Pentogram

Pentagram is a design studio that was founded in 1972 by Alan Fletcher, Theo Crosby, Colin Forbes,Kenneth Grange and Mervyn Kurlansky in Needham Road, West London, UK. They now have offices inLondon, New York, San Francisco, Austin and Berlin.

Pentagram was founded on the premise of collaborative interdisciplinary designers working together in an independently owned firm of equals. Theo Crosby claimed the structure was suggested to him by his experience of working on the seminal late-'50s exhibition This is Tomorrow: "it was my first experience at a loose, horizontal organisation of equals. We have brought it ... to a kind of practical and efficient reality at Pentagram". The firm currently comprises 16 partner-designers in 4 cities, each managing a team of designers and sharing in common overhead and staff resources. The partners in each office share incomes equally and all the partners own an equal portion of the total firm. This equality, along with the tradition of periodically inviting new members to join, renews the firm while giving even the newest members an equal footing with the partners of long standing. This 'flat' organization (there are no executive officers, CEO, CFO or board, other than the entire group) along with the self-capitalized finances of the business, allows equal participation and control of the group's destiny by the members.

Lifeline of Luxury

A singapore-based design company Kult3D critiques the consumerisms take on the Couture Jam and faux luxury life. The life preservers were inspirted by some of the biggest names in fashion such as Chanel and Louis Vuitton. The flotation devices and the concept of the life jackets is a satirical look into the future of consumption. This work suggests fashion in our era and the age of excess that we live in. Today Kult3D states how we can be branded to death.

The life jackets are very beautiful and have a striking effect on the viewer, however also a thought provoking one. However after you have glanced at the product and seen the beauty, you begin to look closer and see an almost disturbing message behind it, 'either we demand that companies and their brands embed sustainability now, or we risk not having the opportunity later', said Daryl Arnold CEO of Newton Circus. 'We make things that can lead to change. This time its art that changes minds, next time it might be a product that changes behavior'.

http://www.core77.com/blog/social_design/couture_jam_a_lifeline_in_singapores_cbd_18852.asp#more

Readable Furniture!!

Letter-shaped seating and a punctuation mark and quotation mark lamps allow you to express yourself in your living space. Both the letter chairs and the punctuation lamps are manufactured by Tabisso, a French company. I found this post on core 77 very interesting as I have seen design like this before. I have seen furniture spelling out words, however they were aimed at children. The chairs all lined up next to eachother spelled out childrens names. The article in core 77 makes a joke that seeing that it was a French company, they were surprised to not see any accent-grave headrests!!

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/legible_furniture_by_tabisso_18856.asp#more

U.S. Snowboarding team social networking

The U.S. Snowboarding team’s website is very dynamic and straightforward. One of the website’s major strengths is how it is easy to navigate around the site and the layout is very user friendly. It is a very attractive website with many videos and other highlights that is a way of interacting and engaging the audience. The list of upcoming events and highlights are very informative for the user and keep viewers updated. Being a Graphic Design major I find the website particularly aesthetically pleasing and a very well done website that appeals to the target audience of young people.

I particularly like the Athletes section on the website. All of their pictures are featured and makes the viewer become more aware of the athletes themselves and makes them more easily identifiable.

The U.S. snowboarding team also has a twitter and facebook page. These forms of media are necessary in promoting and generating awareness. The twitter updates its audience on events and the athlete’s personal lives, creating interest in a quirky way to engage the audience. With 1,650 followers, the twitter site is growing in popularity!

The facebook page portrays many albums, mobile uploads and videos of the team and their travels. There are many promotions taking place trying to gain more traffic to the sight and more interest in the team. One promotion currently taking place is a signed snowboardcross poster up for grabs to be one as long as the facebook site breaks 5,000 fans by November 20^th.

Another status is, ‘The secrets of Olympic Snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis/Beauty on the go’. An article from fitness magazine on facebook creating buzz and attracting a female audience on the beauty secrets of a successful athlete. This is exciting and advertises for women athletes, getting them involved in the sport just as much as men.

https://twitter.com/ussnowboarding

http://www.facebook.com/ussnowboarding

Facebook Funeral

In a plot twist few soaps fans could have seen coming, ABC pulled the plug on two of its longest running daytime TV programs, "One Life to Live" and "All My Children," earlier this month. The shows were born in the era of boxy TVs and a good decade before cable. In a sign of the times, ABC posted the details promptly to its Facebook fan pages, home to nearly 700,000 die-hard fans combined, alerting them that the final episode for each show would run in the coming months. The message was clear: enjoy it while it lasts before the mourning period -- the entertainment business prefers the term "sunset" -- sets in.

Bernhard Warner

Fans aren't happy, but the broadcaster went where few brands and organizations are willing to go these days: to their warm and fuzzy fan pages to announce the death of a loved one, be it a discontinued show, a terminated product or a suspended campaign.

Brands and organizations spend increasingly greater marketing funds and manpower to build a virtual community around new product launches and ad campaigns. They're very good at starting the party, but have failed to master the art of the poignant goodbye. In a few cases they've even abandoned the community altogether when a show's over.

To be sure, marketers aren't the best equipped in an organization to talk publicly about death and loss. (That's the job of the PR pros, apparently.) But surely death and loss are inevitable discussion topics that will arise in any community. Social media communities are no different.

How then have organizations chosen to communicate the end? Here are a few notable examples from the past few months:

1) A few months to live

ABC's "All My Children" and "One Life to Live"

Death notice: Citing "extensive research into what today's daytime viewers want," broadcaster ABC on April 14 announces that this will be the final season for daytime soaps "All My Children" and "One Life to Live." They will be replaced by new shows that glorify good cooking and, respectively, nutrition and weight loss. The 670,000 "AMC" and "OLL" fans on Facebook are informed the shows will "sunset" over the next few months; their final episodes will be in September and in January, 2012. The details are posted to the Facebook fan pages of both shows where many of the fans first hear of the news.

Remembered for: Heroically, the network continues with its dutiful Facebook postings, even if the travails of characters like "AMC's" Tad and Cara and Griffin seem somehow trivial in comparison to the faithful. Fans beseech the network to reconsider and even form an ABC protest group, vowing to, among other things, boycott the network's coverage of the royal wedding. But the inevitable is starting to sink in among soaps die-hards. One fan ominously predicts doom for the genre: "NBC is getting ready to cancel 'Days of our Lives.' They will not be picking up more soaps." These are not happy times for soaps fans. At least they have each other to commiserate, and a few more months of shows to savor the moment.

Unimark International

Unimark International was an American design firm founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1964 by seven designers: Ralph Eckerstrom, Massimo Vignelli, James Fogelman, Wally Gutches, Larry Klein, Robert Moldafsky and Bob Noorda. Unimark filed for final Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1977, and no longer exists. Although the firm was relatively short-lived, it had a key influence on the direction of American design aesthetics, and set a philosophical direction for corporate design that is still widely followed.

Former Bauhaus faculty member, Herbert Bayer was an early member of the Board of Directors. The graphic style of Unimark's projects was decidedlymodernist. Unimark rejected the idea of the designer-as-artist, embraced standardization and systems and pioneered the use of the grid as a tool for corporate communications. The typeface Helvetica was most often used by Unimark designers.

The firm was an early specialist in designing corporate identity systems and branding. Clients included American Airlines, Ford Motor Company, Gillette,JC Penney, Knoll, and the New York Transit Authority who continue to use Unimark-created trademarks and graphic standards.

Due to the significance and history of the Unimark name, a number of copy-cat design companies have adopted it in order to attract business. However, none of these firms are connected in any way to the original Unimark International.

http://www.unimark-international.com/

class notes - coreys powerpoint

Paul Rand - "Dont try to be original, just try to be good"

Paul Rand designed abc logo, original UPS logo, IBM logo

Massimo Vignelli - "There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence".

(quote means there is more to design than design - you need to study and understand whats behind it)

Massimo designed the NYC subway map (all in Helvetica)

What to do when you are first starting a project:

Read

Take notes

Sketch

Choose

Make it perfect

Dont look at it after its done

Respect.

Dont shoot down someones idea.

work with it.

make it better.

make suggestions.

Erik Spiekermann: Putting back the face into typeface

Burton Sponsorship

When you first think of an Olympic event uniform, what do you think of? What color schemes, designs and patterns first come to mind? Probably something sleek looking, shiny and bright colors. However for Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010 the U.S snowboarding team decided to go against the norm by releasing a plaid jacket and ripped dirty jeans looking pants.

The Olympic uniforms were created by Burton Boards; the leading company in snowboarding techonology and fashion. Burton is a sponsor of the U.S snowboarding team and showed their support by creating the plaid jacket and denim looking snow pants that represent a style of individuality and heritage of the Burton brand as well as the culture of the snowboarding sport. The uniforms represent a fresh look at the classic Americana fashion style with vintage looking demin and a plaid, preppy jacket with patches. Burton created these uniforms using only the best technology and fabrics to ensure the riders maximum comfort and support. The riders themselves were also involved in the development of the uniforms to ensure the overall design would maximize performance. The Burton brand stresses how the Olympic uniforms must represent the best and the worthiness of bearing the Burton name.

The creation of the Olympic uniforms by Burton was a way of marketing themselves and advertising their brand name by putting their brand on the uniforms of pro snowboarders on the Olympic team. The worthiness and value of the brand is demonstrated, and by designing a uniform that was out of the ordinary again shows the uniquness of the elite brand.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/alltherage/2009/12/burton-unveils-its-olympic-us-snowboard-team-uniform-for-2010.html

Between The Sheets

Between the Sheets - a blog written by my friend Michelle who wishes to express her love of art and new media through her blog, posting interesting images and videos.

With so many people blogging and tweeting and using other forms of social media to express themselves to the world it is often hard to be able to filter out those bloggers and articles that are actually worth checking out.

Michelle is a student at Hofstra and I recommend anyone to check out her blog.

http://inbetweenthesheets.tumblr.com/

Tiger Tweets

I decided to blog out Tiger Woods' twitter page as I wanted to do a little research in how he is posting tweets and communicating with his fans and the general public. When such a scandal is released with in the Media and Sports marketing world it is necessary for Tiger Woods to apologize to fans, admit the wrong doing, communicate well and follow up. The tweets shown on his twitter is Tiger Woods' way of following up with his fans to try to regain some of his credibility as an athlete and a person.

http://twitter.com/tigerwoods