A new direction

I realised that since no one would take up my offer as my paid PA and do things like update the blog, I’ve decided that Brand New Media will now just become a gallery board of sorts so that I can publish my doodles and attempts at illustration when I feel the urge.  Then in years to come I can look back and cringe with embarrassment.

Watch this space then.

Or not.

Tuesday titbits

Transport for London is turning to graphic design to get people on and off the (baaaa) tube in a safe and orderly manner (baaaa).

This is a fairly old story now, but I felt quite sentimental when I read it. Even though I hated it. Netscape the browser is officially no more. It is dead. Long live Netscape. Or as John Cleese would say, “It’s not dead, it’s just stunned.”

Again, this did the rounds a fair while ago, but if you missed it and you’re looking for some vintage old school inspiration, check this out. I love old school design and paraphernalia, can’t get enough of it. I am a hoarder though.

Are web/digital designers underrated?

So how important is the role played by digital designers in advertising and web design? As a designer, I’ve always felt slightly smug and slightly peeved both at the same time when it comes to most projects. Smug in that I know without me, the creative director/art director/copywriter/cleaning lady/junior intern couldn’t have completed the project and seen his or her vision come to life and peeved in that sometimes I feel designers don’t always get that recognition of having the difficult task of turning someone’s vision into something that looks good on screen. I’m fairly sure each person in the creative process will have his or her own argument as to why their job is the hardest, but I do feel that a good designer can make all the difference in turning an average idea or campaign into something that actually works.

A good digital designer also bridges that gap between the creative and the technical as he or she will make a concept and the design work within the myriad technical boundaries of design for the internet. I always find that I’m reminding myself that the internet was never developed as a visual concept, it wasn’t meant to take tables, it wasn’t meant to handle flash and everything else that it’s been asked to do now! As a quick refresh, it was basically meant to only handle text and was initially invented by the US Department of Defence as a means of communication in case they were attacked by Russia. We can at least give thanks to the yanks for that then. The internet evolved into the World Wide Web and then people later on tried to kill design on the web. Have a look at Microsoft’s first website and Google’s first website.

So in the past, its been a constant battle to marry good design with the inflexibility of the internet. As well as trying to design and develop in and around the constant battle grounds of Microsoft vs Yahoo vs Apple vs Netscape vs Mozilla. On that note, could everyone please just make their browsers display websites the same way? I don’t care about anything else, put extra features on the browsers, give out free tshirts, whatever, just please can we have websites that display consistently across browsers?

Design standards though, have evolved and continue to get better, although I feel South Africa could generally do with a big kick up the backside in this department. It’s not like there is a lack of good examples out there, but I feel SA businesses do lack a knowledge of what they can and should be getting for their money. Because of this, South African digital designers are not being pushed into improving their standards of design. I know there are many reasons for this, not least a lack of bandwidth and infrastructure, SA is generally 5 yrs behind the States and at least 2 years behind the UK and Europe when it comes to digital design, marketing and advertising.

And of course designing for an advertising campaign and designing an actual website are to very different things and thus there are different challenges, strategies and end results to take into account especially when it comes to user interaction. But I think that’s whole other post…

So then back to the heading of this article. Are digital designers underrated and how important are they to the creative process? Well, although there are still those out there who own a copy of photoshop and an HTML editing program and call themselves web designers, a talented and experienced web designer is crucial to bringing your digital vision to life, on time and within a budget, whether that be an award winning advertising/online banner campaign or a website to convert users into buyers.

I am important then. Phew.

Best animated ads of 2007

Check out some of the best animated ads of 2007.  Some classics. I used to LOVE Paddington Bear.  Bit weird, I know.

Lacoste take on dentist for having a crocodile on its signage.

I mean, come now. Give it a rest. Similar to an earlier post I published about MTN vs Nando’s, Gillian Jones vents on Marketingweb about a few other companies who are losing sight of the bigger picture, namely Lacoste and Tiger brands. When will people realise that public perception of your brand is key and running around putting up prices after you’ve screwed your customers already without telling them, or taking on a dental practice in a small England town (who’s residents probably have no clue as to what the Lacoste is and if they did, I’d doubt they be clamouring to buy their overpriced polo shirts) because the dental practice includes a crocodile in its signage, is just not cool. Read the Marketingweb article here.

McDonalds has also been known to swing its big corporate paunch around. In 1994, they forced Elizabeth McCaughey to change the trading name of her coffee shop McCoffee. She’d been running it under that name for 17 years and had called it that as an adaptation of her surname. That wasn’t a first for them either. Wikipedia has more.

eBay is another one. They’re apparantly intent on making themselves the only ‘bay’ on the internet.

It’s a war out there.

War of the Posters – Nandos vs MTN

Which came first? The chicken or the cellphone?

Sorry, couldn’t resist that.

Nando’s has to withdraw its “Yello’ Hummer” advertising campaign following a ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). Nando’s cries fowl, MTN is thrilled.

Now to be honest, I fail to see why MTN is creating such a fuss about this. In my mind MTN has just gone and created a whole lot of negative branding for themselves. Regardless of whether Nando’s did indeed copy their advertising style, it was meant to be a parody, they are not competitors in any way and surely by copying MTN’s style of advertising it was really just more free exposure for MTN and also a compliment to them. People look at it and go “Oh yes, thats the same as MTN’s”. It puts MTN (and Nando’s) at the front of people’s minds. They might have had more of a case if Nandos was continually doing it, but it was a once off and they immediately decided to get involved.

You will never win this one. Accept that Nandos copied you, laugh it off and get on with other business. Now, I just think that MTN are big bullies who can’t laugh at themselves or see the bigger picture. Nandos hasn’t lost anything, in fact they’ve gained free exposure and everybody loves Nando’s tongue in cheek advertising so their reputation won’t suffer. They’ve even come out with new advertising posters in their stores that make a thinly veiled sarcastic apology to MTN.

I’ve seen it so many times and people just don’t get it, they step out thinking that they’re trying to protect their brand when in fact they just damage it. A brand is like a person, it needs to be seen as popular, secure and easy to get on with. If you start trying to protect and defend it all the time, it’ll just be seen as insecure and not worth getting to know.

11 digital forecasts/trends for 2008

Welcome to 2008, may it be a wonderfully crazy digital experience and may all your designs come true. Since everyone is going list crazy with their top 6,7,8,9,10 predictions for the year, I thought I’d swim with the masses this time and give you my top 11 forecasts for the year.

1) Social Networking will continue to be the most talked about digital phenomenon this year. However I feel Facebook’s popularity will decline as it gets too big for its boots too quickly. Personally I feel Facebook is overvalued, over hyped and trying to make too much money too quickly with little consideration for its users. Mark Zuckerberg has recently apologised for it’s Beacon advertising debacle.

2) Mobile (Cellphone) technology will accelerate now that the iPhone has become a reality. One area that Africa is normally ahead of the global community is mobile technology. This is primarily due to the fact that monopolies such as Telkom hold back the internet and people have to find other ways around that. Mobile phones and devices will continue to expand and blur the boundaries beyond just being a phone and more of a tool to update blogs/websites, listen to music, use as a GPS etc. Whatever you do though, do not get a Blackberry! They will NOT make your life easier, they will just make it more stressed.

3) Blogs will continue to grow in relevance in all spheres and more and more companies will start to realise that they can be a great marketing tool and an excellent way to talk to their customers when utilised and updated properly.

4) Google will become more evil, Microsoft will become more evil. Google will get richer, Microsoft will get richer.

5) Content will continue to be king. With all the social networking being done, users need something to network.

6) More and more applications such as Google Docs (offering an online version of Microsoft Office’s Word, Excel and Powerpoint) will be going online and mobile, making them accessible from anywhere. Of course with that comes the inevitable privacy and security concerns.

7) On the actual design front I think we’ll see more fonts with serifs, more illustration enhanced design, rotating featured item/article done with javascript or flash, footers becoming more prominent in the overall site design and the death of titles, images and logos with a reflection.

8) This one is from twentysteps.com; Facebook and MySpace will merge and the new social application will be called MyFace. You will invite people to join by asking them to “Sit On MyFace”.

9) The internet is going through another bubble phase and while it won’t be as bad as the first one, something is going to give. Soon. You heard it here first. There are just too many privacy and security issues springing up and its starting to get out of control.

10) This is more of a hope than a forecast. That the overhyped SecondLife eventually dies.

11) Broadband issues in South Africa will get more and more coverage as businesses start to realise that they need to get their digital act together for 2010, which is now only 2 short years away. Whether those issues are able to get sorted in time is another story.

Brand New Media is up and running

Visit www.springloaded.co.za for a good design.