Interesting examples today of innovative internet advertising. In this economy™, companies are finding ad space on the cheap, and Vitamin Water and Apple have two similar but very different approaches:
On ESPN.com today, Vitamin Water has 5 ad spaces for their “Great Debate” campaign pitting LeBron against Kobe. Too bad these ads aren’t as good as their TV ads (“You can’t check him!”), and not nearly as awesome as Nike’s Jim Henson throw-back (“whooo!”). Each ad by itself looks fine, but the 4 ads together overwhelm the page and is uninspired and tired, if not annoying.
Apple, on the other hand, took over NYTimes.com today with a totally different approach. They’ve got 3 ad spaces here, and each ad interacts with each other. The PC and Mac characters point up to the bar graph, and the Hair Growth Academy guys start pitching in with their opinions mid-way. They’re clearly having some fun here, and employing a much more interesting and engaging experience.
Apple clearly takes the cake on this one, and my guess is they’ll see a better return on those ad dollars as viewers’ eyes stay on their ads for longer and that little Apple logo gets burned ever so deeper into our brain matter.
I’m going to go ahead and call this the best Layer Tennis yet. Aaron Draplin, floor manager of the DDC, vs. famed Ohio graphic designer Chris Glass. One for the ages. More of a collaboration than a battle, witness the evolution of a brand for the newly minted International Design Workers Federation.
Latest article from Jason Santa Maria, taking his per-post art direction to a new level. Pretty spiffy. Jason’s doing more for blog and web design with just his own site than anyone else I’m aware of. Browse through his last few articles if you’re not convinced.
One of the coolest things at last week’s 99% Conference was the Cool Hunting videos they showed during breaks. Above, an inside look at Grafica Fidalga, a print shop in NYC. Love it.
Also see PapaBubble and Baggu Bags. Incidentally, the conference stuffed a Baggu bag with candies and a poster, so it was cool to see and hold products from these little spots. Nice touch.
“Digg sends a tremendous amount of traffic to sites that make it to the top of their front page, but it’s the worst kind of traffic: mindless, borderline illiterates. Good riddance, really.”John Gruber, in How to Block the DiggBar
Cam pulls a Foster and launches something everyone loves. This is Cameron’s first big internet success, so everyone give Cameron a hand!
“On matters of style, swim with the current. On matters of principle, stand like a rock.”Thomas Jefferson. From 1001 Rules for My Unborn Son, which reads like a memoir and feels like a nice long walk with my boys. I want the book.
Don’t forget Northtemple’s Twitter feed, which is a fancy regurgitation of our website content. Many of our designers are also on Twitter, and you can find em by who the Northtemple account is following.
Where the Wild Things Are trailer, with the track “Wake Up” by Arcade Fire.
Ignite SLC is next Thursday – it’s an O’Reilly event that gathers over a dozen speakers, allows 20 slides each and just 15 seconds per slide. All local. Design + tech. Looks fun.
Joel Splosky’s How to be a Program Manager is a near spot-on description of our Design Manager / Interaction Designer position here, minus the pesky HTML/CSS role we keep clinging to.. UE + functional spec + customer liaison.
Form letter FAIL.
“A person who works six hours a day but with total focus has an enormous advantage over a 12-hour-per-day workaholic who’s ‘multi-tasking’ all day, answering every phone call, constantly checking Facebook and Twitter, and indulging every interruption.Mike Elgan, in Work Ethic 2.0: Attention Control
It’s time we upgraded our work ethic for the age we’re living in, not our grandparents’ age. Hard work is still a virtue, but now takes a distant second place to the new determinant of success or failure in the age of Internet distractions: Control of attention.”
The Making of LittleBigPlanet, the uncontrollably cute game for Playstation 3.
Pitchfork’s posted 51-100 of their 100 Best Tracks of 2008. This isn’t only a great list, they’ve finally added handy little MP3 players to hear or download tracks on the list. I guarantee you haven’t heard of over half of these artists. Go explore and find some new faves.
My tops: The Veronicas (87), Justice (76), Sigur Rós (71), The Whitest Boy Alive (64), Q-Tip (61), and some freakin’ Vampire Weekend at 56.
iPhone loverz, here’s a nice set of non-obvious tips & tricks.
case study
Hot and graceful jQuery dropcaps
Dropcaps are a staple of magazine and newspaper design, but aren’t always the easiest to implement on the web. Using this little jQuery and CSS tutorial, you can easily add hot little dropcaps to your web articles without bothering your developers. This method will also let you sleep at night knowing your caps will degrade gracefully, displaying just fine in browsers without CSS or JavaScript enabled.
Please note, this tutorial is for those who are familiar with jQuery and CSS. No basics taught here. Also nerd alert.
Zoom far into a document in the new Photoshop CS4 and pixel lines automatically appear, a nice touch to help define specific colors and fine tune your designs. (Above is 18pt Caecilia LT Std at 3200%.)
Vintage RobFoster™ style illustrations by Patrick Leger. Above: “After the Heist”. Rob, I want to see one of these in your lounge ASAP.
Subtle marketing strategies from Threadless.