It took ages to get them created, literally: the Examiner.com business cards. Note: I did not design that horrible, dated, ugly logo. That would be TTD in Denver, Colorado (Update: TTD just closed their doors in Dec 2009)… and it was long before I was the Creative Director at Examiner.com. The understanding of this identity was that it had to be fresh and fun (something the logo was not) and to make this new internet start-up company look inviting. I was stuck with that blue Pantone 313 color, so needed a balance… and ended up with Pantone 497 for that. The chocolate brown and this electric blue helped to ground each other. It took something harsh and cold and made it warm (much like taking the cold computer delivering the internet and giving you local, warm news, delivered by your neighbor… the company’s business plan).
But it wasn’t enough. I was staring straight at that logo in big, heavy Century Gothic, which though a relatively new typeface, it was designed based on drawings of the late 1930s, which at that time were inspired by earlier, turn of the century advances in machines. Precise letters. Geometric shapes. Boring and unremarkable for today’s “hot new thing.” It was also very “newspapery.” By that I mean that it’s what newspaper people do (ahem, the parent company is a newspaper agency). Take something and instead of freshening it up, make it more mundane and familiar. But that’s not how you win awards.
Anyway, I was competing with this typeface in our modern, slick Google-age. It helped that I reversed it out. Then I needed something with serifs to make those large smooth curves in Century Gothic seem less overwhelming. But too elegant would defeat the point, and we’d look ridiculous. I landed on FF Meta Serif, a fairly new face from Erik Spiekermann, made in 2007 to be added to his decade-old (and popular) FF Meta family. While it was serifed indeed, it wasn’t super long, ornate serifs you’d see in Sabon or Miller, and not too slab-serif, either. It sat smack in the middle of elegant and modern, sophisticated and aspirational. It worked perfectly.
I set the front up with right-aligned text that matched the white line separating the blue and the brown on top of the card.
The back (not seen in the photo) was an all-brown back with all the names of the cities that Examiner.com had (at the time) editions. The cities were a screened brown on the solid background behind them.
After this, the envelopes flowed easily, making them, in essence, a large business card. I moved the return address to the bottom-left and used the same screened-names on the flap. It was a custom conversion.
The letterhead was trickier. Not wanting to print the reverse side in such heavy dosage, I opted to add a bar across the bottom, still including the cities, but not as large as the back of the envelope or not as encompassing as the back of the card. In the end, because we printed on Cougar Bright White, the size and placement helped balance the white space.
All in all, it was a fun project, and one that helped get me my promotion to creative director. Rumor has it, though, they’re about to change the logo again in 2010. Oh well.
