There is a new online address book service that is looking to steal some of Plaxo’s market share. I have a certain friend (should I name you?) who has been thinking about getting into the address book game, so I thought he’d appreciate this.
It’s called Soocial and I read about it on Techcrunch.
I have to admit, it looks very simple and therefore very nice. But it really brings home the awesome with this video:
As I mentioned in this post, the Say Do Make brain trust has been considering a business model that involves on-demand printing of art for your walls. Preferably, most of the art would be on canvas and it might work similarly to a very fine website called ImageKind. There are other details, but for now we would like to keep them secret because the sheer brilliance of them could bring our entire society to a screeching halt.
The more I think about it, the more I’d like to get a business started that does not rely on physical goods. Obviously the value of a company is dependent upon a great many factors, but right now, a broad generalization might be this: an online business with physical inventory is worth 1-2 times its annual revenue… an online business with no inventory is worth 10 times its annual revenue.
That is a big difference.
Whether it’s completely accurate or not is up for debate. But if it is close to being correct, it explains a little bit about the current climate of web 2.0 companies appearing, growing, and being sold. Those doing the acquiring don’t want to have to worry about receiving, shipping, customer service, and all the headaches that come with a non-digital inventory.
So with that in mind, this is what I propose: a website where you can purchase files of hi-res art for printing at home or work. I suggest we start with a specific niche… digital artists (or even more narrow, concept artists). An artist could upload their own hi-res images and we would display thumbnails of their work, similar to any image-stock website. The difference is that most of those sites are focused on business-to-business transactions, (sometimes) charging a lot of money for images to be used by graphic designers in advertisements.
We would offer a downloadable file for $1-3 that the customer could print at home or work on 8.5 x 11 paper, or at Kinko’s for perhaps a higher quality or bigger print. Like the image-stock websites, we would also offer a higher price if the customer intends to use it for commercial purposes, and simply trust them to do the right thing.
Eventually, we could grow to offer prints of the works: on canvas, framed, matted, etc…
I think it could be fairly easy to recruit the artists. Perhaps we could start with the Concept Art world. Many of those artists are incredibly talented amateurs who are going to produce the art no matter what. Why not attempt to sell the file for a little bit once you’re done? You’d still own all the rights, you’re just letting your fans/friends/family get a print of their own.
These artists post everywhere, especially forums. In their signature, most of them link back to their official home page. All they’d have to do is include another link that goes directly to their own profile page on our site. We should be able to acquire a ton of links this way, and grow our artist community virally.
One thing I’m more worried about is our future customer base. Who is going to buy hi-res files of digital art? I imagine it could be pretty popular on dorm room walls. Would people with the means to buy high quality prints actually take the time to get them matted and framed?
I’m also not sure if this model is already in place at istockphoto or other competitors. If so, is there anyone who is focused on the specific niche of digital artists who are doing it for just for the art?
Either way, if we are able to grab a tiny foothold in the digital art or concept art cultures, I see a lot of value down the road. Let’s say we build a pretty impressive network of artists and artworks. There are several companies, including ImageKind, that might be very interested in acquiring such a network. They could build out a specific niche while expanding their serious artist base in one fell swoop (I consider the incredibly talented digital artists posting in forums to be “serious artists”).
I think all of things we’ve talked about doing with this on-demand art model could eventually be applied, but this is a way to get things kick-started. What do you guys think?
*Images taken from an incredibly awesome Concept Art illustrator named Tyranx. Behold his portfolio. This is the type of illustrator we could help spread across the globe. I didn’t ask permission to use the images because I am pretty confident that no one outside a small circle of friends will read this post. Is this starting off on the wrong foot with the artist community? I suppose the blogs and permission issue is a post for another day.
Us fools at Say Do Make have been in recent discussions over the possibility of a flash based program that allows people to create their own art. Perhaps this art would be so cool, that the user would pay for it to be printed on canvas and shipped to them.
This isn’t too dissimilar from the type of Design Center you could find at Zazzle or Customized Girl, but instead of pretty t-shirts, you’d be making pretty art.
The problem with this business model is this: when left to their own devices, the average person makes crap. Would they be willing to hang crap on their wall, just because they made it? Or would they recognize that its crap, and go buy a copy of a Rembrandt instead?
Maybe there is a solution that forces users to create awesome art. Let’s say there is a flash program that lets the user manipulate shapes or paths or objects and then abstracts it (spins it?) in such a way that the final product is always a cool composition that is pleasing to the eye.
Hopefully, the user would then think, “Hey, I created that, and it’s awesome. I’m buying it.”
And if they saved it to the site, we would end up with an infinite catalog of awesome abstract art. If you don’t want to create your own, just shop from the user gallery.
Today I stumbled across a pretty cool game that does something similar from Zefrank.com. The colors are a bit painful but the interface is a lot of fun. The end result is an awesome rotating kaleidoscope instead of a static image, but you could imagine how this could inspire a flash interface that works for art.
CNNs headline story in the business section yesterday was “The trouble with Steve Jobs“. It talks a lot about Steve’s character, but this quote from a former Apple executive stood out to me: “Democracies don’t make great products. You need a competent tyrant.”
This quote seems to be an insight that comes out of that person’s personal experience. He might have never worked at a company with excellent leadership and management. His experience at Apple might have given him the impression that only this extreme way of leading leads to success.
All of this has been discussed many times, but I’m wondering more about what the general attitude towards expectations of leadership is. To me, the ‘tyranny’ approach seems immature, disrespectful to the employees and like a bad idea for the company in the long-term. I highly doubt that employees will commit and invest themselves in a company that pushes them to the extreme but might not properly reward them. I also doubt that employees will flourish and become as productive as they could be when they are constantly in fear of getting shot down or ridiculed. Pressure is one way to push employees to be productive, but it certainly isn’t the healthiest way.
What is your experience? Do great products require tyranny?
Who creates the best product: a talented artist working solo or a committee of talented people working within the constraints of a major corporation?
I imagine that some design research projects are inspirational, and some lead to compromise after compromise. Too many voices often lead to the watering down of a good idea into a soggy one.
Personally, I like the lone artist theory. If it is a simple project, I think it is more likely that one talented person with one vision will create something much more impressive than a committee.And I’d like to prove it.
Well, at least I’d like to test it.
We’ve all heard of Ask.com. Other than Yahoo (which is more of a portal), there is no other search engine that spends as much on marketing and advertising as Ask. In November 2007, Ask signed a long term deal with Google to continue using the Adsense advertising network to display sponsored search results on Ask.
Now it looks like Ask is pulling all of its search results from Google, not just the sponsored results.
It’s a rather brilliant business model: Ask doesn’t really create anything. They don’t have to worry about staying on top of the search engine algorithm game, nor are they under pressure to get advertisers to sign up with a network of their own (not to mention all the customer service, platform, and software headaches attached to running your own adsense).
All they really need to do is get people to their site and display the search results in a pleasing and understandable method.
Why can’t anyone do this?
What if there was a super talented web interactive designer who thought he could design a batter interface than Ask, Yahoo, or Google. All of those interfaces have been designed and re-designed by teams of people. What if, as Knight Rider would have me believe, one man can make a difference?
It would be a cool experiment. Design a search engine interface and import all the results, featured and organic, from Google. And let’s say you are successful, and create something easier to use than the current offerings. And let’s say it gathered a small following. And let’s say things started to snowball a bit.
Well, 1% of the search market is worth 1 Billion Dollars in market cap. So you know, it would be rad to grab a tiny slice of that.
And heck, we could easily build an advertising campaign to grab as much market share as possible. It works for Ask.
So what do you say, Christoph Helzle? Want to make this our next experiment?
In 2004, I founded Follow Function LLC with my business partner, Steven Schranz. It’s an online store for modern design and the stories behind the designers. It’s awesome. If you don’t believe me, check it out yourself. That year, I hired a friend and colleague, Kazuma Omura to design my logo. I hired Kaz because he is awesome, and awesomeness is clearly a theme I’m trying to maintain.
The name “Follow Function” is a derivative of the Bauhaus saying “Form follows function”. We wanted to sell beautiful works of modern art, but we wanted them to be functional as well. We don’t carry and vases or candle holders or other products that are sculpted first while a reason for them to exist is created later.
Kaz, being awesome and also smart, came up with several great logo ideas, one of which I chose immediately. I didn’t want him to spend too much time on it because I was secretly planning on screwing him on the bill (just kidding, Kaz, that check is in the mail!)
His logo has two “f”s, is indicative of the word “following”, and inspires feelings of infinite potential. I loved it. I’m not sure if Kaz was really 100% satisfied, because he is a perfectionist. And awesome.
I write about this today because of a blog post in one of my all-time favorite blogs, TechCrunch.
It was titled “Logo War: Red Hat Takes on Data Portability”. It seems that Data Portability, a 2007 start-up received a cease and desist letter from Red Hat over their use of an infinity-shaped logo.
I’m not exactly sure when Red Hat’s Fedora brand was introduced, but I’d like to wager that it was after 2004. So really, I should probably be sending out Cease and Desist letters left and right.
To be honest, I think that all of our logos are different enough, and Earth is large enough, that we can each coexist peacefully side by side. Or maybe I’m just a hippie.
But the main reason I bring all of this to your attention is this key quote by someone I respect a lot, Michael Arrington:
What’s my opinion? I agree with Marc Canter, who writes in an email to DataPortability cofounder Chris Saad, “Do NOT spend 0.001% of your mindshare - time - or energy - worrying about a LOGO! Get a different logo.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa, Michael. Don’t spend time thinking about a logo? In a sense I agree that you shouldn’t waste time worrying about a lawsuit over a logo, and just make a new one. Or as Arrington suggests later, hold a contest and let fans create a new logo for you (really, that would be pretty cool).
But I disagree that logos don’t need to hold a tiny space in your mindshare.
Logos can say a lot about a company in such an incredibly quick moment. Is your company fun? Serious? Clean? High quality? Crappy? Do these people have taste? Do they have money? These are all questions answered in a split second by a logo.
Unfortunately, I’m not the most qualified to speak of identity design. So what do you guys think?
Is “logo” even the right word? What can a logo express? Is it time for Follow Function to polish up the logo?
Maybe I need a nice swatch of color behind it and ghost out part of the infinity sign? Maybe I need to sue somebody?
I remember the first incarnation of the Chipotle website knocking my socks off while I was a design student in school. I haven’t been back in a while, but today it came up in conversation. Obviously, they’ve done a revamp, but the same tongue-in-cheek feel is there. I laughed out loud numerous times. Beyond that, there are so many small details that I found myself examining over and over again because of the sheer fun of it. Bring your mouse close to the main menu and watch the shape change accordingly. I hope that I bring the same interest and fun to my work as well.
Right out of school, the first thing I did was educate myself about investing. Ok, maybe I went on a vacation… and then I worked for a little bit, and then I taught myself about investing.
I’ve been through your standard, “diversify your portfolio”, “Suzie invested at 25, Marie invested at 30″, “stocks with high dividends” discussions. Now that I’ve had time to watch the successes and failures of those around me who invest, the same thing comes up over and over again: Index funds.
This article (thanks, Digg) embodies all of the conversations I’ve had about investing in index funds. It begins with the advice that Google gave their employees prior to the 2004 IPO. Good enough for Goog, good enough for me! To summarize: the financial institutions are overpaid to manage your money because they are no better at predicting ways to beat the market than you or I.
Some highlights:
“…a “blindfolded monkey” will, in the long run, have as much luck picking a winning investment portfolio as a professional money manager.”
“It all started in the early 1970s with a group of maverick investment professionals working at Wells Fargo bank. Using the vast new powers of quantitative analysis afforded by computer science, they gradually came to the conclusion that the traditional practices guiding institutional investing in America were, for the most part, not delivering on the promise of better-than-average returns.”
It’s a really great article that I recommend reading for anyone interested in investing.
Update on the teaching situation. It’s a go. I was really excited leading up to the acceptance of the offer, but right after I confirmed that I was going to teach, I had this horrible nightmare that dealt with grading papers. I think it’ll be ok though. Look forward to posts in the future related to the lectures and demonstrations I plan on giving.
Isn’t typography wonderful? This video illustrates my fascination with the similarities between graphic design and product design. Communicating a different emotion, aesthetic, or style through typography is the same thing that a product designer does when creating an object. However, typography has the advantage of utilizing words which inherently evoke meaning. Product designers must evoke similar things utilizing only surfacing, color, and texture, without the added descriptive benefit that words offer.
