Advertising / Design
Trust Me: It's not real
I love television. I know it's old-fashioned. These days people in my business are supposed to be tweeting, linking, blogging, bookmarking, friending and tagging. Not just… watching. But I watch. And it's rarely the good stuff like The Daily Show or National Geographic.
Catch-22 on three, hut hut hut
Like rising and falling hemlines, Super Bowl ads are a cultural barometer. The zeitgeist is all about austerity in a lousy economy. So here's the catch: How can your Super Bowl ad capture a spirit of belt-tightening when, at up to $3 million for 30 seconds, the ad's very existence is evidence of lavish spending?
The Year of Handcuffs
As economic uncertainty rolls over American businesses in 2009, it’s reasonable that clients who depend on creative messages will take fewer risks. They will be unwilling to invest in fresh, new creative. Instead they will modify, recycle, tweak, Frankenstein, (you pick the verb!) an existing idea.
That Dang Photo
The rise of online stock resources has made the designer and art director’s job far easier. Virtually any image is just a few clicks away. It’s also made some super lazy.
Grid systems: Content's most loyal friend?
Throughout history and still today, cultures have used grid systems to structure their cities. Instead of discussing grids used to align streets at right angles, the grids I'm talking about today refer to page layouts on the Web.
Fun with gradients: Use an image to create your next effect
Next time you feel your mouse moseying on over to the gradient tool in your Photoshop toolbox for a fill, stop right there! Try this instead.
Lowering the Bar for Design
When testing Web design with users, it would be interesting to add in a control design. An option that represents the baseline, the lowest acceptable bar for Web design. It may even purposefully ignore the wireframes and not fulfill the strategy.
