In our line of work there is a lot of emphasis put on visuals and aesthetic quality. Here at kor group that is something that we’re obsessed with; the right color palette, the right typeface, a stunning composition. We can’t get enough.

What you don’t see is the strategy, process, and thinking behind our design. Good news–that’s going to change right now. In this series of blog posts I’ll take you behind the scenes of a project that’s very close to our hearts–a web standards compliant redesign of our website.

Practicing what we preach
As we sat around the table, it was unanimous. We all love our current Flash based website. It works well, it looks great, and it remains fresh even as it approaches it’s third birthday.

There was only one major problem. Times have changed and so have the best practices on the internet. The emphasis has turned to content generation, social media, and accessibility. We believe that all these trends are important to our clients’ brand strategy. We decided that these trends are important to our brand, too.

The wish list
Keeping our goals in mind, we started drawing charts and making lists. It started with a roughly sketched flow chart. Then refined into a site map and wire frames for every page on the website. This is a key part of the process. This information allows everyone to understand where the website is going and builds a solid foundation for the design.

Balancing design and social media
We’ve started blogging, twittering, and etsying. We’ve even introduced our own micro-blogging program for higher education! However, our focus never strays from creating beautiful and effective design for our clients. This is the message that we intend to send with our new website.

To support this message, we’ll be simplifying our site map, emphasizing our work, and redesigning our portfolio section to better display our projects. To incorporate our other content we will be folding the kor kitchen into our kor.com domain where it will have more prominence than it does now. It will also be redesigned to carry all of our most current content.

Decisions to be made
At this early stage we’re still figuring out a few important details. For instance, how will we manage our content? Do we need a CMS? Of course the blog will still be run on Wordpress, but will we need it for our non-dynamic pages? Stay tuned for answers to these important questions, and design in our next episode of “Redesigning kor.”

The hoopla surrounding the Tropicana orange juice re-branding, has caused a stir at kor group and our branding juices are flowing! We’ve been following the news about Peter Arnell’s design and the 20% sales plunge that it is said to have caused.

“After its package redesign, sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line plummeted 20% between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22, costing the brand tens of millions of dollars. On Feb. 23, the company announced it would bow to consumer demand and scrap the new packaging, designed by Peter Arnell. It had been on the market less than two months.” AdAge.com 04/02/09 http://adage.com/article?article_id=135735

With more higher education and healthcare clients than retail, kor group hasn’t been in a situation like Arnell’s–seeing hard evidence, within weeks, of a re-designed brand’s success or failure. We do, however, feel very strongly about our clients’ brands and make every effort to improve, re-design or tweak as needed/requested. We also feel it’s important to provide our clients with clear and concise instructions on how, when and where to use their brand identity.

Most recently, we were asked to expand on Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s brand standards (www.bidmc.org). We created a hospital-wide Graphic Standards Guide and 6 additional Graphic Standards Guides for the Centers/Institutes within the hospital that are using a new identity and color palette in conjunction with the BIDMC logo. Each center’s name is within a colored square including the Transplant Institute, represented by PMS 234 (see below). After putting the finishing touches on these guides, we’ll pass them on to the internal Marketing and Communications Department at BIDMC. These Graphic Standards Guides will provide the internal teams and their vendors with the guidelines needed to prepare artwork, and make informed decisions about how the brand should be represented. Especially in these difficult economic times, companies will be forced to make these decisions internally, and be unable to hire outside consultants. It is our hope that by providing these tools to our clients, they become increasingly comfortable with their own brand usage, but still value the additional communications projects kor group creates to further promote their brand.

One week ago today kor group hosted our annual Creative Retreat. It is
always an overly aggressive programmed day. Our goal each year is to review
the previous year and set goals for the coming year and of course to
complete the day by 6pm to enjoy a cocktail.

At the retreat we address the state of kor group, evaluate the market
sectors we work in, share what we learned at conferences from the previous
year, discuss latest technologies, discuss our marketing plan, commit to
conferences and decide to attend or exhibit, assign team members to speak at
seminars we’ve been invited to and review all of the previous year’s
completed work. This all takes place before lunch!

By the way a big thumbs up to Liz for ordering from my favorite Italian
eatery in West Newton, Comella’s – homemade pasta and eggplant and cheaper
than the local business catering establishments.

Each retreat we’ve brought in guest speakers after lunch to engage the kor
members in various team building exercises, coach us on presentation skills
and so on. This year we wanted to be somewhat self indulgent and take the
DISC test. The DISC test is a research based model that is designed to help
you understand why you act the way you do.

We thought it would be interesting to learn who we are as individuals and as
a group. What we gained from this exercise is how to work with different
behavioral types.

For example when we are engaged with a D (dominant) we know what methods
will be most effective in communicating with this client and how we will
build a balanced personality set to work on the account.

So what we thought would be a self indulgent exercise, turned out to be
yet another skill set in our kor group tool belt.

This is who we are:

D (Dominant)
D
D
D
D
I (Influential)
I
I
I
I
S (Steady)
S
C (compliant)
C
C
C

So when career opportunities become available at kor group S and C need
apply!

Yesterday, we had Samira Daswani spend the day with us. She is currently a first-year Wellesley College student as well as an intern at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum and Cutural Center. We have been working with The Davis since 2007, so when Barbara Levitov, Marketing Manager extrordinaire, asked if Samira could shadow us for a day; we jumped at the chance!

The Overview:
In the morning she spent time with Liz, our office manager, who gave her an overview of how things work from an operational standpoint at kor group. She then spent some time looking through our printed samples to get a feeling for the type and breadth of work we do. She was ready for us (we like that) with lots of great questions about how a design business runs.

Coffee break with paper:
At around 11 am we met with Dana Sallee from Appleton papers and Joyce Robillard from Arjowiggins. We poured over paper promos and swatchbooks over coffee-talk about Curious and Utopia papers. Interestingly, Joyce had one of our printed pieces that we designed for MIT!

Creative Tour:
We spent some time making our way around the studio to see what the other designers were working on:

James reviewed proofs with us (see image below) for the Cargo Ventures project for the Drydock Building collateral which he teamed up with Matt on. 

Rusha showed us the trade show panels she is designing for Bond, a construction company.

Justin showed us the alumni magazine he is currently designing for New England Law Boston.

Brigitte showed us some new concept boards that she and Matt are working on for ING.

 

A project in proofing stage

 

 

Brain Power:
After we all had lunch (yes we really do all take lunch together at one long table), Samira joined a brainstorming session for Bucknell University, lead by Anne, Dan, and Libretto (a writing team we work with). She offered a fresh perspective to the brainstorming session.

We said our good-bye’s and off she went with her bag of kor schwag; just another fun and productive day at kor group!

Thanks for spending the day with us, Samira!

There are phones for all kinds of people. Some like Apple, others Blackberry. How do they fight their battles for the consumer’s attention? Here’s how Blackberry takes a shot at Apple and Apple’s response.

As we prepare to sit down to our annual St. Patty’s Day feast to chow on mounds of corned beef and cabbage and wash it down with a little green ale, I can see from my office that this years table is set with real silverware, not plastic, with a communal roll of paper towels rather than individual napkins, with a stick of butter and a bottle of mustard rather than the individual size packets…and I smile because it is evident that we really are practicing what we preach!

Squeezing 15 people around a lunch table is a challenge, more so is finding the room on the table and in the trash for the instant soup containers, Wheat Thin boxes, potato chip bags, York Peppermint Pattie wrappers, and so on. Thanks to our ever-diligent team of recycling commandos we have a home for every type of container, bag, and wrapper that are conveniently located within throwing distance of the table. And one day Jette will actually make the toss!

While we have a successful laundry list of the green things we do (see list below) we are losing the green battle with the most important liquid in our daily lives – yup – coffee!

Every morning we wait in line holding our little plastic tubs of flavored coffee until it is our turn to plug it into to the Keurig. It is amazing how much love we get from these little

K-cups. But like anything they have their downside – they are not biodegradable or recyclable. We tried tearing one apart to see if we could rinse and recycle it, after the 30 plus minute battle between the mini plastic cup and screwdrivers, kitchen knifes, and yes exact-o blades we gave up.

Having witnessed this defeat, our enviro-friendly office manager did the unthinkable – she unplugged the Keurig and placed it in the storage room. To her credit she was diligent about bringing other makers in to the kitchen that used pods, not plastic. The pods either came in foil, or they tasted horrible, and we weren’t any closer to a greener coffee option. After a few under caffeinated cranky weeks the Keurig made it back to our kitchen. While we don’t feel good about the k-cups we are at least perky and continue to look for other alternatives. So please, if you have any brilliant bean advice, please send suggestions to  liz@kor.com.

Besides the obvious paper recycling bins and ink cartridges here’s what else kor group is doing:

• We conduct paperless production meetings – we view the project spread sheets on a large screen in the conference room.

• We use both sides of paper in the printers.

• Switched to florescent light bulbs. They use less electricity and last five times longer than traditional light bulbs!

• We place our presentations on flash drives instead leaving hardcopies behind for the clients or prospects.

• We stopped using aerosol spray mount over two years ago!

• We shut down all of our computers every night.

• Conduct conference calls whenever possible rather than driving to meetings.

• The Associates ride their bikes to work every day – even in the middle of the winter! And 7 others take public transportation!

• The real recycling commando Brigitte, takes home to recycle everything that the landlord doesn’t – such as ink cartridges, gift baskets, and batteries.

• We no longer accept the free plastic cups from our water delivery company.

• When ordering out we no longer accept the paper plates and plastic utensils.

Team ACIS/Kor/Sarah Wilkins

We just finished designing the ACIS (American Council for International Studies) 2010 student travel catalog, and this year we worked with a wonderful illustrator from New Zealand, Sarah Wilkins. Her use of color and imagery are refreshing and well thought out. She worked closely and collaboratively with the kor-ACIS team which made the design and approval process seamless.

Take a minute to check out Sarah’s work, and what great student travel packages ACIS has to offer!

Catalog cover

 

Sample interior spread

MB and I (James) just came back from a great trip to Kalamazoo, Michigan. It was a whirlwind of a trip from getting stuck on the runway in Boston to overdosing on salty snacks on the 2 hour ride from Detroit to KZOO. We really enjoyed meeting and talking to Kalamazoo College about kor group, our process and capibilities. It’s a beautiful campus, we left feeling inspired. Hopefully we’ll be working with them soon… Fingers crossed, Stay tuned.

Here are some pics.

With the change in the economy and growing competition to win new business, we have noticed an increased trend in companies requesting spec work (speculative or free work) from us. kor group internally calls it “the design bake off.”

The pressure to compete in this activity is intense, but kor group holds strong to the belief that it is not the best strategy to finding your branding or visual communications firm.

The practice of requesting spec work is a traditional advertising approach where a select group of agencies develop and pitch ideas for free in the hope of winning large advertising contracts.

I was so excited today to find an article in the BBJ that addresses this issue! (by the AD Club, President Kathy Kiely)

She writes

“… This approach is losing favor because many agencies are seeking to reduce the amount of essentially free work they do …it is not the best way to find the right marketing partner, says industry experts.”

The article reiterates everything kor group has consistently told our clients for 15 years.

There is no single magic bullet, you need to really understand the client to develop the right strategy, it is most important to see how collaborative the team will be, and the real test of relationships comes when things become difficult. 

I really hope companies looking for strong branding firms read this article and take it to heart.

Gary Hustwit, the director that bought us the film Helvetica, is working on a new film - Objectified. Described as ”a feature-length independent documentary about industrial design,” it is due for release in March, 2009. As part of this film, the director gained access to Apple’s exclusive design facility to interview Jonathan Ive as well as interviewing designers from BMW, IDEO, Toyota and more. It looks like it could be another great look into how design shapes the world around us. Check out the trailer!