JOYENGINE: cause sharing is cool

The super fun and creative folks at Advanced Photoshop Magazine over in Dorset, England, interviewed us a few months back.  They featured the studio and some of our thinking in an article called, Start Your Own Studio, in issue #63.  Thanks guys!!!

…complete interview below!

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Thanks to the brilliance of Birks & Birks we are now toting some super-serious business cards. For our latest run, Brett, letterpressed (1930 – 8″ x 12″ Chandler & Price Press) our most recent plates (type set in DIN Next) onto matte black 4-ply Museum Board w/ a black ink applique. A total of 5 sheets of board were pressed producing roughly 150 cards per team member. Due to their limited nature we’re quite particular about who gets one. Look forward to future collabs with Birks & Birks!

We’re pretty damned pleased to help announce the release of the Josh Keyes catalogue for Sprout, his exhibition at the David B. Smith Gallery this past May.  The catalogue is a work of art in and of itself.  Designed in landscape proportions of 12″ x 9.5,” the catalogue boasts 48 x 100lb velvet cover pages, an exceptional fold-out of Keyes, Burst I and a brilliantly crafted essay by George Melrod.  This hardcover edition was produced in a limited run of 1000 units.  In addition, each catalogue is packaged with a pencil signed and embossed 8″ x 10″ archival giclee on Hahnemuhle Velvet Paper.  The catalogue was printed and bound in the good ole’ U S  of A, produced by Limited Addiction Publishing and designed by cypher13.  Get yours while there’s still some left!

Cyprien Delire is a very advanced 14 year old.  He’s a French speaking Belgian, designer-in-training and exeptionally adept design blogger.  Cyprien recently shot us over a real nice little interview.  We wrapped it up over the weekend and he dropped it on his site.  Our guess is, a bit may have been lost in translation, so we’re dropping it here too.  Thanks Cyprien!!! We wish you the best in developing the sort of creative genius required to lead us all into the future.  We hope to catch up with you real soon.

1/ When you were young ( 14/15 years ) Do you know that you would become designer, or artist ( dessinator) ?
Since cypher13 is a team of three, we’ll answer accordingly.  At age 14, No Todd did not know he would become an artist and a designer.  He drew a great deal, and thought of himself as quire creative, but was really more interested in skateboarding, snowboarding and racing bmx.  Alex on the other hand did not necessarily know that it was an artist and designer that he was to become, but was fairly certain that his career path would lead into the realm of professional creative.  Lucian almost knew, his foray into design began at the tender age of 16.  At the ages of fourteen and fifteen Lucian was much more concerned with tuning cars and driving them off-road than being a designer.

2/ What do you use for your work ?
- A MAC or a PC  ( I have a mac, the best ) ?
- What applications do you use? ( Photoshop , Indesign, etc. ) ?
We work explicitly on Macintosh machines.  The two pieces of software that serve as our primary digital design tools are Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.  Our markup and other web-based code is written in TextMate. We draw a lot and use many analog tools to inform and evolve our design process.  Our 24′ x 3′ dry-erase strip is one of our most important design tools.

3/ It’s hard to be a designer in these difficult time ( financial crisis ) ?
The Great Recession has brought difficult times upon many.  Yet, prior to financial crisis of the first world the majority of earth’s human population was already in a fairly desperate state of struggle.  It’s been terribly frustrating to witness the near collapse of the global economy as a result of the greed, arrogance, and shortsightedness by those at the top of the financial pyramid.  We must note that we consider ourselves immensely lucky to be in the position we’re in and that we perpetually strive to help those with less opportunity.

Yes, in some regards certain things have become tougher for us.  But, in other ways things have improved.  There’s definitely been less work in the marketplace.  And, a lot of the work out there is being bid at ridiculously low and below market values.  There’s also been a filtering effect. Studios, small firms and particularly larger agencies that were operating under false pretenses, or producing lesser quality work, and/or were or still are lacking the necessary transparency and ethical foundation to perform in the “New Economy”have gone or are going by the wayside.  We believe that this newly created void resulting from poor or failing practices has led to a profound desire by entities and individuals to work with designers and other creatives possessing sound ethics, utilizing professional practices, and who are consciously considerate of both efficiency and workflow.  We consider ourselves to be in this latter category and subsequently have seen a resurgence in work.

So, perhaps these difficult financial times are working to our advantage.

4/  What’s your diploma ? A diploma of graphic design, a master …  Where do you go ( what university) ?
Todd holds a degree in Environmental Science.  Alex earned a degree in Film.  Lucian attempted to go to design school, but abandoned his formal studies to work professionally alongside Todd and Alex upon completion of his first semester.  Lucian has always been a little advanced for his age.

5/ How do you identify the desires and the preferences of yours customers ? Do you ask questions or do you improvise ? ( Personal reflexion : I’ve no ideas how it happen : what do you do ? You create and you show your creation , logo at the customers ? (Sorry for my english, it’s very difficult to talk … I learn english since 2007 … But I’m the best points in my class ! )
We view all of our clients as our partners.  Every time we take on a new project we in essence create a new team.  That new team is comprised of the three of us and all those on the client side engaged in the project.  The highly collaborative nature of our studio makes the creation of these new teams fun and easy.

All of our projects begin with a great deal of discussion.  We’re very selective about whom we work with, so by the time we’ve begun a project we’re already quite certain that the energy, idea exchange, and general flow of work within the team will be smooth, enjoyable and rewarding.  Occasionally we’re wrong, but not often.

Each and every project we take on is different.  Every client’s goals and objectives are slightly nuanced. We balance our skills and experience with the skills and experience of our clients to achieve the best solution to the design problem we’ve set out to solve.  While we’re expert in our area of business, design, our clients are most often expert in theirs.  One business tends to inform the other until an appropriate and optimal solution is found.

6/  The friendly question :
- How do you are when do you work ( excited, stressed, bored … ) ?
-  Do you know  + twenty name of typeface ( helvetica , lubal, … ) by heart ? Can you recognize them when you see them ?
We’re very happy designing.  We consider ourselves quite lucky and truly enjoy the company of one another.  Due to the nature of our career path there’s always deadlines. It’s not uncommon to have at least one deadline a day, for an entire week. Sometime more than one a day.  Occasionally, this makes things a bit hectic.  We’ve all have a good sense of humor and tend to laugh our way through it when things get too bumpy.  And after all, there’s always the creative potential of tomorrow to look forward to.

And, yes.  We do know the names of a great many typefaces.  We all enjoy and participate in the continual study and creation of type.  Collectively, there’s not too many typefaces (professionally designed typefaces) that we can’t recognize on sight.  Occasionally one of us slips a bit, and one of the others needs to come to the rescue, but not too often.

NEVERCLOUD ///
7/ When do you have the nevercloud’s idea ( yes, I know ! ) ? Have you ever worked with QuickLeft before NEVERCLOUD ?
The nevercloud™ was an opiate induced vision within a dream, a fragment if you will, very much like Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem, Kubla Khan.  Actually, it wasn’t, it’s not really that exciting a story.

We saw a need for a scalable and dynamic EC2 hosted content management system (CMS) and decided to create our own.  We’d taken on a few small projects with our partners over at Quick Left prior to the nevercloud™, but it was one of our first major collaborations.  The initial goals of the project were multi-fold, but one of the most prominent was to create a system capable of powering the most recent iteration of the cypher13 site.  Quick Left handled the heavy-lifting behind the creation of the nevercloud™ platform and continues to while we help drive strategically and from a design perspective.

We’re currently engaged in a number of what we believe to be exciting projects with Quick Left so keep your eyes peeled for those. We recently collaborated on the design of their new site, and we are quite anxious about the upcoming release GIF.LY.  The nevercloud™ platform is in perpetual development and we never know when the next idea will arise that leads to a new cypher13 x Quick Left collaboration!

We’re excited to announce  our second typeface release with YouWorkForThem, C13 Six Pixels of Death. Boasting a six pixel cap height and a five pixel x-height, this minimalist typeface was designed to execute only the most covert web opps. Available for purchase now!

We’re proud to announce our first formal typeface release with YouWorkForThem! Meet C13 LCD, a super technical display typeface born of a desire to improve upon the mundane typography rendered via traditional liquid crystal displays. The typeface comes is 2 weights (normal and alt) each with 75 characters as well as the grid weight to layout the background.

We have big things planned for C13 LCD, including 2 limited edition letterpress posters that we’re printing with Birks & Birks. Stay tuned for that!

super technical display typeface from C13

Like being in space.  Only different.

More photos here.

When considering a logo, soon to be or existing, it must be understood that a logo is not a brand. A logo is just a mark or symbol, be it iconic or typographic or a combination of the both that is created with the intent of representing or embodying an ideology or a set of principles larger than the sum of its inherent parts.

A logo, poorly or well-executed can come to stand for a great many things. All of these seemingly embedded definitions or characteristics lie far beyond the logo’s built-in aesthetic nature. For a logo to take on such layered meaning it must be supported by ideas, actions, outputs and ultimately human beings.  It’s at this juncture that logo and brand intersect.

A brand, in time, can come to define a logo. And, human beings, in time, can come to define a brand. A logo on its own can not define a brand. A logo can represent or identify a brand, but not define one.    It’s the thoughts, actions, and output of the human beings behind a brand and thereby behind a logo that come to define a brand and ultimately imbue a logo with meaning and value.

NOTE: In the future, robots, and cyborgs, and other forms of artificial intelligence may come to define a brand, but those days are still a distant reality.  In the past, half-humans like Dick Cheney have attempted to define a brand, but have failed.

Say, “HELLO!” to the all new HelloTurbo line of track bikes, parts, and accessories.  We’ve completed the identity, the box is at the factory, and frames, parts, and accessories are in development.  Stay tuned for more…

HelloTurbo track bike box detail

HelloTurbo track bike box