I got a tweet today from another graphics guy with a link to a site called Blissfully Domestic that is giving away an Epson Artisan 800 printer! The Epson Artisan 800 can take a perfect photo, edit it, and make a beautiful Hi-Definition print so quick you’ll think you’ve been dreaming! Simply plug your camera’s memory card in the printer, edit on the touch screen and print a stunning photo. It’s butta baby!!!

So we can all read about why its great, but let me tell you why I would love to have this printer… For one, Im a graphic designer. I have a number of projects coming through and I need a new printer… I used to have an Epson when I was in school and I loved it. The Epsons are superior in quality in both printing and construction. They work well and they print even better! I have certainly been a fan of them and hope that ill be the happy owner of one soon!

But it’s not just for me… My girlfriend is quite the domestic diva herself! She works at a local rehabilitation center teaching disabled children and is responsible for all of her class room decorations and projects which means she is ALWAYS on the computer at home and ALWAYS printing out new pictures and projects for the children. One of her last projects included doing a CD presentation for the parents and printing out photos of the children for the parents as well. Typically after work she will be on the computer doing project work for the next day for a few hours each evening… printing, cutting and piecing together new and exciting ideas for her students! In her free time she is a scrap booker… she has a number of books going all the way back to when she was in school! She has done numerous books with her kids over the years and of course has done personal scrapbooks as well. She even has a huge kit that fits into this suitcase type of bag to keep all of her materials safe and in good shape!

Being able to win an awesome printer like this would not only help me, but help my girlfriend and her daily school work and scrapbook regimen! I Wanna Win The Epson Artisan 800! =)

Today I came into work and began reviewing projects for the day. My ongoing company website project looks like it will be taking the majority of my time over the next few weeks. To my surprise this morning I tried to login to the Admin area of the site and was quite frustrated that I couldn not remember the login/password… at least that’s what I thought had happened. Now I don’t claim to have a mind like a steel trap, however, I’m fairly certain of all passwords and combinations therein that I use so when I got an error, I had to dig deeper.

I hit the “forgot password” link and entered the email address and there is was:

The e-mail could not be sent.
Possible reason: your host may have disabled the mail() function

Well, I was positive that my host hadn’t disabled this function and I thought I could potentially take care of anything if I could get back into the admin area… After a good bit of searching I found a post on Resetting Your Password through phpMyAdmin. After following through the process I went back and logged in successfully to address possible plugin and comment conflicts.

I haven’t totally solved the issue yet, but hey, Im in and I got my password working again!

Once again the logo beast has reared its (somewhat) ugly head! a while ago I commented on how bad the new AT&T logo was and asked, “Why would a company with a strong logo design that has been around for ages change it to something visually uncomfortable and simply bad?” Okay, maybe I shouldn’t say “bad” but certainly not as strong, solid or even as well thought out as it was. I’m just floored by a lot of companies like AT&T who give the go-ahead on these redesigns instead of spending the money on something that would actually propel the company further.

My problematic logo of the day is the new Pepsi logo. WOW? What? I haven’t quite read into the reasoning or the meaning of the new logo, but I have heard that the strange shape is supposed to resemble a “smile”. Bottom line is this: once again a big corporation has joined the craptastic depths of businesses who pay top dollar for mediocre (at best) work. Take a look below.

Allow me to say right off the bat, the Mountain Dew design is lame. I understand that a lot of tech geeks use Mt. Dew as fuel but that doesn’t mean that you need to change the font to a techy designed font or bow to that demographic of your market. I think they would even say it looks like ass.
Was there a point here? It doesn’t seem so to me. I guess they thought that since the Pepsi logo was gonna be redesigned, they might as well do the rest too… Well, bad idea guys. Looks terrible.

Now, On to Pepsi. The first thing that I noticed when looking at the new Pepsi bottle logos was that the “smile” is different sizes on all labels! This makes no sense to me. I tried to make a little sense of it by saying that the size of the white smile dictates the amount of calories or its “health benefits” but that didn’t work either! Notice that the diet Pepsi logo has the smallest “smile”. The regular Pepsi logo has a bigger smile and the Pepsi Zero logo design has the “smile” the largest of the three. It just doesn’t seem like these were well thought out and explored; two things that should seriously have been done considering the amount of money connected with the product. Regardless of whether or not there is a “method to the madness”, without an explanation it’s still poor design.

I don’t mind the font so much, in fact there are some postings on Brand New that point out it looks like the old old diet Pepsi logo. I do however dislike it’s placement and size. Personally I think it would have looked better horizontally under the “smile” logo. That way its still balanced and just plain looks better. Along with the placement, the sub text (0 cal carb sugar) doesn’t always appear centered under the logo and in the case of the regular Pepsi the empty space under the logo is really bothersome. With so few elements “white space” cannot be an excuse. The layout is just plain lazy.

One of the last things I will mention has nothing to do with the logo, but the shape of the bottle. I know I’m not the first to notice it but it does look quite phallic to me. I think that Pepsi needs to stop wasting time and money on logo recreations and bottle shaping and pay more attention to their marketing and advertising. Oh, wait… but logo creation and bottle design go hand-in-hand with marketing and advertising! Oh well, looks like another wasted marketing budget!

Overall I’d say that the New Pepsi Logo missed the mark. Not exactly by miles but certainly by a far stretch. I just don’t understand why some companies feel that they need a new or modern logo. In the case of AT&T and Pepsi its just a few really bad decisions and bad tweaks on an already strong logo design. I’m sure it won’t impact their bottom line at all but honestly, how much do you really need to push into advertising and marketing for Pepsi?

Would you like a drink with that? Coke or Pepsi?