Archive | July, 2009

How to find the Basic Shapes in everything to use them to your advantage

Everything is this world is made out basic shapes

If you learn how to find them around you, you can re-arrange your furniture so now it gives you a calming feeling when before it was upsetting and you didn’t know why, you can draw anything you want or you can figure out why you like a landscape and you don’t like another.

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3 Words that will Kill your business used alone

Using these 3 words alone will kill your business. In this video I explain which are the words to avoid using alone and how to get use them wisely to not loose your design, motion graphics, motion design or graphic design clients.

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I’m SO proud of my cats

Last night I went out to dinner with my husband. When we came back to the house, we see my 2 cats coming from my design studio (next door) running back inside. The cats, had moved the chair and briefcase that blocks their cat door (just a hole with a flap) and sneaked out!! When they heard the car parking, they run back inside. I was about to get mad, but I realized the cats where just doing what they REALLY wanted to do, and that’s admirable. They got it DONE, no matter what obstacle was in their way.

Some people ‘move mountains’ to get where they REALLY want.

  • Do you have one in your list of things to do a project you’ve been working on forever?
  • Are you working on a personal project for months and haven’t been able to finish?
  • Have you been thinking about doing a project for months and haven’t started it?

STOP!

Ask yourself if this project is what you REALLY want to do or not and if it’s not: STOP WASTING TIME and figure out what you REALLY want to be doing. For things we REALLY want to do, we do move mountains. Everything else is wasting valuable time that you will not recover ever.

I’m so proud of my cats! They don’t waste time! They REALLY do what they want.

If you want to meet them, here they are, one of the flossing:

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I Get Inspired by a Giant Iguana in my Pool!

Where does inspiration come from? I get it from… watch the video and you’ll see!

Strategy to get your Design project done On-Time and On-Budget

Hello!

In this video I explain the system I use with my clients to get big projects like launching Vh1 for Latin America done On-Time, On Budget and keeping everyone happy.

If you have any questions, write a comment or click here to contact me.

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Michael Jackson Secret Childhood Vh1 Promo

With all the sadness of Michael Jackson’s early death, I though I put a little smile on you. I did this very funny promo a while ago for the Vh1 show Michael Jacksons’ Secret Childhood. Here is little Michael walking to school in the morning.

To Michael Jackson!

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How to take a break mid week to recharge and still get everything done

There are those super busy weeks (like every week) where a break seems completely impossible. And at the end of the day you just crash in bed and pass out watching something on TV. I thought about it and decided that I had to do something to change that. Watch the video below to find out what you can do to take breaks in the middle of the week to recharge batteries and still accomplish everything you got to do.

 

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How to come up with the right design for a project?

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
Albert Einstein

In last few months a lot of people asked me a very hard question to answer:

How do I do to come up with such a variety of designs?

This is how I approach every design challenge:

  1. I write down the keywords of all the things that have to be shown through the design. These words represent the product or subject of the design in every aspect: physical, emotional, vibe, energy, etc.
  2. Then, from all those words, I choose 1 or 2 that describe best each aspect of the product and what the spot gotta say through the design and take out the rest.
  3. Then I narrow them down to Ia total of 5 or 6 words that are very important to the message and convey the most important aspects.
  4. And then I narrow them even more: to just one word. -Yeah! It’s really hard! but you can do it!-
    And that one word, it’s the most important feeling that design will give your audience. That’s the word that when someone sees that design they will think of. That word is very important because it’s the word that you are using to communicate to your audience and it will determine how much success you have with that design in communicating to your audience, so you have to choose carefully.

Here is real life example on how the one word design system works:

This image below, is the original ending of the 7UP commercial ( this is not the final commercial that’s on the air). I’m using it here for this example because it represents perfectly the one word I originally chose to base the look of the motion graphics of this commercial. This image, is the director’s original cut, and it looks pretty much exact to the original storyboard of the spot. And I worked on my works from that original storyboard, imagining this last frame.

My words for this 7up commercial started with:

7UP, natural, natural world, 7UP world, refreshing, fizz, lime, lemon, wonderful flavor, animated, get into my 7up world, flavor, musical, Denise Gonzales, family, for everybody, everyone enjoys it, joy, joyful, colorful, full of life, full of energy, new, it transforms your world, it comes into your world, it’s beautiful, mesmerizing, awe, nature/animal mixture, bubbles, delicious fizz.

Narrow to: magic, natural, animated world, refreshing, wonderful flavor, joy
Final word: magical

This spot -and the music video I just finished- transport you into the magical animated world of the refreshing wonderful lemon lime flavor of 7UP. Looking at the spot you can pretty much literally ‘see’ all those words on the screen.

Because each project/product/subject has a very different message, the words I use to design are very different from each other. So, the result is that in my portfolio you find a big variety of spots.

See below the commercial where this animation appeared:

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And even more clear is the concept in the music video:

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If you have questions or suggestions write a comment, so I can answer here and more people can get more out of it.
Aleloop. Art & Design Strategist