Yes, both of the partners of Hexanine will be speaking together at this year’s HOW Design Live. We’re super excited and ready to deliver the goods at our talk, and it’d be fun if you come too. We’ve always left the HOW Design events re-energized, inspired, and with tired arms from carrying cool swag. This year it’ll be in Boston from June 22-25 — clam chowder, that other historic ballpark, and that New England charm. What else do you need to know?

As speakers, we’re authorized to give you a super-secret promo code that will get you a $100 discount. Just enter HSPKR in the discount code box during the registration process, and HOW will deduct $100 from your total registration. Combine that with the March 30th Early Bird rate, it’s $170 off — that will buy a lot of Sam Adams beer! Can’t wait to see you there.

We’ve just received the proofs for our upcoming book, “Damn Good: Top Designers Discuss Their All-Time Favorite Projects” and are fine-tooth combing one last time before the volume heads to the printer. We’re finalizing the details with our publisher, HOW Books, and everyone’s excited as the finish line draws near. We will be releasing some more images, spreads, and other sneak peeks of the book very soon, so be on the lookout.

We collaborated on a touchscreen presentation for Humana, alongside Edelman, Re:Think Post, Grow Interactive, and Humana’s internal team. More details in our portfolio.

After nearly two years in hiatus, the iam8bit art show is back, with a high-profile gallery opening next Thursday, August 11th! This show will be one for the ages, and definitely worth checking out. Started by our friends at iam8bit in 2005, the art show has featured hundreds of artists’ interpretations of their favorite 1980s video game heroes, heroines, villains, and damsels in distress — and this show should be the best yet.

Peep the awesome poster art above, created by our buddy Dave Crosland.

Also, the new iam8bit book, which we designed and co-published, will be officially released at the show.

Take a look for more info on the opening, and the evening’s festivities, which will include all-night ambiance by DJ R-Rated. Both Jason and Tim will be in attendance, so come down and join us for the festivities!

Video games are no longer a niche market. They’re big business, having long-since eclipsed Hollywood blockbusters in revenue. Culturally, we’ve grown used to video game franchises with their own storylines, plots, and characters — a complex web of merchandising, marketing, and gameplay.

It’s easy to forget that these paths were forged by a cast of simple, clever little characters of ’80s videogames. Their screen time may have been short, but Pac-Man, Q*Bert, Mario, and many other characters were bursting with personality, fun, and an ethos that we wanted to capture in the book, SUPER iam8bit: More Art Inspired By Classic Video Games of the ’80s. With our client-partners and co-publishers, iam8bit, we designed the entire volume, helped curate the mass of excellent artwork, and launched our creative imprint, Plastic Highway.

For more details about this project, power up to our iam8bit portfolio page.

And if that’s not enough ’80s video game goodness for you, be sure to check out iam8bit’s 5th art show in Los Angeles, where the book will be officially released and available for sale.

UPDATE: We received a Twitter reply from @CDOTNews. See the end of the post for details.

To:
Gabe Klein, Commissioner of CDOT
Chicago Department of Transportation
30 N. LaSalle Street
Suite 1100
Chicago, IL 60602
cc: Rahm Emmanuel

Dear Commissioner Klein and Mayor Emmanuel,

It’s no secret that the city of Chicago currently finds itself in a challenging financial state. The economy and the previous administration’s decisions and poor budget planning have left our city with the desperate need to do more with less. Many organizations and businesses face similar challenges — and there are a lot of ways to cut costs, trim expenditures, and stretch the city’s money. But crowdsourcing the new CDOT logo is a terrible idea.

On the surface, it might appear that holding an “open call” for logos would yield many more options, and thus, a better chance to get what the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) needs out of a new identity. And of course, in these challenging economic times, “free” might seem like the obvious choice, but as part of a graphic design firm that focuses on identity design, I have to tell you that this is a dangerous path to tread. I can almost guarantee that this logo project will go off the rails if kept on its current course, because fundamentally, a disconnected logo design process is a lose-lose situation for both the clients, the audience of CDOT, and any graphic designers involved. Here are some alternative strategies that we’d suggest, rather than resorting to crowdsourcing. Building some or all of these thoughts into a revamped logo design process will help ensure that CDOT gets a logo that accurately and powerfully communicates its essence, without breaking budgets or wasting the precious time of our city government employees. So, here they are:

Hire someone with a track record.
Instead of giving everyone a shot at this large-scale project, it seems much wiser to find some experts. Just as you wouldn’t want to have a “dentist-in-training” or a “dental hobbyist” work on your teeth, it makes sense to work alongside a team who has been down these paths before. Hiring a proven and experienced design team will help you to get the project right the first time. They will save you time and money, since they are aware of regular pitfalls, important requirements, and next steps that your internal CDOT team might not be aware of. Even though each logo or identity project is unique, there are underlying principles and overarching methodologies that come with experience, and an experienced identity design firm will employ those to make sure the project will run smoothly from initial brief, to concepting, through execution and production.

Realize that more is not always better.
It might seem like common sense to say that the strengths of crowdsourcing design are that you get more bang for your buck. Lots more designs and design options should automatically lead to more quality logo options to choose from, right? Well, not really. The money you might have initially saved by not paying a strategic design firm will be wasted in countless hours spent sifting through a deluge of weak, poor, unprofessional and inappropriate design submissions. It takes a lot of time to curate the logo entries that have no filter of quality, thought, or craft.

By disconnecting from the process, you sacrifice rapport and strategy.
One of the foundational, essential elements of any good design project involve building relationships and understanding the needs of each client — whether they be budgetary, political (not in Chicago, of course…), or strategic. What have the previous CDOT marketing and design efforts been? How were they received internally and by the general public? What internal efficiency issues need to be kept in mind? Who will be evaluating the success and quality of the designs? What specific criterion do these decision-makers bring to the table that are separate from (or at odds with) the actual project goals? These kinds of points sometimes are less tangible and difficult to communicate, but they often mean the difference between success and failure in a design project. To ignore this aspect of the process is tantamount to asking hundreds of strangers to submit their “best guesses” as logos.

In brief, create a brief.
It’s rather difficult to reach your destination successfully if you don’t know where you’re supposed to wind up. The posted “project description” consisted of the following: “CDOT’s looking for a new logo. Help us! Send your designs/ideas to cdotnews@cityofchicago.org.” The page that this tweet pointed to is no longer available, but regardless, good graphic design requires a stated set of goals and needs. This project will not achieve its potential without a solid design brief. Creating one would be one step that can’t be skipped.

Show Chicago voters that you’re repairing the economy by hiring a local design firm.
Mayor Emmanuel, you’ve talked in public about how strongly you support business development in Chicago, and medium and small business are part of the beating heart of this city. Well, this is a great opportunity to show that you meant it, by hiring one of the many great design firms in the city. Of course, feel free to contact us first, if you like.

This course of action won’t win you any friends within design.
Undoubtedly, the concept of crowdsourcing the CDOT logo was meant innocently, as a way to drum up excitement and press for the CDOT, to get people involved in city government, and to stretch the shrinking budgets you have. But working design firms and professional design associations will see this in a completely different light. Unpaid contests and spec efforts actually belittle the work of solid, practicing designers by suggesting that their work can and should be given away for free. Despite your good intentions, contests such as this “open call” aren’t helpful or respectful towards trained professionals who feed their families by doing this kind of work, and doing it well.

There’s a sweet spot in the relationship between clients and designers that yields a final product everyone can be proud of, and we offer all of the above thoughts in the hope that CDOT can get to that place with this logo redesign — without the pitfalls and challenges of crowdsourcing.

Sincerely,
Tim Lapetino and Jason Adam
Partners at Hexanine

UPDATE:
We received the following response from CDOT via Twitter: “We addressed this 6/23 in Tweet to @aigachicago, others. We respect and appreciate the design community’s feeedback.”

That response linked to a page on the CDOT website which stated:

“Our intent with this process was to get feedback from our customers—the residents of Chicago. CDOT does a lot of things—from paving streets and building transit stations to installing bike lanes and neighborhood streetscapes—and we are looking for ideas that reflect that. We were hoping for feedback from all Chicagoans, not just designers.”

However, this seems very much at odds with their original concept, which read this way:

“CDOT would love to see your ideas for a new logo. Send us your ideas—as a .jpeg, a .tiff, a .gif, a .pdf, even a sketch on paper. We’re certain that your creativity will result in a new look that will represent CDOT as we move into a new era.”

Seems like a little bit of backpedalling, because of the uproar created by the design community. And as we said on Twitter, this still seems like a poor choice. After all, if CDOT were building a new L line, they wouldn’t be soliciting engineering feedback from customers. They’d hire professionals. Which brings us back to our original thought: Logo designs are at their best when created by designers with a foundation that’s firmly rooted in a strategic client brief and experience, not the suggestions of random Chicagoans.

While the book won’t be officially released until next month, here are some fun moments we’ve had during the process:

The photo shoot for the cover in LA. We did the art direction for this shoot both in Los Angeles and via Skype to Chicago. Cover photography by our great friend Love Ablan. Love also shot all of the artwork for the book interiors as well.

Press proofs from the interior of the book, showcasing some great video game inspired art by artists from all over the world.

Some shots of the book on press (a web press, to be specific) at the press check with our printer, Quad Graphics, in Massachusetts.

At this year’s HOW Design Live conference, we got to take some time to chat with our friends at HOW about creativity, inspiration, and why we go to events like this one. This year’s Chicago experience was amazing, and we’re looking forward to attending in Boston next year as HOW authors, as well! Here’s a little edited tease of great HOW authors and creative personalities, including James Victore, Sally Hogshead, Darius Monsef, ourselves, and more.

Our print collateral work for iam8bit is now up in our portfolio, so take a look.