Yet More Stuff From Brand Design

This final seemed like it was never ending, but I think I got a lot of good material from it. Part of the final was having to design an alternative project, anything I wanted, for the brand. So I decided to design a dive map, because it seemed like a logical direction to go. So here it is, comments are welcome.


Here is another random thing I had to design.

Annual Report Cover

Underwater Business Card

Ok, so for part of my final for my brand design course, we had to redesign the business cards we originally did for our companies. I decided to take a completely different approach with this set, as you can easily tell if you check out my original one done.

The first one shown is the front, with the second being the back. I decided to take a distinctly underwater feel with these, and I really like how they turned out. I feel like they definitely convey what the brand is all about. A vast change from my first set.

History is Happening

I firmly believe that when purchasing cable you should be able to decide what channels you get, and just pay per channel. If I had the option, I would purchase
1) NBC
2) Food Network
3) History Channel
4) Discovery Channel
5) ESPN

When the History Channel first started, it should have been called either the WWII Channel or the Nazi Network. All it aired were documentaries about the Nazi Party in WWII. Extremely entertaining, but a little limited in scope. But in the last few years, the History Channel has released a great number of shows that go all of over the place in terms of how long ago the events happened. So this campaign is my attempt to draw attention that the History Channel is not just airing WWII things, but that history is happening now and you can now check it out on the History Channel.

Wetsuit Design

For our final project for Brand Design, we have been assigned to create an annual report and an alternative design project for our brand. My brand, Atlantis Diving, a custom dive shop, has been a lot of fun to work with this semester. And for the final project I have decided to create the staff wetsuits for our company. My first venture into fashion design.

At this point, I actually would love to be able to design my own wetsuit.

Ford Has Finally Found a Voice

For years I really have not been able to tell the difference between Ford, Chevy, and Dodge trucks besides the logos on the front of the trucks. But at this point, with cable readily available while home for Thanksgiving break, a new campaign for Ford F-150's have rolled out and I am floored.

This great graphic style paired with the voice of Dennis Leary is amazing in my opinion. At this point I would never buy a truck, but if I did, I would go for a F-150. The way the type flows with the graphic treatment to it is so eye catching.

And honestly, the more you see the ads, the more you notice the little things that make you laugh when you see the spots. I don't know what agency handles the Ford brand, and I'm even more stunned that Ford has any money to advertise when they have no money to run their company. But that goes to show you, hard to sell a product without advertising for it. My industry will always be needed.

Bravo Apple

Last weekend the FIT hosted the annual AWNY Student Conference in NYC. During the main part of the conference, students attended certain workshops that interested them in all the different areas of advertising. One of the workshops I went to was about interactive advertising and one of the things that stood out in my mind was when she said that interactive is no longer about banner ads and landing paged, its more. But for my brand design course, we are now at interactive and can you guess what we are doing? Banner ad and landing page. Fun. But here is a fantastic banner ad, and of course, Chiat/Day doing work for Apple.

Web Design, Attempt #1

For my brand design class we had to create a home page for our company. My company sells high end, custom SCUBA dive trips across the world. This is what I came up with after a many critiques and just as many drafts. Comments are welcome.

Another path for design...

So today in my branding class Hayes Roth came to lecture and have lunch with a select few of us. Mr. Roth is the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) of Landor Associates, which is the largest branding company in the world. He showed us case studies on Smirnoff, BP and and the second largest bank in Brazil. It was amazing some of the work that was put out by Landor. They updated the logo from British Petroleum from an old, green shield to a modern and exciting logo.

So the idea that going into branding would allow a design student to not only design advertisements solely, but everything a company has to offer is extremely appealing to me. I am by no means turning my back on advertising, I still want to go work at an ad agency and be an art director, it is just very cool to see new options open up in the commercial design area. On the advertising note, I saw a very cool campaign. It's a campaign to encourage voting turnout, and I think is very creative.

Wiki Ads, how to learn anything about anything

So I decided to work on a campaign for Wikipedia because I owe so much to it, and its fantastic free information. Honestly, half of the time I'm using Wikipedia is because I am playing a game my friends and I like to call "Five Clicks to Jesus". This is when you start by clicking the 'Random Article' button, and you now have 5 clicks to get the Jesus Christ page. I have never once not been able to accomplish this feet, it is a very addicting game.

Random Article:
Andrey Mizurov: A Kazakhstani professional road bicycle racer born in 1973.
January 20, 1973: President Richard Nixon was inaugurated.
His Democratic challenger was John F. Kennedy, and the race remained close for the duration.
John F. Kennedy was officially a Roman Catholic.
The Catholic Church defines its mission as spreading the message of Jesus Christ.

No matter where you start, you can always do it. And honestly, I feel like this translates into a good campaign that shows the dexterity and versatility of Wikipedia. Any and all comments are welcome.

Proud to be a Bomber

So at last nights Obama rally at around 12:30, a camera was passed up to the highest point on the quad and you can see us all singing the National Anthem. At around second 12 or so, you can see me, my girlfriend Jenn and my friend Connor on the bottom right of the screen. I am wearing the brown jacket. This is pretty cool and I am very proud to be an Ithaca Bomber right now.

President Elect Obama

Last night, after a two year campaign, Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States. My friends and I watched election coverage from around 1pm until Obama gave his speech at Grant Park in Chicago. We just witnessed history from so many different angles, and I couldn't be happier. After donating time, money and effort, Obama was elected. And not on a platform of fighting or fear, but hope, change and challenging the status quo. I just want to say congratulations to President Obama, I am far more hopeful for the next four years than I had previously been, and congratulations to everyone who fought and voted for him and this election. Like he said in his speech, this was our victory and we will not forget this.

As soon as Obama's victory had been announced, students poured into the Ithaca College quad. Out of a campus of 6,500 students, where only 4,000 or so live on campus, I would say about 2,000 rushed to the middle of the campus and marched accros campus screaming and shouting. I have never been happier to be an Ithaca College student, or a college student in general.

Boston Sports

I am not a huge Phillies fan, and in light of them playing the Rays (not a fan either), I am going to congratulate the Red Sox for winning two World Series in the last few years. At the same time, good job to the Celtics for winning the NBA Championship last year and to the Pats for just being generally awesome. Good job Boston sports at being the most dominant city in American professional sports in the current age.

Package Design

I have realized that one of my guilty pleasures is package design, and in terms of drinks and alcohol, bottle design. I believe it has the most impact on a purchase because it is the last thing you see before you decide to put it in your basket, or cart, or whatever you may have.

Alcohol bottles, whether wine, beer or liquor, always seem to be the most eye catching. Color, shape and typography all lend themselves to creating these fantastic bottles. Half the reason I purchase any alcohol bottle over another is due to the bottle and packaging.

There is a reason that brands put a lot of money into making sure that these bottles look fantastic, because they can turn a customer off with bad packaging just as easily as they can turn one on with good. When I see a poorly designed package or bottle, I immediately either think poorly of the brand, or will never even consider buying the product.

When looking at this bottle, which is not rubbing alcohol, but a brand of vodka, I think about what kind of brand they are. It is not eye catching, and if anything, it makes you think of a medication bottle. I am personally a fan of very slim, simplistic designs. Anyone could tell this by looking at my bottle collection. Below are some more bottles that I enjoy looking at. Enjoy.

Man Scented Candles

Last year I did a campaign for a fake company called Mandles, which is manly scented candles for men and perhaps the craziest creative concept that I ever put to ink. My attempt was to create a little bit of driving force to purchase because I believed this was such a novelty product. So I created a two sided ad campaign where the dotted line is perforated to create a coupon to create that driving force, as well as a sort of viral aspect to it because people can pop them out and either collect them or trade them.







Modernista! Here is the craziest idea I've ever done for the creative intern application.

Leaving Your Mark

Last year while on the e-board for AAF, I headed a campaign for Imprint Magazine. Imprint is a Ithaca College funded magazine that attempts to keep itself distanced from the school and just cover college issues. They were tired of the boring, static brand that they had inherited from the previous generation and wanted a clean start. So we decided to design something fun for them, that could be seen all over campus. And here is what we came up with.

Leaving your mark. That is what imprint was all about. They didn't just cover stories, they lived them. And wherever they went, they left their mark so you could tell where they had been. All of these are 5"x5" window clings that were put around campus.

WPP Hiring Freeze

So last week the holding group WPP ordered a hiring freeze for all of their agencies including JWT, Ogilvy, Y&R and Grey. These are four of the largest global ad agencies and this kind of frightens me a little. I understand that with the current crisis that all costs need to be kept at a minimum, but I believe that if you are not cycling in new staff than an agency will get stale. And where does this leave the new era of ad workers (i.e. me)? I know that smaller agencies will continue to hire and that if I search hard enough I will find something, but this is just not a good feeling with the real world so close.

Philips Universal Remote

I recently bought a universal remote because I had three things running and no remote to control them. This got really annoying when trying to access alternate features of DVDs. So last night I was fed up, and at 11pm or so I drove out to my local Wal-Mart. I of course bought the cheapest one, at a whopping $7.95. It was glow in the dark, it controlled TV, games and DVD and that was all that I needed. So I brought it home, immediate realizing that I didn't have AAA batteries. But after begging certain friends I got the batteries and started trying to program the remote. Now to program the remote to the TV was easy, I didn't actually have to do anything. But getting the remote to work with the DVD player was beyond difficult.

I tried all of the regular codes that are supposed to work for a certain brand, but my TV, being approximately 75 thousand years old, didn't work with any of them. So they then suggested (they being the manual that came with the remote) that I should click setup, and then on Ch+ about 300 times, because that's how many codes there were.

So when I finally stumbled on the right channel, I realized why the punching in of the codes didn't work. When I hit 6, my TV thinks I'm hitting play. With 2, it thinks 1/2 speed playing. Every button minus 3 on my remote actually did something else. Some buttons did absolutely nothing, but some did complete opposite things.

So I am back at square one, where I can hit "6" to play, but I still can't click left, down, right, or up. I don't know if talking to someone at Wal-Mart would do anything, but this remote is one of the most confused piece of electronics I've ever dealt with.

Obama's Comedic Counterpart

While flying back and forth to NH for fall break I bought two copies of Rolling Stone and was actually pleased with the level of good advertising in it. They were funny, well placed and vastly outnumbered the bad ones. But there was one that particularly caught my interested.

This was on one page.


Which was directly followed by this on the next page.

These were outrageously simple, but they stuck out the most to me in the entire magazine, which included ads from Old Spice, Absolute, Orbit Gum and Trojan Condoms. Bravo to whatever AD & CW team thought up these.

Adverteasing

The game of slogans, commercials and jingles. 1980s.



Fantastically difficult game, but no one ever wants to play.

Meghan McCain

'Live Free or Die' is the NH state motto. And Meghan McCain, while visiting Nashua said that if her dad won NH in the November election than she would get the state motto tattooed on her somewhere. Great McCain election tactic? Or great marketing for NH?

May I suggest?

Obama and McCain's Last Debate

Last night on Wednesday night, Obama and McCain squared off in their third, and final debate at Hofstra University. I won't hide my enthusiasm and support for the Obama campaign, but this campaign was pretty much the same old thing. Obama is ahead in polls in the national setting and all of the swing states, so he played it safe. While McCain, behind in all of the polls went on the attack the entire time. The most interesting discussion was on negative campaigning.



McCain claims Obama is running the most negative campaign in history, while Obama claims 100% of McCain's ads are negative.

Both are wrong.

McCain has run positive ads in the past, but as of now all of his ads that are running are negative. Overall, about 71% of his ads have been negative in nature.

Obama has a lot more money at his disposal so a lot more ads are coming from the Obama camp. But at this point, only 63% of his ads have been negative.

I have never once seen a negative ad in my life and then thought better of the candidate sponsoring it. Shape up guys. I expect more from Obama, as I am voting for him. I realize my bias, and will at no point attempt to cover it up.

Risk. A World of its Own.

I did a campaign last year for class and have been battling myself over whether this print campaign has any real promise or if it is just very...student work. I tried to give Risk a new look with males 18-24 by showing the energy and passion that goes into Risk when you play. It is not just a board game, but it is its own world. I showed this to an AD at Saatchi and Saatchi and he sent me a link to the award winning campaign for Risk that had the invaders occupying a major landmark of another country. Fantastic idea.

Any and all comments are welcome. In my opinion, the visual stand out a lot, especially when compared to a lot of other ads. But I am just not sure about them, whether they would be looked at as purely student work or not. Now I need to stop procrastinating and study for the remainder of my midterms, which include: Principles of Marketing, Brand Design and 20th Century American Drama.

Discovering the Undiscovered

So I think I have finally finished my campaign for Atlantis Diving. Well, as much as I will ever consider it finished, I will always find flaws in my own work that need to be corrected. But here are all three, tell me what you all think. Any and all comments are welcome.

Just for class purposes I have to do a different layout on the moon piece, but I think the campaign is at a good point at this time. I do want to keep working on it and updating it so it will be good enough to go in my book eventually.