10 April 2007
06 April 2007
04 April 2007
Rent a wife
"Rent a wife for a better life"
Emakina invented a campage for Dvdpost, a Home Entertainment Service Company, or better yet an ordinary media-rental spot. The design is flooded (despite the acquiry of DesignIsDead) and the tone-of-voice of the campagne is somehow at the edge of ethics but I must admit I kinda like idea so — the post.
01 April 2007
Agency trends
People versus channels in communication:
about why magical agency-founders number is set to 3.
When an agency is formed and founded that is – mostly – the result of differnet individuals (with different qualities) joining forces in order the enhance eachothers specialties and hereby expand the strenghts to accomplish what they are striving for.
Small autonomous teams are more efficient than large ones, that's why all bigger agencies try to divide the existing structure into managable chunks and small agnecies are rising like mushrooms...
There's a mathematical logic to that fact. First of all it has something do with the number of communication-channels in overall. When the number of channels increases it's harder to muddle through, which leads to the difficulty of making fast but solid decisions. thse decisions have to be made in order to accomplish the tasks at hand for reaching the set out goals pointed out in the overall vision of a project, or in this case, the company/agency. There's a lot more on mission statements and core business but this post will only concern this magical 'threefoldness'.
2 people » 1 channel, 3 people » 3 channels, 4 people » 6 channels, 5 people » 10 channels, 6 people » 15 channels, ...
(n2-n)/2 = the exponential figure, n being the number of people.
A two-head strong formed unit, encompasses only one communication-channel. A back and forth between the two, but hence a one-way-traffic channel because one can hardly account talking to the self as a channel. I'd like to refer to it as "stubborn" (when one of two parties doesn want to go along or isn't on the write , it is a poor situation of communication and suppert and will likely fail to reach bigger goals, cfr clients.
A three-head strong unit, encompasses exactly three communication-channels. One between each member, each member or contributor is occupied with managing one channel of communication so we can call this an ideal situation. A task each, and also there's the situation of a possible majority when making decisions. This is the ideal situation for setting up a rigorous flow of work.
In the situation of 4 people, there's still a managable amount of channels, and teh formation is so to say "within managable limits", a formation of 5 people gets at a "double occupation" » because the amount of channels doubles the figure of people. When going to 6 or more the channel figure gets out of reach and is thus as good as unmanagable unless there's a strict build-in hiearchy.
So adding people, mostly increases the complexity of communication. As each person is added to the team the complexity of communications goes up exponentially.
To ensure efficiency, partners should take responsability for different areas. Choose to allocate your responsabilities:
- Creative direction, clients, new business and press relations.
- Financial affairs, studio manager, job costing and staff relations.
- Design, project managment, iT an environmental policy.
This allocation of responsabilties allows companies to grow and function without the partners treadig on eachother's toes. It doesn't mean that you don't communicate or that you stop sharing decision-making. Nor does it mean there is no overlap. But life will be easier if each takes ultimate responsability for a particular area.
Read more:
Frederik Brooks, No Silver Bullet (1975)
Adrian Shaughnessy, How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul (2005)
about why magical agency-founders number is set to 3.
When an agency is formed and founded that is – mostly – the result of differnet individuals (with different qualities) joining forces in order the enhance eachothers specialties and hereby expand the strenghts to accomplish what they are striving for.
Small autonomous teams are more efficient than large ones, that's why all bigger agencies try to divide the existing structure into managable chunks and small agnecies are rising like mushrooms...
There's a mathematical logic to that fact. First of all it has something do with the number of communication-channels in overall. When the number of channels increases it's harder to muddle through, which leads to the difficulty of making fast but solid decisions. thse decisions have to be made in order to accomplish the tasks at hand for reaching the set out goals pointed out in the overall vision of a project, or in this case, the company/agency. There's a lot more on mission statements and core business but this post will only concern this magical 'threefoldness'.
2 people » 1 channel, 3 people » 3 channels, 4 people » 6 channels, 5 people » 10 channels, 6 people » 15 channels, ...
(n2-n)/2 = the exponential figure, n being the number of people.
A two-head strong formed unit, encompasses only one communication-channel. A back and forth between the two, but hence a one-way-traffic channel because one can hardly account talking to the self as a channel. I'd like to refer to it as "stubborn" (when one of two parties doesn want to go along or isn't on the write , it is a poor situation of communication and suppert and will likely fail to reach bigger goals, cfr clients.
A three-head strong unit, encompasses exactly three communication-channels. One between each member, each member or contributor is occupied with managing one channel of communication so we can call this an ideal situation. A task each, and also there's the situation of a possible majority when making decisions. This is the ideal situation for setting up a rigorous flow of work.
In the situation of 4 people, there's still a managable amount of channels, and teh formation is so to say "within managable limits", a formation of 5 people gets at a "double occupation" » because the amount of channels doubles the figure of people. When going to 6 or more the channel figure gets out of reach and is thus as good as unmanagable unless there's a strict build-in hiearchy.
So adding people, mostly increases the complexity of communication. As each person is added to the team the complexity of communications goes up exponentially.
To ensure efficiency, partners should take responsability for different areas. Choose to allocate your responsabilities:
- Creative direction, clients, new business and press relations.
- Financial affairs, studio manager, job costing and staff relations.
- Design, project managment, iT an environmental policy.
This allocation of responsabilties allows companies to grow and function without the partners treadig on eachother's toes. It doesn't mean that you don't communicate or that you stop sharing decision-making. Nor does it mean there is no overlap. But life will be easier if each takes ultimate responsability for a particular area.
Read more:
Frederik Brooks, No Silver Bullet (1975)
Adrian Shaughnessy, How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul (2005)
30 March 2007
Me and the office
My workstation containing my new MacBook Pro 15"4, an Apple Cinema Display 20", some media speakers, a lo of cables, a 19" CRT, a huge wacom tablet, a dozen cd/dvd's, a PowerG4 desktop, a mouse or two, a Coolpix 5900, an iPod mini and a Nano one, a LaCie and a Maxtor drive, an external microphone, some papers and a few notebooks. Oh, almost forgot: my favorite box of pens » Uni-Ball eye Fine UB-157 Black.
And me, at my new office ... chillin' and posing for my new build-in-iSight.
Hebbes.be
My re-design of HEBBES.be is online as from now, HEBBES.be. I was privileged to be assigned the re-design of HEBBES.be during my employment at Snow. HEBBES.be is a client of LG&F for above advertising. So Snow was assigned to do the re-design of all pages and the mailing. It was my favorite project at Snow and I still honour Jay for giving me the responsability over the design of this project and for guiding me thru my first real usabilty-research. Now finally after a few months of waiting... the outcome. I hope Snow and HEBBES.be are happy, at least I am.
Mailing headline is:
"Hebbes.be looks different. different and better!"
It will be even easier to discover the deal of your life, find and achieve your dreamhouse or buy your favorite car. Your opinion matters to us. let us know what you think about the re-design of our new website..."
Original message.
"Hebbes.be ziet er anders uit. Anders en beter!
Het wordt nog gemakkelijker om het huis van je dromen te kopen of een blitse wagen of deal van je leven te vinden. Jullie mening is ook belangrijk voor ons. Laat ons weten wat jullie van de nieuwe site vinden... "
— - — original designs » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » »
The homepage
The vortalpage
The listingspage
The resultpage
The advertiserspage
Mailing headline is:
"Hebbes.be looks different. different and better!"
It will be even easier to discover the deal of your life, find and achieve your dreamhouse or buy your favorite car. Your opinion matters to us. let us know what you think about the re-design of our new website..."
Original message.
"Hebbes.be ziet er anders uit. Anders en beter!
Het wordt nog gemakkelijker om het huis van je dromen te kopen of een blitse wagen of deal van je leven te vinden. Jullie mening is ook belangrijk voor ons. Laat ons weten wat jullie van de nieuwe site vinden... "
— - — original designs » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » »
The homepage
The vortalpage
The listingspage
The resultpage
The advertiserspage
27 March 2007
Beauty of creation
I've been a hard on SecondLife lovers — like Peter, just to name one — so okey, I'll try to make all of you happy for this one time, but just this one time aiight. Do you remember 0100101110101101.org? (They were html-art-pioneers,exploiting html-code-language at it's early days. Well the founders, Eva and Franco Mattes, created the lovely tribute to SecondLife-lovers: “13 Most Beautiful Avatars” is a portrait series from Second Life, presented by Postmasters Gallery.
26 March 2007
Shapish time
Shapish designed the posters for the recent Ghent University campagne. The posters, show the ‘10 commandments of thinking’, are distributed in Ghent with a delay between each of them. They're ment to lure people to the website. After the 10commandments there is an 11th poster… (click here) If you’r too stupid to get it: it says as much as ‘fuck the 10 commandments of thinking, they don’t exist’, which corresponds to the university motto ‘durf denken’ (dare to think).
They're so cool!
22 March 2007
Longlist
Hint: Click the picture and Google at least one of the names on the list...
* Shapish is right, I'm far too impulsive sometimes, Thank you for editing this post mate! Take care
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