jeffrey + upstairsloft

While direct marketing and advertising crawl along the interwebs, it’s not hard to notice the decline in print—but where printed matter matters, it’s well sustained (packaging, editorial [Yes editorial! despite the iFads and kindles] and printed correspondence). Hell, it’s even an art.

There’s no doubt that I’ve been designing a lot for the web—websites, blogs, conversion pages… the list goes on. Without any classes, I’ve learned to design for the web—not code, but design. I’m familiar with what the set of capabilities are per coding language. If I’m not, I know what questions to ask—so I’m not designing blindly. But this is something I’ve picked up from working with and interfacing with developers.

With print, ohhhh print is one beautiful beast to control. Nerd alert. You know that scene in Avatar when Jake Sully wrestles the banshee before linking up and soaring through the wind and all? Yeah. Sorta like that with print. There’s so much prep work that goes into designing for print and there are so many decisions made when the job is on press. Sometimes it’s a headache, sometimes it’s tedious, and it definitely sucks major moose knuckle when clients request changes just before we go to print despite the Final sign-off(s). But the end result is a beautifully, finished piece if you managed to treat her well from the concepting phase to the press check.

I’ve been working with a fair share of start-ups (Majorminor just started up no more than two years ago); and while we have an impressive portfolio to date and our list of capabilities continues to grow, we needed some sort of correspondence to hand-off to push people to our site.

Let me write down our information for you.
Do you have a Post-it note?
You got a pen?
Oh yeah, it’s m-a-j-o-r-m-i-n-o-r-s-f dot com.
Here’s my business card.
Here’s my card.

The response we get and the impression we make when we hand out our cards urge us to adopt a similar model when working with our start-up affiliates who hire us to develop their identities. I’ve even recorded some metric to lay out the success of this program.

Awesome stuff/doing + awesome card = Double the Awesomeness = excited and intrigued people who visit your site.

See. It’s science.

Majorminor Business Cards: Crane Lettra 220#, Third Bay Letterpress
Calvin Ma Photo: Waterford 640gm, Mercurio Brothers Printing
Fun Sponge: Mohawk 130#, Third Bay Letterpress

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ADAC and the faculty at Sacramento State’s Design Department were kind enough to invite Majorminor’s own Rob Martin and me, alongside Hans Bennewitz and Christopher Lee, to speak.

Hans Bennewitz, Christopher Lee, Rob Martin and Jeffrey Tanhueco will spend the evening recounting very different paths taken post graduation. Design degree in hand they have found homes for their particular design talents in Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Come hear their stories of trial and tribulation and ask questions as this panel of young award winning and published designers share their relatively new found wisdom.

This talk has forced me to reflect on the past few years. To the naked eye, I’ve made some pretty foolish moves—foolish moves that carved the path to where I am now and where I’m going next. Rob and I will be delivering separate presentations, but we will meet somewhere in the middle and talk Major.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010
6:00pm – 9:00pm
AIA Central Valley Building
1400 S Street, Suite 100
Sacramento, CA

All the speakers were asked to design a commemorative poster. Here’s ours.

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It felt like the corner store closed. It felt like when they stopped playing Fresh Prince on Nick at Nite and replaced it with The Nanny. I thought Operation: Leave Facebook would feel like wart removal. Instead, it felt awkward. Like, now what? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not addicted to Facebook. It’s not my crack. But strangely enough, here I am, a measly 13 hours later, back on Facebook—I appear to be like a crackhead denying his addiction, regardless of the white, powdery residue around his lips.

I can’t totally blame it on my weakness. I mean, Facebook is the Devil. No, really. It is. Just as I hit the “Deactivate Account” button, the Devil flashed a screen—reminding me of my emotional attachments. It almost worked. I still hit the “Deactivate Account” button. Alas! I was free. I rid myself of this filthy past-time of aimless meandering, reading stupid status updates, feeling offended when other friends receive 43 comments because she informed everybody that her foot itches.

*iPhone Mail Chime* sound

Thinking I was free, Facebook emailed me a friendly little message. Whatever. Time to pop in a movie and doze off.

I woke up this morning, feeling free. Too free. As ritual has it, I grabbed my phone, checked the time, checked email… scrolled to the page where my Facebook App used to be… Then it hit me. The image that the Devil flashed before me came rushing back to my memory. Jonathan, Dean, Kyle, Edgar and Lauren will miss me.

I felt distant from them. I was reminded of the good times we had. That image of me and Jun high-fiving with the Golden Gate Bridge in the backgrund just days before he moved to New York… Jon snapped that photo. Dean and Kyle’s pics from my wedding. Edgar and my dudes holding me up from the ground when Jun visited from New York. Me and Lauren cuddling with a gorgeous view of Golden Gate Bridge—another reminder that Facebook is one big channel in staying virtually connected with my friends across the way.

I logged back on to Facebook with my iPhone, and it was like I never left. It was like any other day of logging in. I was reconnected. My privacy for the taking. Hundreds of photos that went missing from my friends’ profiles—they’re back. It was that easy. Somewhere in Palo Alto, a Facebook employee is smiling at their statistical log of those who’ve Deactivated, Reactivated, Deactivated, and Reactivated. Damn you, Facebook, You hit me at my weak spot. You were like Don Cheadle’s character in that movie with Nicolas Cage—Family Man—showing me glimpses of a life without Facebook. Because I really did miss Jon, Dean, Kyle, Edgar and Lauren for the 13 hours I was not a Facebook member.

I was probably the 4th person in the world to sign up for Facebook. It was 2004; I was  admitted into Sac State and received an invite from my cousin, Dean. I signed up, learned more about Facebook and I thought—”Cool! A network to build from my new school.” Somewhere in between then and late 2007, Myspace was the world leader. Then I watched my list of friends populate like lemmings. I thought, “Cool! We’re connected in more ways than one.” Right?

With texting, multiple email accounts, phones, blogs and all that other social media stuff. Then the relevant became irrelevant. Status updates like “I’m cold;” garnered 25 comments while status updates with some real meaning just vanished into the void. So I am kicking it old school. Communicating through the world wide web via a blog. I noticed a pattern in what kind of status updates received the most responses. Needless to say, they were also the stupidest ones. Plus, my 3-year old nieces and nephews and sometimes newborn cousins would add me as a friend on Facebook. Ridic. They can’t type! It was a wildfire of social media that got out of hand. So I say with great pride, “such is the life,” a life without Facebook.