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On today’s podcast, AT&T becomes lowercase and drags design down with it; Part One of the Be A Design Cast Holiday Design Review; and your friends the Blog Recap and Student Tip of the Week.

First off, a hearty “welcome back” to Donovan Beery, now sporting a beard with the power of 1,000 redheaded suns. #2 Just wasn’t the same without him. Today we take on everybody’s favorite hot-button issue: at&t and the demise of good design. We also start dipping into the Holiday Design Review, with old standards Panera Bread, Target and Williams Sonoma. Quite a diverse group, there. Regardless, they all have great designers working for them, so they kick off what will be a regular feature through December. At the end, we’ll probably mail an award to someone who’s never heard of us. So drop your recommendations for Holiday Design of the Year down below. Also: if you work for Taco Johns, drop us a line, and send us some Nachos Navidad. We promise to pimp you on the show for nachos. Yes, we can be bought for nachos.

Big ups this week to Mountain Dew for never letting us down with a new flavor, and to Bennett for actually reviewing Chip Kidd: Book One. Which is not reviewed on the Design Cast.

And be sure to drop into the iTunes Music Store and subscribe to the Be A Design Cast, it’s free, and automatically updates you with new episodes.

Comments (21)

Bennett said:

Hey guys, Good job again. I do, however, totally disagree with the standard of nine comments. I would say that it totally depends on the post and the people that are commenting. After seventeen comments I would say that it is more likely to degrade, but I have also seen threads that have jumped back on track. There are no formulas for blog comments.

Devils advocate here. Would you be willing to shut off the comments on the rest of your posts to nine? If not, then I would doubt you really believe what you are saying there.

Posted on December 2, 2005

Nate Voss said:

We’ll have to see where this discussion is at comment #10 before we can decide that. Bennett, no holiday design suggestions?

Nate, I think we have had a few posts before this that you can check. You can’t just make broad sweeping generalizations about things without anything to back you up.

For those of you outside of the Midwest (US), Taco John’s is a less polished version of Taco Bell. Of course I don’t have much evidence to back that up, since it has been years since I have eaten there. If you would like to see the monkey riding the dog, here is a link.

Kyle said:

Nice job, guys. The Target perfect bound mailing I got was awesome. I actually took the time to look at every page it was so nice. I want to know…did they take the snowy house photos with lights and other merchandise this year, or last? Are they reusing them? Seems like it would be a hard thing to time, unless they’re manipulated.

Does anyone else get the direct mail square coupons from Target? They’re nicely designed as well.

Frutiger’s a bastardization of Universe? I use Frutiger all the time (I have to).

Mountain Dew is trying to sell soda flavors like McDonalds sells the McRib: only bring them out for limited runs so they constantly sell while it’s available (who’d want to eat a McRib year-round?) I bet you orange MD LiveWire comes back in May for the summer season.

Lime Green and Christmas Red? That’s totally Strawberry Shortcake.

Drew Davies said:

Quick notes: Avenir is a brilliant typeface. It’s a travesty that the at&t redesign team even suggested that they started with Avenir for the new logo. Also, I think it’s probably not fair to suggest that Frutiger is a bastardization of Univers. It’s like saying “all sans serif faces are a bastardization of Helvetica.”

An aid for those of us that are more visually inclined:

(Click here if the image doesn’t show up inline.)

Posted on December 3, 2005

I have no problems with Avenir, I have problems with at&t. So in order to properly distance at&t’s Fake Avenir from Adrian Frutiger’s Real Avenir (or that sexy Avenir New) we’ve called the boycott. Please direct your feedback to at&t.

As for Frutiger the typeface: no, it is not cool. In 14 year-old internet jargon: “Univers P¿WNS Frutiger.”

Posted on December 4, 2005

p.berkbigler said:

In between the three weeks of devoted meditation I consistently do while sitting on piles of “The Elements of Typographic Style” to cultivate and develop my overbearingly wordy posts, I’ve finally also caught up with the three to four weeks of lag time it takes me to actually listen to the latest Design Cast!

Nice work, gentlemen - I knew I needed to get this post in before we hit the dreaded 9 and everything went to hell on this thread!

I have to admit I was seriously hoping for the phone to ring mid-show and Frutiger to make a BE A Guest appearance - if we write his name enough times on multiple threads he might Google his way over here and join the fray.

Adrian Frutiger, Adrian Frutiger, Adrian Frutiger, Adrian Frutiger, Adrian Frutiger, Adrian Frutiger, Adrian Frutiger, Adrian Frutiger, Adrian Frutiger, Adrian Frutiger….That ought to get things started….

Posted on December 7, 2005

Donovan Beery said:

If Adrian Frutiger wants to be a guest on the podcast, he’s more than welcome. We’ll even work our schedules around his.

I would love to hear if he feels used and abused having any part of his name associated with a logo he had nothing to do with.

Looks like one more comment, and it’s all downhill…

Here’s what’s funny to me.

I was starting to feel pretty guilty about trashing Frutiger’s namesake typeface, calling it a “Bastardization of Univers,” and all.

Except that Adrian Frutiger actually designed Univers also, and that kind of explains away a lot of the similarities. And makes him my typographic hero because Univers is the single greatest type family ever designed.

That one guy said:

Here’s what funny to me.

…this is comment no. 10 and with comment no. 10, it all degenerates. broad sweeping generalizations about things without anything to back you up are the only kind of sweeping generalizations worth believing, i believe.

St. Louis is the greatest state in america.

And King Kong will be the best movie-and-or-tv show featuring dinosaurs since “Dinosaurs” on ABC in the early nineties.

Posted on December 8, 2005

Damnit! Cincinnati is the greatest state in America. You sir, are incorrect.

and the comments have officially devolved…

just as you predicted! now you have your proof to show that Bennett guy who called you on the mat several comments ago, during the “still relevant” stage.

What does that Bennett guy know anyway, you bunch of self-absorbed jerks. I would think that you could write better comments than a three year old. Your personal integrity is lower than most ex-cons. Why waste your time with such irrational banter:) Of course, things don’t really “devolve” until someone is called a whore and people start publishing personal emails. This usually happens anywhere from comment 6 to comment 26, depending on the content.

Your mother goes to college.

Whore.

Kevin Steele said:

“And makes him my typographic hero because Univers is the single greatest type family ever designed.” Well, at least now you know how immediately silly you sounded to people who actually know what you were talking about. D’oh!

Radio primarily about graphic design is an interesting challenge. Perhaps a little more prep and a little less caffeine. Maybe even some pictures.

Kudos for actually doing this. I’ll check out the earlier episodes to see how much you are improving.

Kevin, Although I did cringe a bit with that segment of the Design Cast, I think we would all have moments that show gaps in our design knowledge. We can’t know everything and I think the gang does a pretty good amount of research before the recording. They have great chemistry, they don’t allude to knowing everything and their humor is what makes the show. I would rather hear these guys talk and admit to not knowing all, then hear someone that is very dry but a know-it-all. Just my thoughts. Thanks for getting us back on track to actual relevant talk.

By the way, the first two episodes are top notch.

Tom said:

Thanks for the feedback, Kevin. That does look bad now, but I’m sure that’s why Nate corrected himself so quickly. We never claim to be experts, and we do try to research as much as we can. To script the full 25 minutes would take away from the very thing that makes our podcast entertaining: its spontaneity. The tradeoff of that is, of course, that occasionally things we wish hadn’t been said or worse, mistakes, will be aired. I think the tradeoff is a good one; I agree with Bennett that its more entertaining to listen to people talk shop in an accessible, sometimes humorous manner than to listen to experts talk in a dry, personality-less manner.

In any event, thanks for listening and for leaving your comments!

Posted on December 9, 2005

Another nod in favor of the current Design Cast “format”: it very much echoes what things on the Blog are actually like - often a fun mix of considered, studied topics and some seriously shoot-from-hip-reactions and replies…

Maybe the only thing to think about bringing in as a segment is a phone “Post” each week or doing live response to comments as they hit the Blog - Just start a thread at the show recording beginning and one at its end.

Thanks for getting us back on track to actual relevant talk.

You’re welcome. Hopefully that should be some indication that I am here to be supportive.

This is an interesting phenomenon. Hell, only twenty five years ago the roles in the production of graphic arts were fairly specialized, with one set of hands designing and another set of hands typesetting. Today graphic artists not only do the typesetting, some are creating computer programs as part of their work and now some are even making ‘radio’.

TheMZA said:

OK, Frutiger is a good typeface, so is Univers. Frutiger replaced Univers… and the at&t logo is very, VERY http://www.pixellogo.com/ and that makes me sad. The UPS logo works nice in B&W, as I had to rebuild it I can provide it in B&W if you like. How do you feel about the commoditazation & template-tation of design in general? I (heart) International Typographic Style. For more info on the evo. of at&t logo… here is a pdf: http://www.sbc.com/Common/files/pdf/brand_evolution.pdf

Posted on December 15, 2005

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Be A Design Cast 3 : at&t Goes Lowercase

by Nate Voss, (21 comments)

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Comments (21)

Bennett said:

Nate Voss said:

Bennett said:

Kyle said:

Drew Davies said:

Nate Voss said:

p.berkbigler said:

Donovan Beery said:

Nate Voss said:

That one guy said:

Nate Voss said:

That one guy said:

Bennett said:

Donovan Beery said:

Nate Voss said:

Kevin Steele said:

Bennett said:

Tom said:

p.berkbigler said:

Kevin Steele said:

TheMZA said:

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