The other day I received a letter in the mail informing me that I had something in the newly released Best of Business Card Design 8. It wasn’t until I got the book in the mail this week, that I found out which pieces made the cut. Kind of strange timing to get a two-page spread in a design book in the same month that you are shutting the featured website down (i.e. this site).

I was also pleased to find out that the business cards I did for my wife made it in.

Watch and see 15 of the possible cover designs to Stefan’s new book appear before your eyes.

So Sagmeister has done it again. Although we have already seen many different pieces that are in this book, it is great to see and read about the entire project. It is fascinating to have all the work in one place, see the process it took to make these creations and discover the meaning behind it all. What has always struck me about Stefan’s work is the complete originality behind it and the guts that it takes to produce work like his own. We can make all the naked Sagmeister jokes we want (but please stop, it is very old) but he really has put himself out there and it isn’t based on arrogance.

While it would be amazing to have encountered some of this work in its original setting, I assume that the majority of this work was mainly designed for the end photograph and publication. If he created this work to be mainly viewed in these public spaces then his work would teeter over the design/art line very heavily into art. This work is interesting in that it is so much about self expression, but Stefan also has a message to say, and clients are willing to pay him to make the work.

If you look at what The Meister is doing in this book it is easy to complain and say that he is a lucky man, but if you have followed his career and read his book Made You Look, you realize that he is a genius and deserves all the creative freedom that is given to him. While I find the career of his mentor/hero, the late Tibor Kalman, amazing, I can’t help but to be more and more impressed with Stefan over the years. If Stefan hasn’t surpassed his mentor, then he will soon enough.

What impacts me even more than the work, is the message behind the work. We (consumer minded designers) tend to lose site of what really matters in life. You would think that we would be immune to the very advertising and brand desire that we create, but I find that we are more susceptible than almost any other group out there. On occasion we will even buy a product because it is pretty or has good packaging, even though we never plan to use it. So many of the messages in Stefan’s work are great reminders, and it takes somebody rendering these ideas in such painstaking ways, to make us take a second look at our priorities in life.
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To experience more visit thingsihavelearnedinmylife.com.

A big thank you to Eric Nyffeler and Esau for the very appropriate and wonderful music in the YouTube movie.

To start off, I thought this little video I shot would be the best way to show you the design of The Learners.

I have to admit that since I first learned that Chip was working on a follow-up to The Cheese Monkeys, I have been eagerly waiting to see layout, kerning, and typeface decisions weaved into a work of fiction again. While there was plenty of graphic design geekery to be enjoyed, the emotional and psychological aspects of Happy’s life are much more in the spotlight. Having previously worked at several small ad agencies it was very entertaining to follow the politics of a similar size office of yesteryear. The domineering boss, the talent that should have moved to the big city, the eager newbie, the burnt-out hack copywriter … they are all part of the ensemble.

While there are plenty of basic descriptions out there on this book, here is my two sentence summary (the summary from the publisher is more clear). After Happy has graduated from State he goes out to find his dream job at the firm his (de)mentor Winter Sorbeck, worked at. We follow Happy from his interview, to his first weeks and subsequent perils of dealing with clients and the things they promote.

The design of the book itself is much more understated than The Cheese Monkeys. No scanned textures or printing on the edge of the pages and covers. But as always, Chip has a few tricks up his jacket (sorry). If you get the book, don’t forget to play with bending the pages over and also look for intentional ink bleed through from the back of the page. The diagonally cut book jacket is also a fun touch on the cover, and it also might reveal a little about the off balance nature of what is inside.

If you listened to Debbie’s recent interview with Chip (I would wait until after you read the book to listen, I think they reveal too much about the book), they talk about how much darker this book is than its prequel. While this is true, I finished The Learners feeling much less depressed. While The Cheese Monkeys was a fun ride, I finished the book a bit confused and almost angry. The ending of it was like a David Lynch/Spike Jonze ending tacked onto a Cameron Crowe/Gus Van Sant movie. While this sequel was a more depressed journey, I felt there was an interesting resolution.

While I didn’t exactly “enjoy” The Learners as much as I did The Cheese Monkeys, it was a fascinating ride and I felt my time with Happy was too short. While it appears that Chip has grown as a writer, I don’t think I will ever experience the joy of connecting with a character as much as I did with Happy over five years ago. To follow a student and see his eyes open was like taking a trip down memory lane. While I can easily recall the early days of being the pee-on designer that Happy has become, it is hard to feel the depression, pain and guilt that he is experiencing. Instead of experiencing this bit with Happy, I just sympathize with his character and wish I could help.

I recommend getting out there and reading one of the very few fiction books that deals with graphic design. I would read it even if it was mediocre, but luckily for us Chip is almost as talented as a writer as he is a book designer. Here’s to seeing and reading Chip’s works for years to come.

The book is a collection of 45 postcards created by a assortment of designers and illustrators. Each postcard has an illustration on the front and a short paragraph sumarizing the story on the back accompanied by a few words by the artist. First of all, this is not an easy task for an illustrator! Not only did they have to illustrate some of the most widely recognized stories in the world, the format was a 4×6 postcard. If that weren’t enough, the whole piece needed to stand on its own with little more than a few sentences found on the back of each card. My hat is off to the illustrators for accepting the challenge and boldly proclaiming their faith.

As you would expect from 45 relatively unknown illustrators (at least unknown to me), some of the postcards are good and some aren’t that great. At the worst, the skill level reminds me of those montage things you make when you are first learning Photoshop. At the best, the illustrations were ispirational and moving. The illustrations that stood out for me were by Chris Koelle. His illustration for the prodical son was the highpoint of the book for me. Not only is it a strong symbolic story, it was one of the few illustrations that broke free of mediocrity and actually touched me. Chris’s other contribution was an illustration of Jacob wrestling with God that you can see on the right. Chris’s site is worth a visit, too, he is a fine illustrator.

Aside from the few truely inspiring moments, this book has left me scratching my head. First of all, what am I supposed to do with 45 postcards? Second, who is the intended audience for this book? That second question is where my real criticism is directed…

It was painfully obvious that this book was meant to appeal to a secular audience. Listen to how the website’s description of the book that tries too hard to sound hip:

“Art meets the Bible. Without all the cheese. This ain’t your grandmother’s big honkin’ coffee-table Word of God. Nope. This is what happens when some of the best illustrators and designers in the world take on the Sunday school classics. From the Garden of Eden to the End of Days, this is the intensity and drama of the Old and New Testaments like you’ve never seen. It’s visually stunning. It’s spiritually challenging. It’s Scripture with street cred.”

The shorthand Bible stories throughout the book are all written in this same lingo, and quite frankly it bothered me. It just sounds like a desperate plea to be taken seriously. It does everything but apologize for having a Christian message. I think this is a trap that much of “Christian” media falls into. Rather than creating something truely stunning, innovative, inspirational, original or ambitious, most of the energy gets spent on simply trying to appear relevant. As a result the message gets lost, or worse the product ends up being a “Christian” version of a secular product that has “proven” to be relevant. It isn’t surprising that the company that published this book is called Relevant Books. I don’t want to get caught up on that word, but it just seems like if you have to tell me your books are “relevant” then I get the impression that you don’t really believe your message has enough power to stand on its own. I think the illustrations and artist statements were strong enough that the corny text really hurt the message. In conclusion, here is my advice: Buy the book – just don’t read it!

Almost perfectly timed with the units on Renaissance and Pre-Renaissance document design that I’ve been studying with my students in Meggs’ History of Graphic Design lately, the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha is currently exhibiting multiple pages from the continuing St. John’s Bible Project commissioned by St. John’s University / Abbey. I won’t take up an extensive amount of space describing here what the Joslyn describes in detail on their own site, but I will briefly comment on what a wonder this project is to behold in person.

Those interested should also visit the principle site for the St. John’s Bible.

Working under the direction of the head scribe, Donald Jackson, a team of designers, scribes, and vellum preparators are just shy of completing what even they thought might be nearly impossible to revive: a newly illuminated edition of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, handwritten, hand drawn, and executed in the same techniques that Medieval scribes and illuminators would have used. A modern scriptorium humming to produce page upon page of vivid, gold-leafed pages and images that once again demonstrate the humbling beauty that the disciplined human hand can execute in word and image.

My students and I had just discussed the reflected light cast off the gold and silver leaf used in Medieval books in class, but the description pales considerably with the actual experience of seeing light glint back in your own eyes from freshly crafted / leafed illustrations. The aura / glow that hovers around the images demonstrates how adeptly these long-gone scribes were in linking spiritual imagery with drawing / painting materials that provided an ethereal visual experience to parallel the subject they were depicting.

Among the many contemporary / ancient technical mergers involved in the creation of this book, perhaps one of the most striking ones for me was the revelation that the scribes had worked with a single graphic designer (Vin Godier) to initially set the model text / columns and text balances of the many pages of scripture which the scribes would then in turn inscribe the actual vellum with. This was such a concrete reminder of how many hours / days / months it must have taken the ancient scribes to work through the page composition of their manuscripts without the benefit of InDesign, QuarkXpress, or even a program like Word to incrementally letterspace and linespace the body text. Undoubtedly the setting of the text even today within any of these programs likely took a few weeks worth of finessing to get right – the hours that this must translate to if you did it all simply by eye and by hand…

I’ve spent a handful of hours already just scrutinizing the line after line of letterforms that Jackson developed for this project – all the scribes involved learned to make Jackson’s hand / “font” with meticulous accuracy. You simply can’t believe your eyes when you move from page to page and are reminded that completely different scribes were involved in the creation of each of them, only to look again and again at letters you’d swear were all made by the same hand. The “shimmer” of the subtle variations in letter characters that is often described in reference to illuminated manuscripts vibrates from every word, line, paragraph and page of this masterwork – I would challenge anyone who claims their mastery of typography to see these pages and not feel at least a bit like a novice once again.

If you find yourself in Omaha between now and April 16, take an hour or two to see this exhibition before it moves on – the pages in person are both intensely otherworldly and incredibly human in the same breathless moment… Any designer who needs a reminder of the true art that lies in our collective past should spend a day with these pages and these letters to see again how the quill and brush live on even in their contemporary / digital counterparts.

“Raving Fans” is subtitled “a revolutionary approach to customer service.” It is a fairy tale where an area manager meets his fairy godmother, Charlie (an old man whose passion for customer service is rivaled only by his passion for golf) and learns how to turn satisfied customers into “raving fans.” Charlie takes the manager to several companies that exhibit extraordinary customer service. One place is a gas station where the attendants greet every car with a smile. They check your fluids and call you by name. You never leave your car and are always promised the same price for fuel that you would find at the local competition. The premise of the book is that if your customer service is this good you will create raving fans and that will translate into a more successful business.

I found the gas station analogy very entertaining because of the experience I had last weekend. I was traveling from Colorado to Nebraska and stopped at a Conoco in North Platte. It is notorious for their high gas prices because their location is one of the few main stops on Interstate 80 between Denver and Lincoln. In the past, North Platte gas stations wouldn’t even show their price per gallon on their signs because they knew people didn’t really have any alternatives. You had to pull up to the pump to see how much they were going to stick it to you that particular day. When I took the exit, the first station was a Conoco with a big sign flashing at near strobe light regularity that their gas was $2.26 and they had “the best looking attendants.” Feeling somewhat insulted by the intrusive flashing of the sign, I passed it in favor of a Shell station a few blocks further down the road. To my disappointment, the gas at Shell was $2.49. I decided to pay the extra money and get back on the road. On our return to Colorado a couple days later, we again were ready to refuel in North Platte. This time, I decided to forgive the flashing sign and refuel at Conoco since they were still advertising $2.26. I pulled in and was shocked to see that the $2.26 price was nowhere to be seen on the pump. Since I was in a hurry again, I accepted the $2.49 price and filled my tank. When I got inside, I asked the attendant (who wasn’t good looking at all) sarcastically if I had missed the $2.26 price? As if I was the first person to ask this question, he said, “Oh, that is only on pumps one and two.” I think he mumbled something about “out of order” which seemed to be his backup answer. I was too disgusted to say anything else, so I just paid and left. It was a scam. Literally highway robbery. The gas in pump one came out of the same tank as the other pumps. Conoco, who has the prime location right off the highway, wasn’t satisfied with the usual profit they make from their inflated prices. Now they are deceiving every customer that stops there! I was so raving mad that I will never buy Conoco gas again, ever!

A gas station is probably the last place you would expect service worth raving about. Expecting the price on the sign to match the pump is about the only thing you really demand a gas station to do. What if one of the gas stations in North Platte took even the tiniest fraction of a step towards raving fan customer service? If my experience at Conoco had been even slightly positive, I would make it my only stop in the middle of Nebraska. If there was something unusually good about this location (like an unusually large selection of energy drinks, or maybe even actually good looking attendants), I might even recommend it to someone. Multiply that times the huge amount of traffic refuels in North Platte, and people would wait in line for their service!

Designers are very familiar with the idea of raving fans. Almost all of us are raving fans of Apple. We also take great pleasure in the defeat of Quark and site their terrible customer service as the reason for their failure. We know having raving fans is a great thing but we are usually looking at things from the customer side of the equation. When it comes to actually providing customer service, it is a little harder. One of the biggest challenges of customer service can be simply defining your customer. Different people in your agency probably have different definitions of who their customers are. Sometimes it is just the client. Sometimes we want to please the president of the corporation. Some of us want to please our creative directors or account executives. Some of us want to please the end consumer. Some of us want to please everybody. The challenge that this book presents, is how do we create raving fans at every one of these levels?

First, I think you have to all be on the same page about who your customer is. I think this is the conflict that has been unspoken in some offices. Instead of softening our concept of who the customer is to include our co-workers vision, we jockey and leverage ourselves in order to try and change (or belittle) other peoples definitions of the customer. Often the creative department butts heads with the account executives for this very reason. If the client wants spinning starbursts with corny themes, the account executives say “yes we can do that,” because they know that will create a raving fan. When they present the project to the designers, there is conflict because the designer doesn’t see the client as their customer. He sees the customer as the person who will finally see the finished piece. He knows that the average person will be insulted and turned off by starbursts and corny themes. Neither the designer nor account person wants to extend their vision to include the other person’s definition of the customer. This is more than just stubbornness. Usually everyone in the chain is passionate and often morally committed to doing the best job for their customers.

Once you understand who your customer is, things don’t get much easier. For example, what do you do when satisfying the customer conflicts with what you know the customer really needs? Most agencies live in a gray area where they are sometimes a vendor and sometimes a partner. As a vendor, they produce whatever their client needs. They follow instructions. Unfortunately, this isn’t the strength of most agencies. Most work best when they are advising, educating, and pushing their clients to be better. This is less comfortable to the client than when the agency simply bends over backwards for them. “Raving Fans” sort of covers this when it says, “It is important to know the services you DON’T provide.” Unfortunately, it is hard to tell a client “NO.”

It is very easy to turn customer service into a giant complex and nearly unattainable goal. No, customer service isn’t easy, but this book does give some valuable advice. According to *Raving Fans,* there are only three things that you need to do to create raving fans:

1. Discover what you want.
2. Discover what the customer wants.
3. Deliver the vision plus one percent.

If that sounds somewhat simplistic, it is. And maybe that is the valuable lesson that this book teaches. Simplify your vision of customer service to one thing: consistency. Deliver what you promise. Don’t miss deadlines. Take personal responsibility for your work. Don’t make excuses. And most importantly, do it every time. When you simplify customer service to a simple routine you will learn that creating raving fans isn’t as hard as we sometimes make it out to be.

If I had one word with which to review this book, I would choose “collaboration.” If I had more-and you know I do-I’d talk about how Duffy explores the creative teams, account teams, and the clients on their roads to success.

This book takes a great spin on the cookie-cutter “case-study” book formula: it gets the entire team involved. If I had one word with which to review this book, I would choose “collaboration.” Gone are paragraphs that open with an ubiquitous “Well, the client said they wanted X, so we gave them X,” in favor of the client themselves telling Duffy what exactly they wanted along side their creative partners.

The common thread through this book is “respect.” Respect for design, respect for clients, respect for the team (or, in some cases, teams), and above all respect for the work. The case-studies in Brand Apart range from the recent (the Bahamas, by Duffy, Fallon, and the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism) to the seemingly everlasting (Nike’s Just Do It, by Nike and Weiden+Kennedy) and they all share this commonality. These projects take gutsy designers to be sure, but they also take gutsy clients. And nothing else stemmed from that mutual respect as did the trust. None of the projects and efforts contained in Brand Apart happened by anyone forcing their will on another partner in the overarching team. BMW Films (the greatest advancement in advertising since the advent of the television) was essentially invented in a moment of absolute honesty following a pitch where both the agency (Fallon) and the client (BMW North America) looked at each other and said “Geez, we can do more.” That’s trust you can’t buy.

Having read this book I understand that what it is truly saying has been left unsaid inside its pages: That we are broken. That advertising and design are broken, but we have the tools we need to fix ourselves into something much better than we were before. These examples of brilliance are amazingly similar in the relationships that built them. Brand Apart shows by example how to treat your clients, and how your clients can treat you in return. Not in theory; in practice. You’ve already seen most of what is contained here, so you know going in that what you are reading is real. You are reading that clients and designers who collaborate, respect, and trust one another can change the world.

And if you’re paying attention you just might figure out how to do it yourself.

Brand Apart features eleven chapters of interviews dissecting enormously successful design, advertising, and branding projects. Its layout is beautiful, with large visual examples that manage not to encroach upon the type. Anyone who seriously thinks about their future in this business should own and thoroughly read this book. Can’t find a copy near you? Try Amazon

With your background in law, how did you become so passionate about design?
I became passionate about the rights of creative people early in my career. I was teaching writing at the School of Visual Arts and discovered the students knew nothing about business. This led to my creating a business course and then writing Legal Guide for the Visual Artist, which is still in print in its Fourth Edition. I became General Counsel to the Graphic Artists Guild and lobbied on both the state and federal level for rights for creators. In a sense, Allworth Press grew out of this passion.

I think that most designers fantasize about going into business for themselves, but your book doesn’t make it sound as glamorous as our dreams. Law suits, insurance, profit margins, taxes… that doesn’t sound like much fun at all. Is it really worth it?
It’s important that our dreams be grounded in reality. Being an entrepreneur is very different from being an employee. It has different challenges and different rewards. The entrepreneur has design skill, certainly, but also a vision of building a design business. Building any business requires a willingness to take responsibility and risk, to do the menial business chores as well as the exciting design work, to worry about money and perhaps be the beneficiary of a profitable business. When someone is ready to begin a design business, it can be terribly frustrating not to move ahead and get started–whatever the risks and however hard the work.

We had a pretty good discussion a while back about what to do when your graphic design career gets stuck. There was some consensus that it is important to get over the fear of leaving a comfortable situation if you want to find something better. Is there a secret to building the confidence needed to go out on your own?
Going out on your own requires a basic knowledge of how to do the business of design. This can be acquired through working first for another design firm, joining professional organizations, classes, books, and hanging out with friends in the profession. It certainly builds confidence and helps in making the transition out of a comfortable position to the next venue in the evolution of your career.

Do you have advice for a designer that works full time for a company, but takes on an occasional design job on the side? Should they be as concerned about copyrights, contracts, etc. as a person who is in business for themselves full time?
If a designer is employed and also working freelance, that person is in business for him- or herself. This means paying attention to copyright, contracts, building good relationships with clients, keeping records, and all the other requirements of a design business.

You don’t say anything about spec work in your book. Should this be avoided, or is there a time when it can be a good thing?
The Code of Fair Practice is included in the back of the book and basically indicates that designers should avoid working on speculation. Of course, no one should work without being paid a fee. The problem in design comes in terms of how much a design proposal for a client will include. Will the designer go beyond showing a portfolio of appropriate work? If so, will the designer do part of the actual assignment? This would generally be considered going too far and not a wise business practice. However, in advertising, where budgets can be large, firms may do work on speculation in the hope of landing big accounts. This makes little sense for most design firms.

Designers love to swap horror stories about terrible client experiences. From a business standpoint, is that a bad habit to get in to?
This isn’t a bad habit and might even be helpful in the sense that one learns who the bad clients are and what types of things can go wrong. What would not be good is to be in the habit of running down clients (who can be annoying, especially when they want changes).

My favorite part of the book is the section that talks about how to stay in control of a project. It reminds us that we are design experts and recommends that we shouldn’t be bashful about leading a project. That is pretty tough. Does it get easier with experience?
Most aspects of business become easier with experience, and project control is no exception. It’s very important that tight control be maintained over projects so that cost, deadline, and quality objectives can be met.

The Graphic Design Business Book is packed full of valuable information, but the design of the book itself didn’t really impress me. What’s the deal?
I love the cover. The interior is a clean format that I feel conveys information well. But then I’m the author (and the publisher), so my opinion is a bit subjective.

As President and Publisher for Allworth Press, you got a great view of the current state of the publishing industry. What’s your personal take on blogs? Are we a threat to traditional publishing, or a different beast all together?
For the next deluge, Noah’s Ark will certainly need a male and female blog as well as a male and female publishing house. The reason blogs and ebooks aren’t a threat to traditional publishing is the lack of a gatekeeper (in most cases) and also the wonder of a book’s physicality. Maybe that will change someday, but I don’t think it will be in the next decade.

Tad Crawford is founder, publisher, and president of Allworth Press. In addition to writing over a dozen books, Tad has represented many artists and arts organizations during his career as an attorney. For a complete list of Tad’s books, visit www.allworth.com/Authors/Bio_TC.htm. The Graphic Design Business Book is available on Amazon or you can buy it directly from www.allworth.com/Pages/PR_GD394.htm.

I design Chip Kidd covers in my sleep. Ok, ok . . . so it is more like I was designing his covers in my dreams by the time I was done with this book (true story). Chip Kidd: Book One is chocked full of Chip’s design. When he says he has designed over 800 covers, he is not kidding (sorry for the pun). When you get this book I would suggest digesting it slowly, unlike my week of fairly consecutive four hour reading sessions. There is just too much to take in. These covers are all original (some more than others) and unique, but of course you know all of this stuff. Before I go into my overall nit picky complaints, let me say this. This is truly a beneficially read and an invaluable collection of his work. If nothing else this book shows the progression of book design over the last twenty years.

One of the best additions to the book are the letters from various authors that he has designed for. He states that he encouraged the authors to be honest. The evidence shows that they listened. While there are a few that were a little over-the-top gushing, most of the letters were honest and heart-felt. At least one author even blames a Chip Kidd cover for one of his book’s poor sales, which Chip vehemently denies. The inclusion of these letters does add more validity to the objectivity of this book. After reading Rick Poynor’s article “Battle of the Big Books” (reprinted in Looking Closer 4) I’ve never experienced a monograph the same way. I’m not sure I totally agree with Rick’s view that a monograph should be written and designed by someone other than the artist, but he makes some very convincing arguments. Chip addresses some of these concerns in the beginning of the book. “It’s been said that most graphic design monographs are adventures in narcissism and self-absorbtion. That is certainly the case here, but I’m hoping it’s as much about the books and the authors as it is about me. (I know nice try). To this end, I have asked several writers I’ve worked with over the years to comment, in the hopes that their insight might be helpful.” One thing is for certain, when a famous designer does a monograph it makes for an interesting experience. Why not let Chip design his own book, and let the historians of the future compile additional books and writings on him? It is interesting that Chip has already had a monograph of sorts written by Veronique Vienne for the series called Monographics which is edited by none other than Rick Poynor. If you want just a brief, easy to read overview of Chip’s work, I would suggest reading the Monographics book. If you want the expanded, insider view of Mr. Kidd, I would make the jump to Book One. With that said, I think that a few things would have been handled better if someone else would have been the “author” of this project.

The work was for the most part displayed at or as close to full size as possible. This is great, but much of the work is butted up to other work in what at times becomes a confusing puzzle of sketches, covers and text. It would have been wonderful to see more of the the finished books actually photographed by Chip’s long time collaborator Geoff Spear (of course all those photos would surely have blown the budget). I always came away with a better idea of how the design actually worked when there was a photo of the finished piece. The type was also not the easiest to read, which surprised me with the respect that he has for text. Most of the copy was set in reversed out Twentieth Century. Those funny question marks never ceased to throw me off while reading this text. One other problem I had with the text was that at least once, Chip’s description overlapped the featured work, causing some confusion as to what was jacket copy and what was Kidd’s description of the work.

The elaborate tricks that we have come to expect from design monographs (i.e. Make It Bigger, Made You Look and *House Industries*) and the books that Chip authors was surprisingly vacant outside of the half-size cover. No printing on the binding or fancy overleafs were there to drive the printer crazy. The cover itself was a clever concept but it would have been fun to see him try a couple more experiments. Maybe this is Chips way of saying that he has pushed book design as far as he can, or more likely, he was staying within the budget. With that said, I am reviewing the soft cover, so the hard back might have just been that much more impressive.

This book didn’t ignore the design crowd by just focusing on the literary world. The insights into the design and writing of The Cheese Monkeys was fun to read about. The genesis of it, the inspiration, the coming sequel, the basis for the characters, the rumored six figure book deal he made, the Chris Ware collaboration. . . I find it fascinating to see what was behind such a widely discussed book. The inclusion of sketches and rejected ideas of other books was also invaluable for the designer. I also found it strangely comforting to read a book of a famous designer that does the computer work himself. It seems I continually hear of famous designers that never touch the computer. Although this fact doesn’t detract from those designers, it is easy to identify with a designer that toils with the same programs that I do. His mentions of Quark (hopefully he has switched to InDesign) and Photoshop show that he does a great deal of the computer work himself. It was also interesting to see some of the trends he fell into along with the rest of the design world when the computer was still so new.

I found that there were parts of this book that I won’t appreciate as much as others. As my personal library fills up with art, advertising and design books, I rarely find time to read fiction (sad, I know). So a good amount of the work he has designed is going to have a completely different relevance to an avid Knopf reader. While the author letters are interesting from the designer/client angle, they will be pure gold for someone familiar with that particular author. This book does pay a great tribute to the writing of the authors and shows that he does truly appreciate the very work that inspires him. I often found myself wanting to go pick up several of the books after reading Chip’s brief description.

With Chip’s ever increasing influence in the book design and graphic novel industries, it will be very interesting to see where he goes from here. He seems so happy at Knopf and why shouldn’t he be? He can work for other publications as much as he wants, and still come home to a company that obviously has a great deal of respect for design. In the advertising and design world I can’t imagine a firm with such a laid back approach to freelance work. I wonder what opportunities lie ahead for someone that is taking on editorial (graphic novels) and writing roles outside of his design. What will Chip Kidd: Book Two look like and will we have to wait another twenty years? This book is equal part ode to design and writing. It is obvious that you can’t separate the words and the pictures from the Kidd. Those are my thousand words, but I suggest you get the whole picture.

Note: Photography by Bennett

Your new client sends you a breathless email: “Our CBO is building an IMT to reorg the brand architecture from the bottom up. We’re deciding on a BHAG this week, and as soon as we refine our backstory, we’ll probably need an avatar. What do you think?‚Äù

You could respond in several ways: 1) “What’s an avatar?‚Äù 2) “I’m not really an architect.‚Äù 3) Could you please translate that into English? 4) “Don’t call me a beehag.‚Äù

None of these answers is likely to raise your client’s confidence in your brand savvitude, especially after you sold yourself as an expert. However, if there were a copy of *The Dictionary of Brand* on your shelf, you could look these terms up and give her a knowledgeable response.

The Dictionary of Brand is published by the AIGA Center for Brand Experience, and contains 211 terms currently in use by leading brand professionals. Some of the terms are fairly stable, such as *brand equity* and *primacy effect*, while others, such as *brand police* and *parallel thinking*, have sprung up like mushrooms and may well disappear overnight. (This dictionary is nothing if not fresh.)

The design was done by Ann Willoughby and her staff in Kansas City, recycled paper was donated by Smart, the book itself was produced by Metropolitan Printers in Vancouver, and the editing was led by yours truly. To help me compile the terms and regularize their various definitions, I pulled together an all-star advisory council of top authors and practitioners from a variety of brand disciplines, then leaned heavily on my fellow members of the Brand Experience board for additional guidance.
Our goal was simple: to make the book available to every designer and client who wants one, at a low price, through Amazon and selected AIGA events.

Why do we suddenly need a dictionary of brand? Because, at least in my view, brand is rapidly becoming the lingua franca of marketing and design. It provides a level playing field for all the people who contribute to the building of a business, whether they’re marketing executives, strategists, graphic designers, researchers, advertising agencies, PR firms, or Web designers. Today all designers are brand designers-the only question is where we fit in the system. (See my articles, Survival of the Fittingest and Who’s Afraid of the Big Brand Wolf?, both accessible in Voice: AIGA Journal of Design, at aiga.org.

Now, back to your client and her email. This time, before replying, you grab for your brand dictionary to refresh your memory. Instead of blurting out, “Don’t call me a beehag!‚Äù, you respond with savoir professionnel: “Well, of course we could explore some avatars-maybe even take a look at some icons-but shouldn’t we consider an earcon as well? First we’ll need to meet with the metateam and agree on a zag, then we can put together a perceptual map.‚Äù If she seems a little confused, just send her a copy of the brand dictionary.

Marty Neumeier serves on the national board of the AIGA, as well as on the board of the AIGA Center for Brand Experience. He is author of The Brand Gap, (co-published by New Riders and AIGA), and former publisher of Critique magazine. He currently manages Neutron LLC, a San Francisco firm that coaches companies in brand collaboration.