PS: You know what’s the result of bad kerning? It’s called keming ;)

One of the things I really like in the field of graphic design is typografy. What is even better, is handmade typografy! I came across this beautiful project via Little Paper Planes (on Facebook) called “‘The’ Project”. Robb Ogle from houndofthe.com already has some impressive font designs in his portfolio, but he used wordmarks from a private stock of predigital lettering scoured from low resolution archives and turn it into clean, straigh bezier curves. He only extracted the word ‘the’, hence the name of the project for use by today’s graphic designers who appreciate the wonky shapes of yesteryear. That’s me!

Make sure you go have a look over at the special website he created for this project www.thetheproject.com!

It took five years, but a lot has happened during that time and it’s not over yet. Although they wanted to wrap up this first part of the ‘journey’. Finish it with a inspiring book and not just your average binder with hundreds of graph’s, figures and a lot of numbers. Instead colleague R. pitched the idea of making a sort of journal about the whole WCCM journey. Alliander liked the idea a lot and gave us a lot of freedom to let us do what we are good at. Creating an individual and creative solution to their problem.

As said, R. pitched the initial idea and after a kickoff together with the customer and a copywriter I took over and was responsible for the design and the overall result. A bit much I thought at first, but it all went well. Feels nice when you know that everybody want’s to make something awesome! The final idea was to create a sort of journal that was the traveling journal of some fictitious person during the whole time WCCM was running. We had to look for a nice blend of personal touches and of course some inescapable longer pieces of text. In the end we succeeded and added Polaroids and Post-It notes to the personal pages. Both by design and by font these two forms of information were seperated.

The book was such a big hit that the initial batch of 40 pieces was already followed by a second batch of 90 books. Before they even saw the final result! When they did see it a third batch had to be made, 125 pieces. Last batch, but still over 250 books instead of the 40 that were planned. After all, the WCCM journal was a big hit inside Alliander, but also at TriMM. For me personally it was a big chance do create something that was tangible and not only online. We did create an online version too though, but I focused more on the book itself. I think we can be proud of the results and Alliander can too. What a nice way to end this year!

This project will get it’s own page later on which will show you more of the content and the online version too. Patience…

Working with my hands is what I like and that made me think of some old school work I did that wasn’t on the website already. Simple redesign of a matchbox and some ‘shoebox’ pictures based on the lyrics of DJ Shadows Six Days. Apart from the schoolwork there is a lot more that needs to be uploaded, but I have to get approval from the big bosses first… Very frustrating to have very nice work laying on the shelve, but you can’t show it to the world… Aargh! To hell with legal issues!

Ow and by the way, the titled is written in the dialect of Cologne meaning “the water of Cologne is good”. Since it is pooring with rain today I thought it was appropriate.

During the last two years I have been working at TriMM I also did some smaller assignments for the in-house consultancy agency GriDD. It started of with some small DTP-ing and tweaking businessmodels and presentations but it’s getting bigger and better. Last year I made an infographic that represented the new office we were going to move to and it was a gift ofor TriMM. Since last year NXP and some other major clients got me and GriDD all worked up about infographics. I really like working on these visuals and wanted to thanks GriDD for those fine jobs.

As a sidekick and to help out in their presentations GriDD asked Sjors Trimbach to design a character. And so Gregg was born! One year ago Gregg saw the light of ‘day’ and as a celebration different artists were asked to make a drawing/sketch/piece of art. In a few minutes time I made my share which came in handy since the planned artist couldn’t make it! Thanks Gregg for all the nice work you have brought me!

Because she is just running a small business the number of prints was also very low. Because of that I decided to try out an online business card printer called Moocards. I must say that they did a really nice job. You can either upload your own designs (like I did) or use some standard templates. The fonts are not really complete as I heard they use some faux bold for their bold typefaces. Too bad, but as long as you used your own designs there is nothing wrong with it!

PS: I also added some package shots to the Travelogue “Ich Hab’s”. You can now check out the complete movie and view the box it comes in.

My latest assignment for a corporate identity was for Marloes Rooswinkel. She was going to start her own business with financial services. She will be providing people with insurance, loans and pensions.  This post will explain the design proces I followed with her and ending the whole story with some conclusions. This really worked well!

Marloes Rooswinkel and I had a first meeting in which we discussed the following 5 keywords:

• Brand – User experience
• Customer – Transmitter
• User – Receiver
• Information – Content
• Design

Customer and User communicate with each other and the Information and Design are your restrictions or boundaries.

First, I had no knowledge of the types of services she offers. This will often occur and as a designer you have to dive in to it to some extent. To get  more feeling with the design, but also to understand the customer or the user of the product (in this case the website).

Basis

After a brief explanation about her field of work, we also discussed her history as a financial consultant, why she now wanted to start on her own and how she got to that. Everything went well and I had a whole list of questions, but during the conversation a lot of those got answered. I didn’t have to start an interview in which I asked a question, got an answer, wrote it down and went on to the next question. Luckily! Sometimes it is difficult to  keep the conversation going because you also want to wright down things, but don’t want to be looking away from your conversational partner at the same time. Plus, you have to write in such a way that your handwriting is still readable, hehe.

During the conversation I already had a vision about the website and how it should look like. As I found out this was completely matching Marloes’ vision too.

Because this is a corporate identity, we first determined that about 5 words should form the basis for the complete design of her company’s identity. This worked super! The following words were chosen:

• Classic
• Elegant
• Quiet
• Open
• Familiar

Logo/Wordmark

After this first meeting I had a good feeling with the branding. Then comes the hardest part. Translating that feeling into a graphic or something visual, which then is transfered to paper and then into the computer. I did a few sketch sessions with the word and some style tryouts. I just tend to throw anything onto paper that pops up. Afterwards you can always throw something away. At the end of such session, I lined up the drawings and reflected them to the keywords I established earlier. From each drawing some things had to go, sometimes the complete sketch, but all those little parts together were forming a very nice image.

Eventually I had a logo with a badge that addresses the feeling very well. After some minimal changes to it I showed it Marloes and explained it on the basis the (by me) rejected logos. To make the path I followed clear to her.

Stationary

The days after I finished the wordmark I got on to the letterhead, business cards and envelopes. This was a fairly small step. The logo really lends itself for this and everything fell in it’s right place. After a meeting where everything was approved and finalized I got on to the next step I wanted to determine. After the 5 keywords I wanted to get the tone of voice for the photography clear. I had some trouble doing this and I think that’s also because of those keywords. There is nog need for a tone of voice. The keywords are enough, plus there isn’t much photography in the website too.

Funny thing I discovered was that those keywords were automatically some sort of filter system. Classical, but not too frivolous. Elegant, but not too feminine. Maybe next time this can be used in a design process. For now there wasn’t enough time to use these ‘scales’ to their full extent.

Website

I handled the design of the website in the same way as the logo was tackled. Create sketches and then check it against the keywords. It still fits? If not, why not, what is not right? Change it. And start over. So I came to a clear site design. The top menu bar is always present and the wordmark is centered above that. Then there is a small introduction text and below that three clearly separated business lines. Completely appropriate within the keywords.

One thing that the website differed from other parts of the corporate website is that it has a real purpose. This was necessary to get clear. Was the website just going to be informative? Or selling? Or maybe another purpose? In the case of Marloes the purposed of the website was to give the visitor/client confidence in Rooswinkel’s bussiness and thereby generate trust with the customer. That trust is important for a long term customer relationships where Marloes is at. Clients can not order an insurance or loan online, that’s not the purpose. Marloes Rooswinkel wants long term relationships so the client has to put in a bit of effort to get into contact with here and arrange a loan, insurance, credit, or what so ever.

Conclusions: Looking for these keywords is a good foundation. Five pieces is a good number. It is enough to remember, they are more than three and it is a whole handful. Certainly in this case where there is still nothing. Comparing the websites of competitors was also a handy trick.

Check your design with the keywords every time. Sketch a lot and immediately. Any inspiration that helps, you put on paper. Sometimes you build your design from many pieces of  ‘wrong’ sketches. All those pieces together constitute the logo.

Words on a scale to help for photography or other manifestations of the brand can help. A colleague if mine also called archetypes, a sort of defining your brand as a person. For Rooswinkel there was too little time and it wasn’t really necessary. Rooswinkel is perhaps a little too small, after all it’s just one person.

What do you find good approaches to a design proces or how do you like to work?

“You know you are a graphic designer when…”

There are tons of versions of this list and most of the time it is just posted on someone’s blog. So the source remains unknown.