Hey There Comma Check This Out

March 29th, 2012 by Dustin Blankenship

I’m finally joining the masses. Even though this is my first attempt at writing a blog post, I’m still going to take advantage and use this opportunity to call myself a writer, and I will choose not to concern nor associate myself with anyone who thinks otherwise. Now, as I am a designer here at Hyperquake, you can expect some of my future posts to be about designery things. I studied digital design and very much enjoy the web, so interactive design for all devices will be a repeat topic for me, however, I would like this to not only be informative but somewhat entertaining as well. Not only for you, the reader, but for me as well (remember, you get to read, I’m the one who has to write).

So without wasting anymore time, lets get to what I have on my mind today. I really like books. They are good for lots of things, but I mostly use them for inspiration and reading. Since we are rapidly approaching the end of the Maddness and the Wildcats are about to be crowned college basketball’s finest, I thought I would talk about some basketball books. We’ve got Freedarko’s The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac and The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball: History.

They are both relatively outdated. The almanac came out in 2008 followed two years later by the guide, but their current relevance is not what I want to talk about right now. I want to call to attention the beautiful, stylistic illustrations and infographics that lie between the soft matte hardcovers.

Now, of course you can read about things like Kobe’s spirit animal, why Lamar Odom is so sad (complete with a chart that breaks down his facial expressions), and even the ancient style of play demonstrated by Dirk Nowitzki (I’ll give you a hint. It’s Dirk Style). I know that designers (especially myself) are always trying to look beyond the web for inspiration. These are great assets to add to your library. Even if you just want to look at the pictures, that’s totally fine too. So trust me, it doesn’t matter if you could not care less about sports or basketball in particular, there is still a lot of enjoyment to be had out of these two books.

 

Posted in Design, Fun | 1 Comment »

Which is evolving faster, brands or technology? The not so surprising answer.

September 16th, 2011 by chris.heile@hyperquake.com

Brands have always leaned heavily on technology. One might even say that brands owe their very existence to technology. After all, television, radio and print are what created mass brands in the first place. In the early days, we didn’t need to know how these analog systems worked or how to get the most out of them. Much like the computer you’re reading this on now, it didn’t require a technical degree to use it.

Today, technology is infiltrating every corner of our lives and with it has come an explosion of new interaction points with consumers. Clearly, our understanding of how technology works and how to use it as marketers must evolve. And in a dramatic way.

No longer can we get by without understanding the inner workings of these interrelated systems. We need to know how to customize and manipulate the many diverse parts to best fit our unique consumers and our unique brands. To be successful, we have to think more like programmers and less like users. Traditional media, social media, mobile media, web media, websites, blogs, CRM, SEO, SEM and everything new and exciting lurking around the corner must be mastered and programmed in order to see its true potential. And we haven’t even scratched the surface.

Every technology has a precise purpose and a particular effect. Each touch-point influences and appeals to very different groups of consumers. We now have the ability to program and optimize this vast network of technologies and media in our favor. To test out and prove what truly impacts sales, awareness, loyalty and short and long term growth. To eliminate waste and redundancy and track how every penny we spend drives consumer action.

To succeed in this increasingly complex, technology-laden world, we must be world-class hackers, manipulating data and technology to our own benefit.

Take advantage of this immense power and use it wisely to the peril of your competition.

Posted in Technology, Thinking, Uncategorized | Comments Off

Google Art Project

February 8th, 2011 by Katie Winkler

Street View from Google maps has come to the art world. Google Art Project launched early last week and I have to say, I’m pretty stoked about it. Art museums from all over the world (14 at the moment), on display and fully navigable from anywhere with an Internet connection.

National Gallery interior Shot

Nation Gallery, London

I spent a bit of my morning roaming around the National Gallery in London and the MoMA in NYC and plan to check out the Palace of Versailles next. Yeah, you can always look up images of artwork online, but there’s a different feeling when you see the work in a gallery environment –  nothing to be compared with seeing it in person, but for people like me, only dreaming of traveling to across Europe to admire priceless masterpieces, it’s a great opportunity.  Not only that, but I think I’d be tackled by security guards before I ever got this close to a Van Gogh.

Van Gogh's Starry Night Close Up

Seriously, there are 7 billion pixels per image. Close enough to see the cracks in the paint.

Posted in Fun, Technology, Uncategorized | 205 Comments »

There is a future for social media. We just haven’t seen it yet.

February 7th, 2011 by chris.heile@hyperquake.com

We’ve been keeping ourselves busy these days amassing our many thousands of online connections: facebook friends, twitter feeds, linked-in colleagues, news feeds, blogs, celebrities, magazines, favorite brands, et al.

Where does it all end?

How many people, places, things can we possibly keep up with at any given time?

Fortunately humans are equipped with a little something called selective hearing, which is our natural defense against over stimulation and the inevitable insanity that follows. But as of late, our over-connected world has caused a bit of rapid human evolution. It has lead to a highly-developed filtering system that allows us to instantly bypass comments, communications and blurbs from those less interesting to us. Proof is in your uncanny ability to fly through hundreds of facebook posts in seconds, always seeming to find the interesting nuggets and subconsciously breezing by the inane comments from friends you know are simply inane.

But as of yet, technology has had surprisingly little to add to this filtering system. Today it simply acts as a gatherer. Tomorrow it needs to act as hunter.

Think of it this way, much of the information we gather can be extremely valuable in certain contexts, even the mundane stuff.

When you’re planning a trip with a group of friends, everyones commentary is important at that particular instant. When you’re going shopping, all the brand information, sales, promotions, comparisons are extremely valuable.

Marketers more than anyone need to recognize this. As personal networks grow, being selected as part of a consumer’s vast network of connections may be nothing more than facebook wallpaper. But in the right context, those connections are extremely useful and greatly desired.

Technology needs to take control, bucketing all of our varied connections into useful groups and more importantly, bringing relevant connections to the forefront precisely when and where they are most useful for us.

As much as we’d like to think otherwise, these networks can’t grow forever. There is a tipping point. Marketers should take some responsibility here. Maybe even become part of the solution. Either that or there will be a cataclysmic house cleaning in our future.

Posted in Technology, Thinking | 238 Comments »

Are You Pinterested?

January 20th, 2011 by Dan Barczak

It’s no secret that Yahoo is in a troubled place. I’m a huge Delicious user…well, used to be. Yahoo may be looking to sell bookmarking service Delicious and “sunsetting” a number of other web services. Preceding this debacle was a massive round of layoffs that affected over 500 employees. Many have tried to pinpoint where Yahoo went wrong (i.e. product strategy, leadership etc.), but this infographic, titled “The Rise And Fall Of Yahoo,” gives you a play by play of the company’s history, acquisitions, highs, lows and more.

While I’ve got about 2000 bookmarks saved via Delicious, I’ve decided to get wrapped up into Pinterest, which takes care of my biggest desire that Delicious could never fulfill…the ability to quickly see quick thumbnails of your inspiration. You can easily create different “boards” of inspiration…I chose titles like Design, Tech, Style, etc.

Chuckbees is working on a little Labs giddyup to incorporate Pinterest into how we gather inspiration here at HQ. Can’t wait.

Posted in Design | 187 Comments »

Pull don’t push

January 17th, 2011 by chris.heile@hyperquake.com

When things don’t go as planned, there’s a voice in the back of our heads that tells us to push harder. When pushing harder doesn’t generate the result we want, the voice tells us to push harder still. When we slice a shot on a long par 5 because we took too big a swing, our next desperate swing will be even harder.

Pushing harder rarely changes the outcome. In fact, it often gets in the way of us seeing the obvious opportunities. In golf as well as marketing, reevaluating our approach is the only way to truly change the result.

Think pull instead of push. Instead of chasing new ways to push what you have onto consumers, step back and ask the tough question: what would you have to do to get consumers to run to you? What would your brand have to look like, what would it have to do, where would it have to be available, exactly who would be most excited about it?

We have so much invested in what we’ve built and the way we’ve always done things that it becomes virtually impossible to stop forcing square pegs into what may simply be round holes. As marketers we have the world’s greatest job: to entice and excite consumers, to listen, inspire and anticipate what they desire most.

It’s time to stop pushing on the wrong pedal.

Posted in Thinking | 241 Comments »

The Car of Your Dreams – The 2011 Mediocrity

October 21st, 2010 by Chris Strong

So, Subaru doesn’t really make ‘mediocre‘ cars. Take the WRX for example, it’s pretty loud, pretty flashy and pretty darn fast.

Heck, the picture below just makes it look fast. If it wasn’t, why else would it need that big wing to keep it planted on the ground?

Fast!

Now, Subaru does make sedans and no offense to anyone that drives sedans, but the sedan market does tend to be a bit boring and seems to be getting even duller. Things tend to run together and styles tend to be a bit blah.

Well, Subaru apparently took note of this and recently decided that they’d mess with people a little bit and get some heads scratching via an uber-sneaky viral marketing campaign for a car dubbed the Mediocrity. To give you a better overview than I ever could, check out the video below.

The video had me laughing quite a bit after I stumbled onto it and after checking out the 2011 Mediocrity website I was only laughing that much more.

The car of your dreams

The Mediocrity site is a trip. From the descriptions of colors and interior appointments, to the shopping tools and mission statement, I enjoyed every bit of it and had a good laugh a few times. (I still laugh when I read ‘Inoffensive Steel Exhaust’ on the comparison page). I also love that one of the choices as you build your car is a wicker chair. Why? I don’t know, but wicker isn’t really offensive and that’s a good thing when it comes to mediocrity.

As a viral campaign, many have speculated as to whether it is a success or failure because the site itself and everything else around it points to Subaru from the start (check the redirect in the URL when you go to www.2011Mediocrity.com). I tend to lean towards this being a good campaign and one that obviously wasn’t trying to be super viral. It’s quirky and fun as a campaign and just a good time. As someone who isn’t in the market for a car, it got me to spend some time with the brand (even after I went to the Mediocrity site) and that’s certainly not bad.

Now, if I can just get my wife on board with me getting that WRX STi I’ve always wanted…

Posted in Design | 186 Comments »

Milk

October 11th, 2010 by Julie Hill

Milk is one of my favorite illustrators ever. Her work is just epic and gorgeous. I couldn’t gush enough about it. Do yourself a favor and click the images below to view the full-size versions.

Posted in Design | 165 Comments »

Dolla Dolla Bills, Y’all

August 23rd, 2010 by Mike Dew

Awesome rework of the USA Currency system by Dowling/Duncan for the Dollar ReDe$ign Project. I really like the idea of the vertical format and different sizes for different denominations. Assigning artwork based on numerical value might prove tricky and limiting in the future though.

Thanks to @kcdunstan for the heads up.

$1

Posted in Design, Thinking | 120 Comments »

Because we like posters…

August 4th, 2010 by Katie Winkler

I considered calling this post “Poster Overload,” but is that really possible? Well, maybe. Check out this gigantic gallery of amazing European poster art, assembled by Bob Staake:

Exceprt from European picture gallery

And, if you haven’t already be sure to take a peak at HyperQuake’s very own poster series!

Posted in Design | 161 Comments »