Four projects to tell you about.
Event branding
Design Kompany just finished branding The Broader View, a June event here in Seattle. Above is a corner of the printed envelope, just to give you a sneak preview. I’ll post more about how we got to the design and what the invitations look like later, but for now, check out the newly launched Broader View website Design Kompany designed.
High tech branding
We’re branding a Seattle software company that’s been in business for a while but needed to refresh their image completely. Right in the midst of it, having just renamed for a fresher and more evocative company image. (See links on naming at the end of this post.) Now we’re developing a bunch of concept ideas for the new logo. To build out the brand, we’ll find typefaces to pair with it for printed marketing materials, color schemes, stuff like that. In the coming few weeks, we’ll then apply this to a striking new website design.
We designed brand identities last summer that we then applied to Case Design + Project Management’s blog and website and Group3 Architect’s online portfolio. In both cases, the websites came only after working together to iron out a core message first.
Marketing materials for Gupta
Last fall we created a logo for Gupta Insurance & Financial Services.
Now the new website we’ve designed is getting built as I write this post. We’re working with a website developer that Gupta recommended, which is really exciting. It’s always good to know who else is out there, and what they excel at, so we can work together when the right project pops up.
At the same time I was reading a Japanese samurai’s book called The Book of Five Rings, I was also reading and watching YouTube lectures by Warren Buffet. He talks quite a bit about people staying within their “circle of competence,” and not veering into areas they don’t know anything about.
I have been sharing this pearl of wisdom—sphere!—with just about everyone in business I’ve chatted with since.
Getting back to Design Kompany’s work for Gupta, we’re also creating newspaper ad designs. And a brochure.
It’s very helpful that all of this stems so easily from the strong core message. We worked together to clarify and distill Gupta’s core essence, and most importantly, their unique advantage, in late 2007. This is what each piece of outward-facing marketing copy needs to convey to attract the exact kinds of customers we are seeking.
‘You do wedding invitations?’
Okay, we do more than logos, but this was a first.
Design Kompany doesn’t normally take on wedding invitations, but the bride-to-be is someone we’ve worked with before and told us she appreciated our approach and a “clean and modern” design style.
The wedding invitations Design Kompany worked out sketches for in January just came through the postbox with a lovely note.
Once I get the go-ahead for permission to post, I can share the design, but you know? Akira and I are both really impressed. They look really, really nice!
Especially because our client decided to go for an elegant letterpress option. What a splendid choice.
A lot of times designers will push for these kinds of details because it makes their portfolio pieces look snazzier, but we left it totally up to the newlyweds-to-be. It’s their wedding, after all.
And in all honestly, the texture of the paper and the imprint of the design really show off the detail you can see we thought about over the time we worked together on the concept.
UPDATE: May 2008
OK, here it is!: the finished wedding invitation design!
Aside on Ian McEwan
I love it when I see a piece, whether it be a painting or even a nice album cover design, or when I hear a piece of music (like An Die Musik) that you can really sense has been thoroughly considered before it’s blasted out into The Public. These days people put anything up online and the art of editing’s been sort of lost.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s awesome that people are getting to share their creative expression online and get good feedback and even recognition! I’m guilty of “testing things out via cyberspace,” as anyone who’s seen Design Kompany’s short films on YouTube, a series, can attest… We all need places to experiment and test out things.
But then, sometimes, you happen across real Art. You stop. You consider. You are moved and this is the stuff that lingers.
Suddenly the book Amsterdam by Ian McEwan comes to mind. Here’s Ian, adjusting his spectacles:
Anyone who likes music composition and intricately told, well-paced stories should definitely flip through Amsterdam. I’ve read it three times and it still makes me tear up.
Speaking of experimenting…
Just last week I did this at the copy shop at the corner of Broadway and John. They have a ‘happy hour’ for copies from 7 to 8pm. Aside from wanting to save a whopping $0.24, I got there to relearn the xerox machine as a kind of “brush.” As a tool. For making images. Tons of fun.
Part of a personal campaign to go analog more now than ever before.
More to come on Design Kompany projects and ramblings about art as the summer (can I go ahead and say it’s summer now?) progresses.
Design Kompany’s posts on art:
Dali’s The Dream
Kandinsky’s Point and Line to Plane
Stieglitz portrait of O’Keeffe
Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s art nouveau chairs
‘Wavular’ by DK at Seattle gallery Vermillion
DK’s posts on naming:
Superman’s crystals: finding your company name
Common naming mistakes to avoid
What Designing Brand Identity author says about naming
—DK
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