Design & Advertising

Good Advertising Sells, Great Advertising Steals your Soul

December 17, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

It steals your soul in a good way. Usually.

Note: Really long ramble about psychology and advertising and random crap that spurned from the “1984″ commercial for the Mac. Only read it if you feel like absorbing my thoughts.

I had a great conversation with someone the other day about what’s missing with the new generation of marketing that’s evolved from traditional marketing/advertising. Many people view the new-ish marketing mediums as a quick way to engage users online, but they don’t really look behind the actual psyche and fundamentals of the company that’s being marketed or the people that are being marketed to. While the allure of “quick, flashy and fun” can be appealing and work to some extent, marketing and advertising will always come down to one key component- Psychology.

Enter… the rambling.

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Filed Under: Design & Advertising Tagged With: 1984, advertising, apple, big brother, macintosh, marketing, traditional advertising

Oh Groupon, You Humor Me

February 27, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

I unsuscribed myself from Groupon’s emails (stop it. Don’t judge me) so I went to the bottom of the email and hit the handy dandy ‘unsubscribe’ feature.

I must say, I’m a sucker for little fun pages or advertising you find within a website (Just ask me about Pickles the Panda) so it amused me greatly when I got sent to this page for attempting to be unsubscribed:

Naturally, I wanted to punish Derrick. Call it the New Yorker in my but I suspected it could be fun. How dare he assume I’d want to receive daily emails?! (Just kidding. I’m not dumb enough to ignore the fact that I WANTED these emails, originally).

I suggest you all unsubscribe immediately to see what happens to him.

You gotta love their little guilt trip, too. Bravo Groupon- I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I was actually glad I unsubscribed because I got to see this fun madness! :)

Have you ever come across any fun pages like this? If so, what brands do it? I love checking them out- even if it means adding and then removing myself on purpose.

Filed Under: Design & Advertising, wtf sunday Tagged With: groupon, groupon unsubscribe, punish derrick

Pickles the Panda- Office Style

August 7, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

And here we go again. Pickles the Panda. Grooveshark isn’t telling me that it loves me anymore, but it’s mocking my terribly timed “that’s what she said” attempts.

GROOVESHARK. I <3 YOU.

Filed Under: Design & Advertising

Cute Error Messages: a Seesmic Surprise

August 1, 2010 By admin 1 Comment

You may remember my Pickles the Panda post a few weeks ago- and my excitement that GrooveShark professed its love for me after all my dedicated hours of listening. Clearly, I’m a sucker for all kinds of cute advertising and error messages.

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Filed Under: Design & Advertising

Google Font API

May 22, 2010 By Selena Narayanasamy 1 Comment

When I was taking a college HTML/CSS class way back in 2003, I remember one thing. I was writing code for a site I was ‘designing’ in class (and I use that term loosely). I really, REALLY wanted to have a pretty font. That’s all I was asking for. But due to web safe fonts, it was a bitch to do that. So what did I do? I put my font in as an image and wrote the image into my code. Simple solution at the time right? Teacher was amazed, ended up getting asked to tutor… all for one stupid revelation that we weren’t taught in class.

Google has now officially fixed (or at least helped) that pain in the ass situation. What they have been working on is a Google Font Directory, where developers and designers can submit their fonts for us to use, so that developers, designers and coders can use the Google Font API to enhance their websites with more web-safe fonts.

With each font, there’s the html code that you’ll insert into your site so that it can read, accept and display it. The html will look something to this effect to link it to the external style sheet:

and the CSS will look like:

h1 { font-family: ‘Cantarell‘, arial, serif; }

…doesn’t seem too complicated at all.It said it works in “most browsers”, so I’m assuming Chrome for sure, but I’m questioning Firefox (because it’s touchy about a lot of things) as well as IE. Safari will most likely easily support it.

Filed Under: Design & Advertising, Technology Tagged With: google font api

Dribbble for Designers!

April 5, 2010 By Selena Narayanasamy Leave a Comment

I was looking around the interwebs today, looking for new social networking platforms etc, when I came across something called “Dribbble“… yes, with three B’s.

Dribbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbble is pretty much a “Twitter” for designers- you can show what you’re working on in 120,000 pixels or less; it’s called a “shot”. I think the concept is actually really cool- why should people who write get all the fun? I love looking at what other people are designing… mainly because I can’t design anything that looks better than a stick figure. Sometimes I get all Picasso though. Don’t ask.

Dribbble plays off of other ideas from Twitter, not just changing the 140 characters to 120,000 px but also:

You can follow fellow Dribbblers.
‘Rebound’ and follow up with your own designs so they are linked as references.
Comment….constructively of course.
You can “like” the shots (they also took some elements of Facebook. THE HORROR!)
You can also search through Dribbble by tags. I smell trending designs in the making.

Follow fellow Dribbblers. Say that 10 times fast.

The only catch for this neat website is that it’s invitation only. Another Dribbbler has to send you an invite so you can join and start participating in the community. It’s completely member driven.

You are allowed to post 24 shots each month- you get more when the month starts. For instance, if you have 15 left at the end of the month, you’ll receive 9 more shots on the 1st to make it 24 again.

I find websites like this interesting, because when they launch you’re like “oh DUH! Why didn’t I think of that? Of course we should have made a visual twitter for designers.” But often the obvious escapes us and we just don’t think about things like that. Maybe we should all start analyzing social networking sites. There’s bound to be something we’re missing.

I actually have a list of features I feel that certain websites are missing and I would like to incorporate it into a new site to launch The problem is, in true life fashion, every time I think of a website, application or cool idea… it gets released. THE WORLD IS READING MY MIND!

Of course there’s ALSO the little problem of me always wanting to start 80 billion projects and burning myself out. One day I’ll stop being so typical and actually finish something astounding. Something good has to be coming out of this brain of mine, with all the ideas I churn around!

So I’ll leave you with this… what else do you feel social networking websites are missing or moving towards?

Time for bed.

You can also search through Dribbble by tags.

Filed Under: Design & Advertising, Social Media Tagged With: designers social networking, dribbble, twitter

Inspiration and Aspiration

August 23, 2009 By Selena Narayanasamy 1 Comment

It’s Sunday! The glorious day which was created specifically for relaxation, being lazy and indulging in guilty pleasures. Therefore I don’t have any kind of interesting news I want to write about, but a few thoughts floating around here and there that I figured I would jot in here.

I spend a lot of my time stalking websites that can benefit my technology and science addiction creativity in some way… whether it be design tutorials for color inspiration, websites geared towards free lance writing, technology blogs (to hone in on various people’s writing styles and skills) and personal websites. Doing this everyday keeps my brain in focus for writing. In order to writer better, you have to read more. How else are you going to get inspired? Where else will you find your aspirations, if not from the desire within yourself to be as good as the writers that you enjoy reading? What is it EXACTLY that makes me want to keep going back to certain websites, excited to read new articles? What can I pick apart that draws me to it? Usually it’s their writing style. There is something so distinct and catchy that I just can’t get enough.

There are two main things that exist to someone in the creative field, aside from their own talent. Inspiration and aspiration. I’m a writer, clearly, and I know what it’s like to aspire to be a “Houdini with words”, mimicking great writers of old and new literature. I write, edit, change wording around, write more, drink a cup of coffee, rip my hair out edit more, then begrudgingly complete it. I read so many amazing pieces and wonder if my writing can ever hold up to those standards or even be of the same caliber. Design, writing, art, music… it’s all so subjective. What is phenomenal to one person may be “ehhhh…” to another. Of course, it’s hard to not want to smack the “ehhhh…” person upside the head and ask what wonderful things they’ve written/designed/composed lately, but we don’t do that. We are supposed to be calm, cool, artsy creatives. I personally don’t fit that category, seeing as I’m a sarcastic hot-head, so maintaining my composure is generally harder than the typical “artsy creative” person.

When we see something that inspires us it rings a bell in our head. Shines a light in our eyes, if you will. That little something activates a trigger that makes us think “I aspire to do that”. Then we set our aspirations high and vow to ourselves that we will reach that level of utopia. However, with all good, comes the bad. Shane is like me. He spends time playing scrabble with me always seeking inspiration, so that he can integrate new things into his design work to achieve a clean well thought out look. Sometimes I email him websites or work I come across during MY inspiration-hunt that I KNOW he’ll love, and that will inspire him. Now, like I said, there is always a bad side. I know he is reading this (Hi Shane!) but he has already heard me say this, and actually suggested I write on a topic like this and inspired me to do so, for everyone else who feels this way that is a creative field. [NOTE:incredibly long run on sentence. Bad thing to do.] Shane is amazing at what he does- he is an extremely talented designer. His advantage is that he can both design AND code- something that most people can only do one or the other of. He gets blindsided by other people’s work, but fails to see how great his own work truly is. The problem is that we aspire so hard to be as “great” as the ones who inspire us, that we overlook our own budding talent. We also feel like we should “be as good as this person” or “write as well as this person” when… well, while they are great and talented, we may be as great and talented as them- we just aren’t on the same level of exposure as them. Who knows how many tries or mistakes, and how much time it takes to actually get their final result, that we so badly crave to achieve.

Creativity comes from within. Some people have it, and some people seriously lack it (you can spot them a mile away). So if you have it, use your ability to be inspired, take that, and manipulate it into something beautiful. Use this to spark inspiration in others. Creativity is a blessing, not a given right.

If you are looking for a great designer/coder, I have one for you. Please visit his website: http://www.shanewaite.com

You can also contact him via email- contact@shanewaite.com

Filed Under: Design & Advertising, Life Tagged With: aspiration, creativity, Design & Advertising, graphic design, inspiration, shane waite, shanewaite.com, web design

Post-It Mayhem [video]/Mona Lisa comprised of caffeine.

August 21, 2009 By Selena Narayanasamy 1 Comment

video below

Let me start this off with a personal declaration; stating something that most of you who know me [or read my website] already know. I LOVE POST IT NOTES! I have all different colors, use them haphazardly, as well as include them in anything I can in and around my desk. There may or may not be blank ones hanging around as well just for the sole joy of peeling them. If I could materialize 3M into a human, I would probably hug and squeeze them tightly… and make them my personal office ~~slave~~ helper.

[note: slight exaggeration there in case a genius or two couldn't pick up on that]

browsing the interwebs, I stumbled across this amazing stop-motion post it note video. This probably took hours upon hours and is really impressive. Impressive as in I wish I thought of it first. BEHOLD! With a great “thanks for the awesomeness” to Bang-Yao, I bring you, the sneaky post-its caught on video. Someone needs to squash that smiley bomb. Continue reading for the Mona Lisa coffee cup art.

Deadline by Bang-yao Liu. from Umberto Cigognini on Vimeo.

Here’s another great example of art through a different median. This Mona Lisa, on display at the Rocks Aroma Festival in Sydney, Australia, was created using 3,604 cups of coffee with various amounts of coffee and creamer contained in them for her shading. Whoever was behind this put in A LOT of hard work to make this work of art. It’s a modern day take on an old masterpiece.