Walmart Misplaces its Asterisk

First off, I’d like to welcome WAL*MART—er, Walmart—to 2005! It seems the neighborhood-munching behemoth’s nearly two decade old logo wasn’t friendly enough to represent the company in this brave new world. Second, I wonder how long it took to develop this logo. Ten minutes? Fifteen? It probably took a year of focus groups consisting of [...]

Blip: In Sync

While driving home one night, I encountered a lot of road construction, and noticed that the various flashing lights were vaguely in sync with the beat of the music. Music: “Beat Connection” by LCD Soundsystem.

Mobile Me? Seriously?

So, at this year’s WWDC, the Apple folks announced that .Mac is being replaced with a new service called Mobile Me. They’re still charging $99 a year for 20 GB storage, push e-mail, and and over-the-air syncing between iPhone and Mac or (gasp) Windows PCs…you know, mostly the stuff that Windows Mobile and BlackBerry [...]

Florida Anti-Tobacco Campaigns, Now With More Twitter

What began more than a decade ago with Florida’s landmark $11.3 billion tobacco settlement and subsequent (and successful) TRUTH anti-smoking campaign has become the Tobacco-Free Florida initiative.
Like the nation-wide spin-off of Florida’s TRUTH campaign, TheTruth, this new initiative is all about targeting teens, and therefore all about keeping up to date with social networking. [...]

From the Department of Lazy Graphic Designers…

When designing a layout, one usually uses placeholder images to get a better idea of where every piece of content will go. The placeholder images are not a part of the final product, so the quality and content isn’t especially important. That is, unless one happens to forget to replace the placeholder image with the [...]

Using a Meme to Sell Life Insurance? WTF?

So, I’m minding my own business, reading Slate, and see one of those “family killed by ninjas, need money for karate lessons” pictures off to the right of the page. Then, I see it is an advertisement for life insurance. Oh, and the article in question was about John McCain visiting Mo Udall on his [...]

Swag Alert! Free Jimi Wallet for Facebook Members!

I don’t usually do link posts, but, this one’s special: it’s a freebie!
Maybe you’ve heard of the Jimi Wallet (think wallet2.0). Well, now’s your chance to grab one for free! Join the Chase+1 group on Facebook (account required to view page), add the Jimi Wallet, go to checkout, and you’ve got yourself some truly awesome [...]

Un-pimp my Ride (Volkswagen’s GTI Ads)

If you've spent any time around Volkswagen or auto forums (or even digg!), you might have noticed some buzz around the new ads for the MkV GTI. While the lion's share of talk has gone to the "Project Fast" ads and its creepy little rabbit mascot (including its propensity to fetch absurd bounties on eBay), [...]

Digital On-screen Graphics: Pop-ups for Television

Have you noticed your screen real-estate shrinking?
Years ago, networks began placing their network IDs as digital on-screen graphics, nicknamed "bugs", small watermark logos that often appear in the lower right-hand corner of the television broadcast. These began as innocuous, only mildly obtrusive logo watermarks which popped up infrequently during broadcasts to remind viewers which [...]