kungdesign’s posterous

The American hobo developed a rich iconographic language to aid in their travels. Symbols that could warn of trouble or signal free food this pictographic language grew to a rich collection for the traveller on the go.
Some enterprising children in a neighborhood of Sacramento California have been honing their own language for years - to aid in the search for Halloween Candy. These symbols are left as chalk drawing at the bottom of driveways.(thanks to cockeyed.com)

See the galleries below for examples of their work

Here are some typical Hobo Icons followed by Halloween symbols

                                                                               

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As a follow-up to my posting on Coke-Cola's Freestyle soft-drink fountain
http://bit.ly/gVdma

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It was announced on November 9th that there is now a partnership between LinkedIn and Twitter.
When you set your status on LinkedIn you can now tweet it as well. And when you tweet, you can
send that message to your LinkedIn connection as well, from any service or tool.

http://blog.linkedin.com/2009/11/09/allen-blue-twitter-and-linkedin-go-together-like-peanut-butter-and-chocolate/trackback/

And as I am doing with this entry I am posting to my Posterous page which is linked to my twitter which is now linked to my LinkedIn page.

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Brandweek's provocative headline "Marketing on No Money" (Oct 12 2009 issue) makes the argument that social media and web 2.5 tools are enabling companies to get their "marketing costs down to zero".

It's an interesting look at the mathematics of marketing, but equates advertising to marketing, and while that makes for great headlines, it's not just fuzzy math, it's wrong.

The article profiles Mint, a personal finance site that was just purchased by Quicken for $170 million. "Marketing on $700 a Year" leads the article in 30-point type.

If a brand manager reads no further, that's the number that sticks in the brain and that becomes the war cry: $700! Brandweek says why spend more?

The trouble is, the actual cost is closer to $1 million dollars a year: a $700 advertising spend and the true cost of creating and running an effective marketing campaign are far apart - in this case, $999,300.

What do you get for your million bucks? Buried in the article is the answer: "Salaries for marketing staff and out-of-pocket expenses like hiring an outside PR firm."

So you still have to pay for people to determine strategy, define the right mix of social media tools, write the blogs, post tweets, maintain Facebook pages and monitor the results.

In other words, the tools might be cheap but you still have to do the actual work.

Let's recap: it cost Mint $999,300 a year to create and manage a successful marketing campaign that had $700 in hard costs for off-the shelf services. And that's really different than 'no money'.

"Marketing on $1 million a Year" doesn't make a sexy headline, no matter how true it is, but still - some clients are going to expect million dollar results for $700.

So thanks for nothing Brandweek - you've armed the masses with mis-information and devalued the contribution of the bright minds that develop campaigns, create the imagery, wordsmith the blogs, program the widgets, respond to consumer emails and make the YouTube videos. Nice work.

Read the article here: http://bit.ly/ygrlH

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http://bit.ly/lsCkd

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After just hunting down a corrupted font on my computer this was particularly timely.

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I was just recently at MOMA in NYC. While there I took in the Ron Arad exhibit entitled No Discipline. His work is a very interesting combination of complex form and function.
Here function follows form. A few images and video that say it all.

                   

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I recently came a cross an article at TechCrunch that really has me thinking about how Web 2.0 services and the current recession may help to destroy design innovation.

 http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/buildabrand-offers-startups-high-quality-branding-for-the-price-of-a-domain .

 This article is about a web based service that provides brand identities, collateral, and swag with the use of a design wizard. You answer a few questions about your company and chose some images that summarize the tone, character, outlook, style, senses, and approach of your company.
Buildabrands "algorithm" then takes these parameters and produces a logo - presto.

 The fact that the CEO and design director Justin Champney ,of this upcoming service is the former head of brand innovation for McCann Worldwide.
Makes me really wonder how they go about creating brands at McCann. On the buildabrand blog they do attempt to address there critics, like myself, by stating that they are " trying to lower the barriers to entry for startups by providing them with accessible and affordable tools".

 But come on guys lets call a spade a spade this service has nothing to do with branding and is more like clipart roulette.

 The buildabrand blog states that their service is a starting point to inspire companies to build the foundation of a brand. That they don't want to replace traditional agencies.

 What I worry about is that this service, and the ones like it, will attract small to midsize businesses that would have traditionally looked for help from a design firm. I see services for logos, websites, business cards and so on popping up everyday, and admittedly some of these services are very compelling. see www.wix.com. We all know garbage in garbage out.

 I can see a new chasm in design services is being established. Large enterprises that have complex branding issues to solve will hire large firms to solve them and smaller and mid size firms will start using free/cheap services. I fear this may wipe out a lot of work for boutique design firms. I am already seeing some potential clients lured in by the promises made be these new services. This is also being fueled by the flames of the current recession. Really cheap or free is hard for perspective clients to resist no matter how much you try to educate them. Of course there will always those who get it - but now we are setting our fees compared to free.

 Another problem I see is that innovative design solutions brought on by having to be clever with small budgets, the realm of the boutique design firm may slowly fade away as HAL takes over. Never mind the art and solutions that include wordmarks, calligraphy, illustration and truly clever design solutions that get excluded in these approach's.

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