Fast Forward: it’s now 2011. It was a late Monday afternoon when the call from Quiksilver came into our west coast office. They needed help with a last minute project and asked if we could come in the following morning to discuss. We have a long standing relationship with Quik, so we knew it must of been important. We showed up to the office not knowing exactly what was going to be needed. Nothing like last minute, but we were up for whatever curveball tossed our way. Cutting to the chase, apparently Pirate Surf had been shelved in the mid 90’s; the product design and POV had been folded into Quiksilver’s line as a whole. The brand was “shelved” meaning the brand stopped producing product, and ceased distribution, and was basically put away for another day. Well, Quik wanted to bring it back. We were charged with re-animating the brand in preparation for some large meetings the following week. Tic Toc, time’s a ticking, we have one week.

A few additional twists:

1. We needed to make sure the brand could speak year round, a four season offering.
2. We needed to expand beyond just “Surf” – it needed to apply to the culture as a whole, and be accepted in the moto, music, surf, skate, and snow arenas as well.
3. The brand needed to speak to male and female audience
4. At a glance, the brand needed to represent the mainstream general perception of action sport culture and it MUST come across as authentic
5. And finally, it must be a modern day version of Pirate Surf as the days of typical grunge are long gone. So, what does Pirate look like and stand for, both now and for the next 5 plus years?

Before heading back to the office we made a run to the local Trader Joes to pick up some PIRATE’s Booty. We knew that with this time frame, we’d need to maximize our eating efficiencies for the next several days.

We rolled up our sleeves and got right to work. We ran it through our traditional process but modified for speed. We did our homework, both on the history of the brand, its competition, and current market trends given how Quik thought it should be positioned. We developed a very poignant creative brief in one days time, defining target audiences, unique positioning, values, personality, etc.

We launched into full creative mode pulling swipe and inspiration from wherever we could in that short time frame. It was actually quite liberating to work on such a stringent timeline. It was almost like a mini escape and everyone in the office was leaving the team alone for the most part. They were respecting “the code.” The biggest inspiration we had in our arsenal was a book called “Fucked Up and Photocopied” which showcases the “instant art of the punk rock movement.”

We really gravitated to these gems:

We wanted the look and feel to capture the life of this youth culture and energy, with a subtle nod to a Pirate’s life (Pirate to us represented unbridled freedom). We wanted a weathered feel, bold use of color, but a zerox monochromatic look which lent itself to high contrast black and white imagery, almost disheveled but not. Once we honed in on this certain look and had our overarching concept developed, too many sleepless nights began to set in.

Somehow we got a little “Captain” in us. We found ourselves talking like pirates, quoting pirates, discussing the hottest pirate actresses, and best pirate jokes, all the while playing surf videos in the background and skating the hallways late at night. We even earned nicknames along the way, for example, senior designer Justin was known as: “Captain Calico J-Beard”, and senior copywriter Kyle became: “Black Long Dolphin” for which reasons we wont get into (but lets just say it had to do with too much rum and a tattoo parlor).

Ultimately we solved the puzzle and delivered one kick ass brand. We not only delivered a presentation, we took it one step further and fully developed the brand. It was complete with all the trimmings, brand guidelines, packaging, instore, outdoor, gorilla strategies, web templates, and an ad campaign to boot. Quiksilver was set, and Pirate was well Tee’d up for re-launch.

Check out the full case study here and relish in the Pirate life: http://www.160over90.com/
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…and wasn’ really going to post these but what the hell.

A couple of side notes, incase you were wondering:

1. Everybody wants to be a Pirate. Even my 2 year old son. Argh! (he does a great impression, i’m still getting the image)
2. the top pirate quote at least in the office during the time: “… you are without doubt the worst pirate I have ever heard of … Ahhh, but you have heard of me…”
3. the top pirate joke: There was a pirate who wore a steering wheel on his belt buckle. One day, a landlubber asked him why. The pirated replied “I don’t know, but it’s drivin’ me nuts.”
4. hottest pirate actress: Penelope Cruz

A year ago at this time, Kelly Dorsey and I had just completed the first and second Loyola University Maryland search pieces—a two-part direct mail campaign targeted at sophomores and juniors in high school. They hit the mailboxes, and they were successful, and that was great, and we were happy.

But when we were asked to expand the two-part mailer into a four-part series, we were honestly a little worried. Visions of Rocky 3 & 4 (and every other half-baked sequel/ made for TV movie) began to haunt us. Even though the four pieces would be tied together by identical format and materials, we wanted to create something new and unexpected—and to give the reader a glimpse into the school from a completely original angle.

We started Piece Three from a bird’s eye view: deciding that we would focus on campus life, and bring to light the fact that every student has enough activities, tasks, and experiences to keep them busy all four years. At the heart of this idea is the notion that no two people can possibly experience Loyola in the same way—and that’s a good thing.

What resulted was a piece that transitioned from the conversational “Loyola voice” straight into three first-person narratives, written from the point of view of students with vastly different Loyola experiences. Our inspirations were wide: the writing style from those Papercuts ads, the kinetic energy of the Euro trip montage from The Rules of Attraction (minus all the sex and illicit drug use), David Foster Wallace’s use of simultaneous stories and footnotes, and Maira Kalman’s hand-drawn typography.

The manuscript was long and full of blocks of text—but that was the point. We wanted each story to be something that you had to dive into to experience. Something that was so subjective that you couldn’t help but imagine the type of student who would embody this voice and engage in all these activities on campus. Each story was then paired with its own hand-drawn typeface (many hand cramps and late nights later).

Check out some of the pictures of what we came up with, below.  Of course, while this was happening, we were also concepting Piece Four…but we’ll leave that one for another blog post.

Last week, I was going through the snapshots I took during my visit to Greensboro, Alabama and was thrilled to make this connection to Walker Evans — that Greensboro is indeed one of the towns that Evans documented for much of his acclaimed collaboration with writer James Agee in 1936. Their collaboration resulted in the honest and revealing book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and grew out of an assignment that the two accepted from Fortune magazine to produce a magazine feature on the conditions among white sharecropper families in the South.

WALKER EVANS: “Storefront, Greensboro, Alabama.” Summer 1936.

WALKER EVANS: “County seat of Hale County, Alabama.” 1935/1936.

Above: Greensboro’s Main Street, then and now. Much of the architecture remains unchanged.

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In the spirit of Evans, below is some of the inspiring signage I encountered while exploring Greensboro last week — a graphic designer’s gold mine! Fun fact: Evans went on to teach graphic design (and photography) at the Yale University School of Art from 1964 to 1974.)

Currently, there’s an A to Z blogging challenge underway  — post about a letter of the alphabet every day in April except Sundays; beginning with ‘A’ on the April Fool’s Day and ending with ‘Z’ on the 30th. You don’t need to be Nostradamus to foresee an avalanche of x-ray and xylophone-related posts on April 28.

I’m not even going to try to meet that challenge, but it did remind me about something I was working on last year. Intended as a type specimen book as written by Charles Addams or Edward Gorey, Character Assassination (or, Accidents Grotesque) chronicles the grisly deaths of various typefaces, led to their doom by weaknesses in their characters — just like people.

We do attribute personality traits to fonts, subconsciously; an art director may select Univers because it is rational and unemotional — if you break up with Univers, it’s not going to call you at 3am in a torrent of drunken tears. Similarly, a kindergarten teacher putting together a class handout will choose Comic Sans because it’s fun and friendly — if you’re waiting for Univers to bring in cupcakes for your birthday, you’ve got a long, frosting-less wait ahead. Once you start assigning human characteristics to typefaces, it’s a short hop to developing emotionally biased relationships with them. There are fonts that we love  — Helvetica even has its own movie — and fonts we’d love to see come to a horrible end (see the aforementioned Comic Sans.)

Today’s* letter in the A-Z blog challenge is “M” — here’s a cautionary tale just in time for grilling season, but sadly too late to save hapless Madrone.

Wise gourmets will heed the warning
left behind by dead Madrone –
‘Cook poultry thoroughly’, the words
they etched upon his stone

* well, last Friday, when this was written

I think I would have gone with some more like a Tungsten. I like the way it sits there and silently judges you. Not like that jerk font Fajita, who is constantly goading you to have another margarita or some taquitos.

Goodbye, and a hearty salute to Grafik Magazine, which folded a few days ago. This cover gallery, here, is a fitting testament to its accomplishments – a cavalcade of top notch design, and an ad-hoc primer to just about every style and mode in vogue since 2003.

Newsprint is an immersive, temporary material. It is disposable. It crumples easily and yellows quickly.  It has a short lifetime. It is intentionally imperfect. This is what we love about it, and why, when we were asked to create a search piece for Loyola University Maryland back in January, we chose newsprint. We wanted to use a material that was as immediate, honest, and unvarnished as the messaging contained in its pages.

The task was to create a mailer for Loyola that was aimed at high school Sophomores and Juniors—a time when many prospective students are feeling overwhelming emotions (both good and bad) about college. So instead of going down a tried and trite path full of generic campus photography and preemptive university information, we decided to instead tackle the immediate emotions that students feel at that particular moment in their lives: excitement, uncertainty, nervousness, and above all, possibility. We wanted to create something that was welcoming, immersive, and relatable—a bit of relevant life advice, rather than marketing jargon.

We explained the idea to Loyola as a piece that’s about the now—one that doesn’t immediately refer to Loyola, but instead reflects the school’s ideals and the type of attention and life skills that students can garner from their time on the Evergreen campus. Loyola was so excited by the idea that they encouraged us to make a double-edition piece that would be mailed out in two waves over a month-long period.

Looking back, it was really exciting to have the opportunity to work on a piece that pushed the boundaries of what a piece of university branding can be—going so far as to have the first volume appear without any logo or mention of Loyola whatsoever, besides a discrete seal on the back cover. The first volume focuses on the types of questions and uncertainties that high school students might be dealing with, and encourages them to embrace their facets, take advantage of their ability to try many things, and to focus on what makes them happy.

The type- and photo-driven first volume was followed by a graphic-heavy second volume that goes into specific detail about the tenets of Loyola University Maryland, and the University’s devotion to care of the whole person. Volume 2 asks students to examine their own personalities and interests as a means of uncovering what university is best for them—whether or not that school ends up being Loyola.

In its playful nature, curiosity-inspiring approach, and intellectual roots, the piece reflects Loyola University Maryland on a fundamental level. And like Loyola’s tenets, it provides advice that remains relevant throughout different periods in your life.

Think of it this way…if Medalist was a band, I’d like to think they’d be Cheap Trick. Direct and intense with just enough humor and art to make you realize how well made and smart it really is….

Medalist is a small, smart outfit out in Reading, PA. They have a technology that does this thing, and does it really well…it’s a fabric, SilverMax, that eliminates/controls scent and body temperature. And weighs next to nothing. And is comfortable. The apparel is used by hunters, cops, firemen, and performance athletes. Oh, and astronauts! And anyone else who puts it on- regular folk, expecting moms, construction workers, etc…It works exactly as described, and it’s the best.  And they need a brand.

So the brand we built is as direct and unfussy as the product. What do hunters, cops, firemen, and performance athletes have in common?  They are demanding, passionate experts. And when they do what they do, they are defined by moments. The score, the count, the save, the rescue. Straight as pie. Just make it count. Same thing with the work. Great headlines, powerful type, epic photography, bold intense color palette – same thing.  Just simple, classic advertising done with passion and chops. Check out the work here.

Printed in 1957, the designs of these covers are a blessed aesthetic convergence. The thick textured cloth and debossed inky black type tie them firmly to the tradition of classic childhood books. The bold spare composition and modern typesetting give them a wizz-bang new frontier coolness.

And the economy and power of those illustrations! A simple rocket and squid, as keys to the imagination, have the power of a thousand glossy covers. The effect is hypnotic. Holding these for a while you’re tempted not so much to thumb through them as to dive into the covers themselves. Just perfect.(via shepelavy.com)

Working with type, I think it is always interesting to see how far letterforms can be forced before they become unreadable. Add too many details or abstract the form too much, and you have an unrecognizable mess. Rachel Young, of  Goollery.org started from scratch and made her letterforms out of google maps. Presenting all sorts of interesting experiments, Goollery showcases inventive ways to push google’s technologies to the edge. This typeface is just one small portion of the site. I’m just wondering when I can get this as a TrueType.

Rachel Young's google map typography

Rachel Young's "A"

Rachel Young's "C"

Rachel Young's "O"