Etch A Sketch, the classic children’s toy made by Ohio Art, met the phrase, “any press is good press” face-to-face last month when Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign aide Eric Fehrnstrom related Romney’s political positions to an Etch A Sketch. “Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign,” said Fehrnstrom. “Everything...
Instagram, “the future of startups,” as coined by Business Insider in September 2011, was purchased on April 9th for $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares by Facebook, forming a powerhouse of photo sharing. Instagram launched in iPhone’s App Store on October 6, 2010 and grew so quickly on the first day that co-founders Kevin...
If you have worked as a graphic designer for any length of time, you may have heard a few terms thrown around by your clients as they critique your work. You have tried your best to present a well-executed and thoughtfully designed piece and your client says, “It looks nice, but it needs a more, pizzazz. Can you jazz...
Word of mouth has always been the best advertiser; people are more willing to try a new brand, a new restaurant or a new service based on their friends' advice. Social media takes word of mouth beyond conversations over the water cooler and to the internet, and the widest social network a person likely has.
Pinterest.com has been around since 2010. But it has only recently exploded in popularity once being discovered by the do-it-yourself crowd and given a boost with $37 million in funding. But what is Pinterest, and why is it quickly joining the ranks of other top social media sites?
When I was a design student, we'd take tours of design studios. At the end of the tour we were offered a question and answer period. One question was asked again and again, "Do you do things by hand or on the computer?" Why was this asked over and over? Why was the question phrased as if the two...
Abigail Smith is an award-winning graphic designer who specializes in web applications and digital environments. Since 2002, she has worked with a host of arts and non-profit organizations from her home base in Brooklyn, NY. She's shared a collection of some attention grabbing humanitarian campaigns with us.
Subjectivity is the curse of design, and designers. Fortunately there’s a valuable, but often overlooked phase in the design process that can remedy this situation - testing. Testing provides designers a chance to see which design solutions will potentially work best. Testing also provides a counter balance to one of the biggest traps designers face – selecting designs based...
Yves Béhar is a visionary. Founder of fuseproject, a San Francisco based design agency, Béhar aims to break into new markets and disrupt old ones by bringing a humanistic approach to his work. You may remember him for the world’s first $100 laptop for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization.
Customers. Audiences. Users. People. However you describe them, they are the reason that businesses and organizations exist, and ultimately they determine whether an organization succeeds or fails in the marketplace. As more and more organizations look to design for strategic advantage, a greater emphasis is being put on understanding how design motivates audiences. When combined with business analysis,...
