Today, Radiohead released their much-anticipated seventh album, In Rainbows. As has been reported everywhere, they are selling it directly to listeners via web download and you, the purchaser, get to choose how much you pay for it (even if you want to pay nothing – I paid £5). What music label would allow such a thing? None. Radiohead doesn’t have a label. Prince, who’s also had his issues with record labels, took a similarly revolutionary path recently when he gave away for free millions of his latest CD in the UK and then proceeded to sell out 21 dates in London. Trent Reznor announced two days ago that Nine Inch Nails is free from a record label obligation and is looking for a “direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate”.

Apple and Amazon selling DRM-free music while huge acts like Radiohead, Prince, and Nine Inch Nails sell unencumbered tracks directly to the public? The Media Sphincter (that clenching muscle of media companies who continue to restrict media from being freely created and sold to audiences who crave more and more of it, even in the face of epic changes that will eventually remake their business model whether they like it or not) is beginning to fail. Watch out below.

Fire Marshalls may be on hand to contain the crowds expected for the MIMA 07 Annual Summit. As a Gold Sponsor, we see this event as one of key venues to bring in thought leaders from all over the country. If you are attending, stop by and check us out during Happy Hour as we are strategically placed next to the bar and DJ. If you didn’t get a swanky swag bag, stop by to say hello and pick up a 45 (yes, they actually have songs on them) and get a chance to win iTunes by playing our SMS contest. We teamed up with our fantastic partner, OnCall Solutions, to bring this interactive strategy to life.

As anyone who’s driven across Wyoming a couple of times like I have knows, it’s got to be one of the top five most beautiful states in our current collection of fifty. Its got Yellowstone, Old Faithful, the Grand Tetons, the Bighorn Mountains, Devil’s Tower, dinosaur fossils, and breathtakingly beautiful vistas. With all that, here’s their new commemorative state quarter:

What a missed opportunity. I know that cowboys and buckin’ broncos are a big part of their heritage (and that is their state symbol) but with all that natural beauty at hand, they pick what appears to be a chrome silhouette better suited for the mudflaps of an 18-wheeler hauling cattle to market? It’s not even an attractive engraving. It looks more like something cheaply produced in a South China metal stamping plant.

We all know how Apple’s focus on the customer-experience design has resulted in a passionate user base, surging profits and a stellar stock performance. But how does this apply to other companies?

“…A three-year study of more than 40 Fortune 500 companies by the research firm Peer Insight found that companies focused on customer-experience design outperformed the S&P 500 by a 10-to-1 margin from 2000 to 2005.” FastCompany

Today, the New York Times got smaller. Like, a lot smaller. It’s only an inch and a half, but as you can see above, when compared to the previous size, it’s quite noticeable. They say it will save them $10 million dollars a year and conforms to the way other papers are made. They didn’t change the layout; it’s still six columns, but they’re narrower by a quarter inch each. The masthead is smaller, as are the story headlines, but the typeface for the text appears to be the same size as before. Personally, I hate it. From a design perspective, I think the type is too big for the narrower columns and the big beautiful masthead seems just a bit too small. All in all, it’s a more awkward experience.

The bigger problem, though, if from a branding perspective. See, the Times is the greatest paper in the world. As the paper of record, it’s our first draft of history. It holds that position above all other American papers, and it’s well deserved. The fact that the paper was physically bigger than most other broadsheets helped reinforce it’s position at the top of the journalistic food chain, even if it was subtle. “We’re bigger because we’re more important. Deal with it.” Honestly, in some way, it helped justify its higher cost to readers like me. Now, with its diminution, it feels and looks like just another paper. In fact, they used that standardization argument in their justification of the move.

I know some will say that in this era of the embattled newspaper, this was bound to happen, even to the Times. They’ll say it makes good business sense. Ten million dollars is a lot to save. Sure, but what will it cost to save that money? The Times, like any other company marketing a product, needs to remember that a lot of consumers don’t base all their purchase decisions on the quality of the product inside the packaging alone. Premium brands differentiate themselves through experience. My experience enjoying the Times just decreased. It feels cheaper. It feels smaller. It feels standardized.

Honestly, I’d have paid a little more to keep the bigger sheets.

In the spirit of wikipedia where people from all over the world contribute to a product (i.e. an encyclodpedia), crowdsourcing has emerged where organizations outsource the need to solve a problem to the public. Are you working on the next product or service that will change the world but can’t get past the last formula or technical approach? Check out Innocentive.

At Innocentive, companies (who can choose to remain anonymous) post their challenges and anyone from around the world can submit answers. The people who provide potential answers, even though they are registered users, remain completely anonymous.

Solutions are evaluated on the merit of their idea. The submitter’s previous work, current research, educational background, recent published papers (or lack thereof) do not play a factor in winning as the answers are provided anonymously. It’s the democratization of innovation.

Chosen solutions may be offered monetary prizes, formal recognition and of course, bragging rights.

My current weekend project to solve:  Dual Use – Off Grid – Illumination Device.

Source: NPR

No drop-shadows, no reflections, no cute button, no trendy colors, not even any gradients! The designers of the new CNN.com eschewed every trendy tool designers are using today. I have to say I was a little put off. How dare they not show-off their photoshop wizardry! I came around, however. What a novel approach, use type, good layouts, clean lines, and simple color scheme to give it a modernist look. I applaud the design team for going back to the basics, and creating something fresh and innovative.

ADDENDUM: They now have a huge banner ad at the top of the site that pushes the most important content below the fold on my Macbook (1440×900px). What a great way to trash a design.

Has to, has to, has to be a joke.

3D Mailbox

Doesn’t this feel a little like this? How well did it work the first time?

Real people (like your mom*) don’t buy things based on the number of bullet-pointed features found on the outside of the box. Apple knows that now. They learned it from the iPod.

* And don’t bother telling me that Helio isn’t selling their product to your mom. I know that. However, your mom (or, at least my mother in law) absolutely wants an iPhone.

This week Minneapolis played host to Flash designers, developers, and everything in between at the Flashbelt 2007 conference, and some designers from ideapark were along for the ride. Going into this conference, I thought it was mostly going to be product demo’s, how to’s, and possibly an example here or there of some pretty cool work. Well, I was wrong. It turned out to be one of the most inspirational weeks I have had in a long time.

What can I say? Day one blew my mind. It started out with your standard keynote. Adobe advertised some products, talked a lot about CS3 and all of the cool new stuff you could do with said software. Eh, I could read all of that on their website. Luckily though, the next speaker was Craig Swann….wow. Here’s a guy who gets to play for a living. Without boring you with details, his lecture on thought process was amazing. It was like I was back in design school, being reminded how the concept process is the most important part of the design process, and the most fun aspect of design. I think sometimes as interactive designers we can get in the mode of just skinning IA and making it look good. Without giving you a play by play of the day, a couple of blurbs about the other two speakers.

Jeremy Thorp, his Pixel Economy experiment is amazing! It’s a literal visualization of an economy using pixels trading color values, beautiful and thought provoking.

Joshua Davis. You probably know who he is, and why he is amazing. The really great thing is that he is opening up all of this source files for people to learn how he does his amazing work. Very cool.

Day Two. Pretty cool as well. A little more technical, but still worth going to. Saw some great experiments with particles in flash (something I have always been fascinated with), more Adobe product demos, and some other experimental works. Another of my favorite lectures was at the end of day two by Calle & Pelle Sjoenell. Two ad execs from Fallon who talked about the nature of interactive of media and why traditional advertising is stagnating. They have an interesting take, as one of the brothers made the leap from traditional advertising to the interactive area .It was a really fascinating conversation about the importance of the idea, and more important than that, the importance of being first with that idea. The word of mouth for a groundbreaking idea can be more important for the client than what the idea is trying to promote. Even a new idea that could be potentially be offensive, is better than an idea that nobody cares about. I found this to be quite interesting, as this is an idea that we believe in strongly at ideapark.

Day Three. Very boring Flex and AIR demo to start. However, I think Adobe AIR (formerly known as Apollo) is going to change the way the people think about the line between online and offline applications, and it will allow us “web designers” to try our hand at UI design. So it was worth seeing. The final presentation I saw was also one of my favorites. It was given by David-Lowe- Rogstad and it was about redefining how the workflow process should work for interactive products. His whole premise is that we should break down the rigid process a lot of use now, and break it down into smaller chunks with more testing. More doing, less talking. Very fascinating, very thought provoking.

The name Flashbelt for this conference was a misnomer. While, it did center around flash. It was a conference about interactive media and everything that is involved in making it. Even if you were a designer, developer, or manager who wasn’t really interested in Flash, this conference left you feeling inspired. If you didn’t go this year for those reasons, trust me, go next year.