Sharing My Crayons

One for the Thumb!!

 

 

"Experience isn't interesting until
it begins to
repeat itself.

In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience."

Elizabeth Bowen

 

I remember in the winter of 1980 watching Terry Bradshaw and the Pittsburgh Steelers striving to win "one for the thumb", a catchy little way of saying their fifth championship ring.

The term popped back into my head sometime after walking the stairs at the most recent Photoshop World to receive my fifth Photoshop Guru Award. The other term swimming around up there: ridiculously blessed!

And it is indeed a blessing to have been so successful in this particular competition; one that I feel, more than any other, recognizes Photoshop as a powerful storytelling tool. To date we have won five Gurus and been one of the three finalists in the Commercial category another four times.

Here is the winning piece, the montage design for 3M Fall Protection Training (click to open a larger version in a new window).

 

 Now, for the REALLY cool part of my Photoshop World experience...

I was strolling through the Expo, when I paused at the Adobe booth (the makers of Photoshop) to watch a demonstration. Off to the side of the presenter is a white pillar with a flatscreen mounted below the words "Photoshop Is . . ." that's scrolling through a slideshow of images created by conference presenters – many are widely recognized images within the Photoshop community. Amazing images from the likes of Bert Monroy, Corey Barker, Jim DiVitale and Moose Peterson among others. Then, all of a sudden - Wham! There it is – mine! After a mad scramble for the iPhone and an impatient wait for the slideshow to come back around, I snapped about 5 shots like the one below (I wanted to make sure I got this).

 

 

For my work to be scrolling through alongside such well-known artists was just icing on the cake and such a delight that I can't really put it into words. Again, the phrase ridiculously blessed is the only thing that comes close.

And to 3M – and all of our clients – I can't say thank you enough for the opportunities to create this kind of work, and for entrusting us to help visually tell your stories.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

 

PS. Feel free to take a look back at our last Guru winner HERE.

 

You've Come a Long Way, Baby!

 

 

"Every new

beginning

comes from

some other

beginning's

end."

Seneca

 

In case you missed it in the banner image sitting atop this blog, we've been very busy little bees here at Born to Design. Several months ago I had merely wanted to refresh the symbol potion of our logo. I came up with something that I was happy with – but the process had taken me down an unexpected road that I felt led to explore further. That road brought us here, to a new and wholly different brand identity. And it is indeed a long way from where we started.

And yet, this feels like much more than just a new coat of paint. More than just a rebrand. More like a rebirth. It's hard to describe, but there's a renewed enthusiasm around this launch that has me as energized as I was when things were just getting started.

Which is another reason the timing of this feels right; this year we're celebrating 15 years in business. To be honest, that had kinda snuck up on me. But it was back in 1997 that I was blessed with the opportunity to leave my position as Creative Director at Tavel Optical Group and take a giant leap of faith to go out on my own. And what an incredible journey it's been.

As I was processing all of this, I thought it would be fun to launch the new identity with a nostalgic look back at the evolution of the brand.

For starters, back when my now-13-year old daughter Alex was just north of one year old, I sat her on our kitchen floor, grabbed the camera, spread out some crayons by her and started shooting. The image that opened this post (never shown in full color before) was among those shots, and has been a component of our marketing materials and collateral ever since.

But even before that, a baby has been a part of the vision for our identity. That's due to the answer I always gave when someone would ask how long I had known that I wanted to be an artist – "...ever since I could hold a crayon" was always the answer, and the truth.

So in 1997, with the thrill of the leap still fresh, I grabbed my sketchbook and started working out design concepts (the same way I still do today). The sketch to the left was used for a very short time as is, but it's really the genesis of what would become the first Born to Design logo.

 

 

This was the first real Born to Design logo. It was really just a refinement of the initial sketched idea, but it felt much more official. It was also a little indicative of some of the identity work I was doing at the time. Still, in the end (pun intended), it felt like me (other than the fact that I didn't work in the buff... and, for the record, I still don't).

 

 

Around the year 2000, I felt like I had really outgrown the initial logo. My work had grown as well and I felt that, ironically, the first logo was a box I needed to break out of. I needed something that would stretch and grow as I would. My love for 40's and 50's era design aesthetics influenced what would be the Born to Design logo for nearly 12 years.

 

 

Around the beginning of 2012 the typography in the logo was beginning to feel dated. Honestly, I'm not sure if it truly was, or if I had just lived with it for so long that it no longer felt fresh. Either way, I set out to slap a fresh coat of paint on things, while keeping the same visual vibe (maintaining brand equity, as I would tell a client).

 

 

As I explored the new direction that the update process had taken me, it became clear pretty quickly, that this last logo was only going to be a transitional design; a stepping stone to something new and completely different. It's been very encouraging to hear what the few folks that have seen a sneak preview have had to say. It's exciting to finally unveil it to everyone else!

 

The new brand is such a departure from the old one that it required a complete, from the ground up, redesign of our website as well. That has now launched and we'd love it if you hopped over to born-to-design.com and took a gander at that too.

And while you're at it, click over to our Facebook page and give us a "like". That's all freshly rebranded as well.

Thanks for strolling with us down memory lane. It's been fun looking back at where we've been – but not nearly as fun as anticipating what lies ahead!

We have come a long way in 15 years...

And we're just getting started!

 

This Book Is Not For Me . . .

 

 

"Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience.

They are the currency of human contact."

Robert McKee

 

 

If the title Gentle Rogue didn't give it away, the barechested Fabio lookalike with his open puffy shirt and windblown golden locks grasping the rope that's falling mysteriously from the sky as he readies himself to carry off the buxom, raven-haired beauty before the oncoming tidal wave sweeps her out to sea should do the trick. This book is, indeed, not for me.

That fact is never really in question. The point is, Johanna Lindsey knows this book is not for me. It's not written for me. Nor is the cover illustrated with someone like me in mind either.

But the author does have a story to tell here. She knows her audience (and at sixty million books sold, it's a large one) and writes with intentionality to it. To assume that because something fails to make a connection with me, personally, that it fails in telling it's story powerfully, is missing the point. More than that...it may even be making a pretty strong case for just the opposite. A story, like a brand, is intended to capture, captivate and compel it's audience. The glistening pecs of our "Gentle Rogue" are not just to better carry away our heroine – they're to carry away the potential reader.

There has been a lot of thought here at Born to Design recently about how we can better communicate what we do to our audience of existing, new and potential clients. As we've worked through this process, the idea of storytelling really started rising to the top. Not by design, or because we thought that would be clever. The truth is, all marketing, design, advertising and communications efforts are, at their core, storytelling. And every brand is telling a story as well – some are just doing it better, more compellingly, and with greater strategic thinking and intentionality than others.

Our internal endeavors landed us here – a fresh answer to the question "So, what does Born to Design do?":

Our gifts lie in visual storytelling
that connects your audience to your brand.

I like it. But, as mentioned, it's not something new we created. It's simply a better telling of the story of what it is we were already doing.

Robert McKee (quoted above), knows a thing or two about storytelling (he's spent 30 years educating writers of all stripes in better storytelling). He states: "Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today." I would, perhaps, add the word "Good" to the beginning of that quote.

Sometimes it's easier to spot the ones getting it wrong, than it is the ones getting it right. For some time I've wanted to write about the gigantic missteps of Netflix this past year (and still may). The mistakes they made weren't in their marketing efforts (at least not directly), but they still told a story about the Netflix brand – one that actually undermined the story they wanted their audience to hear.

The lesson? It's not enough just to have a good story to tell.

The story needs told clearly, continually reinforced and protected from sabotage – even from the brand itself.