Archive for July, 2008

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Taking Ideas to the Next Level

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

There are ideas, and then there are HUGE ideas.

Virgin founder Richard Branson is no stranger to big ideas. Anyone who can develop a brand and turn it into a record company, chain of Megastores, mobile phone provider, hotel, and airline deserves serious applause.

Yesterday, Branson outdid himself with the launch of WhiteKnightTwo, a carrier airplane that will launch Virgin Galactic passengers 50,000 feet above Earth’s atmosphere. They hope to be the world’s first environmentally friendly, private spaceflight airline. Talk about ambitious!

Companies like Virgin Galactic are inspiring because they teach entrepreneurs and creatives to be hopeful and relentless in pursuing their visions. It’s possible to expand a mail order record store into a groundbreaking, aeronautical venture.

For the aspiring astronauts, sign up for a window seat on the Virgin Galactic website if you have the time (there’s a waiting list, and flights aren’t projected to begin until 2009-2010) and money (roughly $200,000).

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DIY fun through the centuries….

Monday, July 28th, 2008

User innovation is a hot topic online and we pay close attention to it. We have always thought that the cS model was an incarnation of this type of open innovation and are proud to number ourselves among the open-source, mashup, DIY, and UGC crowds.

People innovate. We can’t help ourselves – it is in the DNA of human-kind and has been a deep-seated part of what makes us human beings. This is not unique to the internet age – there are great examples going back through history. For instance, we know that early peoples learned from one another’s inventions, tinkered around with them, bettered them over time, and shared the knowledge openly for the benefit of all. Just take a look at how spear points evolved and you get a good idea about the flow of knowledge in a broad “community.” This graphic shows the evolution of Paleoindian points over 2,500 years.

Almost a hundred years ago we saw another great burst of creativity, this one centered around the Ford Model T. I am not talking about Henry Ford’s creativity. We all know the story of how he “invented” the production assembly line after visiting a slaughterhouse and witnessing how beef was processed. I am talking about what normal people (“users” in internet-speak) did to their cars once they let their imaginations take over. One of the beauties of the Model T was its simplicity. Just about anyone could repair one and just about anyone could change one. The body of the Model T was designed such that by removing a few bolts the entire body could be removed or replaced. This modular design allowed owners to let their ideas and their creativity take over. So cool….

A power plant

A stationary power plant

A police wagon

A police paddy wagon

(more…)

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Posted in Awesomeness, community, crowdsourcing, design, inspiration | 1 Comment »

The Design Process

Thursday, July 24th, 2008

Many people would agree that the idea/concept is the most important part of the design process. After all, the final product is only as good as the original idea.

And it’s important not to confuse originality and creativity. There are very few completely original ideas. Most creative ideas involve combining previously existing concepts in a new way.

But what happens when a client has very specific ideas about the direction a design should take and doesn’t give the designer enough room to create? Watch the video.

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Posted in business, design, inspiration | 7 Comments »

Your Biggest Fans

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

Today, we are very excited to announce a collaboration with heavy metal gods Judas Priest for creating their official online tour poster. They are a band that’s been around since the 1970′s and have sold over 35 million records worldwide. There’s a lot to be said about Judas Priest’s longevity in an industry where so many acts crash and burn every day, but their success could not last 30+ years without a raving fan base.

What is a band, or any product for that matter, without its fans? Ask any marketing / advertising guru, and they will all say the same thing: Customer loyalty is equally essential as targeting new customers.

People who feel connected with a product are more likely to be the best evangelists. Apple consumers proudly display the logo on their cars, guitar cases, notebooks (the pen and paper kind), and wherever they can advertise their affiliation with the company. As a brand, Apple has done a great job aligning itself its users. Fans embrace the company as a lifestyle. I have heard both Actionscript programmers and rock musicians say, “I could never date someone who didn’t own a Mac.” If a product can affect affairs of the heart, then it better be really good!

It doesn’t matter if you are fanatic about Judas Priest or Apple: you belong to a community that shares a strong, common bond. Fellow fans are eager to discuss if the 3G iPhone will live up to expectations or why “Breakin’ the Law” was the best song released in 1980. In order to maintain this strong sense of community, bands and brands must listen to their fans and continue evolving to meet their needs, whether it is heavy metal songs or titanium-encased laptops.

Check out this comical montage, shot at a Judas Priest show in 1986, from the cult classic documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot. The band is still touring and playing shows to die hard fans, 22 years later!

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Forget Rock Star and Ninja – How About Warewolf?

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

The labels “rock star” and “ninja” are overused in software development.  After all, even the late Chris Farley was a ninja but he couldn’t even spell CSS.

I’m suggesting a new label: warewolf.

Hear me out. At the start of a complicated project, a developer usually starts out clean shaven and proper. Here is Chad, our lead software engineer, at the start of a long project.

After a few weeks, we start to see Chad change. At first, just a little. He grows some more facial hair and becomes a little more grouchy. After 6 weeks of long days, it’s apparent that the transformation is well on its way, as evident in the following photo (taken 6 weeks into our massive push to launch into private beta in March 2008).

And at around 8 weeks, the transformation is complete. Here’s Chad after 8 weeks:

As you can imagine, after 8 weeks, we typically decide that the product is ready to launch so that Chad can shave and return to normal. We’re pretty good at keeping our major development cycles under 8 weeks.

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Posted in Awesomeness, business, community | 3 Comments »

Ideals and Reality

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

The 4-day workweek. The 4-hour work week. Sounds really nice, doesn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to work 4 days every week and then play for 3 days?

It’s not surprising that tens of thousands of books have been written about efficiency, about working less, about being more productive, about getting more out of your day, etc. There are countless of blog posts written about this too, although I believe Seth Godin is spot on when he wrote in his blog two days ago that too much today is written simply to get the post noticed, not to offer anything of real value.

We can all agree that sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor (except maybe for a select few type-A personalities).

The reality is that it’s far easier to say “work smarter” than to actually figure out how to do that from the start. And this is especially challenging for start-ups (in any industry). After all, there is also the reality of operating a business – any business (except perhaps for those lucky businesses who after many years have successfully found a great balance between work and play). Sometimes, the ideals of a short week are more fantasy than reality. Sometimes, ideals can’t replace hard work. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with working hard when one must.

Below is a photo of Pete Burgeson, crowdSPRING’s Director of Marketing, at around 4:50 a.m. the morning we launched into private beta in March 2008. The smile on Pete’s face, after many loooooooong days and week says it all.

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Posted in business, inspiration, start-up tips, Strategy | No Comments »

Typography is Sexy: Part 1

Monday, July 21st, 2008

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been brainstorming at the crowdSPRING office on ways we can provide more resources for our creatives. One of the ideas we came up with is having guest bloggers spotlight topics of interest to our community. We are very happy to welcome our first guest blogger, Adelle Charles, who runs Fuel Your Creativity. The site encourages creatives to exchange ideas and find inspiration from each other. Adelle and her team won us over with their interesting feature articles. In this post, Adelle highlights some great uses of typography. Head over to Fuel Your Creativity to check out Part 2 when you’re finished. We’ve been scheming with their team, so keep an eye out for a collaboration soon!

Lately I have been surfing around vi.sualize.us and last night I was totally inspired by some really sexy use of typography. Since there was so much to show, I have decided to break it up into a few different parts – so stay tuned for some more sexy type! If you have some great examples, shoot them my way and I will try my best to include them in part 2. Hopefully this will inspire you to use type in many different ways.

Christopher Allen

Fabiano Hikaru

(more…)

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Posted in Awesomeness, community, design, inspiration, marketing | 2 Comments »

Rockin the House (er, office)

Saturday, July 19th, 2008

The Wii has invaded the shores of crowdSPRING HQ and like all things “game” the response from the team was immediate and visceral. After some argument over the playground rules governing the choosing of teams, it was Ross vs. Chad in Guitar Hero:

Those of us with teenage children, and others of us not far removed from teen-age could easily relate to the game and the music. Having said that, I still made the guys close the door to the conference room so I could get some work done. If anyone has pointer for Ross, please let us know as soon as possible.

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Posted in Awesomeness | 3 Comments »

Not-So-Creative Design: EcoGeek vs. Intel

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

A while ago, Ross began an interesting primer on Concept Copying, an issue which often comes up in the design world (Look for him to finish up Part 3 shortly).

Regardless of whether creatives are graphic designers, musicians, or filmmakers, they all draw inspiration from other works. Take a band like British rock act Oasis, who’ve sold over 18 million copies of their sophomore release, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory. They are a hugely successful modern rock act with multiple hit singles. If you listen to a song like “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” there’s no denying that The Beatles were a huge influence on Oasis. The same statement goes for The Beatles, whose early music is heavily influenced by Chuck Berry, and so forth.

However, drawing inspiration from other creatives is very different than blatantly stealing their work.

The Twitter-verse went crazy yesterday as news circulated that microprocessor giant Intel stole from the blogosphere. They yanked environmental-friendly tech blog EcoGeek‘s logo design to use in several slides for their Centrino processor launch.


(EcoGeek’s logo, designed by Peter Holm)


(EcoGeek’s logo, as used by Intel PR)

According to EcoGeek, Intel also released the slides to the public with full sharing rights. It will be interesting to see how the company’s lawyers handle the situation. Looks like somebody in their PR department is in big trouble!

(Click here for the original post, including many interesting comments.)

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Posted in business, design, marketing | 2 Comments »

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