I’m going to be taking the next few weeks off from blogging as I’ve got a fresh-faced little baby to take care of. Everyone’s doing great and I look froward to seeing you all when I get back!
.alex
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Both of these are a few weeks old but I still wanted to call them out because I like them so much, for different reasons.
Chiquita Bananas: A Beautiful Brand Refresh
What I love about this was that they took branding that was already iconic and took it in a new, playful, and ultimately really memorable, direction.
Chiquita will always remind me sharing an office with Dennis, who’d eat a banana a day and cover his laptop with the Chiquita stickers from said bananas. Clearly he’s not alone in that endeavor and Chiquita is showcasing that behavior on the new site in support of this new campaign.
Just look at these things. They’re so f*cking cute I want to collect them all and nom the crap out of them.
Think rebranding bananas isn’t exciting? Here’s a great quote on finding that angle to build on when helping brands rebuild their identities:
Many times as designers we are tasked to help brands build or rebuild their identities. We may initially think that a clean slate is required to achieve a better identity, and in some cases that can be true if the existing brand identity has little to no value. But in most cases, there is always something that can be built on, discovered, or championed with any brand. It really just requires spending as much time as you can with the product, immersing yourself in it. Like method designing, you just have to live it and the work will flow through you.
The Heinz ketchup packet : A User-centered product redesign
Heinz’s effort is impressive because it improved both form and function, making the brand feel newer visually as well as functionally, addressing their major use cases, referred to as the “dippers” and the “squeezers.”
This is a redesign that just makes so much sense you wonder how it took so long to get here. Technology wasn’t holding it back. It was a matter of really looking at the problem from a user’s point of view and then making a change. Bravo.
+ The Art Director responsible for the Chiquita redesign process did a great interview about the process.
+ Read more about the Heinz redesign here.
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Some really great bits in here:
“We nail facts into students’ heads and there’s nothing wrong with it if the goal is to employ someone for 40 years in a Ford Motor Company Model A factory.”
“The A students work for the B students, the C students run the businesses, and the D students have the buildings named after them.”
“Never ever hire someone who had a grade point average of 4.0.”
I highly recommend you take 4 minutes and 12 seconds to watch/listen to the whole thing.
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The team at Panic have rigged up this amazing (and beautiful) real-time display of the data immediately relevant to their team. Projects that fall in the cross section of dataviz and productivity really interest me. It reminds me a bit of the dashboard that Crispin Porter + Bogusky set up to visualize the health and status of their ongoing projects.
Here’s some info from the team at Panic:
What’s on the board?
The idea quickly grew beyond “Project Status”, and has become a hub of all sorts of internal Panic information. What you’re actually looking at is an internal-only webpage that updates frequently using AJAX which shows:
- E-Mail Queue — number of messages / number of days.
- Project Status — sorry for the heavy censorship — you know how it is!
- Important Countdowns
- Revenue — comparing yesterday to the day before, not so insightful (yet).
- Live Tri-Met Bus Arrivals — when it’s time to go home!
The Panic Calendar
- Employee Twitter Messages
- Any @Panic Twitter Messages — i.e., be nice! They go on our screen!
I highly recommend you head on over to their blog and read all about it.
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Love to see Experience Design fall at the center of People, Technology, Business and Story. Most people (and companies) instinctively gravitate to the first three but it’s usually the last one that ties it all together to make something truly memorable.
(via Conrad Lisco.)
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Julia Yu Tsao paints a mesmerizing picture of a future where you have an army of nanobots with displays on their backs to enhance the information you get out of your environment. Reminds me of Bruce Sterling’s spimes from Shaping Things. (via kitsuneoir).
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