Esquire Magazine AR

Esquire Magazine takes it's first augmented reality steps.

Meeting New People? Get A New Business Card

Most people design a single business card (or have one designed) and take it everywhere they go.

When you think about it, this is not a very smart thing to do.

Because using the same business card all the time, means you are using the same thing to make a good impression on lots of very different people.

Designer Maurizio Russo realized this and created a special business card for a special audience.

For his trip to Japan he designed a series of  Maurusso vs Godzilla toy businesscards.

We like his toy business card idea a lot.

But we like the fact that he first thought about the function of a business card even more.

Possibly The Best Brief Ever

In his excellent book "Buyology" Martin Lindstrom describes one of the greatest briefs ever.

It was for the design of the 3rd coke bottle from the left.

The brief was simple (which is always good) but very demanding (which is even better, but you can't do that without making it simple first).

The brief said: "We want our Coca-Cola bottle to be recognizable even when it is dropped and gone to pieces".

It is a very weird demand.

We can't imagine Coca Cola actually worrying what their bottle would look like broken.

But it is also a brilliant demand.

It challenged the designer to come up with something incomparable.

And it forced Coca Cola to approve only of something incomparable as well.

The brief forced both designer and client to be brave.

The world could do with more briefs like that.

Live Social Media Count

Is this a great tool to show clients how big social media have become?

Or a great example how the web is becoming more and more about 'real time'?

Anyway, it's  great and we thank dutchcowgirls.nl for pointing it out to us and Gary Hayes for creating it.

These Are Sausages.

We have to admit, we were a bit shocked when we saw them at first.

And we consider ourselves creative open minded people.

This has to be strangest sausage packaging in the world.

It's wild, modern, balloony, festive...

It's definetly not something you would immediately associate with sausages.

The Russian designer and client have to be nuts.

Or are they both geniuses?

They might be if you look at the alternative.

Which is to go for a design that is all about sausages.

Which would make it look like all the other sausages in the supermarket.

Let's say this sausage brand is totally new.

So it would have to start getting some market share at the cost of other sausage brands.

Looking exactly like all the other brands would mean that consumers would probably not notice the new brand.

Looking like a wild party sausage from disco space will definitely get people's attention.

The way we see it, this new design could fail quite easily.

But so could a "safe" design, and the rewards for this weird design could be much higher, because it is almost a new category by itself.

Go strange sausage go!

Not Your Average Car Commercial (Thank God)

Why do all car commercials look the same?

(You know, shiny car drives on empty road in desert/mountains/forrest).

Because that's what most car manafacturers want from their ad agencies.

They think it's safe, because nobody can hate it or not understand it.

We think it is very dangerous.

Not only are these commercials boring the crap out of consumers, but they also don't tell anything special about the brand.

Fortunately, there are a few car marketers out there who do get it and have the guts to produce some great stuff, which makes people fall in love with their brand.

Mini is certainly one of them.

Microsoft's Future Looks Good

This is our fourth post on Microsoft already.

And we do tend to critize the brand's communication.

Not this time tough, we like this video.

It's not desperately trying to sell it something, it's just showing us a possible future.

A future that looks rather good.