Illustrator: Brad Hamann

A former professor of mine, illustrator Brad Hamann, has created an advertisement and comic strip for DKNY's new fragrance Be Delicious. The pop art illustrations inspire the entire Be Delicious campiagn from the TV spots packaging to counter displays to a reusable tote featuring the Be Delicious model. Congratulations, Brad! Elements loves the art. To see the full ad, TV spot and to learn more, visit Nitrolicious's blog.



Images via Nitrolicious

Good News: Summer 2009 Edition

Elements friends, fans and followers: Our summer 2009 edition of Good News is now available here. Read on to learn more about current Elements events.

Mad Men Yourself

Mad Men Season 3 premieres Sunday, August 16 at 10pm. While you are excitably waiting, take a look at the inside thinking behind the creative for making the Season 3 poster.



And if that's not enough Mad Men marketing for you, check out the "Mad Men Yourself" site where will be able to create a Mad Men-ish styled avatar of yourself for your Facebook profile, iPhone, or screen background. This type of cool, cutting-edge use of social media is great.

AMC only needed to make an initial investment in graphic design, programming, and illustration services and in return, the Mad Men avatar icons (above) are picking up speed as it catches on and spreads across the net.

What a smart investment when you think of the reach AMC is receiving each day as more and more folks create these cool "Mad Men" avatars and post them onto Facebook. It's good branding. It's creating a buzz. It's in keeping with their image. It's creative and unique. I love it.

Fountain of Youth

Tweet-tastic!

Peep Twitter's new login page. Launched yesterday, it has an intuitive, approachable design.


I'm liking it! For more on this and news of future changes, visit Twitter's blog.

Things Marketing People Love

This blog is a hilarious mid-week pick-me-up. So true...they have us marketing folks pegged!

Some of my favorites:

• Ending emails with "thoughts?"
• Giving "ballpark estimates"
• "Reaching out to bloggers"
• "Low hanging fruit" and "soup to nuts"

And, by my own observation, excessive use of quotation marks?

Happy Wednesday!

Your Logo on the Moon?

Some say the moon is made of cheese.

Well - soon, that round piece of dairy in the sky could include your company's logo. A Utah-based advertising agency Moon Publicity has a patent pending for "shadow shaping" technology that would use rovers to shape moon dust into logos, domain names and more. Check out this 23 second video that describes the process.

Hurry - "lunar messaging" bidding is open now and starts at a mere $48,000+.

Jenni Friedman

Above is the talented and lovely Jenni Friedman. Jenni is an adjunct professor of art at the University of Hartford who, this weekend, had an open studio sale in her new beautiful studio in her backyard. I bought a stunning print for myself and another for a friend's birthday (photos to follow). I encourage you to check out her inspirational work here and let me know what you think!

NPR's New Website

Looks sweet! Take a peek:

Last Night @ The Blue Oar

Last night I was hanging out with some of my design peeps at the quaint, colorful, local joint in Haddam "The Blue Oar". It was a perfect July evening and the food, company and conversation were inspiring. Thanks to our hosts Peter Good and Pam Williams for putting on this casual get together and I hope we can squeeze in a few more before the long summer nights are over. Here are some pictures Pam and I snapped with my iPhone (sorry for the low tech quality).

Best. Film. Titles. Ever.

For those of you who follow our blog regularly, you will have picked up on by now our love of movies - and in particular - film title sequences. We're obsessed with them. This morning I was happy to discover a fairly comprehensive round-up of 30 of the best in one place. What's your favorite? (Image above from "To Kill a Mockingbird", one of my top 10 personal picks).

Tilt-Shift Trend

Here is a new trend I've started to see around a lot lately: tilt-shift miniature faking. Basically, it's a way to photograph while manipulating the images to create the illusion of a real-life scene in miniature. Follow this link to read the full explanation and to see 30 stunning examples. Very cool.

Inspiration Can Come from Anywhere

Last last night, I caught a show I never watch, "Real Sports with Byant Gumbell".

There was a story about a young girl diagnosed with a brain tumor who, over the course of receiving treatments, passed a photo in the hospital hallway of the Northwestern lacrosse team, a sport she had recently started playing before being diagnosed. Her father would say to Jacklyn as they passed the photo, "You're going to be like these girls someday."

This is the story about how one little girl helped raise a team to excellence - and how one inspired team helped to heal a little girl.

Since then, together with her loving father Denis Murphy, Jaclyn began the Friends of Jaclyn Foundation whose purpose is teaming children battling brain cancer with college sports program who "adopt" them.

Amazing, inspirational story I encourage you to watch.

Livin' the High Line

Just yesterday on a phone conference with one of our wonderful clients, we were reminded of a place we'd love to take a field trip to this summer (thanks, Rob!).

The High Line is an elevated train track in NYC circa 1930's. The tracks haven't seen a train since 1980, but in 1999 when the threat of demolition emerged, community-based group Friends of the High Line formed and worked in partnership to maintain the structure as an elevated public park.

Historic image of the High Line, facing north

Today the first section of the park is open to the public. Since opening last month, the park counts among its visitors the world's largest lemonade stand, a Target-sponsored festival, NY Times photographer Bill Cunningham, the High Line Renegade Cabaret, a number of butterflies and bees, and, in just its first week, 700,000+ visitors.

Photo courtesy of David Berkowitz

The section of the High Line now open to visitors runs from New York's Meatpacking District at Gansevoort St. to W. 20th St. in Chelsea. Designed in conjunction by landscape architecture firm James Corner Field Operations and architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, section two of the park is slated for completion in June 2010. For more information, visit TheHighLine.org or their blog.

Photo courtesy of David Berkowitz

Happy Birthday, Amy!

Today we celebrated Amy's birthday (7/19) with a delicious chocolate cake with white icing (made by Kerry) and, if our freezer hadn't let us down, we would have had vanilla Haagen Dazs to go with. The pink Victory Rose plant is a gift from Chelsea.

Best wishes to Amy as she celebrates this happy occasion on Sunday!

Play Me, I'm Yours

In Sydney, Australia there is a piano sitting in the middle of a quiet park just waiting for someone to discover it and begin to play:


And in a busy square in Sao Paulo, Brazil some passerby's stop to linger and listen:


Near the Millennium Bridge in London, a woman is serenaded on the open street: As this image proves, the New York Times article stated: "Best of all, Londoners have resoundingly disproved the stereotype that they are genetically incapable of spontaneous acts of public exuberance".

All these magical moments are part of an international art installation called "Play Me, I'm Yours". 30 decorated pianos are set out in public spaces recently in London for people to happen upon them. Some might just walk by, some may sit and play, some just listen. The point is - it engaged people. Touring internationally since 2008, ‘Play Me, I’m Yours’ is an artwork by artist Luke Jerram:

Touring the globe since March 2008, Jerram's artwork Play Me I'm Yours comes to London this summer. Located in parks, public squares, train stations, bus stops and even on ferries the pianos are there for anyone to play, decorate and claim ownership.

Compare web fonts online

Ever wonder how Georgia looked as a headline compared to body text online? How about the difference between Arial and Verdana when you have white text on a black background?

You can answer most of your online font questions at this website: http://www.typetester.org/. This online application lets you style three different configurations of font styles, sizes, text color, background color, and several other options. Compare and contrast to your heart's delight. Hint: make sure you scroll down the page to see how the fonts look in bold, all caps, etc.

One additional feature which is really nice is the font list. It shows you a list of web-safe fonts, as well as lists of common fonts for both the Mac and Windows operating systems.

Happy Birthday, Effiel Tower

La tour Eiffel fête ses 120 ans
by mairiedeparis

For those of you who know me, you know my love affair with all things French. You might also know that since the birth of my son (*gasp* five years ago), I have not been to visit Paris (something I did bi-annually beforehand). I'm always looking for any excuse to try to convince my husband that its worth packing up and traveling with two young kids.

Well, here's yet another one for the list: The Eiffel Tower celebrates its 120th birthday this year. If you can make a trip to Paris soon, you can join the celebration - including this free exhibit called "The Epic Story of the Effiel Tower" which runs through August 29th. Worth a trip, don't you agree?

Social Networking for Designers

With the world of social networking ever expanding, niche group sites are popping up all over the place. Design:Related is a social networking site aimed specifically at designers - we're thrilled!


Users can post portfolios, find inspiration, post articles, job search, read news and more. A blog component is also offered - redesign:related, a tumblr blog features before & after photos of design overhauls.

The interface is clean, easy to use and really lets the content sing. Six Revisions, a resource for designers and developers recently posted a list of social news sites of interest to designers. Check it out, and get connected.

Going Viral, Dunkin' Style

Ever been the unfortunate intern to make a coffee run, tasked with the difficult job of keeping diligent track of tall skinny lattes with no whip vs. vent iced chai tea lattes with soy? Have no fear - Dunkin' Donuts is eliminating the burden for their customers by providing an easy-to-use online order form that they're branding the "Dunkin' Run".

The coffee "runner" can send the online form to friends, inviting them to submit their order by a certain deadline. The runner then prints out the form or sends it to their mobile device, visits their local Dunkin' shop, hands the form over and returns with the correct coffee order when, as the site claims, "let the hero worship begin". There are also neat features like the ability to save a list of friends, store favorites drinks and keep track of past purchases.

This example follows up nicely to last week's post "It's Way Too Soon" on the best uses of social media. Dunkin' Donuts creatively utilizes Facebook, Twitter, the web and mobile applications to connect with their customer base, making it easier for the consumer to complete a purchase. A great, helpful and smart initiative, if you ask me.

[Via Direct Marketing News]

Become an Official Elements Fan

Attention Elements friends: we will be making the transition from Facebook group to Facebook fan page in the coming days.

We invite you to become a fan of our Elements fan page on Facebook for updates, photos and more. Hope to see you there!

It's Way Too Soon

The debate is on. It seems almost everybody has an opinion about how companies offering goods or services should use social media marketing. The problem is – given this is a relatively new phenomenon - the discussion is extremely premature.

Some say the best use is customer service, and I’m inclined to agree.

Others claim it’s about creating an open and honest dialog with customers (existing and potential), and they’re right.

There’s a camp that insists learning how people perceive a brand is the height of social media achievement. That camp is definitely onto something.

Finally – and perhaps most controversially – there are proponents of good old-fashioned promotional activities, and no surprise, I also believe they’re correct.

Although it may seem like my only point is that I’m a very agreeable guy, it’s actually this: there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to social media marketing and it’s way too soon for any definitive pronouncements of what works best. Where I become a lot less agreeable is with an insistence that any one goal is flat out wrong.

There are – of course – mistakes to be made, but as computer giant Dell has so thoroughly proved, there’s plenty of room for do-overs if you don’t nail it the first time.

When clients seek our advice as to their best social media strategy, we start the discussion with absolutely everything on the table. Anything less might lead to opportunities lost.

Twitter bandwagon image by Matt Hamm.