Conference Coma (We are all smarter than we think)

The end of last year I attended the Future of Web Design conference here in New York City. The opening speaker was Joshua Davis and anyone who has ever seen him speak knows that his presentation style usually appears to be a battle between a mild jet lag induced dementia and a the greatest Red Bull rush you will ever see. It was a good start to the day as I enjoy his personal style as well as his work. As the day ended I realized that I had spent more time surfing my iPhone than learning anything new about the future of web design and it wasn't the first time I had felt that way after leaving a conference. That realization has been rolling around in the back of the head and I found myself mentally reviewing these types of events in my head and the conclusion I came to made me laugh. Maybe I am smarter than I think. Maybe we are all smarter than we think and we don't gibe ourselves enough credit for it. What is driving us to goto these events and think that sitting in a room with a few hundred people will cause inspiration to strike?

For me, and I think for a lot of us, since I am asked to take a blank canvas and create something it's a very personal undertaking and when it is finished you want to find recognition and validation for that work. I think it's why we go to these conferences because we want to know that what we are doing is as good as the designers who someone has deemed as "the best" and we look for similarities between their work and ours. The problem comes because recognition and validation are emotions that face to the past and work we have already done and we must face and shape the future with new ideas to be successful.

Try this. Think of the artists who's work you love the most. Do you think they got the inspiration or idea for that work sitting in a conference listen to someone else or working in their studio? Keep it in mind next time you get the urge to validate the past and not work on the future.

One less thing to do before I die - LeMeridien.com in new iPhone commercial

It is always great to start out the year on a high note and this one is going to be really hard to beat. The recently re-launched LeMeridien.com is now making an appearance in the new French iPhone ad called 'Toutes les parties' which means 'All the parts" (see English version of the commercial). It will also be making appearances in the German and Italian version in the coming months.

BMW.com -2.0

I worked on automotive online advertising for a few different automakers and they all had one thing in common when it came to online - they wanted to be BMW. Starting with the launch of the visionary BMW Film every other car marker has been chasing to catch BMW and their consistently innovative use of every aspect of the interactive medium. So I was more than little excited when I got a note that BMW had re-launched their Web site right before the Christmas holiday.

After spending some time with the site I found myself so frustrated that another brand I expected so much from gave me nothing but a bad case of deja vu back to the mediocre adobe.com re-design of a few weeks ago. The most notable change is the site design that took a step backwards to be painfully generic with the use of so much white space and small photos that there is no visual hierarchy or energy to the design. It is that lack of energy that is most disappointing because I am car guy who would kill to have a 6 series but there is nothing in this design that gets me the least bit excited about any of these cars. The upgrades to the site seem to have come in the form of a more visual configuration tool that incorporates images and 360's of every possible accessory combination in the 'build your own' sections. I think this is certainly a worthy addition since I know how useful of a sales tool it can be but I just wanted more.

I have been writing this piece for about a week now and I haven't been able to hit the publish button. I had everything written but it just didn't feel right and keep rolling around in the back of my head. Today I finally sat down to work out what was bothering me and why this had become a lot deeper for me than I expected. It's probably partially because it will be the last thing I publish in 2007 but it also had me looking back over my work from the past year and all the work I have seen created by our industry. I keep coming back to one word for all of it - safe.

Safe makes me mad. It's a four letter word. It's like good. Who wants to be good? They are compromises. What made me so mad about the Adobe and BMW sites were that these brands who's audience looked to them to be innovators and they took the safe route and squandered the opportunity. If this year the iPhone and Wii have shown us anything it was that there can be a mass market appetite for something innovative that pushes the envelope. I am going to pass on the hollow New Year's resolutions and just work to keep safe out of my work in 2008.

Helvetica the Movie

So I have been using some of my holiday free time to make my way through my Netflix backlog nd finally got my hands on a copy of Helvetica. For those of you who don't know it's a documentary film by Gary Hustwit that takes the main title type faces as uses it to look at typography, graphic design, and global visual culture. I really recommend that any designer take the time to watch this because it is an interesting study of the current state of global design as well as talking to a lot of the key type and graphic designers. It will probably bore the wife or girlfriend to tears but if you can get you can get a copy it's really worth watching.

Happy Holidays

With the holidays fast approaching I thought I would share two interactive greeting cards worth checking out.

Grow A Xmas Tree
Grow A Xmas Tree is a simple site where you can type a holiday message and the letters and words wrap around to make the tree. You customize two elements of the card by choosing from 5 different backgrounds and the colors of the type.


American Airlines Snowflake
The first half of the American Airlines Snowflake Builder really isn't any different from other site I have seen that let you customize the various dimensions of a snowflake and release it out in to the storm. What does set it apart from those other sites in the last half of the site where American Airlines encourages customers to spread the holiday cheer and donate AAdvantage miles to worthy causes like the Make A Wish Foundation. This is one time it is nice to see no up sell, hard sell or any sell besides the attempt to get people to donate to worthy causes.

Amazon.com refreshes main nav

I was cruising through Amazon.com today look for any last minute Xmas deals and saw they have updated the design of the main nav on the site. I have to say they did a beautiful job with this refresh by simplifying and condensing the nav structure, updating the design and keeping it all in a very compact space. Let the cloning begin...

The U.K. has some pissed off hamburgers

Burger King in the U.K. has launched a new microsite called Angry Gram to promote their new spicy Angry Whopper. You create an Angry Gram by filling in six blanks on form letter and you much choose from available options for each blank. You get a lot more options for each blank than you would think and you can create some very funny combinations. When you are finished with the rant it is played out by a 3D animation of the Angry Whopper himself. I have seen this execution done for other products but this works for several reasons. The fact that you can really customize the message, that the product is kept as the center and hero of the concept and that the animation is entertaining and well done make it work. Plus isn't everything funnier with a British accent?

Ultrashock comes back from the dead but should we care?

Back in 2001 the launch of Ultrashock.com really got my attention as it was the first Flash resource site at that time that catered to professional Flash designers and developers. Sadly, the site never picked up steam and died a slow death as it was rarely updated with few tutorials or useful content added after the initial launch period. Now the site is back with version 2 sporting a new design and all-new content. A review reveals that all the useful and cutting edge content that first got my attention is gone and has been replaced with low grade stock photos, sounds, illustration, forums and a blog. It is easy to see that this re-design was little more than an effort to see how little they could do to revive the site as a revenue stream using the halo of the old site. The only hope is that the site is labeled as beta so maybe there is some small hope that they will try ad restore the site to it's former glory.

Ecards grow up at SomeEcards.com

With the holidays fast approaching some of you may not have had time to send out your holiday greetings and SomeEcards.com is a great solution. Hallmark and American Greetings haven't been able to make it old age and past fart jokes for their cards but this site has a range of humor for everyone from pretty mild to raunchy. The site was the brainchild by Brook Lundy who is a friend of mine and fellow creative director working over at Razorfish and he was the twisted mind behind last years smash hit ShaveEverywhere.com. You can see the same great sense of humor in all the cards so check them out and give your friends a laugh.