Tag Archives: branding

Friday Links: The See Ya Next Year Edition

• How the ball in Times Square is assembled.
• Tis the Season (for top whatever lists). The New Yorker offers up 100 best lists of all time.
• YouTube’s most-watched ads of 2012.
• Brand New presents the best and the worst identities of 2012.
• Cosmic ABCs.
• A supercut of space helmets.
• Lamenting the loss of children’s chemistry sets.
• 10 of the year’s best designs for social good.

Branding US Presidents

This project is similar to the woman who set out to brand 10,000 of Minnesota’s 11,842 lakes.

In this case, the designer is branding each of the 44 US Presidents. He or She is up to Grover Cleveland, #22 (and #24). So far, James Madison is the best one (and I don’t just say that because James Madison is my favorite ex-president. Okay, yes, I do).

Friday Links: Best practices from fast-growing firms

• The Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal’s “Fast 50 Diary” latest entry is about best practices from fast-growing firms. You can read about what The Nerdery had to say in the News section.
• Author Neal Stephenson does a Reddit AMA.
• Lifehacker on how passwords are stored & when strength doesn’t matter.
• How a cheeseburger is made for a campaign, food-styling looks crazy and fun.
• Branding talk isn’t helping your company.
• Boing Boing on the ongoing The Oatmeal v. FunnyJunk circus.
• Surface vs iPad, a video mashup of the announcements of each device. Also, John Gruber on the new tablet.
• The next time you’re in Brussels, you should totally stay at The Pantone Hotel.
• How Apple seduces with the angle of its laptop screen. Fascinating.
• If you’re a book nerd, drunk texts from famous authors will make you laugh.
• What makes us laugh.

Friday Links: Mike Derheim named one of the 40 under 40

• Mike Derheim named to The Business Journal’s 40 under 40. You can check out the other honorees too.
• A dad’s plea to developers of iPad apps for children.
• Hipster branding.
• Sounds of the Internet Vol. 1, a ridiculously fun “mixtape of websites with autoplay music.”
• Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs (feels a bit like Don Draper’s “Why I’m quitting smoking”) also, Why I am leaving the Empire by Darth Vader.
• On Tuesday the interrobang turned 50. It’s a punctuation mark you should go read about.
• Chris Pirillo’s Dad uses Windows 8 for the first time and OSX.
• The 10 most successful failures in geekdom.
• Sweet bookends for the nerd in your life.

Friday Links: DC Comics launches new brand & Hipster StarWars

• DC Comics unveils new brand (a follow up to this).
• Don’t forget to RSVP for our February 2nd Open House.
• Matt Haughey shares lessons for Kickstarter creators fomr the worse project he ever funded.
• Animated Leo Burnett tells agency “When to take my name of the door”. Highly recommended for people enamored with the history of advertising (and cute animations).
• Hipster StarWars. You know you wanna look. Also, If StarWars were made today, and finally I’ll follow you into the dark, a valentine for your StarWars loving sweetie.
• 12 sci-fi film locations you can actually visit.
• Is new Google the new Coke?
• LEGO slowly revealing Lord of the Rings minifigs.

Friday Links: So long 2011 edition

• How your privacy will be invaded in 2012.
• Do you want to see a picture featuring 340 Nintendo characters? Of course you do.
• Recommended resolutions for advertising types, but probably good idea for all office types.
• Gamification sucks.
• 14 of the year’s best ideas in interface design.
• Brand New has the the worst and the best identities of 2011.
• Reddit’s Top 20 popular pics of 2011.
• Short order designer notepads are kind of awesome.
• The 8 Worst print ads of 2011. Warning: You will be offended.
• 40 most shared articles on Facebook in 2011.

Are you brandwashed?

Did you listen to All Things Considered on NPR this weekend? No. That’s okay, you can listen to it now, and you totally should. Why? Because this weekend they talked with Martin Lindstrom the author of Brandwashed: Trick Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy. Don’t worry, if you’re not so much of a listener you can read a write up of the interview. Here’s some fun facts from the post/radio show:

• The average American 3-year-old can recognize 100 brands
• You and I are talking about brands 25 percent of our entire time
• When grocery shopping try to avoid a cart. They’ve made carts bigger which makes people spend 40% more than they usually would

Branding 10,000 Lakes

Designer and art director Nicole Meyer has challenged herself with designing logos for 10,000 of Minnesota’s lakes (according to the DNR we actually have 11,842 lakes that are 10+ acres). But even with designing one new logo a day for 10,000 lakes, the project will take more than twenty-seven years. It’s a delightful project that’s fun to look at. Go see for yourself.

Friday Links: Some Webchallenge advice & assorted goodness

The Chicago Webchallenge is this weekend and the Minnesota nerds are making their way down to the Windy City to join their Illini-brethren to make websites for needy nonprofits. Good luck to everyone involved!

• If this is your first time participating in the a webchallenge, here’s some advice from past participants. Also, take a look at a few videos so you know what you’ve gotten yourself into. If you want even more, you can read the entire Webchallenge category. Have fun!
• Meet the class of 2015: your future coworkers and customers.
• Scrabble Players ‘know’ more words, but not necessarily what they mean.
• How browsers work.
• Where’s WALL-E like Waldo, except with a ton of awesome robots.
• The questionable birth of Times New Roman
• How Marty and Doc became friends in Back to the Future. I always wondered why they were hanging out together.
• The Nike Swoosh turns 40.

Friday Links: Modern Brands, More Bogusky & Maps

• Modern brands 2.0: revenge of the corporation.
• More Bogusky? Why not.
• What happened to Yahoo.
• The EFF reviews Verizon and Google’s Net Neutrality Proposal.
• The 2010 social networking map.
• 25 songs about outdated technology (some what related, This is the tapedeck you’ll leave your great-grandson).
• StarWars X-Wing Fighter mailbox.
• A cool-looking MoMA App.
• Twitter: The Movie.