You commented about my lack of imagination for the header font. I heard. I'll change.

I've been browsing the internet and came up with the following advice on picking fonts. Katherine Taylor suggests:

1. Top priority - combine font, color and size to make it readible.


2. You can't lose with classic typefaces that are the little black dresses of typography. Always appropriate and elegant are Garamond, Baskerville, or Caslon for serifs; Helvetica, Futura, or Myriad, are standard sans serifs. Helvetica and Garamond are your best friends.


3. Use a font appropriate for your medium. Georgia and Verdana were designed for web use. Think twice before using them in print.


4. Match your ad's message or theme with your font.


5. Don’t pick something too weird.


6. Break the rules, sometimes. Most of the time, serif=classic, traditional, and sans serif=modern. But if you’re feeling creatively stuck, try something different.

From the creativeblog, the suggestions are simple and sweet:

1. Font colors should flow with the theme of the ad. Default colors: black or white. Black and white are your best friends (I thought Helvetica and Garamond were)


2. Determine the graphic's mood and play along.

So I've got a tropical theme going on this ad. I want to have a Jamaican theme but quite honestly every time I hear the Jamaican song "One love, one world. Let's get together...." I instantly replace with my own words "One love, one world. Don't stray from your resort or I'll rob you blind..." I've got a feeling I'm not the only soul with this perception. So I won't be going too heavy on the Jamaican theme.

So tropics it is. Do I do knock out 'steel drum tropicals' or more 'spa in the tropics'?

Garden Party has a feel steel drum spa feel to it, but too skinny.

URW Abbey Bold has a 50s tourist brochure feel to it. I like its boldness, but not so spa-like.

Sarabella is lean more towards spa than steel drum. Still casual enough to work.

Nanumunga Bold is perfectly steel drum but missing the spa.

FG Adam, simple but too stringy.

And the winner, in my book is: Bittersweet NF. I was having a lot of problems with the captial 'G' in a lot of casual and script fonts. I was finding them hard to read. If 'G' started anything but the first word in the header, I wouldn't have minded. I like that it has an art deco feel. The large lower case letters make up for the overall stringyness of the font. The font used to spell out 'Tropical' I know I've seen before. Bittersweet NF hit its groove without being too fussy or too messy (another words, casual).

You probably noticed that I've made the header smaller. I wanted to keep it between the bushes and the shack. The header was just helping set the theme, it wasn't the overall message.

The edge on which we exist

I read this story today and felt instant compassion for the Marketing Director. Some of you may not be familiar with this retail store's name, Caldor. It used to be a KMart-like store in the northeast. It went out-of-business several years ago and this may be the reason why.

In 1998, one of their weekly fliers that you'd find in your Sunday paper prominently displayed a photo of two grinning boys playing the board game Scrabble with the word 'RAPE' spelled out in the center of the board.

11 million copies of the flier was distributed across 85 newspapers. Caldor released a statement stating it was mystified as to how the image was created and got past proofreaders.

I understand how it happened. I used to put together the advertising and fliers for Woolworth's when I was just out of college. You get so busy pulling together all the copy, making sure the prices are right, making sure the store will have stock, getting artwork and photos for all the merchandise, and doing all this with a tight deadline hanging over you. I can see how the photo's detail got missed.

It may have been a photo you were waiting for and you were so relieved to get it that you didn't take the time to give it a discerning look. Chances are the photographer didn't notice the boys' prank. Maybe the boys had spelled 'grape' and had accidentally knocked off the 'g'. So many things could've gone wrong.

That's why I'm always a bit cautious about posting, printing, emailing, talking to reporters. Although I run everything by my boss and the President, something like that could failed to be noticed. And it's my job not theirs to make sure it gets noticed.

It's why I truly and deeply appreciate when my boss takes his time and really looks at everything I hold out for approval. He catches and thinks of things I don't. He's my safety net.

It's why I use proofreaders. I like to send them the entire ad, press release, newsletter, document. They catch it all. Thanks to the web, we're no longer faxing or emailing the copy to a proofreader and waiting a day or two for them to get to it. I use ProofReadNow.com, I send them the document or PDF and choose when I need it back. Fantastically, they have one hour service. And the price is quite affordable. Again think of the cost if you've made a mistake.

A bit of nostalgia for myself, during my career at Woolworth's, the advertising manager quit and I got promoted. As a joke, the old ad manager replaced the copy for some ceramic mugs with "I no longer have to put up with 'Name of manager he didn't like'". Needless to say I missed it and it printed. It got noticed a couple of weeks later. Luckily my management believed me when I said I didn't do it. I always wondered if he meant it as a joke. Joke on me maybe.

So where does that leave me in today's world of blogs, twitters, emails.

Perched on a thin edge, I am. And I've got lots of company.

The real winner

I finally got my act together for the Uniq Fruit. I wanted some of the colors of Jamaica and finally found a photo of a beach shack with typical Caribbean colors. Here's what I did:

• Pulled sky out and lightened it, our trade publications publish dark. It would've look like a stormy day, if I hadn't.
• The foliage lightened too much so I had to pull it out and lighten it less.
• I made the sky just about the same color as the post on the shack so I selected the color on the post and did a darken effect.
• I took the photograph of the Uniq Fruit on sand (Play Doh makes a sand-like Play Doh that's extremely easy to work with but out the mess). I like the look that the Uniq Fruit seem to be in some sort of shade.
• There was a 'hair branding' sign leaning up against the shack. I tried to use it and write on it 'from Jamaica' but it wasn't working so well.
• The photography had Christmas lights dangling down from the hut that was distracting. I took out the ones that hung down.

Creative block

• This time of the year is slow. The last of the avocados are nearly packed. Starfruit have exited for a while. Usually we advertise papayas or do general ads.
  
  I always like to ask our VP of Sales about what product to feature in next week's ad. That way, just in case I haven't heard about a shortage or unprecedented volume, I advertise what we most want to sell.
  
  Yesterday the VP of Sales sprang a new one on me. He wanted to advertise Uniq Fruit. It's from Jamaica and is a cross of a tangerine and a grapefruit. Everything you don't like about a grapefruit is gone in a Uniq Fruit.
  
  I should be more prepared. Unfortunately, we haven't advertised it in years. And when we did advertise it, we used illustrations which I am loathed to go back to.
  
  I did several mock ups. Nothing was hitting a creative groove. With a deadline of noon today, I was feeling the pressure. I finally went with a beach scene with the simple phrase 'go tropical'. Here are the runners - up.
  
  I've been asked several times what the costs are in putting together any campaign. This is what's nice about knowing PhotoShop and the entire Adobe suite, the cost is my time and effort paired with the cost of stock photography. True, I'll get freelance help occasionally but usually I can do it myself.
  
  The mock up ads that I do cost nothing in terms of stock photography. You download comps from the sight. True the mock up has some annoying trademarking that you have to work around but I can usually explain it and move on in the decisionmaking process with my upper management.
  
  To complete the ad, I had to
• Lighten the sky (originally it looked like a storm pending)
• Turn one of the Uniq Fruit a little more authentic yellow
• Change out a Uniq Fruit for one with more of a neck.
• Lighten the clouds (lightening the sky had little effect on the clouds since I changed the color balance not the brightness)
• Took the label from the original Uniq Fruit and put it on the newly photographed version. Embossed it to give it a more realistic effect.
• Fill in the background, the original photograph was more square than rectangle. To get the trees just right I had to fill in the sides.
• Draw the copy rectange, fill in the headlin and copy, pluck a logo in and the job was done.
  
  I know several of you work with ad agencies and know what I know. Those of you who still work at AT&T know the prices I'm quoting are actually low.
  
  It would take an agency at least two weeks to turn an ad around. And the cost is around $2,500 where the artwork is available. $5,000+ is it's all new creative. And that price doesn't include the stock photography.
  
  How can you ignite your marketing under those terms.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Chinese New Year digital marketing campaign

The year of the ox. That I get, the year of the rat I didn't.

I've always like the Chinese New Year over January 1. It's based more on the positions of the earth, moon and sun. And isn't that what a new year is all about, the earth and its moon has made it one more time around the sun. And in doing so, the earth unwittingly has taken us with it.

My digital marketing campaign for Chinese New Year took two paths. Both used the fortune in the fortune cookie idea.

For consumers on the website the message was a simple "Happy Chinese New Year." For our retail, wholesale and foodservice customers, the message had a double meaning. You know how I love a double entendre. "Good fortune in tropical produce".

I took tons of fortune cookie photos last year and got too fed up trying to figure out how to animate the fortune cookie opening. I had the cookies in various stages of opening with the fortune showing just so. Again with animation, I was making it too difficult and when you make an animation difficult you just know the flash file way is going to be way too big.

I'm glad I saved the photos. For the web site, I wanted the viewer to question what was happening in the beginning and then for the animation to dawn on them.

For my online banner ad, I just couldn't make the animation work with the 120x240pixels (w x h) space. I tried putting the fortune diagonally - making it hard to read. And having the fortune pan horizontally made it hard to understand what you were looking at. So I did someting else for The Packer. A clean looking ad that really stands out. I've got to remember to use more white background banner ads, they really jump out at you. On the left is a screen shot of thepacker.com showing the banner on the right hand side. I'm not so good at timing 'print screen' but it does show how a white background amidst other colorful ads really makes it stand out. At first you think it's copy for the article.

Being photogenic, making big look and feel changes

For some years, my firm has used illustrations in their advertising. The artwork was striking, reminiscent of botanical illustrations.The papayas in the ad on the left will show you what I mean. We were known for this, and it created a look and feel that we were known for. Brand recognition!

When I first joined the firm, I knew the ads needed an update but felt like the ad director for Alka Seltzer when the animated character Pop Pop Fizz Fizz was retired. When do you give up a good thing?

My first attempt at updating was adding the 'vintage postcard' that you see in the second ad. Still illustrative but adding to the overall look. I wanted us to get to a more sophisticated look without losing the recognition. The vintage postcards lasted for about a year in a half.

My ads took on a bit of schizophrenia as I added photos to some ads with the fruit illustrations and some ads highlighting just the product's vintage postage (the toucan vintage postcard was popular). I was straining to hold on to the old look and feel while trying to introduce some sophistication.

I was stuck on the fence.

Then along came Hurricane Dean in August of 2007. It took us out of the papaya market for six months. Papayas and general ads are about the only thing I advertise in late December through April. I cut back the number of ads and decided when we came back with papayas, we would come back with a new look and feel.

The "We're Back" marketing campaign heralded the return of our papayas. The ad had to be bold and I wanted it to be a more photographic look and feel. It was an all out campaign, print ads, press releases, new web site animations, new online ad animations, new email signatures and new images for our market update.

We became photogenic and we're not looking back.

Trained monkeys do it

No I'm not about to break into song, but wish to note that in recent experiments trained monkeys were able to correctly identify Helvetica 90% of the time. Arial, however, was a different story.

Just kidding. The part about Arial is my attempt at a joke, the rest is true. The typographers amongst us, no doubt, are doubled over in laughter.

I wish I was. A typography nut that is, not a Helvetica discerning monkey. My first thoughts in a creative project is shapes and colors. Font lovers in putting their best foot forward, put font first on the design page. It's an evolutionary step up from where I am in design.

Greg, who does my factsheets, choose the Chocolate font for headers. Chocolate's elegant lines bulges and contracts making each letter seem floating yet rooted together to make the word. The word takes on the appearance of a phrase. Chocolate makes you stop and read, and Chocolate achieves all this while being very readable.

Not being so font adventuresome, my work shows Arial, Trebuchet MS, or Comic Sans - when I'm at my wackiest. I fear going overboard. Fontfanatics do go overboard sometimes putting font first where an image would better do the job.

When done right, collateral pulling the reader in by mere use of word and font is a true marketing masterpiece. You control the message, you've enticed the viewer to stop, breathe and read. It's a compliment to work well done.

You'd think I'd now show you a sample type masterfully delivering a marketing message. Instead I choose to an example of 'font gone wild.' The font is called 'game'. Makes me want to meet the designer.

Ilovetypography a favorite website is unapologetically devoted to type. I love to go there but leave often feeling overwhelmed. So many fonts, yet I still choose Arial, Trebuchet MS and Comic Sans.

Have you ever saw a font that you wanted to use but didn't know the name? The advanced search at Fonts.com has a 'search by sight' function which asks you a series of questions e.g. 'what type of tail does the upper-case 'Q' have?'. The search function then shows you images and you pick which image is most like the 'Q' in the font you're trying to find. At the end of the questions, Fonts.com shows you potential matches. Well done!

How subliminal advertising works

I read with interest this 1/4/09 Parade magazine article by Martin Lindstrom. My marketing education never touched on the subject other than to announce that showing one frame of popcorn and soda inserted every 30 seconds of frames will make a movie theater audience head out to the lobby for refreshments. And being warned that doing this is illegal.

The Parade article discusses legal types of "subliminal" persuasion that happen every day. How shoppers are encouraged to buy with subtle appeals to senses or unconscious assumptions presented. The article discusses five techniques that he says we advertisers use to mess with consumer minds. Hyperlink to read the other four, the fifth is worth discussing.

Invoking ritual may persuade us to buy a product

The author talks some about how the ritual of squeezing a lime into a Corona beer came about. It turns out not to be a time-honored Mexican custom but a 1981 bar bet. We all know it caught on like wildfire and is generally credited with helping Corona become the best-selling imported beer in the U.S. Market.

Interesting piece of trivia that the author uses as an example of a "ritual that marketers know full well and exploit it knowing that the more stressed-out we are the more we unconsciously adhere to familiar, comforting rituals."

And yours truly is guilty, albeit unknowingly. Last year I created a lime ad with our limes posed above beer bottles. My initial reaction to the article was more of a “so that's why the ad was a hit.” To my credit or discredit (however you view it) it was so subliminal that I didn't know why the ad was so popular until I read this article.

I'm sure my upper management read the article, what I don't know is whether I'll be considered clever or deceitful. Marketing such a thin line we walk.

PhotoShop, Illustrator, Flash resources

I got a couple of emails about resources to learn more about Adobe's PhotoShop, Illustrator and Flash.

Probably the first thing to do is check out is your community's colleges. I'm lucky in that Miami Dade Community College (MDCC) has a healthy roster of classes for the Adobe suite. But MDCC is the second largest college in the U.S. (over 125,000 students,* go figure). In suburban NJ and Palm Beach county, I know the Adobe offerings were quite scanty.

Books
Once software companies got out of the business of duplicating installation diskettes, they also made a significant step away from providing software documentation and tutorials. What was an end-user to do after they checked the FAQs and posted queries on the infinite number of forums, but to go to a bookstore and buy a book written by a independent party.

Sitting on my shelf are three well worn thick books called The Adobe PhotoShop CS3 Professional Bible, The Adobe Flash CS3 Professional Bible, and you guessed it The Adobe Illustrator CS3 Professional Bible. I literally bought the first because it was the thickest book on the subject; I felt so overwhelmed that I felt that only a thick book could alleviate the problem.

These books read like the old documentation sent with the software that had a 3-ring small-sized notebook with tabs. I find answers there, it's well worth the hefty expense. And yes, I'll be using my Christmas stocking money on the CS4 editions when they come out.

My suggestion to you is to go to a bookstore (the bigger the more computer books they'll have) and browse. Find your own 'bible' on the subject.

My apologies to the trees, I find most customer support search engines bordering on useless.

Organization
Beyond books, there have sprung up some other resources. The foremost is the National Assocation of PhotoShop Professionals (NAPP). Whether or not this organization is non-profit or not is beyond the scope of this blog. I can say that the NAPP has a wealth of training opportunities both online and in-person for the entire Adobe suite. The membership is $99 a year (less if you sign up for more than one year). With the membership you'll get discounts on everything they do, so you'll save more than $99 during the year.

The NAPP's online community is great, but NAPP also does training roadtrips. In a town near where ever you live, you can take one day classes that will take you through an application or even an application within an application (they offer PhotoShop for photographers, website developers, etc.). The classes are cheap $79 with your membership discount. It's definitely not one-on-one, nose to the plasma monitor training. You'll be sitting in a large ballroom with over 300 others watching the instructor bang away in the selected application. I've been to three and all three were worth the cost.

But the thing not to miss, if you can afford it, is PhotoShop World. A three day event (2009 in late March in Boston) that covers everything. There are like 6 simultaneous sessions going on, multiple times a day, for three days. Evening sessions to boot! If you get antsy, there's the tradeshow floor to browse. I went to PhotoShop World in Orlando last year and can't say enough. I felt my expertise went up notches across the Adobe suite.

Publications
Adobe does put out an interesting magazine called Layers I read it cover to cover. It comes out every other month. Adobe isn't so swift with the subscriptions, however. I called today because I hadn't seen an issue in months. They'll send me back copies which is nice but I had to call and go through Adobe onhold micro environment to get the back issues.

*the largest school is some online one, I believe it's called Phoenix.

High tech heaven found in Flash

The Miami Herald has had a series of articles about occupations considered 'hot jobs'. No marketing anything (manager, director, vice president) was on the list, but the list did contain 'Interactive Developer.'

An Interactive Developer, as defined by the newspaper, helps companies market themselves on the web. The skill set includes Flash, PhotoShop, Illustrator 'as well as web design'. College degree is preferred but not required. Pay range is from $55K to $75K for starters. $80K to $130K on the high end.

The tough economy has been somewhat of a benefit for this industry. Companies are spending less overall but spending more digitally.

The same skill set, I believe is crucial for today's marketing manager/directors. I don't think it's enough to hand off interactive projects to an outside agency or interactive developer. You need to know enough to give them the specs, know enough to tweak, know enough to make the work fit for your goals.

The more PhotoShop, Illustrator, Flash learned the better job you can do.

And it doesn't hurt to have skills that are in demand with increased job security or less unemployed time in this daunting economy.

Hmmm, the salary ranges might be useful in negotiations. One friend, who shall remain nameless but will recognize her situation, has been tying down the details for a new job. Salary is still up in the air. I hope you can use this for discussion fodder.

2009 new year's resolutions

My career new year's resolutions have changed dramatically every year for the last five years, hence the need for this blog. So much is going on, so much to be aware of, so much to be on top of.

Here are my career (not work mind you, although there is considerable overlap), resolutions for 2009. Let the new year begin.

• Learn podcasting. So much to be gained. Talk about how to cook with tropical fruits and vegetables, interview chefs that use tropical produce. Interview experts in marketing.
• Learn web video, or plain and simple, learn YouTube. How to slice papayas, how to make and avocado bacon salad, etc.
• Make blogging a solid endeavor. I've started and now I need to keep it up.
• Social networking, make it too a solid endeavor.
  -try to figure out if twitter is worth the effort.
  -establish presence on flickr for work and personal photography
• Be more Googlicious
  - ace search engine optimization
  -figure out if Google words would work for BT or me
  -Adsense, does it make sense for BT or me
• Photography - I started down this path based on dire need at work (no photographer is willing to come out to rural Miami-Dade county for less than a grand, and I need to take decent photographs at least once a week). It turns out I have an eye for it and a passion for it. In 2009 I want to feed the passion. Expensive hobby, I know. Save up to buy camera and stop borrowing work's.
• Maintain ascent of learning curve for PhotoShop and Flash. Restart learning curve for DreamWeaver and Illustrator.

Happy New Year! Wish me luck.