AbsoluteB.com

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One of my many functions here at Bonobos includes designing ads that find their way into the phone books. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t looked in a phone book, in like, ever! At least not till I started here. In any case, if you’ve ever seen the ads that are in there, they’re really, I mean, REALLY crap. It’s almost like the plumbers and electricians designed their own ads in MS Word. But then again, like many others out there, I believe that placing ads in the phone book is a dying business, what with the Internet and Google and what not. But apparently there’s still enough business being generated from this medium. So I’ve been attempting to take these ad designs to another level.

One thing I’ve noticed about most of the ad designs in the phone book is that they’re designed as if the reader (if you can call a person who’s looking through the phone book that) knows who they are, when question really is what they’re looking for. Which means that the company logo taking center stage isn’t the right way to go.

First of all, if the person knew who you were, they wouldn’t be looking through the phone book in the first place. Secondly, none of them stand out. They’re all the same, none of them shout anything out or entice me to call them for what it is I’m looking for. Full page ads have way too many bullet points with too much text talking about things I don’t know about or care about either.

In any case, I’ve been experimenting with various methods of print designs concerning ads aimed at the phone book. These are mostly full page ads so that does open up a lot of possibilities in terms of space. These ads are also placed towards the front of the category, so they’re more likely to get noticed. But on top of that, I’ve aimed my designs at grabbing the most attention, while retaining self respect and avoiding cheesiness and above all, they need to remain memorable in the few seconds that a “reader” browses the other pages. Kinda like web design, only static.

Advocaten & Juristen Nederland (Lawyers & Lawyers Netherlands) will be going live in the coming month now that the design has finally been converted into, what I consider, beautiful CSS and HTML code. It will be heading towards the developers in the morning.

In the mean time, I thought I would post the new brand which will be representing the series of sites which will fall under AJN. The main umbrella site will represent general law and legal topics and offices all over the country, while the series of website which fall under the umbrella will be representing more specific areas of law. I’m looking forward to the launch as I’ve seen other sites with similar intentions and functionality, but I find it difficult to grasp that those sites do anything but a good job at what they’re supposed to do. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Bonobos B.V. has been selected as Bedrijf van de donderdag (Company of the day for this Thursday) by Radio 3FM Serious Radio on the Arbeidsvitaminen (literally translated; Labor Vitamin) show, and Patrick Noordhoff, our Creative Director, has also been voted boss of the day! He’s being described as someone who’s crap at math because he thinks that if his opinion is different from that of 4 others, that it’s still a 50/50 vote. Obviously the exposure from all this is nice an’ all, but that our company’s top 10 gets played is the real plus point here! My vote for John Mayer’s “Waiting on the world to change” will get played too, very cool.

I’ve been with Bonobos for over a month now and so I’ve only written about learning new stuff and stuff not really working so I thought it might be time to showcase some work I’ve been doing which I actually can show just to prove that I’m not sitting around merely admiring my Apple dominated work space; which has turned out pretty sweet I gotta say, though I’m finding it hard to justify €25 for an Apple iPhone doc.

Anywho, this isn’t the first nor the only project I’ve been working on since joining the company obviously, as there are many, many more, but seeing as this one has just gotten approval and the client is pretty psyched about the design, I figured this would be a good one to start off with.

I won’t go into the whole process I went through and the thinking behind it for now. Just that Van Kooten Wijnen came to Bonobos in need of a brand to represent itself and needed that image reflected in all aspects of it’s business, so I designed a logo and the usual letterhead/business card/etc/etc to go along with it… and that’s pretty much it.

It’s been about a month since I last posted and that’s mostly to do with the fact that I started working at Bonobos so any and all my time has been spent on their projects and on learning and integrating myself into their work flow as much as possible. Not just that, but also looking for ways to streamline the various processes. So far I’ve been more than happy to be part of the organization and being able to work in such a young and dynamic environment. I’ve slowly gotten to know my new colleagues better and they’ve been great in allowing me to feel a part of the team. Since moving into the new building, I’ve definitely been able to work on some great and fun projects; from designing sites to logos and functional widgets and elements. …read the rest of this entry »

From the initial contact to the moment we came to an agreement, it all happened very quickly. I received a message via AbsoluteB, completely out of the blue, expressing interest in my possibly joining Bonobos as a designer/developer. Barely a week later, having had a few conversations and giving the offer some thought, I have initialed, dated and signed my contract to develop and design for Groningen based marketing and media company Bonobos. Ok, so I don’t officially start till next month, but I’m already excited about getting started and am really looking forward to bringing and sharing my ideas in the hope of reaching higher levels of success!