Something About This Web Site
Found Elsewhere Online:
YouTube - DEADLINE the making of > Video taping by Jay Tseng,
Edited by Bang-yao Liu
Point/Counterpoint > An important list of the subtle differences between the tech centers of SF and London. Important because more than half our studio has a foot in either place.
Ivory Press | C photo magazine - A New International Magazine of Photography > Foster's Wife sets up a rare book shop of artists and bookmakers.
Screensaver "Factory Safety" [Art Lebedev] > Art Lebedev create a serious yet enjoyable safety screensaver for a factory client. I enjoyed it even though I work in an office...
The Future of Wild Fish Project [Central] > What we're working on here at Central
Friday Edition Amazered > Truly inspiring. We're not sure we should leave the site looking like this. It adds a dazzle we sorely lack in our office. Now where's one of my cats...
Angry bored octopus goes wilding - [Boing Boing] > Funniest headline + article I've seen in a long time: A octopus has caused havoc in his aquarium by performing juggling tricks using his fellow occupants, smashing rocks against the glass and turning off the power by shortcircuiting a lamp.
The Wallet : What A Bear Market Might Teach Us [WSJ] > Two quotes: "The most important lesson that I learned, I believe, is that money is not wealth." & "Life may not always have been easy, but it certainly was good.". Personal and illuminating piece from WSJ writer Jason Zweig.
Election maps 2008 > Mark Newman (cousin) updates his cartogram election maps, insanely fast, to show this year's results.
Unboxed - Design Is More Than Packaging [NYTimes.com] > The only smart thing said or written about in this article: "It would be overreaching to say that design thinking solves everything. That?s putting it too high on a pedestal," Mr. Kembel says. "Business thinking plus design thinking ends up being far more powerful."
Another Frightening Show About the Economy [This American Life] > Alex Blumberg and NPR's Adam Davidson - the two guys who reported our Giant Pool of Money episode?are back, and explaining in alarmingly simple terms why shit happened, and how it might have been prevented.
313 - A Handy Map of San Francisco Bay [Strange Maps] > This 'Handy Map of San Francisco' does not say why or whether it is absolutely necessary to paint your right thumbnail black to create the effect of San Francisco.
Making money twice - [37signals] > That's roughly $765,000 over a few years off roughly the same content. Insight and ideas about how we run our business.
World War II Codebreaking Remembered [The Encyclopedia Vulcanica] > And that most importantly, were it not for the works of invention and genius performed at Bletchley Park in contribution to defeating the Nazis, your entire way of life could be markedly different.
Big black holes [Jason kottke] > Put another way, if you had 99 duodecillion dollars, you could buy as many PlayStation 3s as you wanted. Blows your mind, right?
Beginning a short series of brand notes, I’ve taken literally the notes from my notebook and this week, prepared them into a short, simple nine-page document.
Over six or nine features like this, I plan to write up my notes that explore what a brand is. These will be in note form, because as I proceed, I may find I wish to alter original thinking or find better examples to illustrate my point.
This document suggests there are five working parts to what a brand is - the company, product, the experience/interaction, the consumer and their perception of all this. In future features, I’ll explore these relationships in a little more detail and document useful case studies that highlight this thinking. The PDFs may not make as much sense individually as they should in conjunction with others, and really should be considered a partial thought, sort of incomplete without the following PDFs to come. In this case, there are still many parts of a brand to explore before answering completely, “What is a Brand?”. There, have I covered my butt?
Overall, my notes are to help me simplify my area of focus so I can apply and communicate it clearly in many different situations. I hope they serve the same purpose to you.
Because of my interest in business behaviour, in particular how organizations can improve their performance through design thinking, there most likely will be a lot of intersection between design thinking + brand thinking here.
Do feel free to correct, discuss or ask questions. Because it is in a PDF doesn’t mean it’s final by any standard, and I’ll always appreciate any ‘helpful’ comments.
This PDF tries to illustrate the answer to, in very simple terms, “What is a Brand”. It stops short of discussing parts like brand identity: personality, values and so on. Instead, this sets the stage for further notes, questions and answers.
What is a Brand? [brand-notes.pdf: 700kb]