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We’ll be back on Monday after taking a long weekend, have a great holiday!

The Voltage crew took part in the annual Walk for PKD, held by the PKD Foundation, on September 20, 2008 at Theis Park in Kansas City.

I got frisky and built a new theme for our blog this weekend. It’s now much more “a part of” when it comes to VoltageCreative.com. It also loads faster, is more readable/scannable and incorporates a few new SEO tricks I’ve learned in the last few weeks.

Here’s the oldie for reference:

And, uh, you’re already looking at the new one, so here’s a peel-y sticker…

Voltage Creative is excited to announce the addition of our latest team member, Melissa!

Melissa comes to us from the great state of Texas – Dallas to be exact – where she previously graced the hallways of mundayMorning Creative Group. Melissa brings to the table expertise in print and branding design as well as her passion for stellar creative.

Here are some notable details on Melissa:

• Lees’ Summit, MO native
• Digs traveling abroad, Sunday brunch and classic blues.
• Does NOT dig traffic or forced karaoke.

Welcome aboard Melissa!



The mark Voltage created for dry ice supplier Allied Refrigeration will appear in the 2008 Design Annual from Print Magazine. Woohoo!

Here’s a little background: Allied Refrigeration, an established supplier of dry ice products wished to create a brand for their consumer product. While the brand was new, the product has been available to consumers for decades. The team at Allied wanted to convey the history of the product and catch consumers eyes.

Solution: Focusing on retro typefaces and classic illustrations styles, our team developed a mark that speaks to product use, the longevity of Allied Refrigeration and product quality.

Voltage Founder Ryan Lorei directed the project. Nice job, Ryan!

The response to our I’ll Give You $50 for a Worse Brand Name Than Knol contest was great! We had exactly 100 replies as of the this posting. Many were fantastic, but we had to choose. It was hard, so we felt we had to list a few honorable mentions first. Then we’ll get to the winner. The honorable mentions go to…

Comment #24: Erud

From the root erudition. Since the Google idea is that people write articles about stuff they know, and attach their name to the article. The writers are experts in a field, and can show off that expertise. Erudition implies bookish knowledge that is above an average person’s comprehension, so right away the name can give people some unease while at the same time stroke their egos. Are they really smart enough to be reading, let alone writing for this thing? But if you do write for it, doesn’t that make you somehow better than other people?

Now this name doesn’t have the soft ending like Knol, but it does have the advantage of sounding too hard; too short. Erud; sounds like rude.

Comment #37: Knowr

A forgettable derivative of the word “knowledge”, hurts your mouth to say, a shameless implementation of Domain Naming 2.0 ™, the domain is parked, etc, etc.; a categorically worse brand than “Knol”.

Comment #45: nuur

How about “Newer”. Maybe “Nuir” or “Nure”. Nope. I’ve got it. The name for our salon should be Nuur!

Bonus points for involuntarily sounding like a retarded person when you say it! : )

Comment #68: phamthe

Comment #95: Vaio

wtf.

AND THE WINNER IS…

#30: Whol

(As in: something that contains the whol of our knol-edge. Ahem.)

* Silent letter. Could be either W or H, depending!
* Starts and ends with weak sounds.
* Unclear pronunciation. Hole? Hahl? Hall? Wole? Wahl? Wall?
* Potential homonym for “hole”, which yields TONS of awful-sounding spoken constructions. “You got that from a (hole)?” “I’ve got a (hole).” “Hey, look at this (hole)!” “Stick that in your (hole)”.
* One letter away from Whor.

Congrats to Drew Thaler. You should receive an email shortly to get your payment details. Then we’ll send you $50.

Thanks to everyone who participated!

UPDATE! Being an honorable fellow Drew has opted to donate the prize money to Cleveland Scholarhip Programs to help educate children about the perils of terrible branding.

I can’t believe what just happened to me. I’m a Mac-o-phile. I’ve worked with PC’s for years, but here at Voltage, and in my home, I have the privilege of working only with Apple products. (We do have a Dell laptop we use to check browser compatability with IE 6.)

This morning I found my way onto Dell’s website where I was confronted by the “the NEW studio Hybrid” PC line. I want one. I want one for the same reason I want an iPhone: I’m shallow and it’s gorgeous.

What’s happening to me? Is the PC industry finally going to use my shallowness against me? I’m lusting after a bamboo-covered Studio PC made by Dell? Dude, I don’t want a Dell. At least I didn’t, until now.

(Full disclosure: Voltage Creative has done some design work for Dell in the past. However, it’s not my department and it didn’t have anything to do with this product.)

Calling all designers, developers, information architects, project managers, writers, editors, marketers, and everyone else who makes websites. It is time once again to pool our information so as to begin sketching a true picture of the way our profession is practiced worldwide.

Yesterday, a video was making the rounds called Why every guy should buy their girlfriend Wii Fit. It definitely struck a chord with me (A 27-year-old male, aka the intended audience) as it featured a girl gyrating around and bending over repeatedly in her underwear, courtesy of actually playing Nintendo’s Wii Fit. (Video is mildly NSFW.)

This viral video was uploaded to YouTube 4 days ago and now has 475,776 views. It was dugg 8000+ times on Digg. It’s got 64 up-votes and 123 comments on Reddit.

Why every guy should buy their girlfriend Wii Fit was originally submitted to YouTube by a user named tinsleyadvertising and the two people featured in the video appear to be Tinsley Full Service Advertising employees Giovanny Gutierrez, Director of Interactive Media, and Lauren Bernat, Account Executive. At least it sure looks like it, after doing a quick search for “Giovanny Guiterrez” at Flickr…

Now, one of two things is going on here:

1. Nintendo has paid Tinsley Full Service Advertising for a viral marketing campaign that was worth every penny.
2. They should have.

In 4 days this video has been viewed almost half-million times by people who use YouTube, Reddit, and/or Digg. Not necessarily all first-adopters at this point, but definitely a tech-savvy crowd. Most definitely made up of people that would buy or own a Nintendo Wii. This was a very nice piece of viral marketing.

Or so I thought until I read the YouTube comment that was submitted with the video: “This is why I love Wii Fit. ‘Nuff said. PS This is a personal video I made… I just work at Tinsley Advertising (not related to Nintendo whatsoever). However I’d love to do work for them :)” This led to an argument about Giovanny’s agenda with my co-worker, Geoff. Maybe, they weren’t paid by Nintendo, maybe they were, maybe they want to be.

Either way, they’ve surely got Nintendo’s attention now. Nice, er, move, Giovanny.

UPDATED 05/30/08: The L.A. Times picked up on the story yesterday afternoon. They contacted Giovanny, who said that it was not a paid viral and that his girlfriend…

“She was FURIOUS,” wrote Gutierrez, who said she “called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me.”

“But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame.

LA Times – Wii Fit girl was ‘FURIOUS’ at her boyfriend

Rejoice, fellow Mac-heads. Google has a search just for you! No more quantifying your software, screen saver, or hardware searches with the perfunctory “for Mac” at the end.

[Photo Credit]

I have some bad news. Deep breath, designers. Here it is:

The Nike logo isn’t the greatest mark ever created.

There, I said it. I feel better, but chances are you disagree with me or are slightly uncomfortable with my blasphemy. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a quality mark, but in my humble opinion it is certainly not the end-all, be-all in corporate identity.

Why is it so popular then? Three reasons; (1) Nike sells quality products and good looking products to boot, (2) their advertising rocks, and (3) Nike’s brand equity has been well managed. If Nike sold toilet brushes on late-night TV via shoddy homemade style commercials with a guy in a bad suit shouting tired slogans, I doubt as many people would be drooling over the swoosh.

So now you might be saying, “Ok, point taken, but why do you think it’s lame, logo-critic?!?!” Well, I don’t think it’s lame. I just don’t think it’s that great, and here’s my reasoning:

1. Shouldn’t a mark communicate something about the entity it represents? I think so. (Nike’s doesn’t)
2. Without the mountains of advertising would you know what the swoosh represents? (You wouldn’t)
3. It’s a glorified check mark. (Old news)

Note: I’m typing this as I wear my Nike shoes and prepare to run this evening with my Nike watch. I simply feel as if the logo has been elevated to stardom through quality brand management versus the merit of the mark itself.