What's in Store

We're excited to announce that two of our projects—Nice Package, Nice Rack promo and the web site for SYNQY—have won the gold and silver 2013 Davey Awards, respectively. The Davey Awards is an international creative award focused exclusively on honoring outstanding creative work from the best small firms worldwide. The 2013 Davey Awards received nearly 4,000 entries from ad agencies, interactive agencies, production firms, in-house creative professionals, graphic designers, design firms and public relations firms.

So we have all done it. Had something go to print and there is an error. When the client calls, your heart sinks and and your stomach tightens. In hindsight, the errors can be quite funny but in the moment your whole world comes crashing down. One of our more serious errors happened on a launch kit to Toshiba Telecom dealers. The word "Reliability" was misspelled in a headline. It was spelled "Realiability". Break that into two words and you get: REAL LIABILITY No there weren't two "Ls" but the client called and said it reads "real liability". Frantically we went back to check our printouts. The final signed off printout was spelled correctly. There, plain as day on the signed proof, by us and the client, was the error REALIABILITY staring us in the face. How could this have happened? The printer fessed up. A pre-press person had to retype the headline before proofing and they made the misspelling and we all missed it. Quickly we stopp...

It's true that as a design firm we're inundated with our fair share of unsolicited direct mail pieces and emails from photographers. Most of the time they go straight into the trash (actual and digital). A recent mailing we received from Ethan Pines Photography , however, not only managed to stay out of the trash, it's lingering on our desks. The cover immediately grabbed out attention: the shot of a ragged old-timey sailor with the headline "Argh! Another mailer!" That's pretty much exactly what we say when we get one of these things, so that elicited some chuckles. One we started leafing through, we saw that Ethan Pines was an accomplished photographer of people, with a really great sense of humor. We loved the dude with the pipe and the spread of the old guy dancing around. Even though most of our projects wouldn't call for photographs in Ethan's style, he's definitely made a good impression on us and we hope that this post might get his work ...

As soon as we got our first few followers, our first mention, and our first re-tweet, all I could think of is the scene from The Jerk when Steve Martin's character, Navin  R. Johnson, discovered his name in the phone book and he said: things are going to start happening to me now..." http://youtu.be/ahuPW6_t-z0 We came to the social media game a little late for ourselves. We helped our clients brand and build content but we didn't jump into the social media pool with gusto until a few months ago. Sure we had the occasional blog, we posted interesting content to our Facebook page, and we pinned in Pinterest, but we didn't follow our own advice---until now. We needed to make a true commitment to this marketing strategy for it to make a difference and we have enlisted the help of the entire office. Our first step was to define the type of content we wanted to cultivate and who we wanted to follow. Our purpose: Gain awareness and position ourselves as thought ...

This Book is Dedicated to Sound. These words above are printed on the dedication page of this great book. So how do you create impact without words? Cochlear knows how – and they've done so in stunning fashion with this promotional book about Cochlear implants. We recently received this limited first edition, printed by Lithographix based in Hawthorne, California. This large book comes in a slim box with a visual of crashing waves on the front of the package and the subtle headline "Let There Be Sound". Aside from an intro page and a few pages of copy in the back detailing the different Cochlear implant systems, this book uses very little words and is primarily eye candy — and it's brilliant. Thumbing through each page presents a different "sound" depicted with a photograph. From the simple bubble wrap pattern on the inside front cover, to a shot of popcorn popping, people laughing, or rain drops on a puddle, you can "hear" and even ...

A SYNQY allows you to deliver the perfect brand experience on websites you don’t own. SYNQY provides a solution that turns your static brand assets, like logos and product images, into rich dynamic points of engagement. Sounds intriguing doesn’t it? We thought so too. Michael Weissman, Chairman and CEO, of SYNQY called upon JDA to pitch the concept and we knew many of our clients would want to take advantage of this technology. We became so intrigued we assisted Michael and his VP of Marketing, Sharlene Sones, in developing and designing their web site. “It's a very rare graphics company that can deliver both creative and well-constructed code. JDA is one of those rare companies. But, more importantly, JDA acts like a partner. They deliver superior thinking. They solved problems we had not even considered — before we had to deal with them. They work as hard as we do. And they are great fun to be around. Our team loves the JDA team. They delivered tremendous value f...