New York developer’s new identity and website

North­park Devel­op­ment is a full-service real estate devel­op­ment com­pany based in Man­hat­tan. They focuses on devel­op­ing cus­tom res­i­den­tial con­do­minium and rental apart­ment and build­ings in upper Man­hat­tan. Their brand is char­ac­ter­ized by qual­ity, design integrity and atten­tion to detail.

Merola was con­tacted to cre­ate the new iden­tity and web­site.Visit the North­park website.

Visceral, Behavioral, & Reflective design

This video is a few years old but I just dis­cov­ery it through TED. Also read Don Norman’s essay: “Emo­tion & Design: Attrac­tive things work better.”

Google’s latest SEO Recommendations

Google’s head of search, Amit Sing­hal sheds some light on how the new page rank­ing algo­rithms from Google can effect your web­sites search performance.

While the actual rank­ing details are top secret, Sing­hal shares a list of ques­tions that will help guide web design­ers and con­tent cre­ators to stay focused on what’s important–the user.

1. Would you trust the infor­ma­tion pre­sented in this article?
2. Is this arti­cle writ­ten by an expert or enthu­si­ast who knows the topic well, or is it more shal­low in nature?
3. Does the site have dupli­cate, over­lap­ping, or redun­dant arti­cles on the same or sim­i­lar top­ics with slightly dif­fer­ent key­word variations?
4. Would you be com­fort­able giv­ing your credit card infor­ma­tion to this site?
5. Does this arti­cle have spelling, styl­is­tic, or fac­tual errors? Con­tinue reading »

Making complex data simple to understand

US Fed­eral Con­tract Spend­ing Data Visu­al­iza­tion by Pitch Inter­ac­tive, Inc. The left side rep­re­sents US spend­ing and the right side rep­re­sents related media cov­er­age. The data was culled from 2009 New York Times news arti­cles. Visit their site and view full-size US Fed­eral Con­tract Spend­ing Data Visu­al­iza­tion.

The Power of Data Visualization

David McCan­dles gives a fan­tas­tic TED​.com talk about the power and poten­tial of Data Visu­al­iza­tion and it’s unique abil­ity to take a stag­ger­ingly large amount of data, and deliver it with clar­ity and beauty. Go to his web­site right now to view his tremen­dous work. View his TED​.com talk too. David McCan­d­less: The beauty of data visu­al­iza­tion | Video on TED​.com.

Can You Know Motion Without Knowing Stillness?

A great arti­cle and smart dis­cus­sion regard­ing the rela­tion­ship between still­ness and motion. After read­ing the dia­log about the new Com­edy Cen­tral logo redesign and accom­pa­ny­ing motion graphic pre­sen­ta­tion, It becomes clear that the role of cor­po­rate iden­tity has move up from the cor­ner of the page in to a dynamic brand nav­i­ga­tor that reveals and enhances the entire con­sumer experience.

Motion Graph­ics, Visual Effects and Exper­i­men­tal Mov­ing Image Sto­ry­telling.

Mapping America every city every block

The New York Times has again man­aged to blow my mind with another inter­ac­tive map. Using data gath­ered from the 2005 to 2009 Cen­sus. Matthew Bloch, Shan Carter and Alen McLean are cred­ited with the map and have dis­played and unbe­liev­able amount of infor­ma­tion beautifully.

Drill downs on data, street by street, city by city illus­trate an unprece­dented view of the coun­try.
Look at where you live to dis­cover the edu­ca­tion and income lev­els of your neighbors.

Data points include:
Race and Eth­nic­ity– White, Black, His­panic, Asian, and for­eign born populations.

Con­tinue reading »

Fool, you can’t tell Arial from Helvetica!

The ulti­mate graphic designer smack-down. Admit­tedly not as much sting as a well timed mother joke, but it can set an SVA, Par­sons or Pratt grad back on their heels a bit.

Take the quiz and impress your friends with your new found skills. Walk down the street con­fi­dently point­ing to store win­dows and pass­ing deliv­ery trucks, suck­ing your teeth and mut­ter­ing – urgh, dreaded Arial! Or find your­self say­ing things like – Hel­vetica would make a nice girls name wouldn’t it…

If you’ve seen Hel­vetica the movie this should be pretty easy. Take the quiz and let me know how you did. I scored 18 out of 20, and I’m not a good test person.

Ironic Sans has taken 20 Hel­vetica logos and redrew them using Arial.

“It seems to be the con­sen­sus that Arial is a sub­stan­dard alter­na­tive to Hel­vetica. What if the logos we’re used to see­ing in Hel­vetica were redone in Arial? Would you even notice if the next time you saw the Amer­i­can Air­lines logo it was redone in Arial?

If you know what to look for it prob­a­bly jumped right out at you. If not, you may see that they’re dif­fer­ent but still not know which is which.

Take the quiz here!

Orig­i­nal post: Ironic Sans: Quiz: So you think you can tell Arial from Hel­vetica?.

Law firm marketing is more important than ever

Design­ing logos and web sites for lawyers and law firms today is dif­fer­ent then it was even just a few years ago. A list of part­ner names set in Times New Roman or Cop­per­plate doesn’t cut it any­more. Firms need to dif­fer­en­ti­ate from one another, develop a solid brand strat­egy and have a personality.

Hud­son Law, LLC spe­cial­izes in intel­lec­tual prop­erty cases and needed a clean pre­sen­ta­tion of what exactly they offer to their clients. The use of sim­ple draw­ings through­out the site illus­trated the con­cept effec­tively, “IP Pro­tec­tion from the sketch on a paper nap­kin to rev­enue, choose Hud­son Law.” Merola Designed the web­site. Visit the Hud­son Law web­site.

Pre-school gets a fresh new look, Rego Park, NY

When par­ents are look­ing for a preschool for their child, word of mouth rec­om­men­da­tions from local par­ents are key. Par­ents want to know that the school is safe, clean and pro­fes­sional. Most preschool mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als do not com­mu­ni­cate these qual­ity traits. A rel­a­tively small invest­ment in these mate­ri­als can go a long way in help­ing par­ent choose the right school for their chil­dren early edu­ca­tion needs.

Robert Merola helped re-brand Sesame Sprout pre-school design­ing the new logo and mar­ket­ing materials.