Also extremely useful is Marty Neumeier’s company and web site: Neutron LLC. Not only is he the author of some very helpful books (The Brand Gap and Zag), but he also provides training, workshops and e-newsletters. He will be in Chattanooga on September 11, 2008 to give two workshops, one for entrepreneurs and business leaders to learn about the “new branding”, another for branding professionals to learn more about “brand messaging”. Stay tuned to our blog and AIGA Chattanooga for more info on that event.

And this online book-work-in-progress has been interesting and useful to me: Visual Branding. It's by Tom Dorresteijn, a partner in internationally renowned Studio Dumbar.

Learn to write, then use presentations as a way to entertain as well as educate:

I can’t tell you how much I wish I had spent more time learning to write back in school — the day I decided to drop out of my English major was the semester I took Grammatical Writing. But now I am called on to utilize those grammatical skills on a daily basis.

My advice to people like me: find entertaining and informative writing and copy it. Copy it directly at first, word for word. Then you'll learn a thing or two about how that author structures his/her thoughts and you can begin to emulate that while developing your own style. You can see I am still learning...

Then, when it comes time to present that presentation you wrote, think about it as a sort of performance. I have heard that Landor is employing skits and improvisational techniques in their presentations now. We have experimented (thanks to a very open and creative client) with atypical or unexpected presentation techniques: strange locations, outfits/uniforms of sorts, old-fashioned overhead projectors, sound tracks and so on. Not only do they make the presentations entertaining and memorable, but they make the client feel free to step outside normal “meeting” moirees and expectations. It can really help your client to become more open to creative ideas.

But be wise: know your client well and know how far you can push the envelope. Don’t overdo it or they will not trust you...

Enviro-Friendly Office Supplies:

The Green Office

Green Earth Office Supply

Nifty Photoshop Tool:

In an earlier Tips, Tricks and Tools of the Trade we referred you to a web site LiveSurface for cool in-perspective comping... Since then we have learned how to do it ourselves in Photoshop CS3. Learn how here:

Design Center Tutorial: Vanishing Point

Some ways to Make A Design (that doesn’t suck) Very Quickly:

- take a graphic element/icon/logo/symbol/letter and step + repeat it into a pattern or turn it into a radial, then repeat or randomize or overlap

- minimize — leave as much empty “whitespace” (or whatever color you are working with) as possible

- use existing graphic language and repurpose or recontextualize for your pruposes — for example, I like to use dingbats, symbols or punctuation and modify small parts of them. Or I might use international signage symbols and overlap them or juxtapose contrasting signs (like a hiker and a Flammable sign).

- make it by hand. Or take something commonly seen as mechanized and render it by hand (eg LED letters drawn with charcoal)

- take a letter or number or punctuation symbol and make it big. And remember if it ends up big and ugly, its not big enough. If its as big as it can get and its still big and ugly, make it red.

okay, another useful post with links and advice ok how to copy stuff. I must say, when you're slow over there, you sure use the time wisely and make the rest of us feel bad not learning.

Thanks for the kind words Stevie - I forgot to add in the Creative Business Strategy part that any of us who are less than adept at marketing should be visiting Seth Godin’s site regularly or subscribing to his RSS feed:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/