Wow. Errol Morris, Philip Glass & IBM

Dan Formosa is Mr. May

Some of the ladies at Smart put together a calendar of some of the men at Smart, including our beloved Dan Formosa. Besides the men, Smart's product designs are highlighted. Download the calendar.

Benefits of a Pre-Mortem

Today I had the pleasure of seeing a panel discussion on the launch of StyleFind.com - a shopping site created and curated by InStyle editors. It was orginally the site StyleFeeder.com (original site is still up) but was acquired and re-branded as StyleFind. This is an attempt by InStyle to claim their original branded content positioning as more and more brands are heading in this direction, as well as take advantage of the e-commerce potential.

One interesting take-away from the panel was a comment from the moderator, Martha Nelson, Editorial Director of Time Inc. which was a "Pre-Mortem" exercise that she implemented at the beginning of the project. It involved imagining and visualizing that the launch was unsuccessful and discussing what were the mistakes that led them to their demise. This allows the team to exorcise their fears and worries about what might go wrong and it identified 16 potential pitfalls that they should be mindful to avoid. She then assigned each issue to a member of the team so that they could monitor them throughout the process. Thought it was a very positive, proactive way of handling the negative.

Ted Talk : Gunter Pauli

Here is the link for the video I tried to iterate tonight in class.

Hope you enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmtIXjekGAk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Starbuck's new "I'm a greedy pig" trenta size

There's a new size at Starbucks – the trenta – 31 oz to be exact. According to this graphic, the trenta is about 1 oz more than the average stomach capacity (but 1 oz less than the Big Gulp). Enjoy!

Things Real People Don't Say About Advertising

Great new site. The submissions by the tube community are better than the originals. Mob Rules! Click for more...

Logoland

Interesting if not terribly original article in the Economist: Why consumers balk at companies’ efforts to rebrand themselves

"The debate about logos reveals something interesting about power as well as passion. Much of the rage in the blogosphere is driven by a sense that “they” (the corporate stiffs) have changed something without consulting “us” (the people who really matter). This partly reflects a hunch that consumers have more power in an increasingly crowded market for goods. But it also reflects the sense that brands belong to everyone, not just to the corporations that nominally control them."

Snackrifice Yourself for Brands

PepsiCo makes fruit possible to eat, a Doritos ad outrages Catholics, and 7-Eleven shrinks its Super Big Gulp to 40 ounces.

Massimo Vignelli's 80th Birthday

Happy birthday to Massimo Vignelli, who is now 80! He is known for designing the 1972 NYC subway map, American Airlines corporate ID, and Knoll furniture catalogs and brochures. Legends like Milton Glaser and Richard Meier helped him celebrate.

#great #hash #tag #article

http://media.twitter.com/1058/science-hashtag

"There’s a lesson lurking here, but to see it, you need to scroll back up and look at the point marked “B” around midday GMT on January 5. The little bump you see there happens when Katy Perry retweets a #LessAmbitiousMovies Tweet. Now, it’s pretty amazing to see a single account cause an inflection point like that. But notice that even with 5.2 million followers, Katy Perry didn’t send #LessAmbitiousMovies into orbit again."

Amazing art direction

Just discovered the flickr page of the amazing art director, Francesco Franchi:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ffranchi/