PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT - Ideas & Execution

Most of our work consists of applying client logos to merchandise. Creativity, judgment and knowledge are required to process these orders so the results will meet our standards.  Nevertheless, this work can be child's play when compared to the challenge of actual product development. 

THE CHALLENGE - Produce public radio's first BobbleHead for A Prairie Home Companion at a higher quality standard than commercial BobbleHeads achieve.

Based on Garrison Keillor's likeness and representing one of his fictional characters, the Guy Noir BobbleHead is pretty special. To obtain superior product quality, as required by Keillor and the A Prairie Home Companion staff, we had it made by a custom gift factory in China. Months of interaction were required between the sculptor and our staff. And hundreds of minute adjustments were made to the clay model before we signed off on it. With the same factory we also produced a BobbleHead version of Carl Kasell, the acclaimed Morning Edition newscaster and scorekeeper on Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me. Carl told us that his two year old granddaughter instantly recognized that it was a miniature version of him. 

NOTE:  Benefit from our experience. If your organization is interested in developing a BobbleHead version of one of its luminaries, and if you are looking for superior quality, be sure you do the following - no matter who your vendor is: provide current photos which cover a full 360 degrees of the character's head; give your vendor a list of the features which should be emphasized or caricatured; allow ten weeks, at the very least, for production before the product is shipped. 

THE CHALLENGE - Develop a logo clever enough to represent a program that may be too unique to be easily described in words or art.

Ira Glass tells us this graphic is in the faux-socialist-realist tradition of American art. Fancy genre for such a goofy concept. The name of Ira’s wonderful program - This American Life - is stated below the radio tower. But it is written in Chinese! Created by VisABILITY's artist Michelle Smith, this whimsical design is imprinted on mugs and T-shirts for stations to use as a fundraising premium.

THE CHALLENGE - Devise an upscale and convenient package to carry a heavy assortment of car products.

This 27-pound Car Talk Roadside Survival Kit was loaded with high-end components. It’s an e-commerce product sold previously on The Shameless Commerce Division of the Car Talk website. The equipment was picked by Tom and Ray. Our contribution was design and development of the ingenious custom case which held 22 pounds of goodies securely in place. That required a complex set of pockets, straps, tie-downs, plus a wall-to-wall drawstring pouch made of industrial strength mesh. For an upscale touch we then added an embroidered Car Talk logo to the top.

NOTE: If you want to check out products we develop for ecommerce clients, two of the stores we operate are on cartalk.com and reddwarf.com. (The latter is the cult science-fiction program broadcast worldwide by the BBC and in North America by PBS, CBC and BBC-USA.) VisABILITY does the product development for these stores and Peak Fulfillment handles the shopping cart, order processing, inventory management and fulfillment.

THE CHALLENGE - Produce a custom product that’s not available at retail, that has high perceived value and low price for UCLA.

The UCLA Alumni Association needed several hundred units of an exclusive upscale item with a price around $6.00. In response, we made an opportunistic purchase of Italian marble rectangles. Then we added a pen and a dimensional American Pewter plate to the top and felt padding to the bottom. It took about four weeks from the time we were given the assignment until we had them fabricated, packed and mailed for UCLA.

THE CHALLENGE - Deliver thousands of fluffy, authentic looking Polar Bears at a low price.

For KRMA, under license from the Denver Zoo, we designed Klondike and Snow for the national PBS audience and had them manufactured in China. The bears were pitched during fund-raisers by PBS stations around the country. The occasion was a wonderful documentary about the difficult infancy of our favorite polar bears. After being abandoned by their mother the twin cubs were hand-raised by the Denver Zoo staff and captured the attention of the country.

NOTE: Off-shore production of products can substantially reduce costs. Such orders require increased production and transit time. 

THE CHALLENGE - Build a high-end duffle bag in three different fabric colors that match exactly the PMS colors authorized by the NPR Graphic Standards Policy.

NPR introduced its visual signature "tiles logo" in 1994. (After sensing station and audience reaction, it  wisely replaced the logo a few years later.) Shortly after the logo appeared we searched for heavy synthetic fabric available in colors which duplicated the logo’s restricted 3-color pallete of navy, burgundy and forest green. After finding them, we built this handsome duffle bag imprinted with the authorized one-color version of NPR’s tiles logo.

NOTE: If your organization’s primary logo is multi-color, be sure to create a one-color version for the many applications that can’t handle multiple colors economically or with an appropriate level of imprint quality.

THE CHALLENGE - Come up with a goofy gift that people will purchase from the Car Talk ecommerce store as a present for fans of the program.

This Muffler Gift Pak is something of a collector's item for Car Talk fans. The program’s official logo is embroidered on a Merino Wool Scarf.  Knowing that a scarf is also called a "muffler",  we fold the scarf and secure it within an authentic automobile muffler clamp. The Muffler Gift Pak is then enclosed in the kind of  industrial grade box used to package auto parts. 

THE CHALLENGE - Give new legs to a fairly static logo that had been around for a while.

The radio program Whad'Ya Know? wanted a new T-shirt with a full front imprint of its old logo. We improved the shirt’s visual impact by adding an overlay of transparent glow-in-the-dark ink. The overlay is virtually undetectable in the day. But it makes a surprise statement, and becomes a source of comment when the Whad’Ya Know? logo appears unexpectedly after the sun goes down or the lights go out.

THE CHALLENGE - Reprise and update a limited edition NPR accessory that had long been out of production - and then make it available to the general public.

Former NPR News VP Bill Buzenberg asked us to reprise the old carryall bag used by NPR reporters throughout the world. The bag was a necessary tool in the early days of heavy, clunky portable tape decks. We changed the dimensions to accommodate modern equipment, added a front pocket to the new version plus a narrow side-pocket - perfect to carry a microphone, a folding umbrella or a banana. Bill distributed the new NPR Reporter’s Bag to his staff worldwide. We then supplied them to public radio stations as contribution incentives to be offered to their audience during on-air fund-raisers. The NPR Reporter’s Bag was wildly successful as a station premium, partially because we enhanced it with an embroidered label which declared its authenticity as the official bag carried by the NPR news staff.

THE CHALLENGE - Develop inexpensive giveaway items with an educational "feel" for Shining Time Station.

We designed the Thomas The Tank Engine children's scribble-set for Shining Time Station. It included a lined composition book designed for little hands and big letters. (Local kindergarteners helped us determine how wide to space the lines.)  Even though the art we designed was printed along the length of a tiny cylinder, the 7-color pencils had perfect registration! 

THE CHALLENGE - Design custom award plaques for the Corporation For Public Broadcasting (CPB).

For years the Corporation For Public Broadcasting (CPB) presented fairly undistinguished achievement award plaques to public radio during the annual Congrats-Fest. When VisABILITY got the assignment, we had the CPB logo and a rectangular award plate cast in dimensional American Pewter with an antique patina. The names of broadcasters, programs and stations whom the CPB selected were engraved on the award plates. Then the two pewter elements were applied to a routed walnut base.

THE CHALLENGE - Convince NPR to authorize integrated Premium Packages and then introduce them to the public radio system on behalf of NPR.

When NPR asked us to provide products for the 10th Anniversary of Morning Edition we used the opportunity to again suggest a technique that had been rejected by former NPR staffers. (We had developed it for Car Talk.) When permission was granted by the new folks, we rolled out a comprehensive premium package with integrated design. It included perhaps a dozen products clustered around four price points that covered all standard membership levels used by stations in fund-raisers. This approach, which we named the Premium Package, is now standard practice in public radio.

NOTE: This is another example of the necessity of having a one-color alternative to the multi-color logo. The six-color Morning Edition logo, designed for printing on paper, was a serious price and production challenge - especially on ceramics, where it required a different and much more expensive imprint process. That resulted in an expensive mug. So the one-color logo, being something like $1.25 less costly, became an important option for stations.