Durham, North Carolina brand marketing and messaging consultancy.
Some videos I thought you might like, if you were thinking about inspiration and stick-with-it-ness.
Ira Glass: Stuff at first will not be good, but you have killer taste.
DK’s take on how to get there: trust the process, all the way.
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An infographic we designed for New York-based search marketing firm Dragon Search. Click here for a .pdf
Many thanks for the hard work! –Josepf Haslam, Dragon Search
Ric Dragon, who heads Dragon Search in upstate New York, was in a Tweet chat at the same time with me a year ago, and now we’ve done two drawing projects for his company. Which is awesome, but the more intriguing thing was when he told me to Google Ellsworth Kelly. Whoa!
I’m just back from a week in Washington, DC, where I got to see a bunch of Kelly pieces now showing in the modern wing of the National Gallery of Art. I also got to wander about on parts of the Mall where Akira and I first had our conversations about art, meaning, and joining our lives together, and that was back in 1996! Coming full circle with knowledge of artists after having seen pieces in museums of cities like Berlin, Tokyo, London, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, and many more, I was really moved to note the time lapse. I feel older, but more awake to things. Seeing this museum after so many years and experiences was powerful. Kelly is one of DK’s new heroes: keeping it simple, straight, and delightful at the same time. A solid concept, a well-executed motion. Love at first sight, you could say.
When Ric asked Design Kompany to make some drawings for the front page of their web site last year, it was great because he was open. To our idea, to my sketches, and to DK’s homemade process (interview, clarify, reflect, clarify, and then build). You can see the four vector drawings I made if you stay on this page to watch the animation change.
Next up was the infographic design you see at the top of this page. I got really excited about this. I love information.
I got a chance to nerd out about layout again, and it’s been so long since my news design gigs. I also got to revisit the beautiful book by Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information.
We started with a really raw clump of words:
The raw data set I started from
I’m the kind of person that likes to make sure I know everything I need to before I start to publish something. I want it to be right, I want it to be fair. I guess that comes from working in two newsrooms, one in Seattle and one in southwest Ireland. Accuracy is big.
So it was fun to put on my journalist hat to discern the who, what, where, when, and why in our first interview. I asked about audience. And how they’d receive this. That gave me a benchmark for the tone of the writing I would put into the later versions of the chart. Friendly, accessible. Search marketing is complex and overwhelming, so it’s nice to be able to break it down. I wanted to make it look like a fun game, so that’s why there’s “START” and “WIN!”
Who doesn’t like to WIN!, right?
Later, I got to follow up with Josepf Haslam to gather mini-checklists (purple flags in the drawing), because I thought it was important to tell the story with some action steps for “users.”
Wow, I can’t believe I said “users.” Some work we’re doing right now on user experience design is influencing me, too.
I also made some concepts for them, and we went with “The Chart” for the infographic design you see above. It has to start with a clear concept, not an overproduced Illustrator image that you have to sell to someone. Strong concept is as important as a smart data set.
The winning concept
This post is going to be continued, because I have a lot of things to say about infographic design, and presentation design in general.
A hint: I’m an engineering student-turned journalist who’s now doing brand message and dialogue design. So I’m really interested in setting up the problem in the way that makes it easier to come up with bright, beautiful solutions later.
More on that in my next post, and some pics of my Washington, DC, visit, too.
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I met Malo, a painter from Columbia, this past weekend. He was a delight to talk to, and had a lot to say about his process, his burgeoning visual art career (he was previously a fashion photographer, he told me), and the art of relationship-building that it’s based on. All the stuff DK is always happy to riff on with anyone:)
Later, I found this video on his Tumblr.
the lady and the horse mural/sculture from MALO on Vimeo.
You can see this man thinking, improvising, and stretching as he goes over the 3-D surface of this gigantic thing he transforms into an art piece.
His solo show at the Carrack runs through May 10. It’s worth a look.
—AM
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AETHER DC is Thursday, May 10
Going to be in Washington, DC, for our stop there for AETHER, a conversation about medium, message, and design.
I’ll be wearing DK’s “dialogue design” outfit, Orangutan Swing. I’m looking forward to getting back there, DC is where Akira and I used to hang out when we were young and in college and looking for inspiration.
It was the first time I saw Eschers — ones that were real, not college-girl posters (of which I had one, the staircase paradox one, you know about that one?).
The real-life Escher images burned right upon my youthful, and easily-impressed-upon mind. That, along with engineer-turned-artist Alexander Calder’s pieces, which I also saw in DC for the first time (and some of which are now showing at Duke’s Nasher Museum, by the way), probably inspired the kind of minimalist line art I’m making at Wavular, too.
I’m excited to host one of the AETHER conversations, after Akira got the tour started in AETHER New York and AETHER Boston in recent days. Can’t wait to see what happens up there. I’ll be stopping into some Meetups, too, being social and stuff.
Washington DC creatives and media folks, watch out for Orangutan’s Swing.
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Here are 8 questions we ask to stack candidates when we’re asked to brainstorm names for a rebrand design.
Rebranding is costly, not just in terms of money but in terms of time, too. You’ll want to make sure to set up the process right by thinking through every aspect thoroughly, including the company name.
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Can’t stop thinking about this cinematographically tight, ace story by master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, last mentioned by me when we met logo designer Kiyoshi Inoue. The film is called “Sanma no Aji,” which translates as “The Taste of Mackerel,” but for marketing purposes to English audiences, they called it “An Autumn Afternoon.”
I was so keyed into its delights I wanted to write this post in Japanese. But this updated version of Wordpress, um, doesn’t let me. That means I don’t have to break out the dictionary from, um, 1996.
Watch this film if you need to reflect for a minute on the gravity and ephemerality of the story that is life. A calm, soft-light and terrific film that quiets the nerves, for sure.
Highly, highly recommend.
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Photo of Otis Lyons courtesy Scenes From My Lunch Hour, from this article on Otis Lyons
When he was 12, Otis Lyons‘ mother told him to leave home. “My mother was on drugs every day,” he said to a group gathered at the Durham Rotary Club’s meeting downtown yesterday.
Turning to gangs and the rough life in poor neighborhoods of Durham, he was thrown into jail and sentenced for 30 years for being “influential,” he said. Some of that time he was in solitary confinement. But the sentence was overturned, and in 1994, Lyons was released. With a new lease on life, Lyons committed to an abstract idea. Giving kids hope. “Every kid has some good in him.”
Today Lyons runs a nonprofit called Campaign for Change, which takes for its slogan George Eliot’s line, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”
Certainly not.
Lyons partners with area groups to gather and distribute Christmas presents, organize NBA-esque basketball leagues, get people to try karate for the first time, and otherwise bridge gaps between cultural haves and have-nots. You can read more about him in this article on Otis Lyons by Connie Campanaro and this one at Clarion Content.
He told us area nonprofits like the Boys and Girls Clubs, the YMCA, the United Way and others are doing good work, but money they raise doesn’t go to impoverished communities. People are scared to go there, for fear of being killed or robbed. And with good reason. But someone has to go into those areas and offer hope, because if kids don’t have someone show alternatives, they won’t know. They’ll turn to gang leaders and drug lords, like the ones who bought Lyons his school uniforms, without the kids realizing they’re being groomed as replacements.
It reminded me a lot of Roddy Doyle’s book, A Star Called Henry. You don’t realize people are using you, until it’s far too late.
I asked Otis Lyons after his talk one question. After all he’s been through, what he would have liked to have been different for him?
A mother and father who loved him, he said.
“Someone to show me the way.”
All those books on attachment parenting, all those months of being with my little baby kid, all those nights staying up late nursing and singing and crying: suddenly, in a whoosh, all worth it. Validated, in a millisecond, by one most inspiring ex con.
“Those kids are not told they’re going to be something in life,” he said.
Continue reading ‘How an ex con becomes an inspiration’
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Design Kompany is in Durham, NC.
PO Box 1512
Durham, NC 27702
@designkompany facebook.com/designkompany
o. 919.886.6332
c. 206.778.5136
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