You’ve probably heard of it, Pantone… no, I’m not talking about that Italian cake that comes around the holidays (panettone). In the field of graphic design, the Pantone matching system is one of the most common forms of communicating color in a consistent manner. It may seem like a silly thing to need a book of colors, but think back to the Italian cake just briefly. Picture yourself in Italy enjoying an expresso and didn’t know any Italian words, yet you wanted the waiter to bring you a delicious slice of chocolate cake. Without a common term to describe the cake that waiter might bring you a piece of angels food cake or fruitcake (panettone), but you really wanted a piece of chocolate cake (they’re all cakes). In this case, it could easily be resolved with a menu showing pictures of each type of cake- regardless of what it might be called, you could just point to the one you want and the waiter would absolutely and clearly understand what your asking for, regardless of language barriers.

That scenario holds true in color as well, but to some degree is even more difficult to communicate. You see we may speak exactly the same language but you tell me that you really like Red and you’d love to see it on your label. I pick an red color and show you the comp, immediately you say “oh no, not bright red, I like rusty red”, as you can see, this is were having a book full of different shades of red colors comes in handy. Regardless of whether you call it rusty red and I call it brick red, we can both sit down and agree on the sample in front of us. In the world of print, Pantone is the universal language of color.

I just touched on the most simplified version of color management, but it has enough complexity to warrant a couple more posts, I’ll come back to this in another post.

“I need a wine label design”- this is a common phrase that I hear when I’m getting acquainted with a new client and project. While it is true, they do need a wine label designed, the unspoken yet more powerful portion of the statement should be, “I want to sell wine”.  And its important to differentiate between designing pretty packaging and designing packaging that successfully and precisely supports sales to the target audience.

Design just for designs sake, slapping a pretty piece of art on a product and calling it packaging, may indeed sell some product and have some success. However, in a well designed product every design element of the particular package should be chosen with a singular purpose in mind: encourage the target audience to interact with (and purchase) your product. In the absence of a purchasing the secondary goal should be to increase your brands visibility and perceived value.

Once in a while I like to share a client’s product that we have really enjoyed working with on. In this case, the clients have a great idea for a product and the product truly fills a need in the market. Epicure is high quality skin cream that greatly reduces the irritating side effects of radiation for cancer patients skin.

When we started working on the design, our goals were to convey the soothing qualities of the product as well as to reflect the clinical nature of the product. We chose a mild blue for the background and a simple silver accent. In building the branding of the product, we used the two tones of blue and silver in the lower case “e” to symbolize the healing action on the surface of the skin.

Keep your eye out for more high quality products to come from this company.

The colorful spinning wheel of death again.. Illustrator crashes right after you finished that complex flourish, and just before you saved… Sometimes you just need to break away from the front of the computer and do something mindless.

I have to admit it, it took me a while before I put the dartboard up in the studio, but now I find myself hurling darts at it while I’m thinking or sometimes even during brainstorm sessions. Even a brief pitch or two can refresh your mind just enough to get back to whatever challenging task you were up against.

A good show, that’s what I’d call it- We got to meet lots of new people working on a variety of cool new projects, and everyone seems so excited to get their new winery/project off the ground. I really enjoy these shows, just for that reason. For the most part, people have time to hang out and chat in a little less hurried fashion than the typical work day allows for.

Working the booth I didn’t get as much time as I usually do to go out and wander the floor looking for new products, but I did get to visit with a few vendors that we otherwise rarely see.

Even though all of us were tired, one of the first things we did when we were back in the studio was to meet and talk about what we’d like to do better next year. Armed with some fresh enthusiasm and excitement about potential we came up with some fun new concepts (you’ll have to visit us next year to find out what they are).

2 years, that’s how long its taken to get a booth at the Unified Symposium. But this year we’re here! After chipping away at a new website design for a while the symposium finally created a deadline that we could sink our teeth into. So, we’re also introducing our newly designed website right along with our booth. Come on by and say hi, we’ll be at booth 2324 upstairs.

Sometimes design can be hard, there can be a multitude of challenges between you and the final execution of the project. But few are more challenging to overcome than your own sense of correct design. This is how it was to complete the 6 West branding.

We went through stacks of variations of 6’s looking for just that perfect balance of design that captured who we are. Finally tired of revising we would call it off (just for a while). A couple of weeks would go by and we’d be back at it again, sketching, reviewing, pitching , sketching. When we’d narrowed the field down to a couple that we felt had the potential to represent the company, it would be a whole new round of refinement…And finally completed, we’d build a new logo that we felt sufficiently represented the style of the company. Of course this was only a momentary reprieve, from there we had to jump into all of the supporting materials, business cards, letterhead, contracts.