Pirates – probably not the first thing that springs to mind when contemplating successful branding. Yet in reality they are responsible for one of the most successful and recognizable identities of all time – the skull and crossbones. In her New York Times article, Alice Rawsthorn writes about the pirates’ adopted emblem and its undoubted success as a branding tool.

Like all brand identities, there are three factors that contribute to the skull and crossbones’ success:

Clarity of Message

Using the skull and crossbones as a visual representation of the outcome of resistance (certain death), pirates found that they could remotely instill fear in target vessels’ crews. This use of visual terrorism would allow the pirates to board ships, take their share, and escape much faster and more efficiently than ever before. Effectively what the flag aided was maximizing profit (booty) while minimizing engagement time (mostly spent fighting resistance), loss of manpower (pirate casualties), and resources (ammunition).

Simplicity

Pirates of the 17th and 18th centuries originally flew plain black flags, but eventually introduced personalized designs to differentiate themselves from other pirate crews (their market competition). The skull and crossbones design as we know it was first sighted in the early 18th century and was adopted by pirates world-wide. The crisp white of the emblem made it stand out from the solid black background, making it clearly visible against any backdrop, and also from long distances – the modern day equivalent of a logo being legible at small sizes for use in print and on-screen.

Versatility

Not all pirates chose to fly the standard insignia. Some didn’t even use it at all, instead choosing to fly a plain red flag to signal an intent to kill without mercy – some say this is the origin of the term “Jolly Roger,” adapted from the French jolie rouge meaning pretty red. Others took to customizing the skull and crossbones, adding additional elements, using rearranging core elements, and even adding color (i.e. blood red) to make their individual messages clear. In some respects that places it alongside Saatchi & Saatchi’s recently revised I Love NY logos, and surely one of the earliest, adaptable, dynamic identity systems.

This week saw the world’s last remaining typewriter manufacturer closed its doors. Despite typewriters being superceded by the personal computer, Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing continued to manufacture them until 2009, when demand saw their production levels drop below 1,000 per year.

Invented in 1870, the typewriter was originally intended for transcribing dictation, eventually becoming the tool of choice for composition used by writers, poets and even philosophers such as Neitzsche, Burroughs, Kerouac, Hemingway and Twain. But alongside its rich history, it leaves behind a legacy of popular terminology and out-dated typographic conventions.

Some common typewriter terminology is still in use today. Backspace, cursor, cut and paste, shift, and tab are all remnants of the typewriter age, each named after the physical acts they describe. While these terms are still appropriate today, the typewriter’s legacy typographic conventions are not.

The reason most of these conventions exist in the first place is because of the typewriter’s physical design. Firstly, there was simply not enough space to house keys for all the different types of quote marks, hyphens, and dashes. Secondly, due to the typewriter’s output being monospaced (each character being exactly the same width), a double-space had to be inserted to be able to clearly distinguish the start and end of each sentence on the page. This resulted the abandonment of proper typographic conventions in favor of a more simplified style. Of course, these days we can use multiple key combinations to access these missing glyphs, and with the advent of digital type with varying character widths, there is no need for double-spaces anymore. You can read more about these conventions, and ways to correct them in my previous posts on Typographic Literacy here and here.

Another legacy of the typewriter is the standard QWERTY keyboard layout. Again, it was because of it’s physical design that this keyboard layout was introduced – its purpose was to increase efficiency by arranging the typebars in an order that minimized key jams during typing. Even the staggered arrangement of keys (which was intended to give the typebars extra breathing room) has made its way onto modern computer keyboards. But again, the physical limitations of the typewriter is no longer an issue. Some alternative keyboard layouts have been nominated such as DVORAK, but despite some apparent advantages (DVORAK puts 70% of the common English keystrokes on the “home row” versus QWERTYs 32%, possibly resulting in reduced risk of carpal tunnel syndrome and other RSIs), none are real contenders to the QWERTY throne.

The typewriter may be dead, but it’s certainly not going to be forgotten any time soon.

Fortunately some typefaces are emerging that make constructing these elements directly within layout applications such as Adobe InDesign much easier. These “Smart Fonts” use Opentype features to allow seamless layering of graphic elements and on-the-fly glyph replacement, the results of which were previously only possible using Adobe Illustrator.

Below are examples of three of these typefaces.

FF Dingbats 2.0

FF Dingbats 2.0 is an evolution of FontFont’s early 1990s pictographic type family. Version 2.0 brings alternate glyphs sets for each pictogram (outlines, fills, and additional details), allowing multi-layering and full color customization. By choosing a specific Opentype feature, the spacing of each glyph is adjusted so they stack perfectly on top of one another. You can read more about FF Dingbats 2.0 here.

Chartwell

Designed by Travis Kochel, Chartwell is a type family designed specifically for producing data visualizations. It works by detecting numeric character combinations and substituting them with custom-designed ligatures. Each substituted ligature is influenced by previously entered values, allowing for seamless pie charts, line charts, and bar graphs. You can find out more about how Chartwell works here.

Wayfinding Sans Symbols

As an addition to his signage design typeface, Wayfinding Sans, type designer Ralf Herrmann has developed a pictographic counterpart. Although it may seem like an ordinary pictographic typeface at first glance, the demonstration video below reveals some ingenious Opentype features. Need a shopping basket icon? No problem. Thanks to Opentype, simply type #shoppingbasket and there it is.

Wayfinding Sans Symbols (Preview) from Ralf Herrmann on Vimeo.

The best part? Although currently in beta testing, the typeface will be released as a free download at fonts.info. You can find out more about Wayfinding Sans Symbols here.

I’m really excited to see what else Opentype can do for type design. I expect to see lots more “Smart Fonts” appearing in the future.

Sitting on top of the Social Layer, the Game Layer will utilize familiar game mechanics – such as points, levels, challenges, time constraints, motivated players, etc. – to influence human actions in the real world. Unlike the Social Layer, which traffics in connections, the Game Layer will traffic in influence – where we go, what we do, and how we do it.

Last decade was the decade of social. The coming one will be the decade of games.

In his keynote address, Priebatsch outlined five key issues and explained how the Game Layer fits within each.

School
School is a near-perfect game ecosystem. The problem is that students (players) are unengaged and unmotivated. With the current grading system there is the possibility of failure, but failing is exactly what we don’t want to happen. Introducing a system of “experience points” in which students can level-up – rewarding success instead of punishing failure – would shift focus to the end goal (knowledge), instead of interim goals (grades).

Cheating is another problem area in schools. By removing all faculty oversight during testing, occurrences of cheating at Princeton have dropped dramatically. Now students are simply required to adhere to the honor code, and taught that complicity is as much a crime as cheating itself. Effectively these new rules have created a self-policing game, turning other students into both competitors and compatriots. The role of “enemy” has shifted from the overseer to the test itself.

Customer Acquisition
In a dissection of Groupon, Priebatsch outlined how Groupon operates on three popular game mechanics. The first is the “free lunch” concept, the idea of getting something in return for participation. The second is communal gameplay, where multiple participants are required to work together to unlock the offer (the sheer number of participants makes us less suspicious of the offer). Finally there are time restraints (countdowns) – act fast to unlock the reward. Combine those three game mechanics with a massive email list and you have Groupon.

Loyalty
Everyone likes the idea of becoming a regular, a “Norm” from Cheers. American Express has been successful in nurturing loyalty by offering different levels of cards to its customers. By utilizing a progression dynamic, their customers have become loyal to a brand, not just a place.

SCVNGR’s latest venture – LevelUp, a location-based game service – combines the offer system of services like Groupon and Living Social, with a location-based service and level-up dynamic. Unlike Groupon where there is only a single, one-off deal, LevelUp offers three, with users unlocking better deals on each subsequent check in. The service is currently on trial in Boston and Philadelphia.

Location-Based Services
Currently only 4% of internet users use location-based services – such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrrl, and SCVNGR – showing they are far from becoming mainstream. The rule that players are required to be physically present at a venue to check in and take advantage of offers is very restrictive, with only a limited number of customers present at any one time, and a limited time with which to engage them.

Facebook teamed up with Gap to offer 10,000 free pairs of jeans to people who checked in to their stores. This produced a large spike in activity, but people stopped checking in once they realized there were no more deals. By introducing reward schedules, customers could be inticed to keep checking in to unlock future offers.

Global Warming
Priebatsch’s final topic started with a demonstration of communal gameplay. One each seat was a random number of cards of different colors. The audience were given three minutes in which to trade and organize their cards so each row was a single color. The audience succeeded in less than two, the reward being SCVNGR’s donation of $10,000 to the National Wildlife Federation.

The game was used as an analogy for decentralized leadership, and the application of local solutions to global problems. Audience members were only able to communicate with others in their immediate vicinity, the random number and color of the cards representing an uneven distribution of resources.

While this demonstration of gaming principles was obviously not intended as a solution for eradicating global warming, the Game Layer could eventually make that dream slightly less impossible.

There are a number of different ingredients required to make a successful logo. Simplicity and a strong color palette are two of the key elements that go contribute to what every logo’s end goal should be: instant recognition. The aim of UK designer Graham Smith’s ongoing study on brand and logo simplification is to see which of the world’s most popular brand marks are still recognizable after being ‘unevolved’ – recreated using only circles.

What he has found is that the more unique the positioning of elements, and the simpler the logo is, the more recognizable it will be. However, I think there is another factor that has an effect on recognition. It isn’t merely how simple the logo is to begin with, or how strong the color combinations are, but also how much exposure we, as consumers, have had to the brands and logos in question. A few of the featured examples are predominantly UK-focused, and although I am an ex-pat UK citizen, those examples took me considerably longer to discern.

The most recognizable logos are the ones we are exposed to on a regular basis. Vehicle manufacturers, food and beverage chains, consumer technology manufacturers, clothing and footwear retailers and social media companies dominate our lives and our repeated use of these products and services unwittingly sears their logos into our collective consciousness. We form lasting connections with our chosen brands, and like the face of a friend or relative, their logo evokes feelings of familiarity, comfort and trust. In effect, a strong logo is as much about the strength of the brand it is associated with as it is aesthetics and exposure.

So far Graham Smith has unevolved 72 leading brands. Part of the fun is trying to work out who each logo represents – viewers are invited to guess in the comments section of each post. Using the same rules, I’ve unevolved a few of the logos KA+A has produced for our clients. Take a look at our Case Studies page to see if you can guess which ones they are.

Over the last several years there’s been a steady emergence of online services that are changing the way we consume digital media. Now instead of purchasing and downloading the latest music, movies and tv shows, you can simply stream content from services like Pandora, Last.fm, Netflix, and Hulu, straight to your computer or tv for a straight fee or monthly subscription.

Recently launched Onlive – a new on-demand video game service – takes on-demand one stage further, allowing remote play of video games without ever needing to download and install the games themselves. A small container application is downloaded to the user’s computer, through which the service is accessed. All user input is sent to the hosted game on Onlive’s secure servers, then the results are streamed back to the user’s computer as video. Because Onlive’s servers do all the heavy-lifting, the technical requirements for the services are very basic.

One of the obvious benefits of on-demand is copyright protection. The problem with digital files is that they are easily distributable. No user license agreement or copyright protection system will ever be an effective enough deterrent to piracy, but by hosting files on secure servers, it makes it much more difficult for pirates to hack and redistribute copyrighted material. It basically puts ownership and protection of the creations back in the hands of the creator/distributor.

I think it’s possible that a shift from desktop applications and assets towards on-demand services for design work is likely in the future. Fonts are one of the most pirated digital commodites in the design industry. Webfonts service, TypeKit, has removed access to the distributable, reusable font files from the hands of the end user. Many other similar services have followed their lead since. It seems natural to extend TypeKit-like services to design for more traditional media. This could take the form of a simple Onlive-style container application that accesses a subscription-based font service allowing fonts to be “aliased” on the user’s computer.

Design applications such as Adobe’s Creative Suite could also take an Onlive-type approach and become a subscription-based on-demand service. Instead of installing several gigabytes of application and supporting files, again there could be a much smaller container application that accesses the required services online.

There are obvious limitations with this type of approach for design applications, most importantly they would all require a very fast internet connection, and if that connection ever goes down then so does the service. Muro is a great example of a new breed of web-based drawing tools, although it has a long way to go before it can match the power or sophistication of similar desktop applications.

In effect, what is happening is an attempt to de-materialize our media consumption and software utilization. The days of downloading physical files to your hard drive are surely numbered, to be replaced with “ghost products” – access and permission to listen to, watch, and even use, but not to own. I don’t know if owning these files will ever be obsolete, but it’s looking more and more likely every day.

Over the last several years, more and more of these types of identity systems have been surfacing. From the few I was already aware of, I embarked on an online expedition of sorts, to learn more hopefully discover some brand new species.

What I found was that there appear to be two main sub-classes of polymorphic identity system:

Type 1: Identities that draw from a bank of pre-determined elements, influencing anything from logo structure and color, to its application.

Type 2: Identities that use live data to constantly update or ‘morph’ into new, previously unseen forms.

Even though these identities sometimes appear in a multitude of iterations, they are as cohesive and recognizable as standard ‘monomorphic’ identity systems, but are far more likely to outlive them.

City of Melbourne (Type 1)
With literally dozens of iterations, the bold ‘M’ of the City of Melbourne’s recent identity redesign is “immediately recognizable and as multifaceted as the city itself: creative, cultural, sustainable. A celebration of diversity and personal interpretation that is both future-proof and iconic.”

Tess Management (Type 1)
The identity for this London-based model agency (which represents – among others – Naomi Campbell and Elizabeth Hurley) uses a modular system, constructing numerous variations of its logo from a collection of art-deco inspired elements. These same elements are also used as photo frames and borders in various applications.

Visit Nordkyn (Type 2)
Using a custom generator, the snowflake-inspired logo on Visit Nordkyn’s website pulls in data on temperature and wind direction on the Norwegian peninsula from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, updating every five minutes. The wind direction determines the physical form of the icon, where as the temperature affects its color.

Casa da Música (Type 2)
Using the visually stunning architecture of the Casa da Música Concert Hall (Porto, Portugal) as a basis, six configurations of its logo were designed, conforming to six different views of the building (North, South, East, West, Top and Bottom). From these views, 17 different facets were defined, influencing a 17-point color picking mechanism. A software application was developed which auto-generates the six separate logo configurations based on photography processed using the 17-point system.

The Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology (Type 2)
As part of his thesis presentation, Michael Schmitz’ based his proposed design concept for the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology on the Game of Life, a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. The logos are generated using custom software and are influenced by several factors – number of employees (density), funding (speed), and number of publications (activity). A true example of a ‘living identity,’ whenever the logo is displayed in print or on the web, it reflects the true, current state of the lab as a living organism.

“To anyone curious about #NewTwitter proportions, know that we didn’t leave those ratios to chance,” explains Twitter’s Creative Director, Doug Bowman, referring to the site’s recent revamp. The two-pane layout remains the basis for the redesign, but the new proportions are based on an age-old mathematical constant that – applied correctly – can result in some of the most effective, perfectly balanced, and visually compelling creations.

The Golden Ratio – also known as the Divine Proportion – is represented by the calculated number 1.6180339887, and denoted by the Greek letter Phi (Φ). It is all around us, in nature, science, art, architecture and even music – from nautilus shells to spiral galaxies, the Parthenon, the Mona Lisa, and Bartok’s Music For Strings, Percussion & Celesta. It is ingrained in our consciousness, causing us to find attractive anything in which the ratio appears by nature or by design.

The most common visual representation of the Golden Ratio is the Golden Rectangle. Shown in the Twitter screenshot above appears a Fibonacci Spiral, an approximated Golden Spiral constructed using quarter-circle arcs that conform to both the Fibonacci Sequence and nested Golden Rectangles.

The Golden Ratio is pervasive in graphic design. Many of the household brand names we know today use it as a structural base for their logo. It’s application to formats and grid systems for traditional media is widely documented. Unfortunately it’s precise application to layouts for digital media is rare, most designers instead choosing to use an approximated 3:5/5:3 layout (0.6/1.6666666667), or splitting a standard, 12 column grid – more in line with the Rule of Thirds than the Golden Ratio. This is a much more flexible way of working for the average website designer. Of course, being a two-column layout, the Golden Ratio makes perfect sense for Twitter.

When it comes to browser resizing, Doug Bowman goes on to explain that that’s where the site loses its ‘Divine Proportions’ – “This, of course, only applies to the narrowest version of the UI. If your browser window is wider, your details pane will expand to provide greater utility, throwing off these proportions. But the narrowest width shows where we started, ratio-wise.”

I’d love to get in there and check out the precise measurements first-hand, but like many other users I’m still patiently waiting for ‘Old Twitter’ to become ‘New Twitter.’

With the upcoming release of Apple’s iPad (April 3rd, 2010), there has been an increasing amount of buzz recently around the change in the way we will consume media. With an estimated 40-50 tablet devices set for release by early 2011, Wired Magazine, in partnership with Adobe, has seen this as an opportunity to rethink the way we connect with magazine brands, leading to a fundamental shift in the way Wired is produced with it’s new digital app.

At the SXSW panel After Magazines: Wired’s Digital Rebirth, panelists Scott Dadich (Creative Director, Wired Magazine) and Jeremy Clark (Senior Experience Design Manager, Adobe) explained the production methods of the app using Adobe Air, and showcased its features with a multi-platform demo.

Wired’s Goal: Publish Once, Author Anywhere

The average Wired article takes 24 days to go from initial copy to finished layout—a tight timeframe considering Wired is a monthly publication. Luckily, the team responsible for the print version of the mag are able to repurpose the layouts for use on the iPad and other devices, with only incremental hours, and no need for any additional staff.

Whereas reading a print magazine is a single-axis, linear experience, Wired have succeeded in developing their digital magazine into a multi-axis, non-linear experience. Articles are navigated by swiping left and right, while pages within these articles are accessed by swiping up and down. In addition to this, readers can tap the screen to bring up the ‘Scrubber’, a scrolling navigation bar that allows the reader to scroll page-by-page through the magazine. There is also a ‘Browse’ mode, which provides a fully zoomed-out view, allowing easy access to any article or page with just a couple of taps.

It’s not just Print, it’s Print Plus

The digital app is not simply a straight, digitized version of the print mag, it is much more. The app utilizes audio and video, perfect for providing snippets of interviews, music clips and movie trailers. Illustrations, charts and diagrams can be animated and even allow reader interaction. Photography has a whole new lease of life with the use of galleries, allowing multiple images to occupy the same space, accessed with a swipe of the finger, and 360 VR imagery allows the reader to see more of a tested product than a typical 2D photo. The orientation of the iPad plays a big part in the layout of the articles too. Rotating the iPad from landscape to portrait (or vice-versa) can switch editorial images, offering different perspectives on the same image, or zoom in on interactive content that appears smaller in the alternative orientation.

Of course, it’s not just editorial content that gets the special treatment. Using the same features listed above, consumers can interact with their favorite brands in a whole new way. Fashion labels can showcase collections in one ad and can utilize high-resolution photography to allow detailed close-ups (using your finger and the ‘Rover Dot’ to move around each image). Automotive brands can use 360 VR photography to allow rotatable views of their vehicles. Music labels can embed clips of songs or albums, just as movie studios can embed movie trailers, clips and featurettes.

Reflective vs. Emissive Displays

Many skeptics have expressed concern that reading long articles on the iPad, which uses an emissive light display (LCD/LED screen), brings on eye fatigue much faster than on devices such as Amazon’s Kindle, which uses a monochromatic, reflective light display. Due to the high resolution display of the iPad, Wired are able to use the same custom typeface family they do in the print version of their magazine. Wired’s typefaces were specifically designed to minimize the amount eye fatigue reader. Further research into reflective vs. emissive light displays is being conducted in conjunction with Hoefler & Frere Jones, although they admit there could be years of work ahead in this respect. Also, the monochromatic display of the Kindle isn’t conducive to an engaging, immersive interactive experience like that of the iPad.

The Better the Design,
The Easier the Reading Experience,
The Deeper the Engagement,
The More Connected the User,
The Stronger the Brand Relationship.

Social networking is expected to play a huge part in Wired’s digital rebirth, with Twitter, Facebook and email integration directly within the app, with content sharing capabilities being implemented. The ability for ‘Favorite’ articles will also be present, as well as strong search capabilities. Content will have a ‘sticky’ shelf life and will be available for purchase/viewing from within the app. Finally, user engagement will be tracked using Omniture (the web analytics platform acquired by Adobe in October 2009).

Wired’s iPad app is set for release this summer, through the iPad app store. Versions for other devices such as iPhone and Google’s Nexus 1 later in the year. Subscription pricing TBA.

Wired rocks audience at SXSW with iPad demo from Mangrove on Vimeo.

]]> http://www.kaplusa.com/blog/2010/03/sxsw-wired%e2%80%99s-digital-rebirth/feed/ 0 http://www.kaplusa.com/blog/2010/03/on-the-ends-of-goods-and-evils-lorem-ipsum/ http://www.kaplusa.com/blog/2010/03/on-the-ends-of-goods-and-evils-lorem-ipsum/#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:33:06 +0000 Joe Farquharson http://www.kaplusa.com/blog/?p=3477

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

In all likelihood you probably read the first five (or perhaps only two) words of the first paragraph before skipping down to here. Many of you can probably recite the first line off by heart, but most likely all of you know what the text’s name and primary usage is. Used as placeholder text by graphic designers and typesetters for the last 50 years (and possibly as far back as the 15th Century), Lorem Ipsum was chosen because it closely represents the ‘shape’ of modern text and can be dropped in place of real text for layout purposes. It is based on an excerpt of de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (On the Ends of Goods and Evils), written by Cicero in 45 B.C. Its approximate translation is as follows:

“Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?”

I say ‘approximate translation’ because the standard Lorem Ipsum passage is full of grammatical errors and omissions, effectively rendering it as nonsense. Of course, because of its new intended purpose and the fall in Latin literacy this isn’t really a problem. Using Lorem Ipsum to fill in for a paragraph of text is by no means ideal but I suppose is acceptable. Using it to fill in for headlines, taglines or any copy that should inform a client of intended messaging is most definitely not.

There are plenty alternatives to Lorem Ipsum available online, but mostly all are comprised of random words to make up nonsense text. One example is the Malevole Text Generator, which generates paragraphs based on popular 80s TV show theme tunes. While this is certainly amusing, it is not really appropriate for, say, a mock-up of a law firm’s website.

Back in the days when QuarkXPress was the primary layout application for print designers, there existed a plug-in called Jabberwocky. Jabberwocky generated the same nonsense text as the majority of today’s online text generators, but it had one trick up its sleeve—the option for designers to specify nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., to generate custom paragraphs of text. That meant it was possible to generate copy that was specific to your target audience, e.g. by entering law-specific terminology to use in a layout for a law firm.

I suppose the redeeming factors of Lorem Ipsum are its wide recognition and the obliviousness of people to its original meaning. Reading the first couple of words is enough for most to understand it will be replaced with real text somewhere down the line. Bearing that in mind, would a web app based on Quark’s Jabberwocky be a good idea? I think it could work and would be a great side project. Until that day I suppose I’ll just keep using Lorem Ipsum.