Dr No Effects

Dutch illustrator specializing custom lettering, Eric van der Boom was recently commissioned by the vintage-sound guitar pedal manufacturer Dr. No Effects to create a new logo, packaging and product styling for all their pedals.  The visual styles for each of the pedals pair amazing well with the rich tone and sounds (demo the sounds on the Dr. No site).

Other projects by Eric van der Boom worth checking out - Ray Ban Rare Prints, Baetulona, and Def P & Beatbusters.

Follow along with this week’s curated posts featuring some of my favorites from the Behance Network - tagged: behance.

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RAY LEMON - Branding & Invitation Concept

To help launch the new restaurant and bar RAY LEMON, design studio LSDK created a suite of branding and invite elements.  The entire vibrant identity set feels both fresh and unique down to the origami invitations filled with spices and ingredients featured in their current menu.

In addition to the usual posts this week, I will be curating daily posts featuring projects recently posted to the creative network Behance.  You can follow along on my blog with the Behance tag.

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space150 v27

Every 150 days the innovative mid-west agency space150 updates their entire corporate identity from business cards to website to environmental design on the agency’s doors. The futuristic branding for v27 was created in collaboration with designer and entrepreneur Taylor Pemberton.  If you visit space150’s site now you’ll see they recently moved on from v27 to v28.

Additional credits on the project from the space150 team:
Design - Andrew Ridgeway, Michael Seitz, and Matt Kuglitsch
UX - Shawn Kardell
Created by - Courtney Davis, and Heather Chau
Written by - Jon Resheske
Video production - ThreeVolts
Creative Direction - Billy Jurewicz, and Ned Wright

Thanks Ned for the additional credits over email!

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Branding and Multipliers

Most companies see brand building as a process of addition, where every touch point adds to the overall experience. They summarize that each point of contact adds to their brand’s overall equity. Yet, branding is not based on the process of addition. It’s based on multiplication. The greatest return doesn’t come from improving the variables with the most value but rather from improving those with the least. In fact, a single point of failure can negate everything.

Excellent post by Mark Gallagher and Laura Savard at Blackcoffee on the nature of a well rounded brand and how a single point of failure can kill the viability of a brand.  The position of brand’s promises or expectations does not equal Customer Support + Quality + Functionality, but rather the equation is better represented as Customer Support x Quality x Functionality.  Score a zero in any of the category and your brand is at risk of loosing all crediblity with consumers.

To be effective, your brand must not only be the best at what it does, it must also improve upon its weakest traits or remove those variables from the equation all together.

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Happiness Report 37signals recently added three simple links at the bottom of each customer support email—“it was great :)”, “it was ok :|” and “it wasn’t good :(”.  The Happiness Report is then used to measure customer happiness not satisfaction, study the ratings to improve and provide full public transparency through their happiness site. We strive for happiness — not satisfaction.The customer service industry is obsessed with “customer satisfaction”. We believe that’s too low a bar. Satisfaction is not a measure of success — it’s just enough to get by. We want our customers to be happy. Happiness is success. Happiness is our goal. Over the past few weeks I have been actively working to improve the support process for Style Hatch.  Between email, the theme feedback pages, Twitter and people tracking me down and messaging me on my personal Facebook page I average close to 50 customer support requests a day.  Rather than seeing the daily process as a chore I love surprising people with a fast—typically same day or less than 24 hours—and personal response.  Even when you have to let someone know that “the theme/Tumblr doesn’t support/work with _______” giving them a prompt and personal response often turns them into brand evangelists. Customer support is one of the most powerful tools in your company’s branding tool belt.

Happiness Report

37signals recently added three simple links at the bottom of each customer support email—“it was great :)”, “it was ok :|” and “it wasn’t good :(”.  The Happiness Report is then used to measure customer happiness not satisfaction, study the ratings to improve and provide full public transparency through their happiness site.

We strive for happiness — not satisfaction.
The customer service industry is obsessed with “customer satisfaction”. We believe that’s too low a bar. Satisfaction is not a measure of success — it’s just enough to get by. We want our customers to be happy. Happiness is success. Happiness is our goal.

Over the past few weeks I have been actively working to improve the support process for Style Hatch.  Between email, the theme feedback pages, Twitter and people tracking me down and messaging me on my personal Facebook page I average close to 50 customer support requests a day.  Rather than seeing the daily process as a chore I love surprising people with a fast—typically same day or less than 24 hours—and personal response.  Even when you have to let someone know that “the theme/Tumblr doesn’t support/work with _______” giving them a prompt and personal response often turns them into brand evangelists.

Customer support is one of the most powerful tools in your company’s branding tool belt.

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Fonts In Use Much of design critique is focused on photography and other graphics. It’s time to shed light on the most basic element of communication: the type. At Fonts In Use we’ll catalog and examine real-world typography wherever it appears — branding, advertising, signage, packaging, publications, in print and online — with an emphasis on the typefaces used. An independent project from Sam Berlow, Stephen Coles, and Nick Sherman that I plan on visiting quite often.  Well done.

Fonts In Use

Much of design critique is focused on photography and other graphics. It’s time to shed light on the most basic element of communication: the type. At Fonts In Use we’ll catalog and examine real-world typography wherever it appears — branding, advertising, signage, packaging, publications, in print and online — with an emphasis on the typefaces used.

An independent project from Sam Berlow, Stephen Coles, and Nick Sherman that I plan on visiting quite often.  Well done.

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Minimal Branding in a Maximum Market

Multi-disciplinary design consultancy Antrepo took on the challenge of stripping down various brands to a minimalistic state to strengthen the brand by removing the noise.  For each product they took it through two steps to simplify and then simplify more.  This fun challenge is more or less the reverse of the Microsoft iPod packaging spoof video.  See the entire project on Antrepo’s blog A2591.

Found on The Fox Is Black

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Nordkyn: Where Nature Rules At the farthest northern tip of Europe you will find the Nordkyn peninsula where nature rules every aspect of the land and daily life.  Oslo-based design firm Neue Design Studio created a new dynamic identity system for Visit Nordkyn that is designed around the ever changing elements. The visual identity is based on two main ingredients; our newly developed payoff, “Where nature rules,” and weather statistics from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. A feed of weather statistics affects the logo to change when the direction of the wind or the temperature changes. On the website, the logo updates every five minutes. We developed a logo generator where Visit Nordkyn can download their logo to the exact weather conditions of that particular moment. Nordkyn is truly a place where nature rules, even over the visual identity.—Neue Project Description 

Nordkyn: Where Nature Rules

At the farthest northern tip of Europe you will find the Nordkyn peninsula where nature rules every aspect of the land and daily life.  Oslo-based design firm Neue Design Studio created a new dynamic identity system for Visit Nordkyn that is designed around the ever changing elements.

The visual identity is based on two main ingredients; our newly developed payoff, “Where nature rules,” and weather statistics from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. A feed of weather statistics affects the logo to change when the direction of the wind or the temperature changes. On the website, the logo updates every five minutes. We developed a logo generator where Visit Nordkyn can download their logo to the exact weather conditions of that particular moment. Nordkyn is truly a place where nature rules, even over the visual identity.
—Neue Project Description 

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How Branding and Transparency Help charity: water Stand Out Scott Harrison from charity: water stopped by the new 37signals office to speak to the team about the unconventional ways that charity: water stands out from other charities through branding and transparency. Another key to CW’s success is that 100% of donations are used for direct water project costs. (A group of private donors, foundations and sponsors help pay for the everyday costs of running the organization.) CW even pays for the paypal and credit card transaction fees when people donate online so each penny goes straight to actually building a well. Read the post “How branding and transparency help charity: water stand out” on 37signals - signal vs. noise.

How Branding and Transparency Help charity: water Stand Out

Scott Harrison from charity: water stopped by the new 37signals office to speak to the team about the unconventional ways that charity: water stands out from other charities through branding and transparency.

Another key to CW’s success is that 100% of donations are used for direct water project costs. (A group of private donors, foundations and sponsors help pay for the everyday costs of running the organization.) CW even pays for the paypal and credit card transaction fees when people donate online so each penny goes straight to actually building a well.

Read the post “How branding and transparency help charity: water stand out” on 37signals - signal vs. noise.

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