2015

What is probably India’s most-used music streaming service, Gaana (“song” in Hindi), launched a new advertising campaign this month. It was very well executed with a great music video, beautiful typography and useful app demos at the end. Campaigns like these add to the brand value of a company — people see themselves dancing to songs on Gaana. But what’s missing here? What is the first thing users see when they download the app?

Pinkberry, a popular frozen yogurt chain, has spurred countless imitators with “berry”-studded names, so when a yogurt chain approached Alexandra Watkins, the chief innovation officer of Eat My Words, a San Francisco-based company that names brands, she wanted to help them find a really distinctive name. They ended up calling the company Spoon Me, and the name was such a hit that t-shirts and bumper stickers bearing the new brand name were flying out of the floor.

John McWade asks a very interesting question in his article How simple is too simple? He says:

Whose logo is this? How long would it take to draw? Let’s say 10 seconds in InDesign to make the rectangle and 10 minutes to get the width just right. How much do you bill per hour? To make it easy, let’s say $90. By that reckoning, this is a $15 logo. Not only that, but the yellow border is not the designer’s creation; it’s been the trademark of the client, National Geographic magazine, for

Early typewriters used monospaced fonts, meaning that the spaces between letters were always the same length, and so, typists started using two spaces to slightly widen the space between sentences. Now that the fonts on your computer are are proportionally spaced, this practice is outdated; it creates unnecessary inconvenience for the writer. To help guide the reader, it is best to use two spaces after a period ending a sentence in this situation.

I had my hands-on a magnificent device this week — a remote. But this isn’t just any remote, it’s one of the most beautiful devices I’ve ever held in my hand. It’s the Apple Remote. When the Apple TV debuted back in 2007, it really had a new vision for televisions. Even with the original Apple TV, you could rent high-def movies or purchase TV shows, music and videos from the iTunes Store, with the addition of YouTube videos.