We have a few good ideas, a couple that are solid gold and a handful that are just crap. The PBJ team is currently working to narrow our focus a little bit and start to move from idea to some early-level sketching/prototyping of aforementioned solid gold ideas. Stay tuned …
If you’ve ever traveled abroad and purchased cigarettes, the new FDA issued graphic warning labels may not surprise you much. Yesterday the FDA revealed nine graphic warning labels that will eventually replace the current text based warning labels. By 2013 the new labels will be required to cover at least 50% of every box sold in the US. I’m not a big smoker, but the labels would definitely make me think twice before lighting up. Canada has been using similar graphics since 2000 and survey of smokers conducted in 2001 (one year after the launch of the graphics) revealed some promising results. (The survey was funded by the Institute of Cancer Research of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, read more.)
Interesting to note is the mix of graphic styles used in the new warnings. It feels like they mashed three different campaigns together to form this eclectic mix. I wonder if this was intentional in hopes to reach the diverse range of smokers or just a poorly executed campaign.
And for your viewing “pleasure” I’ve included a few graphic warning labels from other countries.
Canada
Brazil
Not sure what country, but man that's scary.
Today was a Monday, so that plus a few members of the group being out of office didn’t make for the most productive day. We did establish that we needed to focus on one core idea to start building the app around and build from there. The direction that we think has the most promise is a choose your own adventure-like app based on discovering Cincinnati. We think this is the most unique idea of our brainstorming thus far and will be a good base to build on and eventually encompass some of our other grander ideas. An important element in this core app also includes establishing different Cincinnati personas (i.e. east siders, west siders, hipsters, etc) to add a layer of filtering and humor to the whole thing. Our next step is to map out the basic interactions in the app and start paper prototyping as soon as possible.
Awards garner mixed emotions, especially when you want to let others know about them without sounding egotistical. Today we are thankful to our friends Armin and Bryony over at FPO/UnderConsideration and those who voted for our poster series for one of this year’s FPO Awards. Our “Create Your Own Environment” poster took Best of Category in the Laser-Cutting category and several others were chosen for awards. Thanks to Jessica Hische, Chuck Anderson and several others who were on hand to vote on the work. Humble thanks and we’ll just keep doing what we like to do. Details here.
Today we sat down to further narrow our scope for PBJ’s yet unnamed project. While we may have spent more time discussing social groups like hipsters, bros, and several other derogatory labels, we did however come up with a unique idea that got several of us excited. While discussing how to differentiate ourselves from other apps or websites that offer event information and feedback like yelp or urbanspoon, Dustin threw out the idea for an app styled after the choose your own adventure books many of us remember so fondly. You could see the wheels turning as we all thought of some of the cool possibilities this could lead to. Map and GPS integration, picture tagging, commenting and social profiles were just a few of the ideas being thrown around. Needless to say we are still in the dark ages of this project, the “create your own adventure app” was something to get excited about. Here’s a recap of a few of my favorite ideas:
These are just a few of the ideas we talked about and we still have a lot of polishing to do from a scope and ideation standpoint, but I for one am excited to see where this goes. Check back next time to see how our idea changes and evolves.
Today we started to narrow down our focus a bit on our yet-unnamed project. More post-it notes and white-board-chicken-scratch. Today we decided that we want to make a product, one that is conjured up out of our collective creative minds as opposed to one for a particular client. So far we are pretty sure we want to make an iPhone app. We are in a debate about whether the app will be more entertainment or more content-delivery focused or (more likely) some combination of both. We are all intrigued by the thought of adding a game layer to the experience, which could come to life in a wide variety of ways.
Some random thoughts from today’s brainstorm:
• Do people REALLY check-in with mobile devices and WHY do they do this?
• Make something cool that we all would use and there is a good chance others will too
• Crowd-source content
• Infuse the experience with “inside jokes” and other funny Cincy stereotypes
• Be upfront and honest about Cincy at all times (don’t sugarcoat!)
Our current mission statement: To show the world that Cincinnati doesn’t suck.
Today was the first day of PBJ, which is an experiment between our design and tech teams to create a project over our lunch breaks throughout the next month (or however long it takes). In case you’re curious, PBJ stands for Power Brainstorm Jam, which beat out other awesome names like Lunch Storm, Footlong Ideas, and many others inappropriate for listing on here. Clearly our strengths are not in naming. The guide lines and goals we decided on today are pretty simple. 1. Meet every day at lunch. 2. Document the meeting events/progress on the blog daily. 3. Create something that is an example of the type of work we’re passionate about and would like to do more of.
With that being decided, we began trying to figure out what we’d like to make. The post-its in the image below represent some of the topics discussed. After some round about discussion and hazing of Dustin and his hipster ways (i.e. v-neck sunburn) we settled on creating an app for Cincinnati. What exactly that app is doing, we’ve yet to decide, but some of the popular topics were the CAC, finding venues or restaurants, uncovering the “cool” things, Midpoint Music Festival and general connecting and reviews while on the go.
Our next steps will always be outlined here on the blog as follows:
#1 homework:
Thurs: Share research on existing apps and websites with the group.
Fri: Share app ideas with the group. Hopefully some will bubble to the top and maybe we’ll even get it narrowed down to 2 or 3.
As a fan of the Sunday comics (which I continue to read weekly, though I’m not sure why, because I’m pretty sure I haven’t actually laughed at any of them since 1997) the @Peanutweeter blog caught my attention. Nothing revolutionary here, just funny stuff. “The site arose from the concept that the amusing and sometimes outrageous tweets out there would be even funnier or sometimes darker if they came from someone that everyone could identify with,” site creator T. Jason Agnello told Wired.com by e-mail. See T. Jason’s top favorite 30 here.
If I was to say “Golden Arches,” I bet the first thing that would come to your mind wouldn’t be technology or innovation. It would probably trigger thoughts of Big Macs, Egg McMuffins, Happy Meals or if you’re like me, thoughts of indigestion. As easily one of the most recognizable brands in the world, McDonald’s knows that they need to do very little to grab your attention. Honestly, have you seen the mayhem that is followed by the annual re-release of the McRib? But, what does a fast food giant like McDonald’s do when they want to grab your attention? One might gravitate towards one of the hundreds of TV commercials we have all seen over the years, or one of the dozen or so catch phrases like “I’m lovin’ it.” But for a chain that serves nearly 50 million people each day worldwide and opens a new location every four hours, drumming up a silly slogan just won’t do. When your revenue stream is off the charts, you can afford to think outside the box and give away some free food as well, all in the name of getting people talking.
Enter an interactive challenge, where you can play to win free food. McDonald’s rented out a jumbotron on The Stureplan Hotel in Stockholm Sweden, where you can play traditional pong using your mobile device to control the paddle. The coolest part? You don’t need to download anything, just go to the site on your device and it uses geolocation to ensure that you’re in the game area. If you last 30 seconds against an increasingly fast computer opponent, you win your choice of several products and the coupon is sent directly to your mobile device. For more information, check out the video below.
Gatorade: Brand Videology (short) from Tether on Vimeo.
Since I can remember, I’ve been more attracted to how things get made, rather than the finished product. I loved watching Jerry Rice play as a kid (except for when he beat the Bengals in Super Bowl XXIII in ’89), but love even more how he trained in the offseason, running more miles than most distance runners. Or how a Ferrari is meticulously crafted in Maranello, hand-stitched, etc…not just what the car looks like finished. That’s boring. The making of the Thriller video blew my mind as a kid. B-Sides. Movie deleted scenes. Behind the scenes at Pixar. How a novel was written. The making of the perfect sandwich.
I love the process. That’s why I love design. So when I stumbled upon a gorgeous stop-animation video by Tether (Seattle) which chronicles the Evolution of the Gatorade G Series over 16 months of Research, Concepts and Designs…well see for yourself. I love how other creative minds tackle problems…how they approach even the most mundane or minuscule tasks and turn them into something much larger.
Great work, Tether. (also came across it via Creative Bits)
