Celebrating 5 Years!

We are celebrating five years as a company today! I started the company back in 1998 as a freelance business, but in May of 2005, I broke off from employment and officially became self employed. Paul Kiesche Design, LLC. has grown every year and we're proud to have come this far. I'm happy to report that we have gotten this far with our own sweat and tears...

ADCNJ Awards Dinner

I recently attended the Art Director's Club of NJ (ADCNJ) Awards Dinner. We were notified that we won a medal and they would announce it at the dinner. We've won awards with them in the past, but this time I wanted to attend their big event.

Art Law 101

I get many questions about legal issues and copyrighting artwork. This event looks like it may be good for anyone who wants to learn more about art law. I'm always hesitant to post about copyright issues as I'm not sure if I'm always up on the latest news. This may be worth checking out.

Medal Winning Design!

We just received an announcement that we won an Art Director's Award, from the Art Director's Club of New Jersey, for our work on the Earth Wise Beverages website we designed! It won a medal in the "Web Site Design Product/Service Promotion" category! They will announce what medal it won at the annual exhibition dinner.

The work was selected from over 400 entries by the judges for the Art
Directors Club of New Jersey's 47th Annual Exhibition.

Theatre and Art at the Barn

This past Friday, March 12th, the Barn Theatre in Montville, NJ opened it's latest comedy production, Epic Proportions. They invited me to show my paintings in their ticket area/gallery. We had quite a turn out and it was fun to see some familiar faces. Thank you to everyone who made it out. All twelve of my paintings are on display for the duration of the show. I've posted a few photos I took during the show.

The show was a ton of fun and we had a good laugh. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys comedies.

Dinner with Professionals

Back in January, I set up a casual dinner event for marketing professionals through New Jersey Young Professionals (NJYP). The event was in Florham Park, NJ. 16 professionals showed up and the event was a big success! I decided to make the event every two months. So yesterday March 2nd we had our second event and I was happy to also invite New Jersey Professionals.

Rock Bottom Brand

Wow, it's really bad when your product is so bad you need to admit on national commercials and then chase down people that said it was bad to try and prove to them you changed. That's what Domino's has done in their latest advertisements.

Ensure your project is printed right - use a designer

Attempting to cut costs, more and more clients are deciding to handle the printing themselves rather than going through their design company. This is very unfortunate as it's causing printing issues such as communication confusion, loss of quality, and added costs of redoing print runs. To help you understand why print management is important, we put together a list of five reasons you should let your designers manage the printing.

Slaying the Dragon

In the web design and development world, there are few things as maligned as the dreaded Internet Explorer 6. Originally created in the early part of the decade, almost since it's inception it has been hated by designers. There are Facebook groups such as Uninstall IE6 Day, website initiatives, web developers who will outright not design in IE6 (or create a redirect page to encourage upgrades, and even Microsoft – the creator of Internet Explorer – has put out monetary incentives for people to to upgrade to IE7 or IE8.

However, with around 10% marketshare (depending on who you ask) of internet users, there is still a large chunk of people that force websites to hold back on what they can do. Many people don't even realize how much of a problem this is. Web pages don't render properly in the aging browser, some file types will not work, many flash movies are incompatible, and – most worrisome at all - IE6 is a major security risk.

Google would like to change all that.

Why We Don’t Make Speculative Presentations

Creative Business created this letter for companies like mine to use. I think it is really well written should be shared. We use this as our policy.

Selling a Graphic Design Company

I named my company Paul Kiesche Design knowing full well it would be very difficult to ever sell or pass on my company. I did that because I have no intention of ever doing so. However, many graphic design companies are looking to sell.

Nifty Vintage Cartoons

My parents recently gave me a family treasure of vintage cartoons. My mother's father, Paul Dye, was not a professional artist, but was very creative. He attended The Landon Course of Cartooning, a Cartooning school by C.N. Landon. The cartoons are from 1926 and all the courses are typed out. 1926 was just at the end of the Golden Age of Illustration.

American Graphic Design Awards

We are very happy to announce that we won two American Graphic Design awards this year!!

http://www.gdusa.com/contests/agda.php
The awards honor outstanding new work of all kinds in 23 categories from print and packaging to internet and interactive design.

Summer Sales?

Year after year I wonder if the effort is worth it. Between vacations, half day Fridays, and Summer day dreaming... Are enough people in their offices to bother with sales? And if they are, are they thinking about business?

Won Billboard from the Highway Art Gallery

Thanks for all your votes on my paintings. My "Autumn in Long Valley" painting was one of the winners for the Palisades Car Insurance Highway Art Gallery contest. The painting is featured on a billboard of of Route 10 in Denville NJ!

I was interviewed today and my interview will air on WMBC-TV on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week!

The Vendor Client Relationship in Real World Situations

This is a great video poking fun at the vendor client relationship. I've experienced this first hand too many times. I had a good laugh at this.



The Vendor Client Relationship in Real World Situations
http://www.vendorclientvideo.com

Co-Branding Article

A good article on Co-Branding between two companies. It covers the pros and cons of while showing some examples.
Read the Business Week article here.

The Comcast Experience

A couple of months ago we were in Philly visiting a friend. So we stopped by the new Comcast building that changed the Philadelphia Skyline. Our friend mentioned a giant LCD screen that they wanted to see.

Do I Need Permission?

This is a great article written by Dianne Brinson, a copyright attorney. It fully explains what rights you have as an artist or photographer. It explains what you need permission to photograph and what you don't need permission for.

AIGA on Speculative Work

AIGA is one of the leading associations for design. They recently reviewed their position on speculative work. Take a look.
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/what-is-aigas-position-on-spec-work-and-ethical-standards