KA+A will be presenting at the 2011 Web Camp, presented by Webtrends & Bitwise Solutions and hosted at Lucas Oil Stadium on January 27, 2011.
If you are responsible for your company’s marketing strategy and/or online marketing presence, you know how hard it can be to keep up with the ever-changing online landscape. At Web Camp, you’ll be exposed to relevant and targeted topics for today’s marketing executives, online marketing managers, technology executives, business owners, or anyone else responsible for their company’s web assets. Industry experts (such as @douglaskarr@kristianindy@thefronk@chris_bross@Webtrends@Cantaloupe_TV) will expose you to unique tools, tips, and techniques, that will ensure you’re…
There are a number of different ingredients required to make a successful logo. Simplicity and a strong color palette are two of the key elements that go contribute to what every logo’s end goal should be: instant recognition. The aim of UK designer Graham Smith’s ongoing study on brand and logo simplification is to see which of the world’s most popular brand marks are still recognizable after being ‘unevolved’ – recreated using only circles.
What he has found is that the more unique the positioning of elements, and the simpler the logo is, the more recognizable it will be. However, I think there is another factor that has an effect on recognition. It isn’t…
Last Thursday night, KA+A co-hosted a launch party celebrating TinderBox, a company already enjoying some early success. Guests included the who’s who of Indy’s startup and tech community, investors, clients, families and friends. If you weren’t able to make it out to Broad Ripple to help celebrate, don’t worry. I’ve recapped the entire experience for you right here!
WHO TinderBox is a technology startup company that developed an extremely useful web-based application, that makes it easy to write, manage, track, and send business proposals electronically. For the past year, TinderBox has quickly been building this concept and already boasts an impressive array of investors, clients, and results.
WHEN Fresh from Chicago, where TinderBox launched at midVentures…
Every year, as we arrive in Austin, we usually head immediately to our favorite spot, The Boiling Pot, for some spicy crawfish and Shiner Bock. And every year, our guest list continues to grow. We didn’t have any trouble finding Hoosiers in Austin this year as we were pleased to have over 40 of our friends join us to kick off what ended up being a very memorable and engaging week. With everyone’s hands and eyes cemented to their iPhones for the remainder of the conference, the menu at The Boiling Pot seemed the appropriate choice to start it off, forcing us to put down our phones for some real socializing and interaction.
The gang over at SmallerIndiana, have posted all of the video content from the Bigger Ideas Conference. If you missed the event, head on over here, to catch-up on what you missed out on.
The last several weeks here at Kristian Andersen + Associates have been a very busy time indeed. Last week, as we wrapped up our work for ExactTarget’s Connections User Conference, we decided to treat ourselves to a new office toy – a Nintendo Wii and a copy of Rock Band 2. Perfect for unwinding after a hard day’s work, or simply to make complete fools of ourselves when the mood takes us.
I’d already been playing Rock Band for a couple of months, the guitar being my instrument of choice. I’ve managed to work my way up to playing on Hard level, and even on Expert on a few of the more simple songs. Late Saturday night I…
A couple of weeks ago I was scanning my way through several hundred missed Tweets when I stumbled across this link to a 1920s Coca-Cola Logo Wall Painting guidelines document. It fascinated me to think that even back then, so much time and effort had gone into standardizing the drawing of the Coca-Cola logo, and other details such as brand color consistency. From the four pages on display it was clear that the basic structure of a brand guidelines document hasn’t changed all that much in the 80 years since this one was put together, and it reminded me of parts of the brand guidelines (graphic standards) documents we offer at KA+A as a key part of our…
Recently we were informed by a client, with whom we had been working for several months, that they were moving their account to a design shop, located in a very large city on the east coast. It wasn’t ugly or contentious, there were no angry words, or overt slights – it was all quite civilized. But that didn’t temper the sting of rejection. This particular relationship was, by our standards, extremely short-lived. Of course, we’ve had client relationships die slow deaths of attrition. It’s a fundamental law that in this profession, client/agency relationships will come and go… and oftentimes come back again. But this experience was something all together different. The terminus of a less than ideal working relationship typically…
What is a logo? Most people will tell you in simple terms that it is a mark of identity consisting of a symbol set alongside a company name. But logos can be much more than that, or much less depending on how you look at it.
The word logo is an abbreviation of logotype and is derived from the Ancient Greek word logos, meaning simply “word.” A logotype – a logo whose design is based on typographic elements (e.g. words or letters, numbers, punctuation, etc.) – can often be a much more effective identity solution than a traditional symbol-based logo, particularly when the aim is to build name recognition. Some of the most successful logos of all time have been purely typographic: Kellogg’s, FedEx, Google…
It’s a term that, for me, conjures up feelings of nausea and disgust as much as “root canal” and “Microsoft PowerPoint.” It is a practice wrought with numerous flaws and ethical dilemmas, its concept undermining the core principles of brand design, the very industry in which it operates. For small start-ups with limited funds, design crowdsourcing may be a perfectly affordable and even suitable solution to their design needs, but for established companies hoping to grow their brand, it is wholly inappropriate, and an ill-considered solution such as this, could be detrimental to their brand in the long run.
Crowdsourcing is “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it
