At first glance, it looks like an ordinary teapot. The Michael Graves Design Bells and Whistles Stainless Steel Teapot (which retails at JCPenney for $40) is just that: a functional teapot made for heating water. But when the JCPenney marketing team used its image as a billboard in Southern California,
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Branding a business is one of the most important things you can do to get up and running. If you have a new business, or if you are looking for ways to increase your marketability (and revenue), follow these quick tricks to keep your company visible and, more importantly, remembered.
Read moreIf you haven’t heard of selective attention (known in cognitive science as “inattentional blindness”), you’ll be fascinated, maybe even disturbed, by this cool research study. Spoiler alert! Before you read any further, it’s more fun (and more instructive) to do the experiment on yourself. If you want a taste of
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If you were in a focus group for a new fast food restaurant and you were asked about how much variety and choice you would prefer, what do you think you would answer? If you are like the majority of Americans, you would likely say that you would prefer a
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It’s almost impossible to narrow down a “top 5” list of the best books on visual communication and design. I don’t claim that these books are, by any means, the only five that could or should be mentioned. But if you are serious about visual communication and you want a
Read moreIt’s important that I give credit where credit is due. I always do cite my sources directly in the articles I right, but I want to highlight the books that inform my thinking. There are many books that could be on this list, and so I will update the list
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“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” While Leonardo da Vinci is widely recognized as having coined this pithy phrase, in our day, Steve Jobs is known for having used this mantra to define his company’s visual appeal. Most of us, when we think of the sleek, sexy products that Apple has
Read moreThe Non-Designer’s Design Book, by Robin Williams. This is a great foundation book if you are new to visual communication and design. Williams addresses the four main principles of design—Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity—in a very memorable acronym (CRAP). If you can master the four principles that Williams puts forth, you
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Have you ever created a brochure or pamphlet and stared at the text, thinking, “dang, that looks so text heavy! but what can I do to fix it?” Obviously, small documents like brochures and pamphlets have space constraints, but if you want your document to look more inviting and readable,
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If you are designing anything in color, you should be familiar with the two most common color models: RGB and CMYK. For most day-to-day design intents and purposes, what you really need to know is that RGB color is used for digital communications, like television or websites and CMYK is
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