oh baby!

It was a major weekend to be birthin' some babies! Maritess welcomed her new baby girl, Emma Alexandra Shannon last Friday and Lawrence became a daddy to little Hadleigh Rose Haggerty the following day! A big united* congrats to the proud parents! And a big warm welcome to the world, little ones!

catch of the day

simple and smart guerilla campaign by the surfrider foundation and saatchi+saatchi LA on the amount of trash that are on the beaches. they collected actual trash, packaged them and left them on display at farmer's markets. the condom pack is from newport beach. i'm sure if they paid a visit to coney island they'd have another nice pack full of syringes.

via NiceFuckingGraphics

mets vs yankees

today's post is by our very own strategic partner perry seelert, for all you sports fans:

Every day when we are working with either new or existing clients, we always emphasize the importance of design having a seat at the table. And whenever I think our industry is making progress, something as horrible as the Met's latest branding effort rears its ugly head..

Now let me be clear, I am a Yankee fan and will take every opportunity to make fun of the Mets. But here is the deal....

The Mets just invested millions of dollars ($850 M to be precise) in a new ballpark, and by all first accounts, it is going to be beautiful. Considered architecture.

It is sad that is saddled for the next 20 years (at $20 Million a year) with Citibank name and overall brand. Not exactly a thriving endorsing brand entity. But then you have this hideous new brand identity, which is not insignificant, given that it will appear on all players uniforms the entire season, it really is revealing.

Structure, naming and identity all being coherent in their language???

Just proves again why the Yankees are the brand leader in New York. And a little C.C. Sabathia doesn't hurt either. Yes, the Yanks have more dollars, but they do have attention to detail in all aspects of their visual language.

Hey Mets fans, you can always switch to our side....Really, why endure the constant pain?

- PS

or in layman's terms: branding fail: logo not sexy on uniforms.

neil gavin

very cool portraits by neil gavin. nice use of the horizontal scroll bar layout. horizontal is the new vertical.

via FFF

what is graphic design?

how does the general public view what we do? these folks have hit the streets for the answer. as one man responded, "it's wanky trendy bullshit..." -sigh- its always hard to explain what we do to regular folk...

work hard play hard

winters here and the united* crew will be spending any free time hitting up the stash, eastside at killington, VT and westside at northstar, tahoe. bring on the pow pow.

happy new year!

united* wishes you an exciting and awesome 2009. thanks to everyone we worked and played with in '08. we had a great time thanks to you! here's a good, simple resolution for anyone: do more of what you love and less of what you don't. happy '09!