For those of us not fortunate to have the dream job out of college, we sometimes have to find other ways to entertain ourselves at work. Most likely that is what led a designer to put the name Tyler Durden on labels that are sold at staples. (Thanks to seanbonner for the story. For those of you who may not know, Tyler Durden is one of the main characters in Fight Club.) Every once in a while you stumble across a hidden message, and its like you get an inside joke. It might not make for great design, but it could be the only thing keeping an unfortunate designer sane.

Ogilvy arrogantly says, "As a former door-to-door salesman, I shall go to my grave believing that, given two minutes on television, I could sell any product on the face of the earth." It is precisely that arrogance that made me think I was really going to hate this book. After reading the book, however, I am willing to bet that he would only need one minute on television to sell any product on Earth. He is a fantastic salesman, and I would describe this book as a fantastic salesman doing a great job of selling his philosophy on advertising. So what is that philosophy, and where does the sales pitch end, and truth begin?

I have a hard time getting motivated about designing PowerPoint templates. It always ends up getting included in the usual items in an identity system: business card, letterhead, envelope, and PowerPoint template. I think I dislike the projects because no matter how good I make the template look, I will never be able to control the final product. I think about all the lame presentations I have had to sit through, and I imagine the slides I designed being on screen while the audience is checking their watches, and doodling on their handouts. There is a pdf written by Seth Godin called "Really Bad Powerpoint (and how to avoid it)." As usual, Seth is on target, and gives a great assessment of the situation. He puts much of the blame on Microsoft, and explains how PowerPoint could be used more effectively. If you are interested in the subject, it is an interesting 8 page read that comes free with the purchase of "Free Prize Inside."

I had an interesting talk with my boss the other day about the readability of serif vs. sans serif fonts. He confesses that he is "old-school" and prefers serifs. I find sans serifs easier to read. I am trying to hunt down some current statistics on the subject without success. I read people that say it all depends on what you are used to reading, but I can't find anybody who lists their sources. After reading Ogilvy, I am on a kick for finding statistics. Is there a source for credible statistics that counter Ogilvy's from 20 years ago?

Here is an amazing illusion. Thanks to Kyle H for showing it to us. Color sure is an amazing thing.

I was critical of Tom Collin's makeover of a Hilton ad in his "Makeover Maven" section in Direct magazine a few weeks ago. I emailed my comments to Tom in the hopes that he might visit our site, and respond to my thoughts. To my delight, I got an email today from Direct asking for my permission to print my letter to Tom in an upcoming issue of Direct. It should be interesting to see how the conversation develops. You can find my original critique of the makeover here. I gave permission to edit and print my letter, and asked them to mention the address of our blog. Stay tuned.

We hope you like the updated design of our site. Thanks for your patience as we iron out the last few glitches of the change over.

“Ella Minnow Pea” by Mark Dunn is a pleasure to read. The title alone made me want to read the book. It was a nice break from the usually dull, but informative design books I have been reading. I won’t go into great detail about the book, but the writing was very impressive.

A quick synopsis of this work of fiction. The main character, Ella Minnow Pea, lives in a small island country off the coast of South Carolina. The island is named Nollop after one of their former leaders Nevin Nollop. Mr. Nollop created the famous line “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. For this he is made into a national hero and years after his passing he is nearly worshipped. The famous pangram “the quick brown fox jumps…” is placed in tiles under the dome of city hall. When the tiles start to fall, the community elders see this as a post-mortum sign from Nollop to ban the specified fallen letters from use. Since this book is written in letter form, from specific characters in the community, the written letters must abide by the ever changing laws. I would go on, but I don’t want to ruin the rest of the book. I can’t imagine the time it took to write this book. As the letters continue to be banned, the more entertaining the writing becomes. The ending totally ties everything together and is a delightful surprise.

You may have seen commercials for Coke's new contest, called "Unexpected Summer." They have put a gps/cell phone device in winning cans. Once you find out you are a winner, you call Coke on the cell phone, and then they will track you down via the GPS, and surprise you at an unspecified time. The tagline is, "You can Win, but you can't hide." According to fool.com, the military is a little nervous about the promotion. They apparently told soldiers not to bring the cell phone cans to classified meetings. The attention of the military can only help spread the buzz about their promotion. If you want to learn more about it, Coke has a pretty cool site built with Flash that explains the technology, and lets you see where the winning cans are in the USA.

I heard a story on NPR today about Paul Curtis who goes by the name "Moose." He is a Brittish street artist who makes his graffiti (if you can call it that) by cleaning his images out of the dirt and grime of the walls, streets, tile, and anything dirty. You can see some of the stunning work he has done at symbolix.com

There are two really interesting angles to this story. First, he has gotten in trouble with the police for vandalizing property. The thing is, his graffiti usually only lasts a couple of days. The only marks he makes leave the surface cleaner than before he was there. Can you convict a person for cleaning a public place? Better yet, would you convict a child for writing their name in the steamed up windows on a public bus?

The second interesting angle is that Moose has been using his graffiti as advertisements for high profile companies like Big Brother and X-box. The Big Brother work is especially cool. It is just a huge logo of an eye looking out from walls, windows, pillars, and roads. It says Big Brother perfectly.

Moose's work is fascinating becuase it adds a new dimension to the art vs. vandalism issue that makes graffiti so controversial and intriguing. When you add corporate sposorship and subtract the damage to property, this takes graffiti to a new level. I love this concept, and I wish I would have thought of it first.

Here is another example of, "what was the designer thinking?". This appeared in one of those cheap gadget catalogs with everything from mosquito repelling flashlights to a soft serve ice-cream maker. Not kidding. My wife, Suzanne, was flipping through this catalog when she was totally freaked out by the giant kitty. She handed me the catalog with the page open and let me find it for myself. It didn't take long. I couldn't believe that anyone could get the proportion of the hand and cat so wrong. The sad thing is that they didn't even need the brush with the kitten, since they have the actual photo of the dog getting brushed. Who brushes a little kitten anyway?

After reading “Ogilvy on Advertising” a few weeks ago, “The Wizard of Ads,” by Roy Williams was a nice change of pace. Not that it is a bad thing, but don’t expect any examples of ads or statistics based on research. This book is set up as a collection of 1-2 page essays about observations and stories. The first of the three sections is the most directly applicable to advertising because he is talking about the power of words. The other 2 sections, although interesting, relate more to success in general than to success in advertising. Roy’s tone is similar to that of a motivational speaker as he gives examples of small people doing great things.

To be honest with you, I would never have picked this book up if it wasn’t recommended to me. The cover design turned me off. The worn leather look would be alright if it weren’t for the poor type treatment of the title. Calling it “The Wizard of Ads” is too corny for me to have given it a second look, although he does have several references to the Wizard of Oz. Despite my lack of enthusiasm of the book’s design, it is definitely worth reading. The stories are short and inspirational, and the observations are insightful and well written.

In anticipation of Lance Armstrong winning the Tour de France, here is a link to one of my favorite commercials on TV right now. I think it is longer than the one running on TV, so enjoy.

If you haven't seen this Audi commercial, it is definitely worth repeat viewings. The M.C. Escher influenced illusions are so well done that I wonder if the majority of viewers will even notice them. Can a commercial this subtle compete with the ones that are shouting for your attention? I hope it can, but I am not sure. There is a good article on cgnetworks about the making of the commercial if you are interested in learning more.

I can't pass up stories about PacMan. I made a post a while back about Pac-Manhattan, and today I saw that a new game combines the art of Mondrian with the classic Atari game. Its called Pac-Mondrian. It's not the most playable game in the world, but it is a fun idea. If you are interested in reading the history of the best-selling coin-operated game in history, here is a link to some Pac-Man trivia. I think I will go home and dig out my Atari 2600...

We have all had this happen to us. You have a great idea that could drastically improve something. When you start sharing your idea, people say “that is a good idea, but it will never work.” Your great idea gets shot down before it was given a fair chance. Does that mean that your idea wasn’t good enough? According to Seth Godin’s newest book, “Free Prize Inside,” there is no correlation between how good your idea is and how likely the organization is to embrace it. So how do you get your ideas implemented? Seth first challenge of the book is to figure out what it takes to make your ideas a reality. We aren’t just talking about big ideas either. We are talking about small changes that can make a big impact. Seth calls them “soft innovations.”

This book was vastly different from the last book I reviewed, Ella Minnow Pea. Where Ella Minnow Pea was classic, Pattern Recognition was every bit of sub and pop culture jammed into one novel. William Gibson went into great detail, while Mark Dunn simplified his writing to only the essential letters. Having said that, I still think this was a good book.

This is my first William Gibson book, and apparently this is his first non-science fiction book. The main character, Cayce Pollard, is a “cool hunter” that has flown to London to approve or reject a new logo for the world’s second largest shoe manufacturer. In her free time, Cayce is following a phenomenon as it unfolds one download at a time. She is part of an every growing online forum that is avidly following some enigmatic, unanimous film that is being distributed via the web, one segment at a time. Nobody can figure out where this film is being made, how it is made and most of all, who is making it. Cayce’s life gets more and more interesting as her personal and professional life are forced together. This story is definitely set up much like a suspense movie, which of course makes it not that surprising that it is going to be made into a movie. I’m not sure if the fact that I knew it was going to be made into a movie before I read the book was influential in the way I read it or not. None the less, it will be interesting to see the movie.