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One from the vaults: 3D Cardboard Cube Puzzle

Steve Douglas — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 09:59:15 +0000

Every once in a while, a designer will work on a project that is difficult to top, either the hoops they needed to jump through to complete, or the cool-factor once completed. I guess, this 3D Cardboard cube that I worked on back in 1996 (just months before I launched The Logo Factory) is one such project. As part of an interview for Design Inspiration, I was asked “what are the projects you’re most proud of and why?” After thinking long and hard, I decided that through the span of my career as a designer, there are two projects that I’m particularly fond of. The first is an old CFNY Radio poster that we talked about earlier in the year. The other is this funky, 3D cube thingamajig that I built in the mid-nineties, and that was ultimately used in a promotional campaign for ALDO shoes (a major Canadian shoe retailer) that I worked on during my tenure at a small advertising agency – Crunch Inc. Communications. While briefly mentioned the cube in the Design Inspiration interview, I thought you might find it interesting if I went a little more deeply into one of the coolest things I ever worked on.

ALDO, one of Crunch!’s A-list clients, were running an internal sales incentive promotion and wanted something “different”. When it comes to their marketing, ALDO have never shied away from pushing the envelope, so Garret Klassen (owner of Crunch!) Glenn Funk (a fellow Crunch! designer) and myself were let loose to come up with something that was supposed to get employees excited. Before we continue, we need to hop back a few summers, when I had tried to make a card puzzle box, a kind of poor man’s Rubick’s Cube. At the time, these little cube puzzles were becoming popular in the advertising business. You’ve probably seen them – plastic cubes joined by printed stickers on the faces, which can be twisted and turned into various configurations. As an out-of-work designer, I thought it would be nifty if I could print artwork and logos on the cube surfaces, and the piece would make a rather neat little portfolio drop-off during my, to-date unsuccessful, job hunt. Trouble is, I was broke, and there was no way I could afford to pay the rather hefty set-up charges, nor did I need the sizable minimums required. The only way I could create a cube puzzle for my artwork was to create it out of card, in such a way I that I could print it one-of using recently improved desktop digital technology. I had seen similar things done, but I didn’t have anything to work from, and would have to figure out how to build one from scratch.

Trouble is, I am neither a paper engineer, nor particularly adept at creating dielines (though at times, I have a monster case of OCD which helped put this one to bed). Using the plastic cube puzzle as a guide, I worked on my cardboard version for several months, playing with a multitude of dieline configurations before finally nailing it down into something that worked.

The complete cube was made up of four individual die cuts which were held together with with little tabs. I had to do a lot of experimentation, printing layout after layout out 11 x 17 sheets at the local copy & print center, cutting them out with an X-Acto and a steel ruler (losing a few thumb tips in the process) before assembling by hand. I knew what I wanted it to do. Getting to do it was another thing entirely. But OCD and persistence paid off, and after umpteen tries, I finally had a template that worked. Worked pretty well too. Now, I had to set up the artwork to go on it. That was more difficult than I imagined.

Each cube face rotates when the cube is twisted into its various configurations. Some faces have to be upside down. Others have to be sideways. Took me weeks to figure out what went where. To help, I set the entire thing up in Quark, using images boxes that could be spun (with the linked images set up as individual Illustrator documents). After figuring out how everything need to be laid out, I ended up with a pretty cool thingamajig. My original idea was to create a couple of one-off portfolio pieces, by hand, that I could drop off at agencies and studios. But then I got a few well-paying freelance gigs, then the job at Crunch! and my pet project was shelved. Never even completed a final mock-up (OCD’s like that). I knew at the time that production of these things would be prohibitively expensive and figured there would be no commercial application at all. With my career back-on-track, I forgot about my obsession de jour.

Fast forward a few years, where ALDO came in. As mentioned earlier, they were looking for something different for their new campaign. Lost for some really radical ideas, I told Garrett about this cube gizmo I had developed and he dug the overall concept. My setup was still pretty rough, and we needed to work on some practical considerations (a box manufacturer helped us fine-tine the dieline and we utlized a couple of insider trade ‘tricks’ to iron on some wrinkles). We reverse engineered a campaign into the cube – called it “Get Out Of The Box” (as hackneyed as that phrase is now, back then it still had cache) and developed the artwork you see here. Each panel could break into the various prize categories (prizes were being awarded to employees depending on their sales performance) and then back to the central logo.

Damn thing was bilingual which added to the complication (ALDO are based in Quebec) and any designer that has worked with French/English translations will know that they’re NOT the same length and require a lot of finessing. Fitting all the artwork into the various panels and cube faces took forever – a lot of the artwork was done in Photoshop and in those days PS didn’t have layers and only one level of ‘undo’. We used Apple Z a lot.

When we pitched the idea, ALDO loved it and advised us to “Go For It”. We also designed a box for the cube to sit in, but had to make it open from both ends (so that the cube could be pushed THROUGH, rather than pulled OUT. In early mockup-up versions, trying to pull the cube out from a top-only box always tore one of the tabs and ripped the cube in half). The size of the cube was rather arbitrary – we made it, and the box, as large as we could for the press size of the company that were going to print it. I do remember this – the dielines for the box and the cubes were stupidly expensive. Everything was tied into the “Get Out of The Box” concept – the campaign used the cube in all the catalogs, posters (see below) and was a big hit with everyone involved. It was one of the things that once completed, you can sit back and think “hey, I made that”.

And now, the downsides. The cube had to be assembled by hand. Each and every one. If you’ll remember, the cube had four faces. Each of those had to be assembled (using locking tabs, the cubes shouldn’t have required glue, but that worked better in theory than practice). Despite almost maniacal attention to accuracy, one of the dies was a little ‘off’. After the segments were wrestled into shape, the entire cube had to be put together and slid into the packing boxes without wrinkling, or mushing one of the component cubes. Everyone that worked at Crunch! spent day after day in the coffee room, assembling piles of cubes, sliding them into boxes before starting again, and other production work was shelved until we had built them all. Because the cubes were so delicate, we couldn’t bring in outside ham-fisted help. As we didn’t have a lot of overruns (total production was about 1,000 or so units) we couldn’t afford to mess up very often.

I’m not sure of the figures on the project, and while the blliables were probably impressive, if Crunch! made any profit at all, I’d be amazed, due to the sheer time-intensity of it all. But while it may have not been the most money-making project I’ve ever worked on, nor the most efficient, or even the best artwork that I’ve created (a little heavy on the purple there Steve), the gig ended up with something that’s still pretty impressive to this day, almost fifteen years later. People still pick it up and make comments along the lines of “well I’ll be damned”.

Unfortunately, there’s only a few still kicking around now – the one copy I have is a little beat up, wrinkled and sun-bleached (it sat in our studio lobby curio cabinet for a few years before we realized the window-facing side was fading). I still have the template dielines on my hard drive somewhere, and still could probably build a new version for The Logo Factory if I really tried.

Not sure I’d want to.

Logos @ Work – Dice Man Board Game

Steve Douglas — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:24:01 +0000

As a company that specializes in logo design, we often show off our work by featuring projects as standalone artwork in our logo design gallery and portfolios. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it’s often more interesting to see the logo in its native habitat, in context, and as it was ultimately used. Sure, we can always look at how our work end up in stereotypical uses – letterhead & stationery design for example – but there are times when a particular logo’s story is a little more fun than your typical branding exercise. Take this logo (above) we designed way back in 2001 for a then in-development board game called Dice Man. Originally, we were tasked to design the product logo, but as the project went on, we were brought in to design the entire product, board game, instruction manual (which, truth to tell, I was never quite able to understand) as well as the box itself.

As well as a standalone logo, our team also designed the Dice Man central character (above) which was incorporated into every aspect of the product itself (the original R & D plans saw die-cut plastic Dice Men as part of the game play, but production costs shelved that idea in favor of wooden pegs, pinched from another game). Using the game concept sketches, and in close discussions with the developer we also designed the game board itself.

All the material for Dice Man was developed in Adobe Illustrator – one of the main concerns of the day (believe it or not) was the file size of Photoshop files. Internet bandwidth wasn’t was it is today, and there were some concerns of e-mailing large files to Hong Kong, where the game was to be manufactured. The physical size of game board packaging would have seen Photoshop files weighing in at hundreds of megs, so any artwork was created in smaller vector graphics native to Illustrator. Not a big deal – all the logos and support artwork were created in Illustrator anyway – but it restricted us in the use of special FX that would have jazzed things up a little bit.

Must admit I was a bit of a skeptic and saw the exercise as a little bit of a ‘pipe dream’ for the developer. Using dice as the backbone of a game, a board game at that, didn’t seem to me to be the height of cutting edge, and I wondered if there was a market for such a product. Stuart (his last name escapes me), the inventor of Dice Man, was positively contagious in his excitement, so we gave the project our all, and when we were completed wished him the best (I was never quite convinced that this game would see the light of day). The Logo Factory can be pretty fast-paced at times, so once the artwork files were shipped, the game fell off our radar as we moved on to numerous new projects.

A couple of Christmases later, I was at our local Toys R Us, looking for some presents for the kids, and what should I find in the board game section but pristine copies of Dice Man, in all their plastic-wrapped glory. Felt a little guilty for doubting the potential of the game, and decided that judging a board game’s success or marketability probably wasn’t my bag after all. Much to my later regret, I didn’t pick up a copy, and other than telling the gang at the shop “you’re never going to believe what I saw at Toys R Us“, didn’t give the game any further thought.

Until this morning when I stumbled onto this listing on Board Game Geek, a website devoted to famous and obscure board games alike. While Dice Man has long since disappeared from Toys R Us shelves, looks like it’s carved out a place in board game history with true aficionados. And go figure – Dice Man also won the Swedish gaming industry’s Årets Spel (Game of the Year) in the 2001 Children’s category. Looks like some congrats are in order.

And I should really think twice about doubting clients and their pipe dreams.

Blast from the past – CFNY poster art

Steve Douglas — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:37:12 +0000

Spent the weekend getting design examples together to use in an interview piece about The Logo Factory for Jeff Andrews’ Design Inspiration Interviews. Ended up rummaging around in my old portfolio looking for this blast from the past – a poster that I designed for CFNY radio personality The Live Earl Jive (real name Vaughn Filkins) and his Video Circus ‘road show’ back in 1982 (full image after the jump). This poster was created long before desktop design software (actually, before desktop computers even existed) and the artwork was designed with ruling pens, acetate overlays and rublylith (ancient tools of the trade rendered obsolete by computers and design software). Not exactly my best work (in retrospect the hand-drawn video lettering is horrible) but it was something that I was extremely proud off at the time. CFNY was Canada’s first ‘alternative’ radio station and originally broadcast out of an old house in Brampton, my home town. For about a decade, every radio dial I owned was tuned to 102.1 – The Spirit of Radio.

CFNY introduced me to what was known at the time as ‘new wave’ music and 80′s Brit pop – Depeche Mode, Ultravox, Visage, The Cure, Siouxsie and The Banshees et al – bands that I’d still consider myself as a fan of (my itunes playlist could sub for a CFNY play list circa 1984, if they had a playlist, which they didn’t). To actually design a poster for one of their on-air personalities was a thrill for a young designer just getting started out (also netted me quite a few free tickets to road show gigs and concerts). At the time, listeners to CFNY made up for their small numbers with a ferocious loyalty (I even drank Carlsberg beer at my fave weekend haunt, Nuts and Bolts Nightclub, because they were a major sponsor). Alas, CFNY was sold to some corporate interests in the mid-90s, ditched their ‘renegade’ vibe and like many listeners, I lost interest when they were rebranded as ‘The Edge‘ sans the original call letters. If you’re an old fan of 102.1, or are interested in more info, you can check out the colorful history of CFNY over at this fan site.