Jason Polkovitz

Graphic Design & Art Direction

Category: on design & advertising

  • On art, ego, and appropriation

    (I commented on a post by a friend on Facebook and felt a need to share – and expand upon – it here): Art isn’t about the artist. It is about how the piece affects the people who view it. If an artist doesn’t like another artist that is irrelevant to the work – and…

  • Why I like the new Google logo

    I’m kind of glad that the New Yorker published this article lambasting the new Google logo as it helped to solidify my opinion on it. I happen to like the new logo. It does what it needs to do from a design perspective. I don’t mean aesthetic, I mean design. It needed to be clean…

  • Why hire a professional designer?

    I own an entire closet full of tools, from basic hammers and screwdrivers, to drills and circular saws. In theory I should be able to create just about any wooden object my family or I would ever need. Why, then, do I buy all my furniture from manufacturers who make these things professionally? Because I…

  • Don’t keep it a secret… (or, an addendum)

    The most important part of hiring an outside contractor is communication. And perhaps the most important information that needs to be shared through this communciation is this: When do you need it by? It is at best silly (there’s no way for the contractor to plan his or her work flow – see this previous post)…

  • Don’t fear the deadline.

    As with just about everyone growing up, I feared deadlines. They felt like a great wall looming in the mist – something that would race up and slam into me. They crippled my creativity by lacing it with dread. I had yet to understand the great gift that a deadline gives a creative endeavor. By setting…

  • Same sh*t, different day… beware of overdoing it on social media.

    These days I find there are times that I simply don’t want to open my Twitter or Google+ accounts. I follow a few marketing people on both of these services and though there are some who are wonderful and incisive in their observations and choice of post-sharing, others are repetitive in their posts and self-serving…

  • Why you (don’t really) hate advertising.

    You hear this a lot: “I hate advertising.” Most of the time that opinion is based on either display (transit/billboard/etc) advertising or, even more often, online advertising. The thing is, you don’t really hate advertising. You just hate how it is done. Before I get into that can of worms and how ads can be…

  • Design and ego.

    Design is not a competition. It is not about ego. It is about doing the best job possible for your client. If winning a competition helps the client (or helps you keep your client) that’s fine… but it should never be the primary goal of the work. I’ve both judged and won competitions, and, although…

  • On borrowed interest

    Borrowed interest adds nothing but confusion to marketing. If something doesn’t relate to your product, service, or company image, it doesn’t belong. Borrowed interest belittles your product by showing that you have nothing to make yours the best of the lot and insults your true target audience by promoting fluff over substance.

  • Branding vs Marketing

    This morning I read a point/counter-point style article that came my way via Twitter (thanks to @boxofnuts22) talking about the difference between branding and marketing. Here’s the gist of it: The first person’s explanation was long and winding, full of MBA-style doublespeak and overly complex sentences. Boiled down he says that branding is company reputation…