WATCH: Jonathan Ive talks about Mac design

In this clip from Gary Hustwit's docufilm "Objectified" we want to share with you one of our favorite clips, which features Apple's creative genius Jonathan Ive discussing the industrial design approach to creating the MacBookPro and iMac products. This is a great look inside the world of Apple's design 'process' and how that translates into the ideas which make up the Apple philosophy. Learn from this short clip just what makes Apple such a beloved brand and a great product.

Check out Gary Hustwit's other docufilm "Helvetica" which I'm sure all you graphic designers have seen. We're looking forward  to the 3rd installment of the design trilogy, "Urbanized".

Have you seen your twitter page show like this? “Twitter is over capacity. Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again.” Are you frustrated? Don’t worry, you are not alone. This is one of the hottest discussion in web.

Twitter has been one of the most famous social sites in the worldwide web. Almost everyone in the world has something to share to everyone, even celebrities, athletes, politicians and even fan pages. So, why twitter server is overload? Sometimes twitter traffic is very rapidly and its Web server is unable to handle rapid amount of request in very short period of time (server temporary overload).

At least they got rid of the whale...

When Twitter is up! Tweet us: @starmendesign

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An HTTP status code 503(503 Service Unavailable) indicates that twitter Web server is currently unable to handle the request because of a temporary overload or maintenance of the server.

Modern Software Ads - Mad Men

Somtime in 1951, between the advent of the color television and the ending of World War 2, advertising took on a new role in mass media. Businesses teamed up with ad agencies to convince the masses on products and services that they wanted to sell. Content was key, and copywriters were kings. They weren't as creative, or extreme from what our eyes are used to nowadays, but it was groundbreaking content nonetheless. 

Engadget had a few modern day companies, Youtube and Skype (credit to the artist), with a 1950s style and content. They are spot on, and actually pretty funny! Imagine what 1950s advertisements would look like for modern day companies.

Enjoy Your Weekend!

STARMEN Executive Director Stars in Woodbury University MBA Alumni Promo Commerical.

Woodbury MBA Alumni and STARMEN's Executive Director Armen David, was recently asked to star in his own Alumni testimonial to air on local networks in the Los Angeles region, promoting Woodbury University's MBA program.

Woodbury has a great MBA program, it prepared me for the leadership skills needed to run a successful business" says David, who has been heading the talented and growing design firm for the past 5 years.

About Armen David

A Los Angeles native and MBA graduate, Armen has a strong desire to create meaningful connections between businesses and consumers. He launched nearly five years ago STARMEN. He cultivates a seamless dialogue among his clients while working closely with his multidisciplinary teams of designers and technologists to set strategy and create forward-thinking campaigns. Prior to STARMEN, Armen was Vice President of Business and Marketing for a global industrial design firm. There, he built business relationships in thirteen countries, which gave him perspective on the international business market. As a result, he is a frequent speaker at industry events and local universities. Armen holds a B.S. in Business Marketing and an M.B.A. in Business Management.

The 8 Success Criteria For Facebook Page Marketing

Social media marketing has become a hot topic amongst brand marketers and businesses, now more than ever looking to establish themselves within a social network. As a means to advertise/promote their products and services at low cost, the biggest being, Facebook. But it's knowing how to use it and what to do with it, that counts. The proper use of Facebook goes beyond 'setting up an account' as the focus becomes more strategic in being 'interactive' with your audience by taking the right steps to increase engagement and promote word of mouth through advocacy and peer-to-peer interactions, or solicit business call to actions that result in transactions. Simply stated, if a brand makes their community happy by generating a vibrant place, then then have the option to start generating business impacts (revenue).

The Altimeter Group compiled data by analyzing companies posts, comments, 'likes' on Facebook and found a clear pattern. There was a consistent set of criteria they heard from the industries experts, and they found the following 8 criteria:

1. Set Community Expectations
2. Provide Cohesive Branding
3. Be Up To Date
4. Live Authenticity
5. Participate in Dialog
6. Enable Peer-To-Peer Interactions
7. Foster Advocacy
8. Solicit A Call To Action

Okay great, now you know the 'key points' to creating a social media presence on Facebook, but how is your business going to execute a plan that meets this criteria to capture an audience and build your business through the social media platform? Look no further, STARMEN Design Group can take your brand from Content To Commerce by using a unique approach that bridges "people stories" to "product stories" through social media and branded content. Get in touch with us and get current, we are social media experts, and are here to to help you achieve true consumer engagement.

One of the most challenging parts of any brand design process is getting design approved via "client sign off". It can prove time consuming, demoralizing and if you are not careful can lead to a dissatisfied client. What is more you can end up with a design that you are ashamed to include in your portfolio.

How then can you ensure that the design you produce is the one that gets built? How can you get the client to sign off on your design? Below are 10 tips learnt from years of experience, we call them the "growing pain" years.

1. Write the creative brief

Many of the clients you work with will not have been involved in a web or design project before. Even if they have they may have worked in a very different way to what you would expect. Take the time at the beginning of the project to compose a 'creative brief' explain their role in the design of the site. The best approach is to emphasis that their job is to focus on the needs of their users and business. They should concentrate on the broad issues, while you worry about the details of layout, typography and color scheme.

By clarifying what you expect from the client, you help them to provide the right kind of input throughout the process. The creative brief is also a useful tool that you can use throughout your design process, kind of like a roadmap for the foundation from which you 'brand' your client. Get it approved and you'll have something to fall back on if any disagreements come back to haunt you later on.

2. Understand the business

Before you open up Photoshop or put pen to paper, take the time to make sure you properly understand not only the brief but the organization behind the site. By understanding their business objectives, organizational structure and marketing strategy your design decisions will be better informed.

You cannot rely upon the brief to provide all of the information you need. It is important to dig deeper and get as good an understanding of their business as possible, do some audits, external research, go out and study their competitors. This information will prove invaluable when justifying your design decisions.

3. Understand the users

We all like to think of ourselves as user centric designers, but exactly how much effort do you put into knowing your users before beginning the design process?

Take the time to really understand them the best you can. Try to meet with some real prospective users and get to know their needs. Failing that work with the client to produce user personas to help picture exactly what kind of people they are.

Understanding your users not only improves the quality of your work, but also helps move the discussion away from the personal preferences of the client, to the people who’s opinion really matters. Some client's themselves, do not properly "know" or "understand" their audience until you put it in front of them. Be bold, be creative!

4. Avoid multiple concepts, Avoid multiple concepts...

Many clients like the idea of having the option to choose between multiple design concepts. However, although on the surface this might appear to be a good idea it can ultimately be counterproductive for design sign off.

In a world of limited budgets it is unwise to waste money on producing designs that are ultimately going to be thrown away. The resources would be better spent refining a single design through multiple iterations.

What is more, multiple concepts often cause confusion rather than clarity. It is common for a client to request one element from one design and another from the second. As any designer knows this seldom works. This is one of the primary reasons that legendary graphic designer Paul Rand avoided showing more than one concept to his clients. in fact, his iconic UPS logo was chosen after only seeing ONE comp.

5. Use mood boards

Clients are often better at expressing what they don’t like than what they do. This is one of the reasons why they favour producing multiple design concepts. An alternative less costly approach is to create a series of mood boards. These boards contain a collection of colours, typography and imagery which represent different “moods” or directions, which the design could take.

Mood boards are quick and easy to produce allowing you to try out various design approaches with the client without investing the time needed to produce complete design concepts. This means that by the time you develop a concept the client and designer have already established an understanding about the direction of the design.

6. Say what you like, challenge convention

It is not uncommon for a client during let's say, a web project to ask for a design that looks similar to another site they like. The problem is that it can often be hard to establish exactly what it is about the site that attracts them. Also in many cases the sites they like are not something you are keen to emulate!

A better approach that was suggested by most web professionals is to show them sites that you think the design should emulate. Keep a collection of screen captures from well designed sites and pick out a few that are relevant to that particular client. Explain why you feel these designs might suit their project and ask for their feedback. If they don’t like your choices then expose them to more of your collection and see what they pick out.

7. Wireframe the homepage

Often clients find it hard to distinguish between design and content and so sometimes reject a design on the basis that the content is not right. This is particularly true when signing off the homepage.

You may therefore find it useful to establish the homepage content before producing the design. That way once they see the design they will not be distracted by the content. One of the best ways to do this is by producing a basic wireframe consisting of a series of content boxes. Once this has been approved you will find the sign off of design much easier.

8. Present your designs in person

Although it is true that a good design should speak for itself it still needs presenting to the client. The client needs to understand why you have made the design decisions you have, otherwise they will judge the design purely on personal preference.

Talk them through the design explaining how it meets the needs of their users and business objectives. Refer to the mood boards and preferred sites the client approved and explain how the design is a continuation of those. Never simply email the design through and hope the client interprets your work correctly! It's just impersonal.

9. Provide written supporting material

Unfortunately, no matter how well you justify the design to the client he is almost certain to want to show it to others. He may need his bosses approval or require internal buy in. At the very least he is going to want to get a second opinion from a friend or colleague.

The problem with this is that you are not going to be there to present to these people in the same way you did for the client. You cannot expect the client to present your ideas as well as you did. The reality is that you have lost control of how the design is perceived.

One way to minimize this problem is to provide written documentation supporting the design. This can be a summary of the presentation you gave to the client and allows him to distribute this along with the design. By putting a written explanation with the design you ensure that everybody who sees it gets the same message.

10. Control the feedback

My final piece of advice for managing design sign off is to control the way you receive feedback. A clients natural inclination will be to give you his personal opinion on the design. This is reinforced because you ask them what they think of the design. Instead ask them what their users will think of the design. Encourage them to think from the users perspective. Tell them to do some 'polling' with people unassociated with their inner circle to avoid bias at all costs.

Also encourage them to keep that overarching focus I talked about in my first tip. Their tendency will be to try to improve the design, however that should be your problem not theirs. The role of a client should be to defend the needs of their users and business not do the design. Encourage the client to make comments such as “I am not sure that my female users will like the masculine colours” rather than “can we make the whole design pink.” It is down to them to identify the problems and for you as the designer to find the most appropriate solution. Lastly, please when you're requesting feedback make sure you ask for ONE consolidated and FINAL document of revisions, this way you won't have to sort through 23 emails, as the client changes their mind every other hour.

So there you have it. Our 10 tips to improve design sign off. Will this ensure design approval every time? Unfortunately not. However it should certainly help smooth the way. Now you also know a little bit on how we work, for those potential clients out there... let's talk!

When the official logo of the 2012 London Olympics was released three years ago, the odd puzzle-piece design was the object of so much scorn that organizers were desperate to avoid similar criticism when they unveiled the mascots for the Games on Wednesday. With the introduction of Wenlock and Mandeville (above), London 2012 organizers realized their goal. The criticism of the mascots won't be similar to the complaints about the logo. No, they'll be much, much worse. London went for a complicated design that seems a bit uninspired and fails to identify itself to the global community with its host city, culture, history and people. See if makes sense to you...

Check out the short film which details the weird origins of Wenlock and Mandeville:

Wenlock is named after Much Wenlock, a village in Shropshire which held an event in the 19th century which inspired the modern Games. Mandeville is named after the hospital at which the Paralympic Games were founded. Though both sound like Tolkein characters, the names are quite good and are the only thing that makes the mascots distinctly British.

Having a hard time paying off those credit card bills? Well the design of the credit card contracts, make it harder for you to get rid of your debt. If Alan Siegel had his way, more of us would think twice to use plastic to pay for that expensive dinner. It's all in the visual communication.

Alan Siegel, is a brand expert and one of the leading authorities on business communication. He recently gave a great talk at the TED conference in Long Beach. He's man who preaches simplification and specifically regarding legal documents for government and business.

In preparation for the April comeback of Tiger Woods to the Masters I want to take the time point out how a key brand mishap, caused a deep wound in his legacy, which could have been avoided. What Tiger really needed was not a caddy, or a publicist, but a brand manager.

This is not to jump on the media barrage of articles streaming the web related to his "incident" or "incidents" (excuse me), but merely I feel this is the perfect opportunity explain how the success and downfall of the Tiger Woods relates to branding 101. I can't help but make a point of how it a key fundamental of branding was neglected and how it using the Tiger Woods 'case study' as an example for all brands, products or services.

Breaking the "Core Values"

I couldn't help but hear a loud undertone in this recent exclusive interview on ESPN with Tiger Woods when Tiger said, "I gotten away from my core values" and let me tell you, we're not just talking about Buddhism here. More importantly he forgot his "core values" were what drove his successful "brand". Like it or not, Tiger Woods is brand, a 'personal brand' which focuses on the individual, in this case a 'performance brand'. The Tiger Woods 'performance brand' can be interpreted by his success as a dominant golfer (athlete), his role as charasmatic family man, and more so, a marketable global figure. Like all branding, the 'brand' must be authentic, trusted, and faithful. These are the 'core' traits of which all brands must personify, it's the core ideas or values that drive the organization.

Up until this past November, the Tiger Woods brand had outward consistency, power and most of all loyalty. But internally, he was about to collapse. As he said himself, he became removed from his "core values" as a person, husband, and father. We won't get into his embarrassing "transgressions" and the details of his pathetic saga but it's important to note that because Tiger had abandoned his core values and ideas is how he got himself into this mess in the first place. The same way many companies and other brands become victim of their own success and become unmanaged. As brand expert Wally Olins states in his Brand Handbook,

"There always comes a time, however, in a successful organization when the informal, intuitive, perhaps muddled, but shared vision or core idea has to uncovered or rediscovered; when it has to be recreated, formalized, clarified and made coherent".

The steps to recovery is what Tiger is doing right now, but is it too late? Has he permantly damaged his 'brand image'? Will he ever be able to win over the hearts and minds of his loyal fans and followers he once had? Theses are the challenges that make for a great case study and with a brand manager in place, he should be able to overcome his woes and ultimately regain brand success.

During our daily industry readings, we came across this encourging article by brand consultant Tom Hinkes, a contribitor to adage.com. It was refreshing to hear from a well-respected and experienced brand marketer that great marketing requires a balance of strategy and creative. Currently, companies have been scaling back on creatively-led brand solutions and focusing more on "the numbers" approach.

More Data Is Not Better Data

Marketing departments used to be the creative engines powering successful corporations. Now they're overrun by number-crunching nerds. As a direct consequence, despite all the conspicuous focus on "change management," the way brands respond to change in the marketplace has deteriorated. A McKinsey Quarterly article several years ago argued that the key to "better branding" is to build brands "more scientifically." If managers would combine "forward-looking market segmentation" with structural-equation modeling, they could "build a better brand more efficiently." In short: more data, more regressions and more conjoint analysis mean the "brand crisis" is solved. But fluency with buzz words and expertise with spreadsheets do not guarantee brand-marketing competence.

We agree that there is a need for consumer research, but brand marketing is not a science, it's not driven solely by metrics or statistics. It requires analysis, discipline and detail. Even more, it requires emotion, vision and ideas. STARMEN shares this perspective, as we ourselves are visionaires and brand creatives at best! We can manage and balance both successfully, we have the insightful marketing abilities and natural creative talents to do so.

Enjoy the full article here.

"Have it Your Way" campaign reaches a whole new level in this Brazilian BK marketing stunt.

Ogilvy Brazil took the Burger King "Have it Your Way" tagline to new heights and presented diners with a "customized" surprise when they ordered a Whopper.

A secret camera at a BK restaurants took customers' pictures. Their photos were then printed instantly onto the wrappers of their freshly made burgers, giving a super personal meaning to "having it their way."

Can this be headed to your local BK? Would be fun...

Now you can get all the latest, up-to-the moment happenings from STARMEN and around the design world. No matter if it’s thirty seconds or 140 characters, we create ideas that don’t just talk, but get talked about.

Follow us now! @starmendesign

As an award-winning creative agency specializing brand design, we are proud to announce the redesign of the STARMEN web site. But "redesign" doesn't really cover it. This more than a aesthetic adjustment or surface-level change. This is more of a "refresh" both internally and externally. The new starmenusa.com reflects our new ideas, new thinking, and new outlook for our clients, and their brands. For those of you familiar with us, you'll find a lot of new and exciting information, about us, the services we offer and see new design work!

Our LA headquarters is buzzing with excitement! This site has been a labor of love, created with synchronized hard work, absolute enthusiasm, and meticulous attention to how effective design can be. The new STARMEN believes happy users means happy business. One goal of ours that hasn't changed is this: We are here to produce solid, valuable results for you! Now, we just look even better!

Visit our new virtual home and experience the new STARMEN!

Situated in the heart of Los Angeles, STARMEN separates itself from the plethora of design companies by remaining independent, creatively led, and modest enough in size to work closely with clients.  The November issue of Runway Magazine explains just this! Runway Magazine called us ‘Hollywood’s Rising Stars,’ and illustrates how a boutique design agency has found great footing in the entertainment capital of the world!

Download the full article here.