A Progress Report for Promise Girls Nashville

I haven’t written at all about my recent endeavors, so to bring you up to speed: Alyssa and I are working (as HelloFriend) with a local non-profit called Promise Girls. This fantastic group of people are providing help and support to young girls in the Nashville area who have been affected by sexual abuse. Our work with them includes developing a logo, web presence, collateral materials, as well as a few other pieces of design work. This is our current status on that project. We’re excited about it, and you should definitely get to know this organization.

The project is chugging along nicely. In fact, the logo has been finalized. Finally! (It took a while, but the time spent was worth it. This isn’t an identity for McDonald’s.)

The interactive design concept has been completed and work on developing it into a full WordPress theme has begun. Unfortunately themes tend to be more complicated than necessary since you never know exactly how it’s going to be used. Current time frame is looking like end of June.

Alyssa has been plugging away at developing copy and a research pool, but she’s having a hard time finding reliable statistics for infographics. Also, we are waiting until we meet with the public relations team before we delve to deep into copywriting as that is heavily related to PR and we all need to be on the same page. As soon as possible, I would like to set up a meeting and talk about a messaging strategy and copy platform.

As far as the rest of the collateral, we’ve been working on business cards, letterhead, envelopes, and a few other items for you guys (think stickers, etc.). The core of the collateral kit (letterhead, business cards, and envelopes) should be finished by the middle of the month.

So that’s where the entire project stands now. Alyssa and I are very excited to be working on it and we really appreciate the opportunity to get involved with such a powerful mission as Promise Girls!

Step Into My Office

Alyssa bought me a desk, so now I have an office in our apartment. Actually, she bought herself a desk. It’s okay, though. I got the better one.

We’ve only had one desk since we moved into our apartment. A mono-desk arrangement was working fine (except for a few territorial disputes) until we decided to start this design company called HelloFriend. Now that we’re both juggling projects, promotion, and personal stuff, the desk was starting to become a hotly contested piece of property. Even the drawers were a potential touchstone for all-out war.

I needed an office space; the dining room table wasn’t cutting it. My laptop was always spread out across it until no less than 2 minutes before dinner, and it came right back as soon as we would finish eating. My art homework usually involves some form of glue or paint, and lots of paper. I’m usually making a very big mess, so having an office was getting to the mission-critical point.

We thought long and hard about how we could fit something in. We argued about it, we stewed about it, there were probably even tears about it. Then I came home one day and found our beautiful antique schoolteachers desk in a corner with a post-it note above it that read, “Justin’s Office”. On the desk were arranged in perfect height-order, were The Chicago Manual of Style, my books on advertising, my typography books, and a tiny little shrubbery. On the wall above the desk, Alyssa had hung these old 1960′s ads for Sprite and Squirt.

See, Alyssa had found another desk and bought it and set it up for herself, then she moved the other desk and set up my office as a surprise for me. It was a very happy day. And now I have a fantastic little office space to call my own, which is great. It keeps my stuff off the dining room table, too, which is always a plus.

If Illustrator Tools Were Albums: Type on a Path

It’s so ironic even the poster doesn’t use type on a path. What a Hipster.

Hexacomb

A Message In My Sketchbook

While I was at a project meeting yesterday, my wife left a message in my sketchbook. You probably haven’t seen her work, so you likely don’t see this as a big deal. She’s rapidly becoming adept at lettering.

Check out her most recent post, Words of Wisdom, and some of her other work. She’s not famous, but she’s good. I’m incredibly jealous of her skill, but I guess I’m just lucky that I get to watch her work.

Why I Watch MTV

Here’s the thing: I like to think of myself as a moderately educated, cultured individual with what many would consider to be good taste. How is it then that I sometimes watch MTV?

Aside from the obvious fact that it’s mindless entertainment and allows me to focus on other things—typically my sketchbook (which is the primary reason, I suppose)—is there actually a reason that I’m watching anything at all? Why not just sit in silence?

Part of it goes back to my creative process. I get bored pretty easily, so I need something to distract me from time to time. Also, having a diversion keeps me from taking whatever I’m working on too seriously. While there is a time and place for laser focus, working on my sketchbook or amassing content to share (read: spending hours on Tumblr and Stumble Upon) is typically a more lighthearted affair and the forced distraction helps me loosen up.

There’s another reason though. It seems that I find myself repeatedly watching, of all things, Catfish: The TV Show. It plays at a variety of time slots throughout the week, so it tends to be on when I’m watching TV. It’s also not quite as repulsive as some of their other programming.

However intentional this might be, the shows on MTV, especially Catfish, illustrate issues that are important to anyone interested in understanding how our culture is developing. While the quality of entertainment is highly questionable, I find that some of my best insights on how people think (or don’t), interact with each other, and use social media all come while watching MTV-level garbage. It’s interesting: what started as a mindless diversion became a philosophical reflection. I really am a boring person, aren’t I?

If I Couldn’t be in Advertising

I’m applying for a media fellowship in New York and the application process involves several essays. The most challenging one thus far was about what career I would pursue if a career in media wasn’t an option. What I ended up with is a decent summary of why I want to be in advertising, as well as an interesting exploration into some of my philosophy and ideals. Let me know what you think, if you agree or disagree, recommend something for me to read.

Advertising was my gateway to media at large, the flashy billboards and print campaigns got me thinking about who decides what to print and who needed to see it. I quickly realized that advertising wields immense power to shape opinion and culture. My education focused heavily on understanding culture, and understanding why that culture exists. History appealed to me in middle school—tracing the lines of cultural influence helped me to make sense of the world as it is now.

As I examined culture, I realized that media played a huge part in shaping and solidifying it. Presenting new ideas to a wider audience, reflecting the ideas of the majority, outright lies told for the purpose of control, wherever media was used (and for whatever purpose) it always has an impact on the culture in some way or another.

Going back through history, you can see the influence of media innovations on the culture. The social web, the internet, phone, telegraph, international correspondence, and especially the printing press all facilitated huge cultural shifts. But before the printing press, I noticed that architecture was the chief guardian of culture.

While I have always admired his architecture from an aesthetic perspective, reading the essays of Frank Lloyd Wright caused me to realize just how much I have in common with his philosophy. In The Art and Craft of the Machine, Wright emphasizes how architecture was the primary mass media in the days before mass printing was possible. Wright goes on to describe how the explosion of the press led to a decline of architecture during the Renaissance, an important point stuck with me: architecture was the original mass media.

From cave paintings to inscriptions of the legal code, buildings were historically used to relay written (or at least graphic) information. Even today, our buildings share a symbiotic and co-influential relationship with the way we live. Our houses and offices not only reflect how we live now, but they also shape the ways in which we live in the future. Architecture can promote collaborative creativity or encourage solitary meditation.

While my first choice is still media—the nature of the work appeals to me on many levels and I have invested a significant amount of time and energy into understanding it—I find myself considering the part that architecture plays in cultural influence. The most basic reason for my passion for media is a passion for inspiring others and promoting positive change. Media seems to be the area in which my skills, interests, and passions overlap the most, and the more specific field of advertising only increases that overlap. However, if the areas of media were for some reason not an option, I would most certainly pursue a career in architecture as it still provides me with a creative, arresting outlet for my core passion—inspiring others to affect positive cultural change.