It’s the fiftieth anniversary of the Peace Symbol. It was created by Gerald Holtom, an artist and textile designer, who created for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The Peace sign is literally “N” and “D” in the Naval sign language of semaphore and stands for Nuclear Disarmament.

At the time no one knew what it meant, but over time, obviously, it transcended it’s original use. Although it is still used by the CND specifically for nuclear disarmament. On another note, the CND purposely chose not to copyright the peace symbol. Yay to the CND.

I do have to wonder if a symbol like that would have even made the cut today. Simplicity is not the trend these days and few high profile logos, like Kodak and AT&T, as logos, are even going to be around in ten years much less 50 years. Ironically enough, the old logos for both these companies were iconic and had stood the test of time, but not the stockholders.

“If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.”
-Betty Reese (via)

I’m in self help mode devouring every book on management, networking, design and writing that I can find.

In one of the books, The Little Black Book of Connections, the author says his response to anyone that wants to “pick his brain”, he will tell you his rate per hour.

One of my biggest problems with tapping into my network for even something simple as advice is it always seemed very awkward to call someone out of the blue without having done anything to nurture the relationship.

So the question becomes, how does one stay on the radar of someone he wishes to network with without being a dork. The main thing I can think of, and is hinted at in the book, is becoming interested in the things that they are interested in. Pretty easy for me, I like being interested. Now I have to figure out what the people in my would be network passions are.

Without being a dork.

So we are starting on our Holiday cards.

In July.

Ironically, I still don’t think it’s enough time. It’s never enough time. Holiday cards always throw everyone for a loop. I think of the three tenets of construction when I think of holiday cards. It’s cheap, It’s good, It’s fast

You’ll never get all three. In terms of Holiday cards:

1. It’s good
2. It’s clever
3. It’s plain

It’s good. This one is pretty straight forward. This is something that is designed well. If you can get the second two, then the holy grail is in sight

It’s clever. I like the unexpected in design. I think design should in it’s ideal state work on many different levels, from the 10 second glance to the ever elusive one minute investment

It’s plain. The concept should be easily gotten. If the user or client has to think about it, we’ve failed in our job as communicators.

This is really any design job, but it’s just especially challenging in terms of an international, non-religious holiday cards for business clients. I’m ready for it.

This was the title a of a speech given by Greg D’Amico, one of my professors at NYU.

He covered six points that, although they were used in the context of the Graphic Communication industry, could be applied to any business environment.

1. The customer is our business
2. Focus on core-competencies
3. Create one-to-one customer relationships
4. Build strategic alliances
5. Enable a culture open to change
6. Hire a talented and educated salesforce

“Your clients want a three inch hole, not a three inch drill”

Dr. Bruce Myers
Professor, NYU
Virtual Proofing seminar, April 17, 2007

On the last night of my Printing Estimating class, Joseph Truncale, one of our professors, and president of the National Association for Printing Leadership (NAPL) (I haven’t had any of his courses yet) was a guest in the class. He graced us with an interesting little tidbit called Mailbox value.

He told us a short story about when he belonged to an organization that printed a monthly magazine. The organization decided to cut cost in light of rising postal rates. Every member got a letter saying the the magazine had been discontinued, but would continue online, and if they logged on they could get all the content they would’ve received with the magazine.

Months later Mr. Truncale got a renewal notice for the organization, and promptly dropped his membership. He never once visited the website.

Later he met the person ahead of membership of that organization, and they got to talking about the magazine. The membership guy said membershipe dropped something like 50%. In fact, he said, that the subscriptions department, on their own started putting out a quarterly magazine again to bring that perceived value back.

Mailbox value. It reminds people, your clients, your membership, that you are there. That there is some return on your membership fees.

I thought about this when a client wrestled over whether to stop her three-times a week email newslettere. I worried about mailbox value, and whether there would be a drop in her website. After sitting down and figuring out the cost per newsletter (thanks to the operational models we talked about in the same print estimating class), we decided if was not worth continuing.

So far no drop in readership of the site. We are waiting to see if there is a decline over the next several weeks.

These service make life as a graduate student a lot easier. Both, Easybib and Bibme are lifesavers. All you have to do is type in the name of the source, and it automatically fills and formats everything for you, excellent. It is particular useful for me, as someone who is very conscious of where I get things from, but not so well versed on how to site them. This is important because school take the whole plagiarism thing rather seriously. These site come via Lifehacker

As I get this blog up in running, I’ll probably be installing Bibliofly, a wordpress plugin