Wranglers Blue Bell
Great mixture of product, video and audio in this interactive site for Wrangers europe by Kokokaka.
I’m of the opinion that the advertising agency, in its current form, has a rather bleak future ahead. Certainly the automobile industry has taught us that you can’t continue to profit from a mediocre product forever. Wall Street showed us that eventually greed left unchecked is punished. And newspapers have demonstrated that by ignoring the real opportunities provided by technology you absolutely risk extinction in the longterm. And that’s where, I believe, the advertising industry largely finds itself today: mired in mediocrity, greed, and ignorance.
- Bud Caddell
Cognitive fluency is simply a measure of how easy it is to think about something, and it turns out that people prefer things that are easy to think about to those that are hard. […] Fluency is implicated in decisions about everything from the products we buy to the people we find attractive to the candidates we vote for - in short, in any situation where we weigh information
Cognitive Fluency—Easy = True
Although some of the results of cognitive fluency studies are somewhat as predicted, the studies have also produced interesting findings around the disfluency of a product, message, concept or design. Often by creating an element of disfluency in marketing a product, potential customers are more likely to view the product as less familiar (a positive in many instances) and far more innovative.
Read the full article discussing the research findings of cognitive fluency (and disfluency)—Easy = True | The Boston Globe.
Tokyo Sky Drive—Night
Take a journey through the city of Tokyo at night with this video filmed in HD on the Tokyo Monorail and horizontally mirrored. The music track is “A Furrow Dub” by Sugar Plant.
via Kitsune Noir
Macro Kingdom
Shot with the extreme macro Canon MP-E 65mm lens and the 5D Mark II body
Playful 2010
Argentinean graphic designer and illustrator Pablo Alfieri relaunches his website, Playful 2010 with bold colors and great typography. The “Fun” section is full of inspiring artistic and creative experiments.
If you find yourself in the same business you were in ten years ago, you’ll soon find yourself out of business.
-Unnamed Blackcoffee Client
Change is Inevitable. Mark Gallagher & Laura Savard discuss the importance of evolution in business and how Nokia, Wrigley, Tiffany & Co., and Hasbro look vastly different today.
Virtual Story Layers
Jawbone.tv recently featured an article on augmented books and adding additional story layers and elements. I would love to work with a children’s book publisher to develop a virtual layer like this.
Much energy has been spent recently trying to discover ways for technology to simultaneously spread story across multiple media. And while this is a worthwhile pursuit, some independent creators have chosen instead to narrow their efforts, focusing on applying technology to the untapped corners of a single medium. Case in point is media and interaction designer Camille Scherrer and her exploration of the interactive realms of the printed page.
Michael Bierut on Clients
Partner at Pentagram, Michael Bierut discusses the topic of Clients at the NYC CreativeMornings event. Often people in the industry love to swap horror stories about difficult clients, but Michael talks about how the the right client can change everything.
The quote that really resonated was, “a sign of a good designer is when the designer gets enthusiastic about a client’s business”. Over 2009 I worked on several projects in the connected health realm—a subject I knew very little about prior. I spent a lot of time researching and fully diving into the industry which translated into enthusiasm. Ultimately it lead to a great relationship with the client through the entire process and translated into work that was very successful for their business. Take the time to immerse yourself in your client’s business.
One last last quote that I have found to always be true, “the best clients love design, or don’t give a damn about it.”
