your ticket in

Creative Brief, sort of self explanatory in the name. Its has lots of names like marketing brief, project brief, job ticket, or innovation brief. Whatever the term you decide to use, it is “the written description of a project that requires some form of design.” The goal is to make the brief as complete and useful as possible. It gives you a written ideal of what to the company is about so we can better design something that is suited for the campaign or event or just the company’s brand. When writing ours in class there was a lot of things I didn’t know we needed to know and the amount of detail. It is very important since this is something that we will use as our guidelines to have as a tool.

real. not real.

While working with image altering (through bitmaps, grayscales, layers, cmyk, rgb, solarized images, layers and clipping paths) I found that there really is no true pure picture out there. There are so many ways not only just in altering the image quality but the actual things in the image. I always knew that it was being done I just never thought I would be able to create such alter and manipulated images. In a way it takes away from the glory that a/the photographer feels when he/she has gone out, searched for that perfect spot waited for the perfect light and time of year to take the perfect picture. That ecstatic feeling you get when the picture turns out and you seen nothing wrong with it because of all the work that went into finding the place and setting it up just right. Now all you have to do is go out there take the picture in the rain in the middle of December and you can make it look like it was taken in the middle of July; just turn this color up and this color down a few key commands some paint tool here and there some layer masks and bam! But on the contrary that then makes it your own. All the manipulations you can make it absolutely perfect, all yours, and take pride in the fact that you did take the picture and know technology like the back of your hand and have the capabilities of making such an image possible.

touch screens and delete buttons.. what would Gutenberg say?

After watching the video on the Gutenberg press and learning about the history of Type in process and materials, I finally began to realize what all actually went into the development of our typing machines. I knew it took a long time to make printed things and to get the paper etc. but I never knew how long it really took to just make one printed page. Its almost mind numbing. I can remember as a kid my parents having a typewriter that was my grand parents and thinking no big deal I’ll just type, I can spell I am in the third grade, hello! I can remember the complete frustration I felt when I messed up like the 10th time. I just wanted to hit the delete button and move on but it’s just not an option. Thinking of that frustration in comparison with the mess up of a letter on a press like that one while printing say a BIBLE, my ordeal is so minute! Something I think that everyone in the past ten years takes for granted is the fact that now we have computers with which we can type and delete on command and its no big deal. Not only that but just the fact that we can type period! I remember learning it in school and how unimportant I thought it was. It just seems like something that I never would need to learn in my 7th grade mindset. Now in today’s world we’re having to learn how to touch a screen and make it do what we want it to do. Something else to think about, huh?

branding, its more than just a name

In the book The Brand Gap Marty Neumeier talks about the common problems that the culture that needs brands confuses with the actual logos and objects themselves. He definess a brand as a feeling that you get from a product. “Each person creates his or her own version of it. While companies can’t control this process, they can influence it by communicating the qualities that make this product different than that product. When enough individuals arrive at the same gut feeling, a company can be said to have a brand.” This confused me the first time I read it. Not necessarily the quote I just put up but the concept behind it. A feeling is a lot to be riding on a company with a product. I still don’t quite understand this idea and feeling but I’m beginning to wrap my head around it. For example: the Nike “swosh” its self isn’t a brand, but the name is something with meaning and trust. As a runner you trust them as a company to produce a shoe that will hold up, make your feet feel great as you run and to keep producing better shoes with better qualities and you will keep buying them. That is the brand. It is the feeling of trust. In this book Marty is trying to fill that gap and help you understand what it really means to be a brand, not just a logo or name. in this book he tries to explain what the essence of a brand is and from someone who thought it was the same thing as a logo or a name not realizing that I hesitate when I buy “off brand” items that I do get nervous that maybe it wont perform the same as the real deal name that that is the brand speaking, my gut feeling!