Tag Archives: Design

Redesigning banana packaging

I can’t tell if the design a sticker campaign> for Chiquita bananas, as reported by the The New York Times, is awesome or a sign of the apocalypse.

Whenever I see words like this in quotes, which in newspapers means someone actually said those words, I get a little scared:

“Ciafardini says Chiquita is particularly interested in communicating to the under-25 crowd that the company offers the “convenient healthy snacking platforms that people are looking for these days.”

Healthy snacking platforms? Sounds kind of like a cracker to me. But anyway, the story is pretty interesting tale of branding and packaging, when your product is a banana.

Adaptive Path’s “Beyond I Hate Green” is today’s must read

Anyone who has to participate in a creative review (design, content, or otherwise) should head right on over to Adaptive Path’s blog and read Beyond “I hate green:” Managing Productive Visual Design Reviews. There you’ll find nine strategies for handling the feedback clients give from how to make sure you validate their opinions (no matter how misguided those opinions might be) to driving the conversation in a more helpful direction. It really is a must read.

Friday Links: The Friday before a long weekend edition

• Ad spending up for the first time since 2008.
• Envisioning your future in 2020. Kinda awesome and kinda creepy all at the same time.
• Truth on brands.
• 138 Years Of Quirky Inventions From The Pages Of PopSci.
• The periodic table of imaginary elements.
• Great logo redesigns of 2009 & 2010.
• Adorable homemade robots.
• 10 clever Commodore 64 t-shirts.

Friday Links: More iPhone 4 drama, social media crack, and some stuff about typewriters

• Meet Brian J. Hogan, the dude who stole the iPhone 4 and sold it Gizmodo.
• Also, a handy flow chart of the whole Gizmodo iPhone 4 drama.
• And, finally, because I have to: Steve Jobs’ kiss off letter to Flash.
• Much like crack, students go through withdrawal when they can’t access social media.
• An interview with Threadless’ VP of Marketing on the eve of their 10th Anniversary.
• The worst of sci-fi/fantasy book covers. The best of the worst? I Sing the Body Electric.
• Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the world for 2010. Once again they forgot me. (and Yahoo collects the five people from the list you’ve never heard of).
• Website teaches kids not to get suckered by ads. This reminds me of the girls I nannied for while I was in college. They begged for some Chips Ahoy cookies of some sort because there was supposed to be a party in each bite. “Uh, there’s no party in my mouth,” one of them said upon tasting the regular old cookie. She was crushed.
• Rock it old school: stickers to make your mac look like a typewriter. I wonder if they can make it so you get that delicious clicking sound and a ding when you reach the end of a line.
• Related to the last: beautiful, beautiful advertisements for Olivetti typewriters.
• Leslie Buck, designer of the iconic NY Greek coffee cup, died.
• The saga of forgotten brands and their logos.

Winter Olympic posters since 1924

Now that the games of the winter Pentathanerd are over, the world’s attention have turned to the Olympics over in Vancouver. Good times, those winter Olympics. Watching TV where at any moment someone is going to trip in fall, is the ultimate form of entertainment, isn’t it? Falling is funny, nobody can deny it. Especially when it’s someone else falling.

To get you in the mood for tonight’s games (figure skating, snowboarding, and skiing, lots of fall opportunities), take a look at this collection for all the Winter Olympic posters from 1924 through today. Collections like this are fun to look at because you can almost guess the year (or at least get pretty close) just by looking at the design. Great fun for everyone!

Here’s my favorite from the 1948 St. Mortiz games. I like the way it appears the sun is shooting out snowflakes.

Tech Tuesday: Development for (and getting our Nerdery hands on) the Apple iPad

By now, you’ve read all about the Apple’s new tablet, the iPad. You’ve watched the videos. You’ve maybe giggled about the product name; let’s be honest though, the Nintendo Wii’s name hasn’t hurt its popularity. You’ve either dismissed it as a big iPod Touch that won’t go anywhere, or, you’ve already smashed your piggy bank and have money in hand. Regardless, Apple has a pretty good track record with their latest products (iPod, iTunes, iPhone) and we don’t want our ad and marketing agency partners to be the last ones to the party.

First, the iPad debut doesn’t mean that our agency partners should stop making iPhone applications. All iPhone applications will work on the iPad out of the box.

But how does the iPad affect our agency partners who have already created applications for iPhone and now also want to take advantage of the bigger screen of the iPad? Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as hitting an Easy button (trust me, I have one) and magically all your applications are reformatted for the iPad. The user interface will have to be redesigned to support multiple resolutions. It’s also not just relaying out the design for the larger screen; it’s also understanding what the iPad is, and designing an amazing user interface to take advantage of the new user interface features.

When looking at creating a new iPad application, our agency partners really have two options: target just the iPad or target the iPhone and the iPad.  Targeting the only the iPad should have a similar development cycle and cost as developing an application just for the iPhone. If the choice is to target both devices, there will be some design layout changes, but the core of the application will stay the same. There will also be some additional time for our crack Quality Assurance team to make sure we release a great application.

If you don’t think the iPad is going anywhere, I present Steve Ballmer.

Then again, if you think Apple is infallible, I present the iPod Hi-Fi.

Either way, The Nerdery is ready to help you create great applications, no matter the platform.

Friday Links: How Much Data Americans Consume Daily

• A Small Agency’s Guide to Going Digital, Things I wish I knew 10 years ago.
• Infographic of the week: How Much Data Americans Consume Daily.
• An open letter to James Cameron from Papyrus.
• Twitter for cars: Ford tech reads your incoming tweets aloud. I hope you can choose the voice. Because I want Jeremy Irons to read all my tweets.
• Dream Captcha (props to @gillianr for the link)
• Congrats to Pat Fallon who’ll be inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in March.
• When clients take too much design control.
• MyFonts’ Top 10 fonts of 2009.

Friday Links: Understanding designers, holiday newsletter MadLibs, and more greatness

• The 10 Commandments of Brand.
• Must See! Infographic showing browser share from 2002-2009.
• Evolution of Horror Movie Poster Designs from 1922-2009
• 72% Of Advertisers See More Digital Spending In 2010.
• It’s been awhile since I’ve pointed out a stunningly beautiful print ad campaign, so take a gander at Words Create Worlds for a bookshop in Prague.
• Check this one out when you’re not on the billable clock, Merry Newsinator. It’s an awesome holiday e-newsletter generator that’s kind of like playing MadLibs.
• 7 rules to understanding designers.
• The World’s 10 most-successful logo designers.

Agency Primer Notes: Mobile Web Design

If you missed Tuesday’s Agency Primer on Mobile Friendly Web Design, don’t worry there’s still time to sign-up for tomorrow’s primer (that’s Thursday, December 18, at 3:15 p.m. CST). Still can’t make it? Well, we have the second best thing the slides from the primer as well as a video you can watch to go along with them. Sure you won’t be able to ask your own questions, but you know that you can always contact us if you want a live-action private session for your agency, right? Well you can.

The slide deck:

And the video:

The Nerdery’s Mobile Friendly Web Design Agency Primer from The Nerdery on Vimeo.

Agency Primer: Mobile-friendly Web Design for Agencies

This week The Nerdery continuse its series of Agency Primers with Mobile-Friendly Web Design where you can learn what you need to get your clients’ big message to the small screens of millions of on-the-go web users.

RSVP for one of our public sessions held on Tuesday December 15th at 10:15 a.m. CST or Thursday December 17th at 3:15 p.m. CST. If you’re interested in a private session, the contact information is on the RSVP page.

This primer offers a one-hour tour of the things your agency needs to know about when it comes to making your web projects mobile-friendly. We’ll cover:

• Sizing up the mobile web market.
• Understanding the difference between mobile users and “normal” users.
• Technologies available to enhance the mobile web experience.
• Common mistakes brands make in the name of mobile-friendliness.
• Example implementations and cost estimates.

Sign-up today, it’s totally free!