What We Write About +

What We Write About.

find interesting.

Mar­ian Bantjes — A look at the designer's personal touch to custom cards.

While most peo­ple use Christ­mas as a time to reach out to fam­ily and friends through card-sending, Mar­ian Ban­t­jes, famous designer and illus­tra­tor, waits a few months until Valentine’s Day, instead. And, she doesn’t just send out ordi­nary, store-bought cards. Over the past eight years, Ban­t­jes’ valen­tines have included laser-cutting, hand-lettering, recy­cling of old cards, and even draw­ing an indi­vid­ual valen­tine for every one of the 150 peo­ple on her list. It is her beau­ti­ful, care­ful and per­sonal atten­tion to detail that has led her to such remark­able suc­cess in brand­ing and design.

This year, inspired by the travel she fre­quently does, Ban­t­jes repur­posed old post­cards sent from from around the world as the can­vas for her valen­tines. The post­cards dated from 1901 to about 1990, and some of them had even been sent before, evi­denced by the hand­writ­ten mes­sages on the back. To add a per­sonal touch, her mes­sage, “From me wher­ever I am/To you wher­ever you are,” was printed in sil­ver over each one. You can see more of this year’s cards here.

While Ban­t­jes’ cus­tom cards require a lot of time and effort to send out (her valen­tines list has grown close to 480 peo­ple), it is a nice ges­ture that we can eas­ily use on a smaller scale. Some­times, just a sim­ple and per­son­al­ized detail can make all the difference.

For more inspi­ra­tion, you can see her valen­tines from other years, here: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011. 

Posted: 02.21.2012|Posted by: Katherine R.|Comments (0)|
think.

Social Media Management — Are you targeting the right audience?

When social net­work­ing sites first hit the Web, I found myself fas­ci­nated with the idea that I could con­nect with my friends and keep up with cur­rent hap­pen­ings at all hours of the day. From fol­low­ing my favorite celebri­ties to check­ing out the lat­est from all of my friends’ week­ends, I quickly found myself addicted to the sites — giv­ing myself the offi­cial title of a social media “junkie”. It wasn’t until I set­tled into my career path that I saw the true poten­tial of these sites and their abil­ity to effec­tively rep­re­sent and posi­tion a brand  while con­nect­ing with con­sumers in such a way that had never been mas­tered before. But, how can com­pa­nies know if they’re truly con­nect­ing with their audi­ence? Is there a “secret” to effec­tively and effi­ciently man­ag­ing your company’s social media plat­forms to lever­age your brand? Let’s take a look at how you can iden­tify and deter­mine if you’re talk­ing to the right peo­ple, and how to effec­tively man­age your company’s social media channels.

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Posted: 02.16.2012|Posted by: Emily S.|Comments (0)|
have on our wish list.

2012 Designer’s Wish List — Ten creative and "well-branded" items I want this year.

Each year, I have my eye on a few items I am really inter­ested in acquir­ing, whether they are tech-y or just plain cool. Call it brand mon­i­tor­ing, if you will. Last year, my list was more tech-inspired with the iPad and Apple TV at the top. This year, my list ranges from weekly cod­ing lessons to the highly unat­tain­able iPhone-controlled Cof­fee Faucet. Regard­less, most of the items I find inter­est­ing typ­i­cally revolve around well-branded prod­ucts or services.

My list is sorted by most attain­able (start­ing with one) to most unat­tain­able (end­ing with ten). It is also sort of in the order I plan on pur­chas­ing these items. Enjoy this year’s eclec­tic list and maybe some of these things will end up at the top of your list, as well.

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Posted: 02.14.2012|Posted by: Stefan B.|Comments (0)|
think.

Your Brand May Not Be For Every­one (and that’s okay!) — How identifying and sticking to your organization's expertise will position you for success.

Recently, I stum­bled upon a file of old pro­pos­als. It’s fun to see where some of our rela­tion­ships began. It’s also inter­est­ing to revisit those that failed to pass the “esti­mate” phase. Sur­pris­ingly, in review­ing some of the deals that we didn’t win, I was at ease with the unmatched relationships.

In busi­ness, the mantra is often that more is bet­ter; we’re tasked to sell as much prod­uct as pos­si­ble. How­ever, some­where along the way we must ask our­selves if every poten­tial rela­tion­ship is a right fit for both parties.

This is really more of a dis­cus­sion in tar­get mar­ket­ing than any­thing else. You see, when I reviewed the projects that we didn’t “win”, it was clear that some of these projects were out­side of our rebrand­ing scope. Opt­ing out of busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties in effort to stick to our organization’s fun­da­men­tal val­ues and vision wasn’t nec­es­sar­ily a loss, but rather an oppor­tu­nity for growth in our field of expertise.

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Posted: 02.09.2012|Posted by: Phil D.|Comments (0)|
would like to announce.

Tac­tic Iden­tity Design Published — Recent corporate identity design selected for publication.

Corporate Identity Design Recognized

We were super-excited to see our copy of iheart­l­o­gos’ Sea­son Two book arrive last week! Our recent iden­tity redesign for NOW Courier was selected for pub­li­ca­tion this time around, and we’re pleased to have our work rep­re­sented along­side so many other great identities.

iheart­l­o­gos, a pop­u­lar logo design com­pe­ti­tion where “the com­peti­tors are the judges — and vice versa,” received approx­i­mately 1,300 entries in the Sea­son Two com­pe­ti­tion. 450 were selected for publication.

Posted: 02.07.2012|Posted by: Cody T.|Comments (0)|
find interesting.

The Super Brand — A look at the brand behind the Super Bowl.

It’s that time of year, again! In a few short days over 100 mil­lion peo­ple will tune into the sin­gle most-viewed pro­gram on tele­vi­sion: the Super Bowl. And, what could be more excit­ing than this year’s game hosted right here in Indi­anapo­lis? As the city hosts the nation’s most pop­u­lar sport­ing event, we thought we’d take this oppor­tu­nity to share insight on the Super Bowl’s brand posi­tion­ing and development.

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Posted: 02.02.2012|Posted by: Emily S.|Comments (0)|
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