The U.K. mobile provider Orange has created one of the most interesting uses of Facebook and Twitter connect that I have seen recently. To promote the launch of the social media focused Motorola DEXT mobile phone they have created a site that quizzes you on ten questions to see how well you know your friends on Facebook and Twitter. The way they use the data is really smart as the questions aren’t the obvious ones you would expect and use things like friends upcoming events events, like and dislikes to create challenging questions that will really test how well you know people (I only got a 45%). You leave the experience thinking that maybe you need to be better connected to those sites and that information which us exactly the point of the experience. Since Facebook seems to be unable or unwilling to give advertisers the tools to be able to create meaningful experiences on their site then this direction may be able to save them from themselves.

As a type hound I thought this table of popular, influential and notorious type faces was pretty cool. You can get your own printed or digital copy here.

After nearly 90 years of service to the creative community the Art Directors Club has decided to re-design their iconic logo designed by Paula Scher around 2005 which was an update of Albrecht Dürer’s mark that the ADC had been using almost since its inception.

I have to be honest that the new logo leaves me flat and uninspired and I echo the views of Armin over at Brand New in his assessment of the new logo when he said “The biggest problem I have with the new logo is that it really doesn’t do much. I understand the direction to go with an all-type solution and as an advocate of all-type solutions I don’t complain about that aspect, but why so dull? Why just Franklin Gothic tightly letterspaced? One thing is to “embrace our origins and heritage” but it’s another to ignore and disregard the present or even the future and not offer a new kind of visual language for a new century. For an organization that clearly has its own unique, edgy voice and is well respected in the industry, they surely had an opportunity to create something that reflected that same attitude that they have applied to their annuals and competitions. Dressing it in magenta is unfortunately not enough.”

PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew is taking a new tact on their agency review for their $100 million-plus business by letting consumers pick the winner.  A contest beginning this month will allow any agency, independent film company or individual to submit 12-second clips outlining their ideas for marketing three new Mountain Dew products. Consumers will then vote for the top talent, whom will be awarded the business. This is not their first venture into the area of crowd sourcing as the three new products names Distortion, Whiteout and Typhoon were created by consumers through Dewmocracy a Facebook-based initiative designed to open up product development to consumers. And when you look at the number it is obvious that this tactic is working for them as the Dewmocracy brands accounted for 25 million cases in sales last year which equates to nearly two hundred million dollars.

Trivial Pursuit wants to know which sex is smarter and is trying to find out with the Trivial Pursuit Experiment. You log in and join your corresponding gender team, answer a question correctly and increase your team’s points. If you get the question right then you get are treated to a YouTube video featuring the other sex in a not so fine moments and if you get it wrong you also get a video with your sex having less then their finest moment.

It is a fun distraction but doesn’t have the innovation and lasting draw of the Monopoly City Streets online game. I think this is due to the fact that the Trivia Pursuit game makes your opponent a generic number removing the individual opponents and rivalries you have in Monopoly. I also wonder if there is a load balancing mechanism so the outcome is based on the same number of questions on both sides and not just the raw amount of answers which would skew the results. It runs through December 31st so we will see how it ends up then.

I was contacted by Microsoft today asking for my opinion of a preview they just launched for a redesign of MSN.com. I took some time and went over the design and come up with the feedback I have listed below but I wanted to open it up to hear from all of you.  You agree with what I have to say? You think I missed something? You think I got something wrong? Click here to see the new home page and post your thoughts in the comments and I will pass them along to the team at Microsoft.

My thoughts on the new MSN.com:

I think this minimal problem carries over to the drop down menus where you have minimal menus with a lot of white space over minimal content with a lot of white space and there isn’t enough visual separation between the two and it makes the menus hard to read. I would consider carrying the colors used in the main nav over into the drop downs to create that separation and also help reinforce the different content groupings which could be stronger than having colored nav that all the menus that look exactly the same.

I would find a way to expose the content in the hero image and content area of the page so you can see all of the stories at one glance instead of having to click through them one at a time. I know from experience that the first story in the rotation will get the lion share of the clicks and it will fall off sharp;y from there.

I think it is smart to use ‘bing’ instead of ‘search’ in the main form field to try ad make it a branded verb.

There needs to be a stronger separation between the tier 2 content (Latest, MSNBC, FOX Sports, etc.) and the third tier content below it as I was expecting all the content from the tier 2 tabs down to change.

The search field at the bottom of the page just seems odd as it goes against the engrained user behavior that would tell them to scroll to the top of the page to do a search.

I wish I there were ways to be able to customize the content shown on the home page through content filters as well as the ability to add/remove tabs and change content placement.

VW has decided to launch their new 2010 GTI soley through a new iPhone app that is an independent level of the racing game Firement Real Racing, which has already received 70-million downloads since launching back in June. In this version can choose between 6 different GTI to race with the best times competing to win one of six real limited-edition black GTI MkVI cars.

This is the first time that I know of where a brand is using an iPhone all as their only marketing and advertising for a product. The choice to build the app on top of an existing successful app was a smart one we have seen how badly building an app from scratch can go in the case of the Audi A4 launch application. This game actually makes the driving experience fun and gives consumers a strong impression of the car that could drive them into dealerships. I wish that link to the dealerships was more prominent because you have to realize that you will find that info under Showroom.  Once you find it the functionality is well done as it uses your GPS location to find the nearest dealer and then ties into the iPhone nicely with options to call the dealership or map a route.

I think VW has made a lot of smart decisions in creating this app and an experience that will have a positive effect consumer who had this car in their consideration set but only time will tell if a free app can drive consumer to buy a $25-$30,000 car.

Back in August Toyota released the Prius Experience iPhone app that let you take a 360 degree tour the Prius interior, take a photo of a Prius ad to get a augmented reality version of the ad or draw shapes that will be added to the Prius environment. You are prompted to “draw a tree” but you can draw anything you want but i has to be done with a single continuous movement. That drawing them populates the landscape behind the Prius as it drives along. This week the app gives you a chance to move those interactive elements from your iPhone screen to the Reuters board in Times Square. The creations are updated on the live displays in realtime throughout the day and you can check it out via the livecams on the Times Square web site. When I tried it I got a warning that because of high volume, all artwork might not be displayed and that drawings will go up in the order in which they were received. I think this is a well worded cover for the their behind the scenes approval process which obvious is in place as I haven’t seen anything obscene go rolling across the screen.

I can see how they are trying to pull everything together with the campaign theme of “Harmony Between Man, Nature and Machine” and the play between the app and the Times Square board is an interesting twist but it is done on an old execution (the Nationwide Insurance ‘Life Comes At You Fast’ Times Square site I worked on launched 4 1/2 years ago). In the end the app as a whole falls short because it feels like a collection of the latest techniques that never really come together to make anything really conceptually or executionaly breakthrough. The Times Square functionality is still live so you can download the app now and decide for yourself if ti makes you want to buy a Prius.

Saw this FedEx ad today and loved it because I am a sucker for a visual and concept that is so strong it doesn’t even need a single word of copy. It plays up to the consumer to have a brain that can  figure out the two icons and what they mean.  Also as a designer who has to create global advertising all the time I also love that this ad can work anywhere in the world with no translation needed. Click on the ad to get the full sized version which obviously works better than the thumbnail.

I may be late to the party on this one but I just had a colleague show me the social media interface on Mashable.com today. On every other site when you want to share a piece of content you have to pick through a long line of small icons to find the one you want. As a designer I have never liked that interface because I think it makes every article I write look like the the United Nations with all the nations flags flying out front when they are in session. With Mashable.com you find the content you want to share, rollover the photo in the story then click and drag to it get the social media interface to appear.  Drag it onto your network of choice and you done.  The beauty of this approach is that it retains all of the functionality without any impact on the visual design of the site and it really cleans up the user experience by eliminating that multi-colored line of icons. You could put any site design under the interface and it would still work perfectly.

Crispin Porter created a nice online extension of their Tony Stewart School of Endorsements TV spot (see below) with BK Finds Out The Truth About Tony microste. The site is a video stream of a polygraph test that was given to Nascar driver Tony Stewart as he answers consumer submitted questions about he is he really loves his primary endorsement – Burger King and the Whopper. I have always believed that advertising needs to work out from a core concept and that the interactive extension of a campaign should take advantage of the medium and not just be a straight port of the offline creative.  When you watch the TV spot and experience the site you clearly see that was the case here and the benefits of this approach are obvious. The total video is about an hour long and you will have to watch it to see the final results for yourself.

It is also a small thing but orange home bar that runs down the left edge of the site that opens to the content of the BK.com home page is a really elegant way to keep micro sites like this one from developing into individual islands that are disconnected from the main brand site.

PhotoKeys: Photoshop Remote – $2.99

I am 6′ 4″ and wedging myself in to a coach airline seat is bad enough but trying to do anything in Photoshop is nearly impossible because I can barely get to the trackpad let alone the keyboard. In those cases Photoshop Remote has been a lifesaver because it puts the entire Photoshop toolbar, as well as many useful shortcuts like Cut/Copy/Paste, Undo/Redo and  Open/Save into a fullscreen iPhone app.
Learn more |  Get it on iTunes

AirMouse – $2.99

Made by the same people that brought you Photoshop Remote, Air Mouse basically turns your iPhone into a really well designed trackpad, wireless remote or Logitech MX mouse replacement. It is clear there was a lot of time spent polishing the interface and responsiveness because it is a quality mouse substitute when you are on the go.
Learn more |  Get it on iTunes

KERN & EYE vs. EYE – $0.99 each

If you are a designer then these two games will be right up your alley.  Kern is a game that has you drop a missing letter into a word and based on your accuracy and the height or leading is it is dropped from determines your points. Eye vs. eye lets you compete against against a fellow designer to see how can more accurately match a color from memory. The better the match the higher the score.  Both are a fun design centric diversion when you are on the road or a need a break from a late night work session.
Learn more |  Get it on iTunes

myPantone – $9.99

If you have ever been in a client meeting or design session and needed to know what a certain Pantone number looked like then app is for you. You can also build color libraries, extract colors from photos, generate harmonious color combinations and cross reference colors against other Pantone color libraries. It is a lot cheaper and easier than lugging around your Pantone color books.
Learn more |  Get it on iTunes

Looks like Verizon is finally fed up with Apple’s continued iPhone exclusivity with AT&T and has decided to do something about it with a new phone called Droid and a new campaign called “iDon’t” that takes the biggest swing yet at the iPhone. The visual design of the campaign clearly mimics Apple’s typography and music style while the content uses copy like “iDon’t have have a real keyboard, iDon’t run simultaneous apps, iDon’t take 5-megapixel pictures, iDon’t customize, iDon’t run widgets, iDon’t allow open development…” to get their point across. If you are going to poke he bear you better have the goods and early tests with the phone has generated some really good press but can good performance generate the same kind of breakthrough appeal and sales that happened with the launch of the iPhone?

Estee Lauder is the latest brand to tie their product to the wide spread adoption of social media. Starting next week they will be offering free makeovers and photo shoots at its department store cosmetics counters coast-to-coast to produce photos women can use for their online profiles, blog or Web site. You will also see in the fine print that they understand the power of the medium and the potential exposure as you can get your photo done with no purchase required. I still think creating these types of assets for consumers to use in social media is really smart as it gives not only a lasting brand presence but puts their branding into a context thats feels much more personal than any ad ever could. It will be interesting to see if we all starting seeing these photos in our friends lists as quickly as saw the Mad Men Myself creations appear.

The second execution is an outdoor poster where the bottom half of the image is obscured during the day by a polarized film. At night poster is back light so the bottom portion of the image can be seen through the polarized film.

Even more important than the smart use of technology is that fact that the ads create an impression that will make you not only remember them but either take action to see the rest of the print ad or seek out the outdoor ads. It also makes you take that action at night which I am sure is based on behavior of their core audience demographics. 9pm is a media grazing phase and will be able to focus on the experience not distracted by work and before young guys would be heading out to clubs and bars. I hope they keep up this new direction of moving beyond the bikini clad TV spot to do more work like this.

I want to start with focusing on a big problem I have consistently found with the leadership style of senior creatives through my career – managers vs leaders. The best creative directors I have ever worked for had figured out a way to have the two characteristics combine but those instances were sadly very rare. I think that the ability to combine the two characteristics is especially important when you are leading a creative team because you are dealing with individuals who all create in different ways, get inspirited in different ways and who have different latent levels but all need to work together and produce a product that is in line with the creative directors vision.

Round the table we go…

Managers do just what the name implies and sadly not much more. Their leadership style consists managing the project load for the group and the individual deliverables that have been assigned to each person. They usually hold a weekly status meeting where the team slowly and painfully goes around the room reporting in on their progress of the previously mentioned workload and concludes with a quick rundown of the highlights from the latest company newsletter. This method maybe be great for employees who do repetitive and mindless tasks but anyone who is being asked to be creative it is a slow, uninspired death where you increasingly feel like your career is going no where.

If you are in charge of a group then being a manager has to be part of your tool kit but it has to balanced out with vision and leadership. Everyone says they want to be a leader and even talking like one is pretty easy but it is your philosophy, actions and follow through that will be the ultimate judge of if that is really the true or not.

Stand for something

Leaders have a vision for the way they want to run their studio, if they will focus on ideas or deliverables, the direction and focus of the work and how they are going to grow and evolve the people who work for you. They set the tone and have a plan for moving their people and their aspirations forward and not just manage their deliverables. But this means they have to take the hard road of doing things like having unpleasant conversations as they are trying to effect a change to actually standing up for their for beliefs and vision which may not be popular inside of the company. I think the willingness to stand up for yourself and your beliefs is found far, far too rarely because it is easier to just blend in, not make waves and accept mediocrity generated by diluted mass thinking. When you stand up for something you claim a position and no longer move hidden within the crowd and it lets the small minded managers and office politicians sit in the background and judge for your views, take shots at them and try to tear it down. It’s a hard road to travel and you often find yourselves traveling it with few if any companions.

It takes confidence to be able to go down that road especially since you have to create confidence in something other than what you got into this business to do.  I got into this business to be a designer but the longer your creative career the farther you will find yourself from what you loved and got you here in the first place.  I continue to move me farther and father away from being able to actually be a designer on a day to day basis and have had to add this tools to be a process voyeur and idea filter I spoke of before. Once I was placed in a leadership position it had to be done or else the growth of the development of my group would depend on the motivation of the individual creatives which meant it would be uneven, headed in the wrong direction or even non-existent.

The creative process by its very nature is personal and emotional and your leadership style should be no different. You are not going to find the secret to your leadership style in a book or anywhere in this blog because it has to come from you. You have to use your own experience to become an inspirational spark, a career mentor and guard against mediocrity. You have infuse your experience and vision but it will only happen if you really believe it and follow through with it every day. Be introspective with you own creative process to find the insights that let create great work and use them as a guide to be able to able to set a direction and tone for everyone else. It can be a hard first step to move away from the crowd and stand for something but it is the only way you will be able to create great work, keep people for more than 2 years and build a successful team. Any other thoughts or comments feel free to but them in the comments below.

This trend of ex-employees creating anti-employer sites is thanks to technology but I have never seen one that I thought was worth the effort.  If I had been accused of looking at porn all day I would have been out of my mind, demanded the list of sites, times of day they were viewed, length of site visits and I would have posted all of that in my story as proof I was being set-up. In this case the author choses to stay anonymous which I don’t get because you want to tell us all your story about how you were wronged but not tell us who you are?  You want to clear your name then gibe us some proof, your name or anything solid that would keep this from becoming a throw away oddity for bloggers like me.

I thought the interface design for The Toke portfolio site is simple but I like the way the used the same elements to create 3 different information design layouts for their portfolio.