Do You Pass the T-shirt Test?

Our client is currently launching a new surfing lifestyle brand. One of the first orders of business is the development of the requisite silk-screened T-shirt.

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Do You Pass the T-shirt Test?

This morning, I selected from my vast wardrobe a shirt that sometimes earns a few comments at the gym – my light green Krispy Kreme doughnuts t-shirt.

Coincidentally, I also poured my coffee into a Krispy Kreme mug. Realizing what I’d done, it was obvious that there was only one thing left undone in my accidental promotion of this American doughnut chain. Blog it.

For those of you not familiar with Krispy Kreme, it is a shop that started in the U.S. south, and quietly grew until a decade or so ago, when the brand began exploding in popularity. Why? Two words – HOT NOW.

Do You Pass the T-shirt Test? | Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog.

Antenna Design: Bridging Art and Commerce

Steve Jobs has demonstrated that great innovative product design (otherwise known as Industrial Design) can be a primary element in creating a successful brand. Who could separate the Apple brand from the Apple product designs like iPod, iMac, iPhone and the like. The following provides some fresh insight into the designing process and ideal environment.

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This year’s National Design Award product design winners have found a solution-seeking ethic to be best approach.

by Matt Vella

“Good design isn’t always visible,” says Masamichi Udagawa pensively, light streaming behind him into an airy Manhattan studio. Nodding, his partner Sigi Moeslinger adds: “The essence is to lead people; design is the embodiment of the right information at the right time.”

The unassuming, soft spoken pair, winners of this year’s National Design Award for product design, are trying to pinpoint common themes in a broad body of work that stretches from products for companies such as Bloomberg, IBM (IBM), and Microsoft (MSFT) to interactive art displays in galleries such as the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and New York’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The Japanese-born Udagawa and Austrian Moeslinger form the core of the five-person, New York City-based Antenna Design, a firm that since 1997 has bridged the divide between art and commerce, public and private, information and objects.

The firm works on just 8 to 10 projects a year, but Antenna’s rise tracks closely with the design boom of the past decade that has seen business executives refocus on the discipline as a strategy for growth. High technology acolytes, Antenna has specialized in creating information-infused objects that place equal emphasis on form and function. Millions of daily commuters, for instance, use the MetroCard Vending Machines designed by the firm for New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority more than a decade ago. The aging boxes dole out subway passes via a simple, elegant touch interface—devised years before Apple’s (AAPL) vaunted iPhone revolution. Originally commissioned simply to dress up the outside of the existing, dull gray vending machines, Antenna fought to work on the interface design, too. This combination, say Udagawa and Moeslinger, has contributed to the design’s longevity.

*click link for full story and slide show …

Antenna Design: Bridging Art and Commerce.

Here are 50 Reasons to Avoid Change

50 Reasons to Avoid Change – One Reason to Embrace Change – “WINNING”

A Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008

A Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008

January 01st, 2008 | Category: Web Marketing, Web Strategy

This is an updated revision of the 2007 version, which was one of the top viewed posts for the entire year. I’ve added quite a few new forms as they’ve emerged or come to maturity over this last year.

Summary and Audience

This document catalogs the many tools and tactics available for corporate web strategy in 2008. Even if your strategy or resource limitations restrict you from entering all spaces, awareness of the changes in our digital landscape are critical. This document is intended for decision makers roles such as CMO/VP/Director of Web and Marketing.

Changes in communication require corporations to adapt and evolve

In North America the web medium in the number one medium in the workplace and second at home, a significant portion of your resources should be developed around your online programs, research indicates the web medium will continue to grow. We also know that prospects in a variety of stages in the buying stage use the web to make decisions, this is an arena no company can afford to ignore. Most importantly, future generations are native to the web, and this will only increase over time.

Limitations

This is not a substitute for a plan or strategy, this is simply an index of tools. This list is not prioritized, nor should it be considered formal analysis, A strategist should first identify objectives, develop a plan only then choosing tools, and in that order.

For many corporations who’re not fully aware of all the tools available, deploying web marketing goes beyond your corporate website and google results.

A Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008.

Coke’s New Design Direction

Coke’s New Design Direction

Five years ago, Coca-Cola’s design chief was told: “We need to do more with design. Go figure it out.” Now his labors are bearing fruit

When David Butler joined Coca-Cola (KO) almost five years ago, he was given, as he tells it, “the Post-it Note mandate: We need to do more with design. Go figure it out.” Butler, who had come from a gig as director of brand strategy at the interactive marketing and consulting firm Sapient, had soon written up a 30-page manifesto laying out a design strategy for the company. But if Butler, who’s now vice-president for design, has made an impact at the beverage giant, it’s not because of some heady proclamation. Instead it’s because he has learned the most effective way to implement design strategy at a company as large and complex as Coca-Cola: avoid the word “design” as much as possible.

Coke’s New Design Direction.

Movable Type, WordPress becoming social platforms | Software news, tips and opinions from Download.com editors – Download.com

August 12, 2008 9:34 AM PDT

Movable Type, WordPress becoming social platforms

Posted by Rafe Needleman 1 comment

Six Apart is announcing Tuesday night the launch of Movable Type 4.2 (download from CNET) and Movable Type Pro. The 4.2 platform gives blog publishers better performance, according to Six Apart. But the really interesting thing about this launch is the new social features in MT Pro.

Movable Type Pro will enable “social publishing,” which is a fancy way of saying readers of MT blogs will now be able to do much more than just reply to posts in the comments. Readers will get profiles pages with “walls,” and the capability to rate other posts and comments, and to follow other blog members.

Six Apart also has added an aggregation widget called “Action Streams,” that allows bloggers to automatically pull in their activity on other sites, like Twitter or Flickr. It’s like FriendFeed, but with all the control and formatting you’d expect of a modern blogging widget.

The new Movable Type will have much richer social features for blog readers. WordPress is getting all social, too.

Meanwhile, WordPress (download from CNET) is converging on social networking as well. A new platform, BuddyPress, which is being built on the WordPress core, will allow users to set up social networks. Presumably publishers will be able to graft these networks onto blogs.

The power of a blog is its network of users, and Web users are becoming accustomed to a culture of participation. Just as blogging is changing publishing, social networking is going to change blogging. So it’s appropriate the these products are getting new social features.

Movable Type, WordPress becoming social platforms | Software news, tips and opinions from Download.com editors – Download.com.

30+ Plugins to Make Your WordPress Blog More Social

August 20, 2008 — 12:00 PM PDT — by Sean P. Aune —

wordpressWordPress blogs are getting increasingly social, giving readers the ability to bookmark your site to a number of services, get to know you better in more ways than just your comments section (and vice versa), and view your activity on a variety of social sites. We’ve compiled a list of more than 30 plugins that will let you make your WordPress blog more social.

This collection of plugins just begins to scratch the surface of what’s available out there. As with all WordPress plugin lists, we highly suggest you do not install all of these because not only would it be redundant, it would also slow down the response times of your site.

30+ Plugins to Make Your WordPress Blog More Social.