Whitehouse & Company

W+K Studio is donating all of the profits of their Help Japan Poster for relief support. Buy one today.

Dropping its time tested and 20 year old logo, The Gap (now simply GAP) has re-branded with what may be the most boring re-brand since… ever really. Dropping their iconic stretched serif logo for one which is remarkably like American Apparel’s logo (also Helvetica, also black, and also tightly kerned)

What I find most confusing that during this economic decline, why they would decide to throw out something which will require millions of dollars in new signs, promotional materials, clothing labels, etc. Not to mention as environmental graphic designers, we have no idea how one might apply this mark 3 dimensionally without creating a fairly ugly sign box for the gradient?

All in all, we are not impressed with GAP’s re-brand and think it’s more of a marketing stunt (Ala Tropicana’s terrible re-brand of months back) than an actual graphic design solution.

If you can’t make it to the SEGD national conference this year or want to see what we are up up to in D.C., you might want to follow the Whitehouse & Company Twitter feed. We’ll be updating throughout the event and bringing our unique view of the show.

There will also be tons of spelling errors, because there is no spell check on the iPhone, so you’ll have that to look forward to as well.

Let’s get environmental.

Whitehouse & Company will be closed during the 2010 SEGD National Conference down in Washington D.C. June 2nd — June 5th. We hope to see you there and please feel free to say hello to Ben or Roger.

We will also be live tweeting during the conference, so please be sure to check back to find out what find interesting in our nations capital.

We have recently put the finishing touches on a web appliction for the New York State Department of Education. Developed in association with the Literacy Assistance Center in New York, the ASISTS site allows teachers to record the progress and history of students, and to be able to access this information and update it at any location. Being database driven, it can automatically prepare statistical analyses within any specified parameters, for reporting purposes.

For the technically minded, the site features:

• XHTML Strict compliance
• CSS Styled
• Cross browser compatibility
• Small bandwidth footprint

All of which means that it is state-of the-art, as well as having a clear graphic hierarchy to enable users to easily navigate and understand this otherwise complex and extensive site.

What was the last book you bought?

Whatever it was, I have a hunch that it had either a distinctive or descriptive title…

(Catch 22 and Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity are my last two and I would highly recommend both of them!)

In essence, every e-mail you send has a title too. it is called a subject line and should describe the contents of that e-mail as clearly and succinctly as possible. Yet often, subject lines end up being the most disregarded aspect of the communication. The Subject line is much like the spine of a book, describing the information it contains. I certainly would never pick up a book that had any of the following titles:

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How many times do you check your e-mail every day?

If you are like most e-mail users, your e-mail program is set up to check for e-mails every 5–10 minutes. That’s a whopping 48–96 possible interruptions per day respectively! That’s like the mail person giving you letters every few minutes throughout the day. Oh! here’s another one.

This is a bad business and organizational practice.

1. It is a sure way to get distracted from your tasks at hand.
2. Answering e-mail throughout the day, instead of at a given time, can cause attention and focus deficits often resulting in poorly thought-out or rushed replies.
3. Answering e-mail throughout the day will often create a “now or never” reply strategy.
4. Constant interruptions can take their toll on your attitude and self-esteem.

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Quark, makers of QuarkXpress just unveiled a new identity which is a really fresh departure from their old dusty 1980’s Quark logo.

Unfortunately, It seems that their new brand is almost identical to that of The Scottish Arts Council.

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