By now, most of us get the message–we need to consider the entire customer journey, the complete experience, surrounding the products and services we offer to customers. But in this frenetic, multitasking, app-happy society, how do you prepare people to pay attention in the first place, let alone get actively involved in your carefully planned customer journey?

Read the whole article here:

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665615/6-secrets-to-branding-ripped-from-raiders-of-the-lost-ark 

A quick visual update to start the New Year right! Thankfully this thinking is (very very very slowly) becoming reality. Top Business schools like Yale have even introduced design courses into MBA programs, which in theory anyway, should give some newly minted marketers new respect for how powerful this stuff can be in shaping their products and consumer engagements.

Is Design Thinking Dead? Hell No. Not By A Long Shot.

Bruce Nussbaum may have delivered his eulogy, but design thinking–in its best forms–still has a lot to offer.

Recently, Bruce Nussbaum rang the bell on design thinking and told us he is moving on. I was surprised at this. Nussbaum is one reason why design thinking exists in the first place. Following his lead, people staked their careers on design thinking. Corporations like Procter & Gamble have invested, hired, and re-organized to accommodate it. Yale created a course, Stanford a program, and the University of Toronto reshaped its B-school curriculum. IDEO and Jump nailed their colors to the mast.Why the recantation? He says he’s got grounds. First, design thinking “has given the design profession and society at large all the benefits it has to offer.” Second, the corporation attempted to mechanize design thinking, diminishing it in the process.

Is Nussbaum right? Has design thinking delivered all the benefits it has to offer? Should we move on?

Read the whole article here at FastCompany.com

My current favorite:

WOULD YOU SETTLE FOR A METROSEXUAL RAINBOW?

CLIENT: I want a design that uses a rainbow, but not one of those gay rainbows.
ME: Excuse me?
CLIENT: I want you to put a rainbow on it, but like a Jesus rainbow.
ME: Can you… specify the difference?
CLIENT: I WANT IT TO BE A RAINBOW BUT NOT GAY.

http://clientsfromhell.net

Big used to matter. Big meant economies of scale. (You never hear about “economies of tiny” do you?) People, usually guys, often ex-Marines, wanted to be CEO of a big company. The Fortune 500 is where people went to make… a fortune.

There was a good reason for this. Value was added in ways that big organizations were good at. Value was added with efficient manufacturing, widespread distribution and very large R&D staffs. Value came from hundreds of operators standing by and from nine-figure TV ad budgets. Value came from a huge sales force.

 Read the entire blog post here.

From the blog of photographer Chase Jarvis, a short but interesting article on the making of an image. It’s rarely this simple in real life, but it goes to show you how much digital technology has taken over for ‘old school’ in-camera effects!

Read the full blog posting here.