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Great samples of re-branding Elaina! I'm especially unimpressed with the DMI logo. You'd think a design institute would come up with something a little more provocative. Love the Nonprofit Finance Fund...they've muted the bluish-gray and pumped up the gold to liven the sucker up, not to mention the good contrast between the corporate/cold branch on the left and the organically-shaped blossom on the right. The modernized font makes it less hoity-toidy as well. Nice.

On an unrelated note, I took a tour of Pavsner Press over by Golden Ring Mall on Wednesday before my Designer's Survival Guide class. The tour is actually a requirement of the class, but I had an easy "in" because my step-brother, John Ermatinger, works in Sales at Pavsner. That place is just awesome. When you first walk in, it's like you walked through a time-warp to the 1950's...the front office consists of small "cubes" and everyone in one room (Much like the Office..btw, people say I look and act like Andy Bernard, but that's a story for another time). My tour took me through the part of the building where all the old equipment was and where a bunch of guys stood around stripping plates...a process which is now obsolete. Now proofs are made off of the "stripped and ripped" files. This process is done in lieu of working off of the native file and allows the printer to make adjustments to satisfy their printing requirements. After finally reaching the "Quality Control Room", a very well-lit proofing room where clients are brought to sign off on jobs, we entered the 21st century. Pavsner has 3 Heidelburgs...the best press in the world. On top of this, all 3 are Speedmasters, which means they are souped-up, and then on top of that they run on the Autoplate system, which means they require no manual feeding of plates and hence are considered the Bill Gates/Donald Trump models. One press is a 7-color 40 inch press, another a 2 color 40 inch press, and the last a 5 color 29 inch press. Another thing that was awesome to check out was the book-binder and how that whole process works. I realize as I'm typing this it probably doesn't mean much unless you are there in the moment seeing these things, but man were they impressive, and I couldn't jot stuff done fast enough.

While I was there I did ask John if they use synthetic inks, etc. He said they've been using soy-based inks for 10 years and went on to explain how they comply with all the green concerns. I'll say this...he's in Sales and it's a popular question, so he knows his stuff. The most surprising thing, and probably because I just have never really sat down and thought about it, is that it's less environmentally-friendly to use recycled paper because no one wants yellow paper or paper with brown specks and so the chemicals used to bleach the recycled paper and the old ink that's extracted go right back into the...you guessed it...environment. I won't bore you with other details on this discussion about environmental-concerns, save to say he knows an awful lot about the history and the politics of printing. A very interesting and enlightening tour and I highly recommend it, regardless of class requirements now or in the future.

Nard-Dog out...