Why do they call these things “circulars?” The word makes me think of my mom, clipping coupons from the Sunday paper for the weekly trip to the Shop-N-Bag.
Anyway, this one came in the mail from Target. I usually toss these things right into the recycling bin, but I thought it was pretty clever.
I used to love flip books as a kid. I even made one once, as a Christmas present for my younger brother – a mix-n-match sports thing where, for example, you could put a football player’s head on a baseball middle and a pair of hockey legs.
Anyway, kudos to Target for having fun with something so everyday. You actually got me to look at all the coupons as I played with different face combinations.
The big athletic footwear companies have built their marketing campaigns around aspirational themes and creating connections between regular sports hobbyists and elite athletes. If you work hard, if you show character and passion – the message goes – then you are like them.
I saw this clip from Nike today, and I think it does an especially good (and literal) job of putting the viewer in an athlete’s shoes…
Have you ever noticed the way American beer commercials emphasize packaging gimmicks? The wide-mouth can. The label that turns blue when it’s cold. The easy-pour vent. The shelf pack that fits better in your fridge.
Are there people who peruse the beer aisle thinking, “hmm… you know I really enjoy [favorite microbrew/import], but it pours all splashy, and I can’t tell if it’s cold without picking it up. I guess I’ll take the Coors.”
In the same vein, I was listening to the radio the other day, and a commercial for Miller Lite came on. Apparently, they took the top award for “American Style Light Lager” at the World Beer Cup in 1996, ’98, ’02 and ’06. Well whoop-dee-doo. American Style Light Lager? Really? There’s an award for that? How many beers could possibly be competing in the American Style Light Lager category? “American Style” itself narrows the field quite a bit, since American microbreweries typically produce traditional European style beers. This leaves you with just the big brands. When you add “Light” to the mix, you’re down to what, three beers? And Miller Lite is bragging that they won the top award only four times in the last twelve years.
The thing is, I don’t actually have a problem with the taste of some of the big brand American beers. I’m more than happy to drink MGD at a ball game.
They way these guys mostly brag about the packaging though, you’d think they’re embarrassed about their own product.
The state of Texas recently held an “e-vote” to choose a new license plate design. There were five designs in the running, and over 450,000 people cast their vote for the worst one. Just my opinion, but Design Observer agrees with me.
This always seems to happen when design meets democracy. Letting the masses into the design process always leads to cluttered, overdone hodgepodge or bland, predictable treacle.
But there’s an obvious paradox here. Namely, if we are designing for these same masses, then who are we to say their opinion is wrong? On what basis can we defend what we consider to be good design?
Along with the usual flow of annual family newsletters and photographic Christmas cards, featuring matching cable-knit sweaters and first visits to Santa, this year I received a handful of emails with links to online photo albums. Lots and lots of pictures of babies and toddlers – many clearly taken within seconds of each other. Dozens from a single evening.
It occurred to me that this generation of kids will certainly be the most recorded one in human history.
A couple of hundred years ago, only the wealthiest people in only the most advanced civilizations could acquire portraits of their kids. Even so, such a family during that time might have one or two at most. The advent of photography democratized the portrait, but until just a generation ago, pictures were still special. For one thing, you had to pay for film. You had to go to a store, choose a film stock based on camera type, optimal ISO speed and number of frames per roll, and shell out real money before you captured your first shot. You had to load your camera – carefully – and because you’d paid for the film, you had to consider and reconsider each picture before, during and after you shot it. When you reached the end of the roll, you had to go back to a store and hand it over for processing, which often took a few days – unless you were willing to pay a premium for a 1-hour turnaround.
Fetching your pictures from the store was always kind of magical, because you had no way of knowing whether you’d aimed right or focused right, or whether your mom had blinked at the wrong moment or your friend’s face was hidden by an unforeseen shadow. Also, the photographed events themselves had already started their slide into memory and forgetting, so to see the pictures was to get to relive a little.
In the era of digital cameras, pictures have joined the growing list of things that have stopped being special. It’s a bit sad, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. I would never suggest we return to the medium of film, with its chemicals and waste, but I like the idea of reintroducing some restraint into the act of picture taking.
The other day, I learned about something called the 36 Exposures Challenge that aims to do just that:
…this ease of use and surfeit of images comes with a price. In the analog era, when we had to pay to see what we shot, we were more careful when we took photographs. This forced a discipline that is hard to imagine today. In the words of Stephen Shore, “[Today] there seems to be a greater freedom and lack of restraint…as one considers one’s pictures less, one produces fewer truly considered pictures.”
From the booking process on the Singapore Airlines web site. I only wish I’d seen this in time for Tracy and I to travel as Earl and Countess or perhaps simply Professors Smith and Cohen.
by Shawn on Thursday, 21 October 2004 | 1 Comment | Tags: YahooNew Yahoo! in beta
Yahoo! has made available a “beta” version of a proposed new home page. The main improvement I see is their reorganization of their various web properties (News, Sports, People Search, Personals, etc.) into a simple alphabetical list:
Previously, these were grouped into blurry categories like “Connect, Organize, Fun…” Other changes include a general visual design refresh of the icons and module wrappers, and a demotion of the Directory.
A group calling themselves gravity monkey has gone mobile with FundRace‘s geo-coded FEC data. They’ve created a Java app called red | blue (pronounced “red or blue”) that can tell you whether or not you’re standing in enemy territory.
User Agency is the virtual professional home of Shawn Smith, User Experience designer and strategist. A "User Agent" is an application (usually a browser) that accesses the Web, but I like to think of myself as an agent for users of all things digital.
