SMPS is the Society for Marketing of Professional Services and their ‘Build Business’ Awards Gala was held last Thursday at the Boston Marriott Copley Place. The SMPS Awards program is the longest-standing, most prestigious awards competition that recognizes excellence in marketing communications by professional services firms in the design and building industry.

Judges’ comments were that BOND’s submission was “very clearly stated,” that the “color scheme was very nice” and that the “identity matches the company very well.”

kor is honored to receive such a recognition and enjoyed the evening’s celebration with some of the BOND client team.

Below is a photo of our own MB Jarosik with Marc Pellitier (left) and Ed Bond of BOND at the Gala.

kor group repositioned the brand, designed new corporate identity and marketing materials including the website www.bondbrothers.com.

Gold, Silver, Bronze? TBD…

Bond Collateral

This year’s event was focused on the topic of healthcare reform. The design reflects  a more serious typographic approach, while still communicating elegance and festivity. We created this system of materials using a rich color palette, soft transparencies and innovative shapes which are formed from the letters and numbers in PB10. Congratulations to BID for yet another successful fundraising event!

Invitation cover

Invitation with save the date postcard

Invitation interior with overleaf

From my schizophrenic notes!

Jan Chipcase — Nokia Research Center, user experience research
His visuals and personal stories of travel captured everyone. His research takes him to different cultures, countries off the map and villages in-between grids. It was fascinating to see how necessity drives innovation.

Emile Pilloton — Project H Design, industrial designer
Inspires and believes in life-improving humanitarian products. Her innovative solutions of a handmade bag turning into a hammock for the homeless women and counting tyre games for rural Africa and North Carolina truly carved the path for creative solutions.

The Integration of Design and Business — panel discussion
A very lively panel of Debbie Millman, Peter Lawrence, Bill Faulkes on design strategy, human behaviors, business of design, value and design as a business resource.

Culture Factor or Why the best laid plans go awry — Bianca Dahl, anthropologist, brown university
An enlightening workshop through several case studies on why the solutions with best research, taking the needs of people in mind, with regular follow-ups in the villages of India and Africa went wrong. We tried to answer, why after spending billions of dollars in aid with no result, how we interpret local culture and how to use these techniques to design for a better world.

Teddy Cruz — architect, san deigo
His incredible research and knowledge of San Diego and Tijuana culture clash at the border, literally, was mind-numbing. San Diego is the largest gated community. The exchange — discarded houses, materials from San Diego installed in Tijuana while migration from Tijuana to San Diego provides interesting challenges and opportunities.

Kiggie Hvid — Index
Based in Denmark, Index advocates, and offers the worlds largest financial assistance to design projects that improve life. Check out kiva.org where individuals can microfinance an entrepreneur to lift themselves out of poverty anywhere on this planet.

Jaime Lerner — architect and urban planner, brazil
He transformed his congested, polluted city to an efficient unclogged city with great mass-transportation. A strong advocate for public transportation gave his gyan on how an individual can make a difference:

1. separate garbage

2. use public transportation

3. work close to home / live close to work

4. multiuse facilities

my excerpt:
Consume less, keep it simple, don’t compromise, impactful-meaningful work, go beyond going green, follow my heart, immerse in different cultures, TRAVEL, and DESIGN LIKE I GIVE A DAMN.

You?

A Career in Design?

I took the graphic design class at my high school thanks to the suggestion of a friend. It was only a matter of time before I discovered that I loved doing graphic design; whether it was a CD covers, magazine cover, movie poster, or website. I am required to complete a senior project about careers and for mine I chose to job shadow one of the partners of kor group, Anne Callahan.

During this experience I interviewed employees to see what the different jobs were, see some of the current and past work of kor group, and write this blog. I learned that there are many different programs used in graphic design such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, and even though the majority of the day is spent working at a computer, it does not get boring because of the diversity of projects. Some people were working on brochures for colleges such as Merrimack College and Bucknell University. Others were working on different logos for businesses such as Pixelgroove and Bond Brothers, and some were working on invitations and cards for events for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Here at kor group there is a very laid back environment. The employees are all friendly and did a great job explaining to me exactly what it is they do. The environment here is very creative and exciting. It is modern with fun and exciting colors and each person has a desk with no cubicle walls so it is very open to collaborate, interact and help with different projects. I learned that it takes a long time to work on a project and sometimes even takes a few people to work on one. Also, one person may work on a few projects at a time. Designers interact with many different types of people including clients, printers, programmers, and writers. All of these components come together to create the final product, whether it’s a website, print brochure, or brand identity.

Being a part of kor group for two days really helped me understand what a day in the life of a graphic designer is like. This experience really opened my eyes to a new perspective for this career. As of now I hope to pursue this major in college. Hopefully I will work in a successful design studio like kor group!

Anne & Charlotte at kor group

In order to deliver effective and creative results, kor group feels that no matter what the economic state or the clients’ budget is, we must follow a simple process with our clients in order to achieve their objectives.

get ready: beginning the relationship and scoping the process.
get set: presenting and vetting the findings that will shape the communications.
design: gaining approval for creative concepts that are unlike traditional approaches.

We showed examples of effective strategies, and cross platform communications for some of our higher ed clients such as; New England Law | Boston, Emerson College, and Assumption College.

We also walked through some of our sketches and creative processes for Berklee College of Music and MIT.

Download the full presentation here.

We just received our feedback from CASE and participants seemed very pleased and informed with our information.

Be on the look out for our next lecture.

Cheers!

Since its start 15 years ago, kor group has been involved in issue-driven projects for healthcare and social well-being including event branding for neonatology at BID, a brochure for Peer center at BU School of Public Health, bridging the gap between HIV patients and doctors, and donor appreciation materials for Melmark, an organization supporting individuals with developmental disabilities. Working within the client’s limitations, we apply the same level of energy, creativity and problem solving found in our for-profit work to deliver spectacular results for these worthy causes.

Pro-bono work not only builds a bank of good karma; the process of working on these projects is a reward in itself. Posing a unique set of design challenges that impact the world for the better when solved effectively, they are fun for a designer to tackle. Working on such projects creates a feel-good situation that aligns with kor’s philosophy of community-building and giving back to society. The turbulent economy along with the ever-changing political and social landscape calls for positive and responsible actions, a reevaluation of beliefs, and an understanding of the greater good that can come from the smallest of changes. As designers, we can be the front runners driving that change.

The debate about speculative work is growing with the rise of “crowdsourcing,” as discussed in this recent Wired blog post. The term applies to a number of websites where designers compete to win projects by submitting concepts from which the client can choose. This trend, working towards the lowest common denominator, can only commoditize the creative process. When designers are pitted against one another to produce speculative work, they do so in a vacuum – making presumptions that can only cheapen the final product. They must “speculate” on the clients’ needs and wants based on what little they can gleaned from a short RFP description or existing marketing materials. Thus, the work presented in the crowdsourcing model can be seen as mere caricatures of a brand – something that neither designer nor client wants. 

As Charles Eames said, “The details are not the details. They make the design”

It is argued that the speculative work provides the client with an insight into the capabilities of particular designer or firm. And it is understandable that those commissioning work might believe this to be the best way to evaluate design skills. Hey, you take a car for test drive, why not a designer? But a car and a company brand are two very different things. A car is a commodity. It’s a product that we want to be manufactured the same way every single time. On the other hand, a brand is the result of a collaborative process that aims to produce a unique result every single time. To evaluate the branding process, you need to evaluate the ability of a design firm to create unique solutions at the end of the creative process.

Here at kor, we recently produced a logo book that serves as an inventory of our identity work to share with potential clients. This document allows them to observe our ability to strategize and communicate the unique personality inherent in each of our clients’ brands. If our work for other companies, schools, hospitals, museums, etc. communicates effectively to potential clients, they can be confident that kor is able to do the same for them. That is a far less risky proposition than making a decision based on the decontextualized gamble of a speculative sketch!