whizdumb

I can see clearly now

I sometimes think that in another life when I had more talent, maybe I was (or will be) a designer of some sort.

Until then, I struggle.  So I was delighted to find kuler, a site from Adobe Labs that presents thousands of color combinations that look nice together. 

Thanks to whoever posted it over at plannersphere.

Frustrated art directors unite!

NYT Style Magazine highlights Denver style

One of the nice things about living in Belmar is that I can walk down to Composition anytime.  It's a modern store that sells books, shoes, housewares, bags, and other elements of good design.  Jennifer owns the place and I've got to know her from dropping by every now and then.  She moved her store to Belmar from Lodo a couple years ago. 

So it was nice to see that she got a little coverage in a recent New York Times Style magazine.  Here's the article as it stands now, and the permalink is here. 

Jennifer's been working her tail off to get her store going and it's looking great.  I was in there today and she's got a great collection of art and design books as well as the whole Wallpaper Travel collection.  There is also a book called Doodles which is the coolest coloring book ever.  And I even think there are some shoes on sale.  At any rate, drop by if you can, it's well worth a visit. I've never left without being inspired (and usually a little lighter in the wallet).

When feet fall asleep, do they dream?

According to BBDO New York and Havianas the answer is a resounding yes. The spot is a brilliant example of building from a strategic territory (call it 'feet have emotional needs too'?), and creating an evocative foot-point-of view world. More work from the campaign is here.

I just love the idea of changing a basic foam sandal to a catalyst for podiatric reveries.

A taste of what's next from Google

I've been poking around Google Labs a little bit lately.  It's really cool to see what they've got going.  Not just for the sake of seeing the tools but because each tool is meeting a need.  Maybe not a need people were clamoring for but a need nonetheless.  Like for example, I never wished I could graphically compare a search of Nike vs. Adidas (or David Letterman vs. Jay Leno or broccoli vs. brussel sprouts or anything else you can think of).  Now, thanks to Google Trends I can. 

The Trends tool is one of many on display at Google Labs, including a topographical map of Mars (Google Mars) and live locations of taxis (Google RideFinder).  All told there are 21 unique products available for tinkering.  Pretty fun to test drive works in progress. 

I wonder what would happen an agency or client took a step beyond test markets and copy testing research and took a Google Labs approach to developing new ideas and products?  What if there was a place (on or offline) where anyone could tinker with a work in progress?  Where people had absolute transparency that these were nascent ideas meant to be improved, derided or lauded.  Could be fun.

When data and insight collide

I love what Jonathan Harris and Sepandar Kamvar have done over at We Feel Fine.  They've programmed a computer to automatically search blogs around the world for the words 'I feel' and 'I'm feeling' and then to capture and code the sentences.   And with a lot of back end coding they are able to create a real-time visualization of human feelings.  Thanks to Brody for passing that along.

Jonathan Harris has created a number of other projects.  If you have a little time they are fascinating to browse through.  Most of them are similar in that they take preexisting information available on the web and put it through a sort of organizational lens.  Take a look at 10 x 10, or WordCount for example.

He has a real talent for using technology to simplify and to add significance - to distill massive amounts of data into ways that are cognitively and emotionally digestible.  In doing so, he actually lets the data speak for itself, in a way that is meaningful.   

His new project UNIVERSE is in a sort of beta mode and I haven't found it to be his best.  I like We Feel Fine a lot more.  But he is currently at work as design director of Daylife which is right up his alley.  It's a way of repurposing news content into emotionally engaging, highly visual ways.  Like some of his projects Daylife takes a little playing with to fully understand. 

Cindy Gallup is a big fan of his and I agree.  Thinkers like Jonathan Harris are the type of brilliant mixed-breeds that are going to fuse insight and design in the interactive space. They will help to move from simply posing What If questions, to showing what is possible by doing it.  Especially in interactive places like he has done. What could this look like if he conceived and actually marketed a product?  Check out his other baby, Oral Fixation Mints.

Vader head balloon uses the Force of hot air

Freakin' awesome. How much would you love to see this 86-foot high Vader noggin creeping through the fog in your neighborhood? The loveable dorks over at the 501st Legion FanWars Garrison in Belgium (I swear I'm not making that up) came up with the idea and Lucasfilm gave their royal approval. From the StarWars.com article:

When the Belgian 501st Legion FanWars Garrison first suggested that one of its members, Benoît Lambert, create a Death Star-shaped PVC helium balloon, he was not only thrilled but already envisioning a chance to show off his artistic talents as well as his love for Star Wars--and his skills as a hot-air balloonist.

What a beautiful spectacle. I think the folks over at CP+B should do one for the King. Some heads deserve a balloon. Others, not so much. Can you imagine a Rachel Ray head at your state fair? Scary. But when it's the right one, bam. Something creepy and magical about an oversized levitating decapitated icon.

Only slightly less spectacular but pretty cool nonetheless is the R2D2 Mailbox initiative, via Morgan.

POS doggy style

This is one of three purported executions by McCann Eriksson in Brazil.  I'm not sure how these really worked in store but they certainly have stopping power.  And the dog coming out of the ground is a nice play on perspective for the floor decal medium.

Thanks Paul.

 

Steve Jobs on the iPhone

This video goes on for a while but Steve Jobs has put together a very smooth, clear and minimalist presentation of this amazing new device.

I love watching him present because he makes it look so easy. His simple, reductionist approach masks the obsessive drive beneath. But that's what it takes to achieve this kind of clarity - in presentation, design, ideas - a relentlessness for simplicity. It's really rare. Just look at the Cingular CEO who gives brief comments toward the end of the video.

A couple other notes from this speech:

- Love the setup for the '3 revolutions' announcement at around minute 27

- At about 1:41 into the show his clicker stops working. Grace under pressure for sure here, a nightmare averted.

- He gives a wonderful quote from Wayne Gretzky: "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been."

Let it snow

We had a nice dumping twice in ten days.  The first storm brought 20 inches, the second about 15.  I love the snow.  That's my roofdeck after only the first storm.   

I grew up in California so I never had to shovel a single bit of it.  And I still don't have to much.  No driveway.  But I did do some shoveling for a friend and it got me thinking. 

What would Dyson do with the awful show shovels out there?  Maybe something akin to his 1970's reinvention of the wheelbarrow into the Ballbarrow. 

Perhaps it would look something like this Wovel thing? I sure hope not.  It looks like the bastard lovechild of a dustpan and the flywheel from grandpa's tractor.

Time to get a second life

If you haven't already, you've got to check out Second Life. In case you're not familiar with it, here is a quick primer (thanks Leland).  Lately I've been perusing the bricks and mortar business that have developed presences in this online world.

BBH has joined the fray with a spacious virtual agency. They have their trademark black sheep image and their beliefs posted for all to see.  They've got several conference rooms with tables, and a swanky coffee bar in back.

I heard Leo Burnett had an office in SL but I couldn't find anything but this giant snow globe thingy.

At first glance it seems the agency environments are simply places for them to showcase work, and give them the right to boast, "Yeah, we have an agency in Second Life."  I think it's just as much of an internal boost as anything.  But it's not frivolous.  Agencies must be at the forefront of this stuff.  Tinkering with technology and environments and vibrant new ways to communicate with people is our game, even if nobody is paying much attention at first. 

If not agencies, new companies like Millions of Us will lead our client's into this space.  They've already helped Toyota launch the Scion simultaneously in the real world and on Second Life.  I saw the video.  Pretty dorky but a first nonetheless.  The concern is that once this becomes truly mainstream technology we'll all be catching up.  Now's the time to tinker.