What I'm talking about: During my time as a student at the Basel graphic design class from 1961 to 1966, one tool that we take for granted today did not yet exist: the felt-tip pen. Back then, we learned a profession with the tools available at the time. So if you drew a black line 1 mm thick and 17.3 mm long on a white sheet of paper, the first thing you tried to do was to imagine in your head exactly where this line should be placed. Using a soft B2 pencil, for example, you placed the line provisionally in the desired position. Only then did you fill the black Pelikan ink into the nib and close the wheel so that the line was exactly 1 mm thick. When applying the ink to the white sheet, you could neither tremble nor hesitate, otherwise there would be a smudge on the 3-franc Schöllershammer cardboard. Why am I telling you this?

Today in 2014, only about half a century later, this 1 mm line requires no fuss, no trembling, no hesitation. Work that back then took a week and involved various subcontractors such as reprographers, lithographers, typesetters, retouchers, etc., can now be produced in, say, an hour using InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. That's a blessing and not a curse. My theory is that the curse is greater than the blessing for graphic designers. Back then, you had to prepare a sketch or layout with scissors for every idea. It wasn't possible to conjure something up quickly. It had to be planned exactly to the point. Now comes the curse. The advertising, the brochures, the posters and all the flyers that flutter into the house are 90 percent thought up by amateurs and quickly created on a Mac.

In my opinion, the computer age has damaged quality and professionally designed communication. And massively so. Unfortunately, this will not improve in the future, and the consequences will not be good for the advertising industry. The ugly posters designed by bureaucrats will disappear from the streets, as the city council has already threatened. The stop-advertising stickers are already commonplace - even on the letterboxes of marketing agencies. (Information from the Motzer.) The e-mail and text message culture is to die for... Unfortunately, we have allowed ourselves to be taken by surprise by this ingenious invention. We are now Mac slaves. My suggestion as a resolution: Think, sketch and only then join the Mac blessing.

The posters for the iPhone 5c are my stand-up display for the last week. The medium is the message.

Theophil Butz, graphic designer, advertising agency owner, inspirer and, for the last three years, also mothballs for Werbewoche readers. Please send any relevant information to [email protected]

 

The Zoebeli Communications agency is expanding its existing offering and launching the new platform Zoebelitxt.chas announced in a press release on Thursday. "In recent years, the demands placed on texts by SMEs as well as larger companies and institutions have increased significantly," says owner Peter Zoebeli. "With the new platform, we can meet this demand even better - even for customers who only want occasional and selective support in the text area and do not want to make use of our entire range of services."

The platform's overriding principle is user-friendliness: customers decide between proofreading, editing and creation. Even before the initial contact with the agency, the customer can find all the information about the costs of their order on the platform. Charges are based on category and number of characters.
 

The focus of the campaign (which also includes the microsite Time-for-what's-new.ch is based on a series of TV and Internet commercials. These show a group of five friends experiencing the craziest things with the new digital TV. In short statements, the friends comment on their experiences - in the style of a reality soap format. In this way, the campaign creates a direct link to the target group's world, according to a press release issued by the agency on Wednesday.

Responsible at Sunrise: Timm Degenhardt (CMO), Tobias Händler (Head of Marketing Communications), Cristian Vaccariello (Senior MarCom Manager Segment Young & Youth), Martin Hufschmid (Senior Proposition Manager Segment Young & Youth), Sanja Ruggiero (Marketing Manager Viacom). Responsible at Draftfcb/Lowe: Dennis Lück (Executive Creative Director), Sören Schröder (Senior Copywriter), Marcin Baba (Senior Art Director), Cornelia Harder (CEO), Mark Becher (Client Service Director). Other persons involved: Per Kasch (photography), Rolf Hellat (director), WirzFraefelPaal (TV/Internet production), Jingle Jungle (sound studio), Goldbach Interactive (online advertising media).
 

Gorilla is a national program run by the Schtifti Foundation to promote the health of children and young people. After launching a new campaign for Gorilla, the foundation worked with Kreienbühl and Vogler to develop a marketing concept for a balanced diet in SV school canteens throughout Switzerland, according to a press release issued on Wednesday.

The SV Group's 20 canteens, which serve around 16,000 meals a day, offer balanced gorilla menus and snacks. The Schtifti Foundation, in collaboration with Kreienbühl and Vogler, developed new communication media at the POS to raise awareness of this offer among schoolchildren.

Children and young people are encouraged to eat a balanced lunch with stands and menu loyalty cards. To mark the launch, a footbag tour with gorilla cracks (including Flavio Lötscher, the 2012 Swiss footbag champion) went from canteen to canteen throughout Switzerland.

Responsible at SV: Cristina Tognella (Marketing Consultant). Responsible at Schtifti Foundation: Kathrin Steiger and Roger Grolimund (Co-Managing Directors, Communications). Responsible at Kreienbühl and Vogler: Oli Kreienbühl, Reto Vogler, Marco Donada, Fabian Schiltknecht; Mark Gmehling (3D artist), Frank Blaser (photography), Patrik Rohner (image processing).

 

As usual, nothing will escape the restaurant tester's eye or sense of taste. Food quality, cleanliness, ambience, food quality, working atmosphere, profitability: Bumann addresses the problems directly. With the ambition of a top chef to solve them. Daniel Bumann and his wife Ingrid have been running their own fine dining restaurant, Bumanns Chesa Pirani, in La Punt near St. Moritz since 1995.

In the new season, the Valais-born chef visits six very different restaurants. They include restaurants from the cantons of Zug, Lucerne, Thurgau, Aargau and Graubünden. The sixth season was filmed last fall and will run from the beginning of April on Mondays at prime time at 8.15 pm.

 

The newly designed Panorama will be realized in a modern magazine style, which is intended to emphasize the journalistic claim. In terms of content, Panorama addresses readers with current topics from finance, business and society. The new layout also allows for an even greater depth of information and at the same time conveys the content in a sympathetic, understandable and independent manner, according to the agency's statement on Wednesday.

The magazine is published four times a year and sent to Raiffeisen customers throughout Switzerland. The print edition also links to the Raiffeisen blog, where there is even more to discover through supplementary topics and photo spreads.

Responsible at Raiffeisen: Nikodemus Herger (Head Editorial), Pius Schärli (Editor-in-Chief), Nicoletta Hermann, Philippe Thévoz, Lorenza Storni (Editorial Board members), Nadine Stutz (Social Media Implementation). Responsible at Paroli: Oliver Suter, Tanja Hollenstein (project management, production), Christoph Schiess (art director). Web layout: coundco agency.

 

"You know you have a great product when your customers advertise for you," Tesla CEO Elon Musk once said. Two film school graduates have now once again confirmed to the company that it makes great products. With a budget of 1500 dollars, the two twenty-somethings shot a professional commercial. They only had the chance because the father of a friend had a Tesla in his garage. In "Modern Spaceship", they tell the story of a child's daydreams. (sis)
 

The Lillibiggs children's festivals for families with children aged three to ten cover the whole of Switzerland with a total of 14 venues on their current tour. FBM Communications is responsible for the conception and implementation of the new communicative appearance. This includes a new logo design, posters, flyers, advertisements and the Website.

Responsible at FBM Communications: Carmen Schiltknecht (CD & consulting), Marianne Kieser (design concept & graphics), Markus Ernst Design & Technik (programming).

The Online tool not only provides an overview of your own savings, but also of all transactions across all accounts. The Qontis savings ticker was launched to illustrate the savings potential made possible by using the tool. This shows the amount currently saved by users and is commented on online and in print. As a further incentive to help save, cash prizes of CHF 10,000 will be raffled off among all those who register before the first savings million.

Independently of the campaign, the character Oliver Widmer was created for the platform. In a series of explanatory films, the chaotic money-saving fox will explain the registration process and how to use Qontis - or at least try to. A new episode featuring Oliver and his turtle Hemingway will appear at regular intervals on the website and on social media.

Responsible at Qontis: Nils Reimelt, Alexander Haymann. Responsible at Red Lion / Publicis: Jan Kempter, Raphaël Graber, Daniel Ahrens, David Fischer (creation), Sabrina Elsässer (consulting), Benjamin Kägi, Cem Van-Der-Schaar (TV production).

 

In its redesigned 2013 annual report, the Bern-based agency Hofer Kommunikation has made the transition from asset management to culinary and table culture. Together with top Bernese chef Urs Hauri, Hofer has staged a recipe from an antique Bernese cookbook. The image concept focuses on everyday objects that are shown in a new light, according to the agency's press release on Wednesday.

412 of the top 750 advertising clients disclosed their communications in the recently completed advertising market study by the Media Research Group. In addition to the amount of the available communication budget, the survey also asked about its distribution across the individual media and communication genres.

The total communication volume for 2014 amounted to CHF 5.9 billion. This is CHF 125 million more than in the previous year. Online media (+ 100 million francs) contributed the most to this growth. However, sponsorship (+ CHF 50 million) and mobile media (+ CHF 25 million) also supported growth. Traditional media, on the other hand, suffered another loss of CHF 50 million.

Media spending, i.e. the expenditure of the top 750 clients on advertising in traditional media, amounted to CHF 3.075 billion in 2014. This is CHF 75 million more than in the previous year. However, this does not mean that traditional media are regaining strength. On the contrary. The decline of newspapers continues. In 2009, newspapers still had a market share of 33.7 percent, last year it was 21.1 percent and in 2014 it was 20.1 percent according to advertising clients. There is no end in sight to this nosedive. TV advertising is a different story. This soared from 22.5% to 30.9% in the same period. However, it suffered a decline to 28% in 2014.

Despite everything, 2014 will not be a bad year for advertising - thanks to online and mobile media. Online media managed to double their market share between 2008 and 2014. In 2008, they still had a market share of 9.3%. In 2014, it was already at 17.7 percent. In the previous year, it was still at 14.7%. The situation is similar for mobile media. In 2008, they were still at 0.5% and have now reached 2.5%. Online media have thus overtaken magazines and moved into third place behind TV and newspapers. For their part, mobile media have overtaken radio and handed the red lantern to cinema advertising.

It is interesting to see which means of communication have enabled online and mobile media to achieve this position. The two charts show how many of the top 750 advertisers attach increasing (unchanged, decreasing) importance to the individual means of communication in their communication and how many do not use these means of communication.

Non-classical communication accounts for 47.7% of all communication. The biggest slice of the cake goes to sales promotion. Its market share has been at 13% for the past 5 years. The share of direct advertising is practically the same. However, its share is declining. In 2009, it still amounted to 17.2 percent. In 2014, it was only 12.9%. There is also a clear winner in non-classical communication, and that is sponsorship. In 2014, sponsorship increased its market share to 11.7%. In 2009, it was still at 9.8% and in the previous year at 11%.

Combining humanity and competence - the core values of Lucerne Psychiatry - was just one of the tasks for the designers and advertising experts, according to the press release. It was also necessary to create clear structures for the many different areas of application of internal and external communication, inpatient and outpatient services at different locations as well as specialist conferences and events for doctors and employees. The third and most sensitive aspect of the design work was the fact that mentally ill people with their often difficult life stories are at the center of attention. A balancing act between advertising clarity and conscious attentiveness towards those people who - for whatever reason - need the help of Lucerne Psychiatry.

In this way, we have succeeded in creating a far-reaching, uniform image for Lucerne Psychiatry. The aim was always to position the company more concisely to the outside world and to dispel the taboo surrounding mental illness in society. Minz was responsible for the overall concept and the realization of all applications: Brochures from all areas, customer magazine, annual report, publications for the 140th anniversary and all internal applications. The changeover took place gradually and should be complete by the middle of the year.

Responsible at Minz: Susann Blum and Allan Harry (management, consulting, creative director), Andrea Bucher, Sylvie Rapold, Fabian Gallati (design).