Posts Tagged: design

Worky — No Comments
4
Jan 10

A dash of Balsamiq broke my resolve

Bal­samiq: Even though it appears to use Comic Sans, I reckon it’s still a ground-breaking innovation

Until now, I’ve res­isted the urge to make any pre­dic­tions for the new decade, but a link posted on Twit­ter yes­ter­day by 37Signals’ Jason Fried just about broke my resolve. (Besides, I’d already made my pre­dic­tions in a post at MRM’s site in Novem­ber last year…)

It’s for a really smart app called Bal­samiq, which allows teams to rap­idly trans­late ideas for soft­ware, web­sites or apps into live mock-ups.

So what’s this got to do with brand building?

Well forget what Bal­samiq does for a moment and think, instead, of the effect of its applic­a­tion: It com­pletely messes up the for­mu­laic, tried and tested, chartered-institute-of-chartered-charterers dogma that has the tend­ency to squeeze the life out of great ideas before they’ve seen the light of day.

An applic­a­tion like this offers a tool for genu­inely agile design of web-based ser­vices; it allows people — espe­cially inten­ded users — to road-test ideas without those count­less meet­ings and doc­u­ments that are inten­ded to fine-tune a spe­cific­a­tion (which prob­ably only works in theory anyway).

Bal­samiq is fur­ther evid­ence of a shift away from the packaged-up-to-perfection pre­scrip­tion of the mass media model.

Why? Because it enables teams to col­lab­or­at­ively har­ness the poten­tial of the social web in order to design, build, test and launch an idea more swiftly than would have been pos­sible only a matter of months ago. It cuts out layer upon layer of unne­ces­sary bur­eau­cracy in order to let people use it and — so — improve it.

Just con­sider how counter-intuitive a tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing approach would seem stacked up against the idea driv­ing Balsamiq.

Last Novem­ber, I pre­dicted that three vital dis­cip­lines would sur­vive the col­lapse of the tra­di­tional mass media model: live events, inter­ac­tion design and con­ver­sa­tion. (I explained why in my ‘How to build a brand…’ presentation).

Like Jason Fried’s own Base­camp, Bal­samiq offers real evid­ence of the emer­ging sig­ni­fic­ance of these dis­cip­lines and the col­lapse of the mass media model (that’s the model that spawned news­pa­pers, radio sta­tions, tele­vi­sion chan­nels, call centres, web­sites, market research­ers, media plan­ners, advert­ising agen­cies, event and hos­pit­al­ity agen­cies, spon­sor­ship agen­cies and public rela­tions consultants).

In the past 12 months signs of the dis­tint­er­me­di­ation of the tra­di­tional mass media model have been remark­able: Ashton Kutcher beat CNN to a mil­lion fol­low­ers on Twit­ter, Carter Ruck dropped an injunc­tion in the face of pop­u­lar dis­sent over its Trafigura gag­ging order and Rage Against The Machine beat the X-Factor’s Joe McEld­erry to the Christ­mas Number 1 in the UK.

Des­pite the effects of the shift — which will only accel­er­ate in 2010 — I’m still left won­der­ing how many people in the mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion have recog­nised the redund­ancy of the tra­di­tional mass media model and, so tra­di­tional pro­mo­tional approaches?

Weekendy / Worky — No Comments
24
Dec 09

So here’s my Twelve Links of Christmas

Fol­low­ers of my tweets may have noticed their twit­ter­ing calm punc­tu­ated by the occa­sional #12linksofChristmas over the past couple of weeks.

These are like­able links that I’ve found enjoy­able, enlight­en­ing or just plain inter­est­ing over the past 12 months.

Humbled by its appar­ent pop­ular­ity, I’ve been asked to pub­lish the Twelve Links in their entirety (with apo­lo­gies for the inclu­sion of the bit.ly links, but speed is of the essence on Christ­mas Eve). So here they are; all in one place.

To read­ers of my blog — because there are some (!) — con­sider this my way of saying ‘thank you’ for paying atten­tion to my sporadic posts from time to time in 2009. Next year, I plan to be a little bit more fre­quent in my postings.

Res­ol­u­tions eh?! Con­tinue reading →

Worky — 1 Comment
24
Nov 09

Why the ‘Aol.’ rebrand is absolutely fine by me

Aol. logo

Earlier tonight I posted a com­ment at the Guardian’s PDA Digital Con­tent blog.

I posted it because Wolff Olins’s work on the AOL logo was get­ting a no-nonsense past­ing on the com­ments board beneath a post detail­ing designer reac­tion to the new look. You can see the post plus com­ments here.

I think the tra­di­tional design world needs to get used to AOL’s rationale — and you can see ex-Google-adman-turned-AOL-CEO Tim Armstrong’s inter­view at the Guardian’s Paid Con­tent — because it strikes me that Wolff Olins has pro­duced a piece of work which, assum­ing AOL’s core product and ser­vice stacks up, has a lot more to do with the sig­ni­fic­ance of its brand in the future than its brand­ing.

Con­tinue reading →

Worky — 1 Comment
10
Sep 09

Animating the issues of US healthcare reform

From this side of the pond, it’s been quite tricky keep­ing tabs on what exactly is at the heart of the US health­care reform debate that’s raging in the United States.

So, if you take the prose of award-winning author John Green and the cre­at­ive talent of the people at Thought Bubble, and mix it together, the result is a suc­cinct, ser­i­ous but enga­ging ana­lysis of the issues up for grabs.

This video does what good com­mu­nic­a­tion design always does: it makes the appar­ently com­plex more easy to under­stand and engage with.

The issues — at least from Mr Green’s per­spect­ive — were much clearer once I viewed this. I wonder if you’ll think the same?

Worky — No Comments
3
Sep 09

Google’s move heralds dawn of ‘signature interaction’

Res­taur­ants are always on a mis­sion to rustle one up, TV game shows spawned an entire genre of them, and you and me have a unique one.
Sig­na­tures — whether its dishes, tunes or hand­writ­ten monik­ers — are about to become the next big thing.
As Mash­able repor­ted yes­ter­day, Google has suc­cess­fully secured the US patent to its own sig­na­ture inter­ac­tion design — namely the search box and two but­tons — after a five-year campaign.
There’s a degree of dis­quiet eman­at­ing from the blogs and com­ment pages of the blo­ger­ati over Google’s move. But why should Googlest­and idly by while other brands — who simply didn’t get their first — mimick the inter­act­ive char­ac­ter­ist­ics that were uniquely and bril­liantly invent­ive at the time?
The way in which users inter­act with Google’s search homepage is as dis­tinct­ive as its rather bizarre visual iden­tity; in fact its part of its identity.
So Google has every right to be jus­ti­fi­ably proud of its dis­tinct­ive­ness. That’s why I applaud them for making the first move to pro­tect their brand in this way.
And they won’t be the only ones to do it either. Patent offices world­wide will prob­ably find them­selves deluged with patent applic­a­tions within a matter of weeks (if not days).
Coin­cid­ent­ally, I wrote a brief on behalf of a client about 3 weeks ago now, which has just been pitched to some fine digital cre­at­ive agencies.
It sets them the task to deliver a ‘sig­na­ture digital inter­act­ive exper­i­ence’ for my client.
Strictly speak­ing its not a design brief; it’s a stra­tegic goal for the brand.
I’m asking them to deliver some­thing as dis­tinct­ive as Google; some­thing that is uniquely theirs.
That’s no mean feat as I know only too well from my time as an account dir­ector for TGI Friday’s and their obssess­ive pur­suit of the sig­na­ture ‘main’ that sets them apart from the me-toos.
The trick is to hone your own sig­na­ture and stand out; and not try to be just like Google.

Res­taur­ants are always on a mis­sion to rustle one up, TV game shows spawned an entire genre of them, and you and me have a unique one.

Con­tinue reading →