That Convoluted Marketing Romance.

mywaytoburn: “BREAKING: Senator Martin Heinrich from New Mexico...

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 16:30:02 +0200

“BREAKING: Senator Martin Heinrich from New Mexico becomes the first U.S. Senator to pose for the #NOH8 Campaign! Thank you, Senator Heinrich!”

Nice!

fastcompany: Foursquare’s new Time Machine feature lets you...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 18:29:33 +0200

fastcompany:

Foursquare’s new Time Machine feature lets you visualize your check-in history in infographic form.

Glorious navel-gazing!

"We all grow up with ten great stories about our families, our childhoods … they probably have..."

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 01:17:52 +0200

““We all grow up with ten great stories about our families, our childhoods … they probably have nothing to do with the truth of things, but they’re yours. You know them. And you love them. So use them. And that’s what I did. That’s what I reached for, to become a writer.””

- Richard Price (via theparisreview)

"The issue, in the words of the great social media dissenter Jaron Lanier, is that “you have to be..."

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:20:26 +0200

“The issue, in the words of the great social media dissenter Jaron Lanier, is that “you have to be somebody before you can share yourself”.”

- Molly Flatt 1000Heads “point of view: identity crisis” Warc (via peterspear)

Timely considering that as professional hierarchies and social priorities fracture, it’s harder and harder to put a finger on the role we’re playing.

"This whole social media/guru/pseudo-futurist-douchebags-spewing-bullshit-all-day-long culture of..."

Thu, 30 May 2013 15:36:52 +0200

“This whole social media/guru/pseudo-futurist-douchebags-spewing-bullshit-all-day-long culture of manufactured “influence” needs to come to an abrupt end. It isn’t healthy. It isn’t healthy for companies like Google, for VCs, for startups, for product managers, for marketing, for journalism, and it sure as shit isn’t healthy for innovation either. We are so busy trying to find ways to reward well-funded mediocrity that we completely overlook real successes in innovation. We are celebrating all the wrong things.”

- The Brand Builder, “The Difference Between a Gadget and a Product”

Brand hijack: Abercrombie & Fitch In response to...

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:07:34 +0200

Brand hijack: Abercrombie & Fitch

In response to Ambercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries’ anti-ugly and anti-poor brand policies, one Greg Karber’s decided to take the brand in his own hands. Follow along or pitch in with hashtag #FitchtheHomeless.

"Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 15:43:45 +0200

““Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage—one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.””

- Amos Oz (via theparisreview)

I guess that explains why I feel like I’m in a beartrap.

adtothebone: sscreams: a visual representation of my...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:46:34 +0200

adtothebone:

sscreams:

a visual representation of my life

This made my morning.

Me by mid-afternoon after mornings when I’ve committed to “loving everything and being pleasant”.

peterspear: “If you don’t like what is being said, change the...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:56:46 +0200

peterspear:

“If you don’t like what is being said, change the conversation.”

corley:

bettydraperlookingpissed:

Mad Men 3x02 // 6x04

I always say…

I just love how subtly this happened, the way it does in real life.

"[JC Penney & Uk.gov] both involve root-and-branch redesigns, and both redesigns put simplicity..."

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:55:49 +0200

“[JC Penney & Uk.gov] both involve root-and-branch redesigns, and both redesigns put simplicity at their heart. One has been a roaring success, one a complete disaster.”

- “A Tale of Two Simpli-Cities” @tomewing @brainjuicer

What JC Penney had done was drive for simplicity without taking into account the emotional nature of discounting strategies. By making decisions easy, they had made them less fun.

snip

It’s the same reductive approach JC Penney took – and for them it failed, because fun, fast and easy in retail means more than just price. Gov’s simplicity is emotionless, but paradoxically it shows a better understanding of emotion than most sites. It knows what a happy experience means for its users, and it works extremely hard to deliver one by doing only what is absolutely necessary.

(via peterspear)

"Great marketers don’t make stuff. They make meaning."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 22:50:33 +0200

“Great marketers don’t make stuff. They make meaning.”

- Seth Godin “The brand is a story. But it’s a story about you, not about the brand.”

We love ourselves.

We love the memory we have of how that brand made us feel once. We love that it reminds us of our mom, or growing up, or our first kiss. We support a charity or a soccer team or a perfume because it gives us a chance to love something about ourselves.

We can’t easily explain this, even to ourselves. We can’t easily acknowledge the narcissism and the nostalgia that drives so many of the apparently rational decisions we make every day. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not at work.

(via peterspear)

Why you should move that button 3px to the left

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:46:05 +0200

Why you should move that button 3px to the left:

parislemon:

Braden Kowitz on the importance of the details in design:

There’s a curious brain hack at work here. Our minds are deeply tied to emotional states. Being frustrated or happy changes the way we approach problems. I have certainly been in a bad mood, gotten confused by a product, and found myself repeatedly smashing a button to no effect. In my frustration, I try the same thing, justharder. But it doesn’t help me accomplish my goal.

When we’re happy, using an interface feels like play. The world looks like a puzzle, not a battle. So when we get confused, we’re more likely to explore and find other paths to success. There’s a whole book on this topic: Emotional Design by Don Norman. But here’s the important bit: Getting design details right can create positive emotional states that actually make products easier to use.

Steve Jobs’ Life, Iconified Literally. Check out the...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:55:14 +0200

Steve Jobs’ Life, Iconified

Literally. Check out the digital memorial that walks you backward through Steve Jobs’ life … in the context of the original Mac OS desktop. Via.

Things I Like.: What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 19:01:00 +0200

Things I Like.: What would you do if you weren’t afraid? :

meagan-marie:

So here is the deal. I’m a person. I’m not just a “girl on the internet.” I am not comfortable with you remarking on my breasts. I am not comfortable with you implying that you’d like to have sex with me. And I don’t appreciate you rating my looks against my girlfriends in candid photos.

While I can’t stop these comments and questions from arising when they pop up on random blogs across the web, I can stand up and say that that I won’t accept beingtalked to in this manner anymore. I’m not simply going to ignore you; I’m going to call you out and tell you that you’re being inappropriate. Just because I have a public job and an equally public hobby doesn’t give you the right to ignore my comfort zone.

Meagan Marie’s powerful and brave stand against harassment in cosplay illustrates the merits of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In much more potently than one more Daily Beast article or blog review by somebody who didn’t bother to read the book.

These insidious issues impact everyone, including men, and we’ll be a better society when we can face them with eyes wide open.

thenoobyorker: thedailycal: UC Berkeley has just installed the...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 01:14:53 +0200

thenoobyorker:

thedailycal:

UC Berkeley has just installed the world’s first Dreambox 3-D printer. The Dreambox allows students to print everything from models to shot glasses in minutes. Read more here.

(Source: dailycal.org)

A shot glass? I’ll need one after both of my examinations this week. I’m kidding. (Not really.)

And to think: in my Berkeley days, all we had to play with were sticks, rocks, and Jokémon.

harperperennial: hobartpulp: johndarnielle: So, people ask me...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:56:13 +0200

harperperennial:

hobartpulp:

johndarnielle:

So, people ask me this sometimes, and I appreciate that they want me and Peter and Jon to get maximum paid for the records we make. And it is true that we’ll get the biggest cut from sales at shows, because those copies are copies we buy directly from the label. However, I am every bit just as happy and in fact in some ways happier to take a slightly reduced cut if you’re buying from your local record store, which is almost doubtless scrambling to survive every day, or from a cool mailorder, or directly from the label if the label does mailorder.

I make a little bit of a big deal about this because more people than me need to get paid for the stuff I do to happen. There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about labels and publishers as if they were hurdles to be cleared, obstacles to be circumnavigated. I can’t speak for anybody else’s experiences, though stories of label skullduggery abound, and shame on such labels. But my personal experience in independent music is that the people releasing Mountain Goats records aren’t “The Label.” They’re my friends, and they’re also almost all musicians themselves. They are people who share exactly equivalent praise or blame for the music I make, because you wouldn’t have heard it without them, by which I mean without their support and nurturing and faith I would never have made the music in the first place. So while I’m, again, grateful that people think of my well-being, it’s my opinion that the people who make the music available - especially independent labels, especially independent stores - deserve your patronage, and it’s 100% ok if I have to sell a few more records at retail to make as much as I’d make selling them at shows. I don’t do what I do in a vacuum. Without the labels that put out my stuff and the stores that stocked it and the people working in the stores who told people browsing to maybe check out the Mountain Goats, I would almost doubtless not even own a guitar right now. I’d be a nurse somewhere in California, and I’d write poetry in my downtime. Which would also be a good life, because every day above ground is a good day, unless you’re getting shot at, it sucks to get shot at, but you see my point

John Darnielle ON PUBLISHING

A lot of people are involved in turning an idea in a writer’s head into a book that you can buy, borrow, share, sell, admire, spill soup on, highlight, tweet a quote from, but most importantly read and enjoy. Support those that do.

Some nice perspective on the difference between a label and The Evil Labels We All Think Of. Not all are created equal, and not all should be thrown out with the bathwater.

"Our best chance of seeing the future for a brand or a movement is by having a grasp of the codes..."

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 22:44:04 +0100

“Our best chance of seeing the future for a brand or a movement is by having a grasp of the codes that give it meaning and understanding the context of how it is evolving.”

- Tim Stock “A face in the crowd” Research.

Researchers are in the habit of letting themselves be distracted by the technological platforms that enable human interaction. Yet the tools of our expression will come and go. First we jumped on MySpace. Then we moved to Facebook. We tweet now - but next year? Technologies are merely supportive systems for our expression. Technologies are not culture networks themselves.

Simply put, a culture network is like-minded individuals connecting, thriving and having impact - no matter how small. It’s these networks and their spontaneous expression that we need to be reading, as opposed to the artificial networks generated by brands. Likewise, reading the network needs to be less about quantifying the movement of the masses and its size, more about qualifying its impact

(via peterspear)

If you're gonna ink the streets, don't forget your apostrophes.

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 01:20:15 +0100

London-based tutoring service The Tutor Crowd decided to take its literacy message to the streets — literally — by correcting the grammar of local graffiti with help from the Leo Burnett Group’s Arc.

The accompanying stickers sends users to a website where they can access a free trial for English tuition. From founder Patrick Wilson:

Good spelling and grammar is fundamentally important to young people. But teaching it doesn’t have to be old fashioned and stuffy. We wanted to engage parents and young people alike, and make them realise that online tuition is an option that’s available to try.

See more imagery.

"I think game developers right now consistently underestimate the intelligence of their audience"

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 16:22:12 +0100

“I think game developers right now consistently underestimate the intelligence of their audience”

- Tom Bissell NYT “Building a Narrative That’s Explosive”

In 2010 Tom Bissell — author of seven books, contributor to publications like The New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine, darling of book reviewers who compare him to writers like Wells Tower and John Jeremiah Sullivan — announced that he was going to “go game,” in the way that prominent writers “go Hollywood,” in search of bigger paychecks and the challenges of a new form.

snip

“And just the sense that the player gets of how awesome it is to be in that place, surrounded by these monsters, blowing stuff up with incredibly cool weapons. And as a writer your job is to create an atmospheric foundation for all of that stuff to sit on.”

snip

The storytelling possibilities of the shooter are fascinating but they’re also very, very constraining,” he said. “A shooter story, just by virtue of the fact that you the character, you the player, spend 99 percent of the game looking down the barrel of a gun, there’s really only so much stuff you can do.”

(via peterspear)

fastcompany: The Next Big UI Idea: Gadgets That Adapt To Your...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 16:16:46 +0100

fastcompany:

The Next Big UI Idea: Gadgets That Adapt To Your Skill

More and more interactive products are being returned. In 2002, 48% of all returned products were technically fully functional but were rejected for failing to satisfy user needs (28%) or purely due to users’ remorse (20%). Even though a product may have all the features one can hope for, complexity and bad user experience can prevent users from integrating it into their lives.

User experiences are subjective and dynamic, but by and large, interactive products are not designed to take people’s changing capacity and experience into account. But they could.

Here, I present a model for how designers can use the fundamentals of video games and the psychological principles of flow to design enhanced user experiences.

As gadgets get more complicated, user interfaces must be able to teach their users over time.

Here is how Philip Battin thinks this can happen.