Seth points out that great logos are about the meaning derived, not from the logo itself, but from the company behind it. While that's certainly true, it underestimates the role of design in a good logo.

John Gruber offers a new take on an old debate: are design templates a good idea? He's talking about blog templates, but the idea is general. And so is his conclusion:

Seth Godin brings up an example of an attitude that I see often. When you work at a company for a while, it's easy to start thinking that your company is the universe.

Back in November of last year, I considered whether To Print or Not to Print. At that time, I allowed that print has a role in a well-integrated communications strategy. Today, I'm wondering how viable the medium is.

It's very popular these days to tout the rise of the design culture. For some, it's the stage past the information age. Even organizations need designing. What's at the root of this feeling?

Printing is dead, right? Oh, it's definitely down, but it's certainly not out. It just needs to be thought about in a certain way.

An agency, in the oldest commercial form of the word, is a company that takes action on behalf of another company. In the marketing world, it's a company that provides marketing, branding, and/or design products. It's to be distinguished from consulting companies that provide services. An agency, then, is supposed to be an extension of a company. It starts with a company's goals and then acts as an extension of that company to provide products that support those goals. The agency in this form has been around some 50 years or so. And the current question is "Does this approach make sense anymore?"

Every design-oriented work seems to follow the same process: create the work, present, revise. My question today is whether this is the best approach. Using this process, by the time the work is presented, it's usually pretty finished. Thus, the revise step seems difficult and seems to wrench the project off-track. What's more, even if you cycle through this process several times, in the hopes of getting better results, you are just repeating the same problems. Is there a better approach?