Alphabet Arm Design News

Sup, web friends? My name is Michael Deal and I’m the new intern around here. Born and raised in Seattle, a magical sanctuary tucked between mountains and bays, I’m here to bring a little Northwest flavor to the office.

We played football outside on my first day, which conditioned me into subconsciously expecting it the next day. That might be analogous to how my career is kicking off, because this internship might spoil me into measuring all my future opportunities against Alphabet Arm. That could be trouble, because there can’t be too many places out there like this. These guys are talented, fun, and sharp, and I can’t imagine a better place to intern.

I think my official intern nickname is Sherbie Lou. Aaron mentioned the initial nick of Sherbet Hat after reading an entirely unrelated upside-down scheduling note about my interview. That evolved to Sherbie Lou before my first day even started. I’ll be broadcasting live from the studio’s Twitter account, so follow AlphabetArm to catch a bit of the day-to-day action. Don’t be a stranger now.

We’re in the midst of a really fun project for AIGA Boston’s upcoming BoNE Show. It’s a bit out of the scope of the average design project, but the idea is to create one character in the “AIGA B(oNE) SHOW” title, which will eventually become the signage for the exhibit. Our assigned character is an “i,” and we’re taking somewhat of a sculptural, assemblage approach to it. We’re bringing disparate elements from the aspects of our lives, and creating a unified whole. Also, there will be electricity.

Aaron was recently profiled on SmartMoney.com. Each week they feature an entrepreneur who they believe is standing out from the crowd. You can check out his interview [here] and make your own call!

• Ho-Ag “Doctor Cowboy”
• Six Finger Satellite “Paranormalized”
• These Arms Are Snakes “Tail Swallower and Dove”
• Franz Ferdinand “Tonight:”
• Black Lips “200 Million Thousand”
• Off With Their Heads “From the Bottom”
• Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band “Safe as Milk“

This past weekend Aaron traveled to CT to judge the Connecticut Art Directors Club annual awards show. He spent a couple days reviewing hundreds of projects along side a high-profile lineup including photographer John Madere, Josh Silverman of Schwadesign, photographer Rick Koconis and Megan O’Connell of Hill Holliday. The CADC awards show always proves to be a great show featuring the best work in CT. This year’s Show is being held at Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration on June 18th. A portion of the entry fees will be donated to the Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Rescue Program at the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration!

Being big fans of independent music we like to give back to the indie music scene whenever we can. For example, we teamed up with OurStage to offer a free logo design to one of the top rated bands on their charts. OurStage users voted for their favorite musical acts within 50+ categories. It was our job to choose one of the top 25 (from any category) to bestow our gift upon. It was not an easy task to say the least. In the end we chose a band from Stillwater, Oklahoma called Other Lives. OurStage just posted the news on their site, which included an interview with Aaron. Check it out [here].

The BzzAgent Overview marketing piece opens with the quote “We hate brochures as much as you do.” It’s this kind of tongue-in-cheek humor that makes it fun to work with these word-of-mouth media gurus. The booklet was developed to show off BzzAgent’s capabilities as well as explain some of the basic concepts of word-of-mouth media to outsiders. Their team did a great job of keeping copy to a minimum to allow us the luxury of developing a dynamic layout that utilizes everybody’s favorite design element: whitespace. Check out the unique finishing, including grommet binding and pages with diecut tabs.