Distinctive Design Concrete, LLC

A few months ago, we introduced you to Distinctive Design Concrete, LLC. We're happy to say that, with the help of Eclipse Media Solutions, Vivid City is proud to announce the official launch of DDC.

Here's the final logo, the website is up and running, and Distinctive Design Concrete, LLC is open for business.

Congratulations, Chris and Mike!

Check out their new website here.

New Client--Distinctive Design Concrete

Vivid City Marketing & Events is excited to announce one of our newest clients, Distinctive Design Concrete, LLC. DDC is a new Seattle contracting company. Owners Mike Jellison & Chris Lyons are specializing in residential and commercial concrete, pavers, hardscaping, outdoor design, water features, and more. Mike and Chris have more than 20 years combined experience and their work is truly beautiful. Congrats on the new business.

This logo is the first of our work with Distinctive Design. More to come, including helping with a website launch, marketing materials, and advertising. Stay tuned. And, if you're interested in sprucing up your home this spring/summer, contact Chris Lyons at christopher.lyons04@gmail.com.

Design at the Olympics

Say what you want about NBC's coverage (or lack thereof) of the Olympics this year, but it's hard to not get sucked into Olympic fever. In fact, I'm watching the Men's Half Pipe Final as I write this.
The Olympics are great not only for the sports, but the fanfare, branding and design, fashion, and the way the host city goes all out with new buildings.
Fast Company has a slideshow about design elements at the Olympics, and is is really interesting. Did you know the Olympics logo was picked as the winner in a contest of 1,600 entries?
The slideshow talks about the interesting new buildings, the US team's uniforms, and even the design of the medals, which are made of recovered gold, silver and bronze from computer motherboards.
What do you think about the 2010 Olympics? Check out the article here.

Color!

I'm always interested in how advertising and marketing uses color to enhance, clarify, and create campaigns. In my past life as a photography buyer, I spent so much time doing photo research that I could pick out where most images in print campaigns I'd see around town came from. I am still on the email lists of quite a few stock photography houses, and I just recently received a case study from Aurora Photos about a campaign they did for a neighborhood bank in Maine. They did TV ads, print ads, brochures, and other collateral. I think the campaign has so much vibrancy and energy that they would have missed with a "quieter" color palate. The bank has even reported a direct return on investment. Check it out!

Photography Searching Made Easy

I've been meaning to post about this website for a while now, but I'm just getting around to it now. For two years, a large part of my job was purchasing stock photography, picking images for marketing campaigns and magazines, and being the general go-to-gal for all things photography at my company.

I'd spend hour after hour searching for that perfect image for a campaign. You cook up this visual in your head of the perfect image, and then it is almost impossible to find an existing image that meets your imaginary criteria.

I recently heard from a contact at Masterfile about their new search functionality. It has been around for a few months now. It is AWESOME. It was actually honored at the Webby Awards. They have tools called "SimSearch" and "Visual Matching" where you can take an existing photo, and it will recommend other images that suit it well. I don't know how they do it. Tiny elves? Magic wands? Some kind of potion? (see why I don't work in tech?) However they did it, they did it well. Check out these examples:

Masterfile has posted a demo video here.

Social Media here to stay?

I found this really interesting video on YouTube today about social media and its effect on marketing and advertising. As more and more companies are learning how to market their product or service through social media, some experts are wondering if social media is just a fad, or something that will be a permanent change in the way we do business.

This video is really well done, and makes you think about the way social media affects our daily lives. Check it out.