Morning class surprise? Thanks Red Bull.
Specifics: Walked into my 9:30 class today to find Red Bull cans velcro-ed to the bottom of every seat. Some of the desks were pulled out with clever cards sitting on them like the one shown above. Genius. Good job, Red Bull Marketing crew.
The things we make, make us.
In my opinion, Jeep hit a home run with this campaign for the new Grand Cherokee. Even the website is stunningly designed. There were some great minds behind this and I applaud them, wherever they are. Because if you didn’t want a Jeep before, it’s hard not to want one now. And that’s when you know a campaign is good.
Step 1: Find a random junk poster
Step 2: “borrow” it
Step 3: Design a new one
Step 4: re-post new poster where old one was before
Totally awesome. Learn more about the project here
The Bearded Summer
Girl’s Point of view (Sara): There is a phenomenon occurring in the Midwest and it has to do with two things: men and experiments with facial hair. Do not be alarmed if after an absence of one or two weeks you come back to find your best guy friend or latest main squeeze with a grizzly beard or a “God Bless America” stache. Is there a reason behind this trend? Are men trying to appear more manly in a society that is constantly “threatening their manhood”? Has the Indie rocker grunge look hit middle America? One can only wonder why men would want to cover their face in thick pube-like hair in the middle of this humid, thick-aired summer.
Man’s point of view (PJ): This isn’t a very new phenomenon for me. I’ve been leaving my facial hair to go untamed for years now and nobody but my grandmother has noticed or cared. My question is, does this matter? Do these men have personalities? I have a beard. And if you’ve been in the room with me for more than ten minutes you know I also have no personality. I’ll submit that it may be more important to look for a trend in your “best guy friend” or “main squeeze” offering up his opinion about the state of social values or the intellectual bankruptcy of summer television programming. Where is our value if instead of “men are pursuing the various works of Emerson and discussing the unrealistic and insane ideology of Ayn Rand” all we have to say is “guys are growing their fuzz like they’ve always been able to do”? Why is the natural so surprising or interesting all of a sudden? Please, crack open a freaking book that isn’t “Twilight” this month and realize what we’ve all been missing while hiding our faces behind the hair.
“ Love your experiments. Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day ”
Bruce Mau
Ramblings of an Interactive Junkie
I have such a love/hate relationship with sites like the one linked above. On one hand, I think when they are executed effectively, they are genius. They allow you to create a fully functional personal website with just a few clicks and design decisions.
However, I also feel like these sites are a way of cheating the system. All the hard work is done for you. The hours upon hours of coding, re-coding, re-coding, then browser testing are completely bypassed.
How are you supposed to learn what an extremely complex process creating a website can be if all the “dirty” work is done for you? Sure, some employers will not know the difference and for a quick solution these sites work great, but I think that if you want to work in the World of Interactive… you should at least take a stab at html/css once in your life. It’s only fair. What’s the worst that could happen? You fail? As stated in Weiden Kennedy’s offices in Portland, “Fail Hard.” Through failure comes success.
A graphic designer friend once told me that you should always design a site without thinking about how it will be coded, and then figure the tough stuff out after. That way you are designing without limitations. That being said, I think having a basic knowledge of how coding works is definitely beneficial for anyone working in Interactive.
No matter if you work in-house and only edit simple aspects in CMS, at an agency on the account side never touching the inwards of a site, or spend your days designing sites leaving the coding to the techies, I believe you need to try it out so you can develop an appreciation for how hard the process actually is.
Maybe you will dread every second of the process, but in the end you will have something to show for all of your hard work and hopefully, have a better understanding of what goes into making a fully functional website starting from a blank canvas (sort-to-speak).
Updated response list as to “Why America Rocks…”
New additions include “chicken nuggets” and “super good at futbol”
“For those who like living life in the fast lane”
This project by Volkswagen is genius… and fun. Learn more about it here: http://bit.ly/d3k1hz
