ml haynes design

Logo Lounge’s annual survey of logo trends is a great resource for researching what’s hot, what’s not, what’s timeless and what’s flavor-of-the-month. The selects for 2011 are no different: the lounge folks have gathered a comprehensive collection of color, shapes, effects and general direction.

If you are about to embark on a strategic redesign or you’re creating a visual identity from zero, this work will show you where others have gone — and sometimes many others — and what solutions hit the mark and which fall short. Bookmark the Logo Lounge site. Join and become a contributing member. Check out the catalog of books for sale. Enjoy.

Gradation

Juvi

Vibrate

O

Earth

Monoline

Series

Brown

Dandruff

Concentric

Loopys

Banded

Comma

Buckys

Fruit

If you’ve ventured into Facebook as an advertiser — social marketer, I should say — you know the hell that awaits as platform changes fly out from nowhere, guidelines vaporize before they can be found and apps that promise relief do little but confound your efforts. Well, you can rest now, weary Creative, for the fine folks at Facebook (actually a new crew brought in to create this new initiative) have brought you Facebook Studio.

This community site is “a place to celebrate the agencies and marketers who are creating and innovating with Facebook.” Actually, it’s an online space where agency creatives can submit work on behalf of their clients, comment on and “like” the work submitted by others, and with enough positive feedback make it to the “Spotlight” position and then on to the “Awards” area. For a publisher/portal that’s pretty much stayed hands-off when it comes to giving guidance and forewarning on rules and redesigns this would appear to be a welcome — and much needed — change.

“We need to do a better job of engaging with agencies,” said Blake Chandlee, head of Facebook’s newly formed agency relations team, adding that the site will focus on best practices and highlight quality campaigns uploaded by the creators.

One quick read, however, of the comments on a recent post shows that Facebook will need to do much more than throw up a creative “contest” and stroke those agencies that stuff the ballot box, so to speak. I pulled up the “Most Liked” and “Most Shared” tabs on my first tour of the site and was not surprised to see a Coke campaign sitting in the number one position. The beverage brand seems to have cracked the code early on and typically appears in how-to resources for “Build Your Brand on FB” along with other brands with enough firepower to make the social network “work” for them.

If your client does business in a highly regulated industry you may be charmed by the display of love and appreciation for “good” creative. Aren’t we all? But it’s something altogether different when you’ve finally convinced your financial services or pharma client to dip a toe into social and you’re on your own in navigating the space. It has not been uncommon for those of us adventuring out to be “on hold” indefinitely, given conflicting instructions or none at all, or surprised to find (just when we thought we had it down) that wholesale changes had upended our efforts. Made for quite a rocky ride.

It’s been a week and already there are plenty of submissions to review and remark on. Time will tell if this becomes the resource that is so sorely needed or if it’s just another creative cul de sac for self-reflection and snarky comments. Facebook’s continued involvement, pro-active engagement, assistance, and active listening will be the first hints that this might be real help and not hype.

Earlier this year, CMO.com released their second annual “CMO’s Guide To The Social Landscape.” Billed as an “up-to-date analysis of the rapidly shifting world of social media channels” this color-codified chart breaks down the most popular — and currently most effective — sites according to their value in:

• Supporting Customer Communication
• Furthering Brand Exposure
• Generating Site Traffic
• Enhancing SEO

Working with SEO and social media firm, 97th Floor, CMO.com provides a clear and comprehensive look at a marketer’s social network choices and presents compelling information on how best to move in this ever-shifting landscape. Take a look and see how you’re using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg and others — are you optimizing each unique channel? Could you better position your brand for optimal exposure and effect in these social media spaces? And are there others, not mentioned, that you’re having success with?

Download a PDF version of CMO’s Guide for 2011 here.

Please note all copyrights belong to CMO.com and 97th Floor.

For the last decade, Threadless has been printing t-shirts. And creating community. And tossing the standard small business model on its head. Oh, and inspiring others with a passion to build on that dream, make it real, and introduce brands that matter.

The history of this business and brand—called “the most innovative small business in America” by Inc. magazine—has been captured in Abrams Images perfect-bound book, titled Threadless. Written by co-founder Jake Nickell, this colorful and graphic time capsule is as much a chronicle of the brand’s growth as it is a witness to the growth of the community that defines and invigorates the brand and the artists and designers that are its lifeblood. Big, bold, and beautiful, tee by tee, the author guides us along on an amazing journey, from the prototypical “office in a bedroom” to a warehouse that requires go-karts to get around.

If you’ve never visited the threadless.com site, you may not know that this industry-altering company—a multimedia case study for Harvard Business School, no less—is based on a crowd-sourcing model. Designers submit designs. Community members provide feedback and vote on their favorite design. And the top vote-getters are printed and sold, weekly and worldwide through the site’s online store. This book brings that all to life and showcases the art and artists that have come to define the brand.

So, while gurus have been tapped to contribute and their “think pieces” add a certain heft to the book, what stands out are the profiles of the individual designers and artists who have found a welcoming community and nurturing home in the online space that Threadless has carved out and claimed. Going beyond what one might assume crowd-sourcing to be, the submit-critique-vote process that’s at work affords real-time feedback on an artist’s work and enables those who hope to “win” (top vote-getters are printed each week) a real shot at the title.

The visuals—t-shirts designs, original artwork, point-and-shot photos of the people and places that are Threadless—turn this from a history book to an art book. If you know printing, particularly screen-printing, you’ll delight in the designs and processes that this company has brought to market over the last ten years.

Inspiration and innovation are on every page, proof positive that a brand built with passion, trust and transparency can not only thrive but chart a completely new course.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I am a threadless.com fan and customer, and my “Ninjas vs. Luchadores” t-shirt is one of my prized possessions.)

Imagine you’re sitting around with a group of colleagues, taking a break and talking about what you’re working on, what you wish you were working on. The conversation is more freeform jam than academic discourse and one topic taps and turns into another. Your thoughts are going a mile a minute and there you are without something to jot down the gems that are whizzing by.

I recently found myself having a similar experience with a small, inexpensive paperback book entitled, Digital Advertising: Past, Present, and Future. The collection of essays charts the past and predicts the future of “what we used to call the advertising industry.” Asking and answering questions like “What did we learn from the 12KB banner?” and “What does the agency of the future look like?” the contributors offer insights and ideas on what we’ve built and what we might be in the process of creating — if we’re creating at all.

More a survey and overview than in-depth and technical piece, this book reminds those of us in the industry just how far we’ve come in the last couple of decades. If you were there building ads in the beginning, you’ll appreciate Matt Powell’s “When the 12 KB GIF Banner Was King.” Patrick Gardner’s “When Sweden Rules the World” lays out the seven values that make that country’s digital advertising (and quality of life in general) successful, enviable in most cases. And wrapping up the collection is Daniele Fiandaca’s “Agency of the Future” which details the ten characteristics common to all successful agencies in the decade to come.

Creative Social is a collective founded by Fiandaca and Mark Chalmers and dedicated to inspiring the industry, promoting the industry, educating the industry, and having fun doing while doing so. With twice yearly meetings at different worldwide locales, a small group of pioneers in creative and business collaborate and catalyze movement and change. With the publication of Digital Advertising: Past, Present, and Future—with related blogs and social media events—we all have the opportunity to sit down and listen to these thinkers and makers. We can begin to think about things anew and, quite possibly, take those thoughts into our lunch rooms, lounges, studios, and offices and spark up more conversation. Pick up a great read and start creating your agency of the future now.

Creative Social San Francisco from Daniele Fiandaca on Vimeo.

The numbers are impossible to ignore: More than 500 million people are active on Facebook, and those folks are prospective customers not only for big brands but for the small and niche brands that can — and should — engage in this space. It all depends on who you ask, but many of business owners and marketers whom I speak with still are unsure about why they should be spending time and money on Facebook (or any social media in the hard-core cases). The ones who “know they should be there” are unclear about how to get started, and the ones who are there seem to be hovering in moderator mode over infrequent wall posts and pictures.

Here is my top five list of “likes” — with a twist — for marketers taking a first or new look at Facebook and their media mix. If you “like” what you read, leave a comment and fire someone else up. If you have more ideas — particularly effective in convincing those nowhere near the fence much less on it — please “share.”

1 | Facebook Ads: Usually, you’ll find this at the bottom of the list as most see social media as a “freebie.” The low cost of entry, do-it-yourself and democratic nature of the medium enables promotion with a small price tag, but small business (typically local and regional) is missing a great opportunity to get in front of prospective customers. With the ability to micro-target, flexibility that ensures a nimble approach, and costs that won’t overtax a tight budget, what’s not to like about these hard-working ad units?

2 | Facebook Pages: “Create a Page for My Business” is how it typically happens. Business owners see the prompt, follow the links, and are up and waiting for the “likes” of friends and fans in no time. However, these pages are more than a wall for exchanging greetings or glad-handing; they are, some proclaim, overtaking websites and microsites to be the Web presence for many businesses. Applications for customization using FBML (Facebook Markup Language), analytics to collect and report on user behaviors, and locating in social media’s number one address make Pages so easy to like.

3 | Facebook URL: A page with 25 “likes” (as of this writing) is eligible for a username, the unique Web address that leverages the power of Facebook and announces that a brand is doing business there. Many small and niche businesses find the borrowed equity of these vanity URLs provides a recognizable and relevant credibility to their brand or promotion. Sure, some will tell you that their customers “aren’t on Facebook,” but one can’t ignore the benefit of this powerhouse support in reaching out to new (and existing) customers.

4 | Facebook Apps: More than 550,000 active applications can be found on Facebook, and they’re not all for growing virtual farm crops or blowing away zombies. Small and niche businesses are using these apps to deepen the experience on their pseudo-sites — enabling customers to share photos, videos, and links to ensure that prospects get the third-party information that they’re seeking. Survey apps aid R&D, contest apps create buzz., and off-site promotional apps let businesses sync their Facebook activity to their own websites, which means more than one way exists to like what you see.

5 | Facebook Places: Now that Facebook has turned on this geo-based app, small, local, and regional businesses can tap into this promo-friendly mobile app. Ideally, folks would check in and broadcast their whereabouts to friends, but businesses should consider the benefits of a real-time app like Places for point-of-sale promotions, exclusive offers, and loyalty program add-ons. Who doesn’t like a deal like that?

I recently attended a one-day working session at HP headquarters in Palo Alto. With nine presenters scheduled in just as many hours I came prepared to gain actionable insights on technology, strategy and the future of interactive advertising. Presenters showcased the agency, advertiser, supplier, VC and developer challenges each face today and hinted at how they planned to meet new challenges in the future. Here are some of the more interesting take-aways:

Gary Elliot of HP
Everything is a service.

Michael Theodore of IAB
Online brand building is ineffective. Sponsorships, search and digital video are most effective.
As the “most accountable medium” we are still tweaking and arguing over measurement models and methodolgy; we need cross-industry consensus on this.
To avoid FTC regulation, there is an immediate need to create a self-regulating framework and process for working within that framework.

Curt Hecht of VivaKi
After a spending a year and observing 25 million users, the efficacy of user-selected pre-roll ads on Hulu.com is confirmed. Users will choose which ads they watch in exchange for the video content they crave.

Chris Curtin of HP
“Searchandising” — make it easy for users to find the product that interests them.
Technology + behavior = Mobile at retail
Ideas don’t count until you do them.

John Coyne of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
Bring your discipline, leave your department.
The fear of irrelevance should drive us all to change.
Change + Convergence + Collaboration

Emma Cookson of BBH USA
When looking for creative talent consider two key attributes: Diplomacy and Generosity.
“Getting it done” is the new heroism.
Moving beyond networking, working harmoniously and to each person’s mutual benefit, sharing expertise and disseminating information through the agency is key to an agency’s evolution.

George Gallate of Euro RSCG 4D
Put digital at the core of everything.
Technology does not equal ROI. But technology to the power of creativity does.

Erin Clift of AOL
Build platforms to scale, allowing for smart growth.
Even with perishable content, the portal can flex to deliver relevant content to a built-up “fan base” user group.

Nancy Hill of AAAA
Work to extinguish outdated compensation models and tensions between agency and client

Calvin Lui of Tumri
Chic versus Geek — we need to marry art and science, knowing how to inspire consumers.
Consider “interest-based advertising” versus behavioral targeting

Finally got the call and couldn’t be more excited. As allowed, I’ll use this forum to post my experience putting my superpowers to use for good.

Check out this fantastic organization, The Taproot Foundation. Think about joining me and many others who will do it pro bono.

Now screening in select art-house theaters across the U.S. is an 86-minute documentary entitled, “Art & Copy.” No stranger to the documentary genre and familiar with commercial film as advertising, director Doug Pray points the camera at ad legends and affords us, the viewers, an opportunity to see and hear from the creators of iconic campaigns and cultural game-changers.

I sought out the film, having heard about its release post-Sundance, and found myself sitting in a tired, old movie house amongst what appeared to be kindred spirits. There’s a certain stature to advertising creatives — or I like to think so — and we all seemed to carry the same attitude of reverence for the masters in front of us with a touch of show-me-something-new cockiness. All casual and laid back, but all knowing and up front about it. I was actually surprised at how many of us showed up for a Wednesday 8pm showing. I thought we’d all still be hunched over our keyboards, working out one last thing before the holiday.

I was also surprised to learn about two amazing women who pioneered this testosterone-heavy business — Phyllis Robinson and Mary Wells. It’s not often that women or their work are showcased, but here they have quite a bit of screen time. Robinson, the first copy chief at Doyle Dane Bernbach and originator of the “Me Generation,” speaks gracefully of how her process was not so much one of complete creation but of reflection. Mary Wells, first woman to own and run an ad agency, first female CEO to take a company public and creator of the “I Love New York” campaign, describes how an ad campaign turned into a complete re-branding and changed an industry.

Two other favorites — Hal Riney and Lee Clow — get plenty of attention as they explain what creativity is, how it works (and doesn’t work) and what makes a brand, a company and an agency successful. Riney passed away in March 2008; Clow will retire in 2010. Both men created some of advertising’s most memorable campaigns and have some of the best backstories on those campaigns. And while each man’s distinctive style may not sync with the quick-cut, hyper-speed sensibilities of today’s creatives — and certainly the brands trying oh-so-hard to stay current — they will both be missed.

Art & Copy, a film by Doug Pray. Worth the wait. Worth the search. Order the large popcorn.