The 2014 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic took home best sporting event of the year from the Business Sports Journal. Why this is significant for me personally? I was the designer of the event! Designing for a Berkeley-based design firm called Moss Sports, I designed the "look" of the event. We had created the design the year before but the NHL strike of 2013 postponed the event a year. It was played at the Big House at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It was the only time in the history of the 110,000 capacity Stadium that branding was allowed. It was a sell-out crowd with a huge rating broadcast fro NBC Sports. I am proud to be involved with this event and kudos to my very special design team at Moss Sports.

A quote from Don Renzulli, Vice-President of Events at the National Hockey League:
"Last night the 2014 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic received the award for "Sports Event of the Year"! Everyone had a major part in the success of the game on January 1 and should be proud of this accomplishment. This is the second time the Winter Classic has received this award,  the first for the inaugural game in 2008. Thanks to you and your staffs for all the hard work put forth in making these games a reality. The sports world is taking notice of our games which now raises the bar for all future ones. 
Everyone should take pride in what we collectively have accomplished with this event. Lets keep it going, thanks again."
Check out the link to the Business Sports Journal on the award.

Zachary's Chicago Pizza put up a small profile about me on their new web site. I thought I would share this light-hearted blog posting with you.
Click here to go to the Zachary's story on Ian Ransley.

It's a funny thing how adding a frame to a piece of art makes it, well, nicer. How you present yourself to clients is another story. I'm speaking of presenting your design work to a client. It's essential to spend some time packaging your designs when presenting to a client. You may well have created a truly exceptional design that fulfils a clients brief. The last thing you want is to present the work in such a way that the client is unable to properly visualise it's final usage. You want the client to be captivated and one of the best ways of getting this across is by showing the design in context.
The response to designs presented this way is instantaneous. It leaves no doubt in a clients mind as to the end result. Presenting designs in context is particularly useful for large format work where physical proofs are out of the question e.g. billboards, shop fronts and vehicle wraps.
Better still, is to present the design on the actual building or shop front where the design is to appear (rather than mocked up on stock imagery). When taking the original design brief, ask for a site visit.
It doesn't matter how cool that poster design is or how creative that poster is if it's not presented well. I think I've almost seen it all; stacks of crinkled paper, projects mounted horribly crooked on matte boards and scrap books of color copies.
If you don't care about your own work, why should anyone else? Create an Indesign template you can use over and over with your own logo and slug line in a corner. Create a unique information bar, buy a domain name and create a website with password protection for presenting designs and concepts to clients. Think out of the box!And most of all, make sure to let your passion, knowledge, and enthusiasm out as you discuss your work. You are selling your work but you are also selling yourself!

When pitching to a potential client or delivering concepts; how many is too many? Is more better? When designing a logo I can sometimes generate up to 20 options. I'm currently designing a branding look for a major football bowl game. I have created 6 different designs but I don't plan on showing all of them. When I'm working on a design team we will have an internal meeting to decided what are our best efforts. At our firm, we have developed a questionnaire for clients to try and pull out what they are looking for before we spin our design wheels. This doesn't work most of the time because people generally don't know what they are looking for until they see it. If you show too many design options it looks like you are not confident in what you are delivering. It's even more difficult when you are working with a committee which has people with different ideas and tastes. I personally feel 2-3 options is plenty especially if it's a design pitch.  Keep it simple, too many options can be confusing. Costco does not carry too many options of each product and has far fewer overall products than other stores their size. About 1/10 as many as a regular supermarket. They believe in presenting fewer, hand picked, options to their customers and have seen how it leads to more overall sales. They not only offer most products in only one size, but they usually only offer one or two flavors as well. As designers can we learn from such retailers? Absolutely.