Announcement BY Armin

Brand New Awards, Early-Bird Pricing Last Day

Quick reminder: Prices go up tomorrow, Saturday, for the Brand New Awards.

Announcement BY Armin

2011 Brand New Tips

While cleaning my e-mail a little bit today I noticed that my Brand New folder was extra scrollable. I am aware that I get a lot of tips, but hadn’t realized exactly how many. For 2011, give or take, I received 2,086 tips. Many of them are repeats, many of them are for very small brands, and many of them don’t fit our coverage, but the ones that do are always exciting to receive. This is the fuel that keeps feeding Brand New and I am most appreciative of everyone that takes time to tip us. If you have tipped us in the past and have not received an answer, you can now see why: it’s pretty much impossible to reply to 2,086 e-mails on top of the other thousands of e-mails. But please know how important your tips are. Keep ‘em coming.

Announcement BY Armin

2010 FPO Awards, Storefront

The 2010 FPO Awards publication is now available as a 248-page book, a PDF download of said book, and a fancy iPad app: here.

Announcement BY Armin

FPO Awards, Pre-Order

The 2010 FPO Awards book is now available for pre-order at 20% off the eventual retail price. Preview of the iPad app is also available for perusing. See details on FPO.

Announcement BY Armin

Changes to Commenting

Due to the massive amount of comment spam we get and that we have to fight against, the commenting on Brand New hasn’t been the best experience: lots of spam gets through and many of you (real people with real comments) are getting flagged as spam. We will be moving forward with the Disqus comment system. It changes things a bit and some may not like it — that’s okay, you’ll get used to it. For now, I will try this with minimal registration needs, but if spam is still getting through I will have to do an e-mail verification system. We’ll see. So, for now, test the new system in this thread so that I can see if everything’s working properly and so that you get registered in the system for future posts.

Comments from all the previous posts are currently being imported into the system and should show up in a day or two — as we have almost 150,000 comments.

BY Armin

Technical Difficulties

Apologies for the lack of posts these last two days. After moving our server to a dedicated server the Brand New set up was the only one that didn’t make it intact. It’s sort of working now — commenting and publishing entries — but there are still a few back-end issues. I hope to resolve them today.

Announcement BY Armin

Brand New Conference, Videos Available

Videos of the 2011 Brand New Conference are now available for purchase and download. $5 a piece or $30 for all eight. Files are 1280 × 768 MP4. Five- to six-minute previews and very brief summaries of each talk are available at the site. You can also catch the opening remarks and my overview of the last 12 months of Brand New activity at the bottom of that page.

If you attended the conference in person or via webcast you will receive an e-mail today or tomorrow with instructions to download your set of videos.

Follow-Up BY Armin

Brand New Conference, Online Registration Closes Tomorrow

The online registration for the Brand New Conference will close Thursday, September 15 at Noon Pacific Time / 3:00 PM Eastern Time for both webcast and in-person tickets.

On-site (walk-in) registration will be available on Friday.

Announcement BY Armin

Brand New Conference, 4 Ticket Giveaway

Perk up folks: A random drawing will occur between today and tomorrow to give away 4 tickets to the Brand New Conference this Friday, September 16. These tickets are sponsored by the first ever Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and one of the conference’s Presenting Sponsors. Read on for how this is going to play out.

Update: Winners announced.

Continue reading this entry

Announcement BY Armin

Advertise on UC @ a Discount

Summer went by more quickly than we realized and, while all of our regular advertisers were out working on their tan in a beach somewhere, we somehow have more empty spots for September than we would like. Since it’s on such short notice we will offer a 20% discount off our $2,000 monthly rate (for a total of $1,600) to anyone that signs up before the end of August. Discount applies if you sign up for multiple months. Contact me by e-mail to get more details or if you have an interest in getting a combined 3,000,000 impressions of your logo and banners across all of our blogs. If your audience is graphic designers, a real big bunch of them is reading this too.

Announcement BY Armin

New Blog: Art of the Menu

It’s been a couple of years since we last launched a new blog so we are pretty excited about this one. Art of the Menu, cataloguing the underrated creativity of menus from around the world.

Announcement BY Armin

Brand New Awards, Book and iPad Now Available

The book and iPad app for The 2010 Brand New Awards are now both available. As requested, there is a discount if you plan on buying both. Head on to the repopulated Brand New Awards website for all the details.

Thank you to all who entered and all who have purchased or are about to purchase. We are extremely proud of both the support and interest that led to a very successful inaugural awards.

Announcement BY Armin

Brand New Conference, 2 Weeks Left of Early-Bird Pricing

A quick note to remind everyone that early-bird pricing for the Brand New Conference ends on Friday, August 19, two weeks away. Prices go up by $100 for professionals and $50 for students. So if you haven’t bought already, now is the time, and if you need your boss’s permission best to ask soon.

Announcement BY Armin

Small Summer Break

Dear Brand New readers, I will be taking a small break from writing this week. Unless IBM rebrands I’ll come back next Monday August 1 with daily posts.

Opinion BY Armin

Brand New Conference, Speaker Change

Due to a recent conflict of schedule that involves a joyful family occasion, Howard Belk of Siegel+Gale will not be able to speak at the Brand New Conference this September. We are sad that we won’t be able to hear from Howard but we are very excited about his replacement. Filling in a small void, well two voids, that we had in the original line-up — in-house representation and techie subject matter — we’ve tapped Ben Barry and Everett Katigbak, both the first Communication Designers hired at Facebook (2008), who have been responsible for building the visual internal culture there which is gradually seeping into the outside world. Following is a quick interview with both designers, which we are aiming to follow-up with interviews of the other speakers.

Continue reading this entry

Announcement BY Armin

Brand New Awards, Pre-Order Book, iPad Preview, and Winner Thumbnails

It has taken a little bit longer than expected. Wrangling images and content for 101 entries has not been easy. Nonetheless, The 2010 Brand New Awards publication is nearly finalized and files will be sent to print next week and we expect to have our inventory by the end of July or early August. To get things sizzling we are offering a 20% discount — at $27.99 off the eventual retail of $34.99 — on all pre-orders, available until the books are bound, boxed, and stored at UCllc headquarters. Details, sample spreads, and ordering button in this very post.

Continue reading this entry

Announcement BY Armin

Brand New Conference, AIGA SF Member Discount

A quick note for members of the AIGA San Francisco chapter: You are eligible for a 10% discount of all types of tickets for the Brand New Conference. Enter discount code “aigasf” in the registration form. If you are an SF member and have already purchased your ticket let us know and we’ll refund you the 10%. If you are an AIGA member registered for another chapter the discount does not apply.

Announcement BY Armin

20-Ticket Giveaway to Brand Perfect Tour

Attention New Yorkers, or anyone willing to travel and accommodate themselves in New York. Next Wednesday, June 22, Monotype is bringing their Brand Perfect Tour Think Tank and Design Master Classes to NYC, having previously visited London and then moving on to Hamburg. With a focus on branding, identity, and typography, the day’s speakers include, among others, Paul Owen and (Brand New writer) Rietje Gieskes of Landor; Doug Wilson, director of Linotype: The Film; and Lee Aldridge, Chief Brand Officer of Young & Rubicam. Brand Perfect Tour has kindly offered 20 tickets at no charge — actual price is $395 — to Brand New readers. First come, first serve.

Register at brandperfect@monotypeimaging.co.uk and quote Brand New as your reference to secure your complimentary place.

Announcement BY Armin

FPO Awards, Deadline Extended and Prices Cut 50%

This isn’t fun to admit or broadcast publicly — especially given the success of the Brand New Awards — but here goes: The FPO Awards have not met our expectations nor our estimates of how many people would enter. We have just received slightly over 100 entries and the original deadline is two days from now. While we believe in miracles we don’t see one coming our way and raining over 300 entries to cover what we had anticipated. We have our theories as to why we may find ourselves in this situation but that doesn’t solve the problem at hand so we are making one final move to see if we can salvage this project. All current fees will be cut 50%. Deadline to send materials is extended until next Wednesday, June 8. (Judging is on Friday the 10th, so we need a day to process everything).

I do realize this doesn’t concern most of our readers but FPO is Brand New’s little sibling and as the bigger site with the bigger audience it is its duty to act as the big sister, or big brother, or… Anyway, your support in making this a successful, if bumpy, inaugural FPO Awards is appreciated. More details here.

Announcement BY Armin

Brand New Conference, Registration Open

Speakers, details, ticket-buying-system, and more is all now live for the 2011 Brand New Conference. Comments, bugs, and complaints are all welcome.