reactions

As a marketer, how can you harness Design to support your brand’s strategic goals? When we speak of Design, (notice the capital D) we are of course not only talking about graphics and stylistic treatments (you already knew that right?) but about the organization of information, the hierarchy of messages and brand assets. Starting a project with a creative brief ensures that the visual design that emerges is purposeful, allowing your brand to perform in the market as you intended. It is the objective starting point before the more subjective design process begins.
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“Is having a blog and an email newsletter redundant?” a colleague recently asked. MSLK believes absolutely not. If utilized correctly both will draw from the same content plan, but your email newsletter helps you stay top of mind with your existing database while your blog is designed to help reach a larger network of followers on social media, including introducing your brand to perfect strangers. Here’s how:
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We’re pleased to announce that our new packaging and strategic brand development for Wigwam Mills has just been picked-up by Packaging of the World — one of the most prominent packaging design website showcasing the most interesting and creative packaging work worldwide. Its audience includes packaging designers, graphic designers, advertising agencies, students and manufacturers, garnering close to half a million impressions every month.

Check it out now!

In today’s crowded marketplace, consumers and retailers don’t necessarily need another product in their lives. However humans are natural storytellers. We will always have room in our lives and on our shelves for brands that tell us something interesting .

For over 14 years we have helped brands find their voice in today’s crowded market and send that unified message across varied media. We also recognize that today’s busy consumer doesn’t read. Often a picture — or better yet — a movie is worth a thousand words. This 90 second reel of our work in fashion and beauty showcases a few of the stories we’ve created.
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MSLK just went live with the sixth in an ongoing series of videos to showcase what we do best: create 360° branding solutions for our clients. The video demonstrates how we guided performance sock manufacturer, Wigwam Mills, towards a refined market position, redesigned their packaging and came up with a new graphic language that they are utilizing in all of their promotional efforts.

Earth conscientious students at Smithton Middle School in Columbia, Missouri have recreated MSLK’s eco-art installation, Watershed. The installation was created by the Eco-Art Club and 6th grade Art Study Hall students. Several months ago, Amy H. Company, Art Specialist at Smithton Middle School read about MSLK’s eco-art installations Take-Less, Watershed, and Urban Tumbleweeds and became inspired. Amy reached out to MSLK asking if it would be ok if she led the students through the process of  recreating Watershed.

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If you are designer, you’ve probably already read Paula Scher’s opinion piece, ”AIGA: Unjustified“ in the online journal Imprint, decrying the AIGA‘s decision to forgo other competitions in favor of just one, “Justified.” It has generated an unprecedented amount of comments for the publication, and has polarized the design community. What you may not know is that my agency, MSLK, helped the AIGA in bringing Justified to life.

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In an effort to bring more recognition to Long Island City, MSLK has been working with the LIC Partnership on a master plan to foster growth. Our design and marketing efforts are helping to bring attention to the thriving economic, industrial and cultural developments that are occurring, making LIC truly a great place to live and work. Like the revitalization of Grand Central Station and Times Square, the visual component of these plans plays a large role in shaping the experience of these places. The main streets and intersections are now branded with bold banners welcoming the public.
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If your brand’s core presence is online, you may have heard about Google Panda, a code name for their new ranking algorithm, still very much a work in progress. With all of the conflicting literature out there, I’m hoping to cut through the clutter, so you can understand what you can be doing to better optimize your site. At its most basic level, the aim of this update is to lower the rank of “low quality” sites and raise the rank of “high quality” sites. Google’s spiders are more “human” than ever and can detect many things they couldn’t previously. So you might be asking yourself, how do I become a high quality site in the eyes of google? Read on to learn about the three big ideas we’ve gleaned from our own research.
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MSLK Creative Director and Co-Founder Marc S Levitt was quoted in a recent Atlantic article, speaking about the design profession’s critical — yet largely unsung — role. The article aims to draw parallels between wide-ranging professions from fact-checkers to anesthesiologists, describing them the “Invisibles.”

Citing examples ranging from book design to the now-infamous Palm Beach County “butterfly ballot” in the 2000 presidential election, Levitt describes the careful role designers play in shaping others’ content:

While some may think that the best design always grabs our attention, Levitt counters that great design often shouldn’t call attention to itself. “I’m not as concerned with prettying things up as I am with the end user being engaged in the right way.”

The article seeks to draw a connection between various professions, finding common traits:

Meticulousness, savoring great responsibility, and seeking only internal satisfaction are a trifecta of traits—a near antithesis of our societal ethos of insouciant attention-cravers—as a culture we’d all do well to follow.

Full article, by David Zweig, can be read here: http://mslk.co/zFPIm2