Lacking only endorsement from the Audubon Society

With the unveiling of a new, improved logo and dropping the logotype, Twitter has entered what AdWeek says is “a new era for the social network—one where Twitter is so powerful and omnipresent that they don’t need text for name recognition.”

From Twitter’s statement:

Our new bird grows out of love for ornithology, design within creative constraints, and simple geometry. This bird is crafted purely from three sets of overlapping circles — similar to how your networks, interests and ideas connect and intersect with peers and friends. Whether soaring high above the earth to take in a broad view, or flocking with other birds to achieve a common purpose, a bird in flight is the ultimate representation of freedom, hope and limitless possibility.

Ornithology? AdWeek said this was “peculiar” while @Ornithology has so far been quiet on the matter.

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Test patterns

 

When I see this kind of creativity and detail I know, print is not dead.

If you like this, the “stain bandits,” check out the Pirates Arno ad.

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Advertising for a schizophrenic

A post by mashkulture.net divides the advertising world by copywriter and art director perspectives, and never the twain shall meet.

This was like 1982 all over again. I thought we had moved into bigger thinking. Genuine “capital C” Creativity is not bound by a title or type. I’ve certainly created an illustration and know art directors who have written headlines.

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Job app for Polish copywriters

This is soooo much cooler than filling out those boring job applications.

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Poster for The Dark Knight Rises

 

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So that’s why it’s called ‘Down Under’

I am having trouble getting my head around this underwear ad campaign from Australia/NZ.

The copy is “Quality best appreciated up close.” Via ads of the world. Perhaps even weirder is the “club” ad.

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Explosive Package Design

Cody Betts, a student at in Multimedia Design at the University of Wisconson-Stout, created this Tabasco Limited Edition Dynamite Sauce for his Graphic Design II final project. The laser-engraved aspen helps achieve the look of an old-style dynamite box. Via Behance.

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Are you ready to drop your spam defenses?

Sample-CAPTCHA-AdsSometimes a problem is so bad, the worst thing you can do is talk about it.

Worse than that, however, is talking about a problem when you are completely uninformed on the topic.

While spam volumes are at historic lows, the amount of email that traverses the Internet that is unsolicited rubbish was still 68 percent at the end of 2011. But is anti-spam becoming more of a problem than a solution?

That’s what RedOrbit.com’s Peter Suciu thinks. First he assails what he calls “reactive filtering,” the time-honored DNSBL that keeps the worst spammers far, far from your inbox. In particular he calls out the spamcop.net service and errs in stating that the spamcop.net service sends the rejected sender an email; it is the actual server using the DNSBL that might issue such a warning. My hunch is that Mr. Suciu has never run a mail server.

Suciu then questions the necessity of the CAPTCHA challenge-response test “proactive filtering” that prevents comment sections from becoming a spam magnet. I checked my Akismet stats for this blog and it, using CAPTCHA technology, prevented 3,658 unwanted, irrelevant (and mostly automated) comments last year alone. The clincher was when I looked for a way to contact RedOrbit.com, their response form has, yep… a CAPTCHA.

Spam won’t be going away soon, but there is never a good time to let your guard down.

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Social and Exponential

So many have said it better than I, but truly: social media presents more opportunities to connect one-on-one—across cultures, communities and continents—more than any other medium before it.

Sometimes a bewildered friend or client will ask me, what good is this social media? What I hear is “what can it do for me.” Well, look at what it did for Rashid Temuri, a Chicago Cabbie. Definitely thinking outside the box!

So when I tweeted the Ars Technica story, I received a ping back from the subject of the story himself:

It’s a great and brave new world.

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The Joys of Plaintext

I don’t do HTML mail. It gets in the way of communication.

I recently brought this up with a client and their response was they found it ”refreshing.” That was good to hear, as on this end facing only 12 point Courier as you compose strips away the pretense and forces the sender to really concentrate on the words being used.

I have been a plaintext email advocate for years, so Adam Sherk’s post reciting best practices for Email Press Releases Do’s and Don’ts circa 1999 reminded me of some of the reasons I have remained an “undecorated” correspondent. In some respects Twitter was a welcome technological advance: where the web page/browser construct has a literally unlimited word count, a tweet, again, forces one to be concise. And in this content-laden world that is a very good thing.

Of course now press releases are tweeted, blogged and “liked,” not just emailed. In addition to Sherk’s excellent suggestions, which still hold true today (keep your email press releases short, properly formatted and relevant) I have a few other tips I would like to throw into the mix.

  • Avoid the word “announces”

    Especially in the headline, this is an invitation to yawn. Dig deeper, and figure out why the announcement is important to the reader, your customer or a prospect.

  • Avoid jargon

    Not everyone is in your industry, and press releases can go overboard with buzzwords. Tell the story simply and explain when necessary.

  • Describe your offering precisely

    I am not sure when it happened, but if what you are offering is a ”solution” then you are in the legion of tech companies who don’t know what they are offering. If it’s software, call it software, if it’s a service call it a service and if it’s a platform call it a platform. I am quite sure more than 1,000 press releases were issued today describing a company’s “solution” or the equally tired “solution set.”

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