Published August 27, 2008 by

Meanwhile everyone else gets on with their lives

The darstadly story continues, we should have internet connected back up by next Saturday… in the meantime, I shall continue dying of deprivation.

Meanwhile…

{Bec continues enjoying uni, and actually got inspired about public speaking}

{Bec goes on yearly work conference, and yes there were hundreds of kiddies}

00ergoweaway08-00_jpg

{Bec reads a lot of books}

{Bec promises to write up a review for this book, yes in a small way she was sucked in by the lovely cover, but it should be interesting and hey she gets a free copy.}

For your interest and perusal, check out Colin McCahon – a NZ artist, who does interesting things with words. My lecturer claims he is no typographer, just a fine artist. There is apparently a subtle difference in how they put letters together. Whatever. I love McCahon’s work, it’s beautifully naive in so many respects but still immensely clever.

Books Life

Published August 21, 2008 by

Post of the Day – Runnning your own race

Ripper post over at ideasonideas. Geoff put me onto Eric Karjaluoto’s blog this morning.

Golly I love designers who can think AND can write about what they think.

Design Post of the Day

Published August 21, 2008 by

Reflection

University without internet access is extremely difficult, or at the very least, entirely unmotivating.

General

bec is grumpy

Published August 16, 2008 by

Brand collaboration РXo̤ai

xocaiThis semester I am taking a class on Branding and Identity. Although not very far into the head space, I’ve had some exposure to Brand beyond just logo and hey, I have half a brain on me.

That is why last night didn’t work.

As a favor for a friend, Mandy (a friend of ours) hosted a ‘healthy chocolate’ party for a product called Xocai.

I am quite naturally a big cynic, so like every old sales party, I sit through it for laughs and free samples and never buy a thing. They make me edgy but are rather amusing at the same time.

The Xoçai logo speaks of energy and probably runs on par with something like Powerade. I don’t particularly like the logo, it’s too slasher or samauri sword and you cannot pronounce the product name…

But then comes the antonym of marketing. Xo̤ai Рan angry, energetic power logo is being marketed tuperware style with the swishy happiness of sharing the chocolate we all love.

I don’t eat chocolate for energy. I eat it because it feels good, is comfort food and it goes exceptionally well with coffee.

Xoçai is non-guilty healthy chocolate, there isn’t a problem with that – but their sales pitch attempts to plug the chocolate of enjoyment while their logo simultaneously demands that you eat it on the run, just doesn’t work.

So if brand encompasses logo, lifestyle, marketing and generally the whole package, then Xoçai doesn’t really cut it. The fault here lies with a lack of collaboration between, design, marketing and business strategy.

…it doesn’t really taste very good anyway.

Design Humor Life Uni

Published August 13, 2008 by

Best in Show

crufts_01You may recall my moaning about packaging design? Besides managing to pass the class, (and I didn’t do too horribly), I found out yesterday that the competition associated with our final products was won by my friend Chloe, who got best in show! This is a fairly impressive feat for a second year student as you are up against 3rd year and PostGrad students for that particular award. I haven’t yet seen her product ‘light and shade’ as I wasn’t in her class and they aren’t up online so far but I will share when they become available.

On that, uni has finally started back. I’ve scored a ripper timetable with everything packed into two days, although my Mondays are straight classes from 8:30-2:30 no breaks. My tutor for Managing Design is entirely inspiring (and looks uncannily like a past English teacher of mine) and I wound up in an exceptional group for the menacing 100% assignment, I think this semester might just be a good one.

*Still no internet at home, hence the bland and infrequent posting

image source

Life Uni