Being Different.
One thing competitors in the social search space had in common were very plain, very generic “Web 2.0” looking interfaces. Just being something specific can sometimes be a powerful brand differentiator. After building an identity spectrum, we were quickly able to agree specifically on how the identity should “feel”. And the name Fluther (meaning a pod of jellyfish) gave me the perfect starting point to visualize these attributes.

Interaction.
The idea? You ask a question. Fluther connects you to people with a wide range of experience on your topic. Ya’ll chat about the answer. Your profile develops, and soon you get questions from your areas of expertise.

The easiest way to understand Fluther was to use it - to ask a question. Before any wireframing, we invested some time in determining how to make understanding Fluther an easier user experience.

Interface.
Trust was central to the success of this project. iChat AV helped blur the line nicely between client and contractor (in a way email and instant messaging can’t), making our relationship feel much more like a unified development team. Decisions could be made, problems solved, in a real-time collaborative manner. Definitely a tool I plan on using more with clients.

Check it out.
So… Go. Now. Ask. Let me know what you think?

I have no idea what I was watching last night on TV, but for the first time in a long time, a 30-second spot for Kleenex of all things, captured my imagination.

(Go watch it, I’ll wait...)

Tissues = Being Sick?
Tissue branding has always been aligned with feeling crappy, dryness, misery and/or post-nasal drip. Not a good move brand-wise. Has no agency ever sat down, looked at a box of Kleenex and asked “How do we get people to connect emotionally to this product?” The answer seems so obvious, but somehow it has eluded Kimberly Clark for decades.

“But, We’re Different!”
A frequent mistake for companies desperate to differentiate within their space, is to make their message about competition. Tissue ads seem to be exclusively about how soft they are, how thick they are, how plentiful they are, how soothing their lotion is, etc… They can’t see the difference between “Why we’re better” and “Why you should care”. By asking “Why should anybody care?” JWT was able to look at this mundane product with new eyes. In branding, those are the moments I live for.

Let It Out
“Tissue facilitates emotional release.” What a concept? No, really! And if you understand the psychology of empathy in branding, you’ll appreciate how powerful these spots can actually be. Yes the commercial is filled with pappy sentimental dialogue and music. It’s not the execution of the spot as much as the idea behind the campaign that gets me so excited.

raineer Hosted on Zooomr

Zooomr.com is photosharing for grown-ups. You won’t find a lot of Help or FAQ’s on this “beta” site, but you will find a superior way to upload, organize and share your photos online. Just think flickr but better, and free.

5 things I like about Zooomr:

Zooomr is easy.
While still in “beta”, Zooomr’s interface is well organized, fast and easy to use. Sign-up is a cinch, and thanks to jUploadr getting your photos online is equally simple. I’m hoping to see an update to the interface however, when it finds its way out of beta.

Zooomr is cool.
At the ripe old age of 18, creator Kristopher Tate is giving photosharing giant flickr.com, a run for its money. I got to meet Kris, and Evangelist & CEO Thomas Hawk, in Seattle last October. These are 2 smart guys who understand you don’t compete by being first, you do it by being better.

Zooomr is global.
Translated into 17 languages Zooomr is available to almost everyone, everywhere. And versitile geo-tagging allows you to pinpoint precisely where your photos were taken, and see other peoples’ photos that were taken in the same area, etc…

Zooomr is smart.
Smart Sets is one of the coolest features of Zooomr. Rather than manually building and organizing your photo sets (ugh), you can use tags (among other things) to build dynamically updating sets from your photos, other peoples’ photos, or both.

Zooomr is free!
Bloggers (or rather, anyone with a blog) can get a 4GB Pro account for free, just follow these simple instructions.

New features and improvements are already underway for 2007 - most exciting is “Marketplace”, a channel for selling your images ala iStockphoto.com (although, I expect it will be nothing like iStock). So go check out Zooomr now!

Auckland, New Zealand
Austin, Texas
Chicago, Illinois
Christchurch, New Zealand
Cozumel, Mexico
Ft. Collins, Colorado
Key Largo, Florida
Los Angeles, California (twice)
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Nassau, Bahamas
Orange County, California
Phoenix, Arizona
Queenstown, New Zealand
Roatan, Honduras
San Francisco California
Seattle, Washington (twice)
Wellington, New Zealand

Here are some pics from a mental health break I took just last month (desktops are on their way!). Where did you go for work or fun this year?

Also, thank you to everyone who reads and contributes to my website. And a VERY special thanks to Cat Morley, who was the first person ever to link to my site wayyyyyyyy back in February (gosh, that seems like forever ago). Cat’s having a much more sobering New Year’s Eve than I plan on having. Thank you Cat, and everyone else who’s helped make this site successful. Have a happy and safe New Year! Cheers!

Attn: Albuquerqueans… don’t forget about ABQ’s first ever Barcamp this Saturday (11/11/06). This year I got to localize the Barcamp logo for Albuquerque and design the t-shirt. I’ll also be presenting something called Color Profiles for the Web at the “un-conference”. I’ll be sure to post my presentation here next week sometime. So, on to the details from Clearwired:

WHEN
We’re planning an ABQ Barcamp to take place on 11/11/2006 from 9am-4:30pm. Learn more about ABQ Barcamp and the host...

SCOPE
The scope encompasses any topics related to the web—Design (visual, experience, information architecture), Technology (infrastructure, programming), projects you’re working on. Come share your stuff!

LOCATION
After looking at different venues and having them fall through and others not quite up to task (wireless connectivity), we decided to fall back on on Plan B, the Clearwired Office: SEE MAP—on the second floor in SW corner of the building.

WHAT IS BARCAMP??? (From barcamp.org)
BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

When you come, be prepared to share with barcampers.
When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world.

NO SPECTATORS, ONLY PARTICIPANTS
Attendees must give a demo, a session, or help with one, or otherwise volunteer / contribute in some way to support the event. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall. The people present at the event will select the demos or presentations they want to see.

Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present.

More details are available here:

http://barcamp.org/BarCampAlbuquerque

The Mayor even gave a brief speech before hastily joining the more than 1,000 “Aqua-thirsty” Mac fanatics who showed up before noon today for free t-shirts, and a glimpse at the wall-to-wall stainless steel retail behemoth.

Kelly Robinson, an Albuquerque web developer, was first in line having guaranteed his position by showing up at 8:30 PM the night before.

I stopped by just after breakfast and shot for a while. Ran into many local Creatives and Developers, including the guys from Clearwired, as well as Sam Maclay and Tim McGrath from 3 Advertising.

The store is phenominal. Similar to the ones I’ve visited in other cities with one HUGE diffference… it’s 10 minutes from my house. Needless to say (and yet here I am saying it) I’m thrilled it’s here - not only for the convenience factor, but because it serves as a shining beacon, reminding us all that Albuquerque is a city moving forward when it comes to technology and design. (Cue the white doves!!!)

And now some silly pics:

Mac-O-Lantern.

The good Mayor, Martin Chávez.

Also in attendance, the Four Horsemen of the Appaccolypse. An Apple store in Albuquerque is certainly a sign the end is indeed nigh.

The guys from Clearwired.

Tim McGrath of 3 Advertising, shoots back with his handy “USB enabled” Polaroid 420 Automatic Land Camera.

The Sub-Zero™ freezer where they keep inventory and many of the employees between shifts.

The new 88” MacBook Pros.

I’ve just returned from Seattle where I met with 6 other bloggers and Getty Images, the world’s largest stock photography company. It was my first opportunity like this since launching my blog in January. Describing the guest list as “humbling” would be an understatement.

Robert Scoble - PodTech.net, Buzz Bruggeman - Buzznovations, Marshall Kirkpatrick - TechCrunch, Thomas Hawk - Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection, Kristopher Tate - Zooomr and Latthanapon “Ponzi” Indharasophang - Lockergnome

A huge “thank you” to Getty Images and Edelman PR for including me.

It was awesome.

From the schedule, I’d expected to be spending some real time with my sleeves rolled up, checking out some of the exciting initiatives Getty currently has under development. The day turned out to be a little more “press-junkety” and a little less “hands on testing” than I’d anticipated. Getting to provide feedback at this level to a company whose brand I’m so familiar with (as a designer) was an amazing opportunity however.

The day began with opening remarks from Getty’s top Executives. The contrast between Johnathan Klein (Co-founder and CEO of Getty Images) and Bruce Livingstone (Founder and CEO of iStockphoto) was startling, but it was also immediately clear to me that these two gentlemen were cut from the same cloth (if perhaps a few decades apart).

Questions and discussion revolved around the changing nature of both: digital image consumption, and Getty’s strategy with this year’s acquisition of iStockphoto.

Robert suggests companies like flickr and zooomr are providing talented independents like Thomas Hawk a “foot in the door” with commercial and editorial consumers, potentially shaving some margin from Getty. Robert and Buzz both offered advice on how Getty Images, the largest and most prestigious provider of photographic imagery in the world, could continue to innovate by being more like photo-sharing sites.

Kudos to Getty for being open to such feedback, but personally I don’t think social web apps and monetizing traffic are silver bullets for every market challenge. It’s clear that Getty will have to innovate to maintain its dominance and continue to grow, but I would be looking at the kinds of things Channel9 is doing (rather than companies like flickr and zooomr) to create evangelists within it’s customer base.

Even with recent events, I can’t imagine Getty diluting their brand by going after too many additional revenue streams (read: turning into a Veer). At least I hope they don’t. To me this is Getty’s Brand. Not this. Plus, iStockphoto already has the potential to capture these additional streams built in, and they’re already doing it for less and in some cases better, than Veer.

So how can Getty innovate? I see Getty’s key areas for innovation in the streamlining of licensing, contracts, workflow - really making every aspect of company more usable for Creatives, Journalists and contributing photographers. Not as sexy a solution perhaps as Web 2.0, but for people working under tight deadlines, and who compete by the quality of their work, it doesn’t need to be.

We did get to see some very exciting things Getty’s working on, but I can’t talk about those quite yet. A tour of the facility included the server room, housing the entire image collection. An amazing sight. Visiting their Creative department brought back the excitement and energy of working in such an environment. The floors and walls were simply littered with thumbnails, comps, stacks of photos… Imagine having their entire collection at your disposal. That’s what the designers and editors of Getty’s Edit Magazine have at their finger tips everyday.

After an exhausting day, I had an opportunity to have a few beers with Bruce Livingstone. He shared some inspiring stories with me of how he got to be where is now. “It was never the plan”, he said. What came through with each anecdote were his singular passion, talent and charisma. He’s controversial, but whether you like him or not, you can’t help but respect his genuineness.

Speaking of photo-sharing, if you haven’t checked it out yet, you need to get yourself a zooomr account (server may be down). More on them very soon…

Client: “We really like Apple’s branding. Can you do something like that for us?”
Designer: “I love what Apple is doing too, but your company’s a Mortuary?”

Often when I’m hired to do identity design, I’m given direction like, “Make it look Web 2.0-ish” or “Can you make it look really clean?” or “We really like red. All of our competitors are using it.”

Without some kind of roadmap, the conversation inevitably revolves around personal preferences regarding color, typography and what competitors are doing.

An Identity Spectrum gives everyone involved a common vocabulary for talking about how an identity should feel. What attributes should it convey and to what degree? It attempts to take something very subjective (an identity), and in some small way, measure it. It doesn’t serve as a Bible, but rather a starting point. A point of origin better than just our personal preferences.

Together, we plot 5 or 6 different points between different pairs of attributes on a chart. This helps us to quantify abstract concepts like “Conservative”, “Global” or “High-Tech”.

Identity Spectrums should be quick. They are impressionistic. When I’m deciding what goes on either end, I’m careful to make the attributes as neutral as possible. That is, I try not to put something inherently negative on one side, and inherently positive on the other. Imagine how you would plot this sample chart differently were you doing it for Walmart, John Deer, a funeral home or your company? What different attributes might you use?

Before presenting initial concepts, I like to review the Spectrum with the client. It helps everybody remember what we are trying to accomplish, and focuses the discussion more on how the identity is functioning to support our roadmap, and less on what we like and don’t like. I’ve found it to be pretty handy.

You literally can’t take a bad picture there (unless you forget to remove your lens cap). There were approximately 200 balloons in this morning’s Mass Ascension. They all launch side by side, and spectators are given free reign of the take off field. So you can pretty much walk right up to them, between them and even under them as they launch.

I’ve made a desktop from one of my favorite pics. If you like it, please feel free to download it (no “Mark Bixby” logos or anything).

SIZES:
2560x1600 (<-- Now in "Veerle" size)
1920x1200 (<-- 24" iMacs)
1690x1050
1600x1200
1440x900 (<-- MacBook Pro too!)
1280x1024
1280x800 (<-- DarthBook!)
1024x768

You can see a bunch more in my flickr.com photo stream.

Okay, back to work!

Sundial is a sweet one developed by the prodigious minds over at Clearwired. As with any great widget, it does one thing, and it does it really well.  Sundial allows you to log time directly to your Basecamp Plus or Premium account.

We’ve upgraded our MethodArts Basecamp account to Plus (from Free) to take advantage of time tracking (as well as file sharing, and a few other features that I think are really going to make Basecamp worth the investment ).

A few notes on using Sundial 1.0:
If you use multiple Basecamp accounts, simply create a separate instance of Sundial from the Dashboard widget bar.

You can also jump directly to your Basecamp account from the widget by double clicking on any time entry.

And most importantly, take note of the tasty little icon in your Dashboard widget bar (yeah, ok I designed it).

Speaking of Killer Apps, you should also check out Icon Builder by the Icon Factory. Makes exporting all sizes from Photoshop an absolute breeze.