Useful Lunacy

Designing Across Platforms

I'm very fortunate to be able to participate on the board of the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA), and co-chair its programming committee. One of the benefits is in suggesting and coordinating an appearance by someone with lots of skill and a great story to tell. 

On August 12, that's John Dames, Design Director at CoolFire Media.  

This monthly educational event will allow John to share his expertise and insights gained working across print, motion graphics for TV and film, video, apps, gaming, dynamic content, software interface design, social media—first for CORE (St. Louis), then CoreAudioVisual and now CoolFire Media. John's work includes design for Nike, Pontiac, Karl Lagerfeld, Mitsubishi and (hush hush!) a small company based in Cupertino that has a fruit logo. 

The details:
Designing Across Platforms w/ John Dames, CoolFire Media
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
6 pm Presentation
Metropolitan Ballroom, 5418 Wayzata Boulevard, Golden Valley, MN

REGISTER HERE:  http://www.mima.org/mimaevts/index.asp?eventID=167

This is going to be a very useful session for any creative, and anyone challenged with traversing or understanding design across multiple media, especially application interfaces. 

Hope to see many of you at the Met Ballroom!

Legitimacy

A thought occured to me upon reading a headline on vacation (I'm paraphrasing): "Half of All Republicans Don't Believe Obama Has A Valid US Birth Certificate."
 
Who does have one? If pressed, how many of us could quickly locate the official paperwork? I wonder how many conspiracy theorists (or registered voters) have easily-producable US birth certificates.
 
But let's not stop there. Just because you can produce a piece of "supposedly" official paper doesn't mean it is, in fact, official (per the right wing punditry). Your parents can produce theirs, right? As a kind of "chain of command" proving you belong here, too. And if they can't that means...
 
Legitimacy is a slippery slope.

Mullet Like Me and the 2010 Camaro

Jake Nyberg (aka Mullet Like Me) kills it this time, driving the 2010 Camaro while interviewing its lead designer, Tom Peters. "When you meet Michael Bay and shake his hand, do explosions happen in the room?"

What the hell?

Joseph and I are talking about the Giro d'Italia just now. I'm not a huge cycling fan, but I admire the sport. He pulls up this image from yesterday's race. 

So many questions...

Thank you, Community

Wow. Tonight I saw over 300 people attend a fantastic session from MIMA on social media, the recession and the role of the community manager. Who needs to attend SXSW? We've got an amazing audience in Minnesota.

Many thanks to our great panel—Paula Berg, Rick Mahn, Gary Koelling, Connie Bensen—and our wonderful moderator, Albert Maruggi, for their illuminating opinions, insights and experiences. 

Especially big kudos to Paula Berg for making the trip up from Texas and sharing her expertise with Southwest Airlines, both during the event and long afterwards!

And truly, here's to the Twin Cities community. 

It was amazing to see so many different people getting together to share, question and articulate the growing need for community manager/architect/firestarters. It's a pleasure to be a part of such a large group of passionate, invested people. We're lucky to have such energy here in the Twin Cities. 

UnSummit 2009: Evolution of Trade Associations

The second UnSummit unleashed itself today here in the Twin Cities. 

Based on the BarCamp formula, we had over a dozen presentations available to attend, for free throughout the day, hosted at the Minneapolis Public Library. Quite an incredible achievement if you ask me. But then, the community here in the Twin Cities is impressive.

This UnSummit's theme was "Hacking the Recession." I had a slot at 3:00 p.m. on the evolution of trade associations and communities—specifically how those organizations could change to better accommodate the times. And somehow, I managed to include a Kutiman video as a giant metaphor for associations playing the role of aggregators and conductors of individual talent; and the dozen or so people in the audience didn't seem to mind.

 

The conversation that followed was fantastic. Simply put, we've got lots of really smart, really passionate and really dedicated people here. We're lucky. 

Thanks to Don Ball and Mykl Rovetine for hosting UnSummit 2009. It was great fun to participate.

Hey, Oscar

Finally sitting down to watch the Oscars, two hours after they've started. Thank you, DVR. 

Hugh Jackman is funny, and hey, he can sing (kind of). Steve Martin and Tina Fey are hilarious. James Franco, Seth Rogan and Janus Kaminski—beyond stupid funny.

But here's what I really want: I want to be behind the scenes. 

I'd gladly pay (PPV, iTunes, whatever) to see the Oscars from the Director's or Producer's POV or orchestra drummer's POV. Maybe it's picture-in-picture. Maybe it's a separate stream. 

I'm a writer. I've directed videos. I've played drums in the orchestra pit. I'm much more curious about what goes into the show than the show itself. Give me a half hour documentary of the music director, let me meet the band, bring me to rehearsals, show me an interview with the set designer and the introduce the lead carpenter, let me hear the stage direction as an alternate audio channel during the live broadcast. In other words, give me control.

And I don't think I'm alone. 

This is going to be the future of television and what makes any player, any production, any distributor distinct—the willingness to open up the story, to give the audience access and the ability to dig deep where and when they want to. Remember, we'll pay for the privilege. (For now.)

This can be cost-effective. Hire film students. Hire bloggers. Leverage all the people who want to, and will, participate anyway. Turn the event into a true celebration of the community which not only makes, but pays for and appreciates the world of film.

Okay, back to the show. But I'm skipping the commercials.

Breathtaking?

There's been lots of chatter the past few days about this PDF supposedly created by the Arnell Group for their client Pepsi (download PDF)  to explain, defend, sell or perhaps even perpetuate a hoax around the new Pepsi logo.

Woo hoo! Marketing is the new comedy. Again.

I think this is wonderful. All of it.

The PDF is actually quite useful in the sense that it does walk you through some pretty painstaking effort in deconstructing a logo/icon over time in order to establish consistent graphic design principles. 

If you're a student of graphic design, there's some pleasure to be gained here. The Scale and Dynamic Relations on page 20, or the Color Theory on page 25 are solid examples of the kinds of work graphic designers must do.

But the language throughout, event the whole premise—"Breathtaking"—is hilarious: "The Pepsi DNA finds its origin in the dynamic of perimeter oscillations." Really, I thought it was sugar, mixed with fizzy water.

But who are we to judge?

There isn't enough information out there to say if this document is real, or if the client ever saw it. Or as my friend Joseph asks, "What might have been the issues or personalities inside Pepsi that warranted the creation of such a document?" 

Maybe the top brass at Pepsi need this kind of highfalutin' exercise to justify the hundreds of millions they'll spend implementing the new logo. Hey, that seems fair to me.

Or maybe the whole thing's just a designer's joke.

The meta data for the copy of the PDF I got says it was created by "sarndt," and it was originally created in Adobe InDesign as "08.08.01_Pepsi Breathtaking_FRANCE.indd." There's a Sandra Arndt who works as a Design Strategist at Arnell in NYC. 

Sandra, if this is your work, I say, "Well done." Thanks for the grist that keeps this conversation economy humming.

Synchronicity and the end of advertising

I'm excited because Alan Wolk is coming to Minneapolis on Monday to speak at my MCAD class as well as appear at our first 2009 session for "Conversations About The Future Of Advertising." His presentation is titled, "Your Brand Is Not My Friend." This might be a tipping point. I think we're really close.

Case in point, previous CATFOA speaker and Adweek Digital Editor Brian Morrissey's recent observations around a kerfuffle in the very staid world of Big New York Ad Agency Regime Change. (In short, a creative leader named Eric Silver, noted entirely for his TV work, is potentially moving from one shop (BBDO) to take over the top role at another (DDB). This is news, people. But read the over 230 comments. That's the real story.)

As Tom Cunniff notes in his comments on Brian's blog post, quoting Tom Friedman's latest book: "Whoever heard of a revolution where nobody gets hurt?" C'est la vie, advertising people. 

We are there. Now. (To use the period-emphatic style of advertising copywriting I was trained in.)

As Brian puts it, 

The truth of the matter is ... much of the ad world is still out of step with reality. These arguments about "the work" betray a cultural problem. It's like the finance guys still thinking it's OK to buy corporate jets and give out billions in bonuses. They don't get it. Times have changed.

My pal Dion tells me there are too many good, young, less expensive teams capable of doing world-class, Cannes Lion-winning TV spots. I totally agree. The problem isn't TV or print talent. Or even TV or print. It's marketing and advertising as a whole. 

Imagine if the Eric Silver story was, rather, my friend Benjamin Palmer taking the top creative role at DDB? That wouldn't just be news. It would be a complete change in everything. That would actually be news. Because it would signify that DDB actually understands what's happening in marketing and advertising, and was making real adjustments to compensate for the evolution. Instead, they're just trading tired equals in a game that isn't worth winning because the arena is sinking into the ocean.

Advertising isn't dead. It's just evolving, like some of the characters on Fringe. What's telling about the quantity of comments for one truly unimportant article in Adweek is that the natives are restless. They know the ship is sinking. They can sense the oxygen supplies are dwindling. 

My question to all this is—what are BBDO and DDB's client's thinking? Despite the childish banter in all these comments, real insights have been laid bare about both organizations and the people working inside them. Based on these comments, it seems neither agency understands what's happening in technology, consumer empowerment or the role of advertising in 2009 and beyond. (Side note for fans of digital reputation management: How many people commented on the article with their real names and links. Were there any?)

Will marketers listen, and take action? We'll see. And we'll definitely be discussing all of this on Monday, starting at 6:00 p.m. at the Fine Line Music Cafe. It's free. No registration required. And there will be free food! Hope to see you there.

I want the Messaging Deck, Steve

Another MacWorld comes and goes. Nice to see all the new trinkets now available—I'm curious about the new Keynote and iPhone Remote capabilities. The facial recognition enhancements within iPhoto totally rock. And I thought The Onion's take on the MacBook Wheel was hilarious. But where's the one thing I really want? 

I want the Messaging Deck™, i.e. "One messaging interface to rule them all." Are you listening, Steve and Phil? I want one application that aggregates and controls email, RSS, IM, SMS, Twitter and Facebook (or any social network) messaging. Shouldn't matter where the information is coming from, or where I want my new messages to go; they're all web-enabled. If I can access GMail through my Apple Mail interface, why not be able to view and control everything else that's text based as well?

I'd love to see customizable panes that can be sized and organized how I want, ala Yahoo Mash, and house whatever content I choose, akin to TweetDeck. How about being able to create master "feeds" that blend any input source (RSS, email, etc.) that match a keyword rule I set? Imagine having all your email, Twitter and RSS related to one author or subject in a customizable, searchable pane. Even better, what about the ability to view timelines, ala Plurk, of a keyword you're tracking, regardless of how you track or receive that keyword? It would be cross-referencing heaven.

Can you guys just make that happen, please? 

[flickr image by Jill Murray ©2007 All rights reserved]