New Logo For Society of St. Vincent DePaul

Vivitiv recently completed work on a
new logo for Society of St. Vincent DePaul’s
175th anniversary.

Vivitiv Move

Vivitiv is moving.
As of March 1, 2008
our new address will be:
4745 40th Ave. SW, Suite 101
Seattle, WA 98116
vivitiv.com

Shop Talk

Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion with students of the Visual Communications Technology program at Shoreline Community College. Joining me on the panel were David Kendall of Kendall Ross, Brian Boram of RMB Vivid and Chris Holt of Coolstone.

I discussed the Evolution of a Recycling Brochure which drew some laughs from the audience. The presentations by the other firms were beautifully designed and explained their firm's creative process. The students had probing, thoughtful questions-it was a lively session that went way over the originally scheduled time limit.

Thanks to Daniela Birch of Theorem and to Bob Hutchison of the college for setting it up.

Roman Holiday

We are back from our Roman holiday. Here is a short Zapruder-like clip of New Year’s Eve in Rome. The big explosion at the beginning of the clip had Mark’s ears ringing for a few hours. Our trip to Italy was absolutely amazing, great art, great food and wine, and great weather, Not hot enough to get a tan, but we are pale, rested and ready to roll. Wishing everyone a belated Happy New Year/Buon Anno.

Mark Kaufman + Jacqueline McCarthy

Just a Reminder

We have been working hard in order to finish up a bunch of projects in preparation for our long-awaited, long-time coming, long vacation. We just want to thank all of our clients and vendors, friends and acquaintances of the last 17 years. Without you we would not have been around so long. And after all of that hard work we need a big vacation. We hope you all enjoy your holidays wherever they may take you. We will be back in January, tanned, rested and ready to take on 17 more years of issue oriented design. Happy holidays to all and to all a good night.

Perfectly Seedy

Run, don't walk to see the movie "Gone Baby Gone" at a theater near you. The movie itself is terrific, but what was truly stunning was the spot-on set design. If you've ever lived in a northeast, urban neighborhood with row houses, you will feel right at home. The interiors and exteriors are perfect, complete with low-rent furnishings and decor. And one of the houses was truly scary, but I won't be a spoiler—go catch this flick!

We knew our pal Lisa Shaftel (shown above on the set) worked on this film, so we waited to see her name in the credits. Unfortunately, they didn't list any of the team. This is our small tribute to a job well done.

Gone Baby Gone
Sharon Seymour, Production Designer
Chris Cornwell, Art Director
Kyra Friedman, Set Decorator
Dan Courchaine, Scenic Charge
Lisa Shaftel, Scenic Artist

Lisa is a long-time friend and colleague we met through the Graphic Artists Guild. She is the Advocacy Chair and does herculean work on behalf of illustrators, designers and graphic creators.

Saving the Planet One Event at a Time

Here's Jacki again in the Vivitiv labs, pointing out a portable display that we designed which outlines what is recyclable, compostable and trashable in the City of Bellevue, WA. The display is for events, presentations, festivals and the like. Saving the world one set of eyeballs at a time.

Wind Tunnel Testing

At the Vivitiv Labs, we make sure things work! Here’s Jacki testing the stability of a table top display for The City of Bellevue’s Utilities Departnment.

Bob Walsh

We are very pleased to note that we have been working with the legendary Bob Walsh on a digital presentation. Here’s a slide outlining just one of the amazing adventures that Mr. Walsh, a Seattle icon, has been involved with. It is both a pleasure and an honor to work with Bob on this project.

Vivitiv Brands Puget Soundscape

Vivitiv recently created an identity for Puget Soundscape, a community celebration of Puget Sound through art, ecology and culture. Vivitiv developed the Puget Soundscape brand through posters, brochures, advertising and the event web site. The event had its kick off event June 1st in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. The leading cultural, educational, government and non-profit environmental groups will hold events all over the region in June and July, 2007 to raise awareness for this natural treasure. So get out there, have fun and lend your support to a most worthy cause.

Vivitiv. Issue Oriented Design.

New Name. New Look. Renewed Focus. As of April 1, 2006, we officially changed our name to Vivitiv. After 15 years as Artomat Design, we figured it was time for a change. After much deliberation we created the Vivitiv name to more closely reflect who we are and what we do. Loosely based on the Latin Vividus, meaning full of life, we hope that the new name and logo will evoke the notions of vivid, vision, active, informative, etc.

Over the years our most gratifying and successful collaborations have been in the areas of technology, housing, education, the environment, public policy and the arts. The new name reflects our renewed focus on issue oriented design, and helping organizations in those and other fields to inform, entertain and inspire.

Foss Harbor

Vivitiv developed this mark for Foss Harbor, a waterfront high rise community, located on Tacoma's Thea Foss Waterway. We also created a small site for this luxury development which can be seen at www.fossharborliving.com

Drawmark.com

We recently created a new logo and website for Drawmark.com, a new site for the illustration of Mark Kaufman. Drawmark.com features a Flash animated opening on the value of illustration and a portfolio of editorial illustrations, cartoons, new works, bio and client list. An e-commerce feature and blog page will come online soon. In the meantime, you can purchase some buttons designed by Mark Kaufman at www.prickie.com and look for my page. Massive thanks to Brian Beardsley at Studio B Media for help with the site.

New Logo Volume One and Two

I was at a bookstore recently, and as usual I was flipping through design books. I came across yet another in a long line of logo design books. I don't know how many books on logo design there are but there must be hundreds by now. I'm not speaking of the books on the ins and outs of the art of identity design. I'm not talking of books on the subject of how a design firm works through reams of research and information on a company, product or service in order to distill a brand down to a few lines of type and a few brush strokes. Nor am I talking about the books recounting the body of work of individual designers like Paul Rand, Saul Bass or large design concerns such as Pentagram. No, I'm referring to those logo collections containing page after page of logos. No editorial, just logos.

I have nothing against this kind of publication. Hell, our firm has gotten plenty of marks into these vehicles over the years. They serve a purpose. I refer to them a great deal, as I am sure many in the industry do. It is also a way to keep up with what our peers are doing.

But the books that I was thumbing through may have crossed the line as far as this form of design "writing" goes. New Logo Volumes One and Two by Chen Ci Liang and published out of Singapore really annoyed me. Yes there isn't a lot of difference between these books and the others, in fact the printing is well done, between the two books there are over 600 pages and thousands of marks. Quite impressive right?

Until I saw a couple of my logos in the book that is. I never entered the logos in question to this particular publisher or editor. I don't know where they got the art from. I didn't send them the files, but all of the logo examples in the book are reproduced perfectly. I know for a fact that the marks from our office that appear shown in the books are around 5 years old. The book title seems to be saying that these are volumes that are showcasing NEW work. The assumption when taking the book off the shelf, or shelling out 60 bucks for each volume is that the publishers have compiled a vast collection of the latest and greatest, the cutting edge, the here and now. Of course having a few logos that are a little long in the tooth is neither a crime nor is it a violation of the non existent editorial standards that are the currency of most logo collections. Except upon closer inspection I found marks that are decades old, like the Girl Scouts, the US Bicentennial, and the 1984 LA Olympics. I also found logos from companies that don't exist anymore like Bell Atlantic. OK, maybe it's simply a matter of a lousy title for a book, and these are not new and are a collection of the best examples of the form, and I should be proud that my work is among such quality work. I see other designers blindly touting the fact that they "made it" into these books. And of course logos actually belong to the corporations and organizations that pay for them. But it seems to me that the publisher gained access to a treasure trove of logo files and decided to make a quick buck by putting out yet another book of logos.

Maybe that's my basic problem with this. That I didn't think of it first

International Relations

This past weekend my partner Jacqueline McCarthy and I had an interesting encounter with one of our clients. We left our Seattle office a bit early on Friday afternoon and drove up to Vancouver, BC in order to meet up with Cintia Stella of Wow! Argentina. Cintia is a partner at the Buenos Aires based travel agency and she has been touring through Canada for the past three weeks, making her way westward from Montreal, Quebec City, Ottowa, Toronto and finally the last stop on her itnerary Vancouver.

It's another one of those modern business tales of developing a relationship via the telephone, email and Fedex. Sometimes it is halfway across the planet to Buenos Aires, sometimes it's halfway across town, but meeting clients face to face seems to be yet another casualty of the technological revolution. Cintia was so close, and had travelled so far that the least we could do was to take the 3 hour drive northward to meet for dinner. We had a lovely time discussing the day to day life of running a business, the hard work, the long hours and most importantly the successes. Wow! Argentina was recently added to the latest edition of the Lonely Planet Guides. So it is gratifying to see that all the hard work pays off. The conversation ranged from the cultural differences between Argentina, the United States and Canada for that matter, television shows that run in both the US and in Argentina, food and wine and futbol.

It was great to see one of our clients from south of the equator. So much so, that I'm going to make a point to meet with clients from right here in our own hometown.

Of course if you wish to vist Argentina, please talk to CintiaStella and Matias Mancuso of Wow! Argentina. You'll find that their dedication to showing you the best of their beautiful country will have you returning again and again to one of the great countries of the world. Chau!

Thelonious Sphere Monk

One of our favorite pieces from Artomat Design. This was published in The Rocket, the music magazine out of Seattle. I can't remember the date but it was probably done about 10 years ago. Still, we think that the handcrafted type, the stark contrast, the disonant letterspacing, and the dignified silhouette captures the timeless essence of the man and his music