Well, its that time of year again where you’ll walk around town and from time to time feel as though you’ve been transported onto a bad 70’s porn set. Yes, its Movember!

Movember (the month formerly known as November) is an annual charity event held during November with proceeds supporting mens health issues -  Prostate Cancer and Depression.

To show your support, donate or get involved click the badge below:

This list was compiled by Branding Strategy Insider and quite succinctly spells out the top 12 causes likely to result in bad brand advertising:

1. Design by committee (number 1 by a long way)
2. Opinionated reviewers and approvers who don’t understand marketing
3. Writing ads (or designing brands) that appeal to you (or the client) rather than the target consumer
4. Using flowery language that sounds good but that means nothing.  (This is a common ailment of neophyte copywriters.  Substance is good.  Using an economy of words is good.  Simple, persuasive copy is good.  Fluff and filler are bad.)
5. Squeezing as many features and benefits into the ad as possible (unsophisticated advertising clients often request this)
6. Revising an emotional or metaphorical ad to make it more literal (another common ailment of unsophisticated advertising clients)
7. Focusing on reach versus frequency.
8. Assuming that business-to-business advertising is significantly different from consumer advertising (“It needs to be factual and informative, not emotional.”).  Don’t forget, business decision-makers are people too.  And people are ruled as much by their hearts as by their heads.  Harding’s 1996 study of buyers in ten corporations demonstrated that corporate buyers overwhelmingly rely on personal and emotional reasons over rational ones in their purchase choice.
9.  Jingles.  Unless they are very, very good (and most are not very, very good), they will distract from the brand message.  
10. Celebrity endorsements tend not to be believable
11. Making claims that your brand can’t support
12. And, while this may not result in bad advertising, for consistency’s sake, the following is not a good idea: A new marketing manager, feeling the need to “make his or her mark” on the brand, hires a new advertising agency and creates a totally new advertising campaign (whether the old campaign was working or not)
     

Branding Strategy Insider

Stop writing about it and show us the bloody thing.

It never ceases to amaze me when reading a lengthy, carefully worded press release, news article or blog about a new corporate identity or rebranding - whether it be for good or bad - that nowhere on the page is it actually shown.

Sorry - I lie - if there is no sample of the design, I won’t even bother reading the article. I would thought it a no-brainer that if you showed your readers what you’re talking about it will:

1. add some interest to the article; and 

2. make it easier to understand what you’re writing about.

If I remember correctly there’s a phrase that goes something like this - “a picture paints a thousand words” - hmmm I think there’s a message in there.

To those miscreants I’m talking about - here’s a heads up - when a organisation launches a new identity it is because they usually want it to be SEEN - it is their VISUAL identifier.

It also goes without saying that if you are targeting graphic designers and other visual creatives - they will much prefer to SEE what it is that’s being written about.

And I don’t always want to follow a link to another website - if a link is provided that is.

Below are some examples of news items sent to me that fail the acid test - they may be somewhat obscure publications, but someone thinks they may be off interest enough to highlight them for design  professionals.

I will shame more as I come across them - actually I won’t - a quick look thru my RSS feeds found way too many to list, so here, here and here are just a few to get the point across.

I’ve never been a fan of heavy metal “music” - but a do like those that appreciate the value and impact a strong brand can deliver.

In that respect - I am now a bona fide, head-banging Metallica fan.

In a somewhat symbiotic relationship - Metallica partnered with Turner Duckworth, one of the highest profile brand agencies in the world (think Coca Cola, Virgin Atlantic, Motorola, Amazon.com), to update the group’s brand prior to the launch of their latest album.

Some may call it the ultimate sellout - but if you think about it - it’s not by a long shot.

Heavy metal is a brand like any other product - and branding is about belonging or identifying with a particular cause, product or idea - in this case think loud riffs, black shirts, long hair, satanic symbolism, air guitar etc, etc. People (fans) create brands through the association of whatever they are attracted to, we all want to be part of a club whether it’s Nike, BMW, Harley Davidson, Apple or Metallica.

Brands are created through an emotional response to what is out in the marketplace - all that companies can do, or in this case heavy metal bands, is try to control the message or influence the qualities they want to project and build on the brand equity they have established.

What Metallica has done (like any other business) is recognize the need to formerly standardized their brand so that the underlying message doesn’t get confused or diluted.

I have heavily paraphrased Marty Neumeier’s book The Brand Gap in this post - and I highly recommend it to anybody thinking about brand design and strategy.

More about the Metallica brand here.

I’ve asked our web partners to look into it and fix the problems - trust me, the site looks great on an apple mac! Just when I thought everything was running smoothly I go ahead and finally invite everybody to view the website that’s only taken us about 3 years to finally get together and BANG, it all blows up!

Thanks for your feedback and for being the guinnea pigs for testing the site. Please check back very soon to see how good it was meant to look!

The Fremantle Prison is one of Western Australia’s premier heritage sites, centrally located in the heart of the port city of Fremantle. The Prison was built by convicts in the 1850s and was closed as a place of incarceration in 1991 after 136 years of continuous use. It was opened to the public in 1992 as a tourist site and in recognition of its heritage value.

Axiom Design Partners will be serving out a 2-year term with Fremantle Prison, charged with being the most suitably qualified design firm to develop an integrated wayfinding signage system and comprehensive interpretive graphics installations at this heritage listed site, in preparation for possible World Heritage listing in 2010.

The site is listed on the Australian Heritage Commission’s Register of the National Estate, on the Heritage Council of Western Australia’s Register of Heritage Places and in the Fremantle West End conservation area. Many of the buildings in the precinct are also listed with the National Trust of Australia (WA).

It’s an honour to be appointed to such a significant project and we’re looking forward to working closely with Luke and his team over the next two years.

Click here for more information on Fremantle Prison.

We came across this awesome life/productivity boosting post on Behance over a year ago and thought it time to share the goodness.

Behance just started collaborating with a group of fourteen established blogs, all very different, but all with a shared interest in helping people increase productivity (among other self-improvements). We call this collaboration “LifeRemix.” The Behance team sees this as a great opportunity to share our tips for productivity beyond the creative professional community.Collaborations between organizations with different backgrounds often result in great realizations. To kick off LifeRemix, our group of bloggers collected a list of our 100 best “tips to improve your life.” Leo Babauta, author of Zen Habits and member of LifeRemix, compiled the list.

While not specific to creative professionals, the list includes tips that are likely to boost overall effectiveness and the impact we are able to make with our ideas. For this reason, we re-post the list and encourage you to browse…

1. Find Inner Serenity by Making it Easier to Find Your Keys. For most people, getting control of clutter brings a greater sense of calm and decreased frustration.
2. Surround Yourself With Progress. When you complete a list of action steps, your instinct might be to throw the list away. After all, the work is completed! However, some creative professional teams take a different approach; they relish their progress. Some go so far as surrounding themselves with it.
3. Empty Your Inbox in 30 Seconds. Is your inbox filled with thousands and thousands of unread messages? Before you give up hope, there’s an instant way to clear your inbox of old emails in less than 30 seconds.
4. Instantly Build Self Confidence. These tips will get you riding high in no time.
5. Reduce Your Trash To Almost Zero. Follow the No Impact Man experiment to reduce our trash as close as we can to zero.
6. Feel like a million bucks for cheap. Feel healthier and more energized right away without spending a fortune.
7. End Laundry Chaos. More than 20 tips to help you keep your laundry chaos to a minimum.
8. Learn the Secrets of the Super-Organized. A few simple habits keep clutter and chaos at bay.
9. Check Email Once a Day … or Once a Week. Simple tips that will reduce interruption and increase your productivity.
10. Become an Early Riser. 10 benefits of rising early, and some practical tips on how to do it.
11. Learn Lessons from Google About Self-Image. How you think of yourself greatly affects how successful you can be. Google has got self-image down to a science.
12. Make a Good First Impression. Research shows that people decide what kind of relationship they want with you in the first ten minutes of a meeting, so making a good first impression really matters.
13. Know the Hype Behind Bottled Water. Have you ever stopped to think about just how incredibly odd it is to buy bottled water?
14. Leave Work at Work. Want more time for your family or personal life? Here’s how not to think about your job 24/7.
15. Create a Landing Strip to Become Organized. We come from work exhausted, often carrying our work bags, groceries, and the mail. A landing strip will help you avoid disorganization from the time you get home.
16. Understand Time to Increase Return on Investment. Time is your most valuable resource. Understanding these ideas will help you make optimal decisions.
17. Give Your Resume a Face Lift. Even if you can’t hire a fancy designer and are stuck with Microsoft Word, a few tweaks can turn your blasÈ rÈsumÈ into an elegant and functional showpiece.
18. Boost Your Energy Level. Feeling energetic is a key to happiness and to self-esteem, so take steps to keep your energy high.
19. Actually Execute Your To-Do List. Many productivity systems will tell you how to organize your tasks, but what happens if you don’t feel like doing them?
20. Keep Your Desk Clean and Tidy. Do you spend waste more and more time looking for lost items instead of being the brilliant creative person that you are? Here’s how to get your desk clean, clutter-free, and keep it that way for good.
21. Learn the Truth About Baby Carrots. Baby carrots not really young carrots! They are also less nutritious and less flavorful than regular carrots.
22. Try Quick and (Almost) Painless Ways to Kill Distractions. Are you spending more time dealing with emails, IMs, phone calls, and random stray files than actually working? Here are ten actions you can do right now to kill distractions and get back to work.
23. Reduce Your Carbon Emissions. The most important lifestyle changes you can make to reduce your carbon emissions are listed here.
24. Put the Action Method Into Practice. After a couple years of studying how creative people stay organized, we developed a simple and easily customized method for managing projects. A good portion of 2006 was spent putting the Action Method into practice.
25. Gently End Procrastination. Need an easy way to remind you when you should be working and when you should be playing? Try using teaming up Flextime with Growl. Here’s how.
26. Read Your RSS Feeds Faster and More Productively. Four simple tips for reducing the time you spend on reading feeds.
27. Use Catchphrases to Change the Way You Think. By keeping certain ideas active and accessible through review and repetition - whether it’s “Say yes, “Fake it until you feel it”, or “People succeed in groups” you can shape the way you think.
28. Photograph Your Mementos to Free Up Clutter. Taking digital photos of your mementos can get rid of clutter, free-up storage space, and provide you with a simple way to walk down memory lane.
29. Save Trees With Ease. Want to avoid all the paper towels, paper napkins and other tree-killing stuff there’s no need to use? Read here.
30. Organize Your Cluttered Desktop and Regain Your Sanity. Is your desktop littered with zillions of random files and folders often litter my desktop. Learn how 5 ordinary folders can keep your desktop immaculate.
31. Eat Slower. Why eating slower is better for your health, your sanity, your digestion, and more.
32. Maximize Your Lunch Hour. Your lunch hour should be the least “productive” moment in your day. If it lasts a mere 20 minutes-or just doesn’t exist anymore-here’s how to turn it around and make it joyful.
33. Increase Workplace Productivity by Not Being a Jerk. You get more flies with honey, as the saying goes. This is a brief outline for how to work and play well with your coworkers (and get more done).
34. Find Cheap Petrol Instantly. If soaring petrol prices are draining your wallet dry, here’s five ways to find cheap(er) gas anywhere.
35. Find Your Purpose. We’re all searching for our purpose. It seems tempting that having it appear by divine intervention would be great. Maybe not.
36. Make a GTD System for about $20. Putting together a functional GTD system for the price of a week’s worth of Starbucks.
37. Avoid costly DIY mistakes. You can end up costing yourself more in the long run if you don’t watch out for these mistakes.
38. Think About Whether You Can Afford NOT to Pursue Your Dreams. Pursuing dreams is crucial, even when it means taking a hit or entering financial uncertainty.
39. Plan for Success. Waiting for your ship to come in is a waste of time.
40. Improve Your Mind by Reading the Classics. How to use the wisdom of the classics to become a better writer, thinker, and speaker.
41. Break Habits of Highly Ineffective Emailing. A list of what not to do when emailing, avoiding these habits will take you a long way toward better, more productive email.
42. Make Your PDA Green. If you’re worried about e-waste and the toxins produced by burying and burning old cell phones and PDAs, you may want to try my green hipster’s pda.
43. Learn to Go From Solo to Successful Collaboration. Self-starters are often successful doing everything themselves. However, when forced to grow beyond the one gal/guy-show, many creative professionals are unable to take the leap from a solo success to a successful collaboration.
44. Create a Morning Routine. Developing a routine in the morning could lead to greater sanity and happiness, and achieving your goals.
45. Learn How to Survive a Road Trip. Road trips always begin on a high note, but by the end even Mother Teresa would be willing to shove her grandmother out of the car. Here are 9 tips to help keep you sane and happy on any road trip.
46. Share To Make Ideas Happen. The philosophy to “share ideas liberally” defies the age-old instinct to keep ideas secret. However, the creative person’s tendency to jump from idea-to-idea-to-idea causes most ideas to die in isolation. Creative professionals should take every opportunity to communicate new ideas broadly, seek feedback, and develop a sense of accountability.
47. Use Space Under Stairs for More Storage. Very cool under-stair storage where each step is a drawer.
48. Know What’s In Store If You Have a Toddler. New parents often wonder what’s in store for them once their kid is able to move around on their own. Here’s what you can expect.
49. Work in Multiple Positives. These hyper-productive activities will benefit you in multiple ways at once.
50. Use a Super Slim Wallet. It’s time to shrink down that backbreaking Constanza wallet. Here are 8 ways to radically slim down your wallet.
51. Advertise Action to Yourself. We live in a world of choices. When we buy, we have to make a choice between varieties, brands, and sizes. Similarly, when we work we have to decide what to focus on and how to use our time. While prioritization helps us focus, our minds still have the tendency to wander. We are most likely to focus on whatever catches our eye. Along the lines of “out of sight, out of mind” we learn that “right before our eyes, actions thrive.”
52. Gain Muscle in Minimal Time. How Tim Ferriss gained 34 pounds of muscle in 4 weeks.
53. Choose Living Over Sleeping Sometimes. Despite the importance of healthy sleep habits, there are times when it’s good to throw caution to the wind and invest in your life in other ways.
54. Make Reference Items Helpful. We spend too much time discussing, storing, and organizing notes. References are only valuable if you refer to them. Even with a well-organized system for managing references (either digital or paper), how often do we actually use them? How do we make reference items helpful?
55. Eat Sustainably. If you are interested in how to eat sustainably, read about it here.
56. Lose Weight Without Exercise. How to lose 20 lbs. of fat in 30 days with a sensible diet.
57. Find Calm & Sanity Through the Environment. If you’ve ever thought a more environmental life might also be a calmer, saner life, you’re right.
58. Learn About the Successfully Self-Employed. Is freelancing for suckers? Are you already an expert? This series explores the levels of the free-agent — and how to understand what each one means.
59. Learn GTD the Easy Way. An online primer of all the chapters of Getting Things Done.
60. Set Goals So You Actually Accomplish Them. Setting goals is hard. Following through is even harder. Using a framework that builds on your personal view of the world can make the process easier. This series helps outline how.
61. Reduce Gamer Clutter. If you are a gamer, these are a number of suggestions to help you keep your entertainment system under control and the gaming clutter to a minimum.
62. Stick to a Schedule of Regular Exercise. Exercising regularly boosts moodóright awayóand also makes it easier to sleep, keeps your weight down, and gives you energy.
63. Cut Back on Computer Cables. Follow these 8 simple steps to get rid of the birds’ nest of cables behind your computer.
64. Pay the Price to Be an Entrepreneur. The price of access can be steep, but once you’re flying down the road — it’s well worth it.
65. Single-task. Increase your productivity by learning not to multi-task.
66. Get Outside Your Comfort Zone. Comfort isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
67. Drop Ideas That Fail. Ideas are a commodity. Being able to execute them well is what creates success. Hanging on to an idea, even after it his proven to be ineffective is the downfall of many aspiring entrepreneurs.
68. Learn to Calculate Risk. Risk and reward go hand-in-hand. Knowing what to expect can help reduce risk and shape your reality.
69. Don’t Settle for Just One Path. Variety is the spice of life. So why do you have to be just one thing when you grow up?
70. Get Rid of Paper Clutter. A four-part series dedicated to reducing the paper clutter in your home.
71. Set Up Action Areas. Boxes need to be mailed, errands need to be run, cookies need to be eaten, orders need to be fulfilled, but by whom? Whoever has a chance! The Behance team got tired of limiting our action steps to just an area on paper - why not make “action areas” out of physical space?
72. Find Hidden Clutter. Ten places to start looking for hidden clutter in your home.
73. Get a Promotion. 20 tips that landed the writer an IT promotion — most could be used in any field.
74. Dispose of Old Electronics. The best ways to dispose of old electronics.
75. Increase Your Intelligence. A list of 5 simple activities that will boost your brain power.
76. Present Yourself. Creative achievements seldom happen in isolation. A big part of making ideas happen is controlling how you come across to others. Of course, the Creative’s tendency is to say, “who gives a crap what other people think.” While there is merit in never compromising oneself for the sake of another’s opinion, creative professionals need to make an effort to be understood. You need to present yourself effectively to engage others and get the support (and the business) you need to push ideas forward.
77. Follow George Orwell’s Rules for Effective Writing. Becoming a better writer will create better career opportunities and increase productivity.
78. Lay Your Energy Line. Creative teams juggle multiple projects at once. The constant streams of ideas lead to more ideas. As energy is spread across projects like peanut butter, prioritization is all but lost. Energy Lines are a simple way to prioritize and use design to guide creative energy.
79. Focus on Continuous Improvement. By mastering the optimization mentality you can become an expert in your chosen field.
80. Motivate Yourself. This post will teach you to recognize the primary motivation killers and how to beat them.
81. Become a More Light-hearted Parent. We all want a peaceful, happy atmosphere at home and you can’t nag and yell your way there.
82. Give Up Nagging. Itís no fun to nag, and itís no fun to be nagged. Give your relationship a lift by putting an end to the irritating nag cycle.
83. Learn to Sacrifice Temporary Pressure for Long-term Goals. All success requires sacrifice. Do you have the determination to endure temporary punishment to reach your dreams?
84. Learn the GTD Workflow. An excellent into to GTD for the novice, a great refresher for the experienced.
85. Use the Power of 10 Minutes. 10 Minutes can be even more productive amount of time than 50 minutes, if used properly.
86. Triple Your Workout Effectiveness. Do you exercise regularly but don’t get the results you want? Here are some simple but powerful ways to boost that workout.
87. Work 8 Hours Straight Without Hating Yourself. There is an art to taking breaks that can help you work longer, and more productively.
88. Learn Whether You’re Waking Up at the Wrong Time. Everyone’s internal clock can tell us when we should be working. Are you listening to it?
89. Reduce Wasted Plastic Cups and Bottles. If you want to toss fewer plastic cups and bottles in the trash, you may be interested this ultra-cool reusable cup and water bottle.
90. Avoid Entrepreneurial Burnout: Fill Your Tank. Many times entrepreneurs suffer from going to hard with their vision, without thinking about keeping the work pace sustainable.
91. Take Steps to Boost Your Happiness in the Next Hour. You can make yourself happier ñ and this doesnít have to be a long-term ambition. You can start right now.
92. Learn to Capture Ideas and How to Manage Diarrhea of the Brain. Sometimes our best ideas come at the worst possible times. These tips will help to make sure none of those precious ideas fall through the cracks.
93. Know the Signs That a Pink Slip is Coming. If you can answer yes to THREE or more of these questions, you may want to think about sprucing up your resume and dry-cleaning your best interview attire.
94. Try No TV. In an extreme experiment to reduce waste to near zero, No Impact Man turned turned off electricity, which means no TV. Read about how to entertain a little girl with no TV.
95. Accelerate Your Mortgage Payments to Save a Bundle. See how much money you can save by adding just a few extra dollars a month to the principal.
96. Use a Today List to Get Stuff Done. Helps you focus on what needs to be done today.
97. Use Money to Buy Happiness. Some of the best things in life arenít free, so spend money in ways to bring you more happiness bang for your buck.
98. Save the Lives of Animals With One Change. If you want to help save the lives of hundreds of thousands of animals just by not using plastic bags, perhaps the easiest environmental step, read here.
99. Get the Most Out of Your Rebates. Follow these tips and we can all fight the Man and wrench our hard-earned money back from those big, faceless corporations.
100. Eliminate All But the Absolute Essential Tasks. Is your to-do list overwhelming you? Here’s how to simplify it to the core tasks.

We’re proud to announce we’ve been invited to submit our work for Rockport’s best-selling, international publication - Letterhead and Logo Design 11. An annual series featuring the most innovative and exciting work in the field from well-known design leaders, new design firms, and cutting-edge artists.

This edition is being designed by renowned Washington-based firm - Design Army. To ensure the ongoing quality of the series they solicit only the very best design firms, so of course, we’re happy to oblige and send them some of our latest work.

Letterhead and Logo Design 11, a full-color, 240 page, hardcover book brimming with great design. The book is due for release in 2009.

We’re pretty proud and humbled just to be asked. We may be in the most isolated city on earth, but we’re getting noticed on an international scale. We likey.

Our poster developed to showcase the talent of Calibre Global’s young engineers at the 2008 Young Engineers National Summit has just been delivered.

We worked closely with the marketing team at Calibre to develop a graphic response that was a deliberate departure from the generally accepted style for corporate sponsors. The primary aim of this project was a branding exercise with a recruitment undertone. We focused on showcasing their young engineers achievement in winning the Global MERIT competition and highlighted Calibre as an employer that values its young engineers and is not afraid to be “a little bit different”.

The design maintains core brand elements but puts a youth oriented “twist” upon the established brand guidelines of Calibre Global.

Pleased to report that all systems are now go! We had a slight hiccup with the site IE. We changed our hosting, updated to Wordpress 2.6 and in the process corrupted our database file. No biggie? Just restore it from backup I hear you say….but ahhh, we then discovered our backup schedule had gone a little astray and was last backed up in June. Damn.

Big thanks to Greg and his team at PerthWeb, who rebuilt the database and restored all the posts, bar one, from Google’s cache files - now trust me, that’s a “One PowerBall and I’m outta here” kind of job.

Well, we’re back on track now and it’s safe to say, a more robust backup schedule is now in place.