Heineken fan-sourcing future bottle design

April 30th, 2013

Heineken’s numerous engaging creative projects really stand out among other beer brands. Heineken is ’140 years young’ and is celebrating this landmark anniversary by making its evolution since 1873, available online for designers everywhere to ‘remix’ and design the next Limited Edition bottle. Within the Facebook app, designers can get inspired by browsing through over 250 treasured images from the brand’s 140 year past and pick their favorites to be downloaded and incorporated into their own designs. The Top 30 crowd-sourced designs will be exhibited at Milan’s Design Week in April 2013 and the winning design will be part of Heineken’s 2013/2014 Limited Edition pack.

Brands engaging fans through social media

April 25th, 2013

Brands, big and small, are developing innovative advertising strategies to engage with fans directly and are increasingly using social media platforms to connect with fans. Coca-Cola is coming up with ways to harness the collective input of 64 million Facebook fans. H&M, the global fashion brand, uses Google+ to connect with fans and delivers engaging exclusive content. It is the most followed brand on Google+ today. Ben & Jerry’s recently ran a “Capture Euphoria” campaign using Instagram asking fans to submit their photos capturing the essence of euphoria and using select fan photos in media ad campaigns. Social media platforms are indeed an effective tool to build brand awareness and to engage with brand audience.

Quick mobile stats

February 9th, 2013

Rebranding Native Nuts

December 25th, 2012

We recently rebranded and developed new identity for Native Nuts. Native Nuts specializes in American grown nuts with personalized service and attention to its customers. The challenge was to capture the rustic feel for the brand in the new identity. We designed the new logo which captures the rustic, earthy, organic feel; communicate the traditional roots and commitment to freshness and quality. We used various methods to apply the logo including stamping. More details.

Smartphones lead in online interactions

September 21st, 2012

Image via Google

A recent study published by Google presents quantitative insight into user interaction across multiple screens and devices. The study establishes that majority of the daily media interaction is screen based and that 90% of all such interactions are on one of these four primary media devices – Smartphone, Tablet, Laptop/PC and TV. Today’s consumer own multiple of these devices and move seamlessly between them throughout the day, with the context driving the usage for any given device. Among all the device categories, smartphone leads the way – 38% of all daily media interactions occur on a smartphone. And smartphones are the most common starting place for all online activities. Going mobile has become a business imperative.

Pinterest UX equation

August 3rd, 2012

Pinterest UX = Facebook + Twitter + Flickr + Tumblr + StumbleUpon
Pinterest has rapidly gained popularity and has skyrocketed to among the top social networking sites. We think it is the simple UI and the UX which results in a compelling, engaging experience with social attributes. Pinterest UX is not revolutionary in itself but it seem to combine the best features of many other social networking sites. The use of imagery as the central UI element and the masonry layout creates beautiful, contemporary look and feel for the website. In our viewpoint, Pinterest actually provides a smart framework which users end up filling with their collection of imagery and the entire social experience revolves around that. In a way, users become the designers for Pinterest pages.

Live tiles in Metro style apps

July 7th, 2012

The Metro style apps in the new Windows operating systems – Windows 8, Windows RT for tablets and Windows Phone 8, introduce the concept of live tiles. We think using a live tile is an important differentiation for your app. A live tile is a selling point that differentiates your app from apps on operating systems that only allow static icons. A well designed compelling live tile which presents engaging new content can draw the user to launch the app and drive re-engagement with your app. A user increasingly values an app that they use frequently. Live tile is a powerful tool with key characteristics like presenting fresh, frequently updated content that makes users feel that your app is active even when it’s not running like showing count of new emails; delivering personalized updates and relevant content to the user’s current context like traffic notifications based on user location. We think investing in a well designed live tile should be an important part of the overall Metro style app design.

Android Nexus 7

June 29th, 2012

Image via Google

In recently concluded Google I/O conference, Google unveiled plans for the Nexus 7, its first commercial grade tablet – a 7-inch device running on Android 4.1 JellyBean mobile OS. This comes on the heels of announcement earlier this month from Microsoft about its own version of Windows RT tablet. The Android 4.1 JellyBean mobile OS version from Google has optimizations that enable faster and smoother User Interface transitions. We are reviewing the JellyBean mobile OS specs and user interface changes in detail – more on it later.