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Launch was pleased to have been recognized for its work on behalf of long-time client Rent-A-Center.
The Rental Advertising Excellence (RAE) Awards, the rent-to-own industry’s longest held advertising competition honors the best radio, television, print and Internet advertising campaigns created over the past year. The awards show and annual conference was held July 19-22.
Launch won a Gold and a Bronze in the :30 Radio category and a Silver for :30 TV.
Congratulations also go to partner agency Razor for their awards won in support of Rent-A-Center.
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We’re ready to impart more wisdom from Launch Art Director Reuben Miller’s experience at the 2010 HOW Conference.
An interesting session, “Building a Business: If I Knew Then What I Know Now,” featured Brian Dougherty and Marcia Hoeck. Dougherty is a founding partner of Celery Design Collaborative, which has studios in both California and Paris. Marcia Hoeck is president of Hoeck Associates, Inc. and acts as a business coach. Her mantra is, “Create a business that will run without you.” These two entrepreneurs described their tried-and-true methods for starting a successful business and growing it — specifically, how to keep from getting sidetracked so you can focus on why you started the business in the first place.
Next they explained Dougherty’s “design backwards” approach. By starting from a design project’s ultimate destination and working backwards, designers are able to make more informed choices, allowing them to creatively avoid many roadblocks that might prevent solutions. The best way to begin brainstorming is to imagine the “best possible destiny for a design. Next, imagine the user’s experience with the design and envision scenarios that would make the experience particularly memorable or valuable.”
Reuben said the last session he attended featured “the most inspirational speaker [he'd] ever seen.” The session, “Rediscovering Play: Bringing Fun and Passion to Your Work. . .and Life,” was given by Kevin Carroll.
Carroll’s childhood was less than idyllic; his parents struggled with substance abuse problems, so he moved in with his his grandparents. One day, he found a red rubber ball on the playground, and from that point on, focused his life on the pursuit of fun and the “red rubber ball mentality.” Now he collects different and interesting balls from all around the world as a source of inspiration.
After 10 years in the air force, Carroll spent time with the Philadelphia 76ers and Nike before starting his own business, Kevin Carroll Katalyst/LLC. We don’t do Carroll’s story justice, so check it out after finishing our post.
One of Reuben’s takeaways from HOW was that, “It’s an incredible asset to be a great presenter; it can be the tipping point between whether an idea sells or not.”
Find more information on 2010 Conference sessions visit the HOW website.
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We like to stay on the cutting edge of . . . well . . . everything here at Launch, so we sent Art Director Reuben Miller to this year’s HOW Conference to learn everything he could about technology and design. From printing to design programs to sources of inspiration, Reuben absorbed it all and, fortunately for us, shared his knowledge.
The first session attended was “Inspiration: You Are What You Keep” by Gail Anderson—creative director of design at SpotCo. Her main message was that when we’re young, we gravitate toward certain things, and as we get older, we begin to identify what those things are and use them for inspiration. Those different sources of inspiration make individual designers unique.
Next up, “Print to Web Breakthrough,” was delivered by Mark O’Brien, president of Newfangled Web Developers. Reuben learned a few tricks to make websites more crawlable. For starters, keeping a 300 to 500 word digital newsletter that gets updated once a month is a good way to keep Google bots interested in your site. This will keep your domain high on the Google search list. O’Brien also told attendees of a new web service that allows designers to use non-website-compatible fonts. This service serves up fonts every time a page loads, so that designers can choose any font when creating a website. This allows people to take their favorite fonts online and differentiate their site from others’.
In “Good vs. Great Design”, speaker Cameron Moll, co-author of CSS Mastery and author of Mobile Web Design, pointed out that most people use the word “inspiration” incorrectly. What they really mean is “influence.” An influence is something that affects your ideas, whereas inspiration is the product of your creative thinking and work. Inspiration is something that is earned, while influences can be found anywhere. In the end, the best designs come from turning the things we love, our influences, into something that others can find value in. Moll stated that most of us are starters – we have tons of great ideas, but that’s where they end. Those ideas never reach fruition because most people aren’t finishers. An inhibitor to becoming a finisher is stress, but there is also good stress, which Moll termed “eustress.” Eustress comes from activities that push us in an enjoyable way, such as working out. Last, but not least, Moll touched on the “blur test” in relation to digital hierarchy. As taught in design school, when you look at a design and blur your eyes, you’ll be able to see what jumps out the most. With print, and especially digital, creating a hierarchy is the art of managing, not eliminating elements.
Reuben’s last seminar, “Creating Five-Alarm Concepts,” earned his coveted “bad ass” designation. Speaker Von Glitschka has all of his slides and notes available for download, so instead of a short Reuben recap, feel free to download it all for yourself.
We’ll get back to you soon with more wisdom from the speakers, but until then, please tell us your favorite takeaways from this year’s How Conference.
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In the ad industry, it’s not uncommon to email large PDF files to clients. These large files are bandwidth hogs, can take a long time to send, and are often never received. Job seekers may have similar problems when attempting to send digital copies of their book to prospective employers.
Saving a high-res PDF is pretty straightforward, but when you need to send a 1-gig, multi-page PDF file over email, it can be tricky to shrink it appreciably while maintaining legibility of the type and image clarity. To avoid these issues, here’s one tried and true method to use that’s Launch Agency recommended.
To demonstrate, we’ll use a 310MB Photoshop file entitled “Example.psd.” First, save your file as a PDF. Don’t save with layers, as they will make your file larger, and you probably don’t want anyone else editing your file anyway. Your “Save As” window should look something like this: 
Second, choose the correct PDF settings, because, as you know, “the settings you choose in the Save Adobe PDF dialog can override your current settings in the Save As dialog box.” See the dialog box pictured below. Make sure to select “Press Quality”—this settings produces a smaller final product than the “Smallest File Size” option. 
Third, convert your PDF to a PostScript. To do this, open your PDF in Adobe Acrobat. Then go to “File” > “Save As” and select “PostScript” from the drop-down menu. Use the default settings for saving your .ps file.
Now that you have a PostScript file, open Acrobat Distiller. A window will pop up with a blank box for dragging and dropping files. Before adding your PostScript, select the “smallest files size” option from the drop-down menu. Then you’re ready to go.
Your final file will be a PDF and will be smaller than Acrobat alone is capable of delivering, at least without getting into compression. 
As you can see, the final size for our 310MB file is 55KB. Not bad for a file that looks high-res.
Now that your file size is as small as possible, it’s time to change its settings. Acrobat makes it possible to customize the viewing experience of each recipient. With a few clicks of your mouse, you can ensure your file will look good even when you’re not in control.
To start, open your PDF file in Acrobat. Go to “File” > “Properties.” Select the Initial View tab. From this tab, you can customize the way your file will be viewed. We recommend setting the Navigation tab to “Page Only,” the Page layout tab to “Single Page Continuous,” and the Magnification to “Fit Page.” It’s also aesthetically pleasing to check the box next to “Center window on screen.” If you select “Open in Full Screen mode,” viewers will be warned of possible security risks upon opening the file. It’s not recommended to select “Resize window to initial page” unless all of your pages are the same size or smaller than the first page. 
And voila, you have a small, high-quality PDF file that’s ready to share. Now that you’ve read our guide for saving and adjusting PDF files, let us know if you find it useful or have similar tips to share.
For information on other commonly used file types, check out production manager Laura Carroll’s post from last year.
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Looking for an innovative way to quickly capture thoughts, sketch visual ideas, take notes during client meetings, and gain a little extra tech cred? Launch Agency art director Reuben Miller relies on his iPad and the Adobe Ideas app to do all that and more.
Adobe Ideas is a revolutionary app that allows users to capture thoughts and draw vector images on the fly. It also makes it far easier to create your own “handwriting” font, but whether or not you should make (or even use) a handwriting font is another matter entirely.
After creating an image in the app, like the robot to the left that Miller sketched, you can throw it into Illustrator to adjust your Bézier Curves, add some copy, or combine your new design with other work on your computer. You can even add a background image in Ideas and and create separate layers for drawings and photos.
Miller uses Adobe Ideas to aid him in keeping his notes organized, sketching out ideas, and making notes directly on designs during client meetings. Before a meeting, Reuben sends himself a PDF of his work. He opens the PDF on his iPad, takes a screen capture to quickly save it as a jpg (hit the “Home” and “On/off” buttons simultaneously), and then opens it in Adobe Ideas to mark-up as he pleases. This is not only faster than making edits on paper, it also saves trees.
Adobe Ideas is a free app that can be “purchased” from the iTunes store. Let’s just hope that Apple and Adobe make up soon so we can see more apps like this one.
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Here in ad agency-land, having an iPhone is de rigueur. Not only does its sleek design pair nicely with our preferred dress code (jeans, ironic t-shirts, sneakers), but it’s become an essential tool for everything from generating and capturing ideas to keeping in touch with clients and vendors.
With so many interesting-looking apps cluttering the iTunes store, we thought we’d let you in on a few of our favorites here at Launch—the iEssentials we simply couldn’t live without.
This month’s must-have is Evernote. Imagine a virtual scrapbook, filled with all your notes, snapshots and voice recordings. Now imagine that scrapbook is automatically synced up online, and easily searchable. Better yet, imagine being able to search for any text appearing in the photos you upload (e.g. the snapshot you took of that potential client’s business card). Now take all of that and bake it into a slick iPhone app, allowing you to read any note, or create new notes that will then be synced back to your computer. And while you’re at it, make it all free (there is a paid upgrade available, in case the included 40 MB of uploads per month isn’t enough).
Yep, that’s Evernote in a nutshell. As a copywriter, I use it to collect all my fleeting headline ideas, visual reference snapshots and incriminating photos of co-workers (you know who you are). And I’ll bet you’ll find it equally indispensable. Check it out at:
http://www.evernote.com/about/download
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Have you ever wondered what the difference is between an eps, jpg, gif or png file but were too afraid to ask? Well, here’s a quick reference guide to keep you from asking a “silly question.”
EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) This one is the standard for printing. An EPS is a vector file format created by geometrical figures such as lines, curves, points and shapes. This means the image can be enlarged without pixilation or reduced without losing detail.
JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) The opposite of EPS. A JPG is a raster file format created by pixels. The smaller and closer the pixels, the better the image. As you enlarge a raster image the pixels begin to separate and spread out. If you keep enlarging, you will eventually begin to see the individual pixels and your image will look grainy.
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) When you hear GIF think Web. A GIF is a bit-mapped format that supports up to 256 colors (8-bit) and is dreamy for pretty much all Web graphics except photographs. Why? Photographs need a broader range of colors so this is when a JPG comes in handy.
PNG (Portable Network Graphic) The stepsister of GIF you never hear about. It’s a bit-mapped file format that was basically developed as a nonproprietary alternative to a GIF.
That was easy as ABC. If you have any questions or print production needs, contact Launch Agency’s in-house guru, Laura Carroll.
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Coming up with a great new color palette for a design can often be tricky. Sometimes, designers get stuck in a color rut or need help figuring out what colors will go best with a visual. For some fresh contemporary color inspiration, there are a number of great color palette resources online. Here are a few favorites the Launch team turns to for amping up design work:
CSS Drive’s Image to Colors Palette Generator
This is a great little site where you can upload an image or point to a URL, and it will give you a color palette based on the image. There are many of these out there, but this one stands out because it provides a light, medium and dark palette, as well as a complete palette.
Kuler is a wonderful resource built right in to Creative Suite 4 software. It’s a great way to explore some new color themes, and the content is created by users worldwide. Browse by highest rated, newest, most popular and save your favorite color combos. To access this in Illustrator, simply go to the Select menu, click Extensions, click Kuler.
From Build Internet – Color Scheme Inspiration: Vintage Horror Movie Posters
Can’t omit this little gem … an exploration of vintage horror movie posters and their color palettes. It combines kitschy vintage design, movies and color. And while this blog post may not solve your design problems, it’s great to look through!
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For a couple days last month, Launch was short two Art Directors as Richard Wezensky and Reuben Miller expanded their horizons and got fired up about digital creativity at the annual HOW Conference in Austin, Texas.
Each year, the HOW Conference acts as a reminder of how rapidly interactive advertising is changing. Two years ago, Flash was the big ticket for most agency sites, but now its popularity is fading as strategy and content management become the new heroes. Like the revamped Modernista! and Crispin Porter + Bogusky beta-style sites, there’s been a breakdown of all things ornate and more focus on simplicity, substance and social media. To prepare for this evolution, Richard and Reuben went to two web-focused seminars: “Web Strategy That Works” and “Print to Web Breakthrough”; presented by Mark O’Brien, President of Newfangled.com.
Web strategy that works
In this seminar, O’Brien played up the value of making creative content and strategy, not cool design and visuals, the main focus when creating a great marketing website. If the purpose of a creative website is to “inspire and inform,” then it’s critical to strategize the site with content to bring people in, and develop a stronger point-of-difference from the competition. Along with valuable strategy info, Richard and Reuben were given tips on search engine writing and making the best use of platforms like blogs, newsletters and webinars. Reuben describes this type of search engine optimization strategy as “writing for Google.” The big takeaway—using a content strategy would get people to their site faster, easier and more frequently.
Print to web breakthrough
In the second seminar, O’Brien covered several principles and best practices of web design, and how to cut through the clutter with attention-grabbing work. To successfully shift from a print focus to more of a web focus, designers need to “give up control.” To illustrate the relationship of print versus web design, O’Brien used the analogy of music, where print represents a symphony and web design is jazz. “A symphony is crafted with complete control over all aspects of the piece – with very little flexibility. Jazz often starts with a baseline where other varying components are added more fluidly, giving each piece a different personality as it grows.” Bottom line, you need to be conscious of flexibility when creating for the web.
Tips to ensure search optimization and better viewership:
-Focus on content strategy.
-Write about your niche. People will find you most likely by content, not by name.
-Set up a sort of monthly/weekly/daily deadline for blogs, newsletters and webinars, and get more information on the site more often.
-“Give up control” and make a web plan with flexibility.
-Allow for content management, allow readers to contribute, and use tags.
-Stay informed with web updates and know a little bit about the medium.
-Remember that web developers are your allies. (Help them out by working in layers, providing template options, work on a grid and keep up the dialogue).
-Keep all you assets under your domain. Ex: http://www.yoursitename.com/blog
