While I feel that such “fast food logo services” aren’t good for businesses to be utilising in the first place, plagiarism within the design industry is more of a concern. I believe a good brand – including a meaningful logo – comes from research, concept development and refinement. It doesn’t come from choosing a template and plopping a business name underneath it.

The most frustrating part is that there are potential customers of these services who may have no idea that their chosen logo is already used by another company (and possibly trademarked). They could be completely and innocently unknowing, until down the track they then see their logo used by another company. Now that’s an awkward situation if there ever was one.

Thankfully, a number of the designers who had their work stolen have had the offending logos removed from LogoGarden, but it’s not to say others haven’t been notified yet. Here’s hoping these types of services eventually fall off the radar – they’re doing nothing for the integrity or creativity in branding.

I am personally glad that I don’t need to see the inside of a shopping centre until after Christmas now, but I’ve never been more aware of the “retail experience” than I have this year. Maybe because we’ve been working with a lot more small businesses in the retail sector I’ve been watching how retail operates more closely.

With the doom and gloom of the economic downturn this year, a lot of retailers I’ve spoken to have been fretting about less sales. However, there still seems to be a great number of stores doing remarkably well. But while walking through Southland, I noticed something strange: some stores were packed, and then the store next door would be empty – and I had to ask myself why.

Why couldn’t I get past the door of T2 – it’s a packaged tea shop, it’s not like they’re selling gold – but when I walked in I noticed there were people at the bar in the middle of the store, getting drinks. Then there were other shoppers all around a big table smelling all the open tea leaves available. And people were in the store for what seemed like an eternity.

The Apple store was no different. And why? They have experiences in their stores. They aren’t just shelves of products with a counter to pay for goods. You get to try things out, you get to touch, sense – experience. If retail is going to move forward in the time of online sales skyrocketing, I have a feeling this is the way more stores are going to go. A good experience is worth going back to – not just to purchase something for the cheapest price, or the closest store – but to be able to leave a store and tell a story of what you did while visiting.

It’s beginning to change the way I look at retail.

That’s it for 2011. All of us here hope you have a great Christmas and new year, and we will see you in 2012!

It’s taken me a long time to find the words to explain what we really do – it’s not just making logos, or improving a businesses revenue by putting an advertising campaign in place.

“We create visual solutions to problems encountered.

The final product is almost always visual in some respect, but all jobs have come out of a need. It’s not always an obvious “image” like a logo for a business either – one example was for a promotions company who found they had no way of showing their clients what their embroidered shirts would look like until after production. It had never crossed their mind to do a shirt template – so one was created where they could change the colour of each shirt and add the logos in.

The job of making our clients’ lives easier through creating visual solutions is very rewarding – even when it’s items that people don’t even realised are designed by someone.

So why not start a competition on Twitter? Win some hearts back, perhaps?

They posted this tweet yesterday:
@QantasAirways To enter tell us ‘What is your dream luxury inflight experience? (Be creative!) Answer must include #QantasLuxury.

The prize? “A luxury amenity kit and our famous QF PJs.”

Passengers who were disrupted by the recent Qantas debacle are still heated, and this is plain poor timing – along with a prize that seems more like a poke at the Australian public. Nonsense prizes equal nonsense responses.

@FarmrsMarktsFan #QantasLuxury? 1. Plane takes off/arrives on time; 2. Baggage delivered promptly. This used to be called #QantasService

Social media is a fast-moving medium: #QantasLuxury is one of Australia’s top trending hashtags today. You can’t control what is published by the community in the social media sphere; I wonder how Qantas PR are coping?

“
@kiwi_kali #QantasLuxury Somewhere in Qantas HQ a middle aged manager is yelling at a Gen Y social media “expert” to make it stop. / LOL

Twitter is often used as a venting board for opinions. Qantas should have seen what was already being posted before launching the competition, then listening and responding to the current (negative) publicity first. Customer service is about listening to your customers before taking action – no matter how large or small the company is.

Considering this competition goes until Thursday, who knows where it will end?

“
A new study by the University of Miami’s School of Business Administration finds that “prettying up” a company’s annual report can cause investors to place a higher value on a company. Just adding an extra color to the report, for example, can have the same effect on perceptions as a 20 percent increase in annual revenue.
www.publicradio.org

Is that really a surprise? Annual reports can be terribly drab, and when you see one designed as a publication (not just a report), it makes a huge difference – not just visually; the perception of the company is always greater.

On the same token, I’m not convinced by their use of of the phrase “prettying up” – annual reports are serious information design when placed in the right hands. Graphs don’t just need colours added to be visually appealing, they need to be easy to understand. There’s not much point in a “pretty” annual report that can’t be deciphered.

Wow. It was hugely different to the media release, but was an amazing presentation. It was strange in the fact that many people from Melbourne travelled down to Mornington for his presentation, so there were very few familiar local faces around. If anything, it was more of a spiritual discussion than a lecture.

Around sustainability, he feels there needs to be change from within each person, not change from outside sources. You can bring in processes and products, but if the people won’t change, then all these plans of improving the world fall to the wayside.

“
We can’t solve problems by changing things, we can only solve problems by changing [ourselves].
- Paul Hawken

For us, sustainability is a strange word – it’s become somewhat fashionable and its real meaning has lost strength. Think about all the “green” or “sustainable” businesses you see each day – how many of those are really wanting to change our mindset, or just wanting to make a dollar at the end of the day because there’s a demand to be “green”?

To have a sustainable world is going to be hard – everyone is used to having resources literally on-tap, which makes it hard to change. We know we’ve even got a long way to go to really make a change – both in business and personally – but starting is better than sitting and watching the world go by.

The world lost a visionary today. Look around our studio and you know Apple has had a large impact on how we get our work done. I’ve always had a special respect for Apple, which strangely enough grew even more after watching the movie The Pirates of Silicon Valley.

I always have a giggle at the first Apple computer:

And to finish, one of my favourite quotes from Steve Jobs:

“
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes…the ones who see things differently – they’re not fond of rules…You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things…they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
- Steve Jobs