Bacardí Bombay Sapphire Gin: 8-Page Brochure

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[Prepress Production]

Bacardí held a contest for the Most Imaginative Bartender for 2015, with the leading mixologists — as well as the winner — being featured in an 8-page brochure, complete with both cover and tipped-in insertion in the December 2015 issue of GQ.
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Working closely with the art director, I meticulously combed and corrected the file for consistency, color, alignment, sizes, transparencies, image and copy block alignments, four-color fill-in, legalities and more. Had it not been for my attention to detail, the tip of the foot of the bartender on the right may have been sliced and residing on the opposite page. While not a crime, it would have been slightly jarring for the viewer and possibly distracted from the overall perfection of the piece.
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Details of the campaign may still be found at mostimaginativebartender.com

AIG: Retire Stronger.

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AIG: Retire Stronger

AIG went through a series of redesigns while with BBDO New York and its print department. Among them was this deeply saturated “Retire Stronger” campaign. Rich in color – and ink density – these ads were checked for everything from the richness of the plates to consistency among sizes. Each publication – whether print or digital – has it’s own specifications as to publishing, and we adhered to all…

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Besides the details listed above, I also combed the ads for consistency pertaining to branding, colors, fonts, leading, logo placement and size, legal verbiage, fonts, color, opacity, alignment, and more.

Once assigned to an account and campaign, it was much easier to predict the approval methods of both the creative and account teams. Our versions went from approximately 17-24 on accounts like Campbell’s, below 5 – including client changes.

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Many art directors would often enter the prepress department and ask us about prepress production, but luckily this particular art director, Joe Volpicelli, was well-versed in print, so it was a pleasure to work with him. And as it happens often in the world of advertising, if you’re good at your job, you’re rewarded with more work. So I had the pleasure of working with Joe on more accounts than just AIG.

You don’t need help – you need tenacity

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From a post on my Instagram profile: “@adrienneibrand I need for you to seriously go to my web page and critique it for design flaws.” 

I was flattered that such a great photographer would ask me to review his page, and after briefly viewing it, I could only come to the conclusion that he is finished with “setting up” his social media presence, and should now concentrate on keeping himself in the face of his target audience.

Being both a designer and photographer, I’ve seen both worlds, and in both worlds there seems to be a hope that if we design the perfect site, every human on the planet will want our services. This is a complete fallacy. Of course you should design a professional site, but to spend year after year redesigning the site to the detriment of your clients, you’re only shooting yourself in the foot.

My suggestion: As great as your site can be, as fleshed-out, concise, well-designed and forward-thinking as it is, you still need to keep yourself in the spotlight. So unless your online presence desperately needs an overhaul, stop spending time on redesign after redesign. Focus on posting fresh ideas, new work and solutions to your social media profiles. Your clients don’t want to know where you could be, they want to know what you’ve done.

The Glory of Starbucks Gift Card Designs

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Starbucks has struck gold with this vibrantly red display of gift cards. A woman and I ogled the variations before getting our daily lattes. “This is such a great idea,” she cooed, “It’s so eye-catching!” I agreed completely.

Lately I’ve been really missing the “old” Starbucks designs: Lots of boxed items with embossing and metallic inks. It was almost like the designers would find something and say, “This is really cool – how can we use this design idea at Starbucks?” So it was good to see so many different designs on these gift cards.

I couldn’t choose one. And luckily for Starbucks, I wanted to immediately take several, load them with gobs of money and use them all holiday season. Nice job, Starbucks. Nice job.