By Michelle Peck

It’s that time of year, when we all spend our free time thinking about what gifts to buy, decorating the house with festive lights, planning parties, and singing along to a favorite Christmas carol. The holidays bring love, joy, and excitement year after year and sparks the inner designer in all of us. Design and art direction are all about providing a strategic look and feel to tell a story which is much like the well-planned gift giving and ornate ambiance of the holidays. So follow Santa’s lead to designing the perfect holiday this season with a few simple guidelines.

Think About Your Audience

Before hitting the shopping malls to purchase all the gifts on your list, you need to sit and spend time thinking about your audience and developing a strategy. Think about what each person wants, what their interests are, and how they like to spend their time. It’s important to understand how to speak to your audience, whether it’s finding the perfect gift, or promoting your brand.

Spark Emotion

By relating to your audience, you’ll be able to create a personal connection through your gift giving. You give gifts to people you care about and the right choice will evoke an emotional response in your recipient. Good art direction is all about finding this emotion and tapping into it. Good gifts should do the same thing.

Tell a Story

Christmas carols don’t only provide a festive tune, they tell a story and invite everyone to sing along. They make you feel joyous and bring out the holiday spirit. Creating a voice to convey a story is crucial in marketing a product or service. Conceptual writing makes you feel something beyond learning the facts. A catchy tune doesn’t only tell you what the Christmas story is all about, but you also feel the love and giving the season captures.

Choose a Color Scheme

Yes, it’s true everyone thinks about red and green as the traditional holiday color palette, but bringing true design into your holiday requires so much more. It’s about creating the ideal look for bringing holiday cheer into your home. Define what colors fit your personality and give the vibe your going for. Do you want your home to feel fun, formal, unique or traditional when the family arrives? A color scheme can make a huge impact on the tone of your design and create the appropriate mood.

Establish Your Brand

Ever wonder why the holidays are filled with snowflakes, santa hats, presents, and decorated trees? Visuals are a key element to good design. They are used to support the branding and concept by providing a consistent look throughout all components of a campaign. Visual cues create a culture that is quick to understand in any language. Ornaments and candy canes represent the holidays even without any mention of Christmas. They are ownable elements that can only be used when speaking about your brand.

Check Your Work

Santa knows the value of making a list and checking it twice. The last step for any designer is to proof, test, and share your work with others. The critiques and feedback you receive will only make you a better designer. So, be sure to check those holiday cards before sending them out and have a family member taste your favorite dish before placing it on the table.

In the spirit of the holidays, everyone can be a designer. Know your audience to find the perfect gift, create bliss with a well-told story, and incorporate the right visual elements into your home. You’ll be sure to have a very happy holiday season.

By Nicole Fletcher
Big news in the Social Media world yesterday when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of an interface redesign. This makeover got a spot front and center on 60 Minutes last night with Leslie Stahl…so why is it such a big deal? Good question.

I assumed there must be some changes with privacy or something earth shattering with all the media hype, but in fact, this really is a design change more than anything. The new features are intended to act as a digital ice breaker, if you will, or a virtual sum up of a bar chat with a stranger. In a nut shell, whereas a lot of your personal information used to be hidden behind the “Info” tab, your profile now provides most things people would learn about you in a casual bar conversation including where you live, where you’re from, what you do for a living, whether your single or in a relationship, etc. Further, the 5 most recently tagged photos of you will also be displayed front and center…so be sure to de tag any unflattering shots. You can of course, Mark’s no dummy, control who sees your photos, as has always been the case, and no one who is not already allowed to view them will be granted access. Finally, your friends can now be organized into groups, ie friends, family, co-workers etc, for easy viewing and organization.

I went ahead and watched clips (part 1 and part 2) from the 60 minutes piece and shockingly, the redesign was a minor fraction of the focus. Stahl elaborated much more on Mark himself, the history of facebook, the future of the company, the movie The Social Network and a lovely cameo from the attractive but still bitter Winklevoss twins.

Long story short, don’t be afraid of this new redesign (check out the image below). To avoid frightening users, you can choose to opt in gradually but  everyone should have the new design by January of 2011. No real changes have been made – they’re just trying to make the interface more user friendly and organized in hopes to refine search and sharing as, at this rate, Mark might very well supersede Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page as the defining web superstar of the 2000s.

Check out the Facebook Blog Post for details and the official introduction.

Okay folks…we’re going to play a game today. Which logo did the client like? AND… Which logo did we talk the client into picking? We all have an opinion and these are just the black and white versions we design prior to picking a color palette. Once our client chooses a direction, we THEN decide on colors. In any case, check these out and let us know what you think. You can comment by just giving the number next to the logo. Again… what did the client like? what did JTCG force them into? … and which is YOUR favorite (if any)? Please say you like at least ONE of them!

Okay…here goes:

If you have not heard already, MDC Partners Agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky is lending a hand to the Carrot industry to launch a $25 million campaign to position baby carrots in “sleek, junk food packaging” in order to boost sales and interests in healthy snacking in the U.S.

Though fighting the obesity epidemic that is plaguing the United States’ youth is a genuine enough underlying goal in this whole effort, I’m not sure it’s taking the most direct route. I mean come on, what about the fact that carrots are also an excellent source of beta-carotene, the key ingredient not only in it’s nutritional value and orange color, but also one of the substances most easily converted to vitamin A, raising the effectiveness of the light-sensitive area of the retina and improving eye sight….Zzzzzzz

Here, a recent TV spot was released by the Agency that depicts a gorgeous female model, cradling the beta-carotene filled sticks making them sexy, futuristic and attractive. Let us know how you’re feeling about the carrot ads, because I for one am very intrigued. If CP+B pulls this one off they’ll have conquered the same challenge Goodby, Silverstein & Partners did with their “Got Milk” campaign.