The Ladder: Infrequent Intelligence from the NCSDO Staff
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We just returned from NYC, where we were treated to a tour of Barnard College's shiny new Diana Center. It is a remarkable success on so many levels: exterior colors that blend beautifully with the College's brick and stone, comfortable common areas, superb natural light throughout all six floors (no small feat in the City), and a lovely grass-covered rooftop to cap the LEED-Silver structure. Diana is an elegantly understated addition to upper Broadway, where deference to the vernacular has been in short supply of late.
Along the tour, we came upon a heretofore impossible perspective on Barnard's stately Milbank Hall. We've included a quick iPhone shot in the carousel, but our photographers and videographers will set the bar much higher. Talk about a money shot.
Posted by Clifford Lull on Wed, 12 May 2010 08:42:27 -0400 | Permalink
The Joy Of Student Partners
In 1995, as Hampshire College passed the 25th anniversary of its founding, we designed for it a new visual identifier. Up to that point, Hampshire had exclusively used its seal in this role.
Our work on the logo was based on familiarity with the college from engagements dating back to 1981, and it proceeded with the advice and consent of interested members of the faculty and administration.
Many doodles involving the letter H eventually brought forth inspiration: The letter formed by the negative space between four rectangles could stand for the founding idea of the college. Leaders of the Pioneer's Valley's four institutions of higher learning had envisioned Hampshire as a place that could do things those institutions could not do to provide a student-driven education. In essence, the college was founded to fill a gap, or negative space, in higher education. And, we observed, the colors of those four institutions—being mutually compatible—could together become Hampshire's colors.
High-concept stuff. The College adopted the logo enthusiastically—and it remains in service today.
Hampshire students—not involved in the logo's development—entered the creative process after the fact in a merrily cynical spirit and became (perhaps unwittingly) our partners in its promotion.
- They named their new student hang-out The Negative Space Cafe.
- A gifted artist produced for the student newspaper a cartoon strip telling the "story" of how the logo came about. I, as then-head of the consultant agency, was depicted as a bald guy in a suit. (Unfortunately, our copy of that strip has gone missing.)
- Another group of students made a video "commercial" for the logo, which may be seen—barely—here: It is an NCSDO heirloom.
Recently, we were delighted to find that student interest and creativity around the logo continues, as this new video on the Hampshire admissions Web site shows. Two young Hampshire alums, Evan Viera and Chris Bishop, produced it.
Alex Rivera produced the 90s piece. Since then, he's built a successful film and digital media career on satire. His first feature film, "Sleep Dealer"—a sci-fi about workers in a futuristic Mexico—premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008 and has won multiple international awards. He tells the background of the film in a new interview on Hampshire's Web site (which, incidentally, opens with the H icon).
Posted by Bernice Thieblot on Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:27:55 -0500 | Permalink
Anatomical Insite
At social gatherings, when people ask me about my educational background (a ceramics major at an art school) and what I do for a living (a coding specialist in the IT field for the past 10 years), I often see confusion in their reactions. They sense a disconnect—as if they're watching oil and water do the tango on a hot Miami night. I don't often attempt to explain—at parties, anyway—but the two aren't as separate as they seem.
At RISD, one of the most important aspects of drawing class was anatomy: the human figure as a complex interplay of skeleton, muscle, and skin. In ceramics, we learned how structural balance is an important component of beauty. Aesthetic attributes depend on what lies beneath.
Likewise with websites. As a web developer, I find myself looking at sites anatomically—each part contributing its function to the workings of the whole. An analogy might go something like this:
THE SKELETON
Information architecture forms the structure of a site. The assemblage of pages, and the hierarchy and connections among them, determines the site's size, complexity, and organization. No matter where you are in a site, the skeleton holds its form; it retains its integrity from every angle.
THE MUSCLE
Client-side languages, such as JavaScript, allow for movement and action. When a fresh window appears or when you intentionally move to a new page, what you see is a change in the position of elements on your screen—enabled by these languages the way muscles make our own actions possible.
THE SKIN
HTML—hypertext markup language—controls much of the external appearance of each page. Just as the skin fits the contours of the body, web developers use HTML to arrange the elements of a page to fit the page's available space. HTML governs form and determines basic surface organization.
THE PERSONALITY
Okay, so we have a face: bone layered with muscle covered with skin. It's expressionless without personality—which is where CSS (cascading style sheets) comes in. CSS is composed of everything that gives a site personality and style: from fonts and colors to photographs and illustrations.
CONSCIOUSNESS
You thought I'd stop with anatomy? Server-side languages, such as PHP, are responsible for backstage operations. They process the inputs the body receives. If you enter your username, password, and credit card number on a website, a server-side language evaluates it and determines if the data is acceptable—even before you click "Submit."
MEMORY
Last—but not least—there's the database. It's where all the data is stored, and it's what needs to be updated as conditions change. A website without access to a functioning database is like . . . well . . . a web developer who forgets everything he learned in art school—or who doesn't apply it to his field of choice.
Posted by Jiho Sohn on Wed, 19 Aug 2009 06:56:32 -0400 | Permalink
Pure Gold
"The wind of freedom . . . " (from Stanford's motto) means many things to Stanford students. Exploring them has given Stanford a powerful admission communications program.
The latest news: a Gold Award for the viewbook in the 2009 CASE national Circle of Excellence competition. In March, the total recruitment package won Best in Show and Gold in Admission Marketing Report's 24th Annual Admissions Advertising Awards.
In 2009, the first year of the new communications program, the University
received 30,428 applications, up from 25,298 in 2008.
Entry into Stanford's class of 2013 broke all records for competitiveness,
with seats offered to 7.6 percent of applicants, down from 9.5 percent last
year.
Posted by Bernice Thieblot on Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:25:34 -0400 | Permalink
Strikes and Strokes
Cursed—that's what I am. Imagine waiting your whole lifetime to reach a tropical island, and when you finally get there, the beaches are covered with biting flies. But I get ahead of myself.
When Senators baseball left DC in 1971, it was a dark day for Baltimore. As the closest team to the south was now in Atlanta, it meant that Orioles territory extended to somewhere in North Carolina—and that, in deference to fans in the greater region, "Baltimore" would no longer grace the front of the team's away jerseys. Whatever resistance there was to the idea wasn't enough: the city's name was officially stripped in 1973. Six years later—the year the O's lost the World Series to the Pirates—I was born.
Think of my jubilation when, in 2005, a baseball team finally returned to Washington. Could it be that Orioles players would again proudly wear the name of my beloved town when on the road? Would the glory days of the late 60s/early 70s return to Baltimore? I dared to hope.
This year, my wish came true. I couldn't wait to own one of the new jerseys, to show my allegiance not only to the O's but to the city where I live and work.
I made my way to the ballpark store and approached the rack.
My throat tightened.
My eyes bulged.
I stared at the travesty before me.
There was the long-lost script "Baltimore," sure enough, emblazoned across the jersey. The familiar finial of the "e" reaching back toward the stem of the "B" to underscore the word. The flourishing loops in the "B" and the "o." The bright orange letter forms outlined in black to match the piping on the sleeves. But in the midst of it all, where the shirt came together between the second and third buttons...a broken "t"! Instead of extending the ligature between letters—as is customary—and as had been done between 1956 and 1972—someone had chosen to repeat a portion of the "t" on both sides of the shirtfront, splitting the ascender up the middle and demolishing the cross stroke.
I've spent my life following baseball, my life learning about design. Good design, like a uniform, is about cohesiveness and unity. It reflects a pride in details cleanly rendered, an attention to balance and harmony. Likewise, baseball—a simple, elegant sport—is embodied in script lettering. In the grace of its strokes lies a charm and history that should be treated with respect.
Now, on the emblem of my own team's jersey, the two have come together—and neither is the better for it. One need not be a designer to recognize that a wretched mess has been made, an abomination committed. And not only against baseball. Against me.
Posted by Adam Palmer on Thu, 07 May 2009 05:32:36 -0400 | Permalink
Comma Karma Chameleon
People are surprised to learn that an NCSDO copyeditor can also work as a yoga instructor. Aren't the two jobs fundamentally disparate, they ask, the one being exacting, technical, and nerdy, the other, permissive, organic, holistic?
Yes and no.
They are dissimilar on many fronts (see above), and we all need balance, so I appreciate the mildness of yoga after a day of ink-red precision. In perhaps more ways, however, practicing yoga is not unlike editing for NCSDO: In both endeavors, we are exceedingly present (yoga without mindfulness is beside the point, and editing a proof while daydreaming has big, expensive consequences), so we approach both a posture and a document as if for the first time, no matter how many times we've experienced them. We focus on both the details and the piece as a whole—that is, we think about the placement of the big toe and the coordination of the spine with all the limbs, just as we think of the placement of commas while keeping in mind the overall message and voice of the institution. And in both services, we are compassionate in our criticism, subject to tradition and style, and continually striving for balance, harmony, grace, and strength.
And of course, the end result of, say, a well-executed downward dog and an error-free, magnificently written viewbook is the same: bliss.
Posted by Erica Ashton on Fri, 17 Apr 2009 06:33:38 -0400 | Permalink
The Realization
When former poet laureate Billy Collins first encountered Warner Brothers cartoons as a child, it was as if he had discovered "a world of such plasticity that anything imaginable was possible" (WSJ, 6/28/08). In my first encounter with Typo, when I interviewed at NCSDO, a similar realization hit me: this was not the usual workplace. Not only did this company have a mascot, but it happened to be a dog with attitude—and a cartoon dog at that. NCSDO was a place that knew how humor could animate college admission publications, a place that could imagine a different look for every client (like the menagerie of Genesis, each according to its kind), a place that could help prospective students—and donors—imagine futures of promise.
A little over a decade after joining the company, having written the admission communications program for many clients, including Sarah Lawrence, one of NCSDO's most writing-intensive colleges, I was fortunate enough to attend its summer writing seminar—and participate in a poetry workshop led by none other than Billy Collins. Here was the ultimate (to my writing-centric sensibility) educational experience: small-group and one-on-one instruction from a modern master of the written word. Suddenly, futures of promise weren't limited to those students for whom my words had shown the way; I could contribute to society outside of academe, manage to support a family, and (as I was wont to say in admission brochures) pursue my passion at its highest levels.
In one of Billy Collins's funniest, most incisive poems, "The Revenant," a dog returns from the dead to tell his owner how much he despised him in life, adding that the dogs in "this place" write poetry. I can only hope that Typo continues to see poetry, and its ability to unleash the imagination, as consistent with the mission of NCSDO—a place where, certainly, anything imaginable is possible.
Click on the bone to listen to Billy Collins reading on A Prairie Home Companion.
Posted by Matthew Westbrook on Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:26:42 -0400 | Permalink
Four-peat
Click to view client award winners
For the fourth consecutive year, NCSDO clients have earned Best in Show in the Admissions Advertising Awards competition.
This year, the distinction goes to two clients—Stanford University, for its student recruitment program; and the University of Chicago, for Chicago Life, A User's Guide for Students. NCSDO is the nation's only firm with two clients on the list.
Posted by Clifford Lull on Sat, 14 Mar 2009 01:42:17 -0400 | Permalink
Hail, alma mater! (sotto voce)
Perhaps it's time for the advancement profession to take a cue from the pundits: communicate some optimism, for Pete's sake. To which we'll add: and play some good music.
Campaign launches in candlelit ballrooms outfitted with 50-foot-wide projection screens are on hiatus. In their day, as the lights were dimmed and quiet filled the room, sweeping treetop campus views, shot from rented helicopters, appeared on the screens. The fav musical score? The alma mater, of course, sung by college choruses. Pride swelled. Tears welled.
But recently we've detected an ever-so-slight campaign trend. Along with humbler, more cost-conscience surroundings, there's a next wave of scoring-a little more serious, a little more pensive. Busby Berkeley has given way to Ken Burns.
The new austerity is a proper response, but when is enough enough? Should school spirit really fall victim to the times? 
Could this be a moment for—we'll say it—something . . . uplifting? Something . . . stirring? Something like a Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians rendition of the alma mater?
Waring, who passed away in 1984, was known as "The Man Who Taught America to Sing." He sold millions of records in the 1930s and '40s (during some pretty tough times) and his College Memories album includes ready-made soundtracks for Michigan, Amherst, Penn State, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute, among others.
Bing Crosby even stands in with the band on a version of the Whiffenpoof Song, just in case anyone in New Haven is thinking kickoff.
And since the golden rule of fund-raising communications is "look like you know how to spend money wisely," scratchy vinyl seems as old school and relevant as ever. Maybe it's just a matter of dialing down the volume a digit or two.
Posted by Clifford Lull on Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:17:58 -0500 | Permalink
Flying horses
Stationery, web headers, campus vehicles, signs. These are applications that spring to mind when we map out visual identity style guides.
And so we braced when we learned recently of Horizon Airlines' plans to celebrate its 25th year of service to the city of Boise by marking a Bombardier Q400 with the Boise State athletic identity that we worked on with The Joe Bosack Graphic Design Company.
Turns out that Horizon did a fine job, flying as it did without NCSDO instructions on the matter. We simply never thought to include them.
Moving forward, and just to be safe, we are adding "modes of aviation" to our standards-development checklist.
(Since adopting the new design in 2002, the Broncos have appeared in the Humanitarian, Fort Worth, MPC Computers, Hawai'i, and Poinsettia bowls—not to mention their stunning defeat of Oklahoma in the 2006 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. Just saying . . . )
Posted by Clifford Lull on Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:01:51 -0500 | Permalink
If you don't read this blog...
Before alerting the SPCA, please know that Typo remains unharmed. The threat is disingenuous; but what other content could compete with this single dramatic image to bring visitors to the Ladder?
By the way, if harming a defenseless (albeit steely eyed and imaginary) dog to jolt a readership seems a familiar tactic, then you are likely remembering a 1973 edition of National Lampoon. The black-and-white dog made for an easy connection.
But back to worthwhile content . . . and blogs. Others do a fine job dispensing wisdom about higher education, communications, design, food, sports—the stuff that interests us. And then there are the professional listserves, where the idea of information doubling every 10 years is already obsolete.
We made attempts.
We ended up with the dog.
From time to time, we will find ways to salt this blog with thoughts on those topics. Mostly, however, we'll try to keep this area like Typo—a little off balance but, we hope, entertaining and more or less relevant for those likely to stumble upon the site.
But for now, there's a dog that demands an apology . . .
Posted by Clifford Lull on Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:30:35 -0500 | Permalink