From Ordinary to Extraordinary

"Nightmare Number One: When we did it 'right' ...it was pretty ordinary." - Barry Gibbons - Former CEO Burger King

Just doing something right is not enough to compete in the crowded market today. You must do work and create products that go beyond just doing it "right," they must appeal to your customers in a unique and personal way. What emotions do your products and services conjure up in your customers?

Universal Brand Principles

Every brand is different. It has unique characteristics, elements and emotions attached to it, yet there are some basic principles that can be applied to almost every brand. They are the tenets by which a brand is communicated, helping support it by providing guidance for focusing the message and the meaning, making it more powerful and connecting it more strongly to its target audience.

After years of developing and managing brands, here are the ones that I believe are the most important:

• Simplicity of message
o If it’s complicated, long or highly technical, chances are the vast majority of our audience won’t get it!

• Consistency of messages, phrases and terms
o Say the same thing over and over again in the same way, over and over again and soon they’ll start to understand and remember.

• Relevance to audience and locale
o Give them a reason to care that matters to them.

• Context of audience understanding
o Give them a reason to care in a way they understand, examples and comments out of context are useless.

• Reason for choosing our brand
o If you cannot tell them why your products and services are right for their needs then you shouldn’t be selling to them. Ultimately it all comes down to giving an audience a compelling reason to choose your company or products over any other option.

Take a look at your brand and measure it against these principles. Are you adhering to them, or is your brand message fragmented? It could mean the difference between success and failure.

Great Design is....

Great Design is Bold.... it changes peoples perceptions
Great Design Makes a Statement.... it implies your position
Great Design is Subtle.... it has nuances that say more than words
Great Design is Complex.... it is more than skin deep
Great Design is Powerful.... it commands attention
Great Design is Elegant.... it feels "rich"
Great Design is Sophisticated.... it communicates a higher sense of being
Great Design is Personal.... it says something different to each person
Great Design is For The Masses.... it says the same thing to everyone
Great Design is Timeless.... it never ages

There are a lot of aspects to great design that make it special. Some people say "I know great design when I see it," others feel they need to be told, but one thing is clear.

Great Design is GREAT!!!!

Color Trends... for Flowers?

Color Trends Moving to Warmer Zones

Did you know that there are color trends for flowers, too? Like any kind of designer, retail florists must stay apprised of the new products and design styles that entice customers and disguish florists from mass marketers. Because of the role fresh flowers play as decorative accessories, color trends are particularly important to the cut flower industry.

Colors such as yellow, orange rusty reds and warm browns will be the warming trends to influence designs.

Who knew?

Does your company have a silent messenger?

Moving into the third Millennium, the Inuit have developed a communication system that spans across the circumpolar region of the Earth. Standing the test of time, Inukshuks now convey as eternal symbols of leadership, encouraging the importance of friendship, and reminding us of our dependence on one another. Another reason you may want to wait before changing your branding system after only 10 years. Read more about how a silent messenger can be applied as part of your Design Thought Strategy^SM planning process.

Brand as Performance Art

I believe every brand is personal. Not necessarily the brand owner or creator, but the brand perception: What we each think of, feel or experience every time we encounter a brand we recognize. What drives our perceptions are the interactions we have with the brand and how that brand has "acted" in our personal view.

This is a critical lesson for companies and individuals alike. It has never been more important for us to understand that how we present our brands to the marketplace is as much a performance as it is an activity or promotion. Thus, you should think of your brand in terms of performance art.

Whether you are an executive with a large corporation or a sole proprietor of a small accounting practice, this lesson is one of the most important you can ever learn. Think back to the last meeting you had with a customer, client or fellow employee. How did you "perform?" Were you presenting the standard company line, highly professional and competent, or were you GREAT!! and left your audience wanting to experience more? What you just did was present your "brand." If you were talking for the company, did your presentation match the companies brand? If you are a sole proprietor did your client leave with a better sense of who you are and what you're offering. Was their experience genuine?

Did you present your brand as if you were performing art? Think about it.

We all want our customers and clients to leave their meetings with us more enthusiastic and confident than when they walked in the door and our performance is a direct reflection on their perception of your brand.

Thinking Like a Designer

You've read my posts about Design as a New Religion and Revenge of the Right Brain where the the seismic shift is ending the Information age and begins the Conceptual Age. It's time we recognize that as goods and services are becoming increasingly routinized, our new value allows us to design entire systems, serve as life planners, and move out of the intricacies of Excel and into the art of the deal.

I've just read a great article in FastCompany's April Issue The Business of Design. We're becoming a design-based economy and companies must become more like design shops. Roger Martin, Dean of University of Toronto's Rotman School of Business also believes the North American economy is radically transforming, "Businesspeople don't just need to understand designers better - they need to become designers."

Don't pull out Photoshop just yet.

Currently, two types of logic are rewarded in traditional companies: inductive and deductive -end of story. However, abductive thinking is a process that allows designers to bet on what's probable, instead of acting on what is certain. Moreover, designers try it, prototype it, improve it and then move it -much like Apple did with the IPod.

Growing up, it was my perspective that one's worth was based on being a productive part of society -creating and innovating streamlined solutions. When I became inducted into Corporate America (ohh, I feel a comic hero parody coming on), I noticed that status was based on managing budgets and large staff. Frankly, I could give a flip about that, but I did care about process and the enveloping beauty of elegant solutions. I wished I had kept this oh-so-cool makeup case produced for Avon Cosmetics by a Holland design firm back in the early 80s.

If organizations adopt a design-based strategy, they can embrace the designer's maxim: learn by doing by identifying weakness and make midflight corrections along the way. If everything must be proven, innovations will never take place, thus preventing themselves from becoming the trendsetters.

Buying into Your Brand

You've got enough products to warrant a catalog and you feel they are all worthy of space in that catalog. You begin to fret because you feel you need good photographs of your products and after trial and error, you just can't seem to take a great shot. Hm... what to do?

Have you thought that maybe you don't need each and every product photographed? Perhaps taking photos your best select items or the ones that will lead the trend next season are the best options for photos -the rest of the products could be line drawings with flat color to represent the remaining line. That's right, mix and match the styles of representation also adds intrigue and mystique to your product line.

How does this buy into your brand, you ask? Well, if you are courting customers or retailers, they'll want to see these products intimately, and where is a better place than at your studio or office? Once you've made a brief connection with a potential sale, creating an environment in which to experience the brand will deepen their willingness to participate.

Great Quote from The Incredibles

"Luck favors the prepared."
Edna, the designer to ElastaGirl

Thought for the Day

"Prefer a bold failure to a mediocre success."
Tom Peters to James Hathaway

10 Things I Have Learned from Milton Glaser

Milton Glaser was a mentor of mine in college, although he didn't know it. Upon design class enrollment, we were to learn his name, study his philosophy, and emulate his passion. God help any of us if we could be so enlightened and talented.

Meanwhile, Professor Milton has created a collage of learned ideas influenced by artisans all over the world. Cultures include African groups to the Balinese whose approach to art is not a separate activity from daily life. I believe life is performance art, and if this is true, I'm almost always embarrassing myself onstage -like I give a flip.

Here's a list of Milton's practice of design repackaged attractively from the past 50 years:

1 - You can only work for people that you like
2 - If you have a choice, never have a job
3 - Some people are toxic, avoid them
4 - Professionalism is not enough or The Good is the Enemy of the Great
5 - Less is not necessarily more (Just enough is more.)
6 - Style is not to be trusted
7 - How you live changes your brain
8 - Doubt is better than certainty
9 - Solving the problem is more important that being right
10 - Tell the Truth

"Leading" Your Brand

It is more apparent than ever that brands today require clear, concise and visionary leadership in order to make an impact. Even if you have the key components of brand in place - a clear message, strong positioning, great story and highly distinct elements - you still need to be able to articulate them to your target audience.

Traditionally this is done through vehicles such as PR, advertising and promotions that require the audience to engage reactively. On the proactive side most brand development is done through sales engagements and personal meetings. These methods have historically worked very well, but their influence is starting to wane as markets become more competitive and media constantly delivers a greater diversity of messages.

To fight through the clutter today, you must turn the interactions your brand has with your target audience into experiences. You must tell a compelling and resonant story that connects with them at a level beyond just a transaction. You must inspire your audience to act. You must "lead" them to the understanding of your brand you want them to have. In today's cluttered marketplace there is no better way to make your brand distinct than to lead your audiences understanding.

Design as the New Religion

"I truly believe design thinking will make your life better." David Kelley, Stanford Univ. engineering professor and IDEO chairman.

I wholeheartedly support David's statement. I love design. I live to eat, breath, and make love to design. It's what gets me high, it's what gets me up in the morning, and it gives me permission to day dream about how people might react and cognitively interact with design on a daily basis.

I just read an article in Time under the Innovation heading: School of Bright Ideas. It outlines how IDEO's mission is to change the way student and businesses think.

Read it: http://www.time.com/time/insidebiz/article/0,9171,1034705,00.html

IDEO maintains that it's just common sense when one gets on the other side of design, but because of inertia and conditioning, we quickly lose the persepective we need. One has to do things to provoke creativity, and that's certainly where ECS|DC can fit in on a small scale to help our clients.

Adopting the learn, look, ask, try methodology, we can bring forth questions never thought of by the client. Dismissing the experience and constant creative questions that surround your business plan by your design team undermines your road to success.

Design Thought Strategy When you say to yourself that you can design your own logo or create your own design guidelines, remember that design is more than skin deep. While market-research is imperative, the real solution is solving the problem behind the design challenge.

Writing for the Web

One might compare reading advertisement on billboards while driving to reading copy on Web sites. A mistake often made in the world of Web development is the penchant to dump brochure copy onto a Web page and call it a day. However, there are better ways to accomplish writing for the Web while making your customers happy.

Remember, your customers have 7 seconds of attention span before they move on and 79% of Web users scan rather than read. While reading on the screen reduces scan time about 25%, users also equate reading a long article with non-productivity.

Web pages compete for the user's attention and because it's a user-driven medium, information foraging is the result of an experienced Web reader. Users simply do not want to work hard for their information. Hence, readers are encouraged to cherry pick the most tasty segments as they jump from one hyper link to the next.

So, how do you create the most effective information segments? The first key is to remember that writing for Web is entirely different than writing for print. Our job is to structure information in a way that allows our customers to consume in an efficient and succinct manner.

Additional keys to Web writing success:

Key 1: Headlines
Structure articles with a headline then apply two or three levels of sub-headlines. This provides double-duty by also facilitating access for blind users.

Key 2: Keep Headlines Meaningful
Resist the urge to apply 'cutesy' verbal bric-a-brac to your topics, unless your scrapbooking.

Key 3: Edit!
Cut your copy by half the word count than conventional writing. Cutting word count can be accomplished without sacrificing depth of content.

Key 4: Keep Language Simple
Because we're operating in a global environment, English is not the World's primary language. Prune flowery adjectives and prepositions and conserve the impulsion to design an essay around existentialism. Clean and concise writing provides straightforward understanding.

Key 5: One Idea at a Time
If you have several concepts to convey, consider creating a second article. Keeping topics brief and ideas pared down to no more than two paragraphs -optimally one- will increase the success of speedy comprehension.

Key 6: Delivering the Point

Optimize more than three sentences in a paragraph as a list

Make use of bullet items in your step-by-step guides

Bullet points make articles easier to read both off and on-screen.

Key 7: Use Bold Text Judiciously
Using bold text for important information or the key phrase of the paragraph can make the article easier to read for 'skimmers'.

Key 8: Make It Personal
Remember to keep your voice as your write for your audience. They're reading because they want to hear your viewpoint, in your voice.

Licensing & Copyright Ignorance

People... stop!

I'm pleading with you before you get into a heap o'trouble. I'm talking about borrowing licensed materials and reappropriating them for your resale use.

I was invited to judge an upcoming art event recently. While reviewing the slides for selection, we discovered the overwhelming amount of commercial proliferation used for one's own benefit. I'm asking you to just stop and think about what you're doing.

Let me outline some of the issues I saw and how they might be concluded as copyright infringement:

What we saw were people purchasing items such as Hello Kitty lunch boxes, removing the tops and bottoms to attach to another structure and transforming it into an art box or purse. That's a huge no-no in the world of copyright & licensing.

Another example is when folks purchase brand license plates, such as UNC or Miami Dolphins, and affix them as a roof on a bird house. Again, huge mistake when making items for resale. Unless you've used materials from a demolished house, let's say, tin from the roof and reappropriate it, you might think twice.

Also, one cannot use a logo (i.e. Coca Cola) when carving into baseball bats as decorative accessories.

Another example is when a musician decides to recompose Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds for Bluegrass, he needs to pay a fee to the original artist; in this case, it would be the Beatles.

One needs to gain permission from those brands in order to complete such a project for resale. In many cases, seeking out permission and the funds to purchase an exclusive license will become overwhelmingly cost prohibative to you as an individual.

What can happen if permission is not sought out? Initially, you'll most likely receive a 'cease and desist' letter from the licensor and an invitation to pay back profits as well as pay other penalties such as punitive damages, fines and attorney fees.

So, you might ask yourself, "Just how much is this worth to me?"

For more info on gaining appropriate permissions, see
Getting Permission: How to License and Clear Copyrighted Materials Online and Off

Art Copyright Coalition (ACC)
Learn how copyright images become infringements.