For the Love of Letterpress

Perhaps we should thank Martha Stewart for the renewed interest in letterpress printing, since she's been advocating use of this beautiful reproduction technique for wedding invitations for some time. 

It's easy to see why people are attracted to this style of printing: the tactile experience exudes quality.

However, before deciding to use letterpress for your next project, spend a few minutes to consider if it's right for you. Because colors are applied one at time, letterpress printing is best for one- or two-color designs. Using three or more colors significantly increases the cost. Remember too that photographs are impossible to reproduce with this style of printing.

We couldn't resist using this technique for our new business cards—and love the results!

How Entertaining Can Increase Readership

One of the biggest challenges of any communicator is getting the attention of their target audience.
 
As businesses, our messages arrive at the consumer’s eyes and ears but are allowed in only with their permission. Very often, they’re not seeking what we have to say.
 
The entertain-engage method of communication is one way to break through the sea of communications. Give your target audience something they’re hungry for—whether it’s entertainment, inspiration or a mental break—before you give them the message you want them to absorb.
 
We recommended this method for a university’s recruiting piece we helped develop targeting high school sophomores. We know that messages that carry entertainment value are more likely to be allowed in, and chose to pay an irreverent visit to age-old clichés that parents use to get the readers’ attention and build a platform for a deeper message.
 
Besides increasing the chance for engagement with this audience, its unexpected approach provides a fresh take on college recruiting material—much of which looks very similar.
 
Are there opportunities for you to tell your brand’s story using this method?

How to Make Your Complex Message Easy to Read

Need a way to deliver difficult messages quickly and easily? Consider infographics. Whether it's static or animated, this increasingly popular communication tool allows the reader to digest key points—even difficult and complicated points—at a glance. By using visuals, it accelerates the time the brain takes to translate words into images in the brain—and also makes it easier to remember.
 
Here's an infographic from BlueGlass that unpacks some health myths in a way that draws the reader in. It drew 800,000 visitors over five months.
 
Have you ever used an infographic? Did you find it successful?

Client Showcase: Award-winning Annual Report Features Fresh Imagery

For more than a decade we’ve partnered with Key Technology to produce their annual report. And for the second year in a row, their annual report has been listed in the Top 100 winners gallery in the 2010-2011 international LACP Visions Awards Annual Report Competition. Number 29 on the list, it was selected from more than 5,000 entries across all categories—and from 24 countries.
 
The Top 100 list included companies like Korean Air, Hyundai, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Walmart (Mexico/Central America), Qualcomm, Charles Schwab and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.
 
The report also garnered the Platinum Award, the highest of four awards offered, for annual reports in its industry category. A panel of professional judges scored the project on eight aspects ranging from first impressions to message clarity.
 
This year’s report cover image suggests both the international nature of their company and how their technologies benefit the consumer by bringing us fresher, purer products. We love the power of the image and its utter simplicity—made more notable by generous use of white space and use of vibrant colors inside.
 
LACP is the League of American Communications Professionals that helps promote best-in-class practices in communications.

15 Year Anniversary: It’s a New Year, and a New Us

This year marks the 15th anniversary of CMBell Company—a milestone in our dream to create a workplace that allows us to do work we care about with people we respect—for companies and causes that matter to us.

We’ll be reflecting on this from time to time right here on our blog, starting with today, where we officially roll out our own new corporate identity—and the second logo in our company’s history. It’s an act that signals new directions for our future—while acknowledging the many who have made the journey possible.

At the center of our logo is the fleur-de-lis, one of the most recognized symbols in the world and one that is rich in history and legend. Although used by monarchs throughout history and used to represent perfection, light and life, its own origins are unknown. Besides loving its visual beauty, we think it represents the pursuit of perfection and excellence that has characterized our firm from the beginning. Paired with typography that is both strong and stately, the logo suggests the unique trio of discipline, purpose and creativity required to run a firm like ours.

Ad Envy: Uptown Community Clinic

Did this ad make you read the copy clear to the end? It did us.

This ad (click to view larger) from a series created by a Minneapolis-based agency cleverly plays off research findings which revealed that people were more likely to have a sympathetic reaction to images of abused animals than to photos of abused children.

It works on several levels:

1. The headline and the photo are arresting, and evoke an immediate response—drawing the reader in.
2. The copy is compellingly written, and does a fine job of telling a story and making a point with limited words.
3. It’s simple, and pared down to the most necessary elements.

This didn’t require an expensive photo shoot, but just a big idea that was executed well.

It's pretty. But can it sell?

When a project finally gets to the design stage we explore and create with an eye towards selling. We weigh every image, every color choice, every typography choice to see if it says, conveys, evokes and depicts exactly what it must in order to persuade.

More ideas than not get tossed aside in our relentless pursuit of the best idea. This delightful little video shows an insider’s view of this process of creating, discarding and arriving at just the right place—the place that powerfully sells an idea or product.

Words, pictures, colors—these form the framework of every communicator’s toolbox. The final test is not whether it’s beautiful (though we do love that), but whether it influences the target audience’s decision to try, buy, engage, support or give.

What ideas have you seen that should have been discarded because they didn’t pass the “sell well” test?

Sin No More: Avoiding Common Typographic Errors Part 1

1. Two spaces between sentences. Your keyboarding teacher not only taught you how to type, but also how to sin. Once upon a time, typewriters used a monospaced typeface. Since all of the letters were the same width, it became customary to add an extra space at the end of a sentence to call attention to a new sentence. This was never the practice of professional typesetters, who always used one space. (If you're a doubting Thomas, go find an old book and see for yourself.) Since most typefaces on our computers vary in width, unsightly gaps appear if two spaces are used. Repent of this since by using only one space.  
2. Failing to kern display type. Nothing bellows "I'm an amateur!" quite like display type that hasn't been properly kerned. Unseemly gaps can impede readability by distracting the reader. The kerning tables of some typefaces are great, but the human eye is divine. Adjust the spacing between letters and assuage your guilt.
3. Using a hyphen instead of an en dash. A dash (hyphen) is great for a hyphenated word, but an en dash can be used to indicate a range of numbers or a duration of time instead of the word "to": the 8–10 Commandments, not 8-10 Commandments.  

—From "Thou Shalt Not" by Jim Godfrey, published in the July 2011 issue of How magazine.

Pick Easy-to-Read Typefaces for Body Copy

We read words by shapes—not individual characters—and our reading has a natural rhythm. An alphabet such as Futura Light (below, top) with widely varying character widths disrupts this rhythm—making it harder to read.

When designing printed material, select a body text typeface with similar character widths. Your readers will thank you.  

From Before & After Magazine, What's the Right Typeface for Text

2011 Web Trends: Part 1

While Web design is always evolving, we're seeing these trends in 2011:

Simple Color Schemes—It's popular to use only two or three colors in your site design and then use a lot of shades or tints.

Mobile Ready—Forecasters are predicting that smartphones will outsell personal computers this year, so it's becoming increasingly important to design with mobile viewing in mind.

Design for Touch Screens, Not Mice—Now that more and more people are using smartphones or iPads for their browsing, traditional means of navigation such as drop-down menus may not work so well in these new mediums.

Depth Perception—Layer objects, drop shadows and other 3D effects to create dimension in your site.

Large Photographic Backgrounds—Large, high quality photos are becoming more popular. Arresting photos capture attention quickly and draw your viewer into your site.

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