You all know the Puppy Dog Face. It has mesmerized you. It has made you go madly in love for even at least a moment in your life. Admit it.

Go to your local pet shop and watch all those grown, bearded, smoking men go soft and gay. When they start entering that section with the wagging tails and round, googly eyes silently calling out to them, “Take me home!” It’s over. They’re practically sold. And it doesn’t make it any easier to resist if they’re with their kids.

If, however, through some catastrophic practical or financial decision they suddenly don’t decide to buy the puppy, they leave with a heavy heart.

Puppies have this strong, pulling, magnetic power that people just can’t resist. The good thing is, we can explain and learn from it. Read the rest of this entry…

I recently discovered that UCPB is the next to follow in the rebranding battle of local banks in the Philippines.

BDO was the first to execute the full rebranding package. Clearly, through changing the brand identity, internal culture and innovation in bank operations, they turned their brand around and successfully changed the whole banking landscape. Such a significant rebrand by BDO was so successful that all the other banks were threatened. This led to BPI following in their footsteps with relative success, and now, UCPB.

The Official UCPB (lengthy and difficult to read) Logo Brief

The Old United Coconut Planters Bank Logo

This is by far, one of the most ineffective redesigns I’ve ever seen in a large multi-million company. For starters, their new identity looks like a Chinese restaurant mixed with baby accessories. Read the rest of this entry…

I’d definitely buy these even if they weren’t working.

Image from DesignyouTrust

When traditional fire extinguisher manufacturers brainstorm on how to best sell their products, the answer is quite simple to them—increase functionality! In order to kill the competition, let’s make our extinguishers faster, better, and stronger!

The sad thing in that kind of situation is that the race for functional superiority has an end. There will come a time when the technological limitations of all these brands will only allow them to produce fire extinguisher features up to a certain point. When that limit has been reached, then all of them will be left with a boring, homogenous product.

This is where design can come in and start selling for you.

People in the Advertising industry are creative.

I’ve heard of stories of ad agencies and other creative offices filled with toy guns, slides, billiard tables, trampolines and other unusual devices to keep these people’s creative juices from drying out. This simply affirms that advertisers are indeed, creative people.

That’s where the problem lies.

Advertisers (including graphic designers) have become way too creative, and such creativity is often diluting the messages that are supposed to be sent. Creatives nowadays are focusing too much on winning awards and trying to be funny, rather than communicating and calling people to action.

To paint a better picture, let me relate a short comparative study on Anti-smoking advertisements. The goal of any anti-smoking campaign, is to (obviously) communicate to the person that he/she should stop smoking. Here are two ads doing it differently:

In the first one, the message is basically, “Smoking is suicide.” It is self-directed towards the smoker. Read the rest of this entry…

Who wouldn’t want to receive some good ol’ tips to fill empty pockets?

I’m sure every single waiter, barista, haircutter, manager or employee of any kind would love that bonus. But why is the tip jar, the chalice that will hold the contents of this valuable motivator always hiding itself?

People seem to be ashamed to ask for tips. Tip jars are usually modestly snuck beside the counter, hidden amongst a stack of newspapers  or presented horribly with a pitiful amount of coins lying in the bottom. In such cases where people are doing such a half-assed job of asking, it’d be much better if they just threw them away and stop asking altogether.

If you’ll be asking for them anyway, better do it proud and loud. Do it shamelessly with style and personality. Make sure people know what you’re asking for and while you’re at it, give them an extra smile to take home with them.

Read the rest of this entry…

Brands need to brag.

If you’ve got the lowest-priced computers, the fastest and friendliest service center or the most luxurious hotel, you have to tell people about it. Otherwise, how will they know?

Bragging is perfectly fine. It’s nothing about boosting your brand’s ego; rather, it’s more of simply telling people where they can find services that they can benefit from. However, there’s one common and simple mistake that most brands do when they brag. Read the rest of this entry…

I was somewhere near the area a few days ago, so I decided to give the good old Manila Zoo a quick visit with my girlfriend. I wasn’t expecting much, and I was exactly right to do so.

Here are some of the apocalyptic photos that we took:

Look Mom! No Feathers!

Might as well send them to be slaughtered

Do they know tigers are endangered?

Add a vulture to the picture and you've got a meal

home or prison?

If that’s not animal cruelty, I don’t know what that is. I don’t know what happened or how people allowed this monstrosity of a zoo to exist, but something has to be done. (I’m sending an e-mail to PETA, definitely. Help me out and forward this to them if you have the time.) The people who are allowing this to happen are more animal than they are human.

As much as I’d want to continue, that’s enough for my emotionally charged ranting against the Manila Zoo.

Another important reason why I posted this is to point out another basic fact that many companies overlook—looking after their gold mines.

In this zoo’s case, their animals and the “zoo experience” are their gold mines, the prime assets they have to protect. People go to a zoo to see animals and to experience walking around and enjoying the environment with them. It’s basic knowledge that before anything else, the zoo has to invest time and money in caring for these animals and cleaning up the place!

In the same way, restaurants have to make their food really good, schools have to make sure that their education is top-notch, hair salons need to train their haircutters to be the best they can be and designers must never ever show bad design.

Our goldmines are always right infront of our eyes; but sometimes they’re just too close that we can’t see them clearly.

Thanks for pointing it out Evan.

I’m Chinese and I was raised with the typical Chinese businessman mentality—go abroad, look for money-making opportunities, copy them, bring them home, make money, copy others again, prevent others from copying, and bring more money in. It’s already common knowledge in the world that the Chinese are notorious for making cheap knock-offs from really good brands.

Check these out:

The Original BYD T8

Mercedes Benz CLK

Geely GE Concept

Rollys Royce Phantom

Chinese automakers BYD (Build Your Dreams, seriously) and Geely have been blatantly ripping-off designs from Mercedes-Benz and Rolls Royce, two of the most prestigious auto brands in the world.

It’s shameful.

It’s undignified. 

But does it even matter? Read the rest of this entry…

They were down almost 30 points in the fourth quarter, a shameful and embarassing situation which will be remembered in NBA Finals’ History.

The Orlando Magic definitely knew that they had absolutely no chance in the world to win that game and they could’ve just quit. They could’ve just let their bench play, slack off and watch the Lakers smash them into the ground. But they didn’t.

You saw the coach still screaming and persisting. You saw the players try their best struggle with their shots. You saw them running back and forth chasing down and defending themselves against the enemy—even if they knew that all those would be pointless.

Why? Read the rest of this entry…