As someone who accepts money from people, money he uses to pay his mortgage, I’m not prone to ranting about their weaknesses. But occasionally we have clients who give in to the temptation to sound like insiders by partaking in marketing speak.
It’s not their fault. I blame the manipulators who delight in enslaving and torturing language, in beating it into a sad submission of cliches, lingo and catch phrases, and then selling it in e-books and how-to videos to hard-working and unsuspecting people who are trying to make a living.
Take the word verbiage, for instance. It’s been exploited. Oppressed. Battered.
I can’t tell you how many times clients or potential clients have called asking me for verbiage.
Verbiage, noun, overabundance or superfluity of words, as in writing or speech; wordiness; verbosity. Origin: 1721, from Fr. verbiage "wordiness" (17c.), from M.Fr. verbier "to chatter," from O.Fr. verbe "word," from L. verbum "word"
That’s right: verbiage means excessive or unnecessary words. I don’t care how much someone pays me; I won’t give them that.
Every August we like to remind ourselves why we chose that bug for our logo. So we’re in Idaho, in rivers and breaking the line that connects us constantly to the interwebs, although, we hope, not the line connecting us to the fish. We wish pleasant summer days and nights to you all.
I love a client that feeds me when I visit. Anyone who knows Alex or me knows we are suckers for food. When we set up shoots for food, we don’t allow any styling tricks. We like to eat it when we’re done.
We designed this website as part of a continuing brand effort for Barnabys Steakhouse in New Paltz, New York. You can’t work on something like this without the basic ingredients of invested owners and good food. In this case we had the added flourish of a setting that is beautiful and historic: Barnabys was built as a theater in 1863, out of brick from the local brickyard in New Paltz.
That sort of thing serves not only as great inspiration; it also works beautifully as backdrop. And who is going to turn down a great backdrop, whether you are shooting, or just eating dinner?
You can see more of our identity work for Barnabys here. You can visit their website here.
When our clients ask us how we’re going to do something, I often tell them it’s all theater, that there is no one right way to do it, and that the end result is good if their audience appreciates it. And for some jobs, like showing a tornado through the windows of Dorothy’s house on a live stage, it really is all theater.
Lou Trapani, director of the Center for Performing Arts in Rhinebeck, says that if people make the effort to buy their tickets and be in their seats when the curtain goes up, you have to do everything you can to give them a good show.
I’d add that when you have your chance in front of your audience, it’s not the time to look like everyone else, to blend in and not be heard. It’s your time to shine, to say what you have to say clearly, and earn your applause. (You can apply this metaphor to the real world too, hint, hint.)
And what better to blow an audience out of their seats than a tornado?
When you're driving through a town you don’t know and you can’t find a street sign anywhere – and for the sake of argument, let's say your GPS isn’t working – what do you feel? Frustration? Fear? Hopelessness? Me, I have to go with rage, because thoughtfully placed signs would solve my problem, allowing me to understand where I am and where I am going.
Now multiply those feelings times twenty.
According to the Mayo Clinic, the inability to communicate and interact with others is the common symptom of all sufferers of autism. In a way, their lives are missing all of the street signs.
Our client, Sloan Architects, designed the master plan for the Anderson Center for Autism in Staatsburg, New York. In researching a white paper-style brochure for them about the project, I spent a day there. The inability to communicate, I learned, is a major cause for the challenging behavior associated with autism (the sort of behavior script writers like to use to dramatic effect).
It's easy to get excited about a project that requires a crane, a cherry picker, a metal shop, and a crew of seven guys. Our most recent environmental graphic design project was just that kind of project – the kind that stops traffic.
For years now Alex and I have been looking to scrap the old sign at the Palace Diner, the one lots of people drove past but no one ever saw. Last Saturday, the time finally came, and all morning those drivers were rubbernecking to see what we were doing. Some of them even stopped to talk.
It started as a concept, a vague discussion over coffee — at the Palace in this case — that developed through rough sketches and more focused mock ups before it ever got to the approvals stage. You think you know how it will look, but you never really do until it's up. So you work your way through construction and eventually through installation, and at times you barely believe it's actually coming together.
But suddenly there it is, in this case our monument to the Vanikiotis family and their restaurant. Here's a little photo essay so you can see highlights.
Alison came to us weighing two ideas for a business. One scared her to death because she wanted it so much. The other seemed like a practical way to get the bills paid. Then she got lucky; she landed her first client. A big one. The kind that brings you ten more, and some of those are just as big or bigger.
That made the decision for her, and we never mentioned that practical idea again. But having seen what she’s done since, Alison would have made that choice anyway. Risk may scare her a bit – and that’s smart – but she isn’t afraid to take it on.
A lot of start-ups approach us for help with their identities. How they approach us says a lot about their take on risk and likely indicates what they’ll invest in themselves. Too many of them say something like: “But I need you to build the website first. That way I can start making money so I can pay you.”
If you are asking someone to shoulder your risk for you, you have nothing at stake.
That is not how Alison approached us. She wanted an identity for her company, Blue Flower Arts, that would give life to her vision of a cultural organization that fostered spoken word events, with a strong emphasis on poetry as a powerful oral medium.
I’ll admit to the occasional superhero fantasy where I swoop into an insurmountable situation with my mighty brain and lead the huddled and confused masses to a stylish and inspired glory. In the real world, however, I do try to remember that few people are reviled and ridiculed more than that highfalutin outsider who walks into the room and thinks he knows it all.
Alex and I are outsiders. Eight years ago we moved from New York City to Millbrook, a small – diminutive, actually – town that has welcomed us graciously.
Still, there are two types of residents in a small town. One, the indigenous, is rooted not only through ancestry, but through street name, building facade, memorial and legend. The second moved there from somewhere else.
So when the Bank of Millbrook, an institution so tightly entwined with the Village of Millbrook that some residents have never set foot in another bank, asked us to revamp their identity, we knew better than to start by telling them what we thought a bank should be.
Who knew asking someone to define what makes a martyr could be so upsetting?
Pearl, to our great delight, is someone who has no interest in the conventional. It makes her books a pleasure to read. It makes Pearl a fun working partner.
But the subject of her book: an American soul surfer fascinated with Sufism and caught up in the camps outside Peshawar? This theme of martyrdom in a post-9/11 world either gets people pumping their fists, or throwing them your direction. When we made the video trailer for this book, we decided with Pearl to avoid the conventional notion of a movie trailer style that reveals some bit of plot and intrigue, and worked instead toward posing the question:
How do you define what makes a martyr?
We’ve been thrilled to see some people stop and think about that, and it’s been amazing and gratifying to learn something of their core beliefs in the process, as if they broke open and exposed themselves. It’s been equally amazing to see the degree of venom that can result, and not just about beliefs, but about the creative choices we made.
It’s a special project that takes you somewhere like this.
I gave a talk at the Hotel Sierra in Fishkill, New York, for the Dutchess Regional Chamber of Commerce last week. On blogging and branding in social media. It was part of my effort to follow the same advice I give my clients: Engage your community.
I didn’t used to know what that meant. The experience of living and working in a city like New York differs drastically from the interweaving that takes place in region like the Hudson Valley. In New York we were single faces among millions. In Millbrook, we discovered what can happen when you are one among hundreds.
When we moved our business here in 2004, we knew almost no one. It occurred to us that to survive, we would have to become visible. So how do you become involved in an area where most people have known each other since childhood?
As someone who accepts money from people, money he uses to pay his mortgage, I’m not prone to ranting about their weaknesses. But occasionally we have clients who give in to the temptation to sound like insiders by partaking in marketing speak.
I love a client that feeds me when I visit. Anyone who knows Alex or me knows we are suckers for food. When we set up shoots for food, we don’t allow any styling tricks. We like to eat it when we’re done.
When our clients ask us how we’re going to do something, I often tell them it’s all theater, that there is no one right way to do it, and that the end result is good if their audience appreciates it. And for some jobs, like showing a tornado through the windows of Dorothy’s house on a live stage, it really is all theater. 
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That made the decision for her, and we never mentioned that practical idea again. But having seen what she’s done since, Alison would have made that choice anyway. Risk may scare her a bit – and that’s smart – but she isn’t afraid to take it on.
Pearl, to our great delight, is someone who has no interest in the conventional.