Started to draft a concept for a new idea. I am aiming the following to be my constraints during the process. I have used fffffound to collect these and tryied to provide sources, where possible.
Curves // Via Sebastian Bentler — http://thirtythr33.de
Tone of Red & d.o.f
Edges of Gradient
Composition
Typography
Gradient
Depth
I recently came accross a fantastic series of political posters at Flickr, by PropogandaTimes. Especially liked how simplified the terms & conditions between classes are emphasized. You can buy prints to these and many more designs at their website.
(Source)
(Source)
(Source)
(Source)
(Source)
One of the items in the shows menu — via tuzekmek.com
A year and a half ago I convinced my mom to set up a blog about her cooking, which carries signs of a lifelong journey across Turkey, and her most recent stop Adana. And not long ago she is being out-reached by a tv programmer to be a guest at her show! Thousands of visitors a month, eye-filling mouth-watering piece of heaven food can’t be lying (or can they?), either way, good going mom!
You can tune in to watch the show here on 18th of January at 18oo GMT via TV link on the top right of the page.
You are advised to enjoy that show with a full stomach.
Update:
David Hecker/AFP/Getty Images
I find it more & more intriguing that how emerging industries shape themselves and give birth to new business models, and force old players to re-invent themselves to adapt to new challenges.
Microsoft has announced that it has signed a new patent licensing agreement with LG Electronics, covering LG smartphones, tablets, and any other devices that run either Android or Google’s Chrome OS. (From Verge:Microsoft signs LG to Android patent-licensing agreement)
Patent protection agreements like these pushes Google and smartphone manufacturers to a corner as well as establishing a tone of terror to an eco-system that was meant to be open, by definition.
Google pushed Android to the ‘open’ before the very first iteration of iPhone, with the controversial escort of Eric Schmit. Back in those days, Microsoft’s work for mobile was limited to knock-off versions of Windows OS which were mainly distributed by companies like HTC (Also read MG Siegler’s — Why I hate Android for more detail on these). But after Apple & Google’s massive investments in their respective mobile-dedicated operating systems. Microsoft started to become obsolete to this trending market, and started to follow an indirect route to mobile. While Microsoft is slowly starting to push their own mobile OS with companies like HTC, they are also creating a strong presence with the lesser-complex mobile phone market with their partnership with Nokia (Follow @tomiahonen on twitter for his in-depth point of view on Elop’s involvement in Nokia).
Now, when we observe the mobile OS market; while the Android phones are leading (IOS & Windows Mobile) with the amount of most activations a day. The position of Microsoft as a challenger in the pushs them to attack to the market share piece by piece. This will allow them to;
1. Drive IP driven profit from every Android handset that’s ever sold(currently this means they are getting a cut from 70% of smartphone sales in USA alone).
2. Intimidate handset manufacturers from using what’s freely available to them (Android). As well as offering their own solution.
It’s saddening to see Google’s policy of openness for Android stands for, leave the eco-system out in the open/ unattended. They are destined to lose trust of the smartphone manufacturers as well as a great vertical for them to sell so-lo-mo based advertising. However I can’t deny how inspiring it is to see how Microsoft is attacking the herd sheep by sheep and using advantage of being the market challenger.
Bonus
by Mike Bostock — https://github.com/mbostock
This is a graph that shows which companies are in a patent war in the mobile industry, you can see how agressively Microsoft is positioned. You can also find the interactive version of this graph here.
There is a new interruption in town. They are called ‘sponsored story ads’, and they work very subtlely in order to take advantage of users’ interest in the content that mattered to them the most.
Avoidable (away from the immediate sight and quite) ads on content that is relevant.
That was what Facebook offered until 2012, everybody on this network knowingly or blindly accepted everything that was wrong about Facebook. Only for one single reason to find an interact with people that’s in our lives, and see what they are up to. This defined a new form of entertainment ‘sharing’ and browsing through what’s shared.
Subtle sponsored ads
But what’s happening now is that at the top of the content that’s been made relevant to me by my network, I get to see a sponsored message. These advertisements are not presented very similarly to the content they are interested. So its very likely that users will be receiving the sponsored message (initially) considering it being from their social network. I understand the whole promise of ‘if someone likes a brand they would also like to hear from them’ This is why there are fan pages, if I care about a brand I still get to see what they have to promote or I can see their pages for more information. No one needs their news feed ‘estate’ to be sold because they liked a brand. Why would I like a brand if, they get in the way of me interacting with Facebook? (Seeing what my friends are up-to?)
Facebook now as the behemoth representative of what a social network is, now seeing the potential demand available in the advertising industry, and trying to benefit from it. It should have been the advertising industry who is learning to speak ‘Facebook’ not the other way around.
Also;
Sponsored Story Ads: is just a term to prettify the fact that “Hey, i am selling your time, and making money of it.” Ads are always paid for (means they are already sponsored), calling them ‘sponsored story’ is just the mere effort of putting a make-up on it.
I have seen an intriguing article by logodesignlove on polluted logos with trademark or services mark logos. And I can’t agree less.
I completely understand and the argument of visual pollution that occurs on the brand material at the expense of the security of cross-border legal rights of the brands (corporates in this case). But these logos go to places where brands might not even be aware of and these logos are their own only safeguard. They exists to remind the legally aware (or anyone with some self respect) that they just have to sit in front of the drawing board a bit longer. There can be set-ups offering completely different (see below this yogurt shop in Central London feeling Googlelish) or competitive services-(ie Goojje Google Knockoff Surfaces In China)
Having heard that the Spotify had something else left in their sleeves after marrying Facebook. I was a bit surprised and the views online indicated that they should be preparing web interface, because that’s where they should be going next… Disagree, a browser-only platform would completely be a wrong direction for Spotify as they already have apps installed on the operating systems where the browsers would reside. I congratulate Spotify for not causing redundancy in their ways of offering their service. They instead introduced an Appplatform, (No, i don’t think this is an iTunes-killer feature.) which indicates to the interest in cultivating their own development ecosystem, instead of relying on what Facebook already has.
Ensuring a more superfluous user experience within your application/ hardware more and more relies on the users’ separation from their search (information, entertainment) on the Internet (see, Apple with iOS and OS, Amazon with their own Android App market…). This increases their level of immersion to the medium and engaging them with an offer that’s made believe to be stronger.
Spotify already has a strong presence in the space of having a developer eco-system with the help of web based apps. Seems to me that they are taking their engagement with these users a step further with the possibility of direct engagement with their apps.
