External attachments are great but when you don’t have time to type a thousand words, only an inline picture will do. Until now, Gmail didn’t offer that functionality.
Google just announced the ability to insert images anywhere in the body text of an email by simply enabling the feature in your Gmail Settings under Labs. It will add this icon to your email toolbar; just click on it to insert an image:
Unlike traditional marketing, conversation implies that you know your audience.
Social Cultures
Envision social domains as environments—geographical destinations with varying demographics, practical uses, and cultural inclinations. Hi5, CyWorld, Twitter, LinkedIn, Xiaonei, Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, and to a lesser extent Ning sites and IM aggregators, are macro-cultures with diverse market proclivities and subcultures.
Social Tools
The way we conduct ourselves within those subcultures is akin to a dialect or preference. The tools we use are the words and media we employ.
The tools we select reveal us as finish carpenters (Laugh aloud) or rough framers (lol). Grammar, the words we use, the language we speak; our topics (or lack of same); the videos, pictures and links we post; to whom we speak and who responds all combine to classify and define us within a given subculture.
Social Sharing
If businesses and marketers fail to invest the time to understand the accepted tools and nuances of the specific culture they hope to reach, they won’t be welcome on the ‘job site.’
As with traditional marketing, “Know thy audience.” But, unlike traditional marketing, conversation implies that you know your audience; that you live and work among them in a culturally appropriate manner, using culturally accepted tools.
That knowledge and those tools will certainly vary, domain to domain, culture to culture.
So you want to be a print publisher. Luckily, you’re living at the right time in history. Freedom of expression has never been more celebrated and available. From personal broadcasts of text, voice and video messages to social networks, blogs, micro-blogs and podcasts, media options and outlets abound.
A Democratic Appeal
Although digital media is easily distributed, it’s imprisoned by electronic devices and an endless sea of competition for readership. And, often it’s merely scanned, not truly read.
By contrast, published works derive value from their singular appeals: a tactile form, a willing and welcomed commitment of one’s time, a personal gift.
Until now, print-publishing was expensive, with customized items made affordable only via mass production and distribution methods.
Democratic Demand
Traditional publishing and digital print technologies have now merged, offering a vast array of online, on-demand, turnkey publishing and distribution platforms like these, ready to meet your needs:
Lightning Source
Lightning Source, a sister company to U.S. book wholesaler Ingram Book Group, is an online print-on-demand (POD) service provider to publishers. They offer online publishing, production and distribution solutions that can reduce on-hand inventories and warehousing costs by satisfying niche book demands and calls for backlist and out-of-print books.
CreateSpace and BookSurge
Amazon’s answer to on-demand publishing brings their third party connections and distribution acumen to help you develop and distribute manuscripts and other types of media.
Blurb
Affiliated with Flickr’s popular photography management and sharing site, Blurb offers prepackaged, user-friendly templates for a more consumer-oriented solution to book publishing.
Shutterfly
Shutterfly enters the on-demand book and publishing market from its core focus, online photo sharing and management. The seamless port of existing albums into books, calendars and other product templates positions Shutterfly as a solid consumer choice.
BookPrep
HP brings its leadership in on-demand printing to BookPrep. BookPrep allows you to digitize any existing book into a virtual asset that can be ported via the web and printed on-demand as-is, or customized by the consumer.
MagCloud
For those wanting to produce the next New Yorker, Fast Company or Sports Illustrated, MagCloud offers an affordable solution for would-be magazine publishers. MagCloud not only handles printing, but mailing and subscription management as well.
Lulu.com
Lulu provides a matrix of vertically and horizontally marketed offerings, from consumer-oriented photo calendars to hardbound business books and digital media. In an obvious response to Amazon, it also offers the means to buy and sell works.
A Freeing Democracy
Whether you want to target a single customer with an extended one-to one message or hope to take your ideas to market in multiples, on-demand printing solutions offer both prototype and production solutions in a single model.
From individuals to tier one corporations, online on-demand publishing provides another instrument to add to your integrated brand marketing mix, and a chance at real freedom of the press.
Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.
-Google on their new browser, Chrome
Open Source
Google launches Chrome, its open source web browser, today. News of the release, initially leaked in comic book form then later confirmed on The Official Google Blog, has the Internet abuzz with talk about the demise of Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Chrome is a natural addition—an integrated mechanism to deliver the search giant’s extensive suite of free, albeit ad-driven tools and services.
Open Season
Chrome bolsters Google’s efforts to prevent Microsoft from leveraging Internet Explorer to wrest Google’s position in the search market space.
But whether users adopt Google’s latest development en masse, or not, marketers in every sector will benefit from a viable communication partner offering an integrated delivery vehicle.
With this week’s Sirius-XM merger approval, we take a nostalgic look back at our XM packaging experience.
About the Project
Packaging is a part of modern life. This article, an insight into the design of a consumer package for satellite radio provider XM, includes many aspects of a typical package development process. In the interest of time, we’ll skip research, diagnostic and technical methodology phases and concentrate on the basic iterative process steps in this article.
Contracted as a co-branded piece with equipment manufacturer, Delphi, the XM package is designed to contain a variety of product configurations while meeting the requirements of multiple retailers.
Thumbnails (above: click for larger view)
The first stage of the package design process is broad idea generation with an eye toward reasonable possibility through the use of quick sketches called thumbnails—essentially a Brainstorm session on paper.
Even in this early ideation phase, function and manufacturing objectives established in earlier logistic explorations are at the forefront of the design rationale.
A plump and friendly ovate design—suitable for both pegged and stand-alone shelf display—captured the team’s attention. It features an interchangeable outer shroud designed to accommodate variable messaging and XM product differentiation.
Rough Refinements (above: click for larger view)
Of the 32 initial thumbnails, five are selected for tighter “rough? conceptual sketches. The rough design stage serves several purposes. Roughs allow the customer to collaborate in a conceptual dialog with both Brainstorm and their own internal team.
In addition, roughs allow the design team to further reconcile a host of issues—from substrate selection to detail and aesthetic considerations. Increasingly the form is discussed with a heightened sensitivity to relative manufacturing requirements and capabilities.
Although computer-generated designs are great for visualization, introducing them too early in the development process can consume allotted resources and generate fewer options. Furthermore, their finished look can ignite concerns about exhausting budgets without the benefit of conceptual buy-in.
Design Control Drawings (DCD) (above: click for larger view)
DCD drawings are to final fit and finish what roughs are to concepts. In this case, the forms are expressed as orthographic projections, i.e., front, right side and plan (top) views.
The primary intent of this phase is to convey relative proportions and relationships between forms within the package, i.e., to “control? the design. A rough and wispy hand drawn line could mean anything to a packaging engineer. Conversely, detailed and dimensioned schematics begin to define a working reality.
Of course, many issues were addressed during the XM DCD phase: Drop test considerations, proper cavity allowance for nested accessories, marrying the outer shroud with the stand-alone clamshell, substrate selection and opacity levels, inherent multi-part clamshell tooling considerations, etc.
Rapid Prototyped 3D Model (above)
Project participants hailed from several continents. So, to help bridge geographic and language-based barriers, we produced a quick 3D model based on data and dimensioning extrapolated from the vector-based DCD drawings. The model proved a useful discussion tool in describing general functions of the package.
Aesthetic and Messaging (above: click for more initial design examples)
Although this article primarily explores the physical form development of a package, the aesthetic process is important enough to warrant an article of its own.
Some aspects of messaging development begin as early as the thumbnail stage. However, on many levels, full graphic exploration doesn’t begin until a form factor direction is set. At retail, messaging and brand continuity are crucial.
A Finished Package (above: click for larger view)
Although concessions were made along the way, the completed two-part package is remarkably similar to the original concept design in form and function.
Brainstorm Named Best of Show in International W3 Web Awards
Iconic Site Launch
Developed by Brainstorm for Anderson University and Warner Press WarnerSallman.com features, among other iconic images, “The Head of Christ,” from The Warner Sallman Collection - an image so famous it's been reproduced more than 500 million times worldwide. More from the Herald Bulletin article about the site.
under Branding. Grouped by topic, Alltop aggregates stories from “all the top” sites across the web (that’s their story and we’re sticking to it). View our .think listing, here: branding.alltop.
Our 2008 Multiple Sclerosis holiday project. Every run of Brainstorm's holiday, "Memory Machine," generated ¢.25 for the Multiple Sclerosis Society - up to $5000. It went viral fast - the $5k was just a memory by the time our holiday dinner started.
Brainstorm's 2007 holiday blog parody. A new post everyday featured the ongoing drama of an entirely fictitious corporation replete with fictitious products. Items like the "iPlanet,"NPI’s personal cosmos transport. Like Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine Happiness Machine, the iPlanet promises a “thoroughly self-absorbed social media experience.” Our content was tongue-in-cheek, but the chocolate and gifts we sent to commenters were quite real.
