Blog | Print Magazine

Mar 1, 2018
11 min

4 Steps for Defining a Target Audience

Identifying your target audience is a key step in establishing a strong foothold in the marketplace. Branding expert Carolina Rogoll shares her vast knowledge on all-star branding in her online course, Brand Building 101: How to Build, Manage and Market a Brand.The following course excerpt dives into the process of defining a brand’s target audience. Image provided by Shutterstock 4 Steps for Targeting a Brand’s Audience by Carolina Rogoll, from Brand Building 101: How to Bui

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Jan 26, 2018
4 min

Little Dot: A Comic Book Pioneer of Today’s Avant-Garde Art Scene

HOW Design Live 2018 is happening in Boston. Will you be there? Register by Feb. 1 for the best price. Boss Baby, Captain Underpants, and Guillermo del Toro’s Trollhunters have the most immediate name recognition among six original animated series that DreamWorks and Netflix are producing this year. But also lined up is a show that’ll star three girls from 1950s-era Harvey Comics: Little Audrey, Little Lotta, and Little Dot. And of those three, the one to watch with the most

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Sep 19, 2016
2 min

Marketing the American Dream, Automotive Design Division

Those high-end design history books won’t tell you, but a great deal of brilliant and fascinating automotive design graphics were produced during the decades prior to Koenig and Krone’s “Think small.” Indeed, contrary to the Henry Ford “…as long as it’s black” myth, American cars as well as their promotion material have had a colorful history from their very beginnings. And this month, Taschen Books has helped repair this oversight by publishing a vividly illustrated—hey, it’

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Aug 20, 2015
4 min

Germany’s Golden Age of Book Cover Design

The 1920s were, by far, the most rip-roaring decade for graphic design. Art Deco was jazzing up the whole world. The folk in Russia turned Constructive, geometrically speaking. Western Europe dallied with the Surreal thing. And of course, Germany rocked the Bauhaus, but that’s not all it did: this country also had book jackets extremely well covered, as amply evidenced within the contents of The Book Cover in the Weimar Republic, just published. Sacco und Vanzetti. Berlin: Mo

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Jul 2, 2015
17 min

Elephant Love, Fireworks & Baby Boom Pop Culture Graphics

At the HOW Interactive Design Conference in San Francisco, you’ll take home a solid foundation in UX principles and interaction design, as well as actionable advice you can use to solve design problems as soon as you get back to work. Register today. Warren Dotz is a “pop culture archaeologist.” He’s written and co-authored over a dozen stunning and profusely illustrated books on the sort of commercial artifacts that “respectable” designers and design historians typically ign

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Apr 3, 2014
1 min

HOW Interactive Design Conference Is Back

The connections between design and technology are endless and ever-present. HOW Interactive Design Conference explores this complex relationship and offers designers practical tools and advice they can take back to the office and apply in the field. We’ve worked hard to strike the delicate balance of theory and practice in our programming, and this year’s multi-city event will deliver even more content that reflects this priority. The 2014 HOW Interactive Design Conference pr

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Sep 27, 2013
3 min

The Science, Business and Voodoo of Color in Marketing

Color persuades—this we know for sure. So studying color in marketing, the ultimate persuasion business, seems ripe for fascinating insights. Here’s a dive into some of the latest research on the topic. I can’t think of a longer-lasting, higher-stakes design decision than choosing your logo design and palette, so colors of major web brands seems a smart place to start this exploration. I love the site webcolourdata.com for how it cleanly abstracts the color palettes of the we

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Apr 26, 2013
4 min

Drunk Tank Pink: The Power of Color in Marketing

Drunk Tank Pink by Adam Alter Color sells, it persuades, it cajoles, but how exactly does it wield such power? In the book “Drunk Tank Pink” author and NYU professor Adam Alter peers into how seeming innocuous factors of daily life—colors, names, visual symbols—can drive consumer behavior in unimaginable ways. The book’s title stems from a 1979 psychiatric study in which 150 strapping young men were asked to stare at a card colored either blue or pink, then take a strength te

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Feb 21, 2013
1 min

When Van Heusen Made an Economical Collar

It may seem odd to most of you that shirt-fronts and collars were sold separately. Imagine, going to the Gap and paying extra for the detachable shirt collar. It wasn’t that collars were not sewn on shirts prior to this, they were. But this was a better way to clean and starch a collar for business or formal wear. Van Heusen, the famous shirt company, sold shirt-fronts and collars. They branded their collars and did their best to make certain every man in every household had

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Apr 23, 2012
3 min

Howdy 7Up!

I became interested in pop bottles (I grew up in the Chicago area where we all said “pop”) and related stuff when I was about 12 years old. I had gone inside an old garage that was attached to a neighborhood house that was being torn down and inside was a cache of un-returned pop bottles that must have dated from the 1940-50’s period. I took one of each type home (about 20 of ’em) and yes, still have them to this day. I really got off on all the different labels and colors of

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Oct 17, 2011
2 min

Tucking You In With 12 Pullman Fact Booklets 1929-30

Before branding and marketing had all the options afforded the advertiser today, there was a substantial period when companies spent their time and money on offering up little giveaway goodies to the public. Without the web, television or even radio, corporations often relied on print to spread the word about their “Made In America” efforts. Today it’s the small industries and independent firms that use this technique to reach their customers and clients. They’re the ones tha

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Sep 26, 2011
8 min

"Robin and The Earl of (George) Booth"

Three New Yorker cartoons by George Booth. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with George Booth on three advertising campaigns, and he was even kind enough to design one of our cards of “Happy Holidays” past. Working with him opened vistas for me and redefined what collaboration should be all about. I’m going to focus on a two spot campaign we did together for Pacific Bell because the circumstances honestly couldn’t have been better on all fronts. The advertising agency (Foot

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Aug 19, 2011
3 min

Be Where you Want to Sell

left: a $350 logotype from a contest site. right: a "real" logotype from VSA partners.pop quiz: explain the difference in quality and therefore price to potential clients. Day before yesterday, Stu made a really important comment about the changing ways we have to charge for our work: I think it’s important to address a few things here – first, the “value” of your work at a monetary level is heavily influenced by your location. A designer in California has a lot more overhead

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Apr 13, 2011
4 min

Do Brands Change Us, or Do We Change Them?

As a young boy I was in constant search for an identity, always looking to fill the shoes of my missing father with the spirit of a pro athlete or a rock/rap star. I wanted approval from my friends, from society, and most importantly, myself. I couldn’t get this monetarily, so I searched for anything that could deflate the emptiness I carried around. When I visit my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, I often think about my childhood, stereotypes, our role in society, and why we bec

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Apr 8, 2011
2 min

25 Years of The New York Book Show

I am embarrassed to admit that, until last week, I had never heard of the New York Book Show. I love books! and have worked in the book industry for nearly 15 years but, nope, never. If a friend of mine hadn’t invited me to the event I probably still wouldn’t know about it. Whether that speaks to the marketing efforts of the show’s sponsor, the Book Industry Guild of New York, or to my journalistic shortcomings, I’m not sure. But the fact that it has been around for 25 years

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Mar 28, 2011
1 min

Radiohead Lets Out a Universal Sigh

Radiohead must drive music executives bonkers. Their last album, “In Rainbows” was downloadable on the web for whatever the buyer wanted to pay. For their follow up, “The King of Limbs”, they have created a very limited printed newspaper that will be given away to customers purchasing the CD and vinyl versions. Called The Universal Sigh, the paper (a poetic homage to trees and the environment) features 12 pages of short stories, lyrics, and artwork from the likes of Robert Mc

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Mar 24, 2011
3 min

The Gordon Geckos of Grunge

This year marks the 20th anniversary of “grunge,” or as David Markey aptly named his documentary about Sonic Youth’s European tour, 1991: The Year Punk Broke. The film, which came out the following year, captured the post-punk subculture on the verge of mass appeal, a time when jocks and stoners alike rallied behind dissonant guitars, big-muff effects petals and shouted-out vocal lines. Just to set the scene: It was the summer of 1991, Sonic Youth were overseas promoting thei

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4 Steps for Defining a Target Audience

Little Dot: A Comic Book Pioneer of Today’s Avant-Garde Art Scene

Marketing the American Dream, Automotive Design Division

Germany’s Golden Age of Book Cover Design

Elephant Love, Fireworks & Baby Boom Pop Culture Graphics

HOW Interactive Design Conference Is Back

The Science, Business and Voodoo of Color in Marketing

Drunk Tank Pink: The Power of Color in Marketing

Image of the Day, April 16, 2013

My Tech Start-Up Idea

When Van Heusen Made an Economical Collar

Howdy 7Up!

Tucking You In With 12 Pullman Fact Booklets 1929-30

"Robin and The Earl of (George) Booth"

Be Where you Want to Sell

Do Brands Change Us, or Do We Change Them?

25 Years of The New York Book Show

Radiohead Lets Out a Universal Sigh

The Gordon Geckos of Grunge

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