Phone book ads remind me of protection rackets. “Youz are gonna pay us $650 a month, for your full page display adz. And we promise to cash your check and forget who you are for the next year. And ifs youz nice, and don’t scream too much, weez will actually attempt to get your phone number correct — no extra charge.”

I am creating a new phone book ad for a client to replace last years (freebie) ad that they (the phone book people) screwed up. Freebie is a loose term really. They design it for “free,” although at $8,000 a year it’s hard to call anything free. And the quality of the design is three steps above Bongo the chimpanzee and his amazing finger paints.

To compensate for the screw up, they are giving my client a “free” color upgrade this year. Yes, my client had to live with the awful ad all of last year. (Phone books don’t do reprints.) And yes, my client lost business because of it. But the best the phone book people could do was a color upgrade?

(In my best Tony Soprano voice.) “It’s just bitness, nuttin personal … you understand?”

Speaking of which … when was the last time you used a phone book? It might just be geeky me, but when I need to find a company, I Google it. When my client asked me to look at their ad, I had to quickly dig up the book, which was buried under winter coats and boots. It was placed in this place of respect by my son, who distributed them as a Boy Scout fund raising project last fall, and dropped it here when he walked through the front door. We must have kicked it around for three weeks before the accumulating strata hid its whereabouts from view. Otherwise, I would have had NO clue where to find it.

Which reminds me … I need to add my address and phone number to my big yellow blog header.

There is something about me that likes the “outside the box” approach that grass roots guerilla marketing lays claim to. I like it even better when the results of those guerilla promises actually deliver. What do I like about it? It could be the on-the-low, biggest bang for the buck, stand up and take notice, no holds barred, mentality. It could also be that it forces a designer to stop thinking pretty and corporate and gets you dirty.

I have recently completed a somewhat market focused ad built around a three cent xerox flyer on yellow paper that will be distributed, posted, tacked, and handed out by volunteers here in Coeur d’Alene. The ad was built from the ground up to be lossy — the the more grittier and grungy the better. I created some hyper contrasty Photoshop magic from a picture that was already in-your face. For me, the ad is definitely a stretch. For my client, it is also an experiment in something different x 10. I don’t want to let too much out of the bag, but I will post a visual of this next week after we tally the results. Until then … here is a sneak peek.

It has been a long time coming, and I have not yet reached the point where I can say to myself that it is finished (is there ever such a point?) but I have successfully updated my portfolio and made some navigation changes.

To start off, I killed all the drilling down into specific folders and lumped all my logos and advertising together. I have also brought all my illustration under one umbrella. This should make it easier to view samples and keep navigation simple. I have moved my sculpting portfolio off of this site and I am moving it to another domain. I know this goes contrary to what I was saying earlier this year, but it never felt right to have it sort of frankenstein-ed onto this site. Instead of a blog, however, I think that my sculpting site will be a stand alone informational site. We will see, a lot of this rearranging is still in the air.

Comments or no comments? The rest of this site is open to comments and those of you who read and send “good vibes” my direction are encouraged to keep doing so. A few of you have noticed that I do not have my portfolio open for comments. I am not sure why I choose to do this? It is not like my portfolio is more “formal” than the other parts of my blogfolio. I will think about it. If you want to influence the decision, I can be bribed with M&Ms or you can leave a comment here.

For years I have tried to balanced my studio advertising work with an eclectic mix of national and local clients. Some of these clients live in here in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Others operate corporate offices out of Spokane, Washington, or Seattle. From Florida, to New York, to Chicago, to LA, I am lucky to have made a a valuable impact with a variety of clients, a few of which I have actually met in person. It is a interesting world we live in when I can collect a $50,000 check from somebody, whom I have worked hand-in-hand with, and feel like I know like a good friend, and yet I have never seen their face.

It is wonderful, however, to do local work where I can see instant reactions to my creative efforts, and bank the rewards of a personal face-to-face meeting. It is hard to cash a spontaneous smile, but the value really is priceless.

Braided Accents has been one of my Coeur d’Alene clients for over six years. When they call up in a panic on Wednesday afternoon and need an ad by Friday morning I am happy to oblige service. As a long term client they have banked a lot of smiles in my account.

Ok, it’s not the academy awards. But from time to time I will get the opportunity to work on a commercial and I always jump at the chance to keep my skills up to date and my finger in the pie. This was a quick fifteen second spot that appears on public television and is very controlled. In fact all PBS “Ads” are very controlled because they do not want the ad to be overtly “selling” anything. It is really more of a branding opportunity with a phone number, and no call to action and no claims, and no single product endorsements. It is fun though. And since my Brother Mike, does video production in New York, it is a very easy web-based collaboration. It is not client approved yet, but as soon as it is, I will post it for the world to see.

Now … where’s that red carpet?

My grandfather had the Sears catalog. During the depression, he would leaf through the pages and dream of things he could never afford. It provided a generation with the catalyst for hope; unbound avarice. Gone is the Sears catalog and their pages of advertising delights, but in our current economic times I gotta admit that I too, turn to a catalog for my hope of better times and looser budgets.

My catalog of choice is ThinkGeek. It is filled with the things that make me go “I wanna, I wanna, I wanna!” Where else can you buy the world most convenient surge protector (the squid), a titanium spork, astronaut ice-cream, and caffeinated soap?
This past week was April fools and like every year, they offered a never before seen product. A Tauntaun sleeping bag. It is the coolest thing ever. Although meant as a joke, it generated enough response that they are actually thinking about creating it for real. Is this America or What? My 5 year old saw it and went crazy. He can’t wait to sleep in the belly of the beast.

This is just another reminder that I am geeky without reproach.

Search engine optimization is the daily dental care of blogging and webwork. While most of us I am sure have regimens that ensure a reluctant nod to SEO, I am sure that there is a great number of us who are annoyed with the bothersome tediousness of making sure everything is google friendly.

I my case, I was still using the broken and frayed stick method of this SEO routine. Wordpress helps. They make it pretty easy to add tags and keep things organized, but I am lazy and (embarrassed) I rarely use categories and tags. I am mostly a “write and post” kind of guy.

So I am trying to fix that problem and I found two plugins that are both easy to use and make a world of difference. One is called Headspace2. It is a meta tool that easily creates and suggests tags and allows custom page specific information to be applied to pages, archives, even themes.

The next plug-in is called Google XML Sitemaps. As most everybody knows Google uses its own secret magic formula for generating search engine results. However we do know that is scrubs for data from sites in a specific way and if if your site doesn’t mix well with the web crawlers you ranking drops. This particular plug in creates Google Friendly sitemaps that ensures that Google has the most up-to-date info every time you add delete or update a post. What is even better about this plug-in is the Ron Popeil “Set it and forget it” nature. It just works in the background as you write.

OK, this is a thinly veiled Blogo test. I am nowhere near the net. Exciting isn’t it? I thought that it was time that I blogged the Thunderbird project. The initial brief asked for a design for a 6 foot by 4 foot standee. (A store display). I started with a thumbnail that was actually headed towards an illustrative solution. However, after playing with the type a little, I thought I might be able to create a photo composite using the logo, the storefront shot, and a stock photo. In the end the client liked the photo composite; they changed the jacket from blue to red and then ordered a counter card, a flyer, a 12 foot x 3 foot banner, and a button. The banner called for a major redesign of the type element as well as some tweaking to the photos and backgrounds. All in all it was a fun job. I enjoy photo composites as much as I enjoy illustrations so this project was a win/win.

I run through these blog clients every couple of years. I think the Idea is to make blogging more accessible by giving us a simple interface from our desktops that allow us to post “on the run” without having to actually be logged into our blog site. Of course, my question to this is; “I’m not logged into my website? Is there anything wrong with this picture? I am constantly logged into my site, and Facebook and Twitter as well as a few others … 99% of the time.”

There is the argument, that if I had a blog client maybe I could let go of all these log-ins and concentrate on the blogging. Which is why I test them. The determining factor as to whether it stays active in my dock mostly boils down to a few features that I like and some others that I don’t and on which side of that weighted equation wilI the software fall.

We will see if my life gets more or less simple.

BLOGO link

I’ve been working on a lot of divergent projects but this one takes the cake (ewww). I have partnered with a person who is introducing advertising in of all places … urinals. I know this seems a bit out there, but the demographics and retention numbers play out and it is, after all, a captive audience. That being said, I feel that it needs to be accomplished with a nudge and a wink. It’s hard to take yourself too seriously when you are pitching a stranger who has his life in his hands. Since I am working with this guy, doing the ad design and layouts for the boards, I have placed a few ads as starter seed to help his selling efforts. Yes this relies on toilet humor, and yes it is not an evening at the opera. Still and all, I am not sure if I have crossed the line of taste.

As bathroom ads go, it is not a product placement on a urinal cake, (ewww x 2) nor is it a branded game on the same, both of which exist in the narrow but lucrative market of toilet ad specialties. So I should be grateful.

I am trying to have some fun here. Who knows in the end I might actually drum up some business.