A few years back the video about what it would be like if Microsoft designed the iPod packaging was all the rage. It was a really funny and sadly realistic look at what happens when corporate America takes control of the design process. This new video looks to be the successor to that Microsoft video at it explores what if there were no stop signs, and a major corporation was charged with inventing one. It is again a sad and often painfully true inditement of the majority of corporate creativity, where groupthink and endless revisions rule the day.

I wish someone would do a study to see how if the sale of Barack Obama merchandise and advertising tie-ins did anything for economy because I can't seem to turn around without falling over one of them. The latest one I saw was for IKEA called Embrace Change where you can try your hand at decorating the Oval Office with fiscally responsible Ikea furniture. You get an isometric view of the office and you can drag a variety of furniture into the room and then rotate it the way you want and choose from other optional colors. I loved that in addition to the furniture you can also add Secret Service agents and yet to be chosen Obama dog to the room. There is an option to 'send your design to the White House' but there is a complete lack of detail about what actually means and with only an email field in the form it just feels fake and a pointless piece of functionality.

Labels: Design and user experience, Site review

Everyone wants to create buzz and get their brand as part of the conversation going on in social media. What if you could listen in on what people are saying about your brand in real time? A new site simply called Spy will let you listen in on the social media conversations going on in Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr, Blog Comments via BackType, Yahoo News, Blogs (RSS) via FriendFeed and Google Reader. You type a phrase or brand into the search field and then watch 10 to 100 comments as they animate down the page. It is a really interesting tool to play around with different phrases and brands to see what people are say and be able to monitor it in real time.

Labels: Consumer generated content, Design and user experience, Digital culture, Great resource

Coudal Partners, a design studio out Chicago, is at it again with season two of their Layer Tennis series. Last year they broadcast the first live games of Layer Tennis which is a technique I have used with my designers for years and it is where two designers (or two small teams of artists) will swap a file back and forth, adding to and embellishing the work. Each artist gets fifteen minutes to complete a "volley" and then we post that to the site. This allows the group and the work to quick explore new directions and not get stuck in the vision of just one person. My favorite match of last year was between Jason Koxvold and James Hutchinson which was an astounding display of what each could do in just 15 minutes per volley. You can catch up on season one by here by going through the 14 archived matches from last year. New matches will again be aired on Friday's and you can sign up for free season tickets here.

Labels: Design and user experience, Digital culture, Exceptional creative

I have written for months that I have been impressed with how, now president, Obama has used digital media in his campaign. That was clearly part of a larger plan by his team to turn him in to a major international brand complete will a logo, word mark, color scheme, brand words and all the other elements you would expect. The results speak for themselves and the team that created the Obama brand has done a better job with it than 95% of the companies I can think of.

All of that being said it's not terribly surprising that his digital presence has undergone a transition similar to the one found in the real world. Traffic to his campaign site will find a message directig them to go to the the White House site that has now undergone the same transformation as the actual Whitehouse. This new site draws clear inspiration and design elements of Obama's campaign site but is able to temper it with more restraint than we have seen before in his digital assets. I thought that his campaign site bordered on a Pepsi sub brand at times with their heavy use of gradients on nearly every element of the site. The Whitehouse site again shows an attention to detail that is is sorely lacking in so many major brand sites and probably never seen on government Web sites. The new Whitehouse site is full 508 compliant for people with disabilities, has multiple RSS feeds so you can stay current on news and items on the countries agenda, a blog , a prominent contact us form and email sign up. All of this was created because the administration is "committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise". They are promising more content and features in the months to come so it will be interesting to watch to see how they are able to leverage digital media to do some good and if it will keep the American people involved in what is going on.

Labels: Branding, Design and user experience, Digital culture, Exceptional creative, Site re-launch, Site review

I received an email last week as probably many of you did announcing that the Favorite Website Awards (FWA) is now looking for a buyer. I would think that since they are one of the marquis awards sites you would think they would be able to have their ad revenue and entry fees keep them going but I guess not. It will be interesting to see if they get any buyers and if the site is able to survive the change.

Labels: Digital culture

This morning one of a friend of mine forwarded me an interesting link to this video showing a multi-touch interface built on Adobe's AIR platform from Intuilab. This video is from Adobe MAX in Milan showing off the solution and it is a really interesting example of how far you can extend the Flash platform. The downside is that to create the solution they had to built the entire solution from the hardware to the software from scratch.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional Flash

Earlier this week I wrote about the new campaign from Burger King called Whopper Sacrifice where you could get rid of friends on Facebook for a free hamburger. At the time I had wondered if it would become a problem for Facebook because it was actually weakening the site and if they would take any action against it. Well today Facebook informed Burger King that the application could not continue in it's current form because it goes against the site's "user expectations". Facebook explicitly says it will not inform users when a friend is removed so Facebook's tech team disabled the friend removal notification feature. After learning about the restrictions BK pulled the plug on it and the site which now reads "Whopper Sacrifice has been Sacrificed. Facebook has disabled Whopper Sacrifice after your love for the Whopper sandwich proved to be stronger than 233,906 friendships.". The final tally was that In just a week the application had 82,000 users and more than 230,000 friends removed.

So with this campaign we finally saw a smart, successful advertising campaign that was able to use Facebook to generate explosive viral buzz that was quickly followed by the realization that Facebook may never be a successful advertising platform. The reason is that you are going to find the most freedom and creative possibilities by developing applications instead of a more traditional ad buy on Facebook. By going with the application route you can get a much more viral response but you are also leaving Facebook out of the loop which can lead to a situation like this. That situation is problematic because unlike the uproar between Facebook and the Lactivists which centered around Facebook's documented content policies Whopper Sacrifice was pulled for a violation of an undocumented "user expectation". We all know that really means that is a well massaged way of saying that Facebook didn't want the application doing damage to the site and needed a way to stop it. I have said before that their policies surround applications and their development are the biggest weak point on the site. They let horrible racist content live on because it doesn't hurt the site but then kill an ad campaign because it does. They need to wake up and get serious about how they are going to handle that aspect of the site if they want brand to use it as a serious communication tool which they will also benefit from in the end.

Labels: Design and user experience, Digital culture, Exceptional creative, Viral

Mike Lebowitz and the guys over at Big Spaceship have decided to pay homeage to what is probably the most over looked part of web design - the preloader. It's the first thing you see, it sets the tone for the site and can be a lot of fun but never gets any attention. To fix that problem they have created PrettyLoaded.com which is a museum of sorts to highlight the best of this overlooked art form. Right now there is work up there from Big Spaceship, Odopod, AgencyNet and work from Firstborn coming soon. It is also nice that the site about preloaders has a good preloader.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional creative

Messing with subways and street outdoor ads have slow become an really interesting art work over the years. The latest and most interesting work I have seen appeared in Berlin recently where they put custom Photoshop palettes over the clearly highly retouched ads.

Back in June Google changed its Favicon that appears next to their URL in web browsers and set off and insane amount of debate about what it meant for the future of their branding. The explanation from Google at the time was it was trying to create a more unified set of icons for the brand to use.

All of that sounded fine until today when I saw that they changes their Favicon again less than a year after they did it the first time. On top of that the new Favicon is the result of a call for entries by Google to create a new icon and the design is based on one specific submission seemingly with inspiration also taken from a few others.

This is all just a strange and unnecessary change and you would have thought they would have thought they would have learned their lesson the first time. Who thinks it is a good idea to experiment which an iconic brand and show that new branding concept through a 16x16 pixel icon? It's like saying advertising on grains of rice to people with cataracts is a good idea. It's small. It's fuzzy and it just isn't the right platform for this kind of work.

This seems like the perfect case of ivory tower syndrome where brands get so caught up in their own world they forget that the rest of the world hasn't been sitting in their meetings, seeing 200 different versions and seeing how this fits into a biggest brand system. If you do things like this then we are forced into judging the work on what they give us. In this case you gave us a barely readable "g" that doesn't lend itself to any aliasing on the rounded corners. I think that if you put this in a better and large execution then the icon could have potential to work to modernize the look of the brand but to me it seems like someone needs to get control of this and create a more unified and smarter approach to their branding work.

Labels: Branding

I have to give them credit because I think Crispin Porter may have been the first to crack the problem of how you can use a Facebook application for advertising. They have created Whopper Sacrifice which is an application where choose ten people to be sacrificed from your friends list to prove that you prefer the Whopper over them. For dropping the guillotine on them you will get a free Whopper sandwich and he friends will be notified of your decision. So far over 127,00 people have been sacrificed and the number if growing by the minute as it was 50,000 this morning.

I think this a great concept for a few reasons. First because this idea actually gets people into the restaurants and gets them spending money. You know they will get a drink and fries with it so the concept is creating and shaping consumer behavior at a time when every is looking to make every penny they have go father. My biggest complaint about Subservient Chicken has always been that the concept completely missed this aspect and it didn't build the brand or drive business.

Second is the built in viral component of the campaign because it is smart viral that isn't hoping it will catch on and that people may forward it to a few friends.For every one sandwich they give out they get ten more people to find out about the campaign with no media spend. Even if you get just a fraction of those people to take action you are driving a lot of incremental business and revenue.

It is interesting to see if the success of this campaign will become a back fire for Facebook who separates themselves from the applications created for the site. This application actually hurts Facebook because it reduces the links between people within the site and that means fewer page views and that means less advertising revenue. I will definitly keep on eye on this for the success of the campaign and what it means to Facebook moving forward.

Labels: Design and user experience, Digital culture, Online advertising review, Viral

Everyone knows the economy is in the tank and there are a lot of really talented creatives out of the street right now and more will probably be joining them soon. In the best move I have seen related to these issues Brussels agency So Nice asked the public to do their dirty work for them by having them choose which of their employees should be laid off. The their site, youchoosewefire.be, let each member of the the 10 person agency list their strengths and weaknesses in the hopes of making a case that they now be let go.

They decided to take this tactic because they had numerous delinquent clients combined with the economic downturn was forcing them into layoffs. So Nice co-founder Laurent Duffaut said "It's really a cry of frustration about the unjust choice that we have to make. We are not responsible for what's happening to us.". After the site was posted and an email was sent out to 100 clients the site had 30,000 unique visitors viewing 70,000 profiles and casting 17,500 votes in just 5 days. Turns out that their online gamble paid off because the clients who hadn't paid their bills coughed up the cash, they had tons of new business leads and they no longer needs to let anyone go.

Labels: Digital culture

The new year has brought a big change at ESPN.com who took the site re-design out of beta yesterday. This comes after a very interesting 2008 for the site when the site made a major move to end their relationships with all their ad networks and declined any new offers. They made the decision because they felt that the networks use of arbitrage and algorithms for ad placement was hurting their brand so they pulled they are now doing it all in house. It is obvious that decision plays a very large role in the redesign as the first thing you see when you get to the site is a home page takeover that is a combination video from ESPN and ad from Ford. An ESPN anchor talks about the site redesign and just as he says the site is "faster" a Ford truck pulls in below him and a Ford spokesman walks onto the screen and picks up with "tougher, stronger and smarter. Introducing the all new '09 F-150.". ESPN is saying that this type of ad where the media placement or adjacent content play just as large a role in the creative as the ad itself will be a large part of the site. They also re-worked the site design so the traditional banner ad that has been a staple of the site has been replaced by a large button ad that can run video ads in the adjacent video player. I think it's a smart move because this type of placement that is more relevant does something new and gets the users attention is appealing.

Looking at the usability and visual design, the first thing you will see is the main navigation and that they finally simplified and consolidated the navigation in better drop down menus and they hide the inactive sports. This means that right now NFL, MLB, NBA, Soccer College Football, College Basketball and NHL appear at the top of the page and everything else falls into an 'All Sports' menu. This has been a long time coming a makes a huge difference to the usability of the site.

They have also done a nice job by adding the ability for you to personalize site with the "My Headlines." feature where you can adjust the information you see and making it much easier to get the news you want. The placement of the functionality on the right side of the main nav will get more people to sign up and that will drive longer site sessions.

Overall there is a good balance of design and layout improvements that make going through all the content easier as well as new functionality and usability improvements that will keep you on the site longer. All of that combined with fewer but smarter ads makes it one of the best and most successful major re-designs I have seen in a long time.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional design, Site re-launch, Site review

Over the holidays a friend of mine told me about an interesting development with Facebook who recently angered a lot of online moms who are 'lactivists' or breast-feeding advocates. They are angry over Facebook deleting photos of breast-feeding moms as obscene content. The mom's have formed a group called "Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding Is Not Obscene" which currently has about 11,000 members. In a community of 50.5 million that number doesn't seem very large but neither was the number of Twittering moms that caused Johnson & Johnson to change its Motrin ads after its mom-focused ad offended them. Facebook will probably be less easily swayed as it quickly points to it's terms of service which state that pictures exposing a full breast will be taken down. Facebook isn't saying photos of women breast feeding won't be allowed on their site but they are saying any pictures that expose the full breast will be taken down whether they involve breast feeding or anything else with no filter for context or sexuality applied.

To be fair I can see both sides of the issue on that but in this case the bottom line is that as much as we would like it to be, our Facebook page and it's content isn't really yours. It is subject to the rules of the Facebook site and like any community anything that is against the rules isn't allowed to be in that community. It happens all the time in other publications and while I was researching some numbers for this entry I found a story where the St. Petersburg Times wrote about the protest and how the mom's had been wronged by Facebook. Facebook then did something interesting to make their point and called the paper's advertising department and asked whether an ad could be placed related to breast-feeding that showed a woman with her breast fully exposed. It was told the ad would need to be reviewed and that such an image would not generally be allowed in the paper.

This is the second time this year Facebook has found it's way to into my blog as the source of controversy and I am trying to find the logic between this issue and the jaw dropping hate speech I found on the application Pieces of Flair during the presidential campaign. I know online communities have to have rules because you can't assume everyone is going to play nice all the time and part of creating a community is creating the rules that govern it. All of that being said what I struggle with more than anything is where and when Facebook draws that line on where they are going to step in. What is the logic that says a bare breast in a photo of a mother and child is so offensive it has to be removed immediately but imagery of Obama as a monkey or McCain as a Nazi and the hate speech that goes with it is perfectly fine. I know the Facebook answer will be that Pieces of Flair was developed by someone else so it isn't subject to the same rules. I think that is crap because if you are going to go down the slippery slope and make those kind of decision on what is acceptable then you better be ready to enforce it across the board. You should realize that if it lives in your community in any form then it is part of your community and you should have enough spine to stand for those beliefs all the time.

Labels: Consumer generated content, Digital culture