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The Duck Rocks

May 7, 2008

On a late work night here at Hop Studios, Susie became defective and started listening to Poison’s Every Rose Has Its Thorn over and over and over. This escalated into a devious and destructive music duel between Susie, Travis and myself. We were taking turns, looking for the ultimate expression of that much maligned musical masterpiece, the Rock Ballad. Rules quickly evolved:

Rock Ballad Competition

  • It’s gotta be rock, baby!
  • It’s gotta have that slow build and soaring arc.
  • It’s gotta wholeheartedly commit to a seeming existential but essentially dumb (or at least simplistic) idea.
  • It’s gotta go overboard, we want tears and clasped hands.
  • Classic rock helps. A guitar solo would not be out of place (Bonus if it’s a drum solo instead).
  • If the phrase “torch song for dime-store philosophy” works, you’re golden.

After several hours of fierce competition, no clear winner emerged, and with this premise, one was not likely, either. We did, however, jot down the best examples from our auditory battle-royal for your edification:

  1. Total Eclipse of the Heart—Meatloaf and Bonnie Tyler
    Beats out I’ll do anything for love (but I won’t do that) because of the faint whiff of irony.

  2. Somebody to Love—Queen
    Now this is commitment, when you’ve hired a full choir, you know it’s on.

  3. Every Rose Has Its Thorn—Poison
    Dumb idea masquerading as a profound realization by an over-paid moron in tight pants? Check.

  4. We Belong—Pat Benatar
    Narrowly beating out ”love is a battlefield” because of the “arc” issue, as well as the “tear in the eye of a clown” factor.

  5. Shooting Star—Bad Company (but Travis likes the Poison cover, too)
    Apparently the heavenly bodies are big on sleeping pills.

  6. Summer of ‘69—Bryan Adams
    Yeah, he liked high school, and now he’s sad.

  7. Tusk - extended version—Fleetwood Mac
    Fan pandering.

  8. Walk of the Wild Side—Lou Reed
    Careful lobbying by Travis got this little genre-bender (gender-bender?) in under the line.

  9. Where The Streets Have No Name—U2
    I added this one last second, sounds like Boston.

But we need a 10th song for the list. Any suggestions?

Posted by Matt Gardner at 8:59 PM | Comments (1)

The Problem of Logos

April 14, 2008

It doesn’t happen with every project, but it’s not exactly uncommon either: a client comes to us with an idea, but no logo or identity work done, and asks for a Web site. Of course, they also want a logo as part of that design work, but as they are focused on the Web site they often aren’t thinking about identity, or about what else they might want to do with a logo. Nor are they exactly sure what the logo should say about them.

Logo and identity work is difficult. It’s time-consuming, intense, emotional, and core to the business of the company we’re working with. In larger companies, you sometimes have many people involved in providing design input and direction, and too many cooks in the kitchen can definitely spell trouble.

From our point of view, the problem really comes down to two things: first, clients don’t usually realize they are asking for identity work when they ask for a logo, and second, they don’t really want to pay for our involvement in a lengthy strategic thinking and marketing process, because after all, they just want a logo.

But all too often, that’s what’s necessary. After all, if we do our job right, a logo should express many things accomplish many things for a company:

  • demonstrate quickly and easily what the company does
  • express the company’s values and vision
  • be visually memorable and quickly recognizable
  • unite the company’s management in their opinions about what the company does and why
  • work in various mediums and formats, from business cards to animations
  • work in color and in black and white

It’s a big job for one little graphic!

When I was a student at the University of Southern California, the school had recently gone through a rebranding process. The end result was a new version of the USC logo, which even to the untrained eye wasn’t massively different from where it started. When students talked about the new logo, remarks usually sounded something like this: “This cost $1 million! I’d have done it for $50!” Students were incredulous that it should take the university a year and a million dollars to come up with a small visual difference in the school logo. But what students didn’t see, was a no doubt lengthy, time-consuming and completely necessary process that the company doing the new identity did of understanding and defining what USC was doing and why, and of finding consensus for that vision among such widely different groups as the USC School of Dentistry and it’s School of Fine Arts. And that’s before they even started thinking about how the logo might work when printed very small on a black and white business card.

This process, often referred to as identity work, is an enormous job. Try it sometime! Get three people in your company together and ask them to come to a consensus on the company values, goals, and purpose—and then to try to express that visually. Whew!

The Hop Studios edition of the Graphic Artists Guilde Handbook ties the cost of a full branding/identity package to the revenues of the company involved, and prices start at $15,000-$30,000. The handbook indicates that a pure logo design project (no other identity collateral is created) ranges from $5,000-$12,000. And the edition we have on our shelves is a few years old, so these numbers may be even higher today.

When a client comes to us asking for a Web site, it would be a major bit of sticker shock to see an addition $5,000 tacked on for logo work, much less an entire identity package!

And sometimes, a logo is just a logo. We certainly have clients who don’t want to do a full identity analysis, and in fact, don’t really need more than their name presented in a tasteful font. The challenge for us is understanding which clients are which, when clients themselves may not know what they need.

We continue to ponder appropriate pricing for logo work, especially for our smaller boutique clients. They deserve a mark that represents them well, but simply can’t afford to invest the kind money traditional guidelines say should be involved in creating a logo.

What do you think? What should a logo, that single visual representation of everyhing your business is and does, cost?

Posted by Susannah Gardner at 10:12 AM | Comments (1)

Is CodeIgniter Actually Open Source?

April 11, 2008

Hop Studios uses code written by EllisLab every day, and we’re watching each day for the drop of ExpressionEngine 2.0, which will be based on the CodeIgniter PHP framework.  While we wait, I was musing about how EE is often admonished for not being open source, while CodeIgniter’s status as such is seemingly overlooked.

The PHP framework by EllisLab touts its open source nature everywhere: in the site’s page title, in the home page’s largest text, and in the CodeIgniter At a Glance documentation, where it says “CodeIgniter is licensed under an Apache/BSD-style open source license so you can use it however you please. For more information please read the license agreement.” But the license agreement itself is quite short and says mostly this (I left out the warranty stuff):

Copyright (c) 2006, EllisLab, Inc.
All rights reserved.

...

Permitted Use

You are permitted to use, copy, modify, and distribute the Software and its documentation, with or without modification, for any purpose, provided that the following conditions are met:

1. A copy of this license agreement must be included with the distribution.
2. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice in all source code files.
3. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
4. Any files that have been modified must carry notices stating the nature of the change and the names of those who changed them.
5. Products derived from the Software must include an acknowledgment that they are derived from CodeIgniter in their documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
6. Products derived from the Software may not be called “CodeIgniter”, nor may “CodeIgniter” appear in their name, without prior written permission from EllisLab, Inc.

So, does this mean it’s open source? The Open Source Initiative lays out pretty clearly what it means for a license to be open source, probably most thoroughly here.  So the question is: Does CodeIgniter qualify? Point by point, let’s see:

1. Free redistribution.  Basically, yes.  The requirement to document changes and to acknowledge CodeIgniter is minimal and doesn’t interfere with use.  The limit on using CodeIgniter in the name is addressed in point 4.

2. Source Code.  CI is not required to be re-distributed with source code, which means that someone can take CI, obfuscate it or otherwise compile it, and market that product without providing the source. But not all open source licenses require their code’s “offspring” to have accessible source code. So, this is maybe a little unfortunate, but it’s still open source.

3. Derived works.  CI requires a copy of its license to be included with anything redistributed, but it doesn’t require the modifications to be offered under the same, or even under an open source, license.  Again, this runs counter to how open source software is supposed to behave, but isn’t in itself a disqualification. Incidentally, this clause is perhaps necessarily so, in order that ExpressionEngine can be based on CI without itself becoming open source (though I suppose EllisLab, owning copyright on CI, could give itself a separate, unlimited license to use CI however it wants).

4. Integrity of The Author’s Source Code. CI allows modification of the source code in re-distributions, so this doesn’t apply.  CI requires that a developer not use “CodeIgniter” in the name of the redistributed code, which is allowable.

5. No discrimination against people or groups.  CI has none.

6. No discrimination against fields of endeavour.  CI has none.

7. Distribution of License. CI doesn’t require (or block) any other license.

8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product. CI does not require itself to be part of any particular software distribution.

9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software. CI does not require other accompanying programs to match its license.

10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral. This is true for CI.

So it seems that, while CodeIgniter doesn’t use a standard open source license and could be doing more to protect the open source status of derivative works, it does qualify as open source.  Using a more recognized open source license might help others have confidence in this fact; so would being certified by the Open Source Initiative. But I think the basic answer is clear.  Is CI open source? Yes.

Thanks to Zak and Boris for helping me to think through these questions.

Posted by Travis Smith at 6:32 AM | Comments (2)

Truthdig Nominated for Another Webby

April 10, 2008

Is it April already?  It seems like just a year ago we were congratulating Truthdig on its Webby nominations, and amazingly, there they are again!

This time, they’re one of five chosen in the Politics category.

A fabulous round of applause for them, and a big thank you for their continuing to work with us.  They do great journalism and we’re very proud of them.

Update: I should also add a shout out to fellow Vancouverites Change Everything who got a nod this year and also deserve it—but in the Social Networking category up against Facebook and Ning and Flock—hey, shout out to Flock, too!—that’s a little strange. Ah well, who understand these things?

Posted by Travis Smith at 3:55 AM | Comments (0)

SxSW Photos

April 3, 2008

This was supposed to be a post about SxSW, that’s right, a post about a conference that Hop Studios attended a month ago. But now it’s a post about why this post is a month late. SxSW, unlike most conferences, has no downtime, you are running from daybreak to way, way after sunset (sometimes to sunrise) with meal breaks where you try to cram all the wonderful southwestern cuisine you can into your body. It sounds harrowing, but is, in fact, a blast, you meet tons of great people, catch up with old colleges and learn a lot about the state of the industry.

The only problem with taking your entire staff to non-stop party/conference is that you return to a work pile-up of monumental proportions. It is only now that Hop Studios has emerged to bring you photos from SxSW. Enjoy.


Where we were


It was bad, but in a good way.


Yearly photo of the bag pile.


That was the meal.

All photos were taken by Travis Smith.

Posted by Matt Gardner at 5:42 PM | Comments (0)

More posts from May 2008