But that stuff, like, totally doesn't win awards.

No, I'm not that frivolous, I'm just in a foul mood and am very cynic at this time.

You mentioned editorial layouts right? Here is a magazine I did for UIC's scholl of applied health sciences.

Cover

Inside spread

Couple more inside spreads

And a couple of very non-marketing-driven BRC's to go with the magazine

Great topic, Rebecca. One I will contribute to ... tomorrow.

And beautiful work, Armin. I dig the quotes.

Great topic, I've got a couple info projects in production at the moment that I'll throw up once completed. Two books that I bought recently might be of interest. Mapping and Malofiej Infographics Awards. They're a good companion to Information Architects in terms of imagery.

armin,

nice work, but are you telling me the the publication is not supposed to be marketing?

ps

Rebecca's question is a totally challenging one: Show us the last thing you designed that wasn't a marketing piece.

Let's all fess up: almost all the projects we (designers) work on involve some type of marketing / branding objective. This is the world we live in. This is how we make a living.

Armin, as PS rightly notes, the brochure of the UIC School of Applied Health Sciences is clearly a marketing brochure, just as our redesign of the New England Journal of Medicine clearly was driven in part by a team there interested in the NEJM brand. In this conversation, whether we like the type is not the question: both were clearly projects commissioned by organizations wanting to further their goals / audiences / enrollments / subscriptions.

If I discuss the National Security Strategy book here, I will be (and have been) attacked for bad typography, for my distribution plan, and for being opportunistic in the marketplace. Let's assume all of these criticisms are true.

But this piece was not designed or published as a marketing piece for Winterhouse or for the Bush Adminsitration. It was published because the foreign policy of our government scares me. It may appear to be opportunistic, and the typography may not be pleasing to your eyes, but I swear, our desire was just to get people to read this document.

I would hope that among an audience of peers, that this will not make me pompous or arrogant. Our goal was simply to use our talents and resources to be citizens.

Bill

P.S. Why do I fear that posting this will create another whole tempest? I'm happy to go to bed feeling proud to be a designer, and to hope that our idealism is shared by a few others.

> but are you telling me the the publication is not supposed to be marketing?

I'm not. I was actually going to throw on there a disclaimer saying that this was indeed marketing, but I could feel Rebecca's eyes preemptively rolling.

> Let's all fess up: almost all the projects we (designers) work on involve some type of marketing / branding objective. This is the world we live in. This is how we make a living.

Well, of course. But I don't see it as an inherently bad thing. That's one of the reasons why I chose this profession. To help further somebody else's goals.

P.S. Why do I fear that posting this will create another whole tempest?

No tempest from me. But, the publishing of the NSS is in itself marketing. How so? It just is, simply by the fact the that it exists to purport a message that would otherwise stay unread if it weren't presented to the public. It's all marketing/branding/strategy. It all, for some reason, depends on the goodness of the product or cause. Weird how that works.

On " the goodness of the product or cause," is a good place to end this day.

Speak Up was incredible today. I congratuate everyone who joined in.

Bill

Armin wrote:

But, the publishing of the NSS is in itself marketing. How so? It just is, simply by the fact the that it exists to purport a message that would otherwise stay unread if it weren't presented to the public. It's all marketing/branding/strategy.

Minor point: can we add words like "argument", "discourse", "propaganda", etc. after "strategy"? No, I'm not rolling my eyes back in my head, but with all the focus on Branding on Speak Up we seem to lose track that graphic design isn't always about motivating market forces (unless you're into Marxist philosophy -- I'm simplifying here).

In other words, I hear you Rebecca.

then he wrote (and Bill Drenttel almost restrained himself from jumping on this):

It all, for some reason, depends on the goodness of the product or cause. Weird how that works.

This was probably written in haste, at the end of a long day, but I'd like to see anyone (in Marian's words) Prove "goodness". Objectively.

It was published because the foreign policy of our government scares me

When i got my bag of ... er ... crap from the AIGA, the first thing I did was go through it and discard (recycle) the stuff I knew I'd never look at again. I came to the National Security Strategy book and said, "Holy shit. That's unbelievably bizarre. I'd better keep that." At the time I wasn't sure of the purpose of putting it in the bag. You are Americans after all, and for all I know you're not allowed to leave the country without one. Heh heh. Just kidding. But glad to know it was intentionally scary.

Almost the only design I'm doing these days falls into the so-called-non-marketing-which-is-really-marketing-of-a-kind category. I (sigh) source, write, edit, design and produce the newsletter for our local chapter of the GDC.

Actually, Brian, Kirsten and I reinvented it with the intention that it will change form and style for each issue, and we renamed it "The Point." So aside from the fact that it's a helluva lot of [volunteer] work, it's pretty rewarding.

Before that, in my former life, the last thing I can remember doing that even comes close to being "not marketing" was in fact part of a marketing piece, an Annual Report, but it was this little diagram that showed what a particular drug was doing at a cellular level.

I loved making this because what their scientists gave us was some completely bizarre, incomprehensible thing that was made in some cheap-ass 3D modeling program and looked like an enormous purple hair dryer. So I got together with someone who actually understood biology, and we went over the description of the drug's action, found lots of photos and diagrams, and from that I made this thing. Suddenly it all became clear! I was so happy doing this that I briefly considered joining forces with my little scientist friend and specializing in scientific drawings.

Oh well.

And way back in the mists of time when dinosaurs still roamed the earth I designed the site, Insecta (this link was working a month ago, but not tonight, so either the site is finally gone, or was just down tonight). This was another freebie for a museum of insects at UBC, which had closed its doors due to lack of funding.

If you do get that link to work, please be forgiving: that's a straight html website designed and built by me (my second ever), in, I think, 1995, and it has never been touched since.

Speak Up was incredible today

Stick around, Bill, it's been like this nearly every (week)day for quite a while now.

I do marketing stuff about 5% of the time, the rest is like this. I am a web/multi-media designer - but I still consider myself a designer. Most recently we have been working on - buttons for the navigational system of a new eligibility application. - And it ISNT a marketing piece because the only people approving or disapproving it are myself and one other person - yes, the look and feel would help sell it otherwise, but not in this case.

Armin - gorgeous!!

First, a shipping label for our print shop:

And a couple of technical drawings:

I wanted to include a template for our ag college identity guide (mostly because I'll probably never receive credit for it), but that's probably too close to marketing.

How about a simple map?

Nothing fancy. I do like making maps. Anyone a cartographer in here? I think I could enjoy that as a profession...

Darrel,

Yeah, I'm kind of a closet cartographer. Two maps from our wedding invitations:

And a recent one for a revised county extension district:

I make maps all the time for my job.

I've never done any marketing!!! Haha! What do you take me for a graphic designer?

Otesha: a website for a non-profit environmental initiative.

Antiwar collages: Comissioned illustrations for the magazine Humanist in Canada.

I've got lots more, but most of its personal work. Though it usually finds itself somewhere else at some point.

Darrel, jesse, those are some really nice maps!

This was probably written in haste, at the end of a long day, but I'd like to see anyone (in Marian's words) Prove "goodness". Objectively.

It's impossible. What is good to me will be bad for somebody else. I just thought I would point it out.

I've never done any marketing!

This goes back to Kingsley's comment about adding propaganda or argument to the description of marketing. So Kevin, as "pure" as your efforts want to be there is marketing and branding involved. There is no getting out of it and I really don't see a reason why we would want to get out of it. Why is it painted to be so dirty? That's what I don't get.

I hate doing maps.

I've never done any marketing

I was just joking Armin! I know I must seem terribly naive at times, but its just my childlike character. Again another joke, I'm feeling older than ever. I have no illusions of being pure.

The reason it is painted so dirty is because war is dirty. Simple as that.

I hate doing maps too, that's why I love them so much.

Rebecca, I can't believe you're still writing up specs in this day and age. I thought that went the way of repro and bluelines. You should get them to pay you to typeset your own books.

I LOVE this kind of work. Jesse, those diagrams are awesome, and I love the maps. I want to underscrore the point that Sarah B made earlier: that even though her navigation system might help the project's marketability, that doesn't make it marketing per se. That's the kind of "non-marketing" work I'm talking about.

And Sam, I wouldn't dream of setting my own type if I can get my compositor to do it for me! I work with some of the best typesetters in the business; they actually wrote the book. In fact I did it recently and it looked like crap. I'm back in the corner where I belong.

> It was published because the foreign policy of our government scares me...our desire was just to get people to read this document. Our goal was simply to use our talents and resources to be citizens.

Bill -- I admire the effort, and it did prompt me to read it for the very first time -- confirming my worst fears of the current administration. So in that regard, I did find value in the document -- my other criticisms notwithstanding.

> I'm happy to go to bed feeling proud to be a designer, and to hope that our idealism is shared by a few others.

Not only idealism, but passion, and conviction to the integrity of the craft. Like you, and I love this profession -- which is probably why tempests like yesterday's happen.

Conformity and blind concensus would be the death of design, don't you agree?

I can't see accountants and engineers arguing as passionately about the motivations and ideals of their professions.

> I can't see accountants... arguing as passionately about the motivations and ideals of their professions.

Just wait until April 15.

Designers so do not have the market cornered on passion for their profession. Let's give the rest of humanity some credit.

Designers so do not have the market cornered on passion for their profession.

My doctor, when I asked why on earth he would want to be a doctor, with constantly having people come in with their stupid complaints and having to look at all that creepy stuff, said, "Oh! I find it endlessly fascinating."

And my accountant said, "I just love meeting people. Everyone is so different, and they come in and I get to catch up on how they and their business is doing. I love it!"

I learned something from them both.

Sorry to return to this tangent, but I don't think the terms marketing and branding can really be used interchangeably. Marketing absolutely refers to helping to sell something in one or another fashion, whereas branding can be used to describe any of the practices that fix something's/someone's unique identity in someone else's mind. (The design of any specific Penguin book's cover is marketing: the consistent quality of the design and editorial content, over a variety of books, is branding.)

In this same way, website navigation, insofar as it relates to user experience, is branding, whether or not there are suits looking over your shoulder when you design it. Even dry graphs like this, while not obviously selling anything, communicate the values of its creators and in turn help position them in the minds of the intended audience.

This is why I don't feel there is a value judgement related to branding. It is just one possible mental framework for looking at the way people think and communicate.

For a recent production of my theater company, I needed a concise way to show that we had two different collections of short plays which alternated nights. We also had two special guests who were performing selected nights. I summed it up in the following calendar (this is from the website, so forgive the grey around the background -- that was to go along with the background of the page it's on). It was about a third this size on the postcard, where space was extremely limited.

Though this is admittedly part of a larger marketing piece, I think by itself it fits under information design.

I'd have to disagree with the statement that all design has a marketing component to it.

I started my professional (I think that's the first time I've used that word in a self-referential way...) career as an Art Teacher and I worked very hard to come up with worksheets and lesson materials that were legible and communicated what the assignment or whatever actually was. Then I switched over to Software Training for a corporation and spent a great deal of time taking the ridiculously convoluted diagrams the programmers and tech architects pumped out in Visio and changed them into simple, straightforward, easy to understand (and teach) diagrams that were visually clean (and if I may say so, quite attractive). Now I've switched over to full-time Graphic Design for the same company and I still create diagrams for the Training department as well as reworking internal documents and white papers to be "better".

Sure, I do a lot of really marketing-oriented stuff but I still believe that graphic design is about communication - we have an opportunity (a responsibility?) to render the world an easier-to-understand place, a more beautiful place. The world is full of people who know a great deal but can't communicate it worth beans, and I think that's where we come in. Of course, the majority of the work we do ends up subordinated to some commercial purpose but there's nothing wrong with that - it can still be beautiful, challenging, informative, educational, insightful. That's our challenge.

I used to teach my students that art was all around them; that it wasn't an esoteric thing found only in galleries and textbooks. All they had to do was look at billboards, magazines, movies, brochures, worksheets (ha ha) with a critical eye and they would see the hands of artists, visionaries, teachers. Often the message is commercial, but there are still all those good things at work under the surface.

I'm a graphic designer but I've never stopped thinking of myself as a teacher and I think those two things go together really well. We're communicators and that's a difficult and valuable skill.

I think its...kind of amusing that people are so afraid, or seem to be so afraid in some instances, of doing marketing-related things. This is either something you get, or you don't; just as a good portion of the "marketing-oriented" design out there is total shit, so too is a lot of the non-marketing variety.

I think this discussion is totally arbitrary--who gives a shit. Do what you do, be happy with it, leave it at that. You have nothing to prove to anyone but yourself, so...yeah. Design is design is design. Today's ad for a men's razor is tomorrow's yuppie-collectible, a future bedroom poster of ecclectic value and visual kitsch. What something is now, what purpose it serves, can change by tomorrow morning.

I think this discussion is totally arbitrary--who gives a shit.

Well, ya know, I do, and I think quite a few others do as well.

I hate to admit this, but I think Bradley does have a point. As the song lyrics of a Morcheeba song suggest "once a label is on something, it becomes an it, like it's no longer alive." Info design is very seductive. You get to design how the info is seen. It's info after all so it has to be informative. (Whether it's the right info to be conveyed is worthy of another thread). It's easy to believe that since it's a "truth" that it's above the marketing material its attached to. Though without the material chances are that the diagram would never have been needed. Whatever the label, you're still promoting something. Are the semantics (info vs. marketing vs. design) that relevant ? Enjoy the process and move on.

Just to quote the quote (which is great):

Graphic designers make the hidden obvious and the obvious relevant

Is that marketing? Sure it's an issue of semantics, but semantics are important, they are the fundamental way through which meaning is constructed in language. How can that be irrelevant?

Design is design is design.

Are the semantics (info vs. marketing vs. design) that relevant? Enjoy the process and move on.

Well, if it's all the same, and we should just not concern ourselves with semantics because it's more important to just take in the next job, then what the fuck's the point of this website?

Kevin, I'm not discounting language as you have pointed out, but the "labels" that people use to separate themselves. I'd like to think I do ok as a designer, but whether I'm working in a marketing dept, advertising agency, studio or for myself I don't see much of a difference in what I do.

I'll contradict that by suggesting that each of those categories have different motives, but at some level I'd be doing the same thing perhaps. What the "thing" is, that's harder for me to quantify in a paragraph.

as an Art Teacher...I worked very hard to come up with worksheets and lesson materials that were legible and communicated what the assignment or whatever actually was.

Marketing may be the commonplace term, but, in reality, all design is sales oriented. And I'm not just talking in a consumerist sense. Just because there is not a monetary transaction involved does not mean a selling process was absent. Maybe this is the distinction we are trying to draw here? In the above example from Matt, his lesson plans are obviously not for sale. But, in his desire to make them readable, he is selling them to his students. He wants them to take the assignment seriously and complete it, so he used design to convince them.

I know this sounds a little extreme, but it is the point of design, to use the visual to incite an action of some kind. It may be more passive, like simply understanding a medical chart, or as active as inciting an actual march or protest. My point is really that I find nothing inherently wrong with the idea that design sells, whether it's information or ground coffee. We aren't fine artists (as a profession). We're communicators.

Jerry Springer still has a trailor trash television show on the air that a million Americans actually watch. Thousands of people pay money every day to go see monster trucks smash cars, female midgets wrestle, and trained dogs run around a track. Water cooler discussions at work consist of topics like the fact that McDonalds� now has a Whopper� and Burger King� has a Big Mac�. And we're debating the definition of the word marketing? The fact that we designers consider this a major point of professional debate strikes me as the highest form of irony. Putting the design of a lesson plan into the same category as passing Froot Loops� off as a "good part of your child's balanced breakfast�"?? Please!

Marketing: helping to bring a product or service to market.

What you choose to push or not is an individual choice. Get pissed off at the civilization-crumbling crap people are trying to sell us out there--not at what we should call it. (huge sigh)

Well, ya know, I do, and I think quite a few others do as well.

Well, if it's all the same, and we should just not concern ourselves with semantics because it's more important to just take in the next job, then what the fuck's the point of this website?

I've read every post in this discussion and I don't get it--what is anyone trying to prove, to whom, and for what purpose? Design is becoming JUST LIKE "brand"--everyone has their own personal definition of it and its the "only one."

Sigh.

And Jonsel is correct, and while its a statement of the very obvious, its astute nonetheless because its like we all completely forget that whatever it is that you do as a designer...it's supposed to incite action of some sort.

Why people have difficulty with this I don't know, and why people like Bill Drentel seem to imply that "brand-focused" work can't be "intellectually engaging" I will never understand. Because its so fucking short-sighted. The assumption that commerce is automatically "dumbed down" is a shallow one, and to me, one that tacitly takes the route of avoiding responsibility--you can measure things like awareness and to an extent sales, but you can't measure "cultural influence" or "the spread of new ideas." But you sure as hell CAN say that you're successful in that without having to answer for it or prove it.

And we've talked about the importance of being accountable on this forum before, this is nothing new and its something I for one will continue to push. Because I'm sick of listening to designers basically justifying themselves and what they do, without really saying ANYTHING--there are details and elements of this profession that I love, the things that make design DESIGN, but quite honestly, if non-designers don't "get" what we do in the end, its OUR problem, not theirs.

I guess what I'm getting at is that far too many design discussions are way too circular and self-contained that I wonder what they REALLY accomplish. Its a constant dialogue about what something IS--and I don't see what point there is in defining that. Just fucking do it.

Wow. I didn't know people posted on the weekend! I'm ill-equipped to say anything of substance right now, but I just want to say thanks for all the great and thoughtful comments posted on a fucking Saturday, in particular Paul's comment about branding. Thank you. More later. BYe.

?

Lance. what are you responding to

> Lance. what are you responding to?

I'm responding to the Zen and the Art of Bullshit logic road that takes conversations like this one, as Bradley rightly observes, in a circular path. We end up saying a lot without saying much of anything, because we can intellectually argue that one thing is everything and everything is one thing. For instance:

> In the above example from Matt, his lesson plans are obviously not for sale. But, in his desire to make them readable, he is selling them to his students.

Yes, and every time I tell my son to do his homework, I'm "selling" him on the importance of a good education. I'm marketing, right? Come on, Jonsel. While semantics are important, they are important to this extent: we must codify a language for our profession if we intend to make a collective effort to convince commercial and cultural institutions that we know what we're talking about. If we can't even define the difference between marketing and non-marketing, how much work do we have left to do?

Rebecca started this thread with a simple call to submit non-marketing related work. It does exist. And there are a lot of examples out there.

One can also make a very convincing argument that everything we touch as commmunication designers affects a "brand." But the important distinction we can make and discuss here is a difference between the definition of a word and the value choices we make in our work. The Harvard Business Review and Hustler magazine are both "brands." They are also both sold to a public market; hence, they are part of a "marketing" effort. Designers weigh the choice of engaging in an assignment to design one or the other based on their own personal values. This fact does not change the definition of "brand," nor can we decide collectively that all branding is either good or bad. We shouldn't even try.

Let's discuss how value and choice enter the equation of a client/designer relationship and leave the job of writing definitions to Webster.

As Lance pointed out, Rebecca started this topic with a call to submit non-marketing work, such as charts, maps, signage, editorial layout, forms, diagrams, etc. If you want to debate about the definitions of marketing and branding, fine. But DO IT IN ANOTHER THREAD, please.

I would suggest that if you don't have charts, maps, signage, editorial layout, forms, diagrams, etc., to share, then do the practical thing and ignore this topic. In other words, move on.

Thank you.

Part of what I'm resisting is the trend (in graphic design and elsewhere) towards conflating sales with all the other things that we do in our lives. As Lance points out, selling is selling and teaching is teaching—and while there may be instructive analogies to be drawn between them, they are not the same thing. Sorry to repeat what's already been said; I just want to correct the mistaken impression that marketing as an act is being subtly condemned in this thread.

I'm not sure what's wrong with threads that diverge from their starting discussion point. I've learned a lot from those types of comments.

With that said, below is a diagram in it's initial stages that I'm designing for an AR. I'm trying to show the relationship between the products, services and suites that the company does. The diagram is about 20% complete. What I'll have to add is more descriptive text, show interaction, show different industries and how they interact and work on the opacity of the layers. I figured it might be interesting to show a work in progress and then compare it to the completed diagram.

Cheshire: great calendar. We should have a thread to show off information design at some point...

Thanks, Darrel -- I thought that's what this thread was!

I mean, before it went off on a tangent...

This thread's about information design?

No WAY!

I'm a very beginning part-time graphic designer--i.e., I work for a 4-person small non-profit as a researcher, and I'm the only one who has even the background in doing design work. So I "design" most of our stuff (business cards, letterhead, papers, etc.) We spend a lot of our time thinking how to present information and ideas well to folks with little background in our area. I've been struggling quite a bit with how to make complicated charts and graphs (particularly pictures of networks) comprehensible to anyone outside of the four of us. Do any of you all have a suggestion for a book I could read or even just some site I could check out that might give me some suggestions and/or help?

(And as for the branding discussion--I think you all are being too essentializing regarding what you consider to be a brand. That is, from the perspective of graphic design, it seems that everything IS a brand. One designs something to market it--end of story with nothing to add. However, stepping outside that worldview would lead to different conclusions, even for the exact same piece of art/information. I certainly don't intend to step into wishy-washy relativism, but it seems too definitive to say that everything either IS or IS NOT branding/marketing--I think most everything we do is more complicated than that, depending on the multiplicity of identities we assume and the impact that assumption has on the world around us. So, for example, this post could, on the one hand, be seen as me marketing myself. I am making a claim about myself as a beginning graphic designer and asking for something (like asking for money) on that basis. Yet, at the same time, I'm entering into a norm-creating dialogue with a community, and in the process, helping to create the community itself as well as the local norms and my own self-conception. Neither aspect alone would be "true"--I have both marketing and morality.)