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A rose by any other name would still smell of money

Post author By rcarmstrong
Post date November 17, 2021
No Comments on A rose by any other name would still smell of money

A musing for a Wednesday morning:

I’m sure by now a lot of you have seen the news about the renaming agreement for the Staples Center into the “Crypto.com Arena”. Here’s a link to the story from the AP. While the renaming itself is nothing new (this happens every once in a while with major venues), it did make me think of a few things:
First, the company. I’m fairly sure AT LEAST 75% (I might go as high as 90%) of the people that saw this on their morning TV news had no idea who this company is. And, other than what I reasonably presume is their area of business (cryptocurrency), I know nothing of them. I’m going to go out on a limb and say most of you don’t, either.
This was followed by a question and a wondering. I wonder how many people went “crypto what?” and followed it up with an online search or a visit to the dot com. I have a cursory familiarity with cryptocurrency– or “crypto”, if you’re into that brevity thing, so I didn’t feel like I needed to go search– for now. But a lot of people out there, I imagine, do not. I would love to see the statistics and numbers on search results on this. Bet it brought a nice chunk of traffic to their site. Guess you could call that money well spent.
This is supposed to be a 20-year deal. And, with deals like this, there is lots of money involved, a lot of moving parts, etc. But, given that crypto is such a new and volatile space, I wonder if and how long it may be until we’re back here with yet another renaming. It reminds me of a similar story from a number of years ago whose details escape me at the moment.

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The importance of being Urgent (or the Urgency of being Important)

Post author By rcarmstrong
Post date January 7, 2020
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The idea of “things” (decisions, actions, work) falling into one of two broad categories– either important, or urgent– isn’t something new. I was reminded of it recently while listening to “3 Point Perspective”. “3 Point Perspective” is a podcast hosted by professional illustrators Will Terry, Jake Parker, and Lee White (you can listen to it here or wherever you listen to podcasts).

We need to be more mindful about discerning what things in our lives are urgent or important. If they’re urgent, we should probably tackle them sooner rather than later. If they’re important, we should prioritize them and devote the appropriate energy to them.

If they’re neither, then we should also give them the appropriate time and energy.

I encourage all of us to stop spinning our wheels and take a few moments as we go about our work and lives to try and sort out the urgent, the important, the both, and the neither.

Marketing, money, and time | Random Thought for May 30, 2018

Post author By rcarmstrong
Post date May 30, 2018
No Comments on Marketing, money, and time | Random Thought for May 30, 2018

I was listening to the radio on the drive to work this morning, and there was talk about a pilot program in Sacramento where digital automobile license plates are being made available.

(link to the article on The Sacramento Bee here).

It got me thinking… Let’s presume this program gets rolled out statewide. How long will it take until someone— marketers, maybe even the State of California– figures out a way to monetize this via advertising?

I’m not implying that it’s a bad thing one way or the other. But it is something to think about.

Tags california, license plate, marketing, randomthought

branding opinion randomness Uncategorized

To buck (conventions) or not

Post author By rcarmstrong
Post date August 16, 2017
No Comments on To buck (conventions) or not

Sundays are usually a supermarket run for me, and, aside from getting out of the house for a bit, it’s an opportunity to walk around, explore and examine packaging and products on the shelves.

This week, as I was finishing up, I walked down the aisle containing feminine hygiene products (I think it’s also where the hand soaps are placed, since that’s something I was picking up). As I walked down the aisle, I caught these out of the corner of my eye:

Veeda-tampons-boxes — Packaging for Veeda tampons

I saw these and stopped, because they were unlike anything else that was in the aisle.

And that’s the point. So often we talk about the need to either follow design conventions established by the market leader, whether in iconography, typography, or color usage (notice, for example, that most colas are in red cans, following color standards established by Coca-Cola). On the other hand, there’s the opposite– the opportunity to lay stake to a segment of the market by differentiating from the rest of the pack. But a lot of times both approaches can miss the mark, either because of an overzealous approach to differentiating, or as a result of timidity and being afraid to actually be different.

So I found the Veeda packaging to be refreshing. To me, it managed to accomplish both. It stuck closely to some of the conventions, while steering away from others. The look and feel of the typography definitely has an air of femininity to it. The use of a simplified plant illustration, the 3-color palette on kraft stock– a stark departure from the glossy, varnished, high-contrast color palettes that have become commonplace, suggests an earthier, planet-friendly product.

Note: I checked out their website, and I found that affordable, planet-friendly products are an essential part of their story.

So, I say to the folks at Veeda– good job! You’ve managed to walk the line between common and uncommon, and made it look effective.

Tags packaging, randomthought, supermarket

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Random Thought for August 26, 2014 – On Creativity

Post author By rcarmstrong
Post date August 26, 2014
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I think a person’s creative mind can come up with perfect solutions to any problem. But then the conscious mind gets involved, puts in its 2 cents, and ends up making things difficult or turning them to rubbish.

Tags randomness

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21-day drawing challenge: day 3

Post author By rcarmstrong
Post date August 7, 2014
No Comments on 21-day drawing challenge: day 3

For day 3, we were give a reference sheet and asked to “draw what we saw”. I ended up seeing, among other things, a couple of dogs, a somewhat angry bird-like creature, some sushi, a funky-looking toe, a person ready to go fencing. There’s even a little stick man surfing.

What did you see?

Tags art, draw21days

life opinion randomness Uncategorized

Random Thought for Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Post author By rcarmstrong
Post date January 15, 2014
No Comments on Random Thought for Wednesday, January 15, 2014

On decisions–
There’s an old saying– “It’s better to fail trying something than it is to succeed doing nothing.

It’s one thing to change a decision once it’s been put into action and its results can be evaluated. It’s another to constantly make second-guessing decisions without ever putting any of them in motion.

The former shows flexibility, strength of character and the potential for growth. The latter a paralyzing fear of the unknown.

Given those options. I’ll take the former any day.

Tags decisions, randomness

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New Yahoo! logo– thoughts

Post author By rcarmstrong
Post date August 7, 2013
No Comments on New Yahoo! logo– thoughts

So, I opened up my browser and this is what I found…

The new Yahoo! logo.

Now, I’m pretty sure this has been covered elsewhere, so I’m just going to give my initial thoughts.

Looks like they “hipster-ized” this logo.

Here’s the old logo for reference (no that it was better, but at least it was quirky and had personality).

Yahoo!? More like “yikes!” to me.

Update: Shortly after I wrote this, and while going through my feeds, I came across this post from Yahoo!’s Tumblr. The short version? They’re doing a “variation on a theme” logo a day, until they unveil the new logo on Sept. 4th. Guess we’ll have to wait and see what else they have to show until the big reveal next month. Stay tuned.
Oh, and here’s a link to their post. It has a short video explaining the whole thing, although I’m still not clear as to why they’re going through this exercise…

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Brooklyn Nets logo: Can I do better than Jay-Z?

Post author By rcarmstrong
Post date May 1, 2012
1 Comment on Brooklyn Nets logo: Can I do better than Jay-Z?

So, the internets is all up in arms with the (now) Brooklyn Nets and the newly-unveiled (previously leaked via Twitter) logo. I like the concept as a whole, although I have my issues with it.

So, I decided that, over lunch today, I would take a stab at tweaking the things I felt were a bit weak, especially with how the type was addressed. It’s far from perfect and still needs some polishing (making the geometric elements nice and symmetrical, etc.– remember, this was cobbled together over lunch today), but overall I’m satisfied with the result of a half hour’s worth of effort.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

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