Two weeks ago, I wrote about why Apple was doomed. That entry generated a lot of …er… feedback. The feedback was emotional [and misguided], to say the least.

I also received a lot of verbal feedback about the entry – from people that, brace yourselves fruit-lovers, agreed with my point of view – although the cowards wouldn’t dare publicly associate themselves and their feelings with me in this futile war. So even people that don’t see Apple’s future as bright as some of the drones who wrote back, they still admire and respect the Apple brand enough to know to keep quiet and watch from the sidelines.

So what’s going on with the Apple brand that, no matter what, is revered by both friend and foe? What’s their secret? What’s the deal?

Before I start going down this path, I want to be clear about one thing: I am no Microsoft fan. I am a fan of choice. I like not having to buy a laptop from Dell if I don’t want to, I like to be able to choose what type of software I want on my computer and from what vendor. I like my options to vary in depth, scope and cost. My last article had nothing to do with Microsoft being better than Apple – it had to do with five key facts I noticed that were not stacking up well for Apple.

This piece is about what Apple is doing well from a branding perspective.

1. Form
Everything Apple does is beautiful. Everything! People gravitate to the high simplicity, tight typography, low texture, high white space, and strong contrast style they have developed. Doing that well is one thing, but doing that well across everything they do is simply amazing. When you see something Apple, even if you can’t tell it’s Apple at first, you know it’s Apple. Apple has conditioned the masses to recognize its products by their form, punch, freshness, and consistency.

2. Function
The book The Design of Everyday Things says that simple things don’t need instructions. When simple things need instructions, then the design has failed. Apple makes simple things very easy to use. I have seen many people use several out-of-the-box tools with innate ease. There are many software makers out there that go completely out of their way to make easy stuff hard to use. Apple is not a member of that club. Apple’s software is great for beginner users such as very young and very old people. Everyone in the middle also benefits from their software design considerations, but the groups of people that benefit most are the ones that don’t have a lot of user experience.

3. Emotion
This factor is the most puzzling and the hardest to explain. I have talked to several designers, creative directors and general users - they have all said something along the same line: “it feels right.” “It is a part of me.” “It is part of my identity.” This emotional connection is hard to explain and replicate, but if we can find a way to express and then learn from this, then we might be able to create products and brands that can enjoy similar levels of loyalty. Perhaps this point explains why people were so upset about my last post. In a way, people took what I was saying about Apple personally – as if I was attacking them and their sacrament, not the computer maker.

So, my first pass at this Apple mystery is not terribly revealing or earth shattering. Now, my ears perk up every time the issue comes up. I will continue to post on this as I learn more.

In professional services, we hear plenty about the mistakes we make. But someone ought to explain to clients that they make mistakes too. In fact, it is client mistakes that most often, in my experience, endanger projects, cause budgets and deadlines to explode, and produce less-than-effective end products.

So, without further ado, and in no particular order, here are the top 6 mistakes that clients make.

1. Nickel and dime their vendors. It's one thing to be budget conscious, and quite another to treat your vendor like a used-car salesman. Arguing over every penny spent makes the relationship adversarial, rather than collaborative; diminishes our ability to provide the right solutions at a fair price; and actually causes vendors to be less forgiving when it comes to scope creep. "Come ON, is that really going to take five hours?" is an account person's red flag. Clients, if you find yourself saying something like that, just know that the person on the other end of the phone is rolling his eyes.

2. Give the client project manager little or no authority to make decisions. I have seen time and again the web projects delegated to a junior staffer, while the supposedly more "glamorous" advertising and marketing work is handled by a VP. Inevitably, the junior staffer makes decisions which are called into question too late in the process, and the project often runs off the rails.

3. Fail to realize what they want or set clear goals. Clients often have vague internal directives and incentives completely unrelated to project success. Instead of clarifying their goals internally before hiring a vendor, they often meander into projects which quickly become quagmires. It's essential that clients agree internally on what they are supposed to be producing.

4. Overreach. The rise of content management systems in particular seems to have fueled this trend, but it's been there for years. Just because you can have 150 managed pages, special features, an email list, and 17 levels of editing permissions in your workflow does NOT mean you should. Here's a rule of thumb: the level of complexity in the spec is directly proportional to the number of hours it will take the client to produce and manage the thing.
Corollary: Every reasonably sophisticated organization--that is, any organization with a total marketing budget of a hundred thousand dollars or more--needs at least one person to own the web site. This is not a "webmaster". This is a strategic, informed individual, not a coder or an admin. Otherwise, the ongoing maintenance of your web presence will become unmanageable, fast, and the solutions you deploy will not be well thought-through.

5. Think too much of themselves. This is sometimes called "inside-out thinking" but that's too charitable. Most of the time, no one cares--unless you give them a reason to care. No one cares about your web site unless it annoys them; no one cares about your mission; no one wants your email. The Internet is a big place and users have no patience any more. Instead, clients need to care what users want--not about what you want them to want or what you think they want. Be interesting and offer a value proposition.

6. Not admit what they don't know. Clients hire experts for a reason, so why is it that when we make a recommendation, clients sometimes think they know better? We admit that you know more about widgets or whatever you do--we respect your knowledge of widgets, and listen to you about widgets, and learn. So please don't misquote usability experts or mangle research data. This is what we do day in and day out--if we're not better informed than you, then you hired the wrong people.

I've been lucky because 90% of my clients have avoided these pitfalls. But when good projects go bad, it's often for one of these six reasons.

This is not to say that we don't make mistakes, or that all vendors are well-informed and well-intentioned. But clients sometimes think that hiring a vendor absolves them of all responsibility for the project's success. But on the best projects, it is a true collaboration--a relationship. And as we all know, good relationships require effort--from everyone involved.

I have joked (in a not-so-funny-way) that the reason I (an otherwise marginally capable web developer) have trouble with office phones is that there really aren't anywhere near enough buttons...

How come the button sequence to accomplish almost anything must be memorized?
How come every phone task is arcane and irrational?
How come we needed to be tutored in phone use?
I really DO think more buttons would help!

Cooper, a company begun by Alan Cooper (of The inmates are running the asylum, fame), one of the grandfathers of modern computing, seems to have taken the task seriously.

They have put together a demo for a phone that is LESS confusing. Feature rich to the point of bursting, but actually less confusing. The whole display screen - much larger than your normal phone - is a touchscreen, and it operates as a big button.

This is a phone whose touch display seems to be the siren call answering all of my unspoken phone usability fantasies. The trick they used was the age old approach of Goal Directed Methodology. Basically this approach focuses on the list the things a person wants to do at a given step, all interface work is contextual, meaning that if you are here, you may wish to accomplish this or that goal.

Here are some examples:


Here is a simple readout telling me I just made a transfer successfully. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT. Ever transferred a call and you just don't know if you hung up on the person? This screen tells you that you accomplished the task. It is a small confirmation, but it means the world to me, someone who hangs up on people when they try to put them on hold and transfers them to Hawaii when the caller only needed accounting.



Here are some obvious tasks - touch to add to conference, touch to hold, etc. In the conference call above, it does the seemingly impossible in this age of digital wizardry: it tells me who is on the call and who is waiting to be added.



Here is a voicemail listing, which DOESN'T force you to listen to your voice mail in order - you can select the ones you want to listen to first.

'
At idfive we have a paper list of people in the office and their extensions, and I bet you do too. Or maybe you have some listing up on your intranet. What if that list were part of the phone? What if your contacts directory were part of your office phone, as it is with your cell phone? In the contacts directory above you press the contact's call button to make a call. Wow.

Labels: Design

It was with great hope that we purchased our latest round of cell phones. New phones! Surely these will work better than our last phones, with their clunky interfaces, their difficult voicemail, their poor sound quality. My boyfriend was enchanted with the Razr phone, because he’s a technogeek & a sucker for marketing; I, being frugal, opted for the Verizon phone o’ the month, a little clamshell model that I figured would be basic, pared down, simple to use.

No such luck, of course.

There are a couple things I want to do with my phone. I want to make and receive audible calls. I want to see who called me when I wasn’t around. And I want to put phone numbers in it. That’s it, that’s all I want, and I suspect it’s all most people want. Even my technogeek boyfriend doesn’t want his phone to do more than that—he just wants to look cool while he’s doing it.

Let’s start with the Razr phone, because we paid actual American dollars for it. Sure, it’s thin. It’s so thin that it’s hard to speak audibly into, especially if you have a big head, as both of us do. The buttons are hard to push. Speaking to someone on this phone is like talking underwater.

Both phones offer a plethora of options, even mine: a calendar, games, different display images, the ability to download ringtones. But all of these options mean that to get to what you want—your missed calls, your messages, your phone book—is a multi-click operation. Take missed calls, for example. This is something you want to know quickly—who called and when. On my phone, missed calls are separated from received calls, for some unknown reason. And when I miss a call, all it tells me is I have voicemail. Now, it would be a simple matter to show me, when I open the phone, all the calls I missed since I last looked; but it won’t do that. I either have to call voice mail or click through to “Missed Calls” and try and figure out which ones were recent (since it doesn’t show a time unless you click through to the detail.)

And ringtones! My phone came loaded with a set of incredibly lame ringtones, I presume so I would download more. Okay, I’m a sucker, and also kind of juvenile—I wanted a disparaging ringtone for people I don’t want to talk to, something like maybe a bodily noise or maybe “Ding-dong the witch is dead.” But, get this, my very basic phone doesn’t let me download new ones! Here I am, a potential customer, willing to pay 99 cents for an 8K midi file, and they won’t let me.

The boyfriend’s phone isn’t much better. You can download ringtones, but they are organized so oddly that it’s impossible to find one you want. Loaded into libraries with names like “Cool Music” and “Ringtone Heaven” and “New Hits”, each filled with thousands of tunes… where do I find “My Adidas” in all of that? Because I want my ringtone to be “My Adidas”, not something by 50 Cent. (All the ring tones appear to be songs by 50 Cent, actually.)

It’s bad enough that buying one of these things--and the attendant confusion over calling plans--is a gigantic pain. But why, oh why, can they not make the simplest concessions to user experience? Clearly the best minds in engineering are applying themselves to creating new phones. And yet the simplest things—things which make life incrementally and geometrically more difficult over time—are neglected.

I’ve spent much of my professional career examining how humans interact with machines--specifically, computers with screens--and attempting to ease that innately difficult interaction. I, too, occasionally miss things that would make a web site or application easier to use. But I generally work with incredibly limited time and limited money—unlike Motorola, who spends years developing a phone like the Razr.

It’s unbelievable to me how much of life is like the cell phone experience—how often simple, easy solutions could improve people’s lives immeasurably. Placing straws near the drink machine in a carryout restaurant, allowing people to deposit nickels in parking meters, allowing enough space for strollers in stores, offering a “Press 0 to speak with the operator” option on voice-jail systems… these are just a few of the countless times when a little thoughtfulness about user experience could literally change people’s lives. What seems like a tiny annoyance, repeated often enough, becomes a major aggravation over time.

It’s these tiny details that we try to notice when we’re creating interface designs. They’re easily overlooked, because they seem trivial—does it really matter whether Contact Us is on the top right or footer, or whether a web-based admin has a global navigation scheme? But it does matter, when you think about it from the users’ perspective. When humans interact with machines, fractions of seconds matter greatly to their overall experience, and hunting and pecking is a frustrating experience for anyone.

In an age of limited attention, it’s incumbent on us designers to think long and hard about the minutiae. In fact, it can make all the difference in the world.

As I was getting out of a cab in Chicago two weeks ago, I realized that my pocket was a little lighter than usual. I left my phone sitting on the back seat of the cab and only realized it as the cabbie sped away.

It was a great phone. The Samsung i500. Small, clamshell, Palm OS, telescopic stylus. It was fantastic. I checked it several times an hour. I was attached to it - and it to me. We were one and the same.

At first, I felt really naked without it. Then I worried about all of my data just exposed for anybody to plow through. Fortunately, I had the phone locked down. So the best someone could do is zap-it and start from scratch.

The next couple of hours were absolute hell. Scenarios ran through my mind that drove me insane. Emergencies, clients needing immediate assistance, etc.

Fortunately, after a couple of beers, losing my phone didn’t seem as important. I slept really well that night, too. And my trip back to Baltimore was a lot less stressful.

Being connected all the time was running my life.

I found refuge in the idea that I was unreachable. That people would just have to leave a message. As for being able to call someone, well, that would have to wait as well.

It took five days before my replacement phone arrived. I got so much more done in those five days that I would have in two weeks. It turns out the ten seconds here and there used to check my phone added up to gross inefficiencies. I am not really sure why. Maybe getting off track thinking about it, checking the phone, responding if needed, and then getting back to what I was doing really got in the way of my flow.

Anyway, the replacement phone is a large shoe-like-phone Treo 650. I am not terribly excited about it, but because it is so big, I don’t take it with me everywhere I go. In the end, I don’t feel as free as I did when I had no phone, but some of the freedom I am experiencing now is partially due to the size of my phone and partially because I proved to myself that I was not as important as I thought I was. Being more efficient is great too.

I think everyone should lose their phones for five days.

Why is Madison Avenue quaking in its boots about Spot Runner?

Because of an itch one gets when looking at Spot Runner and then switching over to YouTube.com, then over to istockphoto.com. Then back and forth. This idea was first hinted at by Umair Haque at bubblegeneration.

With me? No?
Stay with me then.

A full explanation of Spot runner and its services will be followed by a prediction that should turn the television industry on its head.

Upending TV’s business model isn’t brain surgery in this day of the TV spot’s increasing irrelevance, but it is a very welcome addition to what we here at idfive have termed Advertising 3.0. (I had to put in a plug, mea culpa!)

It is worth repeating before beginning: TV is a big fat waste of your advertising dollars.

Let me explain.
From the buyer’s perspective, TV advertising hasn’t always been a pleasant or productive experience. Tons of money, a great deal of time and energy goes into a 30 second spot with little or no proof of its statistical relevance or impact.

In effect, your company must be large enough to sustain a financial loss in the blind hope of a win. TV advertising is little more than gambling. Because current TV technology makes it impossible to track who is watching what with any specificity, you are just hoping that revenues will increase enough to cover the cost. (And hope, as we remind ourselves around the office, isn’t a strategy.)

So ok, you say, TV is a waste, what’s to be done?
Well you could certainly migrate to online advertising, which is what we recommend. But if you want to stick with something that has no real metrics, then what Spot Runner has done is make TV slightly LESS of a waste by decreasing the costs substantially and making the whole shebang hyper-efficient. That is to say… cheaper.

Spot Runner’s hyper-efficiency is worthy of note.
The vast majority of advertisers in the United States (let alone the world) have a total annual budget of less than $20,000 a year. But there are SO MANY of them. This is the long tail on the purchasing side. Every small business has a good 5k to throw at TV advertising, right?

Spot Runner has targeted that market with their services.

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How Spot Runner works

Imagine you are a small web designer who gets a hankering to do some advertising for yourself.

You ignorantly remember that some people still watch TV, so you go to Spot Runner and select a tv ad template.

1. Select an Ad
You go to the ads “select menu’ and choose your general industry (arts and entertainment), you specify further (visual arts) and still further (commercial and graphic arts) – and lo and behold you have narrowed the selection down to one template:
http://www.spotrunner.com/advertiser/ads/select/detail/?id=ATWK

My ad is only $499 if I buy it today! COOL!

They offer some nifty other necessities: I can assure its exclusivity in my market, meaning my competitor down the street won’t have access to the same template. Also, this specific spot is only in English, but others are in Spanish.

2. Personalize it
That’s right, there is an online form that allows you to submit personalized changes to your ad. Then, 48 hours later, your ad magically appears in your inbox, all ready for your approval. What could be cookie-cutter-better?

3.Media Buying / Scheduling
If you want the simple and easy method, (and at this point in my blogwriting, I do) then choose a campaign package.

http://www.spotrunner.com/packages/?adcode=ATWK

Because this is extremely localized, I chose Northern Baltimore County as my region.
I get a starter package for $2,170 for the first 4 weeks, with every continued 4 week period thereafter only being $1600.

Here is what they are offering me: I chose these demographics because my best bet is that teens, senior citizens and toddlers aren’t buying graphic design all that much – I could be wrong, but who cares, it is all SO cheap:
Men, 25-34
Men, 35-49
Men, 50-54
Women, 25-34
Women, 35-49
Women, 50-54

Here is the description of the campaign package I chose:

This package is ideal for first time Spot Runner users or businesses with a limited budget. You'll get access to all of our professional quality commercials, and you'll purchase an ad, a television schedule, and expert assistance from our team all together, with a simple process. This is a great way to explore our service, test a new market, or stay thrifty and still have a fantastic ad on TV!

1) Expert ConsultationOne of our Express Launch representatives will schedule a telephone consultation with you to help you choose an effective ad for your business, personalize your ad, and answer any questions you may have about television advertising.

2) One personalized ad.Each of our ads is created to allow you to insert information that's specific to your business. We'll personalize your ad by including graphic elements like your logo or your telephone number and web address written on screen. In some of our ads, you can even send us a photograph of products, or storefronts.

3) Ongoing 4 week TV schedule.We'll choose the best networks and timeslots to most effectively reach your customers. Your airtime schedule will run in 4 weeks cycles. This means you'll be charged $2,170 initially for your ad, airtime, and expert consultation.

At the end of your initial 4 week campaign, Spot Runner will continue to book airtime for you at a rate of $1,600 for 4 weeks. You will have an opportunity to review your airtime schedule prior to each purchase. Actual Price may vary slightly due to shifts in market availability and pricing.

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And there are more refined tools for scheduling when you want your spot to air, so that it doesn’t get slotted into the highly desirable 2 am - 3 am hour. The available networks are exciting, and all in all on the surface it looks like you have a lot of options.

---------------

So what is the damage? Not bad! I have put out almost no effort, and I am $2669 poorer for the first 4 weeks, and $1600 poorer for every 4 week period after that. We are looking at slightly over $20,000 for a YEAR of TV advertising! Most advertising agencies would charge twice that just to do a horrible ad, not including the media buying and scheduling. You’ve managed to do a somewhat ok, if generic, ad for MUCH MUCH less.

But as I said in the opening of this blog, it is still a waste. No one is going to assure you that your money isn’t better invested in a guaranteed cd making 4%. It is a bet. A gamble. And maybe worth it if you can afford to lose the cash. The basis for all the arguments against TV advertising are still as substantive and still as cogent as they ever were, the potential damage is just minimized as the costs have been reduced.

Spot runner has taken the low-end market by storm, sure, but why does this make Madison Avenue tremble?

Because YouTube and google video is a hell of a lot more exciting than anything the advertising community has ever come up with. All that is needed is a button, maybe even a small one, that says: “Click here to turn this video into a television ad for your company”.

The sweet spot is in the massive influx of talent we are seeing on youtube mixed up with the hyper-efficient Spot Runner model. You can see it at work on istockphoto – a million amateurs are uploading their work and making money (credits, sorry) off of their truly fantastic work. Everyone is better off and the only people who suffer, sadly, are the professional high end photographers (i.e., in my analogy, Madison Avenue).

Labels: Old Media Deathwatch

Ok, so this entry is another wound in an age old religious war. Not everyone one at idfive agrees with my analysis – in fact, we’ve had some relatively heated discussion in our managers' meeting about this topic. So, take what you are about to read with a grain of salt (and look for a rebuttal in the near future).

Reason Number 1: They are doing well, granted, but that growth has topped.
For several years now, Apple has enjoyed a rebirth. iBooks, iMacs, iEverything. The cute candy-color and slick design started the campaign that turned things around.

And then came the iPod. This little device really accelerated things for Apple. During Q4 2005, they sold more than 6.5 million iPods. That’s up 220% from Q4 2004. iPod sales are stronger now than they were last year, but the growth has leveled off, and has started to whimper with a sales decline to 8.1 million units Q2 2006 (that’s a 4.7 decline from last quarter)

Reason Number 2: They Lie
Those new, clever and funny commercials are bogus. I have seen Macs go belly up as frequently as I see PCs go belly up. I have seen files open quicker on the PC than on the Mac. I have seen PCs start up faster than I have seen Macs get going. And I am not even going to talk about the price difference between the two.

Eventually, everyone will also realize that the commercials are bogus. And maybe then, the design community will give me back my membership card.

Reason Number 3: Phones can play music, too. And they are also phones.
The same designers that produced the Motorola RAZR (which, by the way, is selling better than the iPod), also designed the Motorola SLVR, which in addition to doing everything a phone does, it also does everything an iPod does – including stuff that it doesn’t do – such as purchase music directly from iTunes. Yes, iTunes will benefit from this joint venture, but considering that much of their recent success is rooted to the sales of iPods, this can’t be all that good. And, there are other phone makers pumping out phones that also play music.

Perhaps iTunes is their sustainable strategy for the future, if so, they needs to start playing nicer with their partners. Keep reading…

Reason Number 4: Closed and secretiveness leads to alienation.
If you think about Michael Porter’s Five Forces, Apple’s success is more or less alchemy. Apple has a very secretive corporate culture. It doesn’t communicate with its customers about what’s coming out and when - making large institutional purchases very difficult, and somewhat irresponsible. It doesn’t give partners and vendors a 'heads up' about changes in software or specifications until they roll out with whatever the next big thing is. This makes is it very hard to support customers’ questions and expectations in joint ventures. If you don’t believe me, ask HP why they don’t work with Apple anymore.

Reason Number 5: Zune, the iPod Assassin.
Initially, I started to write this blog about Microsoft’s “Zune” – an iPod like device that is slated for public unveiling next month. It’s an iPod in the sense that is sleek and that it will play music, video, etc. But is unlike an iPod in the sense that it will come ready with WiFi, and there are speculations that it might become the X-Box’s portable little brother.

Microsoft is also willing to buy you away from the iPod by allowing you to download for free all of the songs you have already bought from iTunes. Wow.

I have also heard rumors that people will be able to listen to other people’s music while they are in close proximity - which is a very intelligent response to the one device, one headset, one ear piece, two people conundrum.

Finally, Zune is being released at the perfect time: Apple has nothing to respond with (or at least that’s what we think since we can’t really know for sure since they are so freaking secretive). Apple is about to suffer a similar fate to what’s in store for Sony’s Play Station 3: a market cannibalization blitz choreographed by good timing, design, functionality and price.

The only thing that worries me about this whole Zune thing is that they plan on doing a Super Bowl ad – that’s so… last century!

On 8/30/06 Andres wrote more about this topic: Apple Droning: Explained

"Casual Games" (those that you can sit down and play for a few minutes at a time like the ever-popular Bejewled and the ubiquitous Sudoku) are starting to steal substantial time away from television and going to the movies, according to this article on CNet.

For those over 18, the study found that 31 percent would rather waste an hour with a casual game than watch TV and 35 percent would rather play games then go to the movies.

Not all that surprising, huh? Well if you dig deeper into the numbers you start turning up some interesting trends, not the least of which is that the numbers are highest for women over 40, with almost half opting to play games rather than go to the movies and 37 percent turning to games over television. Doesn't exactly fit the stereotype, huh?

Labels: Old Media Deathwatch

Earlier this week, AOL announced a departure from their subscription based revenue model. They plan to make cash by selling ad space. In fact, AOL is betting that they can make more money from advertising than from subscriptions.

Right now, their slice of the online advertising market is relatively healthy ($295 Million Q2 vs Yahoo!’s $637 Million and Google’s $953 Million for Q2). They want more. The online advertising market is expected to be valued at 16 billion dollars this year. If things go right, this could be huge for them.

This is a smart strategy for three reasons: (1) more users, more market share, more revenue, (2) no subscriptions, no subscription management, no support, (3) everyone else is doing it!

However, AOL needs to find a way to appeal to the younger generations. For example, late teens associate AOL with AIM, not content. So, it doesn’t matter if they are charging for content or giving it away, some people will simply not go to AOL looking for content. They need to fix that if this new strategy is going to work.

What’s really going on here is an industry wide movement: offer something engaging enough to make people visit, stay, click and comeback. The radio industry did it back in the day, The Wall Street Journal website started giving content away back in 2004, and MTV recently signed a deal with Google to distribute clips with ads.

Give it away, and they will come (and while they are there show them some ads, so that you can pay your bills).

This morning I took a look at the site for Catholic Community Services via cssmania.com. So what you say? Another css site that looks nice? Big deal. But there's more going on here.

The site accomplishes everything it needs to on a number of levels.

INFORMATION
The IA is concise, while allowing for plenty of expansion within the four main categories. The content is easily digestible and legible. Everything is logically laid out and easily found. Calls to action are apparent without screaming.

CSS
The typography is well thought out and pleasing. The mix of Verdana and Georgia is about as good as it can be (granted what system text gives you to work with). The color palettes are fresh and inviting while not being garish. Background colors for text fields are very subtle, but they are there. This is more difficult than one would think and they selected their colors wisely.

PHOTOGRAPHY
I'm betting this was not shot by a pro, but likely by a designer with an eye. I've had to do the same before, due to budgetary and time limitations. I've also designed similar layouts, then had to shoot to fit the challenging horizontal format. These work nicely. You can tell these are real people doing real things and that nothing is staged. Very candid and approachable.

When charitable organizations are seeking donations, there is a fine balance to be had in their marketing communications. This site gives Catholic Community Services an outward appearance of really having their act together without being flashy or gratuitous. It has the right tone of voice for their audience and they look like an organization that would know what to do with money contributed to them.

The most striking thing is that it was accomplished for a client that I'm certain is as conservative as you can get, and has a very limited budget at best. Congratulations to whoever pulled it off. So it seems the impossible IS possible. This is a good case study for what it looks like when all the elements come together on a site of this scale. All that, and a nice logo too.

I’d been working in the Web industry for a few years before I realized how the Internet was going to change absolutely everything. The year was 1999 and I needed to figure out how to tie a bow tie. I don’t remember whether I went to Alta Vista or Yahoo! or what, but I typed in “how to tie a bow tie” and bam--there it was. Diagram after diagram, right there for the taking. I thought to myself, “Oh my God. Suddenly there’s nothing I can’t find out.”

In order to understand the earthshaking profundity of this realization, you have to put yourself back into the pre-Web mindset. Most of us over the age of thirty grew up with three channels on the TV and a library. To figure out how to tie a bowtie or fold a fitted sheet or make a Manhattan or who was the president in World War One took actual work, and most of the time it just wasn’t worth it.

But now we can know anything—anything--with a few short keystrokes.

And yet… we can’t.

The Web utterly neglects an essential part of the business of life. Trying to find small consumer businesses, for a specific need, in any given city, is absolutely impossible. In the three-channel-TV days, it was simpler: look in the Yellow Pages, ask your neighbor, whatever. But now what do you do? The old systems for finding a plumber, a jeweler, a housekeeper have disappeared: we don’t talk to each other as much, our networks are more niched, and the Yellow Pages (online or off) are practically useless. Even Google, which I revere, fails at this simple task. (Try searching “contractor” in “Baltimore, MD” and see what I mean. I don’t want a government HVAC contractor, for the love of Jah! And clicking through on any result inevitably brings you to some irrelevant directory listing of inaccurate information.)

I hadn’t read much about this problem until the New York Times did a piece on it this week. The piece lauds insiderpages.com for using the review strategy: “InsiderPages hit on a clever strategy. The company approaches parent groups at a community’s schools and children’s sports teams — real-world social networks, if you will — with a fund-raising pitch: write reviews of your favorite businesses and InsiderPages pays $1 or $2 a review.”

But the problem is more complicated than just providing a place for paid local listings and an outlet for reviews, paid or otherwise.

First, most of these sites (besides Craigslist, which is free, but badly organized if you use it as a directory instead of as a classified section) require advertisers (cash-strapped local businesses) to pay for listings. The old, useful Yellow Pages never did that. Sure, it was an advertising medium, and you had to pay for a display ad; but the Yellow Pages understood the push-pull of marketing: you gotta offer utility in order to make your product valuable enough for people to pay your advertising dollars. So they listed everyone—and the ones who paid got more attention. Brilliant! So why isn’t it being done that way online?

Second, most small local businesspeople still don’t see the immense value in having a web site, making a small investment in online marketing, and providing real information on their sites. They’re a few years behind the curve, and usually don’t have the money to invest—or so they think. They still don’t realize the true direct-response potential of te medium, to their great detriment. (Although, talking to most contractors, you get the feeling they wish their phone wouldn’t ring, they’re doing you such a favor to answer it.)

The object lesson here is that while we in the industry constantly tout the power of social networking, the netroots, the long tail, or whatever the meme du jour happens to be, the basics get us through our everyday lives. A good dentist, a good electrician, a good babysitter—they’re impossible to find since the Web had its way with us.

But at least I can still find out how to tie a bowtie.

If ever there was a country more in need of a re-branding, it is Argentina.



The eighth-largest country in the world and the second-largest country in South America, Argentina has been fighting a difficult war with its creditors and it seems like it is now rallying to fight back.



Fifteen years ago Argentina was South America's rising star; from 1991 -1997, the economy grew at an annual rate of more than 6%. But in 1998, after years of overspending, the country slid into a deep recession. The economic decline led to political turmoil and successive governments were unable to correct the slide. By late 2001 Argentina announced the largest debt default in all of history and in 2002 the government substantially devalued the peso.



In April of 2003, Argentina showed signs of recovery and in 2005 it finally broke even but still hasn't paid back all it owes. The country's relationship with creditors is strained.

In 2004 the government suspended an agreement with the IMF while it persuaded private creditors to accept a brutal debt-restructuring offer. The president's decision in late 2005 to repay its IMF debt early emphasized the country's economic uncertainty. Argentina now finds itself fighting inflation - so it is difficult to see where this journey will go.



The president’s courageous attempt to re-Brand his country is the only way I can see of announcing that Argentina is finally intent on significant change, and will overcome the stigma of its horrific debt default and attract businesses, tourists and capital to the country.

I believe this new look is optimistic, vivacious and will travel. I like it a lot and far prefer it to the flag. It evokes the Wachovia logo, which I have long enjoyed, and hearkens to a new and exciting future for the country. The ribbons are dying to be animated and as you can see, it works well in one color, in different circumstances and with various treatments.



The internal design brief is compelling and I think very evocative and intelligent in making these points:

• Understand identity as dynamic, not fixed; what we are becoming, not what we are.
• Think of the brand not as a mark but as a system, a visual language.
• Avoid the outsiders' expectations (no gauchos, no tangos); instead, affirm our own new point of view.
• Nothing banal, corporate or mercantile, or pinteresque and obscure.
• A brand that relates to people in everyday life, not to marketing experts.
• A brand consistent with a youthful nation.
  

The identity work was completed by Guillermo Brea & Associates, with Alejandro Luna and Carolina Mikalef.

Labels: Design

Recently, we lost our resident tech guru to greener pastures in the Pacific North West. All of the office technical responsibilities ended up on my lap – needless to say, I was at a loss.

I had to pickup and manage hardware with names I couldn’t spell much less pronounce. It was scary. Fortunately, we are interviewing companies that will come in and do this for us. So this is only temporary.

In the meantime however, I had to get the file server working and the VPN configured. I spent a total of 15 hours on the phone. Normally, I would have found that to be completely irritating, but the engineers at Adaptec and Cisco were brilliantly patient, clear, and helpful.

Both companies have learned how to treat their customers: respectfully. I can’t tell you how important this is. No matter how little or much I knew, both companies had their own way of gauging my “geekittude” and talked to me at the right level in order to get the issues resolved.

I am not sure if these two companies are responding to "slack" they received about their customer experience. I do know two things for sure: (1) I will buy products from these guys again just because I know they have my back, (2) in an environment where competitive advantages can only be found in price point, and customer experience: good support rules.

The point: positive user or customer experience spells client retention and qualified opportunities for up/cross sells. Both Adaptec and Cisco now have me as a customer for life. It takes so little. Really.

If you are not convinced, consider the experience I am having with ADT. I signed a three year contract with ADT to monitor the security system at my house. Seven months ago, I cancelled my house’s landline because nobody was using it. At that point, ADT stopped working because they use that phone line to monitor the house. Sure, the contract says a working landline needs to be active at the house, so they kept billing. But who has a landline anymore? So, for the past seven months I have been paying for a service they have not been providing. I tried to talk to them about giving me credit for a couple of months. If they did, I wouldn’t pay the contract cancellation fee and take my business somewhere else.

Instead of working with me and realizing the value of a long term customer paying a recurring fee forever, they successfully pissed me off because of their rigidity and lack of empathy (and they were nasty too). Now, I am in the market for a new monitoring company – even though it will cost me more money to change than to stay.

This is how deep experience runs and how much it means to people. Let’s take Adaptec and Cisco's lead.

These adobe design winners did a terrific job, so check out their work:

http://www.adobe.com/education/adaa/winners/

About seven years ago, I learned a great lesson from a great person. Peter Quinn, my then Art Director, and current friend, told me to squint at my designs. Squinting at a design shows you the work’s focal point. It also gives you a different sense of how space and texture is used (and hopefully balanced).

The science behind this method was delightfully dodgy and obscure. I didn’t question it much because he had a lot of experience and he had every client eating out of his hand. And when I used it, I saw things about my designs that I didn’t before.

In fact, this method worked so well for me that for the past five years, I have been pushing my students to do the squint.

Today, I read an article by Matt Queen published on Boxes and Arrows. In this article, Matt writes about how our “visual system encodes information using many channels in to major pathways:

1. The magnocellular pathway (M pathway, or “big neurons”) contains channels sensitive to gross shape, luminance, and motion.

2. The parvocellular pathway (P pathway—“small neurons”) contains channels sensitive to color and detailed shape (Nicholls et al, 1992)”

Matt points out that the only tool designers have to use to assess the M pathway is the squint test. Finally, the science behind the technique is revealed: “squint your eyes to obstruct sharp focus and rely mostly on dark and light values.” It makes enough sense for me to buy, but he continues to say, “However, the squint test is not very practical for HCI and Usability assessments” because of the space between elements and the size of icons.

The article is mainly about how to design better icons by understanding how the eye and brain interpret the information. Powerful stuff. But as you would imagine, my question is this: shouldn’t graphic designers substitute the word “icon” for “billboard” or “print ad” or “TV commercial” or… err?… well, you get the idea.

This article is definitely worth the read. It is amazing how scientific design can get. I for one will probably use this new method a couple of times to see how it goes. But I have to tell you; I am biased to the squint. It works so well.

Last week we took a look at how 2 financial institutions are managing their brands in the face of deregulation.

Deregulation, on the face of it, is probably a good thing for most industries. It dislodges inertia, frees up innovation, inspires increasing competitiveness and encourages mergers and strange bedfellows. Financial firms have jumped into this wild west mix, offering every single product that might have a monetary connotation and few that don’t.

But for consumers this is all pretty confusing.

The argument for financial services deregulation was usability-based, consumer-centric and well thought out. But it still confuses otherwise intelligent customers. Here's why.

Basically, the argument goes like this:
a) when times are good you put your money in a high risk high yield instrument, such as stocks or a hedge fund.
b) when times are bad you put your money into a fixed income vehicle, such as a cd or a savings account.

The point that was made is simple – the same person/entity at different times has need of both these services, so why should they have to go to different businesses?

And indeed there have been simplifications. I bank at Wachovia, and if I were to make them my sole monetary solution they could operate as a one stop shop - offering consumer and business banking, investment and fixed-income solutions, even as an insurance brokerage.

But just because things are simpler for the end user, doesn’t mean these financial brands are healthy. I contend that the schizophrenia of these brands has increased and where managing your money is easier than ever, deciding where and with whom to manage it is nigh impossible.

A good example is The Bank of New York. The Bank of New York has a golden history as a local retail operation first started by Alexander Hamilton in 1874. It still serves the wealthy and elite among New York’s gentry, for instance. The other side of the company is a global competitor offering services to institutional investors, such as bulk processing for mutual funds. These two halves of the business couldn’t be more different in type of service provided, target audience or core competency.


Global logo


Retail banking logo

So it gets confusing. This page with the JPMorgan Chase announcement is a perfect example: http://www.bankofny.com/htmlpages/ydp.htm Who is the target audience? Who needs to know this or is interested?

The old red logo will still be used, for reassurance purposes, I suppose, in the retail side of the bank. Maybe it will be phased out over time. Maybe the Bank of New York is making the distinction between its two halves evident so as to make its retail division more marketable in hopes of selling it.

Logo Critique: The new global logo is a bit of a problem. It is reminiscent of stock certificates, European currency and such, and does suggest to my eye a little bit of a hologram or some advanced watermark. But I wonder about the “the” – is it needed? And will the logo hold up when faxed, photocopied, faxed again and then put on a name tag? The whole magic of the mark is its color, which of course won’t reproduce well in grayscale. Can you see this mark in shining steel on a 50 ft sign? Nor can I.

Labels: Fine Financial Branding