A site dedicated to format changes? Why not; what’s more historic than when something begins or ends? The Format Change Archive is your home for airchecks of the beginnings and endings of some of the most historic radio stations (and some you may never have heard).
Max Nesterak: Land O’Lakes quietly gets rid of iconic Indian maiden mascot (Minnesota Reformer)
“It’s a great move,” said Adrienne Keene, a professor at Brown University, author of the popular Native Appropriations blog and citizen of the Cherokee Nation. “It makes me really happy to think that there’s now going to be an entire generation of folks that are growing up without having to see that every time they walk in the grocery store.”
But Keene thinks the company missed an important opportunity in not explaining why they removed the image of the Indian maiden from their brand.
“It could have been a very strong and positive message to have publicly said, ‘We realized after a hundred years that our image was harmful and so we decided to remove it,’” Keene said. “In our current cultural moment, that’s something people would really respond to.”
Hanson O'Haver: The web looks like shit (The Outline)
Share buttons and prompts to “read more” treat readers like idiots who don’t know how to do basic tasks; meanwhile, a huge amount of faith is put in technology, which fails constantly. Embedded social media posts don’t load properly, videos expire, and the pre-populated tweet mangles the text. If there are high-res photos, they are often too large to display on a standard laptop screen, so one first looks at a face and much later scrolls to see a body. Should the poor reader decide to navigate the site’s categories via the drop-down menu, they must maneuver the mouse like a tight-rope walker, lest the proper choice vanish before they can click on it.
Maciej Cegłowski: What Happens Next Will Amaze You
Talk given on September 14, 2015, at the FREMTIDENS INTERNET conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.
There are a few guiding principles we should follow in any attempt at regulating the Internet.
The old Google made a fortune on ads because they had good content. It was like TV used to be: make the best show and you get the most ad revenue from commercials. The new Google seems more focused on the commercials themselves.
Eric Harvey: Worn Copies: Beach House, VW, and What It Means to Sell a Feeling (Pitchfork)
"Much of the power of Beach House's music lies in the way it forgoes simple, this-means-this storytelling in favor of communicating indescribable emotions," wrote Lindsay Zoladz in her Pitchfork review of their latest album, Bloom. Switch a few words around, and this perfect evocation could have emanated from DDB's pitch meeting to Volkswagen. Which is not to belittle Zoladz's criticism, nor to build up ad-speak as any more than means-to-an-end capitalist labor. Instead, this connection highlights the idea that critics and marketers often seek the same positive criteria in art.
I believe the company has good intentions, and is run by people who do not want to be racist or to create racist contributions to culture. Nevertheless, the company made a cultural contribution that was predicated on racist ideas. It's particularly egregious to trade in racist ideas when it's not for artistic purpose or to comment on society, but to sell a product. Therefore, the most helpful thing I can do is to help them fix the broken process within their company that produced this unfortunate result.
‘The coal companies are lying to you. Coal energy is not clean energy. It is the dirtiest form of energy generation we have. The coal companies are spending millions of dollars hoping you’ll forget this. A slick ad campaign doesn’t change the truth.’
Too Much Joy’s Tim Quirk tells the story of his band’s jingle for Budweiser in the early 90s, and how he feels about bands and advertising then and since. A good companion to Matt LeMay’s ‘Art vs Content’ post from late 2010 (http://www.mbvmusic.com/2010/10/19/living-in-the-age-of-art-vs-content).
Forbes: Andrea Spiegel's de.tech.ting: The Real Story Behind Charlie Sheen Joining Twitter
Enablers.
“If you didn’t hear, yesterday Charlie Sheen joined Twitter. Today he very well may reach 1 million followers (as I type he’s already passed the 900K mark). How did it happen? Why all of a sudden did he wake up and decide it’s Twitter time? And how was it that Charlie Sheen went from non-twitterer to hardcore twitterer overnight? Short answer: he got a lot of help from a team of experts at Ad.ly, a small Beverly Hills start-up that focuses on celebrity endorsements via Facebook and Twitter.”
"the Department of Health is considering plans to force tobacco manufacturers to sell their cigarettes in plain unbranded packets." "They'd be taking one of the most carefully branded products in the world, and de-branding it. And since they've already banned tobacco advertising, cancer sticks don't really have much else left except their branding. They'd be stripping them back to just their name, taste and cost."
TechCruch: The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos
The head of a company that makes videos go viral explains exactly how it's done. The commenters go crazy. Very interesting in the specific sense, but even more so in the overall evolution of media.
Another take on the "NYC" portion of the recent and much-maligned NYC taxi redesign. It is praised. The logo on its own is quite interesting, and the possibilities shown with it as a "vessel" are cool.
"A series of professional observations about package design practices within specific product categories," including Razors for Women, Low-Carb Lifestyle, and Packaged Rice.
Very nice, very creative business cards, but don't expect them to fit in your wallet or Rolodex. Check the comments for bonus footage from "American Psycho."
Identityworks: Tools: Guidelines and standards manuals
A list of corporate and organization identity guidelines. A good sampling of conventions, though many of them are terribly designed and poorly organized.
"a western star who uses his or her fame to make large sums of money in a short time by advertising products in Japan that they would probably never use"
The band was asked to do songs for Coca-Cola, an anti-smoking PSA, and English cell phones. Don't miss parts 1 and 2; all three (short) songs are available for download.