Blog: Random Thoughts
Posted Jun 19, 2011 by in Random Thoughts

Desiring Design: Why I Paid $6 For Two Little Chocolates

ramp creative design rocky road packaging design Drooga chocolate Desiring Design: Why I Paid $6 For Two Little Chocolates image

Rocky road clusters are clumps of marshmallows and nuts covered in chocolate. I don’t like rocky road at all, so you might be wondering why I bought a box, or even more crazily… why I would pay $6 for a box of two pieces of rocky road.

Easy. It’s the packaging. The confections are slightly over-packaged (there is too much paper waste for two chocolates), but I was still intrigued. Looking more like a gift box of soap or stationery set targeted to females who appreciate nice things (and gifts), I took the bait and picked it up.

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Posted Apr 19, 2011 by in Random Thoughts

Oliver is a Young One

ramp creative design Young Ones College Competition The One Show Oliver Lan New York City City Harvest award Oliver is a Young One image
City Harvest entry

Oliver Lan, a young designer in our studio, has won a merit for his ‘City of Plenty’ entry in the One Show College Competition, The Young Ones.

Oliver and his advertising classmates at Cal State Long Beach competed among various other student teams and individuals for the chance to win a One Show Pencil Awards and cash prizes. Their mission was to encourage people to support New York City’s poor and homeless. The client was City Harvest, and their main mission is to help the 1.5 million New Yorkers currently who live in poverty, and struggle to afford basic necessities like rent, medical costs and food for their families.
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Posted Feb 7, 2011 by in Random Thoughts, Typography

Excellent Typefaces for Legibility and Readability

ramp creative design typography type readability legibility characteristics Excellent Typefaces for Legibility and Readability image

A typefaces’ x-height, counter, ascender and descender metrics are shown here. 

Whenever we begin the production phase of annual report season (which is in January for us), I start surveying font faces for use in the books. The aim is to achieve typographic clarity and visual comfort for the reader for the large sets of copy and financials, so I look for a face with a good balance of both legibility and readability.

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Posted Mar 12, 2010 by in Random Thoughts

Judging the One Show This Week

ramp creative design The One Show New York City judge design competition Judging the One Show This Week image
Breakfast before One Show Judging: Day Two: (L to R: Joe Duffy Jr (Duffy & Partners), Thom Wolfe (VSA Partners) and Jason Herring (Ordinary Kids).

I’m back in New York again, this time judging the One Show Design Competition. The first day, yesterday, was difficult for me because I was going on three hours of sleep, but today was much better. Still, judging the One Show overall is no easy task.

Last year, when I served on the 2009 Graphis Annual Report show judging panel, we had only 400 entries to start with and went around for days to get it down to 50 annuals or so, and then we really narrowed them down to choose 30 (or less) winners. It was a grueling process, but a satisfying one.

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Posted Jan 27, 2010 by in Random Thoughts

Plugged in…and Turned On

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Apple TV 3.0 media menu

After two years of connecting an old iPod to the television for on-screen entertainment (I refuse to subscribe to cable), I finally gave in to purchasing an Apple TV.

I was hesitant at first, because I thought it was just a hybrid between a Mac Mini and a hard drive. That’s hardly the case. The Apple TV is a media center that allows you to access and watch your HD and standard-definition movie, TV show and music files (and does so beautifully), and provides online access to iTunes, YouTube, Flickr and more.

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