Get Out Your Pen Pencil or Crayon! — Part 2

Gone are the days when pen­cil sharp­en­ers were needed in every account­ing office and when for­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tions were printed on letterhead.  Unfortunately, the hand writ­ten note has expe­ri­enced a sim­i­lar demise…or has it?

Dur­ing the past six months, I read an arti­cle and heard a few peo­ple speak about the res­ur­rec­tion of the hand writ­ten note.  In fact, I was inspired ear­lier this year to write Part 1 about the impor­tance of this “relic tool” that will absolutely get you heard over the “noise” of every­one else.

I was recently at the For­tune Lead­er­ship Sum­mit in Orlando, Florida.  One of the speak­ers was Dave Ker­pen, author of Like­able Social Media and Like­able Busi­ness. He com­mented that the hand writ­ten note was the orig­i­nal social media and encour­aged every­one in the room to start writ­ing hand writ­ten notes.  He even dis­trib­uted note cards and envelopes to the 500 peo­ple in the room and pro­vided a few min­utes to write.

Since the impor­tance of the hand writ­ten note has been cov­ered, I want to review the 8 crit­i­cal steps to cre­at­ing an amaz­ing hand­writ­ten note card.

 

Step 1:  Type your note in your favorite word proces­sor.  Yes, you read this cor­rectly. Typ­ing first allows you to decide what to say as well as edit, and spell check before you take the cap off your pen.

typed doc

Step 2:  Grab your favorite pen.  I pre­fer black, but blue is accept­able.  If you feel like jazz­ing it up with another color, save it for writ­ing notes to your kids or your spouse.

Step 3:  Copy the per­fected note to your note card exactly as it appears on the screen. Don’t stray. I have strayed before and it causes prob­lems with flow, word­ing and other issues later in the note. Don’t for­get to add the date to the top.

Step 4:  Write leg­i­bly.  If the recip­i­ent strug­gles to deci­pher your writ­ing, the bliss of receiv­ing the note will be buried by the frus­tra­tion from try­ing to deci­pher your penmanship.

Step 5:  Don’t try to squeeze too much on the note card.  Shorter is bet­ter.  It is the act of writ­ing and send­ing the card that mat­ters most-more than the con­tent, which is a close second.

written card

Step 6:  If you know the per­son well, write only your first name at the bot­tom and move on.  If you don’t know the per­son well, still write your first name and include your busi­ness card with the note.

Step 7:  Use a printer to address the enve­lope.  Don’t for­get to add a sim­ple return address.  I add mine to the flap on the back of the envelope.

front envelope                  back envelope

Step 8:  Repeat.  You can­not over-do it.

Now you are ready.  Send a note today.  I have com­mit­ted to send­ing at least one note each week.  How about you?  What do you do?  I would love to hear any sug­ges­tions for improv­ing this process.

Keep your eyes open. Inspi­ra­tion can come from anywhere.

This post was inspired by Dave Ker­pen of Like­able.  Great speaker.  Great author.

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Projection Mapping Examples

Pixel map­ping, video map­ping, pro­jec­tion map­ping; all of these terms describe a tech­nol­ogy that is gen­er­at­ing buzz in mar­ket­ing cam­paigns world­wide. Wikipedia defines video map­ping as: “a pro­jec­tion tech­nol­ogy used to turn irreg­u­larly shaped objects into a dis­play sur­face for pro­jec­tion. Using spe­cial­ized soft­ware, a two or three-dimensional object is spa­tially mapped out in a vir­tual environment.”

When the con­tent is cre­ated around the 3 dimen­sional struc­ture you can cre­ate illu­sions of extra dimen­sions, opti­cal illu­sions, and notions of move­ment onto pre­vi­ously sta­tic objects.

The fol­low­ing videos demon­strate the best exam­ples I’ve found on of this new tech­nol­ogy in exper­i­men­ta­tion and mar­ket­ing cam­paigns but please share any of your favorites in the com­ments below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Style Board Revolution

There are sev­eral things I remem­ber from my first job in the exhi­bi­tion indus­try. Fresh out of col­lege, I used Auto­Cad in DOS. There was no such thing as Microsoft Win­dows, client pre­sen­ta­tions were blue­print copies of hand inked vel­lum and almost every client pre­sen­ta­tion was made in per­son so you had to look at a map in advance and plot your route.  No email, no Google Maps, no Inter­net based image search and no scan­ner. It sounds like a period piece film, but it was the early 1990’s.

When­ever I had to make a style board, I had to comb through mag­a­zines and find rel­e­vant images, cut them out and paste them onto a pre­sen­ta­tion board.  The inspi­ra­tion image data­base was lim­ited to the size of your mag­a­zine library. And once the image was used, it couldn’t be used on another style board unless you used push­pins instead of spray mount.  But the pur­pose of the style board has not dimin­ished. It is a key tool in deter­min­ing the direc­tion of a project and get­ting all the team mem­bers on the same page.  There are usu­ally sev­eral deci­sion mak­ers on the client side and all of them agree that the space should feel mod­ern, open and light, but rest assured, every one of them has a dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tion of what that looks like.  A style board IS the visual rep­re­sen­ta­tion of abstract keywords.

Now fast for­ward to present day. The images avail­able on the Inter­net are daunt­ing, but the abil­ity to enter a key­word and do an image search quickly lim­its your choices.  The Inter­net is the new style board library.  There are even web sites like Olioboard and Mural.ly that are style board cre­ation tools.

So now it is eas­ier than ever to find style images, but enter “mod­ern, light, and open” and how do you know you’ll get archi­tec­tural or graphic design ori­ented images that help tell your story visu­ally?  That’s really the trick.  In the past, the mag­a­zines I thumbed through were exhibit, archi­tec­ture and graph­ics ori­ented. Enter Pin­ter­est!

Google ChromeScreenSnapz003

Lately I have devoted about 15 min­utes a day to Pin­ter­est and turned it into my go to style board site.  I also browse sev­eral design ori­ented web sites like design­spi­ra­tion, but I always try and link them back to Pin­ter­est so I can eas­ily find just the right style board image.

Whether you are a designer, sales per­son, exhibit man­ager, chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer or pro­cure­ment offi­cer, you can use Pin­ter­est to get every­one on your team on the same page quickly.  Enter “exhibit design” or just “design” into the Pin­ter­est search field, and you’ll be amazed at what comes up.  Pin some images, have your team do the same and then com­pare your find­ings. Use Pin­ter­est to cre­ate a vir­tual style board and then share it with your designer.

The great thing about Pin­ter­est (and style boards) is that you don’t have to limit your­self to images of exhibits.  You can gain just as much insight by look­ing for ani­mals, celebri­ties, col­ors, tex­tures, house­hold items and vehi­cles that relate to your brand keywords.

To get you started here are a few Pin­ter­est feeds:

http://pinterest.com/mpearlman/3d-inspiration/

http://pinterest.com/mpearlman/2d-inspiration/

http://pinterest.com/hira10/wall-texture-pattern-detail/

http://pinterest.com/cloudesign/patterns-textures/

http://pinterest.com/cloudesign/color/

http://pinterest.com/search/boards/?q=exhibit+design

Browse for 15 min­utes and dig deep. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you can define your brand and your look.  But keep in mind, it isn’t about what you like and dis­like, it is about what images describe your company.

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Graphically Speaking: Resolution Quick Tips

Last time, we aimed to make res­o­lu­tion more under­stand­able. Now, let’s get to some prac­ti­cal tips.

5 Tips for Image Resolution

Look at your image at 100% to 150% on your screen. If it looks blocky, noisy, or blurry, these defects will usu­ally show or even be ampli­fied in the print.

  1. The num­ber of pix­els is key. Recent DSLR cam­eras can cap­ture over 4000 x 3000 pix­els. Divide the pixel dimen­sions by 100 to find the size the image can repro­duce before doing any enlarg­ing. In this exam­ple, the size would be 40” x 30”.
  2. File size is NOT an indi­ca­tor of qual­ity. How­ever, if your image is smaller than 3.0 MB in file size (red alert!), it’s prob­a­bly too small for use in large-format printing.
  3. Doing your own enlarg­ing (upsam­pling) is not rec­om­mended. It causes irre­versible dam­age to the image. For best results, send your high­est qual­ity orig­i­nal to your graphic pro­fes­sional, and let him or her con­trol the enlarg­ing process.
  4. In all cases, com­mu­ni­cate often and early with the designer AND pro­ducer of the graph­ics. They will guide you and help to make you look your best.

squarefoot-filesize_mccall

 

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Imagination IS Innovation

I have made every effort to keep my Fri­day sched­ule to be meet­ing free.  It always felt good, but for the longest time I didn’t under­stand why.  This was the case until my dad sent me a text gloat­ing over how he was relax­ing next to the water at our lake house.  He said he was “Lis­ten­ing to the Quiet” and how it gave him time to think.  This inspired me to write a blog post with the same name about the impor­tance of think time. I was reminded of this and inspired to write on a sim­i­lar topic after read­ing a Wall Street Jour­nal article.

Most com­pa­nies claim they are inno­v­a­tive.  The word is used in com­pa­nies’ names.  It is used in describ­ing their ser­vices.  It is also used when describ­ing their peo­ple.  But what is it that leads to these claims?

Dictionary.com defines inno­va­tion as “something new or different introduced”.

Inno­va­tion does not come by hap­pen­stance and may not come at all to some peo­ple.  We are in a fast paced envi­ron­ment where we are mostly focused on get­ting the lat­est task com­pleted and checked off the list so we can move on to the next task.  Inno­va­tion is impor­tant in most com­pa­nies. The key to achiev­ing it and its pre­req­ui­site lies in the imag­i­na­tion of the innovator.

Dictionary.com defines imag­i­na­tion as “form­ing men­tal images or con­cepts of what is not actu­ally present to the senses”.

Imag­i­na­tion is not easy.  Most impor­tantly, it takes time and some­times a lot of it.  How many lead­ers insist their design staff take time think­ing through the devel­op­ment of a con­cept first? How many lead­ers ask their team to play around with an idea before fully devel­op­ing it? How many lead­ers take time for them to imag­ine and think through a new idea, a process or a strat­egy?  Most answers to these ques­tions will be “not many”.

Believe it or not, imag­i­na­tion is the key to inno­va­tion.  Imag­i­na­tion is also impor­tant to the effi­ciency of com­plet­ing a project, the qual­ity of a design, and the cre­ativ­ity of a solu­tion.  The next time you are faced with a project, slow down for a few min­utes.  Take some time to think about it and allow your­self some time to imag­ine.  You will find the solu­tions are much bet­ter and your time involved much less.

Keep your eyes open. Inspi­ra­tion can come from anywhere.

This post was inspired ini­tially by my dad and more recently by the arti­cle I read in the Wall Street Journal. 

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Graphically Speaking: Resolution Made Simple

Res­o­lu­tion gets a bad rap. No, I’m not refer­ring to that New Year’s res­o­lu­tion to lose 10 pounds. I’m talk­ing about image res­o­lu­tion. Image res­o­lu­tion is crit­i­cally impor­tant when you are plan­ning your graph­ics but it is not well under­stood. Worse, many peo­ple dis­miss it as being too technical.

A dig­i­tal image is sim­ply a grid of color tiles (pix­els). Images, includ­ing “raster effects” like drop shad­ows, are pix­els. Image res­o­lu­tion asks: How many pix­els do you have, and how large is the area (in inches)where these pix­els must fit? This is expressed as pix­els per inch.

resolution-sign_mccall

Anal­ogy #1: Weight

Which weighs more: a 300-pound man or three 100-pound peo­ple? That’s image res­o­lu­tion: if one num­ber goes up, the other goes down. It’s a pro­por­tion; the actual num­ber of pix­els has not changed.

Anal­ogy #2: Money

Which is bet­ter: a $5 bill or five $1 bills? No tricks here—the amount is con­stant. We have merely changed the size of the units. How­ever, what would you think if some­one gave you a $10 bill and said, “Just draw in another zero and you will have $100”? (It doesn’t work with image res­o­lu­tion, either!)

So, hav­ing enough pix­els is crit­i­cal to cre­at­ing large for­mat graph­ics. In my next post, I’ll share some prac­ti­cal res­o­lu­tion tips.

A Story about a Story

After a busy Decem­ber crank­ing out CES projects, I finally got around to see­ing the film Argo.  In the first few min­utes I was hooked by the cuts between orig­i­nal news cov­er­age and images filmed by Mr. Affleck to reflect that cov­er­age.  From a design per­spec­tive, what hooked me was that this was a story about cre­at­ing a story about a story. That’s almost as con­fus­ing as Inception’s dream within a dream, so let me break it down.

Argo is a film (a story in itself) about the CIA’s deci­sion to cre­ate a fake film called Argo (another story) and then build a story around that film to con­vince the world that Hol­ly­wood is cre­at­ing this film  to use as a cover to help sev­eral gov­ern­ment employ­ees escape from Iran dur­ing the 1980 hostage crisis.

This is exactly what we do when we cre­ate an event, exhibit or envi­ron­ment for our clients.  And, like Argo, in the case of our clients in the med­ical indus­try, real lives are  at stake. When­ever we start a project we talk to our clients about the impor­tance of the Dis­cov­ery Phase, and it is often very hard to explain why this phase is so impor­tant to the rest of the design process. But once I saw Argo, it became crys­tal clear.

The Dis­cov­ery Phase is the pre-project state where we gather all the rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion (the inter­nal client story) that will guide the devel­op­ment of the attendee-facing story.  And many times, the client’s inter­nal story is about its core val­ues, about com­pany goals and objec­tives that don’t really mat­ter to the attendee. But that story then gets wrapped in another story, the brand story. The brand story is attendee/customer fac­ing.  It is the exter­nal embod­i­ment of the company’s values.

At a given show or for a given audi­ence, we may not need to envi­sion the whole brand.  A new prod­uct launch may just focus on a bit of the brand story. Or a spe­cific audi­ence may just need to have their under­stand­ing of the brand refo­cused in another direc­tion (shift­ing brand per­cep­tion is the adver­tis­ing term).  And this is the third story, the story that actu­ally gets told at the event, in the exhibit or through an interactive.

This is indeed a story within a story within a story.  And in order to get the last story right, you have to know about the other two sto­ries, and that’s why the Dis­cov­ery Phase is so impor­tant.  It gives us the chance to part­ner with all the stake­hold­ers and under­stand all the angles, rela­tion­ships and con­flicts.  In the mid­dle of Argo, Ben Affleck’s char­ac­ter quizzes the peo­ple he is attempt­ing to res­cue, and they can’t rec­on­cile how the intri­ca­cies of the fake film and their own cover sto­ries as they relate to the fake film will ever work as a viable plan.  But at the film’s cli­max it becomes abun­dantly clear how impor­tant it is to under­stand the story from all levels.

So the next time you are col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion for a project, keep in mind the dif­fer­ent lev­els of your story and how impor­tant it is for your designer to under­stand all those lev­els. It could be a mat­ter of life or death.

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Graphically Speaking: Plan early. Integrate fully.

There is a con­sumer elec­tron­ics com­pany that you may of heard of, that is famous for the tight inte­gra­tion of its soft­ware and hard­ware. That seam­less approach gives the impres­sion of its prod­ucts being nat­ural or right. The same inte­gra­tion of exhibit graph­ics to the exhibit itself is cru­cial to cre­at­ing that pos­i­tive impres­sion. How do you get there? Plan early. Con­tinue read­ing →

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