Are 3-D logos ruining or revolutionizing logo design?

brandchannel is hosting a 'branddebate' on this topic. As they state in their introduction of the topic: "On the front lines of the branding industry - among the designers - an ongoing battle is being waged over an essential branding component: logos, and in particular, 3-D, or dimensionalized, logos..."

It used to be said that format restrictions were a primary functional limitation that informed the decision making process of logo designers. Thoughts like 'it has to look good in black and white', or 'our budget only supports two color printing' often informed the amount of detail and color that made up a logo design. With the web and better/cheaper printing, these two primary limitations have less bearing on the design process (but don't forget about low quality fax cover pages!). Overall, it is now more of a pure design decision. What level of detail, color, and dimensionality will best serve the brand you are representing with the logo design?

Read some interesting opinions on both sides of this topic at brandchannel.com

ECO-ICONIC

The May/June 2008 edition of Trend Briefing is now online, highlighting three new 'green' trends: ECO-ICONIC, ECO-EMBEDDED and ECO-BOOSTERS. "It's a hands-on take on how the branding and design of eco-goods and services is about to enter a new phase..."

8 trends to capitalize on in 2008

trendwatching.com has released it's report on "8 trends to capitalize on in 2008". Always an interesting source for high-level marketing strategy and thought, the in-depth overview is worth a read (note: the full report download is a premium item). To summarize, they've dubbed the hot 2008 trends as:

1. Status Spheres
   
2. Premiumization
   
3. Snack Culture
   
4. Online Oxygen
   
5. Eco-iconic
   
6. Brand Butlers
   
7. Miy | Make It Yourself
   
8. Crowd Mining
   

The End of Advertising as We Know It

"The next 5 years will hold more change for the advertising industry than the previous 50 did. Increasingly empowered consumers, more self-reliant advertisers and ever-evolving technologies are redefining how advertising is sold, created, consumed and tracked. Our research points to four evolving future scenarios – and the catalysts that will be driving them. Traditional advertising players – broadcasters, distributors and advertising agencies – may get squeezed unless they can successfully implement consumer, business model and business design innovation..."



This is a very interesting 28 page PDF document packed with valuable data, and some hypotheses worth contemplating.

read more | digg story

Amazon finally eliminates tabs in favor of menus

It's the end of an era. Tabs are gone, long live drop-menus! Amazon has launched a redesign that more appropriately organizes their store sections into primary left-hand navigation with sub-menus. This is a vast improvement to the lonely few tabs that had been up at the top for a while now. That single giant drop menu is thankfully gone as well. Amazon was the dot com tab innovator, so it must've been hard to let got. But hey, there aren't any more white iPods anymore either. So, I guess if you have a site with white tabs, you are really behind the times now? ;-P

The Impact of Social Media on Search Rankings

SiteProNews:: "Over the past few years, the Internet has increasingly become a participatory social network where user-generated content is just as important as traditional advertising messages. This means your articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts, and other comments on the Web are now critical sources of information about your company, your products and services... Social media, therefore, becomes increasingly important to a Web site's success and its visibility in search engines...

With the advent of universal search by Google and others, search marketers and site owners will soon find it necessary to optimize their Web sites for a broad range of content types. This means creating content in every media and vertical niche applicable to your brand..."

This article summarizes the importance of a broad-media approach very well, highlighting the categories of: Search Personalization; Universal Search; Optimizing Podcasts; and Optimizing Google Base Data Feeds.

You don't want to necessarily implement content types or social media frameworks that aren't appropriate to your business, but be sure you are not overlooking a variety of options. And another trend is to NOT lock-up assets like PDF downloads and demos behind registration walls. Give a prospect all you have, if they are interested, they'll eventually wind up in your CRM database.

A List Apart: The Web Design Survey, 2007

The Web Design Survey, 2007: "Designers, developers, project managers. Writers and editors. Information architects and usability specialists. People who make websites have been at it for more than a dozen years, yet almost nothing is known, statistically, about our profession. Who are we? Where do we live? What are our titles, our skills, our educational backgrounds? Where and with whom do we work? What do we earn? What do we value?"

Give it a go to improve the findings, and you may even win something...

Web Apps 101: Your Three Point Success Plan

TechCrunch - Building a web app is easy. Building a successful and profitable web app is where most people fail. If you want your app to stay out of the Dead Pool, you need to know the answer the following questions:

1. Who is it aimed at?
2. Why will they use it?
3. Will they pay for it?

Also, you can download the MP3 audio and PDF presentation that appear to be the foundation for this article at: http://www.futureofwebapps.com/

read more | digg story

MySpace News: The Digg Killer?

"MySpace is launching a news aggregator called MySpace News in the second quarter of 2007. It’ll rely on both algorithms and user rating - basically a combination of Google News and Digg..."

Yeah maybe it will be like the parallel-universe kind of digg with a really ugly design, giant ads with scantily clad women, and constant intermittent outages! I know, I know, it will probably succeed due to the sheer volume of existing users... Add to the '_-killer?' watchlist :-P

read more | digg story

The 50 Most Important People on the Web

pcworld.com: "Despite what Time magazine would have you believe, you are not the most powerful or influential person on the Web. At PC World we love online personals, social networks, and videos of people falling on their keisters as much as the next person, but without the folks who create the Craigslists, MySpaces, and YouTubes of the world, much of the Web's potential would be lost among spam sites and other online detritus."



read more | digg story

Top trends for 2007: Marketers' influence grows even as customers demand more control of the message

Happy 2007. I thought that BtoB had a pretty fair set of predictions. Here's a summary:

1. Rising influence of CMOs
2. Web 2.0 explodes
3. Global expansion
4. Boom in online video ads
5. Measuring engagement
6. More sophisticated search
7. Need for leads
8. Behavioral targeting hits the spot
9. Trade shows make a comeback
10. E-mail still going strong

Read the full article to get the details...