I find it interesting the number of hoops one has to jump through in order to register something as simple as a blog. Some places even want to charge you money to register. Can registering a blog or website in an online directory really do that much good?
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Guatemala seems to be a hot topic ’round here, indeed.
The chances you’ve been to a camera store or had film developed lately are probably slim and with the discontinuation of Polaroid instant-print cameras and film, there are less mediums available for photography aside from digital. Fortunately in the world of fine art photography, film still thrives and is often the preferred medium.
In Antigua, Guatemala, most things photography and art related are considered a luxury, especially for children. In December a group of undergraduates and Alumni from Columbia College Chicago, including myself, will travel to Guatemala to work directly with CasaSito, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity. “CasaSito works to increase the educational opportunities in rural areas of Guatemala while supporting community infrastructure and adhering to high standards of human values, ethics and economic efficiency.”
During our week stay we will help provide children with the opportunity to learn about various types of photography and art. We will focus on making a camera obscuras and cyanotypes. Students will also have a hands on opportunity to create art using recycled materials. Our group will be working directly with students at Semilla de la Esperanza y Amor and children taking part in the art festival on December 20 in El Convento de Capuchinas. Students will be able to partake in workshops and enter their work in contests and exhibits.
Our team has been researching and brainstorming fund raising ideas to send nine volunteers with art and photography supplies. Currently we plan to volunteer for the United Center and Northwestern University. If you’d like to learn more about the organization, have a fund raising idea or wish to support our initiative, please contact me, Nathan, at nathan.f@mcguffincg.com
With a projects for a wide range of new clients currently on our minds, we’ve been dealing with a wide range of questions on subject of positioning a business for a (moving) target audience. As pointed out on the intro to our site, there are two poles in the positioning discussion:
1) SPECIALIZED: Focused, Efficient, Limited
2) DIVERSIFIED: Broad, Expansive, Universal
As designers/marketers we all cringe at the idea of directing our efforts so tightly in one case, and doing a lot but not saying anything in the other. Obviously most businesses strive to land somewhere between; attract the right clients without painting yourself into a corner. And rightly so. Given our attempts to market our own services, we can tell you that marketing a multifaceted service to any and all businesses anywhere in the world is a tall, if not, bewildering order.
So, where do you put down the chalk to gain a little focus and get started on your marketing efforts? How do you move forward with positioning a business that doesn’t want to commit to segmentation, but still needs to say something unique and expects results?
One approach is to figure out the core interest of the business (which is different than a core competency) and put all efforts into owning that interest. Products and services all hang from (or support, depending on your perspective) that core interest, therefore a new product or service will be a logical tangent. From a marketing perspective what would otherwise be something to force-fit into the neat and tidy existing product line up (or brand story) is now proof of how committed the business is to their core interest.
Another approach is to look at the client’s business in various time frames and take a position that is viable now, but allows for simple escape routes should the business change. Questions like “What new products can we reasonably expect in the next year, two years or five years?”, “What markets are you in now, and which will be easy for you to transition to in the coming years?” and “If this business model is really successful, what are the next steps in expansion?” By projecting what the business will look like in five years, the current positioning can be geared to make adaptation smoother (for the marketing department and the design/ad agency) and less confusing to clients/customers when it happens.
Besides, planned evolution is always an easier sell than revolution from the client perspective. Achieving evolution means things are going well for the most part. Revolution is usually far less friendly to those at the top.
According to EPIC, For every creative who has the desire to give to a cause, there’s a cause in need of creative.
EPIC, which stands for Engaging Philanthropy Inspiring Creatives, helps creative professionals and nonprofits join forces, making a bigger impact on the world than either could alone. Starting August 3 the next group of Art Directors, Designers, Photographers and Copywriters will gather once a week for 2 months to design various print and web materials for one of three nonprofit organizations.
Amongst the 3 rally teams, McGuffin Brendan Shanley will be participating on one as a designer.
Learn more about EPIC at www.iamepic.org
“Mocha Monday’s” at McDonald’s and free pastries on Tuesdays at Starbucks. The caffeine delivery vehicle has changed but the all out war for pep (or at lease the profits of delivering pep) is as hot as ever. And it feels very very familiar. Round 1 was something of a spectacle as the war for global domination was slugged out between Coca-Cola and Pepsi in tit-for-tat ad campaigns and celebrity head hunting. Outlandish products were developed (”Crystal Pepsi anyone?”), strategies calculated (”Okay, we’ll bring the classic Coke recipe back!”) and scores kept (Who can argue with a blind taste-test?).
How about some simple character types for each of the “new” players?
Starbucks: The self-obsessed, and somewhat snooty, little brother that thinks he knows everything. He got a pat on the back for doing well on a science exam and now thinks he’s destined to run Merk, GE, Monsanto and NASA simultaneously. His drive for attention, and approval, will be his undoing as he tries to con the neighbors into buying duplicate newspaper subscriptions using a false name. His only method of getting around the neighborhood is his iconic Harry Potter bike. It was quite awesome when got it, but now only a few well placed Transformers stickers can cool some of the mockery. He makes decent coin with his paper-route, but once he leaves his densely populated neighborhood for the surrounding rural areas his slow to sporadic delivery makes his paper far less appealing.
McDonald’s: Obviously the elder sister, and a slick operator with years of experience in handling the parents, meaning she usually gets her way. While Little Starbucky was basking in the glory of his recent report card and pleading his case to annex his older sister’s room, she was volunteering at a local hospital to pad her glowing college application to escape to a warm-weather university. As for travel, she’s pretty outgoing and can catch a ride with one of the neighborhood families she babysits for, or email one of her dozens of life-long friends. As for cash flow, her more diverse range of income sources (babysitting, mowing lawns, holiday retail) assures that she can earn money year round and anywhere she goes.
So, who wins in the end? It could be that witty little bastard that just moved in down the block who won’t shut up about the health benefits of Tea…
Move those mouses and point those cursors to your browser address bar. McGuffin Creative Group has launched its new website with a Fresh aesthetic. We still plan to update the home page graphic from time to time to keep it interesting. The work section offers more descriptive explanations for the projects as well as multiple views. Learn more about your favorite McGuffinite on the About page. See what we’re up to and keep in touch through our Connect page where you’ll find links to our twitter and facebook accounts.
What are you waiting for? http://www.mcguffincg.com/
Stay tuned! We’re working on a new website in combination with a fun summer promotion.
Thursday I had the opportunity to judge the Square One design competition for the second year in a row. It’s a competition that’s 50% “shoot-from-the-hip-and-see-what-you-can-do” and 50% “welcome-to-the-real-world.” This is a voluntary competition where design students meet in a computer lab at 8:00 am Sunday morning with zero prior knowledge of the subject matter or assignment. They are given a design brief, a list of items they are required to produce and a few pages of required text (and optional text) to be included. This year, unlike past competitions, photography was supplied giving students additional time to focus on their layouts.
Now for the fun part: they have 8 hours to develop their concept, design each required item (four in all) and then print and mount each item for judging. This year’s fictional client/product was a documentary featuring the ups and downs of amateur Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighters and their families requiring a poster, DVD + case, media kit and flyer.
What was produced had a high quality of finish to it. Quite a few of the poster concepts would be right at home at your local theater. They all looked the part, but the strategic target of expanding the viewership/interest in this movie beyond the 15-30 male audience already hooked on MMA was missed in quite a few, sparking some interesting discussion among the judges and faculty. Here are a few boiled down lessons from the afternoon that apply to anyone, at any age and in any profession.
The first, most obvious discussion, circled around the manifestation of our need for speed and stimulation and what get’s lost in the rush. Fully understanding the objectives of a project is far less exciting than actually doing the project. I’m not going to go so far as to look for societal factors in why this happens and how widespread this issue is in business (cough, PowerPoint, cough) but I will say that in my experience, taking the time to fully comprehend a project’s goals and objectives and digesting all the relevant information you can get your hands on is the difference between a great looking idea and a durable idea that will take the punishment doled out in the real world.
The second theme with some gravity was how visual artifacts influence everything we do. We all KNOW what an MMA poster looks like. We all KNOW what a bank ad should say. We all KNOW how a car dealership should function, right? Finding a balance between “understandable” and “revolutionary” is a constant struggle, in fact, it is the struggle most defining of design. It was mentioned that in the middle of the work session a few students looked around and saw that their concepts were not in the same vein as their compatriot’s (read: like a typical MMA poster) and walked out thinking that since their concept didn’t “fit the category” they didn’t have a chance at winning. If you feel like you missed something take a step back, read the objectives again and verify that your idea meets the broad objectives. Whatever you do, don’t leave your award winning/game changing work unfinished. Not coincidentally, the posters that looked least like MMA posters were favored by the judges for picking up on the strategic objectives overlooked by the vast majority of entrants.
The third discussion taking place was really a brainstorm on how to break an academic working style that thrives on consensus. It would stand to reason that the top students would be the top competitors in this type of situation. Wrong. The top students work the best in the vacuum of a classroom being led by a professor and with mountains of time to perfect their work. When faced with making decisions on their own and trusting their gut in banging out a couple explorative ideas, the top students crumbled. The kids that come to class unprepared 50% of the time and pull it all together in a couple all-night sessions before a project is due had no problem handling the pressure; “What, me worry?” Time management and the business world are often at odds, but the academic slacker who keeps their cool and works efficiently is worth their weight in gold… that is, if you don’t have time to wait around for Perfection to show up.
The most commonly asked questions by exhausted students in the competition was: “Is this what a real job is like?”
The response from the faculty and judges: “No, of course not. If it were a real job the objectives would have changed twice and you would have gotten half the time to work…”
For the past 4 years, McGuffin Creative group has worked with Common Threads to make their annual World Festival event a success. This year McGuffin was able to develop materials including the invitations, evites, programs and other various brochures and collateral.
Some of the featured chefs included: Art Smith of Table Fifty-Two, Malika Ameen of Aigre Doux, Jimmy Bannos of Heaven On Seven, Michelle Bernstein of Michy’s, John Besh of Restaurant August, Graham Elliot Bowles of Graham Elliot, David Burke & Rick Gresh of David Burke’s Primehouse and Mark Chmielewski of Wolfgang Puck Catering.
This year’s World Festival celebration to raise money for offering after-school cooking classes brought in $413,000—their highest amount ever.
McGuffin at Common Threads
Sponsoring
Last week we took it upon ourselves to get handy and remove some of the unsightly boxed florescent lights in our kitchen and replace them with these lovely hanging coned lights. A partial afternoon including a trip to the local Ace Hardware, tools, electrical currents, energy efficient light bulbs and a couple cold ones from Goose Island made for a wonderful learning experience. Luckily no one was electrocuted during this installation. We could not be happier with our new lighting that gives the room much more character and also a much better view of our awesome high wood ceilings.
Love the space you work in.