying somewhere new this time. (Any suggestions?) In pulling up to check the weather for my birthday and the day after on KSL.com, I was surprised to find it was going to be a toasty day (and for the low none-the-less!):

So other than the oceans boiling and every living thing cooking in their skin, I think it just might be a good day to hit the slopes. I’ll be sure to grab my SPF 10,000 – wish me luck!

January 25, 2007

Etch-A-Sketch meets Jackson Pollock with EyeFX.com

I check my lists of Utah Graphic Designers, Utah Graphic Design Firms, etc. on a regular basis to make sure that all the folks listed there are active links and still doing great design, and tonight I ran across something cool.

Though I don’t remember what EyeFX had on their page previously, what they have now is a lot of fun on a boring afternoon. The page loads up grey, and your mouse curser becomes a pen tool that allows you to create webs of designs that looks somewhat like a Jackson Pollock painting. Hovering the pen longer makes a thicker stroke, and moving quick keeps it light and thin. You’ll notice that the canvas area fits any size browser whether full screen, half screen or made tiney.

Give it a try at http://www.eyefx.com

December 30, 2006

5,000 Corporate Logos in Vector Format

If you haven’t run across this link as yet, you might find it to be of assistance in the future. It’s a site that hosts nearly 5,000 corporate logos and brand marks in vector format. While I don’t know the legality of this site (thus, it could be taken down any day), it is a great resource for those who need to have a corporate logo and don’t have time to illustrate the logo or go through the corporate mombo-jombo to get one. I recently found it handy to get the “Recordable Compact Disc” logo which I had been looking for.

Check it out at http://www.logotypes.ru/

I was also referred to another site from a graphic design forum, which essentially does the same thing, but I haven’t had time to poke around there as much. The site is covered in ads, so it seems a little more difficult to navigate. Look near the bottom for the “search” and the “A-B-C” directory. The one search I did for “Harley” came up with many more versions of the Harley Davidson logo than the previous logo directory. (I needed this logo to do a mock-up for a local Harley Davidson shop that’s opening up.)

Check it out at http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/

December 19, 2006

MyFamily.com, Inc. Changes Corporate Name to The Generations Network

I read this in a recent press release:

MyFamily.com, Inc., the leading online network for connecting families across distance and time, today announced that it is changing its name to The Generations Network, Inc., effective immediately. The company will continue to serve families online through its portfolio of leading brands and websites.

Hu? The Generations Network? Hmmm. I don’t get it. I wasn’t a big fan of the name “MyFamily.com”, though I’ve gotten use to it over time. The company has proved itself as a long-standing member of the Internet community despite their name; the company’s combined properties form the No. 1 network of family history websites in both the United States and United Kingdom.

But “The Generations Network”? It doesn’t quite rub me right. It doesn’t even sound like the name of a company. I’m sure that the acronym TGN will be thrown around, to avoid having to say the whole thing (they already registered the URL), I mean can you imaging saying “I work for The (capitalize “The”) Generations Network”?

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December 11, 2006

MINDWISE Announcement – What is a Promotion Agency?

In a feature article from connect magazine, there was a story about a new Salt Lake City Utah based promotion agency called MINDWISE. It took me a couple searches to find their website, which currently isn’t built out, though the article says they have officially opened for business and “…already engineered a slew of promotions locally and is in talks with various companies to handle upcoming events, promotions and sponsorships next year.”

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December 9, 2006

I Don’t Like Instant Messaging, and I’m Not Alone

I’ve never been much of a gadget person, nor have I been one who likes to chat, but for goodness sakes it’s nice to hear that I’m not alone. In a recent survey of 1,013 adults and 500 teens conducted online by Knowledge Networks from Nov. 30-Dec. 4., it was discovered that teens use Instant Message or “IM” twice as much as adults.

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December 2, 2006

Scribble on Walls – Self-Adhesive Wall Art

I recently got an email from one of my friends that announced the launch of his latest venture called Scribble Art (located at http://www.scribbleonwalls.com). Scribble turns any blank wall, mirror, window, ceiling, tabletop or even a low traffic floor into a giant canvas to create your design masterpiece.

Other than being a big fan of their logo (way to go Chris!) I am a big fan of the product. Removable wall art is not a brand new concept, I remember first reading in Business 2.0 about Blik who also produces designer surface graphics. They’ve been 2 years in development and received plenty attention from press and the art worlds. This is a good thing – as Scribble has a proven model to emulate – and yet the challenge is that they have to differentiate their product and design in the eye of the consumer.

Their website just launched a few days ago, and so there’s still a few technical glitches. (I had trouble using it in Safari, which is a known bug). But it’s well organized, fun, and for a company just launching – they’ve got a lot of great designs which will only continue to build. They’ve made an good effort to be playful with their copy such as the following:

The point is, we’re design geeks who get off on creating self-adhesive art for your walls. We’re not hip, Swedish people. In fact, we don’t even know any hip OR Swedish people. We are garden-variety art and design geeks. And we’re precisely the sort of people you’d want in your house creating cool designs for your walls. As long as we promised to leave at a decent time.

Could those “Swedish people” the website refers to be my sweet IKEA folks?

For the Therty Brand headquarters (I blogged about this company a couple days ago) I think it would be fun to do large spots with different designs to reflect their product and logo. What great ideas can you think of to do with Scribble art?

Congratulations on the launch! Happy Scribbling!

November 25, 2006

Utah Designers, Illustrators, Design Firms and More

I’ve been adding a few links every week to my lists of Utah talent (have you checked lately?), so keep checking back. I’m always doing Google searches trying to find more to add that I’ve missed. Tonight I ran across a directory called Salt Lake Sites at http://slsites.com where I was able to find a few more design firms, a photographer, and an illustrator I was missing.

Salt Lake Sites
Salt Lake Sites claims to be the largest open directory for Salt Lake City, Utah and surrounding communities. While it may not be the prettiest directory I’ve seen, with over five thousand listings in 280 categories, it well could be as it claims. The site was created by Kevin Delaney as a non-commercial hobby site. All he asks for being listed is a shout-out on your blog or website, or a small listing fee in return. There was a couple ill-fated links in the design section that I reported to Kevin – I’m sure he has plenty on his hands to do just approving new links.

So in an effort to get more people to find my site, I’m listing it there tonight. I’ll let you know how it goes (I use Google Analytics to track it).

Utah Designers, Illustrators, Design Firms and More
And keep checking back for my continued lists of Utah Talent! (I add a few new ones every-so-often, and verify their existence at least every week.)

  • Utah Arts Organizations
  • Utah Design Firms and Agencies
  • Utah Graphic Designers
  • Utah Illustrators & Animators
  • Utah Photographers

    • And please let me know if you have any suggested links of other Utah talent!

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