Nerds, Part 1: Nerds as marketing tactic

Fashion kind of took a backseat for me during the pandemic, but in March, I decided to treat myself to a pair of breakup shoes, to start my new life as a single lady on the right feet! When they arrived, hiding out in the bottom of the box was none other than a sample pouch of Nerds® Gummy Clusters! Because, of course, what goes better with a pair of shoes than candy chews?

I was thrilled (to the teeth!) because Nerds are one of my favorite candies. Despite the incongruity of unsolicited sweets in my shoe shipment, I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth (not if I could put it in my mouth instead!).

When I had a chance to investigate my Nerds packet more closely, I noticed a QR code on the back of the card—but not just any QR code: specifically, a QR code with all the right angles softened just enough to evoke the blobby shape of Nerds candy or perhaps a gooey gummy. That visual trick definitely earned my respect, in a way that hasn't happened much since I graduated from design school in 2010. I guess it is only appropriate that after a decade, when I finally nerd out over design again, it's about a package of Nerds.

But the story gets sweeter. The QR code came with an invitation to "see the work Nerds have done. Get stories about inventions, teamwork & fun!" Never one to resist the siren song of a story, I scanned away! I was expecting some made-up cartoony tales meant to inspire kids, but what I got was a short tale about a real, (formerly) live human (John Walker, who I soon learned invented matches) — written in verse!

Well! If there were ever a marketing campaign designed to appeal directly to me, it would include candy, cute happy cartoon creatures, QR codes that subtly evoke said creatures, and a plethora of poetry with loose meter and slant rhyme! Oh, and it wouldn't hurt for it to be a celebration of nerds—because I've always considered myself to be one.

Or at least, I used to. Nowadays I'm not so sure. The question of whether I'm still a nerd or not consumed me so much that I decided I had to do some research on the subject. That took me so long and got so complex and gave me so much material that I could no longer justify putting it in the same blog post as my little ode to a cute candy-corporation campaign.

So here's where this one will end. Take some time to appreciate Nerds (the candy and the humans who inspired their name). The website and the rhyming stories are fun, and you might learn something! Go scan the blobby barcode above if you want to get there without typing. Marvel at the absolutely adorable cartoon mascots, and wonder, as I did, whether you can get them in stuffed animal form. (Answer: you can't, so maybe that's the marketing avenue the brand should take up next!)

And maybe, by the time you're done, I will have completed my investigation into the nuances of nerddom and published the second part of this essay. Maybe. But probably not!

Why do you do what you Doritos?

It is no secret that I am in love with Doritos. My house feels empty when I don't have  a bag or two stockpiled. I have been known to make them my entree for dinner and lunch.

But there is a secret I haven't been so keen to let on: Doritos don't love me back.

Now I can just imagine the peanut gallery out there going, "Yeah, I bet, when you eat Doritos, they must give you the runs so bad..." Get your minds out of the gutter, peanut gallery! My innards are blissfully unaffected by any amount of Mexican food, no matter how fake and heavily processed.

But what is not so unaffected? My lips.

Sadly, after almost any Dorito binge, I can pretty much expect all the skin to flake off my lips within a few days. This is annoying and inexplicable. Do I have some kind of weird allergy? Are the dry, salty chips just desiccating my flesh? Whenever I eat Doritos, I make a conscious effort to wipe with a napkin frequently and guzzle more water than I think I need, but it never seems to help.

Why, Doritos, when I love you so much do you treat me so bad!? Oh, well, no matter. My love for you is unconditional. I will continue to eat you, even if you change your recipe for the worse.

Oh, wait, you already did that.

Remember when I blogged about Doritos' impending design change and promise of a bolder flavor?  Apparently when they said bolder, they only meant more painful, because the only difference I could detect between the Doritos of the New Bag and the Doritos of old was that the new ones were spicier and made my mouth hurt (but fortunately, did not make the lip-flaking any worse than usual). And the Cool Ranch still doesn't have enough flavor.

And because I promised I would make package redesigns part of my blogging repertoire, here are the old bag and the new bag side by side.

What I got

For some people, shopping is a chore: they do it when they must to acquire the stuff they need. For some people, shopping is a pleasure in itself: they do it to feel the joy of owning delightful new things. For me, shopping is a game of strategy, carefully planned out to minimize the resources spent while maximizing my reward. Today I had an especially successful shopping trip (I think I won) and I'd like to share it with you. 'Cause I know you're just as excited about what I got as I am.

I had to venture out to Lanham today to pick up some things someone was Freecycling. Normally I don't Freecycle out as far as Lanham, because it's a small hike (like 6 miles—quite a distance for someone who doesn't like to drive at all), but I got so excited about this offer that I didn't notice the zip code. Normally an offer like this one (two coats in good condition) would get snapped up in an instant, but I just happened to check my email about 10 minutes after it was posted—making me the one who did the snapping! And the coats are perfect! One of them is going to be the perfect "playing outside in winter" coat (I never do that, but maybe having a coat reserved for the purpose will encourage me), and the other is a stylish black fitted coat that will perfectly supplement my two grey coats which are often, respectively, too light and too long.

On my way home, I stopped at Target, because it had been entirely too long since I got a bag of Doritos (the last bag I tried to buy I ended up leaving at the checkout because it had a hole in it). And apparently I was lucky enough to shop the Doritos right in the middle of a design change! I used to collect packaging redesigns—I would actually clean the package as best I could and squirrel it away in a box along with a sample of the new design. But that didn't really appeal to my non-hoarder side, so I ditched the whole collection. I think I'll restart it here on my blog, right now, with the very last of the old-style Doritos bags. The new packaging boasts a new look and a claim of something like "even more nacho cheese flavor," so I can't wait to see if I notice the difference. Maybe they've also intensified the Cool Ranch flavor, which I like, but have always thought doesn't have enough flavoring relative to chip.

Ye Olde Doritos Bag

 At Target, I also picked up two boxes of hair color, on a whim, because they were marked down to $2.48 each. At the checkout, I received a 5$ gift card for having bought two boxes. Do the math on that one!

My next stop was the back alley of Mom's Organic Market, where they sometimes put out boxes of discarded produce for the riffraff to rifle. It makes the perfect diet for one's bunny (and occasionally oneself). I'd been there 3 times already in the last three days (including once when I traveled out of my way, on my bike, at night, through dark woods, hills, and puddles, in miserably cold weather) and came away empty-handed. This time I hit the jackpot. Not only were there boxes full of leafy greens (pretty standard fare) but there were also Roma tomatoes! Somebody's bunny is getting a treat tomorrow! I might even make a sandwich for myself—but nah, that would probably be too much effort. Funny how I will travel over hill and dale fruitlessly and repeatedly in search of free food for a rabbit, but I can't be bothered to take 5 minutes to make myself some lunch. Well, I guess we all have priorities.

Tonight, mine have been well satisfied, and I will go to bed happy.

On Case

Everyone knows how to capitalize a sentence. You put the upper-case letters at the beginning of the sentence, and the lower-case letters after that. You capitalize first letters in proper nouns and acronyms, and if you're writing in a text-based conversation, you capitalize when you want to yell! Simple. (But should you really capitalize a sentence fragment? Hmmm....) However, the rules for capitalizing proper nouns are no longer as hard and fast as (I imagine, since I haven't done any research on this) they once were.
In recent years, I've noticed some unique capitalization schemes for company names. In terms of corporate identity, the way a business' name is capitalized says something about its values and intended image. While this is great for setting businesses apart and giving them that unique touch, it makes uptight rule-followers such as me a little uncomfortable.

So bear with me while I drag you into my internal debate about the rules of capitalization. After all, when I'm lying awake at night thinking about this matter, I want to make sure that I'm not alone.

First off, there's the issue of all-lower-case typesetting. You see this in electronic messages a lot, because, frankly, when typing fast, and especially when typing on a phone, making capital letters is a big hassle. I've seen it in poetry, because poetry is art, and in art, anything goes! I've seen it in graphic design, and I like it, because I think it helps balance out text which, when capitalized, would look a little heavy on the left. But is it really all right in a business name? Let's take a specific corporation as a case study (get it!?).

innocent drinks, a natural beverage company in the UK, has taken the lower case to a whole new level (get it!?). Not only is their name uncapitalized, but so is every heading on their website! Using all lower case makes them seem super cute and...well, innocent. I daresay that's the exact kind of image they were going for. But it also makes communicating about them quite difficult. For example, when I write, "innocent drinks," am I referring to innocent drinks, the company, or am I referring to guileless beverages in general? Oh, the confusion! And just look at the beginning of this paragraph! In order to conform to their strange capitalization preferences, I had to start a sentence without a capital letter! Horrors! Before I have a nervous breakdown, I'd better move on to another topic.

Such as the good old ISP, America Online. Oh, wait. They're not an ISP any more. In fact, they're not even America Online any more. In 2006, America Online officially changed its name to AOL—which is in itself a bold move that states, "We're so awesome, we don't even need words to support our acronym. Our acronym is big enough to stand on its own." A few years later (perhaps even this year?) they changed their logo in the craziest way, uncapitalizing the O and L and adding a period at the end. In my book, that means their name should now be pronounced "owl," but they still refer to themselves in text as AOL. So what are they? Owl(period) or AOL? Does capitalization affect meaning, or am I just trying too hard to create order out of chaos?

That's my purple! You can't have it!

"The color PINK is a registered trademark of Owens Corning."

When I read this statement at the foot of the Owens Corning homepage, I was taken aback.

What? Pink? How can you trademark a color? Especially something as generic as "pink!" I've heard of some rich people developing their own proprietary Pantone color, but trademarking "pink?" Just plain pink? Breast cancer support groups everywhere would be doomed. Newborn baby girls' wardrobes would be decimated. Maybe they only mean PINK with all capital letters. Trademarking "pink?" Is that even possible?

I was so appalled by this concept, that I had to some research. It turns out that color trademarking is, in fact, an accepted practice, and (as are all legal matters) very complicated and subject to subtle rules and the interpretation of judges. Check out this page on color trademarks to learn just how corporate entities can (and have done so) defend the exclusive rights to a color.

What I take away from my readings is that, if a color is very closely associated with a good or service a company provides, then they can legally prevent competitors from using that color. However, non-competitors—that is, people providing a distinctly different type of good or service—are free to use the color with abandon. So, breast cancer groups are probably safe from the wrath (and legal action) of Owens Corning, unless they decide to go into the insulation business.

Graphic Defender

A blast from the past
In my last post, I mentioned a blog entry from way back, which I wrote in defense of the fonts everyone loves to hate: Comic Sans and Papyrus. Today I share with you the entire post (edited somewhat).

November 12, 2007

This entry has been a long time in coming. This is my objective look at the whipping boys of the design world: Papyrus and Comic Sans.

Consider for a moment. Do you despise these typefaces? Do you do so because there is something fundamentally abhorrent about their design? Do you do so because you are tired of them? Do you do so because professionals, professors, and classmates have wagged their fingers and said, "No, no, no"? I'm fairly new to this business, and I'll admit, a prejudice against these fonts was instilled in me early. Mostly for reason number 3 above. So I decided it was time to make an objective study of my own.

I've looked at these fonts, I've even interacted with them, and I am convinced they are not the devil incarnate. While I wouldn't set a book with either of them, and I wouldn't recommend them for anyone trying to project an air of sophistication, they are not inherently evil.

The problem with Comic Sans and Papyrus is that they are 2 of the very few fonts with "personality" that come in the Windows font set. And since they are the only interesting fonts that most people have easy access to, they are the only interesting fonts that people regularly use. And things that are interesting when they are fresh and new, become trite and annoying when they are old and used.

But let's not blame the victim here. Let's blame the software distributors who are too miserly with free, quality fonts. Rather than chide them for being silly and overdone, let's give these typographic workhorses the praise they so richly deserve!

Comic Sans says:

Let's take a closer look at Comic Sans. What is it good for?
Its name says it all. It's comic! It was designed to represent the speech of adorable Microsoft help characters. For that kind of purpose, it works. Don't use it on your resume, but don't ostracize it either. That's not nice. (Sure, there are lots of other "comic" fonts out there that we haven't seen 3 million times before, but again, don't blame the victim--blame the overusers who don't know when to say enough's enough.)

Papyrus says:

I have to say Papyrus is one of my favorites. Long before I ever stuck my foot in the design door, I was using Papyrus in my AIM profile. (Actually, both of these fonts are splendid for on-screen use. Other "interesting" fonts that I've known become pretty much illegible at 10 points, but Comic Sans and Papyrus? No way! They rock an IM window like nothing I've ever seen!) At small sizes, Papyrus looks stylish and elegant, and I was rather disappointed when I once blew it up to a larger size and saw that it was all raggedy-looking. I think designers think it is tacky because it's been distressed, and what good is an elegant typeface that's shredded around the edges? Almost none. The field of legitimate uses for Papyrus is very small, but people like it. So it gets used, over and over again. Poor Papyrus. I feel sorry for it. It's been used and abused.

I will sum up today's musings with yet another variation of the NRA's famous slogan: Typefaces don't ruin designs; people ruin designs. Rather than banning popular typefaces with limited uses, OS vendors should include new fonts with their software, schools should teach students the basics of typography, and everyone should remember that variety is the spice of life, but too much spice is nauseating.

With values like these in place, I'm sure the world of design will be a much better place.

There. My work here is done.

Best use of Comic Sans ever!

Even if you have never studied typography, you're probably aware that the design community - and a good portion of the general public - hates Comic Sans. Actually, for a class, I once wrote a blog post in defense of this much maligned font (and some day I will let you see it!), the essence of which was, it's not the font that's the problem--it's people using it inappropriately.

A classic real-life example, the likes of which I never thought I'd have the opportunity to share: A company - a rather respectable company that you all have heard of - which sends monthly donations to my organization, contacted us by mail to let us know that they would be making all their future donations electronically. The whole correspondence - the letter, the form we were supposed to complete, and even our address - were composed entirely in Comic Sans!

I had to do a double-take. Then a triple-take. My disbelief was so great, I forgot how to laugh. My mouth is still hanging open.

Picture this now:

Please give us your bank account number.

Nothing like cartoon lettering to inspire confidence in a financial transaction!

Did this really happen? Or was it just a strange typographic dream?

Asterisk

The punctuation mark as a design element: It's a phenomenon I've been watching curiously over the years, and I decided it was finally time for me to try my hand.

My punctuation mark of choice is the asterisk, because the curly brace is overused, the exclamation point is overwrought, and the ellipsis was already appropriated by the person who denied me the opportunity to register dotdotdot.com. Technically, an asterisk is not a punctuation mark...but it is used semantically in written material, and everything I do must be star-spangled (see this blog's subtitle), so I figure it's good enough.

When I set out on my mission to use an asterisk, I had to think about all the different ways this character can be rendered and find the perfect one for my needs. Should I choose round-edged and splashy, or crisp and geometric? More difficult to decide on: Five arms or six?

Take a look at all the different asterisks we have to choose from--Below is a sampling of commonly used fonts and the asterisks that come with them:

I was overwhelmed with so many choices! Eventually, I went with Gill Sans. I wish I had chosen Perpetua.