Any information you could ever want is readily available somewhere out there in cyber space. The trouble is sifting through all the unrelated information the search engine pulls up to find what you want. Xerox thinks they have found the answer to the information overload syndrome portrayed by Bing in their television commercials. Trailmeme, 'a new kind of publishing', allows users to create meaningful patterns in web content. You can blaze your own trails, and benefit from the trails of others.
Care to take a guess at the selections for this year's Communication Arts Ad Annual? Here's a hint, it won't be any of the nominees for The Consumerist's Worst Ad in America 2010. Voting ends tomorrow (September 28), if you want to add your voice.
In the October Issue of Print Magazine the article "The Art of Seduction" reveals some of the sneaky tactics designers use to get those "intractable, unimaginative, chronically contrarian, colorblind, or just plain grumpy clients" to say 'yes'. You would have to be pretty gutsy to pull off some of these tactics, but they are nonetheless funny, non-pedagogic lessons that design students may chose, or not choose, to store for future use.
In his article "Who Needs Agencies?", Brian Morrissey exposes the increasing popularity of Groupon for marketing needs. Social platforms appear to be taking over every aspect of life these days, but can they be used to eliminate the need for advertising agencies? That idea is about as grandiose as desktop publishing eliminating the need for Graphic Designers.
If you've travelled outside of the U.S. you've likely had to exchange your standard green bills for what looks like 'funny money', as most of the world's currency varies in color and size according to the denomination of the bill. In "The Buck Stops Here" Steven Heller posits that designers have questioned the aesthetics of U.S. currency, and points towards suggested redesigns created in "The Dollar ReDe$ign Project". If implemented, any of these could be a welcome change for tourists and the visually impaired.
