STEP 100 Design Annual 2004
ARCHRIVAL: GOTUSED.COM: STEP 100 Award
So you’re shopping for used textbooks on GotUsed.com. Whammo! Trumpets blare, lights flash, the applause-o-meter pings: it’s game-show time. Can this be textbooks we’re talking about?
“The parent company owns a large number of college bookstores, the ones that are not on campus,” notes designer Clint! Runge. “How do you get them to cross the street to go to your bookstore?” The answer, they decided, is marvelously wacky prizes. After giving away a customized 1983 van and a trip to hunt Big Foot, this year you can win a trip to The Price is Right . “For the site, we made this cheesy 3-D set in front of a real flat scene—snow mountains, beaches,” Runge adds. “You know, like: a beautiful beach vacation !”
GotUsed content customizes for each school, and the site is surprisingly meaty: games, advice from game-show hosts, plus a bonus section on spaying your pets. “It always comes back to used books,” notes Runge. True to form, they handed out pet-neutering T-shirts on campuses, with the slogan “Help Control the Book Population”. Wild as it seems, it really works. Chris Rodgers of Nebraska Book Company remarks, “Clint! really stepped through the gate on this one.”
—Jude Stewart for STEP Inside Design, March/April 2004
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ARKZIN, MIRKO ILIC CORP.: STEP 100 Award
The Croatian edition of Empire, a political treatise on the evils of globalization and empire-building, called for a truly arresting image. Two old friends—Mirko Ilic as illustrator and Dejan Krsic as designer and publisher—collaborated to meet the challenge with a brilliantly subtle visual code.
“In Europe, ‘empire’ is always symbolized by some bird of prey with two heads,” says Ilic.“Except those two heads are usually facing out. That’s how Romanov, Hapsburg logos look. To talk about self-destruction of empires, our two heads are facing each other—a scary thing. Usually [the birds] have spread legs, and they hold something. Here, suddenly, the legs are turning towards you. Like: you’re next.”
Krsic and Ilic added little twists all over the book design: the tilted graphics on both front and back covers, “like a reversed swastika,” says Ilic. Even the red inside covers speak a revolutionary code: the front flap features sheet music from a French workers’ song; the back includes space for readers to sign and pass the book along. Publisher and designer Krsic sums up the book design this way: “Visual presentation... is also part of the content. Or, as our old promo slogan says: ‘Yes, you can judge a book by its cover!’”
—Jude Stewart for STEP Inside Design, March/April 2004
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MIRKO ILIC CORP.: STEP 100 Award
Overnight in Dalmacija on the Adriatic Sea, the streets are plastered with images of old-time politicians, each silenced by a red sticker. What could it mean? The answer is a clever relaunch of Slobodna Dalmacija, Croatia’s third largest newspaper.
“The Adriatic Sea in Croatia is called Dalmacija [Dalmatia],” explains designer Mirko Ilic. “That’s why they call those dogs Dalmatians, because they have so many spots, like islands in the Sea. The paper’s name is Slobodna Dalmacija, 'Free Dalmatia.’ But Free Dalmatia sounds like 'free information’ in Croatian,” he notes. “That’s what’s over the lips of the politicians in the poster: free information.” A few days later, they plastered the area again, this time picturing the redesigned newspaper with the slogan, “Today with New Look”.
Redesigning the paper offered bigger challenges. The paper was strapped for cash, hemmed in by old technology, and losing readers to all-color newspapers. Ilic adopted crisper fonts from Hoefler Typeface Foundry and switched the color scheme from red and black to red and blue,“to give an illusion of colo” while suggesting the red-white-and-blue of the Croatian flag.
“It caused a lot of controversy,” says Ilic, laughing. Next time he vacations in Dalmacija, maybe he’ll relax a little.
—Jude Stewart for STEP Inside Design, March/April 2004
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