Just great. My favorite part has to be the Tetris building.
We work with a number of leading fashion brands, so we are always looking for insights that can inform our work. This post focuses on a few trends we are following in the world of online fashion.
Some pundits have posed the question: Why do anyone need this thing? Indeed, even those of you are lining up and standing outside stores may be wondering, Why am I doing this? Why am I lining up like a zombie for an expensive piece of consumer electronics, a product for which there is no shortage and which, let’s face it, nobody really needs? Back in the early days of our design process, Jonny Ive came in to see me and we spent a long time trying to decide where on Mazlow’s triangle this product would sit. Because we knew if we couldn’t be way up above the very top of that pyramid, floating above it, totally outside the needs it describes, then this wouldn’t be a product we wanted to make. Some of our early iterations, in fact, had to be tossed out because when we looked at them we realized that parts of them were too, well, necessary. Don’t get me wrong. That’s fine for other companies. It’s just not what we do here at Apple.
And that’s just a quote. Read the entire glorious letter here.
“Brand” is one of those words that makes me cringe, because I hear it repeatedly misused and abused. So it was refreshing to read this in a New York Times interview with Debra L. Lee, the CEO of BET Networks:
So we sat back and for a couple of years we really went through a process of asking ourselves what we wanted BET to be, and out of that came what we call our brand. We decided we wanted to inspire our audience, we wanted to elevate them, we wanted to respect them, but we also wanted to entertain them. It’s helped me as the C.E.O. because I’m clear in terms of where we’re going.
Now that is a brand.
Yes, we believe that all clients deserve a Bill of Rights. But sometimes they also need to hear how they can sound:
Dearest clients, it’s funny because it’s (sometimes) true.
Last weekend Mike K. and I attended the first ever SMartCamp, a conference focusing on the social web and its relationship to the arts. It was a good conference with speakers from some of the main players at the intersection of the arts and technology, including Etsy, Threadless, and of course, MoMA. However, there were also quite a few speakers that were new to me. Here were some of the ones that I noted:
Michelle Shildkret: runs the Social Marketing Team for Cake US. In a world where every other person suddenly is an expert in social media, it was refreshing to hear from someone who actually has deep experience and knowledge about the subject.
Nancy Proctor and Titus Bicknell: Spoke eloquently about museums and the increasing role that technology (particularly mobile) is playing within them. Nancy is Head of New Media at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and manages MuseumMobile.info.
Yancey Strickler/Kickstarter: I was already familiar with Kickstarter, but Yancey provided one of the more memorable metrics: Kickstarter projects that reach 25% of their funding have a 92% chance of being fully funded. (The insight being that once the 25% mark is reached, their is enough built-in community support to reach the goal).
Art.sy: I missed the presentation of this startup, but like the name implies, looks like an Etsy-type model for artists. Nice.
Jen Bekman/20×200: Again, I was already familiar with 20×200 and Jen Bekman Projects, but this was my first time hearing Jen speak. The clarity of her vision and focus was impressive.
Saul Colt: Not sure if he is actually the smartest man in the world, but surely one of the funniest. Seems to know quite a bit about metrics and communities too.
But that said, perhaps my favorite slide of the entire conference came from artist Natasha Westcoat, whose enthusiasm and honesty was infectious. Here is her advice:
- Be fearless of consequences
- Break all the rules
- Tweet whatever you want
- Try everything
- Learn from all you can
- THEN make a plan
If you’d like a general recap of the conference, then there is a good one at JustJon Online.
Finally, here is a really beautiful short film done for MoMA called I See.
Successful digital marketing is a living, breathing activity. This can’t be understated for luxury real estate. Gone are the days when websites functioned solely as a glorified digital billboard. Other industries have realized this fact, however some real estate marketers and developers still seem to be a few years behind. We are trying to help change that attitude.
The most successful luxury real estate websites speak to the different states of user awareness: Unaware > First Time Visitor > Regular Visitor > Engaged Visitor. These awareness states influence the life cycle of a website.
Understanding how a luxury real estate website should grow and change over time helps us better design it to drive users towards becoming fully engaged and therefore, more valuable.
Over the years we’ve noticed that there are common questions clients repeatedly ask us. And you know what? They should. These are questions that are not in the world of everyday knowledge. They are things that, as experts, we’ve learned because we had to. Often they are things that are annoying or frustrating (to us and our clients) but they are things we have to live with. As such, we often find ourselves in the situation of trying to explain some technical nuance while our clients stare at us, bewildered, with an expression like “what the heck are they talking about and how did they get to be such nerds?” So rather than continuing to keep these things in our heads, we thought they might make for a good ongoing series of articles in our blog.
Client FAQ #1:
Why do colors look different on different monitors?
Ah, the classic web design question. Most clients are used to the world of print design and things like Pantone chips. You choose a Pantone color, and that’s the color. The people at Pantone spent a lot of time figuring this out.
Unfortunately things are not so easy in the world of the web. This is because the majority of computer and tv monitors are not color calibrated (calibration are methods to make colors consistent). Just think how easy it is to change the brightness or contrast on your monitor. When you do this, you are also changing the color. Ever notice how, when you look at someone else’s computer monitor, you sometimes think “wow her monitor is so dark” (or bright), or the colors just look weird. No calibration. Or, have you ever walked into an electronics store and seen all the TV’s for sale, and noticed how the colors looked a bit different on each one? Same issue. Almost all computer monitors are like this, and there is just no way to get accurate color rendering.
We just launched a new site for VC firm J. Christopher Capital. Many of their investments have become household names in the luxury sector including Jawbone, Voss and Tory Burch. Our goal from the beginning was to evoke the company’s guiding principles: bringing innovative and disruptive products to the consumer. Notice that no loading bar is needed despite the highly interactive design. Also, it’s just really fun to play with, so give it a try.