How to Leverage Big Data for PR and Marketing Communications

By Gretchen Hoffman | Aug 17, 2016

Image courtesy of photoexplorer at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Big Data has become a vital tool for large and small businesses alike, with Big Data software able to help analyze the vast amounts of information to today’s organization. New, simplified tools like Amazon Mechanical Turk allow organizations and individuals to more easily collect data from around the world, […]

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What Thought Leadership is Not

By Natalie O'Grady | Aug 10, 2016

“Thought leadership” is often considered a buzzword in the marketing and PR world – little more than a spruced up advertisement for a company. However, if your content marketing pieces fit this description, then you’re not doing thought leadership. Thought leadership can be a strong, useful addition to a content marketing program and goes well beyond […]

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How are you a thought leader? Answer these 6 questions to find out.

By Kelda Rericha | May 3, 2016

If you are reading this you likely already understand the value of thought leadership products. A thought leadership product is anything – written, video, multi-media – produced to help inform an audience on something you do really well. These products are especially critical for service organizations that rely on the smarts and unique capabilities of […]

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Moodboards: Feeling Your Way Through Brand Discovery

By Kris Travis | Mar 7, 2016

Once relatively exclusive to the fashion design industry, moodboards are everywhere now–design, architecture, politics, education, therapy…basically anywhere one’s brand or identity is a work in progress. I use them a lot in the design work I do, whether for a brand identity project, or to determine the mood of an internal campaign for an already […]

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Video Backgrounds in Web Design

By Kris Travis | Feb 10, 2016

Not everyone is doing it…yet. But video backgrounds in web design can be incredibly impactful and compelling in drawing the visitor into a brand. Longtime concerns over load times and usability are on the decline as web technologies improve every day, opening up new possibilities to creating an immersive brand experience online. Here are a […]

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7 Tips for Pitching Ideas from Improv Comedy

By Kelda Rericha | Sep 10, 2015

There is nothing more uncomfortable than watching bad improv comedy. Except perhaps watching someone crash and burn while pitching ideas during a business presentation. Especially if that person is you. As written up by Fast Co’s Joe Berkowitz, master improvisational comic Jason Mantzoukas has developed seven tips for avoid comedic, or boardroom, failure. In a […]

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Putting Unsolicited Advice to Work, er Wipes

By Kris Travis | Sep 10, 2015

This should strike a chord with any parent (especially those of you as sleep-deprived as I am). Sometimes I feel like a short walk to the park with my kids becomes an open invitation for “tips and tricks” from well-meaning advisors. I appreciate their intentions, and I’ve gotten pretty good at hanging on to the advice that […]

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Truth and Fiction in Typography

By Kris Travis | Jun 4, 2015

Designers are always thinking about the best font choice for a given project, and there are a lot of factors that go into that decision. Should the font be serif or san-serif? Modern or traditional? Serious or fun? Wide or narrow? Is legibility important, or can we push it on the style? What age group […]

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Beautiful Brand Guides

By Kris Travis | May 21, 2015

Brand guide for Clearly Business, by The One Off A brand guide is an essential tool for companies who aim to present a cohesive, consistent, and professional face to the world. A company’s brand guide acts as its visual communications “map” over the years, and also as documentation of the brand’s history as it evolves (as […]

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Amazon's product visualization through press release

By Kelda Rericha | May 14, 2015

Amazon executives are typically a reclusive bunch. So its was a rare treat when Jeff Wilke, Amazon’s senior vice president of consumer business, took the stage this week at Seattle University as part of the Albers Executive Speaker Series. In an hour-long talk, Wilke laid out the core leadership principles that make up the tech […]

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Why Narrative Matters

By Jillian Stephens | Mar 3, 2015

Want to hear a great story? Well, I don’t mean to slight you, but I don’t have one. I got you hooked though, right? Everyone loves a good story – so much so that we’ve preserved our entire human history in one form of narrative or another (even the word history has “story” embedded in […]

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Design & Happiness

By Kris Travis | Oct 28, 2014

Design Week Portland 2014 was great fun, and I felt lucky to attend the sold-out talk by Stefan Sagmeister on Design & Happiness. The Austrian-born designer has been a design “rockstar” for decades, but when he’s not working for clients of Sagmeister & Walsh, he’s studying how we attain happiness. His ultimate goal is a […]

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