It’s official: Attention to the design of your annual report yields dividends, literally! The study by the University of Miami’s School of Business Administration finds that “prettying up” a company’s annual report can cause investors to place a higher value on a company.

Of course, we would go one step further than the “prettying up” referred to in this American Public Media Marketplace segment, and assert that an annual report that honors the CEO’s vision and expresses the company’s brand will deliver superior return on investment. And here is a mere handful of examples…

At a firm like ours, it’s likely that we’ll fancy ourselves “young” professionals for a lifetime, regardless of our ages. (Although I’m safely nestled in my mid-20s, I’m well aware that I’ll be booted from the official category in due time.) That is neither here nor there.

The point is that WE are HERE – smack dab in the center of cattle country in a spot that most big city dwellers couldn’t point to on a map. We are (more…)

We have commented on this blog before about the use of crowd sourced spec work (you can read one brief piece about our approach to the ethics of spec work here and another about crowd sourced design for bananas (yup!) here), so it interested us to see that a local business, Mutual of Omaha’s Midtown Crossing development, is seeking public designs for the official Midtown Crossing t-shirt, to be sold and promoted around the region.

In return, the artist selected as the winner will receive a goody basket valued at over $500. The artist will, however, be obliged assign to Midtown Crossing all rights in the design, which, according to the small print, “include the sole right to incorporate and use the Design in any medium, including the use of the Design on T-shirts, mugs, posters, Internet, print advertising, still photographs, and all other media and to reproduce, exhibit, broadcast, transmit, distribute or communicate the Design to the public.” In other words, Midtown Crossing will have the opportunity to leverage that design into a substantial amount of media formats and channels. That seems like great value for a small payment.

We are intrigued to see how the competition progresses, who wins and what happens with the design over time. Good luck to all who choose to enter.

Stellar “brandscaping” firm in Omaha is seeking team member who worships brilliant graphic design and knows how to break the mold to make it happen. (If “worship” sounds like a bit much to you, feel free to stop reading.)

Are you inventive and hungry to learn? Is great design a driving force in your life? Do you have a killer portfolio and want to thrive with one of the most passionate, experienced creative teams in the Midwest? (more…)

After my last post about crowd sourced design, I rather enjoyed Rob Walker’s Consumed article “Banana Democracy” here in today’s New York Times Magazine. The piece explores Chiquita’s public competition for designs for stickers on its bananas. Arising out of the popularity of a web-based design-your-own sticker tool (some 25,000 people took part, apparently), the company decided to extend it into a competition. Public voting on the 1,355 entries starts tomorrow.

Walker goes on to refer to the “pop” nature of this design framework. DJ Neff, the Chiquita art director for this campaign, is quoted as describing this as the creation of “a familiar association with an unfamiliar dynamic.” Walker, in turn, suggests that “A big part of being ‘pop’ anything these days is prodding the masses to participate directly.” It is this element of the crowd sourced design competition that makes me wonder about the authenticity of connections between the brand and its audience. My last post queried the ethical nature of these public design frameworks, but Walker identifies another aspect, which is the brand stewards’ desired enhancement of attachment and meaning between a brand and its audience through this sort of interactive contributory evolution. (more…)