A day in the life of glue...

How to survive the d-word....

Are brands too perfect?

Everyone can benefit from a slice of humble pie now and again, brands included. Clay Shirky makes a great point in his short interview about the focus of agencies on producing everything to the highest quality. The single-minded focus on production excellence ends up being alienating to consumers because it doesn't invite dialog.

This is not to say that a misjudged piece of creative will have the consumer come up to you in their hundreds or thousands and thank you for inspiring them with the latest 'I'm a celebrity, come and brand me'.

 
But the finished piece of high production work is a statement that isn't looking for answers or questions, it's simply a command. Clay's point here is about how agencies and brands can become more human by looking a little less perfect. This is something 2.0 companies know only too well. The idea of being in a perm-beta state is inviting in itself.

Beautiful data

After recently reading through a lot of old emails in search of something else, I got really distracted by an old post in Ping Mag, which had an interview with Boris Muller. In an attempt to share some other great examples here are some edited highlights:

Based on Buckminster Fuller’s legendary Dymaxion map

Gorgeous 3D mapping
You’ll know this one...
Napoleon’s march to Moscow
History flow – visualisations of a topic’s life story on wikipedia
Feltron annual report
TED talk with some great stuff
Loads of lovely ways into Digg data
Dopplr’s raumzeitgeist map
Facebook friend wheel
Live US flight paths
The Wattson – see how much electricity your home is using
Nike Plus
Movie charts

Are great ideas dead?

The complexity of digital media often blurs the lines between "ideas" and "production," particularly as brand building moves from messages to experiences. If the experience is the fulcrum of the effort, it is hard to discount the work that goes into creating that experience as simple production. The best work often erases the distinction.

"The era of everything being based on the great idea is over," says Michael Lebowitz. "Other things have risen to a common level of importance." Without interactive experts to bring ideas to life, he adds, the big ideas are like "a fart in the wind."

"You need an army," says Michael Ferdman, managing director of Firstborn, a New York digital agency. "The idea is going to be spurred by two people, but they need to embrace all kinds of tentacles. It's like a starfish."