2011/12 Creative Mornings with Ben Chestnut from CreativeMornings/Atlanta on Vimeo.
CEO of MailChimp, Ben Chestnut, talks about focusing on entropy in order to build to keep the money machine working.
Danny Trinh: Designer at Path
Danny Trinh, Designer at Path, Interviewed at TechCrunch
Danny Trinh has a unique path to getting to where he is, but he does a great job of representing designers in the SF tech startup community. In this video, he covers how he got where he is, the importance of surrounding yourself with great people and tells it in a very interesting way.
I love his response to Semil Shah’s question of what’s more important; functionality or aesthetics?
He says
Good design is as little design as possible…The most important thing is the product itself. What does it say to the user?…Simplifying as much as possible and editting.
It was only a matter of time
I don’t think anything has been discussed so much among so many venues of the design world. I remember back in October when I heard about the Pepsi re-branding in progress from the brilliant Maury Postal of Carrot Creative. I replied, hoping it was a joke. Obviously, now we all know that it was far from a joke. Personally, it’s grown on me slightly. It’s gone from the point of disgust and hatred to simply a near disinterest. However, it’s hard to find a design blog that hasn’t mentioned it. From the several posts on Armin Vit’s Brand New to even the Typophile Forums to the most recent episode of The Reflex Blue Show. It has even branched to outside the design community. It has become part of discussions with my family in which I don’t even bring it up. It has certainly become remarkable, but when just the word Pepsi become so iconic, at what level does the packaging weigh on the brand? I’d think that if Kleenex did a major re-branding, it probably wouldn’t be welcomed with open arms either. Does this make it the right move? Certainly, it produces a large amount of discussion about it. Therefore, at least it’s not boring, but does it make it a good thing?
Small Town Hero or a Fish Too Big For Its Own Pond?
In a small gathering of business owners and entrepreneurs that I was part of last week, I was especially intrigued in a part of our discussion. The owner of a company who understands the importance of professional design and branding, brought up that now that their newsletter looks professional, it no longer feels like they are a small town company. His fear is that his client-base of the small town is being turned away by the idea that the company is too big.
The small town customer comes to the small town company often because of the fact that they are a small town company. But what happens when the company doesn’t look like a small town company? Can it actually bad for a company’s brand to look professional? Even if the company provides a higher level of quality in service while remaining a small town company?
It seems to me that there are two ways to approach this conundrum. One way is to refocus the brand in a way to not necessarily pull back in quality, but shift the message providing a strong focus on the town and the people being affected. The other way would be to actually reach out and grow to a size that is accurately being represented.
But where did this correlation of size of a company and the level of professionalism in the design of a company’s materials come from? When did this happen? Did this actually come from larger company’s having the budget to pay a designer or a studio to create their materials rather than a neighbor’s daughter who has photoshop? I’m very interested in what your thoughts are.
Tweet Bomb: Redesign
The growing twitter-sensation Tweet Bomb was looking for a new page design with instructions on how it works. I gave them a new logo with it. Check it out and let me know what you think… Tweet Bomb. Their most recent victim was AJ Vaynerchuk owner of PleaseDressMe and little brother of Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibraryTV.
Follow me at @pstonier.