Chocolate and peanut butter. Starsky and Hutch. Frylock and Meatwad. We think some things are better in teams.

Since 2006, Mar­ble­head has been about two things. Cre­at­ing a better cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and treat­ing our clients like we would want to be treated. Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is one of those terms (like “consulting”) that can mean a few dif­fer­ent things. For us, it meant mar­ket­ing strat­egy and cre­ative design focused on making every inter­ac­tion a cus­tomer had with our clients as enjoy­able as pos­si­ble. Cus­tomer inter­ac­tion as a des­ti­na­tion. People antic­i­pat­ing and liking marketing con­ver­sa­tions. We take great pains in our areas of exper­tise to make this happen. Clients would ask what we could doto  extend this phi­los­o­phy into adver­tis­ing. Nada. That was one thing we had no exper­tise or train­ing in. I didn’t know that media had to be planned and bought. In fact, the clos­est thing I knew about adver­tis­ing what Bob Hoff­man had to say at the Ad Con­trar­ian. And that scared me.

Late last year an adver­tis­ing firm approached me about team­ing together to expand both our offer­ings. It would give them a chance to offer inter­ac­tive and direct mar­ket­ing and give us tra­di­tional adver­tis­ing exper­tise. So after lots of spare time fig­ur­ing out all the details, we are now part­ners with the adver­tis­ing agency Com­merce House. www.​com​merce​house.com.

The first thing we did was create a new web­site. Let us know what you think.

The Mar­ble­head Blog will con­tinue to pro­vide all the inter­est­ing things you’ve come to expect. But we are also tin­ker­ing with the lessons we’ve learned and our new part­ner­ship to make this blog even better. Look for some new posts coming up in the next week.

Designers everywhere are starting to rejoice as the online community steadily marches towards an internet where typography can be displayed with the beauty and functionality demonstrated in printed material. Now the real fun begins!

What’s the worst part about design­ing online? The fuzzy res­o­lu­tion? The unpre­dictable browser window size? The insan­ity of mul­ti­ple browsers dis­play­ing lay­outs mul­ti­ple ways? Those are all pretty bad, but the thing that gives me gray hair is the awful way type is ren­dered. There’s no kern­ing, no lig­a­tures, and no real font choices. This prim­i­tive form of text was great for the basic infor­ma­tion orig­i­nal browsers were built for. It is even pass­able for the web as we view it on a casual basis today. But, as the online world grows, web design becomes more and more life­like and little short­com­ings that seemed small when we were just happy to be online, become glar­ing arti­facts sur­rounded by bright color images from high res­o­lu­tion dis­plays. Lucky, there are a lot of smart folks out there work­ing day and night to give us all better type online.

The Horizon

Sooner than you think, web pages will be able to dis­play incred­i­bly smooth fonts that design­ers choose from an enor­mous cat­a­log. When nec­es­sary, the fonts will con­tain lig­a­tures, mul­ti­ple char­ac­ter sets, and beau­ti­ful details you never thought pixels could deliver. With CSS3 down the road break­ing para­graphs into columns, hyphen­at­ing words and doing proper full jus­ti­fi­ca­tion will be as common as it cur­rently is in brochure design. If your not famil­iar with the tech­ni­cal end of type design, I can sum­ma­rize this para­graph by saying, web pages will look so good, you will barely real­ize you are online.

The People Who Make It Happen

There was a time when I believed that most devel­op­ers in the web world were most inter­ested in the linear deliv­ery of infor­ma­tion. I thought they rolled their eyes at flash and fancy designs because they simply didn’t see the rel­e­vance to their single minded cause.

Turns out I was pretty short sighted. I’ve met tons of devel­op­ers in the past few years who truly care about good design and appre­ci­ate how much better it can make their sites. They are work­ing very hard to increase the form and func­tion of the web. They also seem to under­stand that if the web is all about con­tent, then typog­ra­phy that dis­plays the con­tent is at the center of web design. That’s why sev­eral groups are cur­rently devel­op­ing stan­dards and build­ing sup­port to give us the online type we deserve.

Tech­niques for improv­ing the fonts we have to work with on the web have been around for some time. There are always the tech­niques of image replace­ment and sIFR to improve text ren­der­ing on the web but these tech­niques have relied on trick­ery to get the job done and while inno­v­a­tive they are not per­ma­nent solu­tions. One of the com­pa­nies lead­ing the way for better typog­ra­phy on the web is Microsoft. They devel­oped the stan­dard for embed­ding fonts in web­sites some time ago and it unfor­tu­nately hasn’t taken off. Safari has upped the game and added sup­port for embed­ded fonts too, with a slight dif­fer­ence from Microsoft (I’ll talk about that later). Mozilla has been push­ing type for­ward in a dif­fer­ent way with the latest 3.0 ver­sion having sup­port for lig­a­tures and kern­ing in cer­tain types of fonts.

The Hang-ups

As much as the new stuff being devel­oped excites us, the web world has its unique set of prob­lems when it comes to evo­lu­tion. In print work, advances in print­ing presses and layout pro­grams could instantly be seen in work that was dis­trib­uted to the masses. Web design relies on each indi­vid­ual user to have a com­puter, mon­i­tor, browser, and most impor­tantly the fonts that are all suit­able to your work. This means even though new browsers make great things pos­si­ble, it is irre­spon­si­ble to build sites that can’t been seen by some people.

One of the major issues with embed­ding fonts is licens­ing issues. What’s to stop people from includ­ing a font file in the site that just about anyone could down­load and then use? Microsoft with their Embed­ded Open­Type stan­dard has devel­oped a system that incor­po­rates DRM for the embed­ded font. Fonts on your system hold an extra piece of infor­ma­tion in them that tells the com­puter if they can be used in a pro­grams inter­face for text ren­der­ing. Microsoft’s tool reads this bit and makes a new font file out of a True­Type font and includes the license infor­ma­tion for account­abil­ity in the file. Safari’s imple­men­ta­tion is much dif­fer­ent in that it links to any True­Type font you want to embed. While this is great and opens up the amount of fonts avail­able by a wide margin, to avoid licens­ing issues you would have to stick to free and open source font faces.

Another prob­lem with embed­ded fonts is a lack of sup­port in browser imple­men­ta­tion. Safari and Inter­net Explorer are the only two browsers to imple­ment embed­ded type. Fire­fox and Opera are work­ing to imple­ment embed­ded type in the next ver­sion of their browsers. With those browsers at least a year away and browser upgrade cycles being quite slow we prob­a­bly wont see wide­spread use of embed­ded fonts for at least another 3 years.

You can follow the progress and drama behind embed­ded fonts on the web in a couple of places. Fontem​bed​ding.com is a web­site started by Microsoft that is trying to build sup­port for the Embed­d­a­ble Open­Type format. Web​fonts.info is a site that col­lects arti­cles and keeps track of embed­ded font sup­port in all the major browsers. The Open​Type.info blog is a also a great resource for the latest devel­op­ments regard­ing typog­ra­phy in browsers.

The Revolution Is Starting Anyway

Most of the exper­i­ments going on to bring good type online are still a ways off. But good design has never been born out of tech­nol­ogy. Design is always about solv­ing a prob­lem within bound­aries. Lots of folks are off to the races build­ing sites that do a great job of work­ing with the lim­ited tool box we already have in cre­ative ways. Of course, this is a huge inspi­ra­tion to guys like me. So I’d like to point out a few cur­rent heroes:

THE SEED CON­FER­ENCE SITE
The idea that we treat every web site like a brochure, a book, or a sheet of paper is a tough one to get over. The fact is, in spite of all out typo­graphic con­straints, there is great free­dom in design­ing for a canvas that can do lots of things noth­ing else can do. The good people at Coudal and Part­ners prove that with this beau­ti­ful site announc­ing the 2008 Seed Con­fer­ence. Their solu­tion is so obvi­ous it hits you over the head with bril­liance. They simply made a poster with all the con­fer­ence infor­ma­tion. Why have links and unnec­es­sary nav­i­ga­tion if you can get it all in one spot. And why worry about a “design look” when you can simply design the whole page with the infor­ma­tion. This site wins the award for making you forget you are on a web­site. www.​seed​con​fer​ence.com

QUIP­SOL­OGY
Not con­tent to let the web  devel­op­ers have all the fun, the east coast design com­mu­nity is lead­ing the way with inter­ac­tive design that is pur­pose­ful and beau­ti­ful. Under Con­sid­er­a­tion has been out in front with great blogs and a very fresh approach online for years. No where is their fear­less spirit more appar­ent than the inno­v­a­tive Quip­sol­ogy blog. Why write a ton when you know you just want to say “check out this cool thing right here” And that’s all this blog does. a few lines and a link. To match that inno­v­a­tive approach they built a blog like no other. www.​quip​sol​ogy.com

JON TAN­GER­INE
What hap­pens when a web designer with a love for type is giving unlim­ited time and com­plete cre­ative con­trol to work on a site? You get to see the edge of type refine­ment with cur­rent tech­nol­ogy. At first glace, you’ll see that the site is clean and well orga­nized. Look closer and you’ll start notic­ing little details like his logo which is actu­ally made of web text!the site is billed as a work in progress, so keep check­ing back to see what Jon will do next. www.​jon​tan​ger​ine.com

THE SHOW
Alright, here’s one more just for fun. This is actu­ally not a new design at all. I remem­ber seeing this a few years back when I was first get­ting into design­ing online. I was floored by the cre­ativ­ity, sim­plic­ity and audac­ity of this Coudal cre­ation. While most design firms were still trying to figure out what their loader ani­ma­tion should look like, these guys were chang­ing all the rules. If web design were rock and roll, this site would be Smells Like Teen Spirit. Here, Coudal proves big type looks cheesy, really big type looks awe­some. www.​theshowlive.com

Andrews Distributing turns to Marblehead for help retooling their classic Steven Noble illustration into a complete identity system for print, advertising, and online display. The result is a fully developed brand ready for its public debut.

Two years ago, Andrews Dis­trib­ut­ing launched an edu­ca­tional cam­paign called Des­ti­na­tion Beer aimed at busi­nesses that serve and sell beer. The pro­gram showed busi­ness owners the wide vari­ety of pre­mium beer options avail­able and how offer­ing wider vari­ety made them pre­ferred loca­tions for their cus­tomers. Since it launched, the cam­paign has grown into sev­eral printed col­lat­eral pieces, a leather bound sales cat­a­log, and an online appli­ca­tion. Andrews suc­cess­fully raised aware­ness and sales of their pre­mium beers and gave restau­rants and retail­ers a new com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. This year, Andrews plans to aim the Des­ti­na­tion Beer pro­gram at the public with truck adver­tis­ing, store pro­mo­tions, and enhanced online features.

In the Beginning

The orig­i­nal Des­ti­na­tion Beer logo was a com­mis­sioned illus­tra­tion by world famous crafts­man Steven Noble. Noble’s enor­mous port­fo­lio of work is par­tic­u­larly well known in the beer world. He is respon­si­ble for the Sam Adams por­trait, the Orig­i­nal Coors water­fall, the Shiner Bock Ram, and sev­eral other beer icons. Noble gave Des­ti­na­tion Beer a clas­sic look with tra­di­tional, one-​color scratch board shad­ing over water­color. The final illus­tra­tion proof is pic­tured to the right.

Ready for Prime Time

With Des­ti­na­tion Beer set to grow into a full cam­paign across all media, Andrews asked Mar­ble­head to take Noble’s illus­tra­tion and turn it into a fully func­tion­ing brand. The cen­ter­piece on the new brand is an updated Des­ti­na­tion Beer logo. The new logo can be printed at tiny sizes, dis­played online, even embroi­dered, while retain­ing the beau­ti­ful detail and craft of the orig­i­nal Noble illus­tra­tion. We also devel­oped a brand stan­dards manual detail­ing color, type, logos, and pho­tog­ra­phy for Des­ti­na­tion Beer’s public image. We look for­ward to seeing the new logo in action as the cam­paign rolls out this year. The new logo and sam­ples from the stan­dards manual are pic­tured below.

Thanks again Andrews!

It’s always a plea­sure work­ing with the Andrews team. We’d like to thank them once again for their vision and sup­port through the project. I can’t say enough how impor­tant good clients are in prod­cuc­ing good work.

For the past 20 years, DEF has been at the heart of the success, controversy, and revival in the Deep Ellum neighborhood. They came to Marblehead looking for a way to represent their point of view in the growing online community discussion.

Deep Ellum’s Online Voice

The DEF site is built to meet three basics needs: First, it serves as an online brochure tout­ing the rich cul­tural his­tory of the Deep Ellum neigh­bor­hood for poten­tial build­ing owners and future ten­ants. Second, it is a cen­tral loca­tion for resources like area maps, com­mu­nity links, and useful city per­mits. Third, it takes the first step in get­ting the foun­da­tion involved with the online com­mu­nity by pub­licly releas­ing monthly meet­ing notes, pub­lish­ing a blog, and tying into the Deep Ellum Flickr feed.

Wordpress to the Rescue

Making all that func­tion­al­ity work seam­lessly in a site that has to be updated on a reg­u­lar basis is a tall order. Lucky, we have web wizard Blake bend­ing Word­press to his will. The fin­ished site acts like a reg­u­lar web page most of the time, and then turns into a blog when it needs to. The best part is, every sec­tion can be updated in a snap by folks that don’t know a line of code.

Functional Layouts Wrapped in an Industrial Design

Every site we build focuses on how to deliver con­tent quickly and clearly above all else. We like lay­outs clean enough to eat off of not because we are min­i­mal­ists, but because they work well online. How­ever, design should also under­stand and respect its mes­sage and audi­ence. Anyone who’s vis­ited Deep Ellum knows its any­thing but clean and tidy. 90+ years of patina build a won­der­ful aes­thetic char­ac­ter that should shine though. The fin­ished prod­uct is an effort to strike a bal­ance between clear text lay­outs and old build­ing textures.

In addi­tion to the brick tex­ture, the bottom of each page fea­tures a blog feed and a random selec­tion of Deep Ellum pho­tog­ra­phy from the com­mu­nity. We took an after­noon strolling around the neigh­bor­hood taking photos of the clas­sic signs hang­ing from the sides of sev­eral build­ings. The sign photos are used as accents at the bottom of each page. All these ele­ments work­ing together give the site an indus­trial look that pays trib­ute to the community.

About the Deep Ellum Foundation

The DEF is a non-​profit orga­ni­za­tion charged with devel­op­ing, pre­serv­ing, and enhanc­ing the com­mu­nity of Deep Ellum while nur­tur­ing the ongo­ing devel­op­ments, art, music, cul­ture, and com­mer­cial interests.

The Dallas Society of Visual Communications has a 50 year history filled with great work and service provided by creative professionals worldwide. When the time came for a new web site, the DSVC reached out to Marblehead for a fresh look.

DSVC Online History

In the early 90’s before the web, DSVC mem­bers started a monthly pub­li­ca­tion called Rough Mag­a­zine designed to announce upcom­ing events and keep mem­bers con­nected to other people in the club. In 1998 the DSVC took that con­nec­tion to a new level by launch­ing their first web site. The site pro­vided basic infor­ma­tion about the club, a list of upcom­ing speak­ers, and a clas­si­fied page for job list­ings. Since then, the site has gone through 4 major redesigns. Each new ver­sion has con­tributed design and tech­nol­ogy that reflects the period. We are pleased to be included in that his­tory with a 5th major redesign.

The New DSVC Site

From a design stand­point, the new DSVC site takes full advan­tage of larger view­ing areas and faster inter­net con­nec­tions. Large screens and high speed allow for big crisp images, bigger text sizes, and spa­cious lay­outs. The over­all struc­ture is built around a simple grid hold­ing inter­change­able copy and art­work. Great art­work and copy is some­thing this club pro­vides on a reg­u­lar basis. With this site, all that cre­ative work will have the oppor­tu­nity to shine.

On the tech­nol­ogy side, the site is built around a brand new ver­sion of Drupel to manage the ever-​changing con­tent. We are also big believ­ers in clean, standards-​based CSS coding so the site is built by the book, and built to last.

Bringing the Community Together

Every DSVC site has been about con­nect­ing the com­mu­nity. The newest ver­sion pushes those con­nec­tions fur­ther with the abil­ity to com­ment on announce­ments, and the addi­tion of RSS feeds for the job board. We are look­ing for­ward to improv­ing com­mu­nity aware­ness even more with blog and flickr group feeds in the future.

We’ve also added a whole new sec­tion to the site called the DSVC Museum. The first page features 100 Rough covers. Mem­bers are cur­rently help­ing us track down pieces to be labeled and added to the museum. As is grows, this area will archive and dis­play 50 years of award-​winning cre­ative work from the club.

Special Thanks

This was a big project and we couldn’t have done it with­out the effort from our colleagues Jenny Bean and Jordan LaMons. Jenny laid out sev­eral inte­rior pages, made a master style guild, and got all the art per­fect for coding. Jordan pro­vided a lot of tech­ni­cal sup­port hook­ing a full fea­tured site up to Drupel. We’d also like to thank The DSVC web board member, Michael Grif­fith. He plugged us into the project and guided our efforts the whole way.

About DSVC

DSVC is the largest inde­pen­dent cre­ative club in the coun­try. They offer mem­bers a way to con­nect to other pro­fes­sion­als through monthly meet­ings, an annual design show, par­ties, and their own pub­li­ca­tion; Rough. The orga­ni­za­tion also makes a big con­tri­bu­tion to cre­ative stu­dents by host­ing a national stu­dent design con­fer­ence loaded with great speak­ers and sev­eral schol­ar­ships. For cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als in the Dallas area, this club is the orga­ni­za­tion to be involved in.

Last year we designed a small book celebrating the 500X Gallery’s 30th anniversary. We are pleased to announce it was included in the 2008 Print Regional Design Annual. We were honored to work with such a great client and are thrilled at the recognition the book has received.

Great Client, Great Project
The folks at 500X were great sports on this project and gave us a lot of room to design the best book we could. We did our best to pay back their loy­alty with a book the whole shop was proud to have a hand in. This little six-​inch-​square book has made quite a name for itself. Ear­lier this year, The 500X Book was included in the 2008 DSVC Pro­fes­sional Show. It is also promi­nently fea­tured in our capa­bil­i­ties port­fo­lio. We’ve even had other clients men­tion that they’ve seen it on their friend’s coffee table. Now it joins 30 other pieces rep­re­sent­ing the best of Dallas design in Print.

About Print Mag­a­zine
Each year the Print Mag­a­zine releases it’s Regional Design Annual rec­og­niz­ing the most com­pelling graphic com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­duced that year from the four major regions of the United States. The 2008 edi­tion is now avail­able at most major books stores. Pick up a copy and check out all the great work from all over the country.

Shout Out to the Guys that Make it Happen
We’d like to thank the good people at Ussary Print­ing, Jayro Litho, and Clampitt Paper. This book relied on pre­ci­sion work and spe­cialty mate­ri­als. With­out their help, we never would have made it.

The ad campaign for the new season of Dexter pays tribute to a few iconic modern magazine cover designs. In the process, it proves the power of a solid brand’s recognition, even when all original written content has been removed.

Burned Into Your Mind

When a com­pletely dif­fer­ent idea can be laid over your exist­ing design style and every­one imme­di­ately thinks of your brand; you have archived super­star status. Think of how many times you drive by a mom-​and-​pop restau­rant and instantly know that the build­ing use to belong to a spe­cific fast-​food chain. The signs are all gone, but the frame work of the archi­tec­ture has devel­oped a per­ma­nent spot in your brain and you sub­con­sciously make the con­nec­tion. Its a fas­ci­nat­ing tes­ta­ment to the power of a solid iden­tity repeated with integrity over time.

The Art of a Good Knock-Off

I’m a little down on the obvi­ous knock off con­cept in gen­eral. 15 years later, the once mighty “Got Milk?” cam­paign is still being dis­graced. Dexter’s new cam­paign is a whole dif­fer­ent animal though. The dif­fer­ence is, the art direc­tion in these ads obvi­ously has a huge amount of respect for the brands they are bor­row­ing. To truly knock some­thing off prop­erly, you have to spend a lot of time learn­ing to appre­ci­ate it fully. It’s like a good band doing great cover song as opposed to a cheap Vanilla Ice rip-​off.

All About Dexter

It seems like there is a widen­ing divide in the tele­vi­sion world. At the bottom, soap opera style trash and shiny plas­tic game shows are having a con­test to see who can make people with a col­lege degree change the chan­nel fastest. But at the top, high end dramas keep one-​upping each other with writ­ing, art direc­tion, acting, and cin­e­matog­ra­phy that makes you wonder why you should ever go to the the­ater again. Right in the middle of this high end TV renais­sance is Dexter. America’s most beloved serial killing vig­i­lantly has raised the bar with fan­tas­tic acting, music, edit­ing, and design… all in one dark, twisted pack­age. It also has my favorite open­ing titles of all time.

How many of these magazines can you identify:

Thanks to Pajiba for the tip.

The first 50 years of the 20th Century had given Germany a pretty bad name in the international community. The visual identity for the 1972 Munich Olympic Games was seen as a way to once again show the best of German culture.

The offi­cial 72 Munich motto, “the Happy Games” showed they were ready to show the world more VW Beetle and less Gestapo. The iden­tity was an opus for designer Otl Aicher in its own right. In the con­text of its goal; to show a demo­c­ra­tic and opti­mistic Ger­many to the world, it rivals the Bejing Bird’s Nest for the finest exam­ple of what Olympic design can be. Aicher’s abil­ity to use con­cept, type, grid, and illus­tra­tion to convey, a coun­try that is modern, bight, and dis­tinctly German is remark­able. He also expands the con­cept of an Olympic iden­tity, push­ing colors, fonts and themes to ticket design, maps, lug­gage tags, and even cig­a­rette lighters. It’s all amaz­ing today, I can only imag­ine how it looked to fresh eyes in 1972.

Trag­i­cally, the remark­able expe­ri­ence Ger­many worked so hard to present was crushed by the kidnap and killing of 11 Israeli ath­letes by Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ists in the second week of the games. To this day, the men­tion of Munich alludes to the mas­sacre, not the peace and good will every­one was enjoy­ing for a week and a half.

Even in the face of a tragedy like this, 35 years later its won­der­ful to focus on the pos­i­tives of the 1972 games: The aspi­ra­tions of a great nation using design at its finest to make the world a better place. A fan­tas­tic col­lec­tion of work from the games can be seen (and pur­chased) at the 1972 Munich Olympics Online Museum. After about an hour of drool­ing, I grabs a few of my favorites and added them below.

Thanks to the design blog ISO50 for bring­ing this to my attention.

» See even more Otl Aicher work on Flickr

Last week, the owners of Steak & Ale and Bennigans unexpectedly announced that their restaurants would be shutting down for good. These pioneers in casual dining have had close ties to the Dallas design community for over 30 years.

For three decades, Steak & Ale and Bennigan’s have been a reli­able source of sub­ur­bia decor across the coun­try. These two strip mall land­marks made the ideas of fran­chised casual dining and themed con­cept restau­rants main­stream. It seems impos­si­ble to imag­ine now, but there was a time when every restau­rant was actu­ally built and run by people that rep­re­sented the cul­ture of the food and drinks being served. We affec­tion­ately refer to that time as “the good old days.”

Dallas Icons

Through their long reign as cham­pi­ons of con­ve­nient mid-​priced dining and faux cul­tural expe­ri­ences, these two restau­rants were tied in one way or another to the Dallas area. As they expanded, they pre­sented an inter­est­ing oppor­tu­nity to the local design com­mu­nity. Because they com­manded an empire of loca­tions, they were able to deliver some­thing few other restau­rants ever had: a big budget.

The Rise to Power

When the ball started rolling in the late 70s, the own­er­ship group wisely decided that if they were going to sell these restau­rants made from cookie cut­ters they needed to make the cook­ies look great. The logos look dated now, but up against main stream restau­rants of the time, they were extremely pol­ished and had an unmis­tak­able air of pro­fes­sion­al­ism. Even today, you can see they have a great sense of bal­ance and excel­lent craft in typog­ra­phy. After the parent com­pany for the restau­rants moved to the Dallas area, much of the addi­tional design work was done by The Richards Group and their design bou­tique RBMM.

It didn’t take long for the word to get out that man­u­fac­tur­ing restau­rants on a mass scale was a great way to make a ton of money, even if you didn’t know much about cook­ing or cul­ture. All you needed was a unique con­cept, and herds of wide-​eyed masses would come run­ning. All of these restau­rants hired their own high-​end design­ers and the arms race was on.

The Free Market Strikes Back

In the spirit of free market Dar­win­ism, Bennigan’s and Steak & Ale again turned to our local design com­mu­nity for a fresh iden­tity that would muscle them back on the gravy train. This time, Dallas design firm Den­nard and Lacy were asked to make these old thor­ough­breds race worthy again. The task was much tougher this time. In the 70’s simply look­ing pro­fes­sional made them a lone super­power. Now, every chain restau­rant con­cept had their own army of design­ers work­ing to make them look like the pret­ti­est girl at the ball. I think the updated iden­ti­ties look pretty good, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the chal­lenge they faced. The fact is, high-​end design for con­cept restau­rants had become a zero-​sum gain. It’s simply some­thing you have to do to stay even with every­one else. In that regard, the new iden­ti­ties put them back in the game.

The Denary and Lacy redesign for Ben­ni­gans is a noble effort, but with so much com­pe­ti­tion, updat­ing the exist­ing brand could only hope to achieve a level play­ing field with sim­i­lar resturants. Ultimately, it’s tough for a typ­i­cal cus­tomer to see much dif­fer­ence in the new look, so the over­all impres­sion of Ben­ni­gans is left unchanged.

The new iden­tity for Steak & Ale was much fresher. They aban­doned most of the design, color, and archi­tec­ture from the pre­vi­ous con­cept. Ordi­nar­ily, com­pletely chang­ing a brand is risky busi­ness. How­ever, Denard and Lacy wisely rec­og­nized that in the chain restau­rant game, newer is better. In fact, it would be easy to mis­take the new Steak & Ale as a com­pletely dif­fer­ent restau­rant. I really like the strat­egy behind the brand, and I love the design. This is one of the only restau­rant logos that is truly mem­o­rable and still classy. Unfor­tu­nately, this was just a con­cept store. Most Steak & Ale loca­tions stayed the same. This restu­rant had some many forces mounted against them, I’m not sure this design could have saved them. But it cer­tianly would have been a big plus in their column.

The End of An Era

Alas, times are tough, and Gen X is get­ting older. This gen­er­a­tion values authen­tic­ity above all other things when they make pur­chas­ing deci­sions. The idea of fake cul­ture worked great for the leisure loving baby boomers, but it doesn’t play so well now. So expan­sion, a bad econ­omy, and a dwin­dling cus­tomer base led to bank­ruptcy. Despite the Dallas design com­mu­ni­ties best efforts, these two mighty empires have taken their last trip to the salad bar.

Not long after we came on the Dallas design scene, a couple of local seasoned photographers named Lennart Karlsson and Mark Hoffman joined forces to form a new boutique studio catering to marketing departments and ad agencies. They came to us to help them get off on the right foot.

The Hoff­man Karls­son Studio needed a brand that legit­imized their young com­pany to people who cri­tique cre­ative work for a living. They both have a lot of expe­ri­ence, but any­time you intro­duce an unknown name, you have to sell the qual­ity. When we met with the guys, they empha­sized that the logo had to be min­i­mal and cool (Lennart is Swedish after all) and above all, they wanted some­thing black. It turns out, after a little per­sua­sion, they are also OK with orange:

This logo doesn’t break a ton of new ground in its con­cept. Its a modern twist on a clas­sic design solu­tion. Com­bin­ing the H and K work really well from the begin­ning so we stuck with it. We tried other things, but some­times, the answer comes quickly and the best thing you can do is leave it alone. After some custom type work on the names and a bit of work get­ting the lock-​up right, a clas­sic little mark was born. We knew it was good when Jay’s daugh­ter drew a copy of it while play­ing around on the dry erase board. I’m a big believer in simple design that leaves an impres­sion, and I’ve always though the open mind of a child is at least as valu­able as a pro­fes­sional research group. (espe­cially when the kid likes my stuff!)

Mark and Lennart are really happy with the logo. They returned the cre­ative favor by doing our new bio photos. (you can see them here, here, and here) As our com­pa­nies grow together, we are look­ing for­ward to future project collaboration.

In the spring, we were very pleased to learn that the Hoff­man Karls­son logo would be included in the 2008 DSVC Pro­fes­sional Show fea­tur­ing the best of design in our area. Of course when things go well, some of the credit should always go to clients who are will­ing to trust our cre­ative judg­ment and help us with the vision. Thanks guys.

Here’s a few sam­ples of Hoff­man Karls­son Studio’s recent work: