But honestly, what is the argument for books being preserved over music or newspapers? They cost more, they are just as difficult to steal (kidding. I mean I’m sure they are, but..), carrying many of them at once is difficult, the actual content is not compromised when transferred to digital—sounds like it might be a lost cause.

Think about the tangible qualities of a novel: You can write notes in the margins, underline parts, dog-ear pages, use memorabilia as bookmarks. And what about the wear and tear a favorite book displays as a badge of honor after years of reading and rereading? Or there’s the pungent scent of the breeze created from flipping pages—differing with a book’s age and the materials it was made from, conveying an unknown history of where the words may have been.

Do these compare to characteristics of other endangered artifacts of artistic expression? I think vinyl’s come close to possessing the novel’s venerable status, but then again I also still covet a large collection of those. I’m 22 and I’ve had many options for playing music throughout my life, but I don’t think CDs and cassette tapes have the palpable aesthetic qualities of an old (or new) record. Something about the process—removing a large fragile vinyl disc from a sleeve, with music delicately etched into its surface, all encased in a cardboard canvas of sorts. Then, having to carefully place a needle on it to receive the auditory pleasure and remain present and attentive to flip it—the ritual aspect of listening to a record is inherently more special than the action of opening a plastic case and shoving more plastic into still more plastic. And listening to vinyl is certainly more satisfying than pressing a button on a hunk of metal smaller than your hand, not to mention the differences in sonic quality, the warm analog hiss versus the compressed mp3s streaming from an iPod.

Anyway, back to books. There’s also the fact that novels have endured for so long. The earliest work that’s been called the first novel is from 1470, while the earliest known modern sound recording is from 1859. And the novel has arguably gone through more technological stages than music when considering all the different printing, paper type, and distribution advancements. Perhaps it’s here to stay?

All that said, I’m more than willing to imagine the exciting possibilities of fully digitized storytelling. I’m not too well read on the subject (har har), but I see a lot of design options coming into play with e-books. Each page could have a unique background or margin design. Different fonts could be used throughout, or for different speakers. Colors could be abundant and illustrative, pictures could become more commonplace, or there could even be interactive elements. Maybe you could combine the words and pictures and sounds and have the words spoken out loud or with the pictures moving or … oh wait, that’s called a movie.

Not to be too cynical—I do think there are some serious opportunities for innovative design work within digital books. I also think that what makes it so plausible (and perhaps why none of these design ideas are commonly implemented in printed versions) is the money saved when you get rid of all printing costs.

But I ask you, Future, please leave the printed novel be, like you’ve done with … I don’t know… walking? Or not.

• Out in / out of left field – Out in left field is used to refer to someone whose ideas or actions are, according to Answers.com, “a little crazy.” There are various theories for the origin of this phrase, two of which have to do with the New York Yankees, so I will not discuss them here. (The Yankees get enough attention, most of it undeserved.) One of the other theories is interesting: Before the Chicago Cubs moved to Wrigley Field, they played at Chicago’s second West Side Park, which was later bought by the University of Illinois College of Medicine. Eventually, U of I built its Neuropsychiatric unit on what had been West Park’s left field. You can connect the dots from there. A related phrase means something unexpected happening, as in, “Wow, that came out of left field.” When a runner is traveling from third base trying to score, he may be thrown out at home plate by a ball delivered by the left fielder, whom the runner has his back to and therefore can’t see.
• Drop the ball – OK, so this expression could refer to multiple sports—basketball, football, even dodgeball. Now I’m curious about whether the phrase truly did originate in baseball. Excuse me just a moment while I check … I’m back. There’s no real agreement on the origin of the phrase, probably because it’s so generic. In any case, if you do drop the ball while you’re attempting to catch a fly one, throw a baserunner out, or catch a wild pitch, chances are good it’ll come back to haunt you later. Big-time.
• Three strikes and you’re out – This one is pretty self-explanatory, but let’s give it a positive spin, shall we? If you watch any great match-up between a pitcher and a hitter, you’ll see that the hitter actually gets an unlimited number of chances to hit the ball (not only three), as long as he can “stay alive” by getting a piece of it, or hitting the ball foul. Foul balls only count as strikes up to the second one—strike three must be a swinging strike. So, you’ll hear sports announcers say a hitter has a “great at-bat” if he can extend the number of pitches the pitcher throws him to eight, ten or even a dozen. There’s a life lesson here, so excuse me if I sound like a self-help expert for a moment: In real life, as in baseball, you get more than three chances. Just keep trying to get a piece of the ball. And don’t swing at the really bad pitches.
• Threw me a curveball – We’ve all had the  experience of someone hitting us with an unpleasant surprise, whether it takes the shape of a last-minute meeting at work, a late-night phone call or a breakup announcement delivered by that most sensitive of social media, Facebook. Yup, someone just threw us a curveball, and our first response is often to throw the darn thing back, only harder. The trajectory of the curveball is north-to-south (like a rainbow’s arc), so it has the effect of dropping suddenly as it crosses home plate, leaving hitters swinging at the place they thought the ball was going to be. Here’s the thing to remember about curveballs: pitchers don’t throw them to hit batters, but to unbalance them. Maybe that’s true of life’s curveballs, too, even though they do sometimes hurt. (See a video about Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander’s curveball.)
• Hit a home run or Hit it out of the park – People use this as a compliment: “Wow, Joe, you really hit it out of the park with that idea.” If you’re a frequent home run hitter, chances are you’ll be welcome on any team. All home runs aren’t alike in importance, though all are exciting. The more runners there are on base, the more meaningful a home run is; a grand slam garners the hitter’s team four runs. So, while “hitting it out of the park” (that is, hitting the ball over the stands) is a display of a hitter’s power, it’s more significant to hit a home run with runners on base. Another thing about home runs: the more of them a hitter produces, the more strikeouts he is likely to have—case in point, Babe Ruth. He had 714 career home runs and nearly twice as many strikeouts at 1330. The moral of the story has been repeated multiple times, but I’ll restate it here: You have to take a lot of big swings in order to hit home runs. Sometimes you’ll miss, but sometimes you’ll hit it out of the park.
• For you Tigers fans, here’s your very own list of baseball names and words that, taken as a group, are probably only meaningful to you: Mags, Miggy, Cabby, Gibby, Sparky, Ernie, Pudge, JV, DD, Game 163, Jim Joyce, Paws, 1968, Rod & Mario, Jim & Dan, and finally, “near-perfect game.”

I could write about the marketing aspect of baseball, but that gets into unknown (foul?) territory. I just love the game itself, and don’t want to bother myself with all the moneymaking and shaking going on. Now I’m off to see if the Tigers can break their losing streak and head toward first place again!

The difference between B2C (business-to-consumer) and B2B (business-to-business) language is night and day. And not knowing the difference can make your nights awfully long. Glad-handing and cajoling may be a part of the relationship between a salesman and a client. But in B2B copy, it’s all business. Here are five keys to make sure your B2B copy gets read—and acted upon.

Be an Expert. In B2B copy, you must position yourself as a credible expert. People don’t want to be sold; they want information that is relevant to their business. If you talk with authority about the subject you’re writing about, people will read with interest.

Be Real. Don’t be cheesy. If the copy gets an employee excited but he’s afraid to show it to his boss, you’re never going to get the order.

Be Believable. If you’re selling to engineers, accountants or lawyers and you over-promise, you’re dead meat. As soon as you say something that’s not believable, they stop reading. Consumers will put up with hype; business people won’t.

Be Rational. Business people will buy on emotion, but not on pure emotion. They need to justify their purchases to each other, so your marketing materials must give them sound reasons for it.

Be Factual. In B2B, you have to back up everything you say with hard facts. Otherwise you will be perceived as a blowhard.

When Dave first asked me to write about my approach to logo design, I thought it would also be an opportunity to discuss my thoughts on the current state of such a valuable craft. With the rise of crowdsourcing, websites that claim $99 logos and everyone with a Mac trying to be a designer, creative logo design has the possibility of becoming compromised. This has however created an opportunity for good designers to re-affirm the value of their expertise to clients.

However, just being a good designer isn’t enough to get viable work anymore. As designers we have to constantly plead our case that good design = good ROI, which is easier said than done. One of the ways I’ve been able to separate my skills from low-ball logo designers, is by educating my clients concerning my design process. Much like a math teacher sharing their process for an algebraic equation, so I believe the designer should lay out the route from which the successful logo design is achieved.

Here are some steps I use when creating a new logo/identity:

1. Get a clear objective of what the logo needs to accomplish. Understand who the company/brand is:  past present and future, mission statement, etc.  Whenever possible I like to have the client fill out a “creative strategy” form, to help guide their vision and minimize development time.

2. Market Research: After reviewing the client’s needs and objectives, I study competitors’ logos, and industry trends in general, both past and present.

I’m always surprised by how many clients neglect this step when considering their corporate identity. While as a designer I’m not technically hired to be a business consultant, a good designer owes it to the client to understand the market for which they are designing.

3. Preliminary sketches/brainstorming: I always take a typographical approach to creating a logo, be it a logotype (a logo that includes a graphic) or wordmark (a type-only design). For at least 30 minutes I’ll sketch on paper all the ideas that come to my mind: words, illustration, whatever.

4. Take the best 5 sketches and continue to refine. Then I bring the sketches into digital form. I prefer to start logo projects in Adobe Ilustrator. I try to find a typeface family close to my sketched concepts, or I’ll create a font from scratch.

5. Even when designing a multi-color logo, always make sure the logo will reproduce successfully in black and white.

6. Present 3 good options for first review. It really depends on the client, but I have generally found that showing more than 3 options can be problematic.

7. Testing: Finally I make sure the client’s logo will translate well into all types of media including print, web, corporate identity, etc.

Over the years I’ve refined this approach and applied it to many other types of projects as well as logo design. It can be sometimes be tempting to skip a few of these steps, but I’ve learned the hard way that my end product is a direct result of adhering to my process.  Weak process = weak work.

I’ve often heard excuses from fellow designers that “I’m not getting paid enough to be really creative,” or, “It’s up to the client to do the market research.” From my perspective, if a client isn’t going to compensate me to do my job thoroughly, it’s not a project worth taking. In the long run a designer’s reputation is more valuable than a quick payout. It’s important we always view our work as a valuable business asset for our clients, and it’s equally important that they too see our value as well. I think the famous designer Primo Angeli said it best: “…time and money. Without them, design is mere decoration. Neither good design nor fine art.”

To learn and see more, visit http://www.denherderdesign.com/ or visit Jesse’s blog at http://www.workingclassdesigner.com/

Based in Ann Arbor, University Islamic Financial strives to provide complete Shariah-compliant products to be the financial institution of choice for the Muslim community in the United States.

Kregel, based in Grand Rapids, plans to release the new Mystery of the Temple Court in the Fall of this year.

To see the other books in the series and for more information, go to http://store.kregel.com/productdetails.cfm?PC=2100.

Here is the list of nominees, who can guess the winner?

9/11

blog

google

green

text

war on terror

And the winner is…

Google. I’m not surprised. The official definition is “verb: to use an internet search engine, particularly Google.com,” and I have to say I completely agree with the choice.

At the beginning of the decade I was 11 years old. I remember on my home P.C. I had just downloaded Napster and started to burn CD’s. In those days I spent a lot of time tying up my family’s phone line while downloading Metallica songs at 56 kb/s (ironically, or maybe not, it was Metallica’s drummer who filed the lawsuit to shut Napster down). Then, I would use AskJeeves to search for the lyrics. By the way, if you remember the old AskJeeves, you should check out the new 3-D version of the namesake mascot – they do still exist. Anyways, Google was not far behind Old Jeevesy, and within a couple years it was the default homepage on my school’s computers. It’s permeated my life in ways I never would have imagined. Aside from being the starting point for dozens of research papers and providing thousands of hours of internet-browsing fun, it’s become what I refer to as the modern day Oracle in the Temple of Apollo that is the World Wide Web. I’ve been saying for years that my biggest regret from high school is asking for money as a graduation gift when I should have just asked for Google stock shares HINT: they’ve gone up… a lot. Maybe I wouldn’t have applied for a Bridge card last week if I had thought of this at the time.

So there you have it, Google wins and continues wiping decent companies and lexicons into obsoleteness.

Perhaps more entertaining is the “Word of the Year” nominations. It’s an extensive list with mostly humorous categories, despite the otherwise solemn nature of the American Dialect Society.

Here are a few of my favorite categories and their winners:

MOST UNNECESSARY: sea kittens- fish (according to PETA)

MOST EUPHEMISTIC: hike the Appalachian Trail- South Carolina Governor Mark Sandford’s term for his romantic visits to Argentina with illicit lover.

MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED: twenty-ten- a pronunciation of the year 2010, as opposed to saying “two-thousand ten” or “two thousand and ten.”

LEAST LIKELY TO SUCCEED: Any name of the decade 2000-2009, such as Naughties, Aughties, Oughties, etc.

But the winner of “Word of the Year”? Tweet. “Noun, a short message sent via the Twitter.com service, and verb, the act of sending such a message.”

Twitter is something I refused to get on board with, as I originally did with facebook. But kind of like the childhood urge to stare at the sun, I proceeded to burn my retinas and get further sucked into the black hole of social networking media. Don’t get me wrong, social networking is great for keeping in touch with people you otherwise wouldn’t be in contact with, or for promoting businesses, it’s just that it’s also great for wasting time indoors staring at a screen. I am amazed at the rapid growth Twitter experienced in the last year, and, like “google” for the decade, “tweet” seems to be an appropriate winner for the year. I barely knew what Twitter was (some type of distilled facebook?) and then all of a sudden every business, whether it was a restaurant or a television channel or a shoe company, was urging me to “follow” them. For me, Twitter has simply become a source of comic relief throughout the day, as most of the people I follow are my favorite comedians – if you haven’t searched for yours, I highly recommend it. Being really funny in 160 characters is not easy. Hey, kind of like advertising!

But back to their question of what to call the last decade… When forced to think of what I’ve titled it, I realized I must have always sidestepped any type of moniker. “The Aughts” is the technical term, but it sounds so unpleasant. It can’t roll off the tongue like “Sixties” or “Seventies,” and I can’t imagine seeing VH1’s “I Love the Aughts.” Actually, after consulting the oracle, I realized VH1 also sidestepped and simply used “I Love the New Millenium.”

What about next year? What will it even be called, two-thousand eleven? Two thousand and eleven? Twenty-eleven? I think it’d be cool to truncate it to a number of its own, one I call “Twentyleven.” It flows perfectly, the long “e” sound of the last part of “twenty” forming the beginnings of “eleven.” Can I patent that?

Anyway, I’d like to hear some nominations for 2010 word of the year so far, and maybe you could provide a definition if it’s obscure. I’d bet that something to do with Twilight Vampires (which I know nothing about) will be on there, or universal healthcare, or maybe something with the BP oil spill ­– What do you think?

*You can download the press release PDF for the American Dialect Society Word of the Year and Decade, plus nominations, here.

The new website will have a more progressive look and feel to reflect Baker’s expertise and corporate growth.

Welcome back! Today is the third and final installment of our Jordan Jelev interview. From classic calligraphy to modern typographic masterpieces, Jordan has found a real niche for beautiful labels in the wine industry.

Dave Hile: You have an impressive range of styles, from an ornamental calligraphic style to a sleek modern typographic approach. How did you develop your strong type design skills?

Jordan Jelev: I am both a typography addict and a professional calligrapher, which sets me free in type design. My work might be improved by using some digital fonts, but in many situations you have to switch to custom lettering unless you don’t want to have just “another ordinary design.” Custom lettering is my specialty—it is one of those things that makes my designs more distinguished and recognizable. It is somehow like a personal signature that brings more and more identity to the final product. We are in the 21st century now—everything in our life is so plastic, synthetic and automatic. I think it is good for a digital artist to have experience as a craftsman. I’ll give you an example from March of this year. I was designing the new labels of the Royal Selection wine range (domaineboyar.com). I started looking for some interesting font set to write the word Royal in a more artistic manner—it took me nearly three days and I was still unsatisfied with the result. I used my quills and it took me one more day to do the custom lettering for the same word—the result was amazing.

The background of my custom lettering history starts in my near past. I got a present from my father and my wife—a set of automatic pens and an old bottle filled with ink. Up to that day I had so many digital fonts in my head, and when I grabbed the pens I thought I could write every one of them.

DH: Aside from the typography, you show a lot of innovation in the textures and shapes of your labels—in the planning process, do you tend to envision all these elements as one entity, or do you tend to focus on one element separately and then build the others around it?

JJ: The shape and the texture are design elements, too. They significantly improve the communication between the product and consumers. Imagine that you are 3-4 meters away from the bottle of wine in the store; what you see first is the bottle shape, the label shape, and probably some basic colors—that’s what our eyes produce as an image to our brain. The closer you get to the bottle, the more things you start to see better and better till the moment you have it in your hands, where you can touch it, feel it, maybe even smell it—and finally remember it (and buy it, of course).

All those textures, shapes, varnishes, embossing, etc. are important parts of my design—some projects need to use all of them at once, others don’t need them. It just depends on what both the designer and the market experts say and want from the final product.

DH: You’ve done a lot of work for Bulgarian companies. Are you looking to expand into new markets in other countries?

JJ: Bulgaria will always be an interesting place not only for wine label design, but for the whole wine industry, so I’m really happy to work for our native wineries. I am also focused on approaching some foreign clients from the U.S., South America, Australia and South Africa.

Maybe I should use your “Reverse Method” to approach them—start with a bottle of wine and then send an email! DH: Thanks for all the great insight into your work, your process, and your background, Jordan. It’s been fascinating to learn about design in Bulgaria, and we hope to see your labels gracing the shelves of American wine shops soon!

Visit Jordan Jelev or Factor R Studio to see more about Jordan.

Today we have part two of our three-part interview featuring Jordan Jelev, the vastly talented Bulgarian label designer. Also known as “The Labelmaker,” Jordan gives us an in-depth view of his career and his process, as well as some excellent examples of his work. Make sure to visit soon for the third and final installment.

Dave Hile: What does your creative process entail? Do you taste the wine before designing the label? Do you research the vineyard’s other offerings? For example, on the Bulgarian wine +359 design (which is based on the country’s international phone code), you utilized the type font from the Bulgarian Post in the 1960s. Do you always think so carefully about historical or social aspects of the design?

Jordan Jelev: I did not expect it would turn into a normal practice, but the answer is yes—I always taste the wine before starting my work. It is a significant part of the process. When you design the outer part, you have to know what is inside the bottle in order to make a connection between them and to portray it correctly to the buyer of the product. So when you know what’s inside the bottle, it’s really easy to design a label for it. This makes the whole thing 100% authentic because all the elements of the final product are related to one another. I don’t go crazy finding and creating such relationships between history, wine itself, design, or even aspects of consumer psychology, but I do think that if there is a significant story related to the product, we should bring it forward and show it to people.

DH: Do you have a few favorite labels you’ve designed that you’d like to share with us? Why are these your favorites?

JJ: Sure, though I might say I like all of them.

I am in such a creative period in my development that I am beginning to understand the sense of being different in the wine industry.

I started to think differently when I was creating a label following my new formula—which is, that there has to be something remarkable about the label so people can remember it.

There are several examples of my new period—Rousse Rose is one of them. I decided to make a label based entirely on custom modern typography. So I designed letters consisting of small dots overprinted with puff up varnish. The result was amazing—the letter looked like it was made of small led lights. I believe this label is a good example of modern thinking, considering the fact that I am addicted to vintage typography and calligraphy. So this label was kind of unusual for me. Another good example of my more modern design is my latest work for Sarva, and the Project Wines by Dragomir Winery. I had a wonderful time working for those people, and the result was surprising even to me. The whole design is based on the welding and intersecting of three elements, because the wines were a blend of three grape varieties.

We used ultra-gloss, silver-coated, self-adhesive foil to print the labels on and when used in combination with my favorite puff-up varnish, the result was a great success.

Now to the old classics—A few years ago, I began wanting to design a label that says everything about my skills, technical experience, calligraphy—everything about me as a professional creative. That turned out to be my Shiraz Label created for PVN brand.

The label is 100% hand-crafted, against all the supermoderndigitalhyperturbo 21^st-century technology. I drew it on a sheet of A4-size paper. I photographed it then transferred it to polymer plates and printed it in my kitchen in the cold winter of 2007 at 3 a.m. in the morning.

That label was great fun for me—I still recall it time and again.

Stay tuned for part 3…