This is complete genius; Bill DeRouchey an information architect at Ziba design has a blog called History Of The Button. And it's just that, it's detailed, imaginative (and slightly obsessive) thinking about one of the things most of us mostly ignore, just the stuff I love.
(And if you've never seen what Ziba did for Umpqua Bank you should check it out.)
I've been sitting on this for ages trying to think of something smart I can add, but frankly I've got nothing. So I'll humbly link to these genius bits of advice from Mack and retreat to work on my idea velocity.
If this post was a pie chart the biggest slice (probably red) would be 'parental pride'. Then there'd be a biggish yellow slice of 'here's an interesting thing a friend of mine did', a thin blue slice of 'actually this would be a tremendous way to present qualitative research' and a pink slivver of 'aahhh'.
Stefan (you must remember Stefan) has been working on a children's book about monsters. And since he doesn't possess a child unit of his own he sent me some pdfs and asked me to show them to Arthur. I think he was hoping for some written feedback. But, since I'm a lazy tyke, I thought it would be easier just to talk Arthur through the book, record his reactions and send the mp3s to Stefan. Which I duly did and Stefan seemed very happy.
Right now, Stefan's looking for a publisher for said book and one of his contacts asked to hear some of that conversation. And Stefan, being an irresistible designer, built a lovely little webpage with an edit of the audio and some pages from the book. I think it's brilliant, but I'm biased. I also think it'd be a fantastic way to do a qualitative research debrief. If you're a fan of books check it out, if you're a publisher, publish it.
Paul has raved to me a couple of times about how perfectly written and observed comfortable disorientation is. But I'd never checked it out until this evening. And he's right. It's brilliant. This post, chosen almost at random, is typically lovely.
This is a very good idea. Various writers are auctioning off the fictional names in various books on behalf of the First Amendment Project. For example, Chris Ware is offering: "The appearance in name and approximate drawn likeness, either as a 'supporting character' or more forthright personna, of the auction's 'winner' in an upcoming comic strip by the author/cartoonist, to appear sometime before the end of 2008 in serial (probably newspaper) form, and later to be reprinted in collected form at an unspecified, and probably quite alarmingly later, date." And Douglas Preston is offering: "Want to get killed? The winning bidder's name will be immortalized as a character who dies or is murdered in my next novel, to be published in 2008. The name you choose cannot be my name or the name of any character in a previous novel. I'll need to have written permission to use the name. I'd be happy to discuss with the winning bidder my plans for the hideous death of the character in question, and I'm always willing to listen to any ideas, although naturally the final decision as to the character and his or her fate will be my own. A signed first edition copy of the published book is part of the deal."
Excellent idea. Advertising could do something like this. We use fictional names all the time in ads and stuff.
Via Neil Gaiman, who explains the genesis of the whole thing here.
Jason's just written a bunch of great stuff: Why don't agencies blog? A great find on Comedy Soup. Some failure. Hurrah.
Jon Howard does a fantastic round-up on Living Brands of posts worth reading every month. He's been kind enough to feature me in there. And up until about 30 seconds ago I was just pleased. It's a flattering thing and a smart service for all us blog readers.
But now I've suddenly realised it's just another hurdle to clear. I've got to write posts, build traffic, increase my technorati ranking, earn a living, go for runs, do press-ups, write a book, be a Dad, and, and, write something good enough for Jon every month. Blimey. Too much pressure man.
This is the perfect t-shirt product for planners. (I wish we'd done this. But don't worry we're working on cool products for planners.)
Anyway, you know how planners always go on about people defining themselves through their media choices and interests. T-lists makes this process very public. Genius. And it taps into that thing you always see with research respondents - they're always desperate to see what categories you put them in.
My only problem is I'm taking forever to decide what I want to put on the 'interests' t-shirt. Because obviously I'm trying to look cool, which involves not looking like I'm trying to look cool. Which involves carefully managing my appearance of authenticity. Which is always tricky. But necessary.
Give me another couple of days. I'll get it right. One question - if I put 'lego' as an interest; cool or not? How about syndrums? HotWheels? Bacon?
I've been thinking for a while that I should point you all at City Of Sound because it's such a brilliant place for thinking and stimulus. And now the perfect opportunity has come up. This post is a collection of City Of Sound's greatest hits. And they're all well worth reading. Honestly. All of them.
