Did Someone Say Tangerine Tango?
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Spring is in the air, the flowers are blooming and the weather has turned from crisp and cool to a slight warm breeze — ahhh San Francisco. It’s also the time of year when thoughts of Pantone’s fall colors dance through every designer and artist’s head. Think of it like that unopened box of colored pencils on your desk just begging to be opened. A glimpse of this fall’s hottest colors brings inspiration and endless possibilities to our work.

This fall boasts versatile neutrals and bold, spirited hues that create a well-balanced palette. Retro colors like Tangerine Tango (the color of the year) and Pink Flambe bring a vivacious, flirty feel to visuals. Meanwhile, when paired together, Olympian Blue and French Roast offer sophistication and sensibility. Pantone’s fall color choices have something for everyone!

For a more in-depth look at this fall’s colors, check out Pantone/Fashion + Home

Movies for Your Ears
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On my long daily commute, NPR is a godsend. But sometimes straight news and music get old. Enter a new radio drama series called The Truth, whose creators are producing short audio stories with smart ideas, original scripts and talented actors playing the roles. “Tape Delay” in particular captures the horrors and hilarity of dating and seeing (hearing) yourself as you really are.

In terms of engagement, what can simple old audio fiction do that a visually explosive HD blockbuster can’t? The answer is: ask us to participate. Audio fiction requires the audience to fill in the visual blanks with our imaginations, much like books do. Let it be a reminder to those of us in the business of grabbing attention. In a world of surround sound, exclamation points and flashing banners, simplicity and understatement—avoiding sense saturation—may stand out most of all.

Which Came First—UX or UI?
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It’s a question that has plagued many designers and developers over time—I still find myself getting into heated debates over it. While it’s important for a website or app to look stellar, it’s equally important for it to function well and provide a seamless experience for the user.

We’ve all encountered poorly organized websites. You know the ones: you click on what you think is a button and nothing happens, all because someone decided it would be cool to use the same color as the active links elsewhere, leaving users lost over where they can click. Or there’s the dreaded app that requires ten touches or swipes to download a song or post a comment. While the UI may have been brilliantly designed, there was clearly a lack of UX planning behind the scenes.

So which did come first? For years we’ve been designing magazine-worthy user interfaces without a whisper of the letters UX. Often, user experience seems to be an afterthought—and it isn’t until countless emails from frustrated developers flood the inbox with 25 questions about what happens after x, y and z do we realize that hey, maybe we should have thought through the UX a little more carefully.

The moral of the story is: it really doesn’t matter which came first. There is no UI without a clearly planned UX—every interface needs to make sense and be aesthetically pleasing.

This feature presentation by Kai Brunner is a humorous look at the UX vs. UI conundrum.

The Mechanics of Creativity 


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Last week I caught an NPR feature on the new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer. How to foster creativity and innovation in the workplace is a hot topic, and not just for creative agencies. Businesses across the board are seeing the value of employees who can solve problems in innovative ways.

According to Lehrer, a relaxed, safe and positive environment is key to promoting creativity. Almost as important is the ability to get distance from the problem or project at hand. For that reason, sitting at our desks for long stretches straining over a problem may not be the best way to find a solution. Most of us have probably gotten a great idea laying in bed half asleep, on a walk or in the shower. The common denominators? Distance from the project at hand and relaxation.

There is a scientific explanation for why distancing ourselves may help us solve problems. The paper Lessons from a Faraway land: The Effect of Spatial Distance on Creative Cognition asserts that we mentally construe objects that are psychologically near in low-level, detailed and contextualized ways; whereas at a distance we construe the same objects in high-level, abstract, and stable ways. Need an idea? 
Time for a walk or a shower.

Thoughts on Mobile Payments
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It seems like every year there is a proclamation that this will be the year of mobile, and every year there are large industry gains but never quite to the level of what was predicted. Everyone has seen the charts about the growth of mobile phones (5.3 billion phones worldwide), apps and mobile web traffic. Those numbers are impressive and show tremendous growth, but which trends will stick? Augmented reality is a cool concept in practice but does the mobile user really derive a benefit? Will AR be here for the long haul?

Location-based messaging was hot in 2011 and was going to be the next big thing, allowing marketers to deliver personalized offers to users. That’s another great technology with tremendous benefits for the consumer, but can it overcome the “big brother” factor of identifying where the user is located?

The mobile technology that I find intriguing and that ultimately has the greatest consumer benefit is mobile payments. The mobile industry has been talking about this a lot in the last few years. Now that the payment industry is beginning to get more interested and more phones are starting to be equipped with payment technology (NFC, Google Wallet, and there is a rumor that Apple is working payment technology into their iOS), it feels like this technology is ready to finally be relevant and take off. There are still some hurdles at the POS, however — you have been able to buy your coffee at Starbucks with your phone for a while now. Just think about extending that to everything you do — groceries, restaurants, taxis, etc. The marketer benefit is as good as the consumer benefit, with retailers able to drive offers using personalization. Ultimately the success of mobile payments will be determined by how easy it is for the consumer to use and how accessible the technology is. Here is one consumer who is looking forward to that day.

Gaultier Exhibit Upcoming at San Francisco’s deYoung
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Those looking for inspiration this spring or summer should take in the dynamic multimedia exhibit The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, which will focus on the other-worldy creations of fashion’s “enfant terrible.” Despite never having receiving formal training as a designer, Gaultier’s decadent designs are known around the world for their creativity, outrageousness and their play on pop culture and traditional gender roles.

Running March 24 through August 19, the exhibition will include 140 haute couture and prêt-à-porter designs created between the 1970s and 2010. For the exhibition, Gaultier partnered with the Montreal theater company Ubu Compagnie de Création to design 30 animated mannequins.

New Facebook Ads Target Mobile Users
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When clients invest in Facebook fan pages they want to see their “Insights” stats climbing in the upward direction daily — and at a healthy pace. Growing the page followers organically by posting fresh, relevant content daily is a no-brainer. Unfortunately, that does not always produce the quick results clients want to see. Investing in Facebook ads to increase your reach is one method of growing a brand page. The social networking goliath has just announced a new mobile ad offering — “Premium on Facebook — this week at its first marketing conference to serve ads to its 425 million mobile users in a tactic to monetize a key revenue source.

Mega brands like Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Macy’s, who invest in Facebook ads to increase their already huge followings, will be able to extend their reach by paying to put their campaigns in news feeds. While brands may give this the thumbs up to increase their “likes”, it could potentially annoy users. In the past, the text ads were always on the right side of the page. If you wanted to ignore them, you could. The new ads can also appear when logging off your account on your mobile device. So which is it for you, thumbs up or thumbs down? For users who don’t like what they are seeing in their feed, they can now let the company know. For brands trying to broaden their reach via social networking, they can engage with their customers and have a conversation about what they’re selling.

Crazy for Pinterest

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The social media world is abuzz with the media wonder Pinterest, founded in 2008. It’s the latest and greatest in the social media realm — a visually-pleasing “virtual pinboard” of photos, videos, and comments on various topics of interest; organized by users like you and me. Being a visual person, my boards are filled with eye candy galore: branding, information graphics, beautiful packaging, fashion, mouthwatering foods, travel destinations and pretty much anything else that catches my designer eye. In the process of playing on our virtual pinboards, users are also generating buzz and increasing traffic for brands like Whole Foods and Etsy, just by linking our pins to their websites.
 
So why all the fuss? Traffic, traffic, traffic! Pinterest attracts more traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined. It’s growing like crazy and if you haven’t started using it, you should really consider asking for an invite. It could just help you or your company increase traffic — and potentially — business.

Global Pecha Kucha Week 2/20–2/26
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Just as open mic night is a chance for the urban poet to read aloud and twitter a window for the aspiring blogger to write, so is International Pecha Kucha Week an opportunity for creatives to show their work and network with like minds.

Next week, in 474 cities around the world, Pecha Kucha nights will commence utilizing the 20 x 20 presentation model — 20 images shown for 20 seconds each, to keep ideas and conversation moving. The event is a tradition devised in Tokyo in February of 2003 by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham Architecture. Their goal was to provide a venue in which young designers could meet, network and show their work publicly.

Job searchers, new converts, veteran designers—don’t miss your opportunity. Restrictions beget art. Interactivity is everything. Find your city and meet your kind.

Not your Mom & Dad’s Super Bowl Advertising
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The Super Bowl advertising landscape is a different frontier than it once was. Ads now cost an average of $3.5 million for a 30-second spot—up from $37.5k in 1967.They are also estimated to reach over 111 million viewers in 2012 compared to over 24 million viewers in 1967.

The numbers are interesting, but what has changed in the last 45 years aside from cost and the number of viewers? The biggest change has occurred in the last few years as a result of mobile phone and social media advancements. To give you an idea of the dramatic shift, nearly half of the 70 Super Bowl advertisers this year put their spots online in the days leading up to the game—a significant increase from last year when only a handful of spots were released ahead of time. Bluefin Lab also tracked 12.2 million social media comments during the Super Bowl, which is a 578% increase from 2011. Plus, mobile apps like Shazam were being featured during the halftime show and in commercials to engage consumers with free and exclusive content like never before.

What does this mean for the future? The drive to engage the audience not only via TV but in the real world and on the second screen (mobile, tablet, PC) will only increase in the years to come. The incremental cost to have a fully integrated campaign across multiple channels is minimal compared to the $3.5M for 30 seconds of air time. Plus, multi-channel engagement has the potential to leave a longer lasting impression with consumers than a 30-second TV spot. If brands and agencies aren’t thinking of creative ways to engage their consumers using these innovative new channels going forward, they will be left behind.