wild thing

An important piece of design– particularly portfolio design– is communication and storytelling. It helps to see how hollywood executes storytelling, boil down those key elements, and translsate them to my own design work.

Last weekend I went to see "Where the Wild Things Are". It was an interesting movie– There wasn't much plot, but there were a lot of underlying issues and it had well-developed characters. I felt so attached to them. I liked it! If you enjoy feeding your imagination, you should watch it too. The trailer alone even tells a story.

You can tell that this is a story about a boy who longs for adventure. We see the ways that he fills this void in his life. The Wild Things are the ones who bring his imagination to life. There isn't much dialogue in this trailer, but it still communicates a strong message. It's stated best near the end: "inside all of us is a wild thing". Enjoy!

brand identity

Brands are huge. I used to fight it, but more and more I realize how attached we are to brands. We begin to see consistency in products, we come to expect certain things from certain brands. Having that sense of security makes us feel a little better, doesn't it? That's the point– we learn to trust our favorite brands. We feel personally abused if our brand "lets us down".

So what's in a good brand? Brand identity: they have values, a purpose, and a design language. They have consistency as their products or services are part of the same "family". They are recognizable.

I found this blog post on brand familiarity– the brand names have been replaced in the logos. Some of the replaced names are pretty funny! (HP especially made me smile)

http://www.design-logix.co.uk/blog/blog-entry/can_you_recognise_these_familiar_brands