noises from dog n’ moon.

Part of running a boutique advertising agency is handling incoming calls and request for work (and revisions, of course). As you get more and more busy, you’ll be faced with the dilemma of what to do when you have more projects than time to do them and more and more of a need for an 8th day and 25th hour tacked on. This is where the “Shirley Principle” comes in. The SP dictates that he/she who is easiest to work for and with gets all requests moved to the top of the list. Its very much like having an automatic “RUSH” stamp on every request that lands in the voicemail or email box.

We have done work for Shirley for years now, and she doesn’t call but once a year or so, but when there are jobs to be done, comps to be submitted,  revisions to be made, and deadlines to be met, she is never anything other than the perfect client. She is forward about what she prefers, direct about what needs to be changed, assertive about what her budget limitations are, and agreeable when we push back on her or accidentally increase the opacity of a drop shadow so clumsily that it makes the message all but disappear from a 15k piece print run (hypothetically speaking). The best part about working for Shirley is that we often work for her for free (or for Starbucks cards), simply because the working relationship is so agreeable. We even built the page for her son’s yearbook message from the parents. How many high school kids have an ad agency laying out their yearbook pages?!?

Let this be a lesson to you, potential clients, and to all of you social humans in general: Smiling Faces bring results!

Yes, it’s Christmas!- however in California, the holidays look suspiciously like the Spring… and the Summer, and the Fall.

Here are a couple of quick projects that came across our desks last month. Merry Christmas to all and have a blessed New Year. (yes… yes, this does mean that we probably won’t post updates until Q2 ’09…)

We were approached by Azusa Pacific University to create an invitation for a symphony that featured pieces by a Finnish composer. The look was to be relatively sophisticated and had to obviously signify the importance of these Finnish pieces and their creator. This is where our creative side kicked in a little bit and can obviously become a little “case study lite”. A diet case study?.. case studette?

One of the first artistic principles that many of us learned in art classes in high school was the idea of closure. We reference it when we end a relationship and we allude to it in other parts of our lives where we need all the pieces to connect and be organized. In art, closure is the process by which our minds fill out the missing pieces of the artwork. You can imply images with half-drawn shapes, you can imply whole ideas with half-fleshed out ideas, and you can lead the mind of the viewer to drink when led to water. To me, this is the fundamental basis of creativity as an idea. We create images that make allusions to a a full range of ideas and we create simple words and pretty pictures that imply a much larger message. Maybe this post has turned into a bit of rambler, but I’m smitten with this thing called Dog n’ Moon and the opportunities for creativity that it brings.

In the designs below (particularly the photo-based one), see how the horizontal cross and royal blue coloring of the national flag of Finland are implied. Whether you’re creating in playful vector art or conservative classic photography, the principles of closure can push you into that creative place that sets you apart from non-creatives. And frankly, one of the most evident differences between creatives and non-creatives is that non-creatives believe that to fully communicate an idea, one must spell it out letter for letter, line by line. 

We’re big fans of campaigns. In short, we want things to match. That doesn’t mean that we always need to be wearing a one-color outfit or that everything in our office is washed in a single print- it means that peace comes from having ideas and elements organized in a logical manner. 

Having said that, you can imagine how we jumped at the chance to design a series of cards advertising an ongoing Choral Concert Series. In the past, these announcements had been made on black and white copies created in-house by an employee who probably had other duties. Convincing the client to go with glossy card stock and a campaign-based creative direction was a coup for us.

Below, you’ll see two seasons of the campaigns. The real compliment is that the first run was so well received that they asked us to repeat the campaign the following year. Enjoy.

Have you ever considered what it would be like to sell 1M of a product? A million records is a platinum selling record, something that very few artists actually achieve. Now consider that the product is something more than music (an item universally loved by all mankind)- but rather applies to a niche market. An international company with corporate offices in both Japan and the US has sold one million guitar amps in their “Cube” amp line. As the name implies, it’s cube shaped and comes in an assortment of models, ranging from a battery-powered practice amp to a stage-ready professional amplifier. Just about any electric guitar player can find the Cube Amp that fits his or her needs.

So, to commemorate the sale of 1M of these amps, the company is running a year-long campaign. Here are the creative directions for the ads. Bear in mind that, of the ads below, two were chosen as the visual DNA while the rest became orphaned and will only see the light of day here at dog n’ moon’s beacon (barkon?) of artistic communication…

I can’t take credit for this idea, since another designer shared with me his theory of “angel projects”. One way to be a designer without losing your soul is to take on an Angel Project every now and then. It’s a project that offers no financial benefits whatsoever, but is fun to work on and offers an extra dose of creative latitude in place of payment. Also, when you’re approached to work on a project with little to no budget, you can say that you’re already working on an Angel Project. Not only does it clearly distinguish between what you’re doing to pay bills and what you’re doing to warm the soul, but it also makes it very clear that this is charity and carries with it a new working protocol (i.e., clients may not call and tear you up since you’re respectfully working a charity project).

Our Angel Project for the past year or so has been Crossline Community Church in South Orange County, CA. They’re fun people, enjoy good design, and allow us to move creatively through the projects. Some we adopt, others we have to forego because of our current workload. (Sidenote: make sure you don’t load up so high n Angel Projects that you’re not able to pay bills and employees…) You can see a smattering of our work for them below.

St. John’s Lutheran Church, in Orange, CA asked us to solve a problem for them. Having been around for more than 125 years, they had a balance of power that needed a refresh so that individuals from within the church could rise up and take ownership in forwarding the goals of the congregation. Imagine if your garden variety large company decided to do away with a CEO and instead create a base of Vice Presidents to run the planning and operations. Neat idea, right? Now, imagine that you have to find a way to communicate this change to the rest of the company… do you do it in an email blast? A memo posted by the water cooler? Or do you spend some of your resources to make it a monumental switch that the rest of the company can collectively get excited about?

I was called in because St. John’s thought the latter was the smartest move. My job was to communicate the new shift in responsibilities and to share with members the rationale and implications of such a shift. We created a piece called “iMatter” that used cell imagery to show how multiple pieces are connected to form a larger unit. You’ll see a handful of variations on the cover below.

This past Fall, we were asked to lend a hand to Concordia University Irvine’s Graduate Admissions Department. In conjunction with a strategic email campaign, we created a couple of hardcopy direct mail pieces, meant to pique the interest of those on the email lists. Of the 4, the last two were comps that were passed over. A wash of color taken from the university’s brand tied it into the look, but it had little “wow” factor. The bright yellow was eye-catching, but in advertising, it’s not just the ability to draw attention. It’s the ability to convert attention into action.

10 weeks of traveling. A dozen states. Hours upon hours of plane flights (there may be a future case study on how JetBlue has the right idea). Lots of frequent flyer miles and hotel points. Lots of video chatting with the family. The one thing there hasn’t been much of is posting here at the Dog n’ Moon World Headquarters. We’ve still been working, just from abroad. Please take some time to look through the next 5 posts to see some of the stuff we’ve been working on. And actually, you’re getting to see an insider’s view of the design work that was passed over. From time to time, clients decide to go in a different direction and, because we really enjoy the work that we do, those neglected designs get priority posting here.

Enjoy! And come back soon for periodic updates.

Open up Guitar Player Magazine and you may see some of our handiwork. The core of the final was our idea, but the fit and finish was done elsewhere. Here is a photo of the final as it appears in the April issue as well as a couple of passed over comps.

The product is called the RE-20 Space Echo and it’s a reissue of a guitar effect that was originally introduced in March of 1972. The original was well-loved, but huge and inconvenient. The manufacturer reissued the effect in a compact box that can be turned on and off by foot switch while a player is on stage playing guitar. We tried to play off of the 1972 roots as well as the product name.