09 February 09
A few months ago I was listening to an episode of Business Week’s Innovation of the Week podcast where David Turner from the branding agency Turner Duckworth was talking about designing the packaging for Metallica’s Death Magnetic CD. Yes, I just used the words “innovation”, “branding”, and “Metallica” in the same sentence.
Turner Duckworth is an agency that is based out of London and San Francisco and boasts the revamp of the Coke brand amongst recent projects. It’s interesting to hear how Metallica was savvy enough to not only look outside the music industry for inspiration, but turn to a branding agency of all places.
The concept as described on the podcast sounded a bit uninspiring to be honest. But I recently saw the execution and think that it’s quite beautiful.
Check out the podcast: Business Week—Innovation of the Week
06 February 09
Looking to sound smart in front of clients or at cocktail parties? No problem. The books that can help you are easy to spot at your local bookstore. The serif typefaces give them the a scholarly look. The no-nonsense white canvas says “I mean business” and makes the buzz-word titles easy to spot. The sound bite on the cover gives you the immediate satisfaction of feeling smarter before you’ve even opened the book.
We laugh and we cringe when someone quotes from one of the white books. Yet we can’t stop buying them.
31 January 09
First we had citizen journalism. Now we have citizen photojournalism. UK-based Demotix gives independent photographers a global reach to major news media outlets such as France’s Le Monde and the UK’s Daily Telegraph.
Scoopt and Citizen Side are two other similar services.
In related news, Getty Images began sending out invitations this week where select Flickr users will be able to license their images through Getty’s Flickr Collection.
18 January 09
Remember Blockbuster? With all the talk in the media about how Netflix has integrated their streaming service with yet another device, Apple and Amazon’s strong entry into the on-demand world, and services like Hulu and Boxee, Blockbuster seems like a distant memory.
After taking almost too long to play catch-up to Netflix’s mail service, the last I heard of them was when they were trying to buy Circuit City almost a year ago. All of this was sounding quite desperate to me, and I assumed their days were shortly numbered. During this year’s CES coverage, the hosts of one of CNET’s podcasts caught themselves doing the same. “Is Blockbuster even around anymore”, they half-joked.
Turns out they are, and they made their own big announcement at CES that they were getting ready to release their own streaming set-top device. Blockbuster clearly doesn’t have the media buzz that all of the other players have, but maybe their massive retail presence will allow them to stay in the game long enough to, well ... stay in the game.
06 January 09
What attracts us to the objects we surround ourselves with? How do they define us and how we see ourselves?
Helvetica director Gary Hustwit brings us behind the curtain to meet the masters of industrial design with Objectified.