Wednesday 17 March 2010

Going With The Crowd

I've come to realize that the future is going to be user generated. We will see the rise of all things user generated from Magazines to News Agencies, and as connectivity becomes more and more mobile so updates and amendments will be come more frequent. The news will be almost impossible to censor but it will also be highly influence-able by less than scrupulous individuals??? Perhaps; but perhaps it will self censor and self correct itself. My theory is this if you have a piece of software that monitors reports and then works out the "true" story by cross referencing the facts that have been submitted. And since such a site would be community based it would be policed by the community this could be achieved by making the stories submitted public as well as the identity of those who submitted them. Another example of this would be crowd sourcing brand ambassadors like for example the recent benetton campaign its:my:time is a good example of this I entered to see how it worked and I'm not sure if it does just yet, but from the looks of it there were a lot of entrants who are pretty handy with scripting automated voting apps (don't worry I'm not dissapointed with the number of votes I recieved I wasn't expecting any to be honest) but it brings me back to my point that systems can be manipulated and skewed if measures aren't put in place to compensate.

Saturday 6 March 2010

The State of the Internet

An amazing little info graphic video about social usage of the internet and its various providers.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

How information spreads "virally"

In my opinion most ad agencies really don't understand the following principle and pretty much copy what ever seems to be floating around on YouTube or facebook or (insert social networking site here); but my theory is this, that information and trends are a form of social currency that people use to bolster their position within the community, the higher up in the said community a bit of information will push you, the greater its value and the faster it spreads. It stems from our primitive hunter gatherer days when if a member of the clan had information to say for example a clump of fruit bearing vegetation his position in the community would become elevated as the information he held was important for the societies survival. I admit its a simple model and needs a bit of work but you get the idea.




Friday 5 March 2010

Thursday 4 March 2010

Electricity And Ghosts

I've been lucky enough to be involved with the people at arthertz working on their Electricity And Ghosts; a new major project scheduled for June 2010 in the Boilerhouse at the iconic Battersea Power Station. The group ‘storytelling’ event will include work by The Orb, Ian Emes, Spacedog and John Foxx involving a live ‘séance’, sonic art, installation, projection and music specially commissioned for the project.

I've designed an Oyster card holder and a teaser sting for the project which have been getting good responses.

Wednesday 3 March 2010

The Social Edge

I work in advertising as a designer who has a rather healthy interest in marketing strategy and mass communication. I often wonder while watching adverts on TV and viewing them on websites and in the press just exactly how effective are they. Is there a more efficient way of getting that information out there and making that sale, whether it be a product service or even just an idea. We live in a world where we are constantly saturated with information and hence we've become I feel largely desensitized to traditional forms advertising. It's no use throwing large amounts of money at airtime and press space when people are just going to switch off to it.

This combined with the rise of digital social networking has given consumers has more power than ever. In fact I would tend to think that social networking contributes quite heavily to our "data saturation" and hence strays our eyes further from commercial messages. Sure there is loads of advertising on myspace and tons of information gleaned from facebook but peoples focus is so heavily on the networking that we have the rise of "micro" celebrities and almost obsessive behaviour by users towards developing social status. This behaviour has also lead to the revival of the individual and more than ever people are trying to stand out from the crowd. There seems to be an explosion in interest of punk mentality and D.I.Y. fashion and music as a result and this seems to be hurting things like the record industry in a big way. These "individuals" do not want overpriced, mass produced products they want things that will give them the social edge of elevating them above the crowd.