Tips for Student Designers and the Small Businesses Who Love Them: OrangeSlyce Life

Stay relevant

Design is a curious profession with naturally curious practitioners. I think it has something to do with the elusive leprechuan called “inspiration,” or maybe just the pressing need to be relevant, or maybe a simple desire to posses a large experiential palette from which to draw creativity but..

Advertising is an area every designer should study. Especially clever advertising which rolls all three of the above purposes of curiosity into a single swallow.

Plenty of Beers Want Your Love and Undivided Attention

Corona just wants a little “like.”

This should appeal to even the slightest kernel of vanity: towering over New York’s iconic Time Square, your face. Usually an expensive/difficult/need to be a model kind of endeavor, the reward of visual domination has been made a little more accessible by the U.S.’s numero uno import beer brand: Corona.

Corona really just wants you to like 'em

The popular Mexican beer jumped on the social media band wagon being hauled by Facebook by creating an app for the blue behemoth to make Corona Light The Most Liked Beer in America.

Bottom Up

The campaign is simple:

“Like” the Corona Light Facebook page, gain access to the Time Square app.

Upload your photo and you’re in the lotto to be run on the company’s billboard from November 8 to December 6.

The Unmistakable Color

Corona’s billboard will become one of the most visually accessible advertisements in the world. Ideally, that aforementioned vanity will cause each featured Facebook user to spread their brief advert debut  to all their friends, along with the associated Corona ad.

And I have a feeling the people who end up on this rotating billboard will be much akin to your buddy who went to Europe once, for a week and won’t shut up about what an “experience” it was. Every time they get drunk, they’ll tell the same story for a year or two. Or five.

That’s a raving fan.

Most importantly though, every “like” will grant Corona access to a Facebook user’s news feed making for beaucoup free advertising.

That’s a raving robot.

Vacation in a Bottle

Considering Corona’s intelligent shift to a younger audience, the brand is playing a smart card here and will probably edge out an incredibly strong market share among light beers.

Besides keeping up to date on ad trends, a designer should take the strongest lesson advertising can give away: differentiation. You’ve got to be more than just clever and clear in communicating a message. Your message has to be different; a tailored signal to your audience amongst an ocean of media noise.

Carve out a slyce and plug it in there. It really does complement the flavor. Almost mandatory if you ask me.

P.S. I have to give most of the credit on this post to our own social media gal, Victoria. As always, much thanks.

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Not in any literal sense unfortunately, but in the simple consideration that all those who devote their lives to the charitable enlightenment of mankind are my friend.

I’m not smart enough to pretend to understand fractals in any technical detail, but I have a strong sense of their implications, such as:

Which is to say:

Complex..

A Space Odyssey

Mandelbrot wrote Fractals: Form, Chance, and Dimension (later expanded into the more common The Fractal Nature of Geometry) in 1977 and joined the ranks of Descartes with what will be an inestimable influence. Mandelbrot’s iterative solution to spatial visualization, self-similarity, was, like all true challenges to rooted paradigms, decried in its infancy, but undeniable in its implementation.

How do you create a snowflake?

Iteratively.

How do you raise a mountain?

One step at a time.

I know there are very few of us out there who drool over mathematics, but I think it is a language all its own (literally, not metaphorically) and possesses its own kind of poetry. So when I come across a true artist, like Mandelbrot, who has found a new way to bridge the gaps between mediums, I am impressed.

When the fortitude of those bridges can bear the weight of many thousand travelers to many thousand lands, I idolize.

Beyond the infinite

Experimenting in Purity

It is very interesting that Mandelbrot arrived at his conclusions using experimentation and observation. When he worked at IBM, rather than attacking mathematics in pure form, Mandelbrot used very early computers to generate images and find his brilliancy within them.

Mandelbrot was humble enough to attribute his discovery as one he only expressed, one he, “made gradually, very slowly by looking again at the painters of the past.” One of the most clear examples of fractals in art is from Hokusai:

The Great Wave off Kanagawa

The self-similarity within the print grants beautiful layers of depth and detail giving it a breathtaking impression of realism, especially considering the strength of its lines. I find it inspiring that Mandelbrot looked to art as a caretaker of secrets.

Benoit Mandelbrot, “a Greek among Romans,” died on October 14th, 2010. His passing, as with all friends, renders a time of grief.

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One of my favorite characters in the past ten years is the pan-phobic, mother-smothered, practitioner of cartography Buster Bluth. Considering that he lived in the age of Google Maps, Buster’s studies of uncharted territory seemed–like most of Mitchel Hurwitz’s humor–both endearingly unique and immediately absurd.

Then I saw this piece:

A visual representation of parsed FAA data for flights

I’ll Fly Away

The above image was created by Aaron Koblin, Technology Lead of Google Creative Labs, and Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne, collaborators in Celestial Mechanics out of UCLA. Aside from the compelling aesthetic, the image struck a chord by whole-heartedly undermining my perception of cartography as a dead art.

Maybe a dead word, but resurrect it in the 21st century and you’ll realize that mapping is a crux of future understanding and innovation. Consider that the representation of data is often as important as the data itself. We’ve all seen this principle manifest itself in the dark art of statistics.

Sight Beyond Sight

Although it’s all much more complex than I presume to understand, I tend to subscribe to Fleming’s VARK model of learning and his delineation between the kinesthetic, auditory and visual elements. I know from personal experience that the visual truly does carry the weight of a thousand, thousand, thousand words.

Parsed FAA data over the course of a day. Note the clock in the lower-right corner. Planes can pulse like blood. They can crawl the sky.

Mapping is a way of navigating between dimensions and digesting spaces unseen. I am of the opinion that we are still in the infancy of the internet and the shear volume of data being mined heralds a renaissance in mapping amongst other things.

And a growing area for designers to apply their talent to visual communication. Not just in data, but ideas.

Show Me..

Here are the highlights from a mapping marathon held in memorial by Edge for Benoit Mandelbrot:

The unending search to reconcile time and space

The true size of Africa

The oldest words in our lexicon (largest font in image) change through history slowly enough that they might have been recognized by people living 15,000 years ago or more. Note the prominence of words defining social relationships.

The motion of emotions

The Internet

I included the last image for two reasons:

• I particularly like the placement of the esoteric and potentially infamous Usenet newsgroups in a dark, distant cave.
• The complexity of the Internet is rendered like a child’s drawing. Fresh and innocent.

The image focuses the core proposal of this piece: successful design is largely about joining simplicity to novelty. In practice, mapping represents an under appreciated approach to doing just that with design.

Chart some new territory.

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The goal of OrangeSlyce has always been to build a platform for students and small businesses to connect as two perfect entrepreneurial complements. Each group offers the other unique growth opportunities that OrangeSlyce is built to cultivate. Since the launch of the website, we have identified an opportunity to simplify and ease the connection between students and businesses by narrowing our focus to design projects and expanding to a nationwide user base.

The Changes:

When you visit the new website, you can expect to see a few changes:

1. As always, a fresh new look. We’re kind of suckers for design too.

2. In line with the new focus, when you post a project the categories are now all design related.

3. To ensure all project postings are relevant, projects will remain open for two weeks for students to apply to (starting from the time of payment).

4. In order to maintain and improve the site, all postings will have a posting fee of 5% of the chosen budget ($10 minimum).

5. The instant matching service for up to 5 recommended students is now included with each posting.

6. OrangeSlyce is now a nationwide service.

The Reasons:

1. To sustain and grow as a community we need to guarantee opportunities for both businesses and students. It’s a “chicken and egg” kind of problem. By narrowing to a single population OrangeSlyce can offer a continuous stream of projects to students and a plethora of designers to businesses creating a better service for both communities.

2. There is a HUGE gap in the online design community. There is nothing that caters to student designers. And that’s just sad. I was reading the HBR blog before writing this and found the OrangeSlyce mantra “Learn By Doing” confirmed again in an article entitled, “Higher Education is Overrated; Skills Aren’t.”  This is how education should work.

3. An extension of #2 really: The alternatives are unacceptable. A student trying to compete on Elance is like trying to push health care reform through Congress; it may work, but only by making serious sacrifices. Students shouldn’t have to set their education on the back burner in order to practice their skills under realistic circumstances.

And ”Spec work,” is a joke. It’s just unhealthy for all parties. To quote the AIGA, ”designers should be compensated fairly for the value of their work and should negotiate the ownership or use rights of their intellectual and creative property… Clients risk compromised quality as little time, energy and thought can go into speculative work, which precludes the most important element of most design projects—the research, thoughtful consideration of alternatives, and development and testing of prototype designs.”

Correct.

Still OrangeSlyce

We saw this as a chance to fill a real need and grow a sustainable community service. We’re still the same group of student entrepreneurs working pro bono and we want to thank everyone that has contributed to OrangeSlyce so far. It’s your site, you helped build it and allowed the OrangeSlyce team to have fun guiding the development.

As we move forward, we hope to add new nationwide segments to the OrangeSlyce service building a community dedicated to providing students and small businesses opportunities to collaborate and grow successful.

As always, don’t hesitate to shoot us an email at info@orangeslyce.com, with any questions or concerns regarding the new OrangeSlyce!

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I’ve always found the statement, “You can’t compare apples and oranges,” ridiculous. Of course you can.

As long as there’s some level of commonality (e.g. these are both fruit) there’s a purpose to looking at the differences.

Case in point: Matt Butson’s resume.

Matt is not your average man. He’s not your average young entreprenuer. And he doesn’t present your average resume.

Check this out:

Needless to say, it’s a little more.. dramatic than usual and it certainly abandons any of the preconceptions of what a resume looks like, but there’s a benefit to holding this apparent heresy to the light of what a resume “should” be.

The rubric: Glenn Kelman’s guest spot on Guy Kawasaki’s blog which presents the simple likes and dislikes of an active CEO. I’m not gonna go through all 29 points (cause it’s pointless and actually more lazy in my opinion) but rather extrapolate and apply.

Three pluses:

1. This is the most easily read resume I’ve personally seen. You don’t even have to “scan” it, you just have to look at it.

2. It’s directly customized to the job. Matt created this resume to apply to Apple. What company would better appreciate the aesthetically clean, novel, and “outside the building where the box was sitting” approach to a resume?

3. Clear personality and personal branding. The resume breaks down like this: here’s what I do, here’s where I’ve done it, here’s how to get a-hold of me so we can do stuff.

The Twitter address is nice too. It’s a cut above @gmail.com.

Three minuses? Let’s just call them suggestions:

1. I think it would be better to note the  single, most personal tangible accomplishment from each entry in the “Work” section.  Something that adds personality, something to talk about. Specific, like how many videos Matt cut at ASU.

2. Clean up the lines in the images. I know it’s picky, but–in my mind at least–it’s kind of like spell checking.

3. State your objective. If Matt simply say’s at some point, “I want to work for Apple,” it helps crystalize the fact that this particular document was created for this particular purpose. Effort, above and beyond.

I would do it something like this:

Totally subjective though.

The Juyce

The most important conclusion of the three pluses: Matt seems interesting to talk to. And that’s a fact. At OrangeSlyce’s Young Entreprenuer Happy Hour last Friday, we discussed topics varying from the potential influence of Big Boi’s Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty on pop music to the U.S. Department of Education’s criticisms of for-profit higher education.

As Kelman says in his piece for Kawasaki, a resume is simply, “a request for a meeting.” Be interesting.

One last idea. Kelman’s piece links to the great Seth Godin’s musing on resumes. Take it with a healthy dose of salt, but consider Godin’s criticism: “Why bother having a resume?”

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Every company starts somewhere. It’s usually with paperwork.

Two things before we start:

You cannot file a Limited Liability Company (LLC) in Arizona online. Seems a bit ridiculous, but it’s true.

You’re do-it-yourself budget for the whole process will probably be $100-$200 depending on the options you choose.

Let’s get you set up.

1-Doing the Paperwork

Choosing a name is often both the easiest and hardest step. Assuming you have one in mind for your business, first check its availability in the Arizona Corporation Commission’s (ACC) database. After a search deems your name available, you can reserve it for 120 days electronically for $45 or by snail mail for $10.

Next, head over to the Arizona Corporation Commission’s Corporate Filings webpage. Under the section titled “New Domestic Limited Liability Companies,” you can find the three forms you need.

Download and fill out forms LL0004 and CFCVLR.

Form LL0004 is the Articles of Organization form and easily the best place to start. You will fill out all the important information like the name of the company and the office address. It has a fantastic checklist as well as links to Arizona laws regarding LLCs and instructions on what to do once your LLC filing is approved.

2-Filing the Forms

After filing everything out, you can mail your forms to

Arizona Corporation Commission                     OR                          Arizona Corporation Commission

1300 W. Washington St. 1^st Floor                                                       400 W. Congress Ste #221

Phoenix, AZ 85007                                                                                  Tucson, AZ 85701

Be sure to include your $50 filing fee ($85 for expedited filing) for LL0004. In our experience, expedited is the way to go. It takes about a week as opposed to the estimate of two months with normal filing.

They take cash, check, or money order made out to Arizona Corporation Commission. If you go down to the office in person to file the forms you can use Visa, MasterCard, and American Express as well.

3-Notice of Publication

Finally, you have to provide a “Notice of Publication” using form LL0001 within 60 days of the date your forms were filed with the ACC. Notice must be provided for 3 consecutive publications in a newspaper with general circulation in the county of Arizona listed as the LLC’s know place of business in section 2 of LL0004.

The ACC provides a list of publications by county. Fees for legal publication vary, but if you’re in Maricopa County you should probably budget about $50-$100 for this step.

Two pieces of advice:

Be sure to call and verify that the publication you end up using provides a notarized Affidavit of Publication to the ACC on your behalf. If they don’t, don’t use them.

Though there is a ticking clock, in general you want to wait to file the notice until after your application has been approved by the ACC. Once it is approved though, complete this step ASAP. Both considerations will help you avoid wasting time and money going through the process again.

Legal Help in LLC Filing

These steps can be done entirely on your own, but we have to remind you that we are not lawyers and if you’re in doubt about anything, you should consult a lawyer.  A specialist in organizational law can typically get all the necessary forms completed as well as draft up custom agreements between members in order to protect everyone’s interests.  Depending on the complexity, fees can go upwards of $1000, though it’s not unheard of to find a lawyer to form your LLC in under a week for $300 in addition to the filing and publication fees.

But really, an entrepreneur like yourself can get it done in a day. Better yet, hire a student using OrangeSlyce, point them to this post, and be done with it in a matter of minutes. Spend your money on entrepreneurship, not lawyers.

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