Between Elsewhere and Here

The O

The New York Times‘s Campaign Stops blog has an interesting interview with Sol Sender, the designer who developed the Obama ’08 logo and branding. It’s worth the read for anyone interested in campaign branding, but as someone who does it for a living, I wish the interview had been more in depth. Personally, I wanted to hear more about the process. Still, well worth ten minutes of your life.

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By Christopher on 11/25/08 02:39 AM | | Link | Comments [0]

Self Anyization

Typealyzer gives a personality test to blogs. How does Between Elsehwere & Here stack up? Well, its personality type is ESTP (Extraversion, Sensing, Thinking, Perceiving) and says Typealyzer:

The Doers
The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.

The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

Fantastic.

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By Christopher on 11/20/08 01:48 PM | | Link | Comments [0]

A Kinetic 150

I’m a red-blooded American, which means I have a deep soft spot for pick-up trucks. My favorite is Ford’s F-250 line – Ford’s middle weight that sits between the more consumer friendly 150 and the more heavy duty 350 and 450. Because the 150 is the most famous of Ford’s trucks, that’s the one you’ll see most of the commercials for, and that’s the one I present to you here.

And I’m not doing this to promote Ford in a time of need. Heck, buying a pick-up truck from Ford right now probably only hurts them, since they need to be building high-quality, high-millage, reliable cars and not surviving on truck sales like they did from about 95 until 05. Anyway… the commercial below is a fantastic usage of kinetic typography. I’ve seen a number of the new ads these past few weeks and finally felt like sharing since you know I have a love for type that flies and twists across the screen.

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By Christopher on 11/19/08 05:33 PM | | Link | Comments [0]

Mirror's Edge

The best thing to happen to political design was Barack Obama’s campaign. The approach they took to their campaign was the same approach a corporation would take towards their brand. Everything had a coherent look and feel. You could tell from just their usage of font and typography that it was a Barack Obama “Change” sign even if neither his name or logo appeared on it.

The Obama campaign’s dedication to their brand DNA is making my job easier. Instead of trying to convince a client of the importance of brand coherence, I now have clients coming to me saying, “Do for us what Obama’s campaign did.” Sure! I’d be thrilled to. Moreover, the level of design that came out of the Obama campaign has pushed myself and others in this business to do even better. In so many ways, the success of Obama has elevated the job I do, and in the regard, I’m inspired and influenced by the Obama campaign.

Benjamin Netenyahu, on the other hand, has decided that instead of being inspired by Barack Obama, he wants to BE Barack Obama. His new campaign website is a mirror image of Obama’s. Now, unlike most copies, Netenyahu’s site captures the overall feel of Obama’s (it’s painfully clear), but it missed on the details. The icons used around the site don’t see to fit into the deign. The gradients don’t flow as nicely as they do for Obama and the silhouettes feel forced. The most noticeable different between the two sites is the sidebar for Netenyahu is on the left, whereas its on the right for Obama giving it a “mirroed” look (see below) when placed next to the Obama site – but that’s not a design choice since Hebrew is read right to left, opposite of English.

I do like that Netenyahu’s tie and hair match the coloring of the site. That’s a nice little touch. It was great working with Kay because we used her favorite color in our site design. That made it really easy to use pictures of her in a light blue jacket, sweater or scarf on the site since she wore them all the time.

Netenyahu Obama Site Comparison

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By Christopher on 11/18/08 02:46 PM | | Link | Comments [0]

Taking a Page from Obama

The RNC today launched RepublicanForAReason.com. The purpose of the website is to re-empower Republican supporters. It calls itself a “grassroots” effort whose aim is to rebuild a party that so quickly fell apart. And in the category of “if you can’t beat ‘em, copy ‘em,” the RNC’s new site has taken some of its styling ques from Obama’s presidential site.

I submit, for you consideration, the following:

How many similarities do you see?

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By Christopher on 11/11/08 03:54 PM | | Link | Comments [0]

A bit of an Absence

I work in politics. My job is help people get elected. Being that we all start voting in less than a week, it would be an understatement to say I’m busy. There are a bunch of things on my mind which demand blogging attention. That will all happen and I will get back to blogging on a regular basis as soon as I can.

Just… give me a week, okay?

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By Christopher on 10/28/08 07:08 PM | | Link | Comments [0]

MillerCoors Logo


While doing some research for a logo I’m working on, I came across the new MillerCoors logo. Not sure why I hadn’t seen this before, but man, this is great logo. It’s pretty simple: a beer class seen from above and about half full. When I own a brewery, this is pretty much exactly what I want my logo to look like. From Pentagram’s Michael Bierut:

The trick was to come up with a mark that would seem to be all about beer while looking distinct from the iconography of the Miller and Coors brands. This pretty much sabotaged my first idea, which was to somehow merge the two iconic script logos. I was sure it could be done, but it turns out it was impossible to make it work visually, even if it was a good idea. Plus, our clients really wanted to signal that this wasn’t just about consolidating the heritage of the two families, but about creating something new.

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By Christopher on 10/06/08 07:08 PM | | Link | Comments [0]

Google the Past

In celebration of their 10th birthday, Google is letting you search the internet via 2001. So go a head, ego-search yourself circa 2001 and see how little the webs knew about you a decade ago.

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By Christopher on 10/06/08 05:49 PM | | Link | Comments [0]

The Webmatter of Christopher Doorley

Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt

Driving is the most complicated task the vast majority of us do everyday. Yet, we understand little about it. This book aims to decode our lives in traffic. Reading Socially »

Photographs of Tokyo taken at twilight from emergency stair cases by Japanese photographer Sato Shintaro. See more »

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In-Flight XXX

American Airlines realizes that people use the internet to look at naked ladies. World shocked.

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I'm doing Science and I'm still alive

A fun little typographical video of the Portal video game end credits theme. Fantastic.

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The Offical 2011 Chevy Volt

The first official look at the car that’s GM believes is going to change everything.

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RIP McCain'08 3.1.07 - 9.24.08

The McCain has become the pathological liar who – even when the truth is on their side – still feels the need to embellish, exaggerate and lie. Their spin is so out of control, McCain seems lost within his own campaign as if he’s being the script not in its entirety, not even page by page, but word by word.

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Mirror's Edge

Benjamin Netenyahu basically steals the campaign website of Barack Obama. Or maybe Obama gave it to him to use. He is a friend of Israel, right?

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