How the holidays can help your company AND your community

With the approaching holiday season there are many things to be thankful for and many people to thanks that have helped you, your company, and your families this year. But there are also people in the community that can use your help too. The elderly, the homeless, and charities that desperately need donations right now as we are still in economic distress. So why not combine these effort? Why not create your holiday promotion this year to also give to the community that needs us all. Here's what I mean...

1. Design custom bags and send them to clients. Have instructions for clients to fill them up with unwanted clothes and also leave instructions for a drop off place. This way it helps your company by sending a great designed piece as well as helping clothe the community.

2. Pick a charity and donate in the name of your client(s). Why send a cheesy piece of swag when you can help them donate to a worthy cause. Create a custom well designed card and viola. Just remember to pick a cause that's general and not too religious, specific, or political.

These are just a couple of ideas that can have more impact than swag or a generic card. There are even more tailored possibilities with whatever type of company/organization you are. The sky's the limit on helping the community.

5 Great Cult Movie Posters

I am starting a local Midnight Movie Madness here in Anderson SC and while looking through the tons of worthy films for the first year, there are also some very good poster designs. I want to share 5 and hopefully this will make you dig deeper and search for more because there are some great ones ranging from pulp to modern design. Some of the handpainted posters are breathtakingly beatutiful. So without wasting anymore time, here's the list.

1. Andy Warhol's Frankenstein
I really never heard of this movie until my movie project took off. I own a design company MUSE DesignLabs so the marriage of B movie and Andy Warhol naturally gravitated to me.



2. Plan 9 From Outer Space
Dubbed the worst movie of all time, this one is a treat to laugh at as a B movie and pretty much sets the precedent.



3. Death Race 2000
Great, great movie. Remake...um...not so much. This alternate future flick has a classic racing poster but more interesting due to the nature and look of the exploding machinery.



4. Donnie Darko
Very good modern cult movie and the philosophies involved will definitely make you think. The movie poster is great with the bunny silhouette filled with imagry from the movie. Very nice.



5. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Best for last? Yeah, probably. This movie is the Midnight Movie staple for decades. It has rabid fans that dress up like their favorite characters and go see this movie over and over in a party type atmosphere. The poster is a great work of art that gives an iconic feel.

The Carolina - Clemson Pep Rally

We are working with Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Upstate to start this great fundraiser. MUSE DesignLabs is designing the look and feel of the event, which will be a great, great thing for the youth in Upstate South Carolina.

Designing the poster was a joy but it had it's challenges along the way. We wanted it to stick out from the rest of the orange and garnet that flows through this area each fall. We also wanted to make it more about the pagaentry of the rivalry than the die-hard football mentality. Which was hard, it's easy to get sucked into that vortex if not careful. But both Clemson University and The University of South Carolina were both outstanding getting us images to use. Our solution was to use the mascots and I think the identity has turned out phenominally well due to that.

The Carolina - Clemson event is November 24th at Zen in Greenville. For ticket information, call 864-242-0676

Guerilla Marketing!

Want to get big impact with a little money? Try guerilla marketing. If done properly, it can expose your company, organization, products, etc. like no other form of marketing. The foundation is (of course) the idea. However, if your plan of attack, lacks, then it can potentially do harm to the thing you are trying to promote. And one fundamental rule is KNOW YOUR DEMO! What works in LA or New York might not work in Anderson, SC...trust me. Here are a few examples of ideas gone right.

1. The Sopranos

The Sopranos TV show utilized a HUGE population center in NYC, the taxi cabs. And that's part of guerilla marketing, picking the right placement for your marketing to yield maximum results. The budget on this project is probably higher than most examples, but if you do have a great idea and can afford to put money into it, it's all the better and even if it doesn't yield instantaneous results. Your reputation skyrockets.








2. Mr. Clean

This idea is particularly brilliant due to it's inexpensive means. Really, it's printed vinyl, and (possibly) paint. That's It! (Well probably a bit of schmoozing with the city to allow it.)



3. Help for the homeless

This is a great idea and completely practical budget-wise. This one is one of my all-time favorites, because it is also a social commentary. But, just as all the other examples, the idea bears the real gravity. Marketing genius.












4.Dental Care

Totally inexpensive, eye-catching marketing idea. Plus, it's
interactive, where you can pull off teeth (probably with humerous results). Great marketing idea.







5.Bad Hair Day

Great example of how to use humor to your advantage. WARNING: Cheesiness is an easy pitfall in trying to be clever. Well, unless it's sarcastic cheesiness....then it works.

Get Your Creative OUT!

As a designer, I find it hard to feel a connection sometimes (especially with website design) to the creative end. And with so many software programs, it seems there's less and less of it going around. The sad part is, it's a great, rich way to design. Even stenciling, potato stamping, or screen printing are great avenues to venture down.

For today's blog I chose to show a video tutorial I found on screenprinting and how these guys made a wolf TShirt easily. It's a lot of fun and a great tutorial for everyone that wants to get creative professionally or recreationally.

As always check us out at MUSEDesignLabs.us

Making Your Twitter Page Chirp!

Almost every celebrity and business are now up to speed with Twitter. I found it about 1/2 year ago and originally dismissed it UNTIL reading and researching on the power of viral marketing. Sure if you're Oprah or Aston Kutcher, who needs this? But if you're a small company (as MUSE DesignLabs is) it's a powerful tool to keep the excitement level up for your business or organization. It's also a great way to (like blogging) talk about a service you know about more than most of your readers.

But as far as design goes, less is definitely more with Twitter. Static background & color palette options is about as far as it goes. Twitter definitely avoided the mistake made by myspace, which was giving users too much design power & options. The byproduct? God-awful web pages and eventually it leads to less traffic by readers.

But having said that, there are a few tricks to maximize your Twitter-page.

1. Make the absolute most out of your static background. I've seen a few businesses put a banner to explain themselves, mine, I have an arrow pointing out of the side with the same hexadecimal color code so as you expand the arrow grows. You may also tile the background to gain nice effects. One very good one I've seen had an illustrated cityscape that repeated perfectly.

2. Neutrality...you want your colors behind any copy to be neutral based, which are whites, blacks, grays, or wahed out colors. This gives your page hiearchy and sets the focus where it needs to be, and that's on the copy.

3. Incorporate a banner graphic in your background. DON'T rely on Twitter's "About me" section to gain viewers attention.

4. Lastly, BE CONSISTENT with your branding and company identity. Don't underestimate the connection potential customers will have between different medias. It all has to match your base identity. And all roads MUST lead to Rome...by this I mean Rome is your company (or capital), then consider Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Your website, Your newspaper ads, and all other collateral material....your cities. Well the roads must all point back to your company, but they must also reference each other to create a marketing web.

*ref. www.cooltwitterpages.com

2008: 5 Amazing Album Covers

As technology rolls on and on, album art seems like a dying craft, but the album art still features some of the most amazing design year in and out. This is partially due to music being a great influence to designers as is and by cutting out the middleman and listening to the client you are designing for creates a more potent route to creative design. In 2008, we saw a few albums that stretched the boundries while others took a more refined vintage approach. Here are a few of the great albums of 2008...





Santo Gold | Self Titled

Santo Gold's album is a prime example of the deconstructed approach that is en vogue in design today. Unconventional methods to warrant a personal response.








Nas | Untitled

Wow, the use of photography and subtle effects creates an amazingly powerful, impactful image. It also portrays the subject as a strong enduring figure, and the power of the image almost begs the viewer to find out who the artist is, if the subtle N in Nas wasn't enough. Plus, the way the background was completely darkened to not compete with the image, was a brilliant idea.







Oasis | Dig Out Your Soul

The 2008 release for Oasis utilized symbolism and a collage approach to create hiearchy in their layout.It feels like cut & paste abstraction while that style gives a uniform feel to the album throughout. The handwritten copy/logo really pops in contrast to the almost Photoshop cut out images. Much like Coldplay's Vida La Vida.







Black Mountain | In The Future

Black Mountain's album gives the eerie feel to some of Pink Floyd's album artwork. Overtly modernism but also gives a surrealist feel to it. I love art that is completely open to interpretation.










Fleet Foxes | Self Titled

Fleet Foxes art goes in a very vintage folk direction. This cover feels like it should be printed for vinyl and really the designer did an extraordinary job, because listening to Fleet Foxes, it matches their style perfectly.