Some thoughts (and images) of minimalism. Not so much minimalism as a design endgame, but more what still remains when you reduce what you’re used to seeing to just its bare bones.

How many (or few) elements of a recognizable brand does it take to recognize it?

Mr. Muscle, M&Ms, Muppets and more after the jump…

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You might ask, why is employee branding important, and why is FINE getting involved? We spare you the lengthy dissertation (and possibly reading the press release) and sum it up thusly:

1. The employment landscape is changing dramatically. What it means to be an employee – where, how, and why we work – presents companies as much of a challenge in finding good employees as good customers, and

2. Every individual in a company now has access to word-of-mouth amplifying media; their aggregate impact on customer relationships makes employees one of a company’s primary communication channels

Still interested? Read on…

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I’m loving this article on how to give good design feedback. It’s aimed at clients, but I think there’s good nuggets in here for everybody.

Two Excerpts:

It’s Not Art

First rule of design feedback: what you’re looking at is not art. It’s not even close. It’s a business tool in the making and should be looked at objectively like any other business tool you work with. The right question is not, “Do I like it?” but “Does this meet our goals?” If it’s blue, don’t ask yourself whether you like blue. Ask yourself if blue is going to help you sell sprockets. Better yet: ask your design team. You just wrote your first feedback question.

and:

I Don’t Know Anything About Design

Let the design team be the design experts. Your job is to be the business expert. Ask them how their design solutions meet your business goals. If you trust your design team, and they can explain how their recommendations map to those goals, you’re fine. If you neither trust them, nor can they defend their choices it’s time to get a new design team.

more here

Environmentally-friendly type that’s, well, just what you typed apparently.

EcoFont software puts little holes in the usual fonts (Arial, Verdana, etc), so that when printed, they use 25% less ink & toner. (Or, if you spring for the Enterprise package, house fonts).

Alternately, going Gothic can help the environment. Century Gothic, that is. In case you missed the buzz earlier this year, the University of Wisconsin made some news by switching their default font to Century Gothic saving 30% in ink over documents printed in Arial.

Type designer Cyrus Highsmith tried to go Helvetica-less for a day (he refrained from anything which uses that font).

The challenge? It’s on everything from subways to credit cards to clothing labels.

His experiment, and other font topics of interest, are discussed in the NYT review of his new book, Just My Type.

I suspect going without Comic Sans for a day would be easier…

I went to SFMOMA this weekend and finally got to check out their wine exhibit: “How Wine Became Modern: Design + Wine 1976 to Now.” It was a fairly small but quite diverse exhibit that challenged the viewer to think about where wine comes from, how it’s talked about, and how it’s evolved over time from something quite esoteric and snobby, to a widely accessible commodity that’s ripe for spinoff. There was also a crazy display of wine additives, which I’d never really thought about before. Turns out your average wine is way more than just grapes and time (such as oak chips, pictured above).

Unfortunately part of the exhibit was under renovation during my visit, but I look forward to going back to see the pieces I missed.

An excellent article from Behance which covers an adjustment to the GTD system to accommodate for creativity.  This approach directly addresses the constant conflict we all face in marketing, design and development positions: how to balance the day to day tasks of your job with the more deep focus work that make up the majority of your responsibilities.

An excerpt:

Creative work, however, is a subtle affair. If your mind is not in the exact right state, it’s difficult to produce high-quality results. Because of this, details matter. This is what’s important about GCTD, not the general idea of blocking out time, but the carefully-calibrated details that accompany it: the blocks are treated like real appointments and are dedicated to only one (or, at most, two) projects in a week; absolutely zero interruptions are allowed during the blocks; and the focus is on process, not goals.

Read the full article at the99percent.com

In 1993, a family ofWalla Walla farmers decided, after six generations, to plant a few grapes. What they found out pretty quickly is that they’d been sitting on a terroir like no other.

So they kept the distinct family farming heritage, but made estate grown red wines their crop of choice, and the rest is history.

You’ll see this unique tale on display on the recently launched Spring Valley website.

A bold 6-slide progression welcomes visitors with the summarized Spring Valley story, and hints at the Gallery section within, where the people and the land are celebrated with especially jumbo imagery.

But perhaps no area of the site makes the connection between family and wine better than the expandable Wines section, which highlights the “family tree” of wine labels, with each brand named for people who have lived and/or worked on Spring Valley land.

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It’s the kind of idea you get after a few pops at the local pub – hey, let’s start a whiskey brand! – and then forget about the next day. But a couple of guys up in Woodinville, Washington actually followed through with it.

And after enlisting a whiskey-brewing genius from Maker’s Mark to help them perfect the secret sauce, and expanding the definition of whiskey to include vodka, they turned to us to bring their brand to life online. The result is what pours out of your browser at http://woodinvillewhiskeyco.com/.

Their site is brand-forward, with big bold headlines that invite you to forget what you knew about whiskey (like what color it’s supposed to be – theirs is CLEAR), and the introduction of a signature character named Peabody Jones the “mad genius moron” who can only be trusted to make a mean vodka . But it’s also simple, pared down, and true to the company’s bootstrapping approach, artisan feel, and 100% organic style.

It’s not your father’s whiskey company, and it’s not your average whiskey company website.

Technology & poverty. Does applying technology to solve the problems of poverty work? Fail? How & why? What’s the best way to make a real difference for the better? Tough, essential questions.

The Boston Review has a forum going this month with essays responding to the question: “Can Technology End Poverty?” Four of the ten responses (by Kentaro Toyama, Nicholas Negroponte, Dean Karlan and Achon Fung) are available online now. Looks like the rest will be available next week.

Is the optimism of new technologies inevitably dashed by the realities of typical human intent, not to mention logistics? Or does technology help individuals and communities take amazing leaps forward? Do computers teach or teach learning? Does technology expand or shrink social & economic divides? When money is limited (and when isn’t it), is that money better spent on laptops or on de-worming medication? Or a combination? The authors do not agree on the answers.

Use your technology to engage with the forum here.