We had a great time working on this project. After Boots and I discussed the theme of mannequins, I called around to a variety of mannequin factories and warehouses and got ignored or turned down by most of them. Finally, I found a gracious factory manager who allowed us to conduct a shoot in a cavernous warehouse located way out in the sphincter of Brooklyn. We rescheduled after the factory closed for an early February blizzard, but finally made it there shortly thereafter. I think the location exceeded all of our expectations; the space was loaded with boxes of hands, aisles of mannequins, and all kinds of interesting environments. Thanks to Boots and Sean. Listen to Part or Execution at iTunes. Here are some alternate shots from our photography shoot.

The Social Security Works logo emphasizes the message inherent in the organization’s name. Through typography and punctuation, the words become not just a name, but an emphatic statement. In previous designs that were considered, other iconography was used: pillars (which you’ll see on your Social Security card), an eagle, elements of the American flag. We eventually decided that all of these things were superfluous; the name says it all. The final logo utilizes bold typography and color to amplify what’s already there.

The animation above features a series of graphic statements developed as assisting materials in the graphic identity. You can see another version of this concept in the background of the Social Security Works Twitter page.

This idea was inspired by a series of blog posts that the Social Security Works team had written. These posts are titled Social Security Works for People of Color and so forth. The articles are informative and persuasive. These phrases and statements proved to be quite persuasive as well. They expound on the meaning present in the logo.

Above is a screenshot of the website I built at socialsecurity-works.org. This site is a branded, customized WordPress content management system. The header features a Javascript photo slideshow portraying a range of societal demographics that benefit from Social Security. The ‘Social Security Works…’ articles have been given their own prominent area of the left sidebar. The right sidebar is devoted to social networking.

Many thanks to the fine folks at Social Security Works.

]]> http://www.magneticstate.com/blogdept/2010/brand-identity-web-design-social-security-works/feed/ 0 http://www.magneticstate.com/blogdept/2010/blog-redesign/ http://www.magneticstate.com/blogdept/2010/blog-redesign/#comments Tue, 20 Apr 2010 02:33:25 +0000 Dan Redding http://www.magneticstate.com/blogdept/?p=556 So… whaddaya think of the new digs? After I made some new decisions about how I plan to use this blog (I plan to use it more and bigger and better), I decided a redesign was necessary. Of course, that’s got me rethinking the design of the entire Magnetic State portfolio site as well – but one thing at a time.

Two vintage title screens from Columbia Pictures

My first goal was a new logo that represented the ‘Blog Dept.’ as an entity that functions both as a component of Magnetic State as well as a standalone publication. In both the name of this blog and the design of the logo, I was inspired by film noir movies (you know, the black and white ones where Humphrey Bogart carries a flask and a revolver in his trenchcoat and says ‘dame’ a lot). I always admired the title screens and studio i.d.’s from these films from the thirties and forties, and I specifically emulated the three-dimensional block letter effects of Columbia Pictures (above). I used a somewhat wild color combination to give my design a modern flair.

Bogart pursues the facts and just the facts. Notice the bold 'Spade and Archer' label on the window.

In films like The Maltese Falcon (pictured), there’s always a business name on the detective’s window or an officer’s name and title on the frosted door window of a cop’s office. I liked the idea that this blog is a ‘department’ at Magnetic State and that the logo can serve as the title on the door, if you will.

As for the web design, I intended to prioritize the content. My previous layout placed blog posts under a distracting header, but now the blog content has plenty of room to breathe, is prioritized vertically, and is more readable. I am thankful for Small Potato’s tutorial on writing WordPress themes, which I have referred to many times over the last year or two. I consider myself an expert on custom WordPress themes now; I have one bare-bones theme that I wrote by hand (from SP’s instructions) which I’ve customized for each of my last four or five WP sites.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you’ll subscribe via RSS! I have some big things planned for this blog as well as a bunch of new design work to unveil in the next few weeks.

Below is a video the boys made to promote a recent performance. I find the video so amusing and that ambient background music so mesmerizing that I’ve watched it ten times. Listen to the Planet Booty record here.

Above is the flyer I designed for the 2010 Beard Ball, hosted by my friends at Build-A-Beard. The show is a benefit for RightRides, which is an organization that provides safe late-night rides home for women and LGBTQ individuals. Cool cause, huh? I thought so too, so I had my design fee donated to the organization. Hope to see you at the show!

My first menu design was an exciting challenge. The design solution is tasteful and elegant, and we displayed an enormous amount of information on a variety of menus, including brunch, dinner, and takeout. For further menu design inspiration, check out this analysis of the menu design strategy at Balthazar.

I highly recommend the food at La Bonne Bouffe; Skander takes a great deal of pride in his fresh ingredients and mouth-watering entrees that deliver authentic French and Algerian recipes to New York appetites. View the menu design.

In all honesty, it was one of the best years of my life as I continue to develop the life of my design studio. Although my schedule is always packed with design work (two new site designs and a menu design will be featured on the homepage soon), some of 2009′s highlights came through my writing. For most of my life, I have been interested in both writing and art/design. In college, I earned two degrees – one in Illustration, one in Writing – at the New School’s BA/BFA program. People always asked about my goals for the two fields or how they’d intersect. Now that I am making my living by creating graphic design and also writing about design, I know the answer to that question. Or at least one of the answers.

Anyway, here’s my highlights from 2009. Thanks to all my clients, friends, and colleagues.

1. Five Chapters Redesign
The year started with a very successful job: the redesign of the logo and website for Five Chapters. Here’s my blog post on the redesign (written in January, reposted to this blog in August).

2. New York Times City Room Blog Feature
Say what you will about Twitter, but that site generated a 2009 highlight for me within days of joining. New York Times editor Patrick LaForge asked his Twitter followers for suggestions of blog posts about NYC people/events. I made a suggestion, and shortly thereafter, Mr. LaForge was kind enough to include my interview with Michael Sayers on the NYT City Room blog. Here’s the interview at my blog, and here’s the feature on City Room (they link to Magnet Cat, which was the former name of the Magnetic State blog).

3. SK6ERS Shirt Design
A design highlight was this t-shirt design to promote the album The Bear by my friends in rock band Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers (SK6ERS drummer Boots Factor and I were flatmates and drinking buddies while living in Stirling, Scotland). Here’s a bunch of fans wearing the shirt.

4. London For The Win (Literally)
The shock of the year came in August when I won a trip to London. I won the trip by writing a short essay about Magnetic State for the British Airways ‘Face of Opportunity’ contest. Forget 2009, this trip was a highlight of my life. Here’s my blog post the day before leaving and here’s a summary of the trip, including my Tweets from London. My favorite Tweet I wrote, and a moment that remains vivid in my mind: “Walking along the Thames. The sound of bagpipes off in the distance, ocassionally smothered by the wind”

5. Supermundane Interview
I spent my days in London writing two articles. The first one is this interview with artist and designer Supermundane.

6. Smashing Article
The second piece was my debut for Smashing Magazine. The piece is called The Beauty of London in Design. The article was a joy to write and I was flattered when Pentagram acknowledged it. I look forward to the publication of my next piece for Smashing, which is complete and will be published in the next few weeks. Many thanks to Vitaly and the rest of the Smashing editorial team.

7. Lighthouse Art Class
This is an ongoing highlight for me, but this year I continued to find new meanings and rewards in my job teaching visually impaired teens at the Lighthouse International. In 2009, we made 3D wire sculpture, a robot pinata, and tactile skeleton collages, among other projects. Here is an article I wrote about art for the visually impaired, including samples of my maskmaking project with the Lighthouse kids.

8. Save The Werewolves
I had a lot of fun working on a project for fun and charity: www.savethewerewolves.com. Here’s a blog post on my intentions with the satirical site design.

9. What Recession?
The freelance income at Magnetic State more than doubled from 2008 to 2009. Many thanks to all clients, colleagues and friends.

Thanks for your support and pleased stay tuned for new designs and new writing that will be posted here and at the www.magneticstate.com homepage in the next few weeks!

Happy New Year and much love,

Dan Redding

I built a satirical website to promote the ‘Party Werewolf’ t-shirt (all profits benefit the World Wildlife Fund; read more about why in this blog post). The site is SaveTheWerewolves.com and it is an intentional violation of all that is sacred and holy in web and graphic design. My goal was to have fun, to create something ludicrous, to raise money for charity, to try my hand at ‘guerilla marketing,’ and to lovingly satirize both web design and environmentalism. I was inspired by an intentionally awful and hilarious website called ‘The Official Website of America.’ That site epitomizes all that is considered wrong, bad, and outdated in web design: animated GIFs (as a tiling background image, no less!), a shitty embedded music file, eye-searing graphics, logic-defying layout choices, et cetera. So bad, it’s good.

It’s good to be serious about the standards and practices of good design, but I find that the design community takes itself awfully seriously sometimes. Getting upset about bad fonts seems silly to me (there are websites devoted to complaining about Comic Sans and Copperplate). Why agonize when you can satirize? I think most designers got into this field to have fun while being creative, but it might serve us well if we practiced the ‘fun’ part more often. Granted, that can be easier said than done while you’re trying to make a living during difficult economic times, and that might be why we should remind one another from time to time.

Another source of inspiration for me was William Friedkin’s use of ‘subliminal’ imagery in his films The Exorcist and Cruising. One of the scariest elements in The Exorcist is an image of a demon face that appears for a fraction of a second during several scenes – it’s visible if you are viewing closely, but it will scare the fuck out of you even if you are not entirely sure of what you’ve seen. Brilliant. I have embedded brief flashes of various imagery (including Mr.Friedkin’s demons) in the animated GIFs on SaveTheWerewolves.com and there are many (rotten) ‘Easter eggs’ hidden around the site. You can start finding them by hovering your cursor over almost any text or image on the homepage.

I hope the site makes you laugh and I hope you’ll consider supporting the World Wildlife Fund and Magnetic State! People who own the shirt tell me that it makes a great conversation piece. Thanks!