Archive for the ‘Design’ post category
Did you know: Unless specifically stated in a contract, the agency, studio, or designer you hire holds the copyright to the work they completed. 
That’s right. Under the letter of the law, the person or company who created the work has the rights to it, and are under no obligation to turn over source files to the client. But just because the law allows it, that doesn’t make it right.
To be fair, the legalities of the matter do make sense. In most situations and business transactions, the client/consumer is buying the end product, and not the means with which the product was produced.
The difference between most situations and the typical scenario of a design studio, however, is that giving away the means with which a design was created isn’t really giving away much. We’re talking about some files, usually the sort that require specific software to use, and a certain level of expertise to manipulate. The real value of what we do in a studio is in the idea and the execution, not in any single InDesign file or Photoshop composition.
When a client asks for source files to a project, in most cases I see no reason not to hand them over. If the client paid for the work, as far as I am concerned, they own it and the source files. If a client is asking for source files so that they can take their business somewhere else, I won’t hesitate to hand them over, along with my apologies for not being able to fulfill their design requirements.
Ember Studio is not in the business of nickel-and-diming our clients for every last cent we can get. For some people, that’s the standing policy. As I recently read on a freelance design website, one designer’s suggestion is to “get from every customer as much money as you can,” even when it comes to releasing source files.
It is rare that a request for files ever comes in. It has been over a year and a half since it last happened. But it will likely happen again, and when it does, my clients can rest assured that they will always have access to their files without having to pay some ridiculous transfer fee.
“I had a couple of Red Bulls. Have you ever had a Red Bull? I never had a Red Bull before, but I had a Red Bull last night and I really like Red Bull.” – Carl Allen (Jim Carrey in Yes Man)
I’m not really a fan of the popular energy drink myself. Never liked the taste, and if you ever catch me drinking one it’s out of necessity rather than choice. After spending the better part of a Sunday night in the hospital with my wife, going home for a few hours of sleep, and then rushing back early the next morning to see her off to surgery (she’s fine, everything went well), I knew coffee wasn’t going to cut it and I had a Red Bull in the car from Saturday that I brought along to get me home from a friend’s bachelor party. Not exactly a healthy breakfast but under the circumstances it did the trick.
Despite everything that was going on and even in my frazzled state of mind, I couldn’t help but take notice of the unique tab on the Red Bull can as I popped it open. The tab is a custom design, generally similar in shape to a standard aluminum can tab but with the bull icon from the company logo die cut into it. It was interesting. The tab is a part of a can that generally is ignored in the design process, acting more as a functional tool than something that gets any sort of consideration in the branding process.
Not having the time to look into it then, I pulled the tab off the can and stuck it in my pocket. After things settled down at the hospital and I had a few minutes to spare, a quick Google search brought up a good number of photos and comments about the unique can tabs. It seems that Red Bull has been using these die cut tabs for at least 4 years now, and they come in various colors. Most often they are seen in the standard aluminum color, light blue, and red.
The value in this unique tab, from a branding and design standpoint, is that it gives the Red Bull can a simple but distinguishing element that is noticeable and memorable. The top of a can hardly ever gets any attention when it comes to can design, and yet it’s the part of the product that we bring up to eye level and put right in front of our faces every time we take a sip. It is also the only part of the can that you really have to interact with. You could theoretically ignore the entire body of the can, but nothing is coming out of it unless you pop open the tab. Red Bull took the ordinary aluminum can and changed just one small detail, turning the ordinary tab into a branded design element that gets plenty of attention and presents their logo in a cool way.
In branding, the campaign is often seen as the long, daunting process of redefining the look of the company, the visual language used to express what the company is about, and the culture of the brand. What the Red Bull tab example shows is that one seemingly small change can make a big difference in a branding effort. Changing one standard part of their product to show off their logo and create a more unique and memorable can design got people talking about Red Bull, not just for the drink itself but for the interesting way they present the product. All these years later, people are still taking about it. Twitter is regularly populated with comments and photos about the unique tabs. People post photos of the branded aluminum on Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook. There are even some interesting ideas on how to use the tabs in creative ways, from making jewelry out of them to using them as tiny spray paint stencils to paint a small Red Bull icon on things. One Twitter user even suggested that he might want to heat up a can tab to actually brand his skin with the red bull logo. Let’s hope he doesn’t really try it.
If the intended goal of this change to the can design was to get people talking, it worked. What small changes can you make to your brand to compel people take a second look at your product or service? A branding effort isn’t always a ground-up do-over. Take a look at what you are offering and see if there is some small way that you can improve your standard presentation to show off your brand and get people talking.
“Do I really need a good website?”
I hear this question a lot, especially lately. In the social media era, where having a Facebook business page seems almost more important than having a company website at all, it has become common and quite valid to question whether anyone really needs a website anymore, especially a high-quality, technically advanced, search-optimized website.
My answer is this: No, you don’t need a website, or your current old-fashioned, out-of-date, technically uninspired website is good enough, if what you’re selling can speak for itself.
One of the most well-known under-developed websites around is pixar.com. Home of the world-famous multi-billion dollar animation studio owned by Disney, Pixar is at the forefront of 3D filmmaking technology and artistry, yet their website is a nod to the Internet of a decade ago and it hasn’t changed much since then. I was in college in the late 1990s and early part of new millennium, studying computer graphics and 3D animation, so I was all too familiar with their company website back then. And I can tell you it doesn’t look a whole lot different today then it did back then. It’s not terrible, just far less of a website than you’d expect and one that is rarely ever updated. But for good reason.
Pixar doesn’t need a website at all. Everything they do is based around their products, their marketing, and their connection to Disney. They don’t need their website to speak for them, sell for them, or really do much of anything. They can get away with a weak website because their products sell themselves, many millions of times over, and they sell their films through a powerhouse distribution channel (Disney).
You don’t necessarily have to be as big as Pixar (or be tied to a company like Disney) in order to get by with a barely-there company web presence. But if you’re going to try to pull it off, you had better be selling something as compelling among your customers as a Pixar film is among fans of the Toy Story and Cars films, because that’s the only way most businesses are going to stay viable in a this rapidly advancing digital mobile age.
You can get by with a bad website or no website at all if people are finding you and what you’re selling through some other media. If you’re product or service doesn’t have Buzz Lightyear star power, though, you would be wise to reconsider your online marketing strategy.
Last year Ember submitted some of our best work to the Annual Design Awards competition and while we didn’t win one of top prizes, our Olympus BX3 ad was selected as one of the best entries of 2010 and is included in the annual book. Thanks to the ADA for choosing an Ember project for inclusion in the book, and of course thanks to Olympus for the opportunity to work on this project.
