Another Wednesday has rolled around, so here’s my weekly collection of interesting digital ephemera I’ve found poking around the vast Internet wasteland. Think of me as your guide through the eclectic digital desert…
Today’s Menu
- Art & Design
- Motion Graphics & Video
- Marketing
- Social Media
- Something Cool
- Something Strange
- Something Terrible
- Three Sites Worth Checking Out
Art & Design
Heather M. David’s Flickr Photostream.
If you are interested in mid-century modern design, Polynesian Pop or Googie. Do your self a favor and check out Heather M. David‘s flickr photostream. You will be treated to a cornucopia of mid-century ephemera including match book covers, gift wrap designs, signs and much more. It is really a treasure.
Nancy Duarte Interview
Check out this great interview with Presentation Designer extraordinaire, Nancy Duarte. She has a lot of great insights about communication, design and the presentation of information. I first learned about Ms. Duarte from reading the classic book Presentation Zen and blog by Garr Renyolds. If you haven’t listened to Duarte’s TED talk or read Garr’s book, you simply must, right now, I’m serious! My favorite line from the interview:
Most designers aren’t strong communicators. The investment in communications would help the entire design community. Many time the shy designers have the strongest concepts but don’t have the skills to explain their thought process.” – Nancy Duarte.
The perfect word when you don’t know what else to say!
Best.Graffiti. Ever. via Juxtapoz Magazine
Motion Graphics & Video
Retro School Videos
This is a really great site, it collects various mid-century educational films for your viewing pleasure. As they promote themselves on their website, “A free and fun way to support your classroom or homeschool curriculum using time-proven Educational Films, Newsreels, TV Shows, PSAs, and Movies from the past.”
The only bummer about the site is it doesn’t allow you to embed the videos from their site. But since the films are in the public domain, it is easy to track them down on YouTube or Archive.org. Like I did for the following hilarious film, Law and Social Controls: Morals, Laws and Conformity in Parenting Theory Video (1949)
Bob
This is a great animation, very funny and clever. Make sure you watch the credits!
BOB from Jacob Frey on Vimeo.
Marketing
Guerrilla Marketing for the Digital Age: I Want To Draw A Cat For You
I read this great article on about the site “I Want to Draw a Cat for You” and am amazed. Basically, for $9 Chicago-based comedian Steve Gadlin will draw a stick figure cat for you. Seriously, that’s it. Surprisingly it’s been fairly successful, recently Gadlin partnered with Groupon and sold 1,000 drawings in a single day.
The markeing video is clever for sure but, more importantly there is an interesting lesson to be learned in this case study. This example shows that non-traditional marketing channels can be used to launch a successful project, even if it is of dubious artistic merit. If you have a powerful and clever video or website that people will share with their social media networks and you can combine it with the rising power of coupon sites like Groupon then you have a great low-cost strategy for success.
Social Media
A new app that allows you to take a picture of a building, virtually vandalize it then share it! Pretty clever and property owners everywhere thank you!
Something Cool
Behind the Scenes: The Life and Death of Stars with Sean Austin and Sandeep Parikh.
Pretty funny video from the Spitzer Science Telescope.
Something Strange
Turkey Chases News Producer.
I am sure this has to have been featured on some “fail” type of site at one point or another.
Something Terrible
Splash Mountain Rap
In the late 80’s and early 90’s Rap Music hit the mainstream, so naturally marketers tried to capture the latest youth craze to promote their products to the youth of America. Just as naturally their ham-fisted approach created something very, very bad. So in that vein, I present to you, the Splash Mountain Rap.
Three Sites Worth Checking Out
- Lynda.com The best internet based video training site for learning graphic design software.
- bufferapp.com A handy site that let’s you set up a schedule for sending out tweets.
- shorpy.com Cool historical photo archive (though the actual images originally came from the US National Archives)
[…] written about Nancy Duarte before so you know I am a big fan. If you get to work on the design of presentations, do yourself […]