PhotoshopDesign

I wouldn't call myself an Apple fanboy, but I like to think that I've mellowed a little bit in my old(ish) age. The face melting vitriol which I normally reserved for shiny Web 2.0 sites in beta invitation mode has been funnelled into more productive pursuits, and I feel like I'm ready to approach Apple product launches in an appropriately objective state of mind.

I wasn't excited about the launch of an Apple tablet; the fervor with which the media and wannabe tech pundits prognosticated about the exact form of the second (third, fourth?) coming of Jobs always had me puzzled. If you could predict so much about it, why was it going to be so revolutionary? It's no wonder that the product itself was a letdown -- no physically producible product could eve r have met your expectations.

But now that it's out, I can actually say that I'm excited.

I didn't think about it too much before, but seeing the iPad immediately made me realise it: we're at one of -- possibly the most -- exciting points in time since the induction of interaction design. And it doesn't even really matter what the product that Steve Jobs showed on Wednesday is like.

The iPad could be a complete failure (though I think that's almost impossible given Apple's current pedigree), but it's guaranteed that within the next two years consumer touch computing will become ubiquitous (if the iPhone hasn't already). It could be under the Apple brand or it could be someone else's, but either way that ubiquity is what has gotten me excited.

The iPhone gave us a taste of what a touch computing world could be like, but using your index finger to jack into cyberspace is the equivalent of jabbing a piano with a stick. Micr osoft's Surface gave us the first inkling of what full touch computing could be like, but the fact that you could only use one if you happened to stroll past it at a conference booth has shown that they totally dropped the ball on that one. Not to mention the fact that all applications designed for the Surface were purely there to show off touch interaction, not make something useful out of it.

The iPad, then, is the first real multi-touch platform where we get to have a go. Where developers and designers get to actually make something that people can touch, stroke, fling, twist and flick. There's still so much of this area that has yet to be explored and if you were hoping for Apple to drop a fully formed <insert revolutionary consumer gadget here> into your lap, then you totally missed the point.

The iPad will be what we make of it. And that's what Apple is counting on.

We're taking a color road trip across America.

Here are some classic colors from 1950's & 1960's American motels. Thanks to RoadsidePictures for sharing their collection of motel postcards.

Inspired Palettes

Warning colors are found throughout nature: the bumblebee, the skunk, the cuddle fish, the coral snake,... These animal's bright colors stand out against their environment demanding attention and declaring to predators that they're poisonous and they better think twice about eating them. So, its no wonder that when we want to get people's attention and warn them about certain perils we use the same high contrast, highly visibile, conspicuous color palettes that are often found in nature.

Researchers now know what colors were used by Mexica artists in the late 15th century & early 16th; colors that were included on such sculptures as the Sun Stone, Coyolxauhqui & Tlaltecuhtli.

"Studies of paint found in the pores of the stones confirmed that Mexica sculpture, as Greek and Roman, was polychrome. An interdisciplinary team coordinated by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), has determined the nature of pigments and agglutinants, pictorial techniques and symbolism of Mexica polychromy."

The investigation, announced by INAH Direction of Archaeological Studies, Leonardo Lopez Lujan, analyzed trace amount of pigments on scultpures from the National Museum of Anthropology and Templo Mayor Archaeological Zone and Site Museum to determine that the chromatic palette of the Mexica was made up of 5 colors: red, ochre, blue, white and black.

Sun Stone

The Sun Stone is a good example: "It was cleaned and analyzed in 2000, as part of the remodeling of Mexica Hall, at MNA, celebrations. Although it was exposed to the elements almost a century, a group of INAH restorers directed by Mari Carmen Castro achieved to detect rests of red and ochre pigments in the stone pores."

The concept of ‘Pull Marketing’ is all the rage at the moment. In the age of the Mad Men, selling a new product was easy. You’d be handed a commodity product like toothpaste or washing powder and set about building a brand to set it apart from the competition. You would then buy advertising space on a small number of influential marketing channels and wait for the sales to roll in. The growth of multi-channel TV, the commercialisation of radio and the rise of desktop publishing in the 80s fragmented audiences, making it hard to get the message out. However it was the appearance of the Internet that changed marketing for ever.

Attention splintered across thousands of channels and billions of website as web-savvy shoppers began to compare products online and shop in the long tail. In a world where company owners no longer had control over the way their products were presented, power went back to the consumer.

At present only the Super Bowl advertising resembles the marketing to the old days (the ability to get in front of an enormous audience at once) and marketers have been looking to employ alternative tactics to push users towards their sites. As a result, a plethora of companies have begun viewing the web as a new marketing platform and introduced “viral campaigns” and “sticky content” to generate traffic.

The question is, will the spike in traffic generated by push tactics help generate extra sales? Push marketing gimmicks work for a while - just as a free toy inside every cereal used to - but these concepts eventually lose their polish. In this world of decreasing timescales, even social media marketing has become so 2007. Instead of being a marketing platform, the web has become a product and service platform in its own right.

To sell products in a networked world, you need to differentiate yourself by more than just brand attributes and a check-list of features. You need to create remarkable products that rise above the competition and get noticed. Products that your users will rate, recommend and tweet about. In fact, what you need to create isn’t a product at all, but an experience.

Hoteliers have known this for a long time, moving up the value chain and transforming themselves from places to sleep into memorable holiday experiences. Gone are the chocolates on the pillow to be replaced by Egyptian cotton sheets, high end toiletries and HD televisions in every room. In fact hotels have a name for these items; they call them ‘delighters’.

Mediocrity just doesn’t cut it anymore. Instead, we need to create products that sell themselves. Does this mean that marketing no longer has a place in the networked society? Far from it. Marketers often understand customer needs and pain points better than anybody. In fact, this can sometimes be the cause of frustration in itself. I know plenty of people (myself included) who’ve been wooed by the notion of integrated phone, TV and Internet services only to find yourself dealing with completely separate business units and billing systems. The marketers were ahead of the curve. It’s the product that was lagging behind.

Companies like Zappos understand the power of delight only too well. Things like complimentary overnight shipping and personalised notes are just the tip of the iceberg for this online shoe retailer from Las Vegas. Zappos have done away with the call-waiting lights and encourage their staff to bond with their customers. They even train their staff to order out-of-stock shoes for their customers on competitor’s sites. The competitors get the sale but Zappos gets the goodwill. I even heard tell of one of their call centre staff helping a clients to order pizza, although this is apocryphal. No wonder they recently got acquired by Amazon for US$1.2 billion.
Marketers have a massive role in shaping new products. They also have an enormous role in shaping people’s opinions on a more personal level. You could even say that customer service is the new marketing. New online services like Get Satisfaction are hoping this will be the case and companies like Zappos would seem to agree.

The secret sauce is simple. We need to take a more customer centred approach to creating products that solve real problems for real people. We need to listen to our customer’s wants, needs and frustrations and create products that solve them. We need to constantly strive to improve our products at their core, rather than hiding their inadequacies with slick marketing campaigns. We need to create experiences that consumers can rally around and talk about, and we need to get out there and engage with the conversation. Not everybody can or will be able to create remarkable products, but the ones that do will flourish and prosper.

So what does this mean for the future of push marketing? I think that it is increasingly becoming clear that the effectiveness of viral campaigns will inevitably dwindle, while clients will begin to question whether their “sticky content” is not just brining them traffic, but the right kind of traffic.

Concepts such as “sticky content” belie the core concepts that are required underneath. Clients are going to need to spend more time learning the needs, wants and desires of their customers when building products, applications and campaigns so that they are pushing the right kind of traffic.

Ultimately, if you spend time creating something that people want, they will do the job of marketing it for you

Rainbows are one of the great visual wonders of our colorful world. They are very familiar to most, but because of the particular conditions in which they form, it is rare to catch a glimpse of their vivid colors, and even harder to capture one on film.

Here is a collection of impressive rainbow photos, and a little information about how they form and the different variations that can be seen.

Rainbows

Rainbows can be observed whenever there are water drops in the air and sunlight shining from behind at a low altitude angle. The most spectacular rainbow displays happen when half of the sky is still dark with raining clouds and the observer is at a spot with clear sky in the direction of the Sun. The result is a luminous rainbow that contrasts with the darkened background, it might even be possible to see a  second arc with an inverse order of colors.

ToniVC

A rainbow spans a continuous spectrum of colours; the discrete bands are an artefact of human colour vision. The most commonly cited and remembered sequence, in English, is Newton's sevenfold red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (popularly memorized by mnemonics like Roy G. Biv). Rainbows can be caused by other forms of water than rain, including mist, spray, and dew.

A lot of companies make money by driving traffic to their sites through marketing or SEO campaigns in the hope that some of their visitors will turn into customers. This makes sense when attention is plentiful and online marketing is cheap. However as marketing costs rise and attention becomes increasingly scarce, companies need to look outside of the traditional marketing funnel. Rather than simply increasing traffic, companies need to start focussing on conversions. After all there’s no point spending large sums of money pushing people to your site if they leave when they get there.

I call this the “leaky bucket” approach to product design and marketing. When water is cheap and plentiful, you don’t mind spilling most of it on the ground as long as you capture enough to quench your thirst. If you need more water you simply open the tap faster. You’ll end up spilling more but it doesn’t matter as you’ll catch more as a result. However as water supplies start to dwindle and costs begin to rise you’ll eventually reach a point when you can no longer afford to be wasting so much water. Instead it become much cheaper and more efficient to repair your bucket. As it currently stands most websites are literally leaking customers. These are people that actively want to use your product or service but can’t due to poor organisation or design.

This is where usability and user experience comes to the rescue. By ensuring visitors can find what they are looking for when they reach your site, you can plug some of the bigger holes. However the biggest holes are usually core processes like registration or check-out. A badly designed check-out process could literally be costing your company millions in lost revenue. In fact it’s not uncommon to see shopping cart abandonment rates as high as 95% on some sites.

Some of this can be put down to people window shopping, but a lot of this is due to bad process design. Shoppers with money in their hands getting frustrated by badly designed forms, or blocked by requirements to register before purchasing. For instance we came across a site the other day that prevented customers outside the US making purchases because State was mandatory and zip code was limited to 5 characters. We’ve even seen situations where customers think they have made a purchase but haven’t due to poor feedback design. All these issues are simple to discover and simple to fix.

So as attention starts to dry up, website owners need to start looking at plugging the holes in their system or risk losing out on business. After all it’s been known for a long time in marketing circles that it’s much cheaper to keep existing customers than it is to find new ones.

One of the problems of working in the knowledge economy is the constant need to keep abreast of current trends and thinking. This would be fine if you worked in a mature industry or one with a limited number of books, papers and conferences appearing each year. However in the knowledge economy of the web, more information is being published every day than could be consumed in a year. What’s more, that pace is increasing.

The problem is exacerbated by a number of things. First of all I’m a reasonably prolific speaker, so feel the need to spend time researching my next topic and synthesising the results. I also program two conferences so have to spend a certain amount of time researching potential speakers and reviewing their slides or presentation videos. Oh, and on top of that I’ve got a company to run, clients to satisfy and staff to look after. As such the majority of this research happens at evenings and weekends, outside office hours.

As such, I often find myself in a position of triage; making snap judgements about the value of information I find and then prioritising them accordingly. So I clip articles to Evernote, store audio in Huffduffer and podcasts in iTunes. I subscribe to RSS feeds, capture video presentations on PopScreen and store lists of books to read on Amazon. Oh, and I’ve got a stack of presentations to review on SlideShare at some stage. Every now and then I get chance to chip away at some of these data sources, but it’s rarely enough. Here 217;s a quick example of what I’m currently dealing with…

• 269 video presentations to watch
• 230 slide decks to review
• 36 books to read
• 542 unread RSS feed posts
• 141 podcast episodes to listen to
• 213 unread articles

It’s a classic case of Information Anxiety. Not enough free time to process all the information I want to. The result is a constant background level of stress. Even when I’m at rest I’m thinking about all the stuff I should, and could, be doing. Now I’ve always been a fairly relaxed person so am comfortable dealing with the stress. But it’s ever-present all the same.

I’ve been thinking about going on a holiday recently. Now with most holidays the point is to go away, relax and re-charge your batteries. However I’ve been toying with the idea of a different, and thoroughly 21st century holiday. Not to relax but to consume. The idea would be to go somewhere for a week or ten days with a stack load of book, articles, presentations and podcasts and get on top of my information overload. I’m not sure if this kind of working vacation common but I know at least a couple of friends who have dome this in the last few months.

Holidays at home are popular at the moment, so it’s something I considered. However I felt that the familiar scenery would force me into learnt patterns of behaviour that would prevent me from getting stuff done. Instead I’m looking for somewhere quietâ€"but not isolatedâ€"where I can spend the day snacking on information. It could be a cottage in the country or a hut on the beach. Just as long as the surroundings have enough variety to keep me interested and prevent me from getting cabin fever. So if you’ve got any ideas, give me a shout.

In the meantime, do you have trouble keep on-top of the wealth of information thrown at you? Have you developed interesting or useful coping strategies? Would love to hear from you.

Color Inspiration from mid-century kitchens.

To create an inspired palette from these, or any, images, simply copy the image's URL (right click) and paste it under the "Photo" tab in PHOTOCOPA.

1953

Blue & Green color palettes from across the web.

To create an inspired palette from any of these images, or any image on the web, simply copy the image's URL (right click) and paste it under the "Photo" tab in PHOTOCOPA.

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The Ancient Egyptians had a rich culture full of advance communication, art & science. We know all this because of the record they left behind, but what we might not realize is how important color symbolism was to them, and how color plays an integral part in understanding that history. Color was often used purely as symbolism, rather then for realistic accuracy of a subject. A king might be painted with black skin, but it was only to assure the fertility of the land to his subjects, as black was used to symbolize fertility. Many other examples like this exist throughout their culture. By taking a look at the meanings behind each color, maybe we can gain a better understanding of this, or any, culture. Egyptian Color Symbolism

Here are some Egyptian color symbolism theories broken down by color.

listentoreason | ryanophilly

The Egyptian palette  was made up of six colors all created from minerals: red (desher), green (wadj), blue (khesbedj and irtiu), yellow (kenit and khenet), black (khem or kem), and white (shesep and hedj).

It looked okay in Mozilla Firebird, but I carefully checked it in Internet Explorer 5 again. All of the floats seemed to be shepherding their content perfectly, so I uploaded the final version of my CSS file.

That was five years ago. Or, if you want to relive the times, fives years ago. (Yeah, I know, the only difference is that visitors to v1 were more prone to cut themselves on the sharp corners.)

I can't decide whether five years is a long time or a fleeting moment. But i do know that a whole lot's happened to me in that period. Sometimes it's hard to say exactly how you ended up at the pres ent -- so many opportunities, so many choices that can divert the flow of life -- but sometimes there's genuinely life-changing moments, and I consider this website to be one of them.

It opened up a whole new world to me and introduced me to friends that I now count amongst my dearest. It also to some extent gave me the professional success which I now enjoy. But really, most of that has been because of the people I've met along the way. People who selflessly serve the community that we're a part of. People that are always there to help you out with patience, knowledge, and understanding.

These are those people: (in a particular order that no one else will get)

Michael Koukoullis, Doug Bowman, Andy Budd, Andy Clarke, Johan Edlund, Andrew Fernandez, David McDonald, Woric Faithfull, Russ Weakley, Peter Firminger, John Allsopp, Lachlan Hardy, Des Hardy, Olly Betts, Matt Magain, Cam Pegg, Nigel McFarlane, D. Keith Robinson, Dave Shea, Joe Clar k, Dean Jackson, Priscilla Weller, Gian Sampson-Wild, Amit Karmakar, Dan Webb, Simon Mackie, Kevin Yank, Mick Chmielewski, Andrew Green, John Oxton, Maxine Sherrin, Tim Lucas, Andrew Krespanis, Lucas Chan, Pete Ottery, Eric Meyer, Molly Holzschlag, Lisa Herrod, Lindsay Evans, Lisa Miller, Cheryl Lead/GledHill, Scott Gledhill, Dan Boud, Dustin Diaz, Jeremy Keith, Richard Rutter, Jon Hicks, Ian Lloyd, Jan Brasna, Cindy Li, Mike Davidson, Aaron Gustafson, Jeffrey Zeldman, Anson Parker, Patrick Griffiths, PPK, Stuart Langridge, Simon Willison, Mark Norman Francis, Christian Heilmann, Andrew Edwards, Dmitry Baranovskiy, Craig Sharkie, Derek Featherstone, Miles Burke, Myles Eftos, Kay Smoljak, Megyn Carpenter, Simon Wright, Lachlan Hunt, Mike Brown, Natasha Hall, Jina Bolton, Jonathan Snook, Sally Carson, Chris Mills, Rob Weychert, Jeff Croft Carl Camera, Carla Hackett, Diana Mounter, Jason Crane, Ben Askins, Earle Castledine. And, of course, my family.

Thank you all for helping me understand that the most powerful thing in life is passion.

Hornsea Pottery was founded in 1949. Located in the seaside town of Hornsea in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, the first factory housed founders and brothers Colin and Desmond Rawson. The factory's earliest pieces included Character Jugs and posy vases with attached animal figures. The business continued to grow over the years, moving into larger and larger buildings. At its largest, Hornsea employed  700 people. The business closed in 2000. Today, over 2,000 pieces from the pottery's beginnings in 1949 to 2000 are on display insides two converted 18th century cottages is theHornsea Museumin Newbegin, the main street of Hornsea. Inspiration: Hornsea Pottery

merebearlandon

Now that the iPhone has a true competitor in the Nexus One, I thought it would be interesting to see how their home pages compared. What is Google doing from an online standpoint to take on the smart phone market leader?

When I first viewed the Nexus One home page I was struck by how utilitarian it looked. The logo, the hero image of the phone, even the 'buy now' button — there is nothing compelling about what's being presented. This really surprised me for such a major product launch.

Compare this to the iPhone home page, which oozes quality. The logo is bold and elegant and the hero imagery shows off the iPhone's excellent industrial design to great effect. The autoplaying slideshow shows off the key features of the device without requiring any user interaction.

As soon as you arrive on the page, it starts telling you why you should buy an iPhone.

I think it's fair to say that the Nexus One can't compete on visual design, both in terms of the hardware and software (take a closer look at the phone's home screen to see what I mean).

So, I was surprised that more emphasis was not placed on the features where it does stand out. Why exactly is this phone a worthy competitor to the iPhone? It would benefit immensely from a more upfront presentation of what sets it apart from the iPhone. What exactly are its killer apps? Surely not Gmail and voicemail?

Apple uses the space below the main promo area to call out additional features and benefits, and Google would do well to do the same. Apple also enables the visitor to easily learn more about each feature. I don't know where I'd go to dive deeper into the features of the Nexus One.

The Nexus One's interactive demo is good once you start using it; however, there's no guarantee how many features a user will click on, and even if they will realize that the image of the phone is interactive (we know how people hate to read instructional text). I couldn't even tell that some parts of the phone were clickable without mousing over them.

Google should be much more proactive about what features the visitor should know about by displaying them automatically once the page loads. Otherwise, without the benefit of great overall site design, the page appears very static and boring.

The page would also benefit from tightening the layout and a greater application of polish to the visuals. For example, the Nexus One logo and the tagline lack association due to the spacing between them, and the hover effect for the already lackluster 'buy now' button adds nothing.

The Nexus One page hammers home the importance of good copywriting. There is nothing remotely compelling about the content on the page. "Web meets phone" is not a strong value proposition when compared with the iPhone. I think most people would agree that web has already met phone.

Compare "Click on an icon for a demo of each app" with "The fastest iPhone ever. Load web pages, launch apps, and more — even faster." No contest.

Overall, the Nexus One site does a poor job of both launching and simply selling its product, especially when you consider the competitor it is going up against. Which is a shame, because I've heard it's a pretty decent smart phone. You'll just have to find that out from another website.

The auto industry has not been known to stray from "car colors" : black, silver, grey, and white, and the "bold" offerings in shades of red, orange, beige and blue, this year is no different. Though from what I've seen, it seems shades of green and yellow-green might be equaling the popularity of the leading secondary car colors of blue, red & beige. Others are reporting that we'll be seeing more purple and plum this year as well.

One exciting color development is the introduction of a few multi-colored cars, like the "CT Café" truck and the touching white car with the silver blue trim. It looks good, though I could do without the graphics on the side. Nonetheless, it is one step closer to the patterns I asked for in 2008.

In other matters: What is hopefully a sign of change from the long-struggling and highly criticized car industry, the usually extravagant show finds itself in a less familiar form, as the New York Times reports, "this year's show is more muted than in previous years, when manufacturers competed to create the most over-the-top display."

Color from newly unveiled models and other standout car colors at the 2010 North American International Auto Show, held annually in Detroit. Thanks to the Polskie Detroit podcast for allowing us to use images from their flickr set.

Car Colors from the 2010 NAIAS

The best album palettes from 2009. Selected from the "best music" lists from: Emusic, Pitchfork, Amazon, Rolling Stone, and NME.

If you have a favorite album palette from 2009 that wasn't necessarily some critic's 'best-of,' post it in the comments.