The All Souls Unitarian Church’s AIDS Task Force

Estab­lished by the Rev. For­rester Church of the All Souls
Uni­tar­ian Church on Sep­tem­ber 29, 1985.
Formed only four years after the Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol issued clin­i­cal evi­dence of a new dis­ease, now known as AIDS. It was the first faith-based AIDS task force in Man­hat­tan.
The first major action of All Souls’ AIDS Task Force was a pub­lic edu­ca­tion cam­paign in which 10,000 plac­ards were placed in this city’s buses and sub­ways.
The graphic designed by Robert Merola, was used on large ban­ners and lapel pins and helped pro­mote and raise funds for the organization.

Typeface designers wrestle with the world of pixels

A New York Times reporter sits down with typog­ra­phy gurus, Jonathan Hoe­fler and Tobias Frere-Jones to dis­cuss some of the chal­lenges fac­ing graphic and web design­ers. Incon­sis­tent ren­der­ing of type­faces due to dif­fer­ent oper­at­ing sys­tems, web browsers and dif­fer­ent user set­tings. View the Times arti­cle.

Three tips I have: 1– Reset your browser zoom set­ting, this at least ren­ders the same sized type that the designer intended. 2– Upgrade to Fire­fox or Safari, any browser but Explorer. 3– Check to see that your mon­i­tor is set to it’s high­est res­o­lu­tion set­ting. I’m always amazed to see how many peo­ple never bother to check this setting.

Design — Type­face Design­ers Wres­tle With the World of Pix­els — NYTimes.com.

Merola designs launch website for Mapwise software

Map­Wise soft­ware bring the power of visu­al­iza­tion to the man­age­ment of trade­marks. By unlock­ing the data trapped in reports and spread­sheets and dis­play­ing it graph­i­cally, com­pa­nies can now man­age their trade­mark assets strate­gi­cally. Merola Designed the Map­wise cor­po­rate iden­tity and was then asked to design the web­site. Visit the Map­wise web­site.

Discribe youself precisely in seven words, or less

Charles Dickens’s Christ­mas Carol reveals seven unflat­ter­ing adjec­tives describ­ing Scrooge, “squeez­ing, wrench­ing, grasp­ing, scrap­ing, clutch­ing, cov­etous old sinner.”

The orig­i­nal man­u­script rev­els that Dick­ens con­sid­ered many others.

Orig­i­nal man­u­script for Charles Dickens’s Christ­mas Carol.

Could you effec­tively describe your­self in seven words?
This chal­lenge comes up every time Merola Design works with a new client. It’s not easy, but it is an essen­tial step in build­ing a strong brand and effec­tive cor­po­rate Identity. The truth is you have more then seven words if you include your company’s name, tag-line and logo. Lever­ag­ing these ele­ments and tak­ing care to avoid redun­dancy, can help you more fully describe your com­pa­nies unique value proposition.

A Closer Look at Charles Dickens’s ‘Christ­mas Carol’ — Inter­ac­tive Graphic — NYTimes.com

Rob Merola designs Soma’s new Synerchi identity

New logo for Chico’s Soma brand

Soma Inti­mates new line of active­ware fea­tures inno­v­a­tive and beau­ti­ful design detail­ing. The yoga inspired line received its own graph­ics and mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als. The design will be used for hang-tags, labels, zip­per pulls and other on-garment branding.

New program for leadership education & mentoring

Robert Merola designs logo for Build­ing Bet­ter Leaders

Art Petty’s goal is to pro­vide content-rich, real-world edu­ca­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties for pro­fes­sion­als who want to take their careers to the next level. He offers per­son­al­ized men­tor­ing to pro­gram par­tic­i­pants to help them real­ize their pro­fes­sional goals and to pro­mote life-long learn­ing and fos­ter the value of lead­er­ship in orga­ni­za­tions of any size. Visit the Build­ing Bet­ter Lead­ers web­site.

Best of luck to Art and his new project.

OneCoast gets a clean new identity

Merola redesigns OneCoast logo

OneCoast is the largest and only national whole­sale provider of gift, home, and col­le­giate prod­ucts to retail­ers through­out the United States. They assist hun­dreds of lead­ing ven­dors mar­ket and sell their prod­ucts to over 60,000 inde­pen­dent retail stores, inter­net stores, inte­rior design­ers, and retail chains.

Merola Design was hired to design Onecost’s new iden­tity. Sup­port mate­ri­als such as Graphic stan­dards, Mar­ket guide tem­plates, let­ter­head, Pow­er­Point tem­plates and Hol­i­day cards were also created.

Visit the OneCoast web­site.

HomeStyle spins off from OneCoast

Robert Merola designs new logo for Home­Style.

Home­Style, will be spun off from OneCoast and merged with the regional sales agency, Ivy­s­tone Group.

The com­bined agency will oper­ate two dis­tinct brands: Home­Style will empha­size home accents and lifestyle prod­ucts, while the Ivy­s­tone Group will focus on the gift mar­ket. Together they will have more than 150 field sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives along with 20 key account rep­re­sen­ta­tives and will oper­ate show­rooms in Atlanta, Dal­las, Chicago and Las Vegas.

Robert Merola was called in to re-brand Home­Style and devel­oped its identity.

Mapwise software launches new identity

Robert Merola cre­ates new iden­tity and brand strat­egy

Map­wise devel­ops soft­ware that visu­ally dis­plays com­plex data into clear, con­cise and user friendly infor­ma­tion. Map­wise for Trade­marks applies this con­cept to the dif­fi­cult job of trade­mark man­age­ment and organization.

In addi­tion to the new iden­tity, Merola also designed the Map­wise web­site. Visit the Map­wise web­site.

YMCA Retirement Fund’s 2009 annual report

Merola Designs 2009 Annual Report

For the third time in four years Robert Merola designed the YMCA Retire­ment Fund’s Annual Report. The theme for the report is Weath­er­ing The Storm. The 36 page report con­tained dozens of duo-tone pho­tographs of board mem­bers as well as clear, con­cise finan­cial charts and graphs. Merola’s pho­to­graph fea­tured on the cover is a com­pos­ite of three dif­fer­ent shots taken off the coast of Long Island’s Fire Island Lighthouse.

Merola also designed the 2006, 2008 as well as the funds 85th anniver­sary logo.