Marketing By Design

n my previous post, you can find here, I mentioned that each Leadership Sacramento class has a community service class project. Every year dozens of nonprofits apply to have their project selected by the Leadership class. (It’s not too often you get the energy and expertise of 35 diverse professionals focused on helping your cause.) Our class made our selection based on a few key criteria: regional impact, accomplishable within a year, ongoing impact beyond a year, that it wouldn’t have gotten done with our help, and that it is a nonprofit with enough capacity to be a good partner.

We reviewed many worthy projects and in the end I am quite proud that our group chose what I think was the most challenging project. It’s not too hard to sell ‘helping to feed children’ or ‘to save puppies’, but we chose to create a new program for the Sacramento Tree Foundation that retrofits old parking lots by adding trees, and to launch that as a pilot project at Florin Road Bingo. A very worthly cause, but not very sexy. Luckily we came up with a good name: Cover Your Asphalt.

Cover Your Asphalt delivers serious environmental and business benefits as the trees mature.

Business Benefits

The trees protect parking lots from the harmful effects of the sun, extending their lifespan by up to 10 years.  Adding trees also lowers the ambient temperature, reducing surrounding business’ cooling costs up to 40%. Another study found that customers spend more time and will pay more at businesses with shaded parking lots. All of these benefits, as well as aesthetic benefits, increase property values.

Environmental Benefits

By shading the asphalt, ambient temperatures are reduced, which is especially important in urban areas covered with black asphalt. High temperatures also expand the gas in the gas tanks of parked cars, causing them to emit pollutants even while they are turned off. Shading with trees reduces emissions from parked cars by 18%. It can lower temperatures in parked cars by 60°F. Trees capture water in their leaves, trunks, and roots, limiting and cleaning storm water runoff. By capturing particulate matter directly from the air, trees improve air quality.

The Florin Road Bingo Hall in South Sacramento (24th Street and Florin Road) is the pilot project for the Cover Your Asphalt program, enabling us to quantify the true costs and benefits of creating shade in older parking lots. We will be planting all 25 trees this Saturday, December 10th, along with volunteers, sponsors and local elected officials who will be showing their support. 

I’m quite proud to be a part of this project. It has taken a lot of energy and effort, but my dedicated classmates have continually risen to the occasion. The planting is this weekend, but it doesn’t stop there. That’s just phase one! Up next is to launch and sustain a brand new program for the Sacramento Tree Foundation.

Learn more about the Cover Your Asphalt program here.
Learn more about Leadership Sacramento here.
Learn more about the Sacramento Tree Foundation here.

As a board member, volunteer and vendor of the Sacramento Tree Foundation, I had a blast helping to invent this tree. At 3 feet tall (and wide), it holds 'pledge leaves', paper cutouts of leaves with contact and commitment information from donors. The Tree Foundation uses it at public outreach events and cultivation events, and it is a stunning piece of art with a fabulous purpose.
For me was the whole process was fun: hearing a request for 'a tree that hangs on the wall' and envisioning it to be something grander and more dynamic; finding a sculptor — Josh Kaiser — the best!; working with Josh to figure out the scale, the textures, the roots and the curly elements to hold the paper leaves; visiting an annodizing facility to explore coating/coloring it; unveiling it at a board meeting, and then seeing it in action at William Ishmael's cultivation event.
I grew up loving fabrics and colors and became an expert in print design. It was a pleasure stretching my knowledge to make this sculpture happen for Sacramento Tree Foundation. I appreciate the opportunity, Josh's exceptional work, and the pride I feel when I see it on display at the STF office.
You're invited to see it there, but I recommend you join and add a leaf to the tree. Visit sactree.com or call 916.924.8733 to volunteer or join.

his year I have embarked on a very intriguing journey with my Leadership Sacramento class. What is Leadership Sacramento? Leadership Sacramento is a year-long program of the Sacramento Metro Chamber that engages 35 emerging leaders in the region's most pressing issues through a monthly class with the newsmakers and policymakers themselves. The class is also responsible for developing, planning, and implementing a charity project during their class year.

Over the course of the year we meet for a full day, once a month, to learn about a different topic in Sacramento’s economy. This year’s agenda covers: Civic Engagement, Sacramento’s History, Government, Regional Economy and Workforce Development, Regional Issues, The Business of Being Green, ‘Arts, Culture and Entertainment’, Emerging Industries & Leaders, Healthcare, and Law & Order. Each day is packed with 6-12 experts specific to the topic at hand. The discussions are lively and intriguing. As the year goes on you begin gain a whole new perspective on the issues we face, assets we have and how interconnected each topic and this region is.

The perspective on Sacramento I’ve gained has been great. Equally as important is the network that has formed amongst all 35 classmates. We are attorneys, designers, managers, directors, advocates and more. Our professions and ages vary widely, yet through this common experience we have all learned from each other, collaborated together and bonded to form a tight network.

Leadership Sacramento has been a great experience for me this year. I’d highly recommend it to all who are interested in opening their minds to the bigger picture of Sacramento. It’s good for you and it’s good for your company’s exposure.

I didn’t sit down to write this post as a sales pitch, but it does so happen that applications are open for next year’s Leadership Sacramento Class, deadline is Oct 21st.

MbD would like to announce that it is the proud owner of a little green alien.  A very green, very English alien, named Isla Waite. Isla has been an intern for the last few months and has been working on improving her production skills under our wing.

Isla met Della while she was still in school, and took an instant fancy to MbD. Through (self-described) pestering and bribes she managed to secure an internship straight out of school, and since we would miss her out-of-tune covers of Pandora, we decided to keep her on for a little longer. Isla has been working on projects for CSPC, and the Sacramento Tree Foundation. (Check out the STF “lazy days grow here” billboard below, which will grace the city skyline in July).

Isla arrived armed with a BA Dual Major in International Relations and Media Studies, and an Associates degree in Graphic Design. Her previous life involved ordering pilots around in the skies of Europe as an Air Traffic Control Officer in the British military. A two year stint as the Operations Manager of a retail store was all she needed to convince herself to follow a brand new path, with a life-long passion...in design. We’re really happy to have her around and it’s so much fun watching our green alien grow!

We're very excited to share that Della will be speaking this Friday, March 25th, at ADAC (Art Directors and Artists Club). She was asked to prersent as part of thier ongoing Words of Wisdom series. We welcome you to come out and join us. See the offical event descripton below:

Words of Wisdom series: Della Gilleran, Marketing by Design

With thirty plus years of experience, Della Gilleran has effectively merged her experiences into a skill set that has helped grow Marketing by Design to be the successful business it is today, and balanced that with...life. Join ADAC on Friday, March 25th at 6 p.m. where Della shares her story... From unpaid sales tax to a kid in college: one day at a time.

Open to both members and non-members. Free for members, $5 for non-members, $3 for non-members students (Student ID required).

All Words of Wisdom events will be held at AIA Central Valley building, 1400 S Street, Sacramento at 6 p.m.

e are one of the design firms that (in 34 years of history) have been lucky enough to work with clients over a long period of time. This sustained relationship can be very beneficial to the client as the designer develops a deep understanding of the client's audience, message and goals, creating better, more impactful design solutions in less time. The client gets consistently effective work with considerably less effort in educating new designers.

There are times when it can be challenging for the designer to create fresh solutions repeatedly, that both maintain and enliven the brand. This is an opportunity for the designer, not a problem. Having a very well defined audience, clear message and years of feedback should help to focus the designer's creative problem-solving energies. The focused, grounded thinking leads to more effective design solutions. Yet even under those circumstances, designers can experience creative blocks.

Determined to gain traction in times of creative blocks, I often browse design publications or my RSS feeds. Many of the blogs I read are for design inspiration, but they're hit and miss. Then I realized I've been keeping my own catalogue of inspirational design tidbits on Tumblr.  Looking at pages and pages of great work, or design showcases, can also be overwhelming. For each piece that moved me I analyzed the basic design principles and/or core techniques that make the project successful, making the piece less intimidating and more actionable, which is exactly what I need. With a little inspiration and revisiting some core design principles I got back on track.

I never knew if my social media efforts would pay off, but over time they have been producing fruit in different ways. On Tumblr I thought I was sharing design inspiration for others, but it turned out to be immensely helpful for me. Now I use it to get refreshed and gain new insights.

Hopefully this helps others in a similar spot. How do you break the creative block? Share your tips below.

Illustrated Drop Cap by Jessica Hische

Hats off to CalSTRS, for hiring Cooper Design in San Francisco to do qualitative research on its members. We are excited to phase into a new relationship with CalSTRS as a design resource, in addition to several good in-house and contracted designers. As CalSTRS is one of the largest pension funds in the world, the volume of member communications can be potentially staggering. Determining the target audience, the message, and the point are all critical to the ultimate goal of 'being of service to the members'.

Enter 'Personas'. [from Wikipedia]

Personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic, attitude and/or behavior set that might use a site, brand or product in a similar way.
Cooper's month long interviews of 75 members across the state yielded five personas. Each at a different point in his/her career, at a different level of financial interest and sophistication, and a different need for segments of CalSTRS' services. We love their approach and it was a pleasure to see it done methodically at a large scale.

The personas were of five different teachers:

• a young woman, married and busy with a family, who is not the financially-attentive person in the household
• a mid-career woman; single parent and struggling financially because her ex-husband lost his job
• a mid-40's man who made a career change into teaching, bringing existing retirement money and financial savvy
• a late-career woman, who is trying to figure out the best timing for retirement
• a retired community college teacher, whose benefits are defined by the years of service and dollars contributed — and who must manage his accounts from a different perspective.

Bringing this Home for Our Clients

We were impressed with the professionalism and thoroughness of the Cooper team. As Phil and I walked away from the meeting we mused how fun it would be to create 'personas' for our clients. The reality is we do a 'lite' version of this for our clients on each project. We don't have degrees in anthropology, statistics or psychology and our clients generally need to work within a tighter budget, but we do keep a strong focus on the target audience throughout our process.
We meet with clients from marketing managers to small business owners on a daily basis. At the launch of each project we ask "Who is the audience? Who are the likely buyers? Who would benefit from this, or be moved by this information?" When the answer is "everybody!", we know there is digging to be done. At that point, designing for 'everybody' will mean design for 'nobody'. Keeping the target audience at the forefront of design and strategy is crucial to making each project successful.

Clarity

Having shared this idea with my sister, who recently signed up to collect Social Security, it sounds like the SSA could benefit from customized messages to well defined target audiences. She's received several mailings of multi-page letters that drone on, difficult to read and identify the important points. As an attorney, she had the stamina to actually read the pages, and still had trouble understanding them. In this age of information overload, clarity is critical!

e were at a photoshoot with one of our favorite clients a few weeks ago and good news popped up in thier email. We had won yet another Gold Medal in the 2010 Awards for Excellence in Public Health Communication for our client. The project is part of thier outreach to educate children on the benefits of eating healthy and being active. We teamed up to create a sticker booklet to encourage kids to "Try Something New." It was a fun project with some interesting technical hurdles and an unexpected perk in the end. Thanks to California Department of Public Health for the opportunity to do some good work. It's always fun to have a project recognized like this.

See more of our work for the California Department of Public Health here.

Illustrated Drop Cap by Jessica Hische

e had a grand time at the Gubernatorial Debate on the UC Davis campus on Tuesday evening. After a sweltry wait in line we were ushered though security at the Mondavi Center and met our good friend, Constance Crawford, Marketing Director of Capital Public Radio. After a quick behind-the-scenes tour we nabbed some great seats in the third row, not far behind Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg.

It was a remarkable feeling to be there in person, witnessing Whitman and Brown face off for the privilege of inheriting a great state in a terrible situation. What did we think of the debate? I give Whitman points for clarity and poise. I give Brown points for passion, savvy and experience. Whitman looses points for too many attacks and talking points. Brown looses points for being chaotic and gruff. Both seemed to know their base audience and pandered well. Of course we won't call a winner, but we will say we had a great time. Special thanks again to Capital Public Radio for the opportunity to be a part of history.

Della Gilleran and Phil Tretheway outside the Mondavi Center before the debate. (We're not really that odly shaped, it's a fish-eye lense)

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What did you think of the debate? Let us know with a comment below.

Illustrated Drop Cap by Jessica Hische

We're excited to share that Della and I (Phil) will be attending the highly anticipated Tuesday night California Gubernatorial debate. What will happen when these two political forces collide? We don’t know, but we’re excited to be there in person to watch the fireworks.

We have to thank our good friends over at Capital Public Radio for inviting us to join them at the event. We've been working together for over a year and it’s truly a pleasure to work with the great people there. For Della and Joel, who are CPR/NPR addicts, it’s a natural fit.

This will be a hotly contested political race and debate, but we obviously can’t share if we are rooting for Whitman or Brown, but we’re sure it will be an exciting evening. We’ll be back to give you a wrap up blog post after the event and share any intriguing tidbits or stories that may not make the morning news.

I think of our client’s projects in the same way I think of boxes. I love interesting boxes: different shapes, different textures, different mechanisms to open, different purposes. You wouldn’t give an engagement ring in a packing box, and you wouldn’t pack computer ram in a velvet jewelry box — unless you are specifically going for an unexpected effect. From a simple packing box to a curved-sides box, to a silk-embroidered covered box, each box has its unique characteristics and purpose.
Design projects are the same, with characteristics and a purpose unique to each. Defining the project means understanding (the optimal) target audience, the goal, the reasons for action (features/benefits), and how this project fits in context with the rest of the project or campaign components so that coherence with the brand is addressed. Printed materials, display graphics, user interface design and packaging all have different criteria, as do the different manufacturing or reproduction methods associated with each. It’s super-critical when those different methods all must represent the product and brand appropriately and consistently!
For example, our branding work with the Sacramento Tree Foundation over the last ten months has included a great group of projects that have asked us to become involved at several levels. Each project was a different ‘box’ to be designed and tailored to a strategy and audience. To have a thorough understanding we participated in developing initial strategy and messaging concepts, and then worked through the design and production phases on many projects in parallel tracks. We’ve been able to create a new look that honors the 25-year-long history and reflects the new human-focused messaging. The success of those projects will play out over the next year, in the varied applications and venues. This process is similar for all clients. By understanding and appreciating the unique purpose of each project that we can create just the right box to manifest your desired outcome.

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Was this post helpful? How do you approach your projects? Do you enjoy delving into each project and refining the problem or do you find it constrictive to your creative process?
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ooking back college was a much simpler time, but that’s what we all say when looking back. At the time it was overwhelming: class, rent, internships, parties, projects, jobs, friends, etc… It was hard to look ahead to this fuzzy, undefined and slightly scary ‘real world’ that we were all vigilantly preparing for. If I could go back and talk to students here is the advice I would share.

Find Your Passion

Design may be a little understood niche in the business world, but it has many forms: Identities, Publications, Packaging, Advertising, Illustration, Infographics, Web Design, Flash coding, Web Development, Interactive Media, Motion Graphics, User Interface, etc… You can’t be great at all of these things, so focus. Pick one or two areas to focus on and develop your skills. I’d hire a specialist over a generalist any day. Make sure you are intrigued and excited about that specialty or you will burn out fast. Don’t pick the one that pays the best, pick the passion. It will show in your work.

Get Experience

Get all the design related experience you can get. Classroom projects are great for developing your skills and flexing your creativity, but we want more. We want to know you can deal with real clients, deadlines, rejection, curve ball requests, ‘non designer’ feedback and produce technically correct, printable or programmable files. This also shows motivation and work ethic. You have to bring something more to the table than student work.

Develop Relationships

Don’t treat your teachers like your parents. Don’t resent them for the work they make you do. They are experienced professionals with a massive wealth of knowledge to share… if you take the time to ask. They’ve been in the real world and are experts in their subject. Cultivate and develop these relationships, they can provide valuable advice and possibly connections and recommendations upon graduation.

Network Now

Every time a speaker comes to your campus, attend, ask questions and talk to them afterwards. Get their business cards and send a quick ‘thank you’ email afterwards. Now you’ve made a connection that you should definitely not be afraid to call upon when you graduate and are job hunting. Every designer you meet you must get their card and send a simple correspondence afterwards. This is networking ‘lite’ and you probably can’t do much more than this as a student, but these are valuable connections to the design world that you can not let pass you by.

There are three things that will get you hired: Attitude, Aptitude and Experience. There are two things that will get you an interview: Connections and Hard Work. The portfolio is very important, but you must be more than your work. We hire the whole person.

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Designers

What do you think? What would you say to young aspiring designers in school? Did I miss anything?

Students

What do you want when you graduate and how are you going to get it? How are you connecting with the professional world? (Hint: This is an opportunity to connect with me and any other designers who may comment here.)

Illustrated Drop Cap by Jessica Hische

We are delighted to share that Marketing by Design has been profiled in the Sacramento Metro Chamber's Metro Business Quarterly publication. If you are a Metro Chamber member you should be getting one in your mail box soon. If you're not a member you'll have to drop by the Chamber to pick one up or find a friend who is a member. It's a great little Q&A where you can learn more about who we are and what we do.

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Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the article. Leave your comments below.

Free Tickets for What?

We have 5 tickets to give away for the Sacramento Metro Chamber’s annual Metro Expo on Tuesday, May 25, 2010 at the Sacramento Convention Center.

The Metro Expo is the foremost business-to-business trade show in Northern California. Join us and 200+ other local exhibitors, mixing and connecting with 1,500+ attendees.

How Do I Win?

Peruse the Portfolio on our brand new website and pick out your favorite project to share with the world. Now there's two ways to win a ticket.

1) Tweet out a link to your favorite MbD portfolio project with a brief description and use the hash tag #MbDgiveaway. You must be following @mktgbydesign to win. We will randomly select 3 winners through your tweets.

Example:

Just saw this innovative Ad Campaign by @mktgbydesign check it out: http://ow.ly/1OnVx #mbdgiveaway

2) For our friends not yet on Twitter, comment on this blog post with a link to your favorite MbD portfolio project and a description of why you liked it. Be sure to leave your first name, last name and email address when commenting. We will randomly select 2 winners from the comments on this blog post.

Deadline for all entries is Monday, May 24th at 4pm.

What do I win?

One full day admission to the Metro Expo on Tuesday, May 25, 2010 ($40 value). Includes admission to the Metro Expo Opening Ceremonies, tradeshow floor, procurement pavilion, workshops and networking reception.

Did I Win Yet?

Winners will be announced Monday, May 24th at 5pm.
Winner must pick up their tickets between 9am and 5pm at 2012 19th Street, Suite 200, Sacramento, CA 95818.

We're very proud to announce that we have won Gold for Best Brochure in the 2010 Showcase of Print/Design Excellence. The winning brochure is a great die-cut, folding piece we did for the California Association of Winegrowers and California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance. Thanks to Paul Baker Printing for the great teamwork.

Design legend Paula Sher has written an excellent article, "What they don't teach you about identity design in design schools…," on logo design over at the Identity Forum on identityworks.com. I'll share a couple of my favorite excerpts. For the full articles go here. It's definitly worth the read.

On the logo design process:

"The design school exercise is indeed a good way to develop craft skills, and hopefully when the student becomes a professional he/she will learn to get fast at it, and achieve that work in the course of a week as opposed to six months. And there, any similarity between real identity design and a design school exercise ends. 

Identity design, for any organization containing more than three people, is the act of diplomatically negotiating personal egos, tastes, and aspirations of various invested individuals against their business needs, their pre-formed expectations, and the constraints of the market place. Making something formalistically beautiful, while desirable, is a more private part of the process, something that the designer needs to achieve incidentally, not something that can appear to be an overt motivating cause.  (This is because form is subjective, and not an easily argued position when a designer is trying to get their client to feel comfortable assuming a new identity.)

 

On what designers get paid for:

"Another thing they don’t teach you in design school is what you get paid for. Right alongside the blog complaint that “any design student could do a better job” is the comment that the designer at hand got “hundreds of thousands of dollars to design that logo that could have been better designed by a design student.” 

I never knew a designer that got hundreds of thousands of dollars to design a logo.  Mostly, designers get paid to negotiate the difficult terrain of individual egos, expectations, tastes, and aspirations of various individuals in an organization or corporation, against business needs, and constraints of the marketplace.  This is a process that can take a year or more.  Getting a large, diverse group of people to agree on a single new methodology for all of their corporate communications means the designer has to be a strategist, psychiatrist, diplomat, showman, and even a Svengali. The complicated process is worth money.  That’s what clients pay for. The process, usually a series of endless presentations and refinements, persuasions and proofs, results, hopefully, in an accepted identity design. "

Well said Paula, thanks for putting it down in words.

knew I was being quite ambitious when I was planning to re-do our portfolio as photographs. The flat digital files on our old site just never did the pieces any justice. They were cold, flat and one-dimensional. Which doesn't communicate what's so cool about print design. We employed photography and creative focus to simulate the tactile experience of print. Hopefully this creates a rich experience and draws you into each of these pieces we have carefully crafted for our clients.

I want to take a moment to thank our great photographer, Gerry McIntyre and share a little behind the scenes. It's quite an endeavor taking 3 shots of each portfolio piece, totaling 100+ photos and God knows how many takes. Gerry's patience, commitment to quality and vast technical knowledge were essential to the process. It also helps that he shares my passion for good Mexican food and chocolate chip cookies.

We used a Canon 1Ds Mark III and one of several lenses, a 85mm F1.2 for soft blurry out of focus areas and one of three Tilt-Shift lenses, a 24mm T/S, 45mm T/S, 90mm T/S. All Canon Lenses.

Thanks again Gerry and Angie of GMP digital. Check them out at gmpdigital.com and gmpfood.com. I've worked with GMP, shooting food, people and now a whole lotta print projects. Gerry, your case of Diet Pepsi is in the mail.

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What do you think of the decision to show the portfolio this way? Worth the time and effort? Seen any other impressive ways to show a print portfolio online? Drop a comment below.

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Illustrated Drop Cap "I" by Jessica Hische

I recently watched a friend of mine go through a process to have a shower door custom made and installed. I had custom glass shelves installed in a kitchen remodel a year before and I was impressed by the precision of the glass company [Dick’s Rancho Glass]. When the friend and her husband got prices from the glass company and from the installation department of a big box store (which I normally shop at), the slightly cheaper price seemed like a reasonable decision. Three door mis-installations later, due mainly to the door manufacturer not measuring and manufacturing the product correctly, and, whoooeee, the $150 they saved has been eaten up by the time spent making and waiting for the appointments for each new installation.

We’ve had that happen with clients as well.  They saved ‘a ton’ of money on the photography, design or printing, only to find that some very basic details had not been accounted for. Even simple things like how we make mockups, versus only sending pdf files, have made a big difference. Once you touch the booklet, see the pages as a spread (vs viewing in single page pdf format) and realize that two photos, or two text blocks don’t make sense in context, then important decisions can be addressed. Otherwise, it comes up at the printers proof with a time and cost consequence.

Love those mockups. They reveal more than we’d ever expect, and are so glad they do.

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Do you still make mock-ups for your clients? or even for yourselves? How do you avoid those types of mistakes? Even been beat out on a quote and had the client come back to you to do it right? Share your story in the comments below.

Lucky us. After several rounds of submitting resumes, cost sheets, and forms, were invited to make a presentation of our work to Sandia National Labs in Livermore. I love science as much as I love design, and this could be a great opportunity to work on making nerdy projects accessible. But with short notice, my loathing at making anything look good in Powerpoint, and the idea that we’d be compared with megashops in the bay area, it was a fun soul-searching process to think about who we are… just the right amount of: creative, smart, nimble, and fun. 

Especially considering the notion that most in-house creative staff have to crank things out and sometimes forget when to stretch the boundaries to create a more effective result, the fact that we can stretch ‘just the right amount’ while still being fast and service-minded is a nice quality to bring to the relationship. I also realized that with them having designers on staff, our bringing ‘a vision’ and ‘art direction’ might be welcomed as a unique piece of the puzzle, beyond the regular design, production and project management.

If all goes well, we’ll be designing brochures, report covers and exhibit panels for some new smart transportation technology and other cool things that scientists are researching; things that need to be explained to policymakers, funders and the public. Wish us luck!