The font DIN typeface family is inspired by the classic industrial German engineering designs, DIN 1451 Engschrift and DIN 1451 Mittelschrift. This font comes since 1995 from two different foundries. While Linotype has the original designs, Fontshop made their interpretation with the aid of Albert-Jan Pool under the name FF DIN. FF DIN became quite popular because it had a few more widths and was optimized for graphic design.
Linotype on the other hand just launched their new DIN interpretation called DIN Next under the direction of Akira Kobayashi. In this new interpretation you find 25 fonts and 7 weights. An impressive re-work with many additional features. Find out more on the official website of Linotype.
While this are good news in the tradition of this series I’ve looked around the foundries to find some other alternatives and found some interesting ones. So enjoy. …click here to continue…
Why more and more companies choose to publish their own magazine is a wider topic I will cover in a future post. I will start my new series about corporate publishing by demystifying a myth – corporate publishing is boring. I will show you in this lesson how you can make a graphically stunning article about the introduction of a new window hardware product line by telling a story.
The recent TV spots from Nike+ is neat, the campaign interesting and it worked for me, somehow. I do running and a lot of other sports actively but I hate watching them on TV. I don’t read the results in the newspaper and I couldn’t care less who will win the Serie A. A friend of mine talked to me about the Nike+ Spot about how much they might have spent for all the stars you can see running. I replied “I didn’t see any stars.” Then I realized – sport stars. I don’t know any of them – ok a few but only in their working dress
In the end the spot doesn’t gain from the athletes – it’s nothing unusual that sportsmen do running. IMHO they could have spent less – the idea would have worked great even without stars.
Advertising lies all the time – at least this is what most people think. I must admit that I tend to believe them when I see all the rubbish on various home shopping channels or housewife-magazines (no really, this kind of magazines exist). To be honest, advertising doesn’t lie more than the average human in any position and mansion, but I think advertising should not lie.
In many countries “lying” in advertising is strict prohibited and if you check the ads you probably find small clues for the omitted facts or the specific “conditions” to get the praised results. But this is not my point.
When do you reach the point where it is advisable to not advertise at all a product? Is it ok for a Aspirin to advertise its painkilling for sportsmen? I’ve seen an ad in TV where two girls talk after a fitness session. One complains about her aking muscles and other one gives her aspirin. Hmm. Stretching or not overdoing might be the better advice.
As an art director I was more than once presented to advertise products with small to none improvements or benefits when compared to the competitors products. I had obviously to show the product as if it where the best product of the world but I always avoided to push it over the top. I also refused to do advertising for certain products. I will not do advertising for weapons, drugs, cars (if they claim to save nature), the usual stuff – but where do you trace the line?
Is the graphic designer responsible for the products of his client? In my opinion any art director and graphic designer take a part of the responsibility because he helps to deliver the message to the costumers of his client. If you deliver a faulty message or if you do not deliver the truth you take part in the disguise. You as a graphic designer might not spot on first sight that the product doesn’t deliver what it claims but this is not always the excuse – it should come out when you do the briefing.
What do you think about the morale in advertising, where do you trace the line? Your opinions are welcome.
Sometimes we discover after we finished our education that the job we pursuited doesn’t match our expectations. Sometimes it seems that we are forced to change our job and learn a new one. Is it worth the time and money or should we stick to what we’ve got? I was contacted by Brittany asking me if she (an account manager with a degree) should go back to school to become an art director. Here her mail and my thoughts.
I came across your blog online and it caught me because I have just decided to go back to school for art direction. I graduated with an undergrad degree: Bachelor of Science in Advertising in May 2008.
However, I focused on the business side of things and not the creative. I want to go into art direction but I would like to hear what you have to say about this. My concern: I am about to spend about $xxK on school to do this, as I attend The Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago. I will finish with another bachelors, but in Fine Arts Visual Communications around Dec/Jan. 2011. Can I come out of school and move into the path of art direction right away? Such as assistant art director? What is the typical path people take for this?
I am just scared I won’t be able to pay back these loans. I see that the average starting salary for this path is somewhere around $xxK give or take. I have experience working in large agencies, as I interned during my schooling at Y&R NYC, and McCann Erickson NYC, both in Account Management. I appreciate all of your help and advice.
First things first. It’s no big news that our generation and the future ones will not stick to their job for 40 years as might have our parents. Changes in toady’s business and our goals will make it much more likely that we will have different jobs in our lives. So the more knowledge and capabilities we can get the better. Me myself went to university at 25 changing completely my career to study graphic design – my passion as I discovered quite late since I was a small kid (I never thought that you can actually make a living out of designing newspaper and logos). So it is never to late to change the path and pursuit a new career.
In the specific case of Brittany the change is both radical and not radical at all at the same time. Let me explain. We can see from her email, that she is focused and structured (she has a plan, got the numbers, knows when she will get the second bachelor), this is fine project management, a typical strength of an account manager and something many creative people lack. But the ability of seeing the bigger picture and to organize is a capability an art director must have. I’m speaking of an art director in a medium to big agency – as usual Art directors in such agencies tend to not do much “hardcore” design work anymore but to lead the general direction of a project. But they still need to know what they are talking about.
The mix of the business side of graphic design/advertising and the creative part is teached graphic designers when they do a master degree in art direction – but I’m not sure if the bachelor degree if graphic design will do the same trick to Brittany (as she already knows the business side from her other degree). Maybe from the knowledge side, but I don’t think for the career.
A “freshman” from university will not likely start in a hiaboutgh position. Depending on the “real world” working experience the best I could imagine is junior art director, which in many cases is a nicer name for a graphic designer. This is in fact a waste of the capabilities, but understandable from the viewpoint of an agency.
I would choose a different approach. I would aim for a master degree in art direction directly. A bachelor in advertising should enable Brittany to be admitted and she could learn the more basic creative techniques and graphic design foundation by herself. It was never easier to obtain the basic knowledge for graphic design and the business part of an art director master course should not be much of an hassle, as she has already studied most of it. This will allow her to focus more on the creative part. In the end the master degree will enable her to enter the advertising career at an higher level using her capabilities at her best.
In the last couple of month I’ve attended to a few workshops related to the new tools we are going to use in our marketing departments. The two main tools I’m talking of is the DAM (digital asset management) and a translation management and approval system based on a indesign workflow (very handy if you manage publications in 32 languages). I know both systems already because I was one of the initiators of the group wide projects and because I tested them before choosing the solutions. This enables me to have quite some notion of “how to do things” with the software. But this does not mean that I already now the fastest way, or the most effective or future proof way to do it.
It’s much like when you learn Photoshop or Indesign. There are many ways to get results, but you might not figure out the best way by yourself. I’ve expected to get from the software vendors some advice, some “best practices” as they are called, what is the most effective way to get your taxonomy (keywords and structures) right and what are good workflows to follow. They should know as they see what theyre clients are doing and what works well and what not. But this was obviously not the case. You get the usual “Every firm has it’s own way to do things.” and “Our system is so flexible that it can be customized and setup to your needs.” This might be true, but if I just match my current workflow I could miss some great improvements or even worse, I discover later on, that if I structured the system or prepared the documents a little bit different in the first place I would get much more out of it. Nobody starts over such a project without a bad need. I hope, that with the spreading of this kind of systems there will be more user groups and tutorials to help firms setup their DAMs, in the meantime I will stick to this subject and bring my experiences.
What is the job of an art director anyway. How is it like? And how to learn to do the things the right way in real life. I will present you here some insights and some tutorials about becomming an art director, not just a graphic designer. Tips & Tricks you won't learn in any school and normally you will have to figure them out yourself. So go ahead and start your lessons.
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