Archive for the 'creative' Category

If Digital Music is Growing, Why Design Digital Album Covers like its 1969?

Published on June 24, 2008 in branding, creative, digital, ideas and marketing. 0 Comments

Last week, emarketer.com sent this email to me. It had some interesting facts about digital music and its growth over the last couple years. As consumers (me included) increasingly switch to digital devices and legal purchases of music, I began to wonder why digital packaging has not caught up to this trend.

The chart above shows that almost half of all US teens did not purchase a CD in 2007 ( a number which is sure to continue to rise). If teens are switching to digital music at such a dizzying pace, why has the packaging not caught up? Most digital albums still include mirror images of their in-store counterparts. Why not progress to something more dynamic to reflect the new error?

Dynamic digital album artwork is the next progression in terms of packaging design for a digital universe. I could see a whole industry built around buying cool iPod/iPhone screensavers with animated capabilities. Does anyone else agree?

Tweetniks

Published on May 16, 2008 in creative, digital, networks, personal, social media and social networks. 0 Comments

A quick post to shout out about Pete Blackshaw’s latest post for ClickZ. In it, he discusses Twitter segments and different classes of individuals on the site. As the micro-blog evolves it will be interesting to see all the different types that join up and further the analysis.

One interesting footnote, Pete actually used Twitter to gather his data by proposing this tweet to this followers, “ok i think im going to write my mkt column about twitter “types” (user segments) send thoughts 03:55 PM May 08, 2008 from web.” The tweet stoked some thoughts in my head. As I have been thinking about that very thing for quite sometime and was happy to help. I added a few segments including: TweetSquatters and Tweetniks.

I wanted to talk about the Tweetniks, or someone who uses Twitter to write 21st Century prose. Listed below are a few examples of these modern day Whitmans.

Society’s becoming more connected and much more digital. Artist are sometimes the first to adopt new technology for purposes of expression. Social platforms provide a natural fit for artist to express themselves and explore new mediums. How will digital change creative endeavors? Tweetniks might be blazing a trail of digital creativity that is a game changer but only time will tell.

What do you think?

FYI - Here is Pete’s website dedicated to the topic. Please visit and leave him some feedback on users you have encountered. Additionally, if you would like to add me to your twitter list feel free to do so @stemato.

Confessions of a Creative Mind

Published on March 20, 2008 in community, consumer insight, creative, digital, engagement, passion, personal and reputation. 2 Comments

What does it take to invent a new tool, product or idea? Ideas are born from somewhere deep down inside of us and can be as simple as Bellsouth’s Caller-ID or as complex as Google’s PageRank algorithm. Both of these inventions have something in common that is much less publicized - failure. That is right, it takes persistence and failure, to make something that improves our lives not some great creative mind.

Humility is most often learned the older you get because when you are young ego rules. I remember as a kid trying to come up with the most original and creative drawing in art classes. Its was the true test of whether you were an artist or just some hack with charcoal. We would debate incessantly classmates with great draftsmanship but poor ability to think in an agile and creative way. The reality of our situation was we were not original either. We did have one thing that set us a part drive. Because as we pontificated about the virtues of original thought we continued to test the boundaries of our own minds without fear of failure. We were free from the constraints of rigid academia to develop ideas, drawings, paintings, websites and more.

With retrospect I learned that age makes you more rigid and less willing to fail. Maybe its the reality of bills. One thing I always tried to keep in my core set of operational values is drive. Because with drive anything is possible. Dreaming big and performing agile is the combination that sets the passionate apart from the rest. I have also never lost the ability to turn my creative fire into well developed originality towards executing a better idea. Because eventually better will become original.

Don’t believe me ask Edison, Ford and Page?