In mid-January, on the generous recommendation of fellow design chronicler Alissa Walker, UnderConsideration was invited by Studio 360 — the beloved Public Radio International show hosted by Kurt Andersen — to tackle a rather interesting problem: Redesigning Valentine's Day, everything from the hearts, to the roses, to the chocolates, to the expensive dinners, to Cupid. Everything we know about Valentine's was due for a new approach. Now you might think, who would want to come up with this challenge in the first place? Well, Studio 360 has posed similar challenges in the past: Pentagram was asked to redesign Christmas in 2006 (in which I participated while employed there) and Worldstudio to redesign the gay flag in 2009. Of course, we said yes. Yes, to a project that we had to finish in less than two weeks, with no pay, and without any precedents to refer to. Regardless, we decided to approach it just as we would any identity or branding project. The results of this endeavor, along with the process that got us there, are shown below, and at Studio 360 you can listen to the presentation with our "client," Mr. Andersen.

The hardest part was grasping the extent to which Valentine's Day had become more obnoxious than enjoyable and finding glimmers of hope in the traditions of this holiday. Our first step was sitting down with our friends Jennifer Elsner and David Shields of Viewers Like You — both of whom shared with us being designers, ex-Brooklynites, married to each other and not celebrating Valentine's — to have a discussion on the merits and demerits of this love-filled day. You can hear very small segments of this conversation here. Based on this hearty conversation and further reflection we established the following aspects of Valentine's:

The Positive
Effusive with an intense display of affection in a single day.
Convenient with a predetermined palette of solutions.
Memorable with the potential for unique gestures.

The Negative
Generic with mass-produced, off-the-shelf solutions.
Divisive with the exclusion of singles.
Stressful with the pressure of getting the right token of affection.
Obnoxious with visual clichés of hearts and explosions of red.

We can't fix everything, so we decided to focus on five aspects.

Clarify expectations.
Simplify visual clutter.
Update color palette.
Revamp traditions.
Transform Cupid.

Sorry single people, this day is not for you. Father’s Day isn’t for mothers and Mother’s Day isn’t for fathers… you have Spring Break, what else do you want?

Applies only to romantic love between two people, so if you want to celebrate friendship you will need to find another day.

Responsibility for displays of affection falls on both parties. Men screw up enough throughout the year to put the weight of a holiday on their shoulders.

On January 1st discuss with your partner whether you will celebrate Valentine’s Day. Sign a piece of paper if needed.

Among all the visual manifestations of Valentine’s, one stands apart as a recurring icon. The heart.

But the heart is not unique to Valentine’s Day.

By drawing from the heart’s symmetric anatomy and curved structure we arrive at a new, exclusive icon: The Valentine.

The Valentine stands for unity, simplicity, and partnership. It also makes the shape of a “V.”

The Valentine is as simple as other global icons.

It can be easily reinterpreted and adopted by anyone. (Your interpretation is welcome at this Flickr Group)

The Valentine can serve to indicate relationship status or romantic intentions depending on its orientation.

It lets your friends know whether you are “open” or “closed” for romantic business.

The primary color associated with Valentine’s Day is red, which is also the color for other significant icons.

The supporting color is pink, in many hues...yuck.

Since red can not be owned by Valentine’s and there is equity in pink, a viable solution is magenta, a vibrant, contemporary and strong color — it is also a default printing ink, yielding efficient and sustainable print production.

Magenta is coupled with a dark gray for a touch of seriousness and sophistication — overlaying these two colors creates a third one, burgundy.

The Valentine rendered in various combinations of the new color palette.

Tradition: The Valentine card
Offering a Valentine card as a display of affection has lost all sense of significance. Originally created by hand with meaningful materials and gestures, today’s mass-produced cards have lost all sense of romanticism. But how do you change people’s behavior to go back to Valentine’s roots?

Photo by Flickr user krossbow

Introducing The Valentine Card Tax regulated by federal, state, and local law. Applied to any Valentine card design produced in quantities of 1,000 or more. Yes… Hallmark and American Greetings, you are out of luck.

Leading to a return to one-of-a-kind Valentines.

If hand-made Valentine cards are not for you, get a silver marker and a stack of sticky notes branded with The Valentine, then use them to leave unexpected notes on Valentine’s Day and even throughout the year for your loved one to find.

Tradition: The roses
Sure, roses are pretty but a large percentage of the nearly 200 million sold in the U.S. on Valentine’s Day come all the way from Colombia — hello carbon footprint — harvested by workers in reportedly dire conditions and pay. Roses must go.

Instead, and to retain the connection to an object that grows from our earth, we suggest selecting from a range of more functional, lasting organic products that, ahem, are also powerful aphrodisiacs. Pictured: saffron, chili peppers, eggplant, ginger, durian, okra, and papaya.

Tradition: The chocolate
There is absolutely nothing wrong with chocolate on Valentine’s Day or any other day of the year. Banning it would be a crime. Chocolate… stays! (Abstain from enormous boxes though, it’s hard enough that most of us have already given up on New Year’s resolutions by this time.)

When it comes to other Holidays’ characters, Cupid just does not measure up. We would like to offer some alternatives. To do so, we asked three of our favorite illustrators to dream up possible replacements.

Chief Valentine Officer by Amanda Woodward
A more benevolent form of C-level executive, the CVO’s sole end-of-year bonus is the joy of procuring romantic love between two people, no matter how hard they are to bring together.

Heart Worm by Von Glitschka
On Valentine’s Day let your heart be infested with the Heart Worm. Its burrowing presence will give you passionate heart burn for the apple of your eye. Eat your heart out Cupid! Plus, it can flex into a number of helpful shapes.

The Love Puppy by Jessica Hische
Nothing sparks conversations between strangers — of both genders and all orientations — than a dog. This winged puppy rejects Cupid’s bow and arrow in favor of the Care Bears Stare, “in which the collected Bears stand together and radiate light from their respective tummy symbols. These combine to form a ray of love and good cheer which could bring care and joy into the target’s heart.”

It’s not perfect, but it’s a start. And, regardless of what you do or don’t do on Valentine’s, a simple “I love you” might be enough.

If you would like to use The Valentine icon, and we encourage you to, you may download it, print it, twist it, scribble it, whatever it.

After designing the logo for the 2009 edition of TypeCon back in April of 2009, the final weeks leading up to the conference on July 14 were a test to the logo and the ideas we had previously established now that it faced real applications. Working with the conference’s organizers UnderConsideration developed a wide range of communication materials for TypeCon 2009: Rhythm.

Conference Program
One of the most arduous tasks was putting together the 70-page program containing the schedule, session descriptions, speaker bios and sponsor advertisements. The broad styles and weight of the selected type family, Benton Sans, proved invaluable in the development of the program. Consciously formatted with typographic details the program strives to be as clear and easy to follow as possible.

T-shirt
Another manipulation of the original logo to fill the t-shirt’s space better. On the back, the always-challenging wall of sponsor logos was deployed following the look of the program, rather than just scattering logos on the poor t-shirt wearer’s back.

Tote Bag
Perhaps our favorite manipulation of the logo’s loops was for this modest tote bag, which help frame important information about the conference. The canvas bag was purposefully as frugal as possible.

Commemorative Poster
Following the unspoken rule that posters must be striking from a distance but revealing and surprising once seen up close, we decided to use a simple crop of the logo that, when seen from afar, looks, well, just like the logo but upon closer inspection reveals that the concentric lines of the logo have been constructed from the speakers’ names and sponsors’ organizations. Yes, it took a long time to do.

As a promotional idea for Brand New, our blog focusing on opinions on corporate and brand identity, we opted for a product that involved our ever-growing readership in its content rather than just forcing a product upon them. One uniting practice among identity designers — whether they do work for Fortune 500 companies or their local laundromat — is that of sketching logo ideas, typically dozens of them before refining them in the computer, so we decided to inquire about the different reasons of why designers sketch logos. With more than 300 responses through Brand New and Twitter we selected the most compelling 30 and produced a modest 32-page sketchbook.

The Brand New sketchbook is available for purchase for $5 plus shipping is sold out.

Our third book as authors and designers, published with Rockport Publishers, is Graphic Design, Referenced: A Visual Guide to the Language, Applications, and History of Graphic Design, a 400-page visual and informational guide to the most commonly referenced terms, historical moments, landmark projects, and influential practitioners in the field of graphic design.

As we note in our introduction, this is one of the most difficult projects we have developed to date — due, mostly, to the 2,000 images we gathered and the 115,000-plus words we wrote. Putting them together, across 400 pages, was perhaps the most relaxing aspect of it all. We established a (seemingly) simple layout through a comprehensive grid with three strong horizontal blocks where we could accommodate all the content cohesively but still maintain a sense of surprise in a few of the spreads.

The book is typeset in Hoefler & Frere-Jones Mercury type family that, in its infinite readability, allowed us to fit more information per page. As the display typeface we worked with Christian Schwartz's voluminous Stag Sans. We first sliced Stag Sans ourselves as a stencil title treatment for the cover and Christian then developed an all-uppercase alphabet to use throughout the book in special instances.

A one-page, promotional web site is available for more information about this book. Photographic details below and flat spreads underneath.

With offices in Boston, Hartford, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix and San Diego and expertise in civic, corporate, education, hospitality and science & technology markets, JCJ Architecture is a highly prolific firm that designs and builds at the local, regional and global level. UnderConsideration was brought in to revitalize their identity in a way that marked an evolution from their 2006 name change and identity.

With Apex New established as the type family for JCJ Architecture we developed a basic lock-up system for both their tag line and the different markets they work in.

The stationery is straightforward, with the letterhead allowing for the generous amount of information that an architecture firm regularly communicates with while the business card packs a red punch in the back that helps establish the bold color as intrinsic to the identity.

One of the most important needs for JCJ Architecture was an adaptable system for their myriad communications needs, whether they are for approaching potential clients, responding to Requests for Proposals, maintaining their existing clients informed of their project’s progress, or cataloguing their work. To help establish a consistent visual cue, we focused on the union between “JCJ” and “architecture” drawing a line from the angle of the “A”, creating a bold visual statement that identifies any and all documents issued by JCJ Architecture.

Note: All the following images are prototypes and do not represent actual documents.

A simple grid, hinged at the center, for the front and back covers establishes consistency and allows for flexibility in printing methods, whether they are full-bleed brochures printed offset or bordered printouts from the office laser printer. The combination of red, black and white also allows for variety.

Unlike other projects we undertake, we had the opportunity to work with the in-house design team of JCJ Architecture, who provided very valuable insight into their specific needs and helped us craft an expandable system that they could then implement moving forward.

As past speakers, attendees and all-around enthusiasts of TypeCon, the annual conference organized by the Society of Typographic Aficionados, UnderConsideration was particularly enthusiastic about designing the identity for its 2009 conference in Atlanta, GA taking place July 14 – 19. The theme: Rhythm.

The result is a logo that doesn't feel static and allows for a variety of executions while maintaining its consistent visual language. We also created a smaller “R” badge that requires less real estate and can be used as a kind of official seal for all things rhythmic. And typographic. The supporting typeface is the indefatigable Benton Sans by Font Bureau.

Because much of the promotion for the conference happens online, through like-minded web sites, the logo had to work at small sizes. Simply shrinking the logo was unacceptable as it became hard to read and lost the pleasant rhythm of its concentric lines, so we drew an alternative set of logos using only three lines for small applications. The same concept applies for print-based logos that need to reproduced at small sizes.

As of this writing, we are working on the complete identity program for TypeCon 2009 and will add that work as soon as it is complete.

Launched in May of 2009, FPO: For Print Only publishes highly detailed posts of greatly designed print projects by designers around the world. The web site, while it has its own visual flair, is designed to make the project overview, production details and imagery of each project the center of attention. Like the rest of our blogs, FPO runs on Movable Type and takes advantage of its “Custom Fields” feature to provide easy input of the varied information through the content management system while reflecting a consistent set of facts in the front end.

Because we had a great set of characters to work with — F, P, O as in FPO: For Print Only — we decided to render each of them as the size of a perfect square, so even if the type looks as if it came out of the box, it didn’t. The wordmark has an inline that can change color, which is something we do every two or three weeks on the website, where we also use the logo rather big giving us the opportunity to gently place the description of the acronym within the O. The text "For Print Only" is typeset in House Industries’ Paperback.

Initially launched in April of 2003 as a feature of our Speak Up blog, Word It is a monthly challenge for our audience to visually interpret a specific word we select; there are no limitations and it is not uncommon to receive over one hundred submissions in a single month. Over the course of 66 months and words we had amassed more than 4,400 submissions and decided to spin-off Word It into its own blog in March of 2009.

The logo or, in this case, the wordmark for the Word It blog is unapologetically big and bold yet, understanding of its context, very simple, allowing the hundreds of submissions to be the center of attention. Set very tightly together, the Word It wordmark uses House Industries’ Neutraface No. 2, Titling style. The wordmark’s generous heft, allows us to use it translucently in some vivacious Word It quilts.

The quilts above show a sampling of Word Its from Cut, Short and Vote.

After designing their inaugural web site, more than four years ago, we were excited to be able to redesign and reprogram the web presence for Toronto-based urban planning firm, Office for Urbanism.

Photo: John-Michael Maas/Darby Films

One of the key aspects of VisionSpring’s model are the Vision Entrepreneurs (VEs) — village-based individuals who have been prepared to do eye test exams and prescribe glasses — that hold public exams in different towns. To promote these events, VEs rely on posters, banners and handouts created locally to be able to attract potential customers and, in some cases, VEs face illiteracy and must be able to communicate through images. UnderConsideration worked with VisionSpring to develop a very basic set of field materials that could be easily updated and replicated, accompanied by a set of illustrations to enhance their communication impact.

The field materials were first used in India on September of 2008.

All photos: John-Michael Maas/Darby Films

To support the logo for VisionSpring we created a simple identity system that could be applied and extended to various business and communication materials.

Stationery suite, including letterhead, business cards and no. 10 envelope.

Press kit provided as individual Microsoft Word documents for easy updating, printing and sharing.

Sample pages of the identity guidelines that help maintain consistency.

Template for PowerPoint presentations (left) and for HTML newsletter (right).

For their 2008 Growth Capital Offering document applied through the Nonprofit Finance Fund, VisionSpring had the opportunity to use a cover fold-out page to tell its story in a more visual manner than the rest of the document allowed. As part of our ongoing work for this fledgling nonprofit organization, we designed an inside cover featuring photographs of VisionSpring’s activity around the world and a spread emphasizing the breadth, reach and impact of its model. The main diagram reiterates the original concept of the logo, as an organization whose central idea can generate global ripples.

Our second book as authors and designers, published with F+W Media’s HOW Books, is Women Of Design: Influence and Inspiration from the Original Trailblazers to the New Groundbreakers, bringing full attention to the wonderful work, careers and contributions of women designers, writers, teachers and entrepreneurs around the world.

The intention of the book is to be rich both in imagery and content, so the layout adapts to showcase the details and work of each woman and, in some cases, the in-depth interviews. The yellow and red colors that appear throughout the book are meant to convey the evolution of the profession and the extended legacy of each woman — a subtle change happens across the book as a gradient between yellow and red develops in each page. The cover illustration was imagined and executed by Marian Bantjes.

A one-page, promotional web site is available for more information about this book. Photographic details below and flat spreads underneath.

A “Diagram of Influence and Inspiration” in the form of a fold-out spread appears at the beginning of the book, establishing the broader network of women defining the graphic design profession. A close-up view is also available.