Tea Sketch by Dave Gray

This is such a great idea for when you have those pesky creative blocks.

So to preform this wondrously inspiring feat, all you do brew a cup of tea, then plunk your fresh tea bag down on a white index card. Once the tea stain has dried, you take a pen and complete the drawing. Finally, just sit back and feel that mental block melt away as the ideas come pouring in.

There is a whole flickr group dedicated to it here, unfortuantly there aren’t too many pictures in it right now, but the ones that are there are facinating.

Anyhoo, I’m sure this will prove to be very useful in the near future.

[via Drawn!]

So Hungry! Must hail cab!

Thai Tanic
Thai Food
http://www.thaitanic.net/
1326-A 14th Street NW
Washington, DC 20005
202.588.1186
Brilliant name, and great Thai food in “up and coming” neighborhood. Cheesy decor, but the food makes up for it. Also try one of their specialty, tropical drinks.

Singapore Bistro
Asian Fusion
http://www.singaporebistro.com/
1134 19th St. NW (between L & M)
Washington, DC 20036
202.659.2660
Great Happy Hour Sushi and drinks

Georgia Brown
Low-Country Cuisine (read: Fancy Southern Food)
http://www.gbrowns.com/
950 15th Street, NW (between I & K st)
Washington, DC 20005
202.393.4499
Old fashion, upscale.

Jack’s
French Inspired
http://www.jacksdc.net/
1527 17th St NW
Washington, DC 20036
202.332.6767
Great brunch, crowded after dark, reasonably priced.

Circa
Café/Casual Eatery
http://circacafes.com/
1601 Connecticut Avenue, NW (Dupont Circle)
Washington, DC 20009
202.667.1601
Fantastic food, great location and excellent price.

Charlie Chiang’s
Chinese
http://www.charliechiang.com/
1912 I Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006
202.293.6000
Excellent & authentic Chinese food.

Bertucci’s
Italian
http://www.bertuccis.com/
1218 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20036
202.463.7733
Brick oven pizza at it’s finest, a little pricey though.

DC Café
Italian & Greek
2035 P Street NW
Washington, DC 20036
202.887.5819
Small and dingy, but excellent food. Large portions

Pizzeria Paradiso
Pizza
2029 P St. NW
Washington, DC 20036
202.223.1245
The best pizza in DC. However, extremely crowded all the time. Best to go early, or carry out.

The Childe Harold
American
http://www.childeharold.com/
1610 20th ST NW
Washington, DC 20036
202.483.6700
Go and have one of their famous Guard’s Burgers (a grilled burger stuffed with cheddar cheese and bacon), and wash it down with a cold, refreshing beer.

Mary clearly not happy because she isn’t in DC enjoying the food. Photo by Alex Hodges

Austin Grille
Great Tex-Mex
http://www.austingrill.com/austingrillee/
750 E Street, NW
Washington, DC 20004
202.393.3776
I worked there as a wait person for almost two years, and I still LOVE the place
try a swirlie! Giddy up!

Jaleo
Spanish Tapas
http://www.jaleo.com/
480 7th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20004
202.628.7949
Great tapas! beautiful try the sangria
Right next door to Austin Grille
You can make online or phone reservations

Café Atlantico
Central & South American Cuisine
http://www.cafeatlantico.com/
405 8th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20004
Between D and E Streets
202.393-0812
Best Paella in town, I worked here too for a little while, such fun!
Later most night they move the tables back and the dancing begins!

Full Kee
Chinese
509 H St, NW
Washington, DC 20001
202.371.2233
Easily the BEST Chinese food in china town – a hidden treasure!
OH yes I do NOT believe that Full Kee takes credit cards

Zaytinya
Mediterranean Tapas
http://www.zaytinya.com/
701 9th St, NW (Corner of 9th & G st NW)
Washington, DC 20004
202.638.0800
Amazing food and Beautiful architecture and ambiance, all for a reasonable price.

Capital City Brewery
Traditional American Fare
http://www.capcitybrew.com/
1100 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20009
202.628.2222
Great food & beer at a great price!

Recently advertising is taking a turn towards the absurd… well I shouldn’t say recently, advertisers have always pushed the envelope as far as unconventional humor goes, but you typically only saw this approach with smaller brands that were more flexible and willing to take risks.

I’ve posted one print campaign and three separate tv commercials from major brands to exemplify my point.

Orbit Gum:

There are two benefits immediately apparent in this style of marketing:

1. It is, or can be, dirt cheap.
2. It is very effective with mellinials (god how I loath that word, but it’s very apropos in this instance)

One warning though, it is much easier to execute this style in video rather than in print.

I would be curious to know what all of you think of this?

My name is Julie O’Keeffe, and I want to share a mini-campaign that we at Marqutte University executed this semester – the goal of this campaign was to increase awareness about our databases.
Below you will find some pictures and a breakdown of the campaign.

If you have any questions about this campaign, feel free to email me: julie.okeeffe@marquette.edu

The goals of the two-semester campaign are to:

1. raise awareness among the student population of the variety of article databases available to them
2. educate students on the costs and benefits of using article databases and search engines such as Google
3. collect data regarding student views of the databases for future promotion efforts
4. determine the maximum size campaign that is possible for the R&O Department to produce with the resources available to the Promotion Team (primarily our time and skill-sets)

Secondary goals are to:

1. follow best practices as identified by ACRL
2. incorporate the “@yourlibrary” logo from ACRL

The entire package of components consists of:

1. a poster by turnstiles
2. movie star cardboard cut-outs
3. a dozen “highway signs”
4. a banner that reinforces the idea
5. web pages
6. a “featured item” on
7. a chance to win $20
8. a running list of the students’ submissions
9. a pre- and post-tests that measures students’ knowledge, use, and view of article databases
10. incorporation of the “@your library” logo

I just discovered information about the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council), so I thought I would pass it along to you.

The FSC is a non-profit working with the lumber industry to be more socially responsible.

Now, here are the bits that interest us in the marketing field… If you work with a printer that is FSC certified, they have the ability to add a badge to your print job that details how many natural resources were used in producing that job (how many trees were used, how many gallons of water were consumed, and so on).

I’m actually really excited about this; I’ve been looking for something that I can use for my work with American University Library. The only downside I can see is that green printing will undoubtedly be more expensive than traditional printing.

Annual reports are notoriously hard to compile, but are they worth the outcome?

This year is the second year American University Library has chosen to dive in and make a public annual report. The first year was a trying task juggling the politics and the pain. The second year went a little more smoothly, but was still a huge nightmare (more politics and different pain).

Sounds like more trouble than it’s worth right?
You would think so, but with the right annual report and the right audience, it can be a beautiful thing.

The motivation for producing an annual report is to communicate the core values and worth of the organization to the public. Another great reason is fundraising- annual reports, especially “trophy annual reports” are great fodder for making the institution look grand and worthy of donations.

The design for this annual report was inspired by a botanic field guide, incorporating images from AU Library’s special collections. The style was chosen to fit in with the nature theme that all of AU Library’s administrative level brochures carry.

I’ve attached the PDF of the annual report to this post for review.

In Fearless Future’s attempt to remove the scourge that is clipart from the face of the earth, here is a list of stock photography sites and other alternatives:

Cheap sites:

• http://www.istockphoto.com/
  Great quality, most images are $1 – $5 but can go up as high as $40 for huge images.
• http://www.bigstockphoto.com/
  Images range from $1.40 -$2.50 each for all of them.

Expensive sites:

• http://www.veer.com/
  Impeccable quality, but pricey. Images range from $130 – $420 each or discs of multiple images in a set for $500.
• http://www.corbis.com/
  If you can’t find it on Veer you can find it on Corbis, prices are practically identical.
• http://www.photos.com/en/
  One of many stock photo subscription sites (basically you pay them a fee and they provide you with unlimited access to their collection). The subscriptions range from 1 month ($140) to a year ($600), this would be a great option if you use enough images to make it worth it.

Alternate options:

This is where is gets fun. These are free and/or alternate options to typical stock photos.

• http://creativecommons.org/
  Creative Commons is an alternative to copyright. On their site, they have a searchable repository of different types of digital works that are licensed under that would allow you to use them almost always for free (if you don’t use them on commercial projects and you say who created them)
• http://www.zoo-m.com/flickr-storm/
  With the advanced search on this site you can search the popular photo community flickr for images that are published under Creative Commons. If you find a picture/artist you like, send them an e-mail and see if you can use their work for your project.
• http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html
  Library of Congress’ Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. LOC has digitized a ton of their prints and offered them up online for the taking – the majority of them are out of copyright.
• http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
  The American Memory Project is just like the Prints & Photographs but focuses on the “American Experience.”

Feel free to add to the list at the AcademicPR Forum under “Marketing and PR”

Hello Everyone,

Jonathan has set up a very user friendly discussion forum for the Academic PR list serv. This is a great way to stay alert of what is going on in the world of marketing, outreach, public relations and promotions of academic libraries with out the usual flood of emails.

This is also a wonderful way to build a community of like minded people who can easliy share ideas and trade knowledge.

Jonathan and I have not posted as much as we like as this is the crazy time for both of us at our different institutions ie. gearing up for new marketing campaigns, orientation events, etc… we are also working on Fearless Future projects that we will tell you more about soon.

But in the meantime check out the Academic PR Forum, you can contribute as a guest or you can join very easily.

marye

Thanks to all of you who came out and supported us, the LAMA Swap & Shop was a huge success. I am posting the redesigns for those of you who couldn’t drop by or didn’t make it to New Orleans.

Here is some background on this project. Fearless Future was invited to do the academic brochure redesigns of the Swap & Shop PR Makeovers at ALA this year. In order to provide the selected libraries with the most flexibility in terms of production, we designed a brochure to be professionally printed as well as in-house produceable brochure (Black & White, Xeroxed).

Below I have posted the redesigns along with some framing so you can see the inspiration behind each brochure.

One of the brochures we chose to redesign was the Missouri Journalism Library. The Journalism Library is moving to a new building, and while they are waiting for a new building to be constructed, they are in very cramped quarters.

Missouri Journalism Library professionally printed brochure redesign:

Missouri Journalism Library in-house produced trifold brochure redesign:

The other library that we choose was the Robert W. Woodruff Library. The Woodruff Library is the consortial library of four historically black colleges in Atlanta, GA.

Robert W. Woodruff Library professionally printed brochure redesign:

Robert W. Woodruff Library in-house produced brochure redesign: