Print Solutions Magazine

A former Coudal Partners employee had saved a promotion disc of Getty stock photography because of the case protecting it. The case had the same dimensions as a traditional one, but with thicker, more durable hinges and rounded corners that absorbed impact. Graphics could be viewed on the front and back panels, underneath the disc tray and on all four spines. The employee tracked down more, ripped paper out of them, made his own inserts and shipped the Western State DVDs to London. The production and distribution firm didn’t become a Coudal Partners client, but Coudal Partners decided if it had trouble finding great CD packaging, its like-minded blog visitors probably did, too.

Coudal met in California with the Netherlands-based company that owned the rights to the product (called Super Jewel Box™ cases), and acquired a license to sell orders of fewer than 10,000 in North America. Coudal Partners formed the business Jewelboxing, created complementary components for the cases and designed software-specific templates clients can download when designing CD and DVD materials.

“One reason our site is valuable is that we know 14,000 people don’t come to it because they don’t think like us,” Coudal says. “When you’re your own target market, it’s hard to make mistakes.” Jewelboxing now sells hundreds of orders weekly and has shipped to 40 countries, and the brand is displayed prominently on Coudal.com. “People on the front page of the site inevitably check out Jewelboxing,” he says. “The films and other things we do for fun drive traffic to that business.”

Forming Jewelboxing enabled Coudal Partners to become choosier when picking clients, Bedell says, because the company doesn’t have to rely on as much conventional income. “If we can think of a way to improve a product or design, or solve a problem that’ll make us happier, chances are the client will feel the same way,” he says. (See “Cool Idea + Caffeine = New Biz” on p. 40.)

This year, Coudal Partners reached its goal of generating half of its income from businesses it created. “I doubt we’ll go totally away from outside client work—we love tackling projects that are new to us. But it’s nice to follow a whim now, create a business and see how it goes,” Coudal says.

“These days, we’re all about stripping away—fewer words in our copy, fewer lines in our designs. The scope and breadth of information suddenly available on demand required a new approach to its presentation. Cleaner, simpler, easy to use and pretty. We reject the idea that ugliness is the price of usability. That’s just dumb.”

When David Wolfgram approached Coudal Partners last year with a restaurant concept, the firm knew his project would be worthwhile, Coudal says. Wolfgram had co-founded and served as president of Corner Bakery Café, which he helped to become an 80-location chain producing $140 million in annual sales.

Wolfgram’s concept was to create a quick/casual Italian restaurant where patrons would order at point of sale, and staff would bring food to their tables. Those tables would lack red-checkered tablecloths and bottles of Chianti; the place would shun hackneyed images and focus instead on liveliness, speed, contemporary design and food quality. “That was a lot to wrap around a new name,” Wolfgram says. “When working on a job like this, a company needs to know everything about the place’s personality—how it will behave, how people are going to use it. Jim and his team made sure they understood our business goals before beginning, and they basically nailed it on the first try.”

Coudal Partners named the restaurant Go Roma Fresh Italian Kitchen, and two now operate in the Chicago area. “‘Go’ brings to mind movement and speed, and ‘Roma’ is Italian, but nothing about ‘Go Roma’ sounds like Little Italy,” Wolfgram says. Coudal Partners selected a font and color scheme that evokes vintage Italian posters, and the firm developed the slogan, “Ciao for Now.” The firm, which also consulted on the restaurant’s interior design, provides Go Roma with its packaging and printed collateral.

“We’re building something from nothing, which we like doing better than rebuilding or maintaining,” Coudal says, adding that the company prefers working with clients that don’t expect 100-page reports that justify what it provides. “Our idea is to get the creative work as close as possible to the place where the decision is made.” Says Everett: “To me, design is primarily a verb, not a noun. The interactions and conversations that guide it are very important to the final result.”

Coudal Partners has been striving for more simplicity. Coudal says its logo and brand design work is more focused and less fussy, its web designs are simpler and less strewn with gimmickry, and its TV ads are more visual and less chatty than in previous years. “Restraint is the designer’s greatest tool,” he says. “We’re not about ornamentation, this year’s model and Photoshop tricks. It’s trying to find the essence of communication, and most times that means stripping away until you get to a spare, simple, effective solution.”

Often, those solutions are collaborations. When projects are nearing completion, Coudal says, it can be impossible to decipher where one contributor’s work ends and another’s begins. “Technique is nice but can be taught,” he says. “Talent is nice but can be developed. What really matters is taste, and that’s unteachable. But it’s our competitive advantage—customers rely on it, and people come to our site because they share it.”

On June 30, during production of the film “Copy Goes Here,” Delahoyde posted a blog entry about how the firm “suddenly got handed huge piles of work” and couldn’t move forward on the film that day. Coudal Partners juggles so many balls simultaneously—self-directed films, blog features, client projects, business startups—“sometimes the stress level is high,” he says. “But it’s just second nature to pick up the slack for someone else. We can genuinely express our opinions without having to judge any messy politics of what we’re saying.”

Unless you’re a character in your own film. Then, you never know what’s going to happen. After Delahoyde confronts his co-workers for being illiterate in “Copy Goes Here,” the staff learns to read, write and recognize numbers together. When they get a handle on all three, they realize they don’t need a copywriter anymore, so they fire Delahoyde.

Veer, a New York City firm that provides visual elements for use in creative fields such as graphic design, motion design and advertising, had been tracking the film’s progress on Coudal.com and said it would underwrite the production and help Coudal Partners distribute it. Coudal Partners completed shooting in late August and began distributing the film last month. “There are few times when it feels like I’m doing something that’s like work,” Delahoyde says. “We have no idea where the company is going to go next.”

Darin Painter is managing editor of Print Solutions magazine. Email comments to dpainter@PSDA.org.