The QR Code of Seattle - We haven't seen anything yet

Seattle....a mecca for good coffee, good beer, the outdoors and technology.

With full disclosure that I was one of the last people to board the smartphone bus, I am now writing with full excitement to how many of the above interests have merged to make life that much easier. And the connector? It's the simple QR CODE scanner apps that are available for almost any smartphone. Apparently Japan has been using QR codes for 10+ some years but here in Seattle, it's just starting to take off. You may have started to notice the black and white square box item in magazine ads or on posters. When you scan them with your smartphone, you are then provided with some additional information, be it a website, a coupon, a short promo or more.

Here at Viewhalloo Designs, we just created our first magazine ad that uses a QR code. It's for the Green Lake Gobble & Mashed Potato Munch Off 5K that will take place at Green Lake Park on Sunday, November 20th. In this instance, the QR code takes the user to the online registration page where they can sign up for the race. Very handy and quite streamlined. We will definitely get more creative with how we promote the QR codes within the print pieces we do so keep an eye on the future work we do.

On a recent walk through Seattle's Carkeek Park, we came across another creative use of the QR code interface. Having no idea it was there but recognizing the shape and intent of the QR code box, we found ourselves in front of a small white cement block that had a QR code on it placed in front of a piece of art. Of course we scanned it and in doing so, a short description of the art piece popped up on our phone. We were hooked and as a result of that quick scan, we then found ourselves walking throughout the park looking for all the other exhibit pieces.

Prior to the walk we had no idea that the Center for Contemporary Arts had an their "Heaven and Earth: Cycles of Return" outdoor sculpture exhibition within the park and we had no idea that we would have so much fun exploring the park while we read about and contemplated the pieces.

Some technology advancements seem to be excessive, but in our eyes, if done right with the user in mind, we think the wave of QR codes is a good thing. Get ready Seattle, there's bound to be more. 

Shown to the right is one of the sculpture pieces found in Carkeek Park. The Heaven and Earth: Cycles of Return exhibition runs from July 9th to October 9th, 2011. Go see it (even if you don't have a smartphone).

Baby Nursery Room Painting in Seattle - A new calling for Viewhalloo Designs?

The last week has been a fun one. On top of working together for the client work we do at Viewhalloo Designs, we've stepped up our game for something both personal and fun...Garett's new baby nursery room. We're not completely done painting, but that said, we thought we would share with you the work that's been done to date. Coleen masterfully free-handed the pictures and then Garett stepped in to help with some of the painting. Is designing and painting kids bedrooms a new calling for the partners of Viewhalloo Designs? Our answer is "maybe". Everything has a price.....

Firecrackers booming in Seattle

The smoke has cleared and Seattle's fireworks are gone but we're still celebrating a BOOMING success! On Sunday, July 3rd at 11:55pm, Seattle's Firecracker 5000 5K took place. Having created the marketing materials for the event as well as the glow-in-the-dark participant shirt design, we had confidence that the event was going to be a success. We just didn't know by how much. The stats are in and with 350 more people than last year, the event saw a 29% increase over last year's attendance. We're proud to be involved with this event and already have a plan for how to help it grow next here. Here's a glimpse of the participant shirt we designed.  

Run Bunny Run....Seattle's Fremont 5K & Briefcase Relay

We're going to hop right to it and say "we had some fun creating the marketing materials for this year's June 10th Fremont 5K & Briefcase Relay". Having created the marketing materials for this event the last few years where we chose to showcase the briefcase relay portion of the event by using just an image of one of the past costumed participants, new this year we decided to merge the visual imagery of the event by super-imposing one of the costumed participants on top of another image of the more serious 5K race participants. We did this for many reasons that include (1) the need to reach the more serious runner, (2) the need to showcase the scenery of the course, (3) the need to highlight the Fremont 5K's typically warm weather and (4) the need to keep it fun. Fremont has the reputation of being just a bit off the norm and we wanted to make sure the marketing materials we created matched this focus while still serving its main purpose which in the end is to prompt as many people as possible to register for the event. As much as we love full-bodied bunnies, we knew that this event needed more. 

Olympic View Elementary Plant Sale

We here in the Burrow are supporting our future Bunnies by designing the press release and helping OV get the word out on a fun fundraiser - The 10th Annual Olympic View Elementary Plant Sale! April 29th, 30th and May 1st. If you have tasted my tomatoes, you have tasted the wonderful plants that come from this sale. It is legendary (says so right on the flier!) and lots of fun for the Maple Leaf neighborhood. Support our school and invite your friends to grow a plant for education. Your garden will thank you.

Bicycling + Food = "Yum" at Seattle's Spoke & Food event

We like bicycling. We like food. We like Seattle and we like community events. That's why last year in the mix of all the work we did, we helped launch Seattle's "Spoke & Food" event. Billed as "An evening of dining & bikes", the event ask residents of the Seattle community to bike to and from dinner on the night of our event while also partnering with a select group of "host" restaurants who all agree to donate 20% of their revenues that night to the local Seattle area non-profit we partner with each year. This year's June 28th, 2011 event will benefit the "Children's Garden" program at Seattle Tilth.

The hope is to have 20 restaurants in 20 Seattle neighborhoods. If you are or know of a restaurant who would like to be involved, please let us know.

We'll be designing all the marketing materials for the event sometime in early May. In the meantime, here's a copy of the poster we made for last year's inaugural event.

Event info at http://www.spokeandfood.com/.

Seattle's Valentine's Day Dash - How to Make Love

With Seattle's Love 'em or Leave 'em Valentine's Day Dash at Green Lake coming up on Saturday, February 12th, we thought as the hired graphic designer for the event, we would share with you a practice that we commonly do for all of the Seattle area running races that we design for. The topic at hand is the selecting of event photos and the value that this practice provides.

Step #1 is to find a good photo. We (Viewhalloo Designs) attend the events we design for and take the photos ourselves, so for us having a good photo is easy. For the Valentine's Day Dash, we took somewhere close to 250 photos at last year's event that we put on an external hard drive. In the month prior to designing anything for an event, we review all the photos we took and then select our top favorite 10 to 15 photos. The key focus in selecting these photos is to find ones that will attract the event's target demographic.

Step #2 is to review the strategy to how the event producer wants their marketing materials to look like. Sometimes this actually happens prior to step #1 but our focus at this point is to make sure we understand the "theme" behind the "message" that the marketing materials must have. Is the race producer focusing on a more serious participant, does the event have a costume contest or another aspect that makes it stand out. We are big believers that the photos in any marketing piece are the most efficient mode of connecting to the viewer. We may have a stockpile of great photos but if they don't support the event producer's theme, they won't get used.

Step #3 - Once the photos that support the theme are selected, the next step is to review these photos to see which of them have the best layout in terms of how they will interact on the marketing pieces being designed. We take this into consideration when we shoot our photos but often times, any image that gets used for a poster or on the front of a brochure will need to have some clean space above the people in the photo for text items such as the event logo to be placed on. There's an order to how people's eyes read print material so as important as a photo is, some key things like the event name and date most often need to be listed above. Photos with plenty of sky in them are perfect ones to accomodate this. Other things we consider are clothing color worn, the gender and age of the people in the photo, the volume of the people in the image and the inclusion of key geographical "selling points" such a lake or something else scenic the race route passes.

In considering all the above, more often than not, the photos that we'll decide to use will rise to the top and select themselves. Once they are confirmed, the last step we will do is the editing to those photos to make sure they fit into the marketing pieces we are creating. Common things we do at this point include the cropping of the image to take out certain items within in the photo (street signs, etc), the cropping of the image to amplify other aspects, the varying of the photos contrast to brighten or darken it and sometimes the horizontal 'rotating' of an image so to make sure the participants in the image are moving in the direction that makes sense for the marketing piece that is being created.

As it pertains to the Valentine's Day Dash, we did almost if not all of the above when we selected the images that we used in the event's marketing materials. Here's the image that we started with as well as what the front of the 2011 event brochure looked like.

Here's the photo we started with:

Here's what the final product (the front of the brochure) looks like:



To learn more about Viewhalloo Designs, go to http://www.viewhalloodesigns.com/. To learn more about the Valentine's Day Dash, go to http://www.valentinesdaydash.com/.