Archive for the ‘Design’ Category

As you may have heard, Facebook has now introduced the Timeline look and feel for all business pages. This change will significantly alter the way your page looks and operates, but overall, it will align Facebook personal profiles and business pages. In case you’re unfamiliar with what a Timeline page looks like, I’ve grabbed a screen capture for you…

So what do you need to know about Facebook Timeline?

• This change is mandatory. Your business page will automatically switch to this new layout on
  March 31 – less than one month away.
• You will want to have a “Timeline” cover image, and possibly a revised profile image, created for your business page in advance of the switchover. Timeline cover images can include images and text. They serve as large promotional or branding banners for your organization.
• Any custom tabs you’ve created for your pages will now be located in the middle of the page and you can change the order of what’s displayed.

Additionally, there are other major changes – seven in all – coming to business pages. For a complete summary, check out this article from the Social Media Examiner.

If you need help with these changes, give us a call at 970.203.9656. We can help you create a Timeline cover banner or revised profile image.

Sometimes desperate situations call for desperate solutions. So we decided it was time for a little agency-wide chat. Literally. Our employees were getting so glued to phones, email, and IM that everyone was forgetting how to talk with one another.

A few insurgents left these “No butts about it” cards, candy cigarettes, and email reduction patches on everyone’s desks to institute a “No internal phone calls or emails day” yesterday.

Results were extraordinary. Idle chit-chat spawned into numerous ideas. One old-timer discovered a copywriter had a baby a couple months ago. And an account executive even decided she could eat more cookies since she was walking around the office so much. Now that’s sweet.

This week Adobe acquired two companies (TypeKit and PhoneGap) that offer services that we at Burns Marketing are big fans of. If you work with us, you may have heard us mention these technologies. I thought I’d give you a quick summary of what they are, why we like them, and what it means for you now that Adobe is calling the shots with these products.

TypeKit
A few years ago, the environment for rich typography on the web was a bleak landscape. You were limited with what you could do with type and what kind of fonts you could use. Some hacks sprouted up like FontBurner and other font replacement technologies, but there wasn’t a great way to deliver great fonts to web browsers. Until TypeKit. TypeKit has a large library of great fonts, and for a monthly fee, TypeKit gives you a relatively easy tool for dynamic typography on your site. Read more about it at typekit.com.

Typekit was a nice acquisition target for Adobe because fonts are an important part of their business. Adobe sells fonts and is a major presence with online technology. I wouldn’t be surprised to see TypeKit incorporated into PDFs, HTML editors, Flash, and their mobile technologies. Probably the biggest competitor to TypeKit is a free service called Google web fonts, and now Adobe has another asset in their rivalry with Google. (As a sidenote, TypeKit was instrumental in helping Google’s service get off the ground, so it will be interesting to see if that partnership continues or if the technologies diverge from this point.)

PhoneGap
PhoneGap is a great tool that allows you to more easily create apps that work on the iPhone, Android, and other popular mobile platforms. These apps are created using standard web technologies (HTML, JavaScript, and CSS) so you only have to write the code once. This significantly lowers the time and costs associated with creating apps. PhoneGap is an open source project that has been gaining traction in the last year. So far, Adobe looks like they will honor the open source heritage of PhoneGap, and the code will remain open.

Why would Adobe want PhoneGap? To their credit, Adobe has been embracing HTML5 recently, even though on the surface it would appear that HTML5 is a direct competitor of their Flash product. Owning the leading tool for creating HTML apps obviously boosts Adobe’s credibility in the mobile space and keeps them flexible since they don’t have to be handcuffed to a single mobile operating system. With PhoneGap they can feed apps into iTunes, Android Marketplace, the emerging Windows phone market, and any other new phone that enters the market. For more on PhoneGap, visit phonegap.com.

So is this all good news?
Honestly, it’s a little concerning when a big company buys up thriving “little guys.” So many products stagnate under the bureaucracy of larger organizations. I’m optimistic that the talent at Adobe will further advance both these services. I would hate to see TypeKit or PhoneGap lose any momentum. Time will tell whether or not these acquisitions are good news or not.

Adrian Hanft is a creative technologist at Burns Marketing. You can follow
him on his blog at adrian3.com as well as on Twitter, Flickr, or Vimeo.

After spending countless hours developing and creating your product, the time has come to start thinking about taking it to market. It has the right features, undeniable benefits, and is priced just right – all critical things to consider. But don’t overlook the importance of product packaging.

Here are some tips to keep in mind as you think about the perfect wrapping for your product:

1. Research your competitors. You’ll want to see what they are doing – what’s working for them and what isn’t – so you can ensure your design stands out from other packages and competitors.
2. Know your audience. Who will be the primary buyer of this product? Knowing who the primary shopper is and what motivates him/her will help catch the eye of the buyer.
3. Know your placement of the package on the shelf, or in the store. Knowing if you’re on the top shelf, eye level, or bottom shelf is important because this can influence the design.
4. Make sure you grab the buyers’ attention RIGHT AWAY. And that you clearly explain the product quickly. You only have one chance to make a good first impression.
5. Understand how you want your product to be perceived. Having a good design can influence the way a shopper views your product’s quality.
6. Consider your final cost of goods on the shelf. Remember both package design and materials are part of your product. Staying within a price point is important.

Our design team has extensive experience developing product packaging that sells. Give us a call at 970.203.9656 to see how we can help your product jump off the shelf.

We’d expect it to carry the weight of the brand on its back. Logos were single-handedly responsible for brand recognition and product legitimacy. On the start-up’s list of things to do, having a good logo was perceived as a huge step between dream and reality.

Fast forward to a multi-channel, socially interactive, and ever-changing competitive landscape. Logos are important, but they alone cannot do the job.

Your brand needs support. A personality. How does your brand speak? What does it believe in? Can it adapt and inspire relevant content?

Graphically speaking, rigid corporate identity systems have lost traction to more flexible structures. Providing familiarity, but allowing for some interpretation. Think Apple.

Yes, a timeless logo still represents the core essence of a brand. But, your logo is not your brand. Your brand is much more.

Check out this post from Mashable and see where brand identity is headed.

In arguably the most useless (and obvious) research ever, social media experts have quantified that cleavage sells stuff.

That’s why it’s no surprise that cleavage thievage has increased dramatically (not proven by research).

Case in point. An online ad in the Coloradoan stole (ya, I said it) a photo taken three years ago at ad:tech San Francisco.

Happens all the time, right? So how are we connected to this story? Our senior copywriter broke the news to the fine folks over at adrants. Turns out that the woman’s strategically placed name badge — which was accentuated by her profitable cleavage — was just the type of picture nefarious ad makers covet. Read the adrants article here

Just goes to show that despite tremendous increase in ad response rates, we need to keep our cleavage to ourselves — otherwise it might get stolen.

Don’t be fooled, Marc Delphine, Oregon’s Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate, is not big into hockey. You might assume he’s a huge Columbus Blue Jackets fan, but you’d be wrong. So why the assumption?

You see, Delphine’s patriotic Senate campaign logo has an uncanny resemblance to the Blue Jackets’. But when word got out that the logo was a copy-cat, it was quickly removed from his web site and Facebook page.

Delphine’s logo Blue Jackets’ logo

It appeared that the Blue Jackets’ logo was simply flipped to the opposite side, the red circle removed from the flag, and voila — Delphine’s campaign symbol.

And that’s why you shouldn’t use a donated logo “designed” by a volunteer to represent you and your campaign — at least without some due diligence.

Being nice and telling them they’re doing a good job won’t help their careers. Honest, expert criticism is what they need. The truth might hurt, but growing from the experience will pay off in the end.

That’s what’s NEXT — a portfolio-building program that puts aspiring creatives in front of some of Denver’s best creative directors. Want to get your book sized up by people like Mike Sukle of Sukle Advertising and Design? Apply by August 5, 2009.

The New Denver Ad Club, in partnership with Roshambo Films, created these videos to help spread the word.

Sometimes the best way to add new life is through a rebrand. Is this the answer for our economy? Could the U.S. Dollar stand to be redesigned? Yes, our paper money has undergone facelifts through the years, but it hasn’t been significantly changed since the 1930s. Check out the suggested new looks for our Greenbacks submitted to the Dollar ReDe$ign Project.

While it’s always fun snickering over ads of the past, computer ads like these are often the funniest. Hope you enjoy ‘em like we did.

Here’s a question, though. How did this advertising industry of ours function without computers? We shudder to think.