For some strange reason, i have a hard time using websites as a source of inspiration. Time and time again, i seem to be drawn back to printed materials or at least electronic versions of books. I know this might make me a bit eco-unfriendly, yet it evens out by not wasting a blank piece of paper every time i have to write something down or doodle when bored.

In those cases when you’re dealing with color, using a printed proof for reference becomes a requirement rather than a simple suggestion. It’s common knowledge that this is a very tricky subject to handle while working on a computer, unless you’re relying on top of the line monitors and calibration tools. Still, spending several thousand euros on this type of equipment might not be such an easy thing to do for a lot of designers, especially dealing with lower budgets, increasing prices and tougher competition. Imagine creating a logo or a website template that looks great on your display, but fails to impress when viewed on other computers. Of course, you won’t be able to control all viewing conditions, but it doesn’t hurt to be confident in your choice. I had to deal with similar situations in the past and i know the amount of stress, confusion/misunderstanding and wasted time a wrong chromatic choice brings to a project.

Following one of these unhappy incidents, i decided to look for a good book that will help me make the best color choices, while also saving plenty of time otherwise spent browsing websites such as Kuler or colourlovers.com. After searching online for a while, i settled on Jim Krause’s Complete Color Index which is in fact an elegant and handy repack of the two previously released Color Index volumes. The box itself looks really nice, does a great job in protecting the contents (as in the case of the shipment from hell) and is a clear indication of the quality of the two books it contains. Each of these serves a different purpose, based on their unique structure. You might try and use them at the same time, but more often then not it’s likely to find yourself going one route or the other. From my experience so far, i can wholeheartedly say they’re quite high on the list of tools every designer should use. They’re fun to browse and give you instant access to a combined number of over 2600 color combinations with both CMYK and RGB formulas.

Color Index was originally published in 2002 and is structured under several themes, which proves to be a real help when you’re looking for an appropriate palette to complement a predetermined concept. The main areas of interest are Active, Quiet, Progressive, Rich, Muted, Culture/Era, Natural and Accent. You’ll also find an introductory section about the fundamentals of color along with a couple of ending chapters on chromatic choices for logos and browser safe palettes (which although obsolete at this point, look surprisingly good in print). Every one of the major themes starts with a short intro, which gives you some basic info about the subject at hand as well as further ideas on where and how to discover more hues on your own. Each sub chapter, practically a specific niche, starts with a color wheel, used in creating the actual combinations. Every example contains the actual color as vertical bars, a pattern, a small clipart icon and the CMYK and RGB codes. There are also (more or less randomly) spread across the book, some additional written considerations on various topics regarding the acquisition and use of color.

Color Index 2 comes 5 years after the original one and includes a different approach. Rather then focusing on a specific idea, it simply shows more elaborate color schemes based on a dominant hue. This time, the chapters are Blue, Violet, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green and Mixed. Each is subjected to the major harmony rules common in color theory. Unlike the first one, where there’s a maximum number of 4 colors for each example, here there are plenty of five color combinations which give you some extra breathing room for complex projects. The second volume comes in handy when the client has already settled on a specific color and you’re simply looking for something to work with it, such as the case of a background or contrasting color.

Given the fact that you’re likely to encounter both types of scenarios in your real life, it’s hard to say which one of the two will get more attention. That’s why buying them together makes more sense. Plus, you can hardly call them expensive.  They’re great for helping you enhance your color knowledge and simplifying the decision making process, while also turning it into an underlying skill. On the other hand, if you have a strong personality or simply are a little picky, you can use them as a quick source of inspiration or a starting point for further exploration. Either way it will save you plenty of spare time you would otherwise waste online weeding out amateur schemes from those created by professional designers.

If you’re doing logo/identity design or any print work, then this box should really be right there on your desk, next to the IPS display and the attached colorimeter. You’ll soon realize that unless your monitor has a wide gamut, the colors you’ll see on your screen will not match those printed on paper, even after calibration. I personally experienced this even though the reported delta E value is well within acceptable range.

Back in high school, there was this craze about advertising among teenagers. The whole media was coming of age, and the agencies were booming. As a result, at that time there was a huge leap in terms of quality as well as quantity in the ad world. Unfortunately, what i was about to find out a couple of years later, when i started going to the university, was that most of those “passionate” about it, were in fact craving for the money and the lifestyle they perceived as the natural spoils of war from the brand battlefield. Even those mentioning creativity from time to time, were still more interested in the awards, fame and bragging rights than the actual job they would eventually be hired to do. It’s almost ten years since then and the things have only gotten worse. For example, I went from admiring a funny, flamboyant, yet smart creative director to working with a cretin, man-child web planner who had issues understanding basic Internet terminology, both of them part of the same agency. But i guess I’ll have to cover that in another post.

Today it’s all about a wonderful book, that literary changed my life: Ogilvy on Advertising. Funny enough, this was my first marketing related book, which i got as a birthday present from a very good friend of mine.  If i remember correctly, is was also one of the very few, if not the only serious advertising books you could get your hands on in my country at the time. It was just before the whole avalanche of quick money publishing tumbled over the bookstores: marketing, branding, self help etc.  Yet, a decade after reading it for the first time and more than a quarter century after being published for the first time, I feel it’s just as relevant today as it was back then. It succeeds because it follows a very simple principle: as an advertiser your job is to sell not to put on a show.

To bring it justice, as I’m writing this, I’m also browsing its pages, just to consciously remember some of the things that influenced my perception of the whole marketing process. As far as generalities go, this is a medium sized book, with a little over 200 pages. The copy i got, which i suspect it’s quite a common version, has a clean layout with beautiful typography and plenty of white space. You’ll find an extensive amount of visual examples, each ready to prove the points stated in the text. In just the same way, you could also see it as a short history of clever and effective advertising from the second half of the 20th century. It is written in an informal tone, with enough real life stories to keep you going and clear explanations of why some things work, while others don’t. Along its twenty chapters you’ll get to read David Ogilvy’s take on things ranging from getting a job in the field, running an agency to praising research and questioning America’s top spot. While there are a couple of chapters that seem a bit out of place, they are still equally entertaining and informative.

Unlike more recent material, which suffers from delusions of grandeur or promises to give you easy recipes for success which only work on paper, this is the real deal. But in order for it to work you have to approach it with an open mind. After all, you might be taken aback just by reading the first few paragraphs, if you’re a fan of Hollywood styled ads. It works by giving you a series of general principles and workflow advice that as much as it is common sense, it’s also just as commonly ignored or discarded as antiquated nonsense.

The first few chapters will put you up to speed on how to produce advertising that sells, what are/were the jobs you could go for, some information on how to run an agency and the means in which you can get clients along with some useful tips for the client in search of an advertiser. These are all great at clearing the bullshit and the legend surrounding this line of work. Yet, criticizing creativity for its own sake is most obvious when speaking about print ads. If you are to take a look at current samples of this kind, you could easily find a generous amount of design extravaganza suffocating the product or its selling points, as designers are too busy building impressive artwork portfolios. For example, one priceless snippet compares the general layout of news stories with that of ads from the same publications, clearly pointing out the latter’s most common readability mishaps.

While you won’t have to deal with TV commercials, foreign travel, charity events or even take Procter & Gamble head to head, there’s still a lot to learn from these chapters as well. As with the rest of the book, it helps you adopt a clean and correct mindframe. This allows you to focus on selling by learning to ignore the false goals and destructive behavior.

Because a history lesson never hurt nobody, towards the end, it talks about what the author regards as “six giants who invented modern advertising”: Lasker, Resor, Rubicam, Burnett, Hopkins and Bernbach. It would be foolish to think that their experiences are directly applicable today, as even David Ogilvy doubts it at times. Yet, they act more as a source of inspiration for the newcomer who can employ the new media possibilities in much the same way as those forerunners did with a young market in the first half of  the 20th century. The book ends with a list of 13 predictions concerning changes in the advertising industry. A quick glance over them reveals that most have in some way or another came true.

All in all, if you’re serious about working in advertising or any other form of commercial communications, then you should definitely read this. While it might be slightly demoralizing for those who fancy themselves as artists rather than salesmen, it has the great merit of bringing them with their feet back on the ground. In fact, I’m sure that if just a part of those young blood “creatives” of today read this, then this field will enter a brand new age. Instead of the visual freak show or the subliminal programming, we could focus on clear selling points and useful creativity. If anything, you should give it a try just for the pure entertaining value. After all, the man was among other things a professional copywriter.

If you were to judge this book just by reading the “Contents” page you’d have a hard time finding reasons to buy it. At a little under 200 pages and just over 40 case studies you could think it’s not too much bang for your buck. At least not when comparing it to those index type publications which feature examples in excess of several hundreds up to a thousand and more. If you were to do that you would be quite wrong.

To be honest, Logo Savvy was the book that jump started my new found love for printed design resources. Last year, back in autumn, i was in a somewhat creative rut, knowing i could do so much more but not really sure how. Of course, i could turn to the endless string of websites showcasing design examples of all kinds. Still, there were a couple of issues which i knew would hinder my success. First of all, most of these sources of inspiration follow more or less the same pattern: several paragraphs of general talk followed by a bunch of screenshots supposed to express the general idea of the article. While that’s OK if you’re in a hurry, looking for something to quickly spark your imagination, it doesn’t really get you very far if you’re trying to learn at a deeper level. The second aspect, is that while you can find logo examples galore, that doesn’t translate into the same amount of information about the naming process, branding and identity.

Right now, you could say that in most cases the brief will include an already named product and for the most part you won’t have to come up with a whole branding strategy. And you would be correct. There’s plenty of money to be made as a designer just for slapping around some flavor of the week design motifs (such as arrows, leaves, gradients etc) next to a nice free font. After all, that’s what most low to moderate budget clients tend to request from us, acting more like frustrated rappers in a never ending race to outbling the competition. Are they to blame? Probably not. After all, these are things you learn in time if you want to or you don’t. As a designer your job is to facilitate the best visual communication for your client’s product or service, rather than selfishly build your own flashy portfolio.

If you’re willing to go the extra mile in hope that one day you’ll play with the big boys, let’s see why this book is a great resource.

It starts off with several small chapters about the whole branding process, describing what seems like a common sense workflow. There’s information about how to name your products, the major directions you can choose from, how they fit with the general strategy and rounding off with some legal considerations you should be aware of. You’ll also find some quick templates to use during the process.

The rest of the book contains campaign examples distributed into 7 sections such as: acronym, descriptive, metaphorical, playful etc. While there are over 30 contributors from 10 countries, there is also a wide array of industries ranging from pharmaceuticals, food and beverages, apparel to arts, travel and telecommunications.  As with other books of this kind, the information is mostly presented in a light and informal manner, easy to read and understand. Thankfully, it strays away from boring neologisms or fancy words for which you need a dictionary to get their meaning.

Fortunately, it’s more story driven, guiding you through the main stages of the branding process. As a results you’ll often see intermediary sketches made during the design process, alternate versions which were rejected along with the main motivation behind the final choice. You’ll find out why some clients decided on a name variant over the others, as well as the shapes and colors used for the logo.

As any design book worth its price, it features extensive photography examples. Because of its focus on brand strategy, you will find more than some basic stationery samples: real life packaging design, point of sale design, outdoor displays and more.  All of these will help you get a general idea of all the possibilities that results from a single, well conceived identity.  If there was a thing which annoyed me at this point, was that some of the quotes and captions accompanying the images were taken straight from the text. This meant reading some things twice.

At the end of the book you’ll also find the list of all contributors, complete with their contact information. Starting from there, you can hit the Internet and check their websites for even more examples.

Coincidence or not, a week or so after I’ve finished reading it, while working on a couple of logo projects, i managed to get some really nice ideas which helped me finish them sooner than expected. All in all, i think this book is well worth a place on your shelf. Yet, if you’re on a tight budget, you might consider going for the paperback version, since the hardcover one, at least at my local bookstore cost about 30 bucks more. The size and print quality is the same so you might spend that extra money on something else.

Hope you’ll enjoy it and don’t mind recommending me some similar items.

The natural and easy answer would be “both”. That’s because rather than thinking they are competing against each other, you could see them as training resources that go hand in hand. Of course, each has its own pros and cons and based on your own preferences/knowledge you could be leaning towards one or the other.

After quite a long time spent believing the web was enough, I’m now going through a book phase which i have to admit I’m enjoying a lot. There’s something unique about flipping pages, which you cannot simply get from browsing a website. You feel it right there, it’s real and at the end of the day it looks better by a consistent margin.

So, getting down to the boring, yet conclusive (some might say obvious) stuff, let’s see what are the pros and cons that i can come up with for each of these two wonderful ways to showcase information.

Let’s start with the benefits of online resources:

• first and probably the most sought out aspect is the fact that they’re mostly/usually free or very cheap;
• the quantity or articles is growing at an ever accelerating pace;
• they’re easy and fast to find and browse;
• most of them are easily searchable either by using their own internal engine or through Google;
• the content can be updated regularly, as soon as fresh information becomes available;
• often the community will increase the quality and quantity of the materials;
• at times it can provide access to high resolution photos/vector resources which you can use directly in your projects or learn from them;

What about the downsides of using websites as your main source of information:

• the content’s quality as well as its presentation varies greatly and you don’t always have the certainty that what you’re reading is correct;
• there’s a lot more content targeted towards beginners as it’s easier to create. This means there are more duplicates/redundancy and they won’t help you as much once you go past a certain level;
• there’s no guarantee that the content will be online forever. Websites come and go all the time, so you might find one day that the article you’re looking for it’s no longer there.
• due to the technical limitations imposed by the computer monitors, reading extensive blocks of text is both tiresome and is associated with health risks such as permanent eye strain;

Now let’s see why books are so special:

• the information presented in them goes through a lot of filtering and checking which means they’re more reliable and better than their online counterpart. This also means that visual examples are a lot less subject to fads and last year’s fashion trends.
• great books are focused on a certain subject. This makes it actually faster to find what you’re looking for than having to go through pages of search results and then hunt through dozens of websites.
• design and photography books in particular are usually true works of (modern) art in their own right. Their overall look is maybe as important as the information they provide so a lot of time and effort is put into designing them. They will even act as livings examples of publication design.
• They are a lot friendlier to your eyes than their electronic versions.
• Information is persistent. Unless it goes through a flood, fire or a nervous breakdown you’re pretty sure it’s going to last you a lot of years from now.
• You can carry and use them anywhere (weight restrictions apply of course) without the need for Internet access. Picture reading about Greek inspired typefaces on a Greek island.

Still, the books have some faults of their own:

• all the eye candy comes at a price, which can range from the so called “steal” to more prohibitive values. This is usually an issue for self taught young designers breaking into the industry. Best way is to see it as an investment in yourself.
• while trying to find information, you’re at the mercy of those who designed the books. Even the best publishing houses can drop the ball at times and make you burn the pages from to much flipping while trying to find something.
• there’s no way to search faster and the index (which might be included or not) can only get you so far. That’s why you’ll probably have to take notes and slow down if you’re planning to revisit the book anytime in the future;

E-books seem like the logical compromise between these two. However, as far as the arts go, they’re still in their infancy, with not many publishers offering PDF versions of their print catalog. Ideally, you would have the paper version on your shelves for those moments when you can take it one page at a time and also the digital version on your hard drive for easy access.

Hopefully, in time, i’ll be able to turn this into a more extensive rundown of the benefits and issues you’ll have to face when selecting between websites and books as your main source of informal design training. Yet, as mentioned in the beginning, the point is to mix them in order to get the best of both worlds. While websites will keep you up to date, ready for whatever’s fresh in the industry, books will provide you with a more laid back approach where you can just sit down, relax and enjoy that wonderful texture and scent.