Before I started Argument from Design, I worked for a local marketing firm. The people running this company fancied themselves clever marketing strategists, or “marketeers”, as they called themselves: something which always made me think of the Mickey Mouse Club. When I interviewed with them, they showed off some of their self-marketing ploys. They had a penchant for sending prospective clients miniature items: briefcases, etc. Once they sent prospective clients tiny tin buckets, with no accompanying letter, to pique their interest. A week later they sent out a letter: “You’ve got the bucket. Do you want the ideas?”

It’s clear what they were aiming for: the proverbial “bucket of ideas”. But the problem, of course, was that the bucket they supplied was tiny. This implied that they didn’t have many ideas. Or maybe it implied that their ideas were small & promised very limited success. Whatever. It wasn’t a clever or successful campaign: it only served to make them look like a stupid, Mickey-Mouse organisation—of which there are sadly many in the marketing/graphic design world.

And it was very old-school, or at least it seems so now: send prospective clients some cutesy little thing to garner interest & they’ll be delighted by how clever you are. In these days of economic distress—not to mention environmental consciousness—you might think the days of spending on such wasteful endeavours would be over. You would be wrong.

A week ago, I received a package from Extensis, a company that makes (among other things) font management software. I’m a customer, albeit an unhappy one, since when I upgraded, Suitcase Fusion refused to import any of the metadata on my collection of nearly 7,000 fonts. I had to recreate all of that data. By hand. Anyway, the package contained nothing else than an adult-sized styrofoam head. You know, the kind that would sport a wig.

A few days ago, part two of their remarkable campaign kicked in. I received a wig in the shape of a mullet. In one of the more strained examples of marketing prose that I’ve encountered, the accompanying letter stated:

Extensis invites you to don your “creative mullet” to experience the perfect balance of professional level and playful font management found only in our solutions.

…[Suitcase Fusion 3 is] more than just business in the front and party in the back.

…Check out www.extensis.com/creativemullet/ to… sign up for a demo or even share your mulletude with us.

Seriously, wtf is a “creative mullet”? This is such a prime example of wankery pokery (a favourite expression of mine) that it beggars belief.

Despite all my sniping at them, I’m interested to hear that Extensis are about to move into the world of web fonts with a product called webINK to compete with the likes of TypeKit and others. I’ll reserve judgment until I hear more about it: like a lot of software companies with a history of print design, Extensis’ forays into the web haven’t been that great. Anyone remember BeyondPress? Gaaaah…

Someone has collected bad paintings of Barack Obama:

Possibly my favourite example

It’s a site that does exactly what it says on the tin!

It’s shocking how a mere interstitial from the 1970s has embedded itself in my brain. And many other people’s, apparently.

“Special” interstitial as a t-shirt: it still excites my childhood brain
with the promise of a “Charlie Brown Christmas” showing

As a design, I’m impressed by how well it stands up over time. Especially for something from the 70s.

So Microsoft has been churning out lots of really crap stuff recently—as well as really good stuff like the ongoing work on IE9. But this post is about the crap stuff. A prime example is “Songsmith”, software that helps you create the most banal music based on how you’re singing.

We’re going to place Songsmith within the context of a big joke. First:

The Wind-Up

Then:

The Pitch

“Running with the Songsmith”, based upon the old Van Halen song. Seriously? That’s what it came up with to accompany the singing? I laughed until I cried.

The University of Cardiff’s Chromoscope is a fantastic way to visualise different wavelengths—visual, x-ray, radio & more—in the universe. Use the slider to see the differences: you start to see some of the interactions between them.

These screenshots don’t remotely do Chromograph justice.

Not only is this great data visualisation, it’s great astronomy (I’m a bit of an astronomy geek, but only level 1) & a wonderful use of jQuery.

Culled from my Facebook posts:

Back in the 1990s, Comedy Central did a series of fantastic interstitial ads called “Think Positive” with the Buddy Scott Trio. It was filled with the ironic 50s nostalgia that characterised so much of the US in the late 1990s.

The subject in each ad’s focus was always in a dire, impossible situation (my favourite was with the man on death row) and, when things seemed their darkest, the Buddy Scott Trio would strike up the song “You’re Gonna Win!”.

This song is frequently in my head, particularly if something is going spectacularly wrong.

And the drummer: he is awesome.

Culled from my Facebook posts:

I was born in the depressed industrial town of Waterbury, Connecticut. For about the first half of my life, I lived within 30 miles of it & so knew the town pretty well. As a child, it seemed like a big city to me. It’s not.

In any event, looming over Waterbury, on a hill, was a huge, glowing cross. This was the site for a kitschy Catholic attraction called the “Holy Land”, a 1/4 scale representation of Christ’s life. My understanding is that the cross has been replaced, but I vividly remember flying back to the UK from Newark & passing over Waterbury: you always knew you were there because of the huge looming cross. The attraction is not maintained: there are some wonderful pictures of this decaying place.

“Jerusalem” in Waterbury’s Holy Land (photo by Shaun O’Boyle)

My mother brought me there as a small child & inadvertently added to my confusion about religion. My father always brought me to a tiny church in a village called Bethlehem: I clearly remember thinking, “If this stuff is so important, wouldn’t it be a bigger deal?”. Now, however, as we walked through a depressing plywood Jerusalem, with statuary about waist height, I thought “Well, people were supposed to be smaller then”.

Culled from my Facebook posts: Twenty signs you don’t want that web design project, via Zeldman.

I swear that I’ve experienced at least some of these, particularly #3 & #6.