Posts Tagged ‘design’

Ducks Pick Design

July 14th, 2010 by Rebecca Hume

We at Big Duck spend a lot of our professional time thinking about websites. A lot. Whether we’re creating sites for clients, leading webinars about online strategy, or just keeping up with best practices, a good chunk of our workday brainpower is devoted to the web.

But then there are the non-work hours, when we surf and search and chat and click just like everyone else.

So we thought it might be interesting to see what we could learn from the websites we like to use on our own time. (Ahem. Not those kind of websites.) All the ducks selected sites they’ve found in their personal web use that they think are particularly well designed.The results are below, along with brief explanations why each duck made the pick he or she did.

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Branding of Olympic Proportions

February 17th, 2010 by Sonny Mui

I’ve been swept up with 2010 Winter Olympics fever over the past couple of days, not because I’m a huge fan of figure skating or ice hockey, mind you, but mostly because my wife is pretty obsessed with the Games (yes, I’m blaming her for my watching sports).

credit: Vancover2010.com

credit: Vancover2010.com

As I started watching the opening ceremony and the subsequent individual competitions, it struck me how the Olympics brand is such a global venture. And I don’t just mean global in the “countries-around-the-world” sense. I mean from a designer’s standpoint, it’s a dream opportunity to design things on a scale that can vary from the size of a pen to something akin to a literal architectural village, across multiple disciplines.

With all the elements that would need to be designed for the Olympics, you can bet that design is one of the first major tasks to be tackled for a host city. Heck, even before a final city is selected, the candidates will design a visual campaign system around the push to be picked. Anyone remember the bids for Chicago or New York City ?

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Do Good Right Here.

October 6th, 2009 by Sarah Durham

BCFLogoTag_RGB

Did you know that if Brooklyn were its own city it’d be the fourth largest in America? Of course you did.

We Ducks love Brooklyn – and now we’ve got another reason. Last week, the Brooklyn Community Foundation officially launched- and were were delighted to be a part of it. For the past several months, we’ve been working with Brooklyn Community Foundation staff and consultants to develop a visual identity, tagline (’Do Good Right Here’), website, and launch collateral for Brooklyn’s first community foundation.

Their mission is to improve the lives of people in Brooklyn by strengthening communities through local giving, grantmaking and community service. We’re delighted to be a part of it and look forward to seeing their excellent mission come to life!

New website

New website

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Feedback that Doesn’t Screech Through the Loudspeakers
Episode IV: A New Hope

September 25th, 2009 by Dan Gunderman and Sonny Mui
Frankensteining

It's best to avoid "Frankensteining."

We’re sure that, if you’ve picked the right creative team, what they present to you will be glorious. That’s certainly true if you’re dealing with work done by the two of us. We’re tremendous. But what if it’s not? What can you do to keep from pissing off these temperamental weirdos, sitting so expectantly in front of you with their precious, precious work?

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Feedback that Doesn’t Screech Through the Loudspeakers
Episode III: Not Tenants or Tennis, but Tenets

September 18th, 2009 by Dan Gunderman and Sonny Mui

Welcome back to our series about feedback. If you haven’t read our intro ramblings or our suggestions about preparation, you still can. Otherwise, read on…

If you’ve ever worked on a fundraising campaign or a website redesign or any other activity that requires either a creative agency or freelance designers and copywriters, you’ve probably seen a lot of work you hated. We hope that you’ve also seen a lot of work with which you’ve been thrilled.

But you probably know first-hand that getting there can be difficult, especially when dealing with the “quirks of the creative personality.” (We can say that because we’re “creatives,” as we’re called in the biz. We wouldn’t recommend discussing the quirks of the creative personality directly with creatives with quirky personalities.)

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Feedback that Doesn’t Screech Through the Loudspeakers
Episode II: Be Preppie or at Least Prepared

September 16th, 2009 by Dan Gunderman and Sonny Mui

This is a series about feedback, but it’s also a part of a larger conversation about process. Any feedback relates directly to the goals of a project.

At Big Duck, we begin any big project with what we call a project brief. It is a simple document that lays out what you hope to accomplish with the assignment and any parameters related to the project. The strategic and creative teams at Big Duck rely on the project brief to guide our thinking, our brainstorming, our sketching, and even the whining that inevitably accompanies our creative struggles associated with any project.

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Feedback that Doesn’t Screech Through the Loudspeakers
Episode I: We Need Each Other, Like Wall Street and Greed

September 9th, 2009 by Dan Gunderman and Sonny Mui
Dan and Sonny at work.

Dan and Sonny at work.

The two of us have had the pleasure of working together as a creative team (copy and design) over a number of years at two different agencies, for a wide array of corporate and nonprofit clients. We much prefer the nonprofits. Much. Seriously. There’s no comparison. To give you an idea of what we mean, one of our former clients was a major liquor brand. We are both physically unable to drink alcohol. And that, friends, is the tip of the iceberg.

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Designing the way to better public policy

July 23rd, 2009 by Rebecca Hume

This week in her blog for The New York Times, design critic Allison Arieff argues that we Americans are in desperate need of a national design policy. Considering everything else there is to worry about these days, it seems like an easy idea to dismiss. After all, do we really need to spend tax dollars making sure things look nice?

The short answer is, Yes. Absolutely.

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