Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There's nothing worse that you can do than create an aura about a company that's not substantiated by fact. It's not only ineffective but actually harmful to the company. You can create an image or whatever, but it won't stick.
In 'Cape Fear,' all that water and the reflections and these threatening and submerged images in the water - that signals the awfulness that is to come. We're very good at awfulness. No, really, we do do some sweet titles, too.
The ideal trademark is one that is pushed to its utmost limits in terms of abstraction and ambiguity, yet is still readable. Trademarks are usually metaphors of one kind or another. And are, in a certain sense, thinking made visible.
If the titles are treated in a straightforward way, nobody is really interested. The theory is that in those two or three minutes, you can set the tone for the films, so that when the story begins the audience hits the ground running.
Interestingly enough, the storyboard... that I did for 'Psycho' went precisely as I laid it up, and there was no change on that. And frankly, I myself at that point didn't even really understand the impact that some of these things would have.
In the course of our daily lives, we're bombarded with a barrage of visual messages, some blatantly aggressive, some subtle. The trick is to find a way to break through without adding to the clutter and the ugliness. We have to be responsible about that.
I want everything we do to be beautiful. I don't give a damn whether the client understands that that's worth anything, or that the client thinks it's worth anything, or whether it is worth anything. It's worth it to me. It's the way I want to live my life.
I think that the sun*like rainbow growing out of the hand is open to many alternate positive interpretations. One may say it's the hand of the United Way bringing hope to people. But it helps signal that United Way is vibrant, exciting, colorful, positive and changing.
The nature of process, to one degree or another, involves failure. You have at it. It doesn’t work. You keep pushing. It gets better. But it’s not good. It gets worse. You got at it again. Then you desperately stab at it, believing “this isn’t going to work.” And it does!
For the average audience, the credits tell them there's only three minutes left to eat popcorn. I take this ‘dead’ period and try to do more than simply get rid of names that filmgoers aren't interested in. I aim to set up the audience for what's coming; make them expectant.
In TV you have to open a show the subject, you deal with an idea. Then you deal with a sponsor - but fast. Then you have to announce the guest stars. As a result, you have a big fat 30, 40 seconds - 50 if they really lose their heads - to put together an unbelievable mishmash.
The key to industrial leadership is technology and design; of the two, technology is quantifiable and design is not. Technological improvements might make your product worth another $20. If you design something beautiful, what is that worth? It's worth whatever people will pay for it.
My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film's story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it.
I want everything we do to be beautiful. I don't give a damn whether the client understands that that's worth anything, or that the client thinks it's worth anything, or whether it is worth anything. It's worth it to me. It's the way I want to live my life. I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.
When I provided the disembodied arm as the logo for 'The Man With the Golden Arm,' it was the first time an advertising-publicity campaign was based on a single symbol. Until then film companies used a variety of symbols and photographs to cover all bets. The concept of using one logo was mine and Otto Preminger's.
I began as a graphic designer. As part of my work, I created film symbols for ad campaigns. I happened to be working on the symbols for Otto Preminger's 'Carmen Jones' and 'The Man With The Golden Arm' and at some point, Otto and I just looked at each other and said, 'Why not make it move?' It was as simple as that.
Corporate identity deals with how a company is perceived. When you're working for a company, you try to determine what the optimum perception of them should be and develop a set of objectives that often take the form of reinforcing what's there that's perceived to be desirable and finding a way of dealing with misperceptions.
Sometimes clients have a sophisticated view of their design problem, sometimes they do not. I often spend time with the client redefining the problem, going back to the beginning. Often the problem is just a symptom. Sometimes you have to move back in order to move forward to understand what the nature of the solution should be.
A new 'look' for any organization cannot be a papier-mache cover, tacked on with Scotch tape under the heading of 'beautification.' It has to be based on a probing examination of the company and the people who work for it. As a result, the eventual external visual design becomes the graphic extension of the internal realities of a company.
You see an artist, a creative person, can accept criticism or can live with the criticism much more easily than with being ignored. Criticism makes you feel alive. If somebody is bothered enough to speak vituperatively about it, you feel you have touched a nerve and you are at least 'in touch.' You are not happy that he doesn't like it, but you feel you are in contact with life.