Google, have you heard of them? Of course you have, they’re the strongest brand online today. When you google something, you search the web. Just like playing Nintendo was videogames (and perhaps still is, given the success of Nintendo DS and Wii).
One thing Google does better than the rest is using their brand, the logo in particular, in a playful way. It’s called the Google Doodles and you see it every Holiday season, or when something interesting is happening. Check out the Doodle archive to see what I mean.
So what’s so great about that? Well, besides the fact that it’s something to react to when visiting google.com, it’s also a very viral marketing ploy. Think about it, how often have you seen tweets or pownces, perhaps even full blog posts, or just short IM messages letting you know what those zany Google people’ve done now.
The Google Doodles spread across the web like a wildfire. It’s a brilliant marketing ploy, simple yet effective. The best ones usually are.
I have by no means seen or fiddled with the majority of Japanese magazines, but I do have made some observations. Take a look at the two covers below, what do you see?
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I’m in Japan, it’s Monday, and I have yet to get my act together and take a dive in Japanese design. It takes time, it seems, to do that. Honestly, it’s quite overwhelming to follow take it all in. Just the fact that the kanji characters that the Japanese written language consists of is an almost graphical element by itself, since most of us can’t read them, is something that I need to ponder and consider the implications of.
However, these things strike me right on, in no particular order, about Japanese design in the public room.
- Colors are plentiful.
- If uncertain, add a speaking dog or something to your commercial spot.
- Hello Kitty.
- English is cool, so don’t worry if you can’t spell correctly.
- Neon always works.
- Magazines should have lots of noise.
This isn’t the country for minimalists. I’ll take a closer look at various phenomenons during the coming week, especially advertising and print magazines, I think.
Oh, the picture to the right is from Universal Studios Japan. It’s a trashcan. The type is ironic to say the least, since cutting down on waste, such as unnecessary plastic packaging, paper napkins overflow, and so on, isn’t something that is remotely in the Japanese social mind, it seems. So please Waste Paper, eh?
In my opinion, it’s important to keep the readers informed, at least if you’ve developed some sort of reputation of keeping the updates coming – and suddenly they’re not. And since I’m doing weekday postings here on Wisdump, I wanted to make my point by telling you all that I’m in transit, on my way to Japan.
Hopefully I won’t be too jetlagged to write something witty tomorrow. You never know.
How you want to pimp your blog is up to you, but this week, being totally stressed out to get everything ready in time for me leaving for Japan on early Thursday morning, I realized that blogs without these three plugins (or similar functionality) and features just will have to go!
- Subscribe to comments plugin. Seriously, it should be a default functionality, and yes, I realize that it’s not here on Wisdump. One of the things I’ll fix when we upgrade to the new design.
- Valid RSS feed that’s easy to find. Why do you hide it in the footer already? If I like what I see but am stressed for time, I want to add it to my reader and be on my way.
- SuperMegaDuperSpamKiller(TM). No, that one doesn’t exist (?), but the result does. If your comments are full of spam, then I don’t want to participate in the conversation, and that’s both you and me missing out, mate.
Are there any features or plugins you feel have to be there for a blog to be usable at all, particularly when you’re in a rush?
I’m leaving for Japan on Thursday, Osaka to be precise, and naturally I’ll do my best to flavor my blogging gigs – such as Wisdump – as much with Japanese design culture as possible.
In other words, I intend to do commentary posts on advertising, store design, branding, things like that – either some inspiration for you lot, or as a basis for commentary of sorts.
However, is there anything in particular you want to see from Japan? Any special kind of advertising, a cultural phenomenon that you think would be interesting? I don’t know, I’ve never been to Japan, and I won’t have unlimited time or anything, but if you know that there are things I should be on the lookout for, do let me know.
I find ads entertaining, for lack of a better word. This one did get everything right though (as opposed to this one):
It’s a PED-estal, basically a holder for iPods and whatnot, and it certainly caught my eye. I saw it on MacRumors’ Mac Buyer’s Guide, which is a truly targeted ad. I clicked it.
Advertisers! That’s the way to go.
I’ve had some reflections on premium blog themes, and also stated that they’re in for a rough ride, with the open source community’s free offerings getting better and better. In a way, I think serious theme releases like Cutline and Plaintxt paved the way, and I’m sure we’ll see more supported free themes.
However, doing something for free usually means that it’s limited to your free time. And free time is always limited, right?
If you charge for something, that usually means you can afford spend more time on it. more
Just a quick one today, because I’m trying a new Wisdump design concept, and if it turns out OK (or promising at least), I’ll post it here and let you guys say what you think. Just like I did with the previous one.
So, premium themes are in for a rough ride. There’s a lot of money involved, and support is great for buyers needing that, of course. However, if there’s something the open source community is good at, is to offer alternatives. Blog Perfume features the BranfordMagazine theme for WordPress, a theme that’s bound to take a way some sales from newsy premium themes.
And here’s the problem for premium themes. There will always be theme designers who do similar ones, and release them for free!
The premium themes are indeed in for a rough ride.
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