A quick sketch to visualize the concept of ‘Our Design’, and the focus of a working theory on creating value based design.
Dirk+Weiss practices ‘Our Design’, and believe that value does lie in knowing that what we are designing and developing, actually is working. This working theory focuses less on (but does not disregard) the upfront, aesthetic design process, and approaches every project with the assumption that design has a formula, yet is not formulaic, and is calculable.
Click the image to enlarge!
graphic copyright 2010 – Dirk+Weiss / www.ourdesign.us
Another Podcast from Dirk+Weiss exploring topics of design, marketing, and technology. This episode explores the term “graphic designer” in all it’s lack-luster nuance. Highlights include tons of banter, personal stories and a phone interview with senior design student Katie Evans.
Note: The views in this podcast are strictly those of Dirk+Weiss and its Interviewees.
If you have not seen or heard our podcast, then now is your chance! The Dirk+Weiss podcast is available in multiple places including the iTunes Podcast Store. And yes, its 100% free!
Our show format includes discussion about one or two topics, and then a follow up, on-the-spot phone call with a colleague to some third party insight into the topic of discussion.
Topics Surround:
- Graphic Design as Industry
- AIGA (Professional Association for Design)
- iPhone and Mobile Apps
- Web Technology
- Content Management
- Mobile Tech News
- Design World News
- Marketing and Design Events
- and More!
We have decided to release “Seasons” of podcast episodes. Each season of podcasts will contain various topics related to Graphic Design, Mobile Tech, and Marketing.
Dick Dale: King of the Surf Guitar, has been marketing and promoting himself in the music business for well over 40 years.
Some great points on being a musician and marketing yourself in the music biz. His wise words are just as valid for almost any form of business or service. To be successful in your personal endeavor, you must have a thought-out, smart business plan that includes a way to market your goods to the highest bidder.
His other great point was about taking the so-called “record label” route, which he claims will steal all rights and privileges to your creations, in this case his music. I’m sure its pretty close to his description. The key here, is that Dick is treating his music like a business and has learned that by being sharp and smart, you can with the big dogs, and keep all the profits.
Again, this applies to not just music, but artists, designers mechanics,cafe owners, and just about anyone who has an idea that they want to see come to life.
Join Dirk+Weiss and AIGA Boston at Pecha Kucha Night. July 22, 1009 @ 6:30pm. The goal of these events is to talk about ‘our’ design work, in a setting that is comfortable and not pretentious. Come support all the speakers and Dirk+Weiss at this open forum type event. Each speaker is given 6min and 40seconds to talk about what they do as a creative professional.
Our topic will include designing for now and the power of interconnecting design concepts with smart technology. For more information: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/cities/boston
What is Pecha Kutcha?
“Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown, without having to rent a gallery or chat up a magazine editor. This is a† demand that seems to be global – as Pecha Kucha Night, without any pushing, has spread virally to over 100 cities across the world. Find a location and join the conversation.”
As a frequent blog reader, and supporter of open software and entertainment, I came across a great post over at The Pirate Bay’s blog. You may know about The Pirate Bay and all of its Bit Torrent seeding. Well, TPB is now fighting a court case in Sweden that pins them at the center of the piracy world, and labels them ‘enablers for illegal downloading’. Many opinions fly about this topic, and in my opinion, if legislators and officials spent less time fighting an un-stoppable mechanism, and more time figuring out ways to make new revenue, it can all work out for all parties involved.
Take the music industry. Previously, a band would gig, cut a record, and find a distributor for actual, physical items to be bought. Now, the internet has allowed files of any type to be easily shared quickly and free, including digital audio files. In addition, the methods of sharing such files have become even more accessible, and thus, un-stoppable. So easy, your web novice parents could probably do it.
On one hand, you could say that piracy was stunted for a brief moment when iTunes was released. A legitimate method of music purchase yes, but not free. Software like iTunes enabled people to have more convenient access to music, thus taking a bite out of piracy. But it could not, nor did it expect to stop the pirate world.
On the other hand, the amount of users that utilize The Pirate Bay and other sites for downloading is astronomical, and indeed could be considered the biggest “digital distributor” for music, movies and software. But where does that leave the bands, movie studios, and software engineers? Broke? Unless your band or company is willing to adapt and evolve with nature of the business, broke you will be.
The solution? Give it away for free, and find other ways to generate revenue. Be creative. Be innovative. Apple has already forgone its Digital Rights Management on downloaded music with its iTunes plus program. A little brainstorming and creative marketing and advertising strategy can go a long way. Some methods for revenue stream could be:
- Pay per click methods
- Commercial Interruptions
- Deals like “Buy one get one”
- New and improved Hardware (one industry that will always thrive)
- PR events
- Online marketing and viral campaigns
The moral of the story is, more money is being spent on trying to fight a losing battle. This quote from a faithful pirate bay user says a lot.
“Tpb [The Pirate Bay] is the biggest PR machine in the world for artists!…Tpb also [does] not charge you anything for publish you stuff! So let the trial go on and it will end up as once it did about free broadcasting many years ago.Today we have free Broadcasting and tomorrow we will have free sharing. No corrupt Society will ever be able to stop evolution…” – http://thepiratebay.org/blog/161
Ask us how to make you new revenue by using the web.
The “Now” way? Don’t you mean the “New” way? Actually…no. In a Facebook and Twitter environment, the New way is already old.
No matter how you spin it, a small business, is a small business. It’s tough enough out there, and the days of the top-down approach are over. So what do small business have at their advantage? The ability and directly connect with clients and customers, without the need for bureaucratic hurdles and expensive salaries.
New Way? Now Way? Old Way? Lets first clarify a few points, crucial to the success of not only this article, but the future of the small business.
The Old Way: A small business becomes dependent on and trapped by a limited marketing strategy. Yes, in the days before the great internet, there was only News Papers, TV, Radio and the occasional billboard. It was a constant uphill battle to get your service in-front of your audience. All theses methods, plagued with an instant expiration date, and a lack of realtime, qualitative results.
The Now Way: Forfeit expired media for targeted web and mobile advertising with quantifiable numbers, to maximize your Return On Investment. We can try to predict the next trend, but we can only be sure of the now moment. You must be willing to come to terms with the following: print media is dead, radio is useless in a visually stimulated society, and TV is way too expensive and noisy for the little guy.
The now way for marketing your small business lies in creating targeted web campaigns that can directly reach the most potential customers. People have given up newspapers for mobile devices and websites, and TV for streaming video.
We are living and working in a “now and free” society. We are also living and working in a recently escalated, highly interconnected, world.
The old way suggests that Business owners and established brands are up above, pulling the strings of its consumers. The “Now” way suggests that consumers drive the way established brands move and evolve. Hence, from the ground up instead of top down. The small business has much more of an advantage with the “Now” metohd, as the distance between parties is greatley reduced, and overall costs considerably less, if not downright free.
Every two years, the AIGA has it’s Best of New England design competition. If you have been following our updates (or love/hate Helvetica) you probably have seen our project Anyone Can Swiss. Well, we can now call Anyone Can Swiss “Award Winning”.
That’s right, Dirk+Weiss has won a Best of New England (BoNE) award for outstanding design. The BoNE awards only go out the best New England designers with ‘knock your socks off’ work. Admittedly, the website for Anyone Can Swiss is not your typical graphic design project, but somehow, it felt right at home inside a graphic design competition.
Overall, we feel the judges connected to the bigger picture, and maybe even had a little fun with the project. That’s exactly what we wanted. Anyone Can Swiss is not just a “Perfect Helvetica Poster Generator”, it is a social experiment for graphic designers. Sure it pushes a few buttons, and causes some to ask “is this a joke? or serious?”. That’s the whole idea: contemplation and discourse.
We would like to thank the AIGA BoNE Show Judges and AIGA Boston for taking the time consider Anyone Can Swiss as an award winning design project, and creating an opportunity for us here a Dirk+Weiss to promote what we do to the greater design community.
Now what? Well, check out our Anyone Can Swiss iPhone app. Why the iPhone? We ask simply, why just be on the web, when you can be on the web and mobile? And we feel it is a safe assumption that many of the 40,000,000 iPhone users in the US are indeed, graphic designers.
With mobile applications, your business is online, viral and now.
Mobile applications have not only become cash cows for those who choose to sell them, but they have also proven to be extremely beneficial for building brand recognition and reinforcement.
iPhone users make up more than 50% of all smart phone users and represent over 15% of all cell phones purchased. A pretty large chunk in the grand scope of total US cell phone usage.
From books to card games to promotions, the iPhone can be a platform to help your business. With a combination of an integrated advertising model and a developed markeing strategy, an iPhone app can not only create revenue from app sales alone, but enable you to sell your other products and services.
If you have not already seen our smash hit site AnyoneCanSwiss, please do check it out. In the first 48 hours, 11 thousand unique-visitor, poster submissions, we’re collected and shared on Flickr. And now, AnyoneCanSwiss, is going mobile.
Here at Dirk+Weiss, we have created a new iPhone app that takes the concept of AnyoneCanSwiss, and makes it mobile. In the next few weeks, you will be able to download your own Swissmaker 2.0 App to your iPhone from the App Store on iTunes. And did we mention, its totally free!
The app will not only make instant Helvetica posters, but will allow you to save the posters to you photo library on your phone. From there, the possibilities are endless! Email a poster to friends, or set one as your phone wallpaper. If any other app on your phone can access your photo library, it can also access your posters.
Also included with the launch of the Swissmaker 2.0 iPhone App, is an advertising model that can connect interested brands to a niche viral market. This process of co-branded advertising is a no-risk model in you only pay for the views you receive. If you our your company is interested in co-branding with AnyoneCanSwiss, send us a message.
