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Written by Jay Boston 10.02.2012

2 months preparation, 58 slide presentation, complete rebrand of the business, new website, stationery, kits, plans and [id] tags, we were ready to unleash our new brand to our clients, target market and the world.

Kicking off at 7pm, the chilled music was flowing, the drinks were being consumed and the gourmet finger food was heading through the mass of attendees - sharing their ideas, discussing our new brand and swapping details. This is the kind of event was aimed for, and we delivered. A network night of all types of people from all types of industries with plenty of positiveness, proactiveness and passion.

The presentation we displayed is available for download here (will not make much sense until we narrate it) for those that couldn't make it.

A couple of team casualties this morning (too many drinks or too much fun with clients) yet we're excited for the year ahead, working with great people and creating innoovative digital in web, print, brand, promo, photo, time block and network.

Written by Speider Schneider of Idiots at MAD Magazine 05.02.2012

When I wrote about QR codes (Designed QR codes: the next level), it was very well received. When I wrote“SnapTags: Will they kill QR codes?” people got a little nasty with their suggestion on what I could do with snaptags and my mother. Now that I’m delving into Augmented Reality, I’m wondering what suggestions people will have for me…and certain family members when I insist that AR is the future of digital media?

According to Wikipedia: Augmented reality (AR) is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality. By contrast, virtual reality replaces the real world with a simulated one. 

Augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, such as sports scores on TV during a match. With the help of advanced AR technology (e.g. adding computer vision and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally manipulable. Artificial information about the environment and its objects can be overlaid on the real world. The term augmented reality is believed to have been coined in 1990 by Thomas Caudell, working at Boeing.

Research explores the application of computer-generated imagery in live-video streams as a way to enhance the perception of the real world. AR technology includes head-mounted displays and virtual retinal displays for visualization purposes, and construction of controlled environments containing sensors and actuators.

The future of business cards

While the QR Code may take you to YouTube or a web site, imagine what it can do for your business card! It’s a bit like Emperor Palpatine popping up to give order 66 (ask a local Star Wars nerd what that means) but why make people read something about you when you can tell them yourself:

Try one for yourself HERE.

While most AR recognition needs a code, very much like the QR Code or, apparently despised Snaptag, this experiment by innovative campaign from Crispin Porter + Bogusky uses a simple dollar bill for a Burger King AR piece:

There are numerous tutorials on how to create AR pieces. Check them out.

Are you ready to jump into Augmented Reality?

So, I’m guessing by now you are saying to yourself, “I’ve got to get into this!” and my family and I are safe from comments on different inappropriate things we can do…unlike my exploration of Snaptags.

AR is not just about learning some new software. There is obviously video, writing, graphic design, and type skills needed but any creative should be able to handle it. I’ve yet to see anyone at any networking event or cross paths with anyone who has an AR business card to date. That seems odd, considering the explosion of the technology. Perhaps the technology hasn’t quite exploded as of yet, so why not be the first kid on the block to have one?

Suggested reading on Augmented Reality

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-sony-augmented-reality-tv-buyers.html

http://mashable.com/2009/12/05/augmented-reality-iphone/

http://technabob.com/blog/2008/12/17/mini-augmented-reality-ads-hit-newstands/

http://boingboing.net/2011/11/21/layar-augmented-reality-for-ma.html

*There are many sources for AR software but I cannot suggest or recommend any in this forum. All of the examples used in this article were solely for the purpose of inspiration and information on AR technology and is not an advertisement for or an endorsement of any of the firms that created the videos included.

Speider Schneider is a former member of The Usual Gang of Idiots at MAD Magazine and has designed products for Disney/Pixar, Warner Bros., Harley-Davidson, ESPN, Mattel, DC and Marvel Comics, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon among other notable companies. Speider is a former member of the board for the Graphic Artists Guild, co-chair of the GAG Professional Practices Committee and a former board member of the Society of Illustrators. Follow him on Twitter @speider

Written by Dallas at 352 Media Group 05.02.2012

It’s not uncommon for a designer in today’s world to pay little attention to how type is laid out, especially with the ever-so-convenient default settings of heading tags and web safe fonts found universally on the web.

If we as interactive designers we’re able to take a little more time when it came to typography, than the results would show a unique, well thought of design as oppose to a “run of the mill” creation.

There is a good chance that the majority of designers and designs you admire showcase good examples of typography.

I’ll show you a few steps I take in tweaking set type to be more appealing than those default scenarios of 24px H1 tags along with 13px set in Times New Roman.

Don’t settle for default settings, everyone is doing it.

Here we have the ever- so- common look of a heading along with a chunk of body copy to follow. This doesn’t exactly pull you in or set itself apart from all the other samples just like it, right? So to make the text sample more visually appealing, first, we’re going to make a few changes with our font selection.

Choose a font that will have more visual weight with your headline

Although font selection is not exactly “typography,” it is in fact a quintessential component to help the type on a page distinguish itself from other elements. With the onset of @font-face, massive amounts of choices are available to designers anywhere.

Here I’ve used an Extra Condensed Gothic Style font that can easily be found on a free font site like FontSquirrel.com. If we stop and think about it, the name “Condensed” should mean something, because it is in fact more dense than it’s normal book style family member, which is exactly what we want out of a headline:, something that pulls the user in and truly sets itself apart from the body copy. It certainly succeeds in grabbing your attention better than the original but there are a few things we could do to further improve the text.

Make it more appealing with two lines of CSS

The immediate change is in the letters; they’re all capitalized now but they also now have negative kerning between each of the letters (a technique carried over from newspaper design).

Both of these characteristics can easily be accomplished through CSS, {text-transform:uppercase; and letter-spacing:-Xpx;}. By making these two lines worth of coding changes, it results in a major improvement in visual weight, especially over the original .

Work out any last little tweaks

In the next step, the font used in the body paragraph has in fact changed to a cleaner sans-serif, which better compliments the headline text. We’re getting closer to a much more visually appealing design, but there are a few changes we can make to clean it up even more.

As the green indicators show, there are unequal margins and what typographers like to call an “orphan.” Which is a single word that falls to the last line of the paragraph. It creates a very unequal weight visually as compared to the rest of the text, and this issue can be solved easily by rewording the text slightly.

When it comes to margins, there is no rule that all must be equal. However, if you are starting a young web design career, it’s good practice to have equal margins throughout until you experience and learn techniques that allow you to extend beyond the guidelines of typesetting and still accomplish your goal visually.

After creating a more balanced visual canvas by removing the orphan and adjusting the margins you can see the end result, a well set type sample that’s comfortable where it lays.

Dallas is an Interactive Designer at 352 Media Group, a digital marketing and web design company.

Written by Brian Anthony Hernandez of Mashable.com 05.02.2012

I’ve been on Facebook for 2,561 days, having joined during the first year of its existence and my first year of college.

As the world’s largest social network turns 8 years old today, millions of people will reflect on the impact Facebook has had on their lives, however big or small that impact may be.

My Facebook experience mirrors yours in many facets.

We’ve changed our relationship statuses, sometimes more than we can remember. We’ve flipped through our tagged photos, every once in awhile untagging the ones we now deem unfavorable. We’ve seen friends’ last names change, with their marriages followed by offspring. We’ve said goodbye to fellow Facebook users, our friends whose Walls — and now Timelines — have become digital memorials. We cried. We smiled. We tell our stories.

Just shy of its second birthday on Feb. 4, 2005, Facebook saw me register for an account on Jan. 30.

Back then, Facebook was only for college students. I was 18, living in a dorm at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. I didn’t own a computer or a laptop, and smartphones as we know them today didn’t exist, so I accessed Facebook on campus computers.

Facebook became a hobby, something I would check every so often and not every day like I do now. But as more faces jumped onto the service — first high school students, then anyone over 13, then my mom (Hi Mom, I hope you “Like” this story!) — I began to rely on it more. I replaced my physical scrapbooks, which I routinely updated in high school, with an online database of memories: 161 photo albums and 28 videos.

In 2006, a year after Pete Cashmore introduced the world to Mashable, Facebook unveiled Notes. I used them as my first crack at blogging. Since then, I’ve used Notes to showcase my celebrity look-a-likes in 2006, reveal some intimate thoughts about turning 21 and listening to Kelly Clarkson’s “Sober” in Milwaukee in 2007, as well as describe my encounter with a suicidal man while living in Phoenix in 2009.

Notes ignited content sharing on Facebook so much — and so early on — that media organizations began opening their eyes to the site’s potential to bring more readers to their stories. Being in journalism school, this piqued my interest immensely. Facebook capitalized on that revelation by launching a Share button just months after Notes came out. Early adopters of the feature such as The New York Times, Sports Illustratedand The Onion continue to reap the benefits of social sharing and the significant referral traffic it attracts.

A year later in 2007, early signs of Facebook trumping MySpace as the go-to social network surfaced. I never really got into MySpace, but the chatter about this topic among friends who avidly used it became frequent and intense. Again, Facebook pounced on this opportunity to dethrone MySpace as social king with a redesign, which involved ditching its trademark “Facebook Guy” logo.

That same year, the first rumblings of a possible Facebook IPO made their way into headlines. CEO Mark Zuckerberg squashed the rumors, but on Feb. 1, 2012, Facebook filed for a $5 billion IPO. Zuckerberg in 2007 wanted to focus on development, and then along came a mobile version of Facebook, specifically for iPhone.

2008 was the year Facebook unleashed its Chat feature, expanded its global reach by adding more languages, and overtook MySpace based on monthly unique visitors. For me, Facebook Chat eventually pushed aside my other instant-messaging applications. A major redesign then merged our Walls and Mini-Feeds.

Facebook rolled out Usernames in 2009, allowing us to sign up for custom URLs (here’s mine). In 2010, a new Feature called Facebook Messages let me create an @Facebook.com email address. Facebook Messages integrated my email, IM and text messages into one inbox.

Just last year, my Facebook experience began to transform tremendously. First, Facebook Chat gave us voice-calling capabilities and Skype-powered video chat. Then, I enabled the new Subscribe feature, which allowed anybody to subscribe to my personal profile and see anything I share publicly. And most notably, some of our profiles evolved into Timelines (see the changes in the gallery below).

Somewhere in between all of those changes, I sent virtual Gifts, I Poked some of you, I cringed at the ads that first appeared in 2006, I scoured the Marketplace for any gems, and I used the apps developed within theopen-source Facebook Platform.

Now it’s election year 2012, and politicians more than ever are using Facebook and other tools to grab our attention and sway our votes. If social networks could run for office, I’d vote for Facebook because of all the things I just mentioned.

Together, we’ve grown. Happy birthday, Facebook. Good luck, Zuck and the gang. Thanks for enriching my life.

What are your fondest memories of using Facebook? When did you join the social network?