One wrong digit in a telephone number can bring a project to its knees – costing your client thousands of dollars. Keep your eye on the ball and sweat out every minuscule detail. If you are incapable of making a final proof, find someone who can. Make sure that your client signs-off.
Despite your desire to make every logo your own, most companies have spend pant-loads of money getting their name and corporate identity out into public view. Unless their logo is offensive, illegible, or a direct ripoff of someone else – from a brand equity perspective, you may have to hang with it for a while.
3. You are NOT an artist, dammit.
People are not paying you to reveal your innermost feelings and expressively demonstrate your very own personal hangups. They have hired you because they feel confident in your ability to make their business brand stronger, generate more interest in their products and/or services, and ultimately – you are responsible for bringing customers through their door, bulging wallet in hand.
In the May 20 issue of Time, there is a single page article entitled: “Assessing the Creative Spark, What Americans think about creativity."
From a page real estate perspective, the article is 65% picture and 35% text. This fits perfectly with the poll results, showing that 50% of those interviewed first define creativity as ‘pictures’, over ‘words’ and ‘sounds’.
In my opinion, there are some important things happening here:
Life is now too damn fast for reading. A well developed ‘picture’ (often referred too as an infographic – a new word, still questioned by my spell checker) is has a much quicker cranial upload speed. Letters need to be deciphered into words, words into sentences, sentences into… blah, blah, blah. You get the picture. (No pun intended.) We are the USA Today generation.
Modern creative individuals, such as Walt Disney and Steve Jobs have proven that it is possible to make a ton of money, creating paradigm shifting, mainstream products – within their own lifetime. This beats the pants off of poor fellows like Vincent Van Gogh and Herman Melville, who never saw a penny from their creative works until long after their expiration date.
Because every moment of our spare time now involves a backlit screen (smart phone, tablet, laptop, desktop… blah, blah, blah) – there is an incredible demand for screen filler (content).
Quite suddenly, the creative is in demand! To steal terminology from my CPA/MBA brother-in-law, the ‘bean-counting number-crunchers’ are suddenly recognizing the value of us ‘creative-types’.
Here’s hoping that our society is ready to pay for it! – Doug.
I made my biannual trip to the local shopping mall over the weekend. Trust me, I do everything in my power to avoid the indoor shopping experience. However, there are certain times when a mall journey is the only option. This year it has been Christmas and Mother's Day.
Earlier in my life, I was up to date with the best and brightest retail brands. Over the years I have become much more numb to the world of the newest and hippest – I am not yet wearing the traditional, frugal Yankee, wool sport coat with elbow patches –but I appear to be headed in that direction.
During my last two forced marches to the South Shore Plaza, I have experienced, first-hand, the incredible popularity of Pandora bracelets. In preparation for female-inclusive, gift-giving holidays, a fifty yard line of customers leading into the narrow Pandora store, is not unusual.
The Pandora concept is nothing new. It is an update of the classic charm bracelet. You buy the bracelet which is available in multiple materials – within a price range of between $40 and $1400, with most models priced at the lower end of this wide range.
Charms (beads) for these bracelets, part of an ever-changing assortment (with a built-in collect-ability aspect) are available for between $35 and just over $300, again, most are priced towards the less expensive end of the dollar spectrum.
The individual components are massed produced trinkets. It is when you ‘build’ your bracelet, one bead at a time, that it begins to take on its own unique character. For the gift-provider, each bead represents another mandatory present, checked off the holiday gift list.
Sure, a Pandora commitment may mean standing in line for an hour or more, but to this shopper – it saves me from the overwhelming clutter and distraction of a ransacked Macy’s, stalking undefined game, that must the fashion sense and size specifications of the gift recipient.
From a design, marketing and personal standpoint, I congratulate Pandora on creating a killer serial gift! – Doug.
The world is moving too damn fast. Machines originally built to streamline the daily grind, allowing for more leisure activity – have now enabled us to get twice as much done within the same amount of work time.
Weekends, once a respite for rest and refueling, are now fair game for work related interruptions and ‘catch-up’ time. In addition, the rules of business engagement, established over centuries of trial and error, are rewritten on an almost daily basis.
Living through tragic Boston Marathon bombings, we have all witnessed firsthand, the problems associated with round-the-clock news reporting. The information spigot has been left open – spewing every drop of unfiltered nugget of information into the trough and down the drain – before, it can be properly deciphered.
Now more than ever, it is important for us as individuals to establish our own rules of engagement with the world – because believe it or not, you are in control.
For the past year, I have been working with Sunil Bhaskaran, a Business Performance Consultant, who runs a company entitled Cahaya Mind. I met Sunil at a conference on conscious capitalism, following my work for YouthTrade, a company built to enable and empower young entrepreneurs from around the world. Sunil was a guest speaker and lead breakout session, that I attended.
At the time, I was working extremely hard, many hours a week. After participating in his presentation, I realized that through Sunil’s direction, teaching, and leadership – I had found the compass that I was looking for to guide me through the many distractions of twenty-first century living.
We generally meet by telephone, twice a month for an hour. However, on a daily basis, I email Sunil a report of my intended actions for that day, the previous day, updates for my yearly goals and an ongoing project – mapping out the next 10+ years.
For this ‘outside the box’ thinker, this structure was at first worrisome. I am not a person that appreciates rules and formality. Initially, I was a bit nervous and apprehensive.
Now, many months later, I realize that once the structure has been set up, I have more time to do what I like to do best – create! – Doug.
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I just received some nice recognition from the folks at LinkedIn. It seems as though my profile is one of the most visited, on the planet's leading business-oriented social networking site. I am not actually sure how much design and marketing business this is bringing in but I know that it is definitely generating buzz.
If you haven't estabished yourself on LinkedIn, the "Blizzard of 2013" might give you the time that you need to get started. – cheers, Doug.
For some reason, this year's holiday mailing list became corrupted and not everyone received our family holiday card. For this we apologize. It was nothing personal.
We would love to add you to next year's list. Send us your logistics and we'll get you back on track for 2014.
Yes, my favorite person in the whole wide world is my wife, Selene, and yes, we have our house on the market. You have probably already seen my 31 Bow Street views, more than you should wish to remember.
WE ARE NOT GETTING A DIVORCE. WE ARE SELLING OUR HOUSE BECAUSE WE ARE DOWNSIZING.
Cohasset Massachusetts, is a storybook New England town of approximately 7500 people. As with any small and extremely charming seaside town, with a world-class school system and wonderful shops and restaurants, there are those small-minded folks that like to throw around rumors and heresay–without conducting adequate due diligence and fact checking.
So, in an attempt to disrupt the misinformative chatter, we have developed a T-shirt concept for clarification purposes. Don't make us print this! You will be sorry.
Currently working within the Germ Incubator. As stated yesterday, looking for one source to publish from. The multi-channel world is giving me a headache. OK. About to push the button.
Animal Planet, The History Channel, Discovery Channel and (not my grandmother’s)National Geographic Channel are investing millions of dollars in highlighting and glorifying the backwoods realities of Redneck life.
Beyond (the assumed) tiny production costs (the whacky characters write their own lines), what is the fascination? Perhaps these shows will convince America’s youth that there is a great deal of potential in family dentistry as a potential career path.
description from website: Think the days of bootleggers, backwoods stills and "white lightning" are over? Not a chance! It's a multi-million dollar industry. But perhaps more importantly to the moonshiners, it's a tradition dating back hundreds of years, passed down to them from their forefathers. It's part of their history and culture. While this practice is surprisingly alive and well, it's not always legal.
Discovery Channel's all-new series MOONSHINERS tells the story of those who brew their shine - often in the woods near their homes using camouflaged equipment - and the local authorities who try to keep them honest. Viewers will witness practices rarely, if ever, seen on television including the sacred rite of passage for a moonshiner - firing up the still for the first time. They will also meet legends, including notorious moonshiner Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton.
description from website: When you think of the Amish, buggies, bonnets, peace and simplicity come to mind. In the historic Amish settlement of Lancaster, protection and "peace" can come at a price.
Lebanon Levi is the Amish insider who holds the power and serves as protector of the community for a price. He exists above the law and occupies the role of police, judge and jury. Levi's team engages in a life outside of Amish and non-Amish community codes as he quietly exerts his influence and control. Levi's brand of order is precise as he seeks to keep outside forces from infiltrating the Amish community, while keeping the principles and morality within the community in check.
Levi's team is lean and fearless. Alvin is Levi's right hand man and nobody gets to Levi without going through Alvin first. A lifelong friend, Alvin is at first glance an average passive Amish community member. However, he has a dark side, a past, and most importantly, Levi's complete trust. Alvin will protect Levi at any cost
description from website: Rocket City Rednecks is led by Travis Taylor and his team of redneck geniuses. In his younger years, Travis started out cleaning chicken coops, but for the past two decades he’s been a research scientist with the Department of Defense and NASA. Sometimes big science moves too slow for Travis, so come the weekends he “gits” together with his father, brother-in-law, nephew and best friend to combine a little hillbilly ingenuity with advanced engineering and physics to tackle real-world scenarios. With their thick accents and distinctive vocabulary, the tight-knit group brings their own unique style of southern charm to science and technology.
description from website: No Rod. No Reel. No Problem. Deep in the heart of America, an age-old tradition has given way to a fierce competition of brains, brawn, and guts: Oklahoma’s Okie Hand Fishing Invitational. For 10 weeks, five grabbling teams hunt for colossal flathead catfish using only their bare hands. With bragging rights, a $2,000 weekly prize, and a $10,000 grand prize on the line, it's an all-out battle to bring home the bacon—or in this case, fish.
description from website: Long before banks, ATMS and check-cashing services, there were pawn shops. Pawning was the leading form of consumer credit in the United States until the 1950s, and pawn shops are still helping everyday people make ends meet. Pawn Stars takes you inside the colorful world of the pawn business. At the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop on the outskirts of Las Vegas, three generations of the Harrison family--grandfather Richard, son Rick and grandson Corey--jointly run the family business, and there's clashing and camaraderie every step of the way. The three men use their sharp eyes and skills to assess the value of items from the commonplace to the truly historic, including a 16th-century samurai sword, a Super Bowl ring, a Picasso painting and a 17th-century stay of execution. It's up to them to determine what's real and what's fake, as they reveal the often surprising answer to the questions on everyone's mind, "What's the story behind it"? and "What's it worth?"
But wait, there’s more pawn shop hijinks and dimwitted awkwardness!
description from website: People have been visiting their local consignment shops for thousands of years. In fact, up until the 1950s, pawn shops served as the primary form of consumer credit in the United States. In Cajun Pawn Stars, which puts a southern spin on History’s hit series Pawn Stars, a cast of quirky characters continues this age-old tradition. At the famed Silver Dollar Pawn & Jewelry Center in Alexandria, Louisiana, an eclectic array of historical merchandise is on display, with items ranging from vintage cars to firearms to livestock.
Jimmie “Big Daddy” DeRamus, a longtime collector who’s as savvy as they come, established Silver Dollar over 25 years ago. His close-knit staff includes his brother, his daughter and others who might as well be family. Together they operate a 20,000-square-foot shop filled with so many rare pieces it’s been dubbed the “museum for sale”; it’s even a frequent destination for school field trips and tour bus excursions. At Silver Dollar, the unique family dynamic and never-ending stream of colorful locals make for a fascinating shopping and viewing experience as Big Daddy and his crew appraise, pawn and trade the Cajun way.
description from website: Dive deep into the backwoods of wild Kentucky with legendary woodsman Ernie Brown Jr. — aka "Turtleman" — as he takes on some of the most outlandish and outrageous nuisance calls these woods have to offer — including raccoons, skunks, snakes, venomous spiders and possums.
Ernie is a charming animal lover with an unbelievable Bluegrass lifestyle, and for the past three decades, he's been diving into Kentucky's murkiest ponds in search of feisty snapping turtles capable of biting through bone.
Accompanied by his canine companion Lolly and armed with country wits as sharp as the steel blade he carries, aptly named "Thunder," Turtleman has the uncanny ability to catch monster snapping turtles with his bare hands and return them into the wild unscathed.
Each week, Turtleman receives calls from dozens of businesses and home owners stuck with unwanted and potentially deadly pests. No job is too tough or dangerous for Turtleman, and his years of bonding with wild animals allow him to use his animal instincts to save them.
description from website: GATOR BOYS follows the death-defying exploits of Paul Bedard and Jimmy Riffle, two extraordinary alligator trappers who risk injury and death to hand-capture nuisance alligators that have invaded the back yards, swimming pools, garages and bedrooms of Florida Everglades residents.
It takes serious skill to do what the GATOR BOYS do. Paul is known for his commanding personality and unmatched expertise, capturing any-sized gator underwater with his bare hands. And Jimmy has been gator wrestling since he was 11-years-old, giving him the unmatched ability to handle nearly any dangerous reptile with ease.
description from website: Welcome to the wild sport of noodling! Watch thrill-thirsty city slickers head to Oklahoma to submerge themselves in murky waters to catch catfish with their bare hands and feet. It's a trip of a lifetime for fish-out-of-water, adventure-seeking city slickers who want nothing more than to surprise themselves -- and maybe gross themselves out -- by doing things they'd never thought they'd do. Led by Oklahoma hand-fishermen and self-proclaimed hillbillies Skipper Bivins and Trent Jackson, city folk get a taste of the redneck lifestyle by going through the paces of noodling catfish with no fishing rods and no hooks. The only lures are fingers and toes -- which, by the way, can be just as attractive to the snakes, beavers, muskrats and snapping turtles that take over abandoned catfish holes as homes of their own. The experience might be uncomfortable, completely foreign and downright terrifying, but it promises to alter the lives and positively affect each newly crowned noodler long after the last morsel of deep-fried fish is gone.
description from website: Animal Planet's hit series FINDING BIGFOOT returns with all-new episodes, investigating compelling evidence that may prove the existence of the elusive creature. This season, investigations take the team farther across the globe and further into sasquatch history than they've ever traveled.
For the first time, the intrepid cast of investigators -- Bigfoot Field Research Organization (BFRO) president Matt Moneymaker, researchers James "Bobo" Fay and Cliff Barackman, and skeptical scientist Ranae Holland - expand their search in North America and beyond to investigate the sasquatch phenomenon known as "yowies" in Australia and the "orang-pendek" of Indonesia. By examining photos and videos of the creature, speaking to local witnesses, using new technology and luring the mysterious beast with the team's signature sasquatch calls, the group uncovers startling evidence of the mysterious and highly intelligent enigma that has eluded capture for centuries and fascinated man for just as long.
description from website: Roaches! Rats! And bats! Oh my! Is your skin crawling? It will you tune in to INFESTED! This show unearths the real-life horror stories of ordinary people plagued by extraordinary infestations inside their homes.
Check your local listings and if you are watching TV from the comfort of your bed, remember to distinguish your corn cob pipe before zzzzzzzzz-ing out!
