A little under a year ago I wrote about the radical re-design of the portfolio site for the agency Modernista. They turned the site into a redirected rollover HTML menu that appears on the top left corner on many established sites including Google, Wikipedia, YouTube and Flickr. You can mouse over and check out the agency's portfolio on Flickr, an about section through Wikipedia, latest agency news through Google New, TV work through YouTube and contact then via AIM or Skype. It had it's hiccups along the road but it was a pretty cool and unique idea.

So I was cruising through my usual collection of digital designs sites this morning and a screenshot caught my eye for the re-design of the Skittles Web site. After clicking on that screenshot I was asked to enter your age and agree to a terms of service that acknowledges that the content beyond this page is not Skittles content. After hitting enter I was shocked by the realization that I was looking at the Modernista site with a Skittles logo on it. The site had loaded the Skittles' Wikipedia page with a purple square navigation overlay in the upper left hand corner. As you start to explore you will find that 'Products' moves you to the bottom of the Wikipedia page, 'Friends' takes you to their Facebook page, 'Photo' to Flickr and 'Chatter' to their Twitter feed.

For me this is one of those cases where Agency.com, who did the re-design, should have done their homework and known better. Scratch that. We all know they have seen the Modernista site and this isn't a case where the Skittles site is kind of close to the Modernista but is the closest thing I can remember to a straight rip-off by a major brand. How they didn't think this would be viewed by current clients, potential clients and potential creative talent as a huge red flag is beyond me. I know times are really hard and we all need business but our industry is better than this.

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

With iPhone application downloads now topping 500 million I thought I would spend some time to share some of the things I have learned designing my first iPhone apps and then being able to get feedback directly from Apple on that work.

Don't miniaturize content or create a Web portal and expect success
I have talked with a lot of friends and ad agencies who think that the road to success on the iPhone is simply to take content they have developed for the web or other platform and miniaturize it, put it in an application and launch it.I have also seen brands who have created an application that is nothing more than a browser window that loads their site that has an application icon to launch it. The problem with both approaches is that all you are doing is giving consumers the exact same experience they could have on their computer but you are doing it on a smaller screen which it probably wasn't created to be viewed on. The reality is that if you want to stand out and have success you need to be able to customize at least part of the experience and that brings me to my next point.

Work with what features of the iPhone
When you open up the App Store and scroll down the top 25 downloaded applications list you consistently see is that the best and most popular applications use one if not multiple features of the iPhone. It's the way the GPS is used in Loopt. It's the way the accelerometer is used in Super Monkey Ball or Urban Spoon or even the was Shazaam or Ocarina use the phone's microphone. They all leverage those new and unique features and functionality to create something that people haven't experienced before. Using this functionality well will also get you noticed by Apple because they are looking for well designed apps that use the phone. Those are the apps that are featured in their commercial and get the free press so if you want ot be one of those people you have to do those two things well.

Just putting your brand on an App isn't enough
Right now we are seeing that success on the iPhone is often found either through apps that are entertainment or they are a utility that people can use to simplify or enhance their lives. You will see brands choosing one camp or another when they come out into the market with a branded application.

In the entertainment camp all you have to do is look at the Audi A4 driving game they launched on the iPhone to see that even a brand as strong as theirs isn't strong enough to make people like a bad experience. The driving game they launched for the A4 was boring, hard to master and just didn't do anything to enhance your image of the car because if the car handled like the game no one would want it. Disney did a much better job when they launched a game to promote the animated movie Bolt as it did what I talked about above and used the functionality of the phone and was original content.

in the utility camp you can look at what Nike did with their recently released Nike Training Club that lets users design workout plans from videos on NikeWomen.com that are then transferred to the iPhone and combined with a calendar function to map out the workout timing. The application than gives users points for completing workouts in an effort to keep them motivated.

You can see the similarities between the two approaches and how all things I have outlined are brought to bear to create a successful experience.

Great iPhone Design Resource
The guys over at Teehan+Lax have created the best iPhone design resource I have found anywhere. It's a PSD file that is a pretty comprehensive library of the available iPhone assets that are all fully editable. The best part you can download this high quality resource for free. If you do at least leave them a thank you comment for their hard work.

Labels: iPhone

During this past holiday season I was in the grocery store and looking for some Tropicana orange juice for breakfast the next morning. I stood scanning the wall of cardboard containers at a complete loss as to why I couldn't find what I was looking for. I then went slowly label by label and realized that Tropicana had re-done their packaging to a horrible new design. The design made the package look like a generic in-store brand. Gone was the iconic orange with the red straw protruding from it and it was replaced with a generic orange gradient. It reminded me a of the equally bad new Pepsi branding which is funny since at the time I forgot that Tropicana is owned by Pepsi.

It seems I was not alone in my reaction to the change because PepsiCo is bowing to the public outcry of letters, e-mail messages and telephone calls and they are scrapping the changes to the Tropicana packaging and the previous version will be brought back in the next month.

I think that the short timeline from launch to the return of the old design was only made possible because of the internet. The consumers ability voice their opinion and provide feedback to the brand in such a quick manner is a new development. It took Coke far longer to figure out how badly they had screwed up with New Coke so at least Pepsi's version of New Coke got off the market in a hurry.

Labels: Branding

I am a type nerd and I freely admit it. I proved it once again today by how happy I got after I downloaded and found out how freakishly good I am at KERN the new iPhone game from FORMation. It's a typesetting game where a random type-centric word with a missing letter appears at different point sizes. the word beings to fall down the screen (the leading shrinks) and you have to get the missing letter to the proper space. The sooner your lock it in place and the placement accuracy is measured and your score is calculated based on the size of the type, the leading height, and the perfection of placement—all measured in points of course. If your placement is too bad you will form an unnecessary ligature and if you get five of them then you lose the game. The game design is a Bauhaus playground with a stark black background with clean white Helvetica type accented only the occasional grey line or interface element. the design and game play make KERN a fun diversion for anyone who loves typography. Also check out their Eye vs Eye iPhone game that pits 2 designers against each other to see who has the best eye for color.

Labels: Design and user experience, Gaming

So I will assume if you are reading this that the headline got your attention. It's a direct reflection of how sick and tired I am of feeling the need to write this parade of articles about just how hypocritical Facebook is about a lot of things.

About a month ago we all watched as Facebook take down the Burger King campaign Whopper Sacrifice because it went again what they called the site's "user expectations". This means that the ad created an experience or an action that went against what user would expect when they use the site. So they made their line in the sand with that decision and we all took note. So tonight as I was mindlessly cruising the site something caught my eye that made what they did to Whopper Sacrifice even more of a complete hypocritical joke. What caught my eye were the two ads I took screenshots of and are just a sampling of actual ads that are running right now on Facebook. They are built to look exactly like the Facebook user interface and in some cases have absolutely no advertising message at all. At least with Whopper Sacrifice there was a message about what was going to happen while here you have a "user expectation" that is just a complete lie.

Once again I am completely baffled with who is so asleep at the wheel at Facebook with all of these issues. They have a site that every advertiser would kill to be able to harness and would throw buckets of cash at them to do it but they can't keep their head out of their ass long enough to have it happen. We all can see the potential but right now I wouldn't let any of the brands under my watch spend any money to create a major campaign on Facebook because if this kind of stupidity. The fact that Facebook can't see that is the biggest reason why they are going to have nothing but these bush league ads on their site for the foreseeable future.

The internet has been able to exposure bad agency thinking on an epic scale never seen before. Will anyone ever forget the painfully lame "You know if we roll, we roll big." Agency.com pitch video for Subway that made me realize I would kick my own ass if I ever pitched business like that. Two years later a true successor to the thrown has emerged in the form of a PDF called 'BREATHTAKING' that shows the logic behind the Pepsi brand re-design. I have been very public about the fact that I am not a fan of their new branding and don't understand it on a lot of levels. This document shows absolutely staggering amount of spin and BS that went into making it. The work was done by Arnell who specializes in brand design and was posted by a brave freelancer who probably needs work in a new industry since no one will go near him after this. You can ready through the trajectory of innovation, Tracing the Pepsi Visual DNA and the Pepsi orbits that show the Pepsi Planet, Galaxy and Universe.

After seeing this and you have to be impressed that anyone could take an assignment like this and spin such a wildly complex and overblown solution to their creative. Have any of you ever used the Mona Lisa and the form of nature to support your creative direction? For me the worst part is that it worked and they bought it. This is my poster child for why if we live in ivory tower and forget that consumers don't see the pitch deck, they aren't in the meetings, and they don't live with your brand like clients do but in the end all they see is the end product. In this case all of this overblown logic didn't amount to anything much more than a shelf presence that looks to rival the most mediocre generic soda brands.

Labels: Branding

The Grammy Awards were last night and I had seen their ad campaign around the city and I really liked what they did with it. It is a nice use of color, typography and simple design. They work like a Chuck Close painting where it stands out from any distance because it looks like an illustration and up close you see the complexity of the typography design. as a guy who really appreciates simple design and great typography it is really nice to see work like this still being created for major clients on a national stage.

Labels: Exceptional design

Shopping for clothes online is the usual journey into information architecture as you pick a thumbnail you like, choose a color and size before heading to the checkout. The new site Thank You Begins with a T takes that experience to a whole new and never seen before level. Each shirt is an interactive experience unto itself where the model wearing the shirt creates the experience and interaction with a black market they use on the screen. the interactions range from an interactive game of tic-tac-toe with the model, a button that will put the model in a chicken suit or even play a game of pong. After you play around with all of the options and try to buy one of the shirts you will find out that it is all a promo for the clients and friends of the agency This Is Grow and the launch of their new upcoming site. It's a really smart way to promote the agency because it is fun, imaginative and unlike anything I have seen before. All things every client is looking for.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional creative, Exceptional experiences, Unique interface design

One of the things I wish I would see more of are personal portfolio sites that are well executed and filled with really good work. You see some sites that are well executed but none of the work they are are showing off can keep up with the portfolio. Other times you see the bare bones site filled with good work but then that makes it hard to get a sense of their role in the project. It took me 2 years to update my site so I know how hard it can be to find the time to put anything together.

I saw one this week that did catch my eye from designer Nick Jones. The site has a really nice but simple interface that lets you scroll through all the projects and then see the corresponding work. It keeps that interaction on one screen which makes it easy and fast to get a sense of the quality and scope of his work. That was the one problem I wasn't able to solve and I think is a big weakness of my portfolio site as you can do something like this within the body of work for one client but you can't do it between the bodies of work or different clients. It is good stuff and worth checking out.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional creative, Exceptional design, Site review

Everyone online has been running to hear the 3 minute plus audio recording of Christian Bale ripping the director of photography on the set of the new Terminator movie. When I first heard it I thought it was weird how the sound, atmospheric noise and even his accent changes throughout the recording since this supposedly was done on the best quality movie audio systems. So I did a little digging and found out an article on a site called Hecklerspray that thought the same thing. They counted 13 different accents in the recording leading to the theory that the recording was a composite of a number of different conversations that was put out there to drum up interest in the release of this movie. You can't help but wonder how a recording like this made it off the set without the blessing of someone and how the studio didn't have it pulled from everywhere if they really wanted to.

It isn't the first time something like this may have happened. About a year ago comedian Eddie Griffin crashed an extremely rare $1.5 million Ferrari Enzo into a concrete barrier during a charity event right in front of a mob of camera. All just days before his new movie that should have gone directly to video called Redline which was about car racing was about to come out. The video and press for the event went through the roof. No way to be sure if either is really true but it is a very interesting theory and tactic if it is real.

Labels: Branding, Digital culture, Viral

I have written in the past and I am sure every designer notice during the presidential campaign the way that Barack Obama was formed into a brand with his own logo, typeface and brand words. Two short documentaries recently appeared on YouTube from Chicago-based Sol Sender of the design studio that bears his name. The video show the assignment and evolution of the now iconic O logo he did in partnership with partnership with motion-design studio Mode and the Obama campaign. There aren't any brilliant insights in any of the video but it is interesting to see how they arrived at the final logo and the other design options they worked through.

Labels: Branding