There are rare moments in life when you, if fortunate enough, have the opportunity to do work that is part of something much greater. A week ago I sat in a conference room with a few of my co-workers listening to Vince, a salesman from our client, introduce us to his company’s new product. When Vince revealed his market analysis — “you’re going to spend $20 a month on paper towels” — my co-worker Chris looked over and gave me a special kind of look. It was the kind of look that said, “this is the next iPod.” What Vince was showing us wasn’t an innovation in interactivity, but a new kind of paper towel. I mean, it was a paper towel, but it wasn’t a paper towel. It was for the house, the car… it was something greater, and Vince came to our agency to sell it.
I’ve spent the last week sleepless. We’ve been making sketches in the office since the moment Vince left. I’ve gone through about 200 sheets of tracing paper and countless ideas; Chris has done so much drawing he’s seeing a doctor next week about his wrist.
Amy, one of our art directors, just got off the phone with Graphis, and Jose, our Creative Director, just left a message over at BusinessWeek. The feeling around here is that we’ve really nailed something big, and from what I hear, some blogs have already started posting about our ad campaign.
An ad, an identity, and a website. That was the simple trio Vince requested and that we have racked our brains over for the past week.
The identity: 324 iterations until we came up with one that just sorta clicked. We wanted the logo to speak to a new generation of consumers, so we took a well-crafted, popular comic book sans serif and applied a sort of squeeze to it, referencing the product’s impressive ability to soak in liquid. Are you following me camera guy? I think the real genius came when Amy suggested that I add an exclamation point to the logo. At a certain moment it just fell into place: I dropped back in my chair, and I literally said: “Wow.”
I was also involved in the development of the product’s online presence. To build the website, we applied two “complementary” colors — blue and orange — to a tightly constructed grid. So many minor moves turned out to be home runs. For example, the buttons on the left felt like they were floating until I gave each one a thick, white stroke and drew a white line behind them circling the composition… that was huge. The website is cutting edge.
All in all, a tremendous success.
Golden Krishna is an up and coming graphic designer studying at CalArts. He also holds a B.A. (in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) from Pitzer College, has run several marathons and likes puppies.
Are you serious?
On Jun.03.2008 at 09:31 AMPlease tell me this is a joke.