Ragu', Ragu', wherefore art though Ragu'?

I think this may be my second blog about Ragu--I do love pasta and pasta sauce, so I guess it is subversively fitting. I work with numerous woman who cook, and they constantly give away old, unwanted cook books. Some of the items they give away are so archaic they crumble in your hand.

Today I was lucky enough to inherit a Ragu booklet called "There's more to Italian cooking than spaghetti." On the inside cover, there is a picture of a jar of Ragu' with a tagline of "New!" on the label--this image hasn't been new since the 70s, I'm betting. Let's have a look-see at the Ragu' of old and the Ragu' of new:

I will gift a prize to the first person who correctly guesses the font of "Italian Cooking sauce"

Ragu' comes in many varieties now and each jar is slightly different, but here is a modern image:

The differences are numerous. They moved the accent placement on the "U"--I wonder if it makes a grammatical difference? Of course, their logo font is different--if not completely, then modified. The "A" and "G" look a little similar, but not identical. They incorporate yellow, blue, and green into their label and no longer include real food images. The text placement is now on a diagonal slant--dynamic (thanks, Molly Bang)! I don't know if I love the gentleman in the gondola, but I would say I favor the new label over the old. You?

Campaign Controversy

I was watching Fox45 Morning News (this is the only Fox news I watch, honest) and they aired an story about a new Aids awareness campaign launched by the Baltimore City Health Department. This campaign encourages African American men to get tested for HIV and pictures pictures of African American men with red bandaids on their bodies. The controversy is not with the images but with the tagline: "Have Balls, Get Tested." A Baltimore resident who was walking her grandson saw the ad on a passing bus and finds the language offensive. According to the Fox 45 story, the resident says, '"They could have said Get on Board or Be Brave, Get Tested. That is not sending the right message to our children. It was very vulgar. Very vulgar."'

This article is very fitting since we are finalizing our campaigns and have spent much time identifying the right tagline that will epitomize our call to action. This Baltimorian was theoretically correct--the campaign could have used those other words. But would those other taglines be effective in getting the target audience to notice the campaign and to take action? And when health, safety, and education is involved, can something be considered vulgar? I don't believe so. Even if one considers it offensive, isn't the more important issue getting people the health care they need? And if this campaign gets even one person to get tested, it is successful.

Here is one of The Baltimore City Health Department's campaign posters:

Show & Tell: Hobbies

I am intersted in writing about either poetry or social networking. Specifically, I'd like to focus on one of the following topics:

Poetry

• Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival
• Chap Book/Self-Publishing: trend/pros and cons of self-publishing

Social Networking

• Virtual Games—bringing us closer together or farther apart?
• Smart Phone Photography—death of “experts”

Regarding virtual games:

According the article Social media games have become big business published on February 25, 2012 on abcnews.com, social media game publisher Zyga Inc.'s daily users grew to 54 million in the fourth quarter of 2011--this is a 13% increase from the fourth quarter in 2010. And many of these gamers spend real currancy to purchase virtual money that they use to buy game items or to advance in their games. I know this to be true, because my mom used to purchase items for her "pet turtle" when she had an account with SuperPoke Pets. True confession: I used to have a pet pig named Binky on SuperPoke who I loved dearly, but not enough to spend real coinage on her (I'm not a freak, you know).

I used to occassionaly capture snapshots of Binky in her decorated habitats--here is one from 2011 when hurricane Irene was on everyone's minds.

Packaging Strategies Article

 from http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/

 

May 21, 2012

 

Effective Product Packaging Strategy

Successful packaging sells. Any company that invests millions of dollars in product development, consumer research, and marketing expects a return on that investment. The shelf is where that happens.

Product packaging is an integral component of the shopping experience. For many people shopping/buying is as much or more an emotional experience as it is a function of picking up stuff they need. With 80% of purchase decisions being made at shelf, the product’s presentation is the only form of marketing seen by 100% of the folks who reach for it and drop the product into their shopping cart. Advertising can’t claim that. As a marketer, no one is more sensitive and aware than you of the daunting task to create successful packaging in an over-crowded-with-abundant choice retail environment.

The design of your packaging determines if your product will make it into the shopping cart or not. In every product category, from elegant wine and spirits, perfumes and apparel to laundry soap and toilet paper, successful packaging design is about connecting emotionally. If the product packaging doesn’t reach out and instantly connect with the consumer, it’s game over.

Packaging that sells is friendly to the mind and connected to the heart of the shopper. In other words your packaging must be designed to be imminently “shopable”.

Awareness + Emotion In A Nano-secondThe mind filters things out with amazing speed and effectiveness. Think about times when you were shopping looking for something specific, or times when something caught your briefest attention. Your mind is constantly filtering out stuff underneath your conscious awareness while you are consciously searching for another thing. Yet when something catches your attention, to hold it long enough for your brain to register, it has to connect with your heart. You have to experience an emotion in order to continue to hold your attention for longer than a nano second. As marketers, that’s all the time the packaging has to make a sale and win at shelf.
 

The Two Battles At Shelf
To make a sale, there are two battles at shelf you have to win. First, people have notice your product and reach for it (as opposed to something else). Secondly, people have to drop it in the cart. You have to win both battles. The product’s packaging is the only weapon you have to win.

Designing Shopability Into Your Packaging
Shopability is how well your packaging will catch the attention and connect to the emotions of your target consumer. Unlike so many other marketing tactics where you have far less control, you can control the shopability factor into your packaging by design. Packaging that is shopable shares these essential design characteristics:

The Brand Billboard Effect
If you have a complete line of products that involve several facings on the shelf, the brand’s visual identity should form a big billboard shouting out who the brand is across the shelf.

Simplify The Focus
Keep it extremely simple and focus on the highest emotional benefit the product provides. The consumer needs to know what makes the brand special and why they should buy.

The Brand Messaging Hierarchy
How many layers of branding are on the packaging facing? If you have layers of branding on the facing (corporate brand, sub-brand, product segment, violators and flags), are these layers supporting how the consumer’s mind is working? Is your branding useful or just white noise?

Spotlighting
Putting visual emphasis on a new feature or a differentiated attribute is a common practice. Is the spotlighting on your packaging a promotional disruption, or is it an integrated descriptor that is important to product segmentation and shopper experience?

The Impression Hierarchy
The mind sees, imprints and recalls in a systematic way. To make an impression on the mind, packaging needs to support how people perceive levels of information when they are shopping. Information is processed incrementally in a sequenced manner. In order of perceptual importance to the mind, packaging design must support these impressions:

1. color – invokes a physical response
2. shape – creates and supports recognition
3. imagery – stirs emotions and fulfills needs
4. words – informs

When you’re facing the task of creating and designing new packaging, it’s important to consider how the consumer’s mind deals with managing the intense overload of sensory information coming at them from every direction when they’re walking down the store aisle. How they see, connect and recall things has important implications for how shopable your products are at shelf. Packaging that sells is always shopable.

Sponsored by: The Brand Strategy Workshop For Startups

What if Comic Sans took over the world?

Poor Font

Comic Sans was developed in 1994 by designer Vincent Connare and was intended for use in cartoon/comic book speech bubbles. However, many designers/font selecters starting using Comic Sans for other uses and this use has caused such a commotion that most designers abhor the font. Much has been written and said about this little, innocent font--there is even a facebook group called "1 Million People Against Comic Sans."

One supporter of Comic Sans is The Comic Sans Project. They refer to themselves the defenders of the font and wish to make the whole world Comic Sans. The Comic Sans Project has redesigned some popular logos using Comic Sans. A few of them work well in my opinion, particularly the M&M logo as seen below.

 

Check it out

Simon Garfield, author of Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, published the article What's so wrong with Comic Sans? for the BBC News Magazine.

 

Show & Tell: Storytelling

There are many ways in which to tell a story--through speech, writing, art, performance, and even experience (anecdotes). I don't know that any one way is more powerful or effective than the other; I think it just depends on the subject matter. Some stories have an purposeful and intended meaning, while in others the story is provided by the audience. Have you ever looked at a painting and provided a story for it in your head? Have you ever witnessed an interaction between strangers and provided your own subplot for their actions? Stories are all around us, all the time. In fact, social media provides the mechanism for each of us to share our own mini-stories daily with others, although they might not be extremely exciting or thought-provoking at times.

A modern storytelling model is NPR's StoryCorps. StoryCorps is "an independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives." They have recording studios in certain locations and a mobile recording booth that travels to you to record your story. Of course, you have to make a reservation. According to their website, they've have collected more than 40,000 interviews, which they archive and broadcast weekly on NPR's Morning Edition and on their website.

Here is a story told by Nathan Hoskins to his friend about growing up gay:

Nathan Hoskins and Sally Evans | StoryCorps

Design Resources

Design resources have been on my mind recently (and for the past several years). It seems every day one of my classmates is telling me about a valuable design website, which has got me thinking--is there one place where designers can go to find a comprehensive list of resources? If you know of any sites/apps for one-stop design inspiration, I'd love to hear of them. If not, perhaps it is up to one of us to create such a resource. For now, I will share with you a few of my favorites:

Design Envy ("A Curated Blog of Design Excellence-Selected By Designers, For Designers")

Graphic Design Theory (Supplemental links inspired by the textbook written by Helen Armstrong. Check ou the Inspiration section)

Top Design Magazine (Examples of good/bad design in many genres)

Twaggies (Not a design resource, per se, but a fun "crowdsourced comic")

HypeForType (I didn't know about this site until after I named my blog--honest. They have some free fonts--I haven't downloaded any yet, but it looks reputable. Do your research before you download).

type eh? (Maxwell Boam' blog [previous UB Typography professor]. Wonderful examples of typography and design).

Smashing Magazine

Adobe Kuler (" the web-hosted application for generating color themes that can inspire any project." It's free and fabulous!)

I Love Typography and We Love Typography

Stock.XCHNG (Free stock photo site)

Perhaps the real issue is not identifying resourses, but having time to keep up with them.