The beginning is always Today, Today Design

#UPDATE: DISCLAIMER:
The cases of Stad Antwerpen, Pegase, Brussel Airport, Veritas en Indi are courtesy of LDV United. Redstar Design is a division of this agency.
Today let me know they never intended to claim this work as theirs and they disclaim all rights for the work they performed during the time working at Redstar Design for LDV United.

Next Shapeshifters (12 March 2009, Brussels)
Thursday I'm off for a new Shapeshifters edition. This week Sint-Lukas is featuring Joshua Blackburn who studied crime, consumerism and political philosophy. And Randall. C who would love to live like people say he draws comics.

Today Design
Belgian Craftsmanship in Brand Design




Small summary
This post describes my meeting with Tom Andries of Today Design, a small screening of his lecture at Shapeshifters and some insights on brand design, his company, and the relation between design-agencies and ad-agencies in Belgium.
Tom Andries is the co-founder of a small but great brand design agency based in Leuven, Belgium. Tom is very fond of Olins and it's Brandbook. He specialized in typography and works with a focus on brand design. One of his favorite fonts is the Grotesk, basically that's how we relate, and owh... I admire him because he worked in an ad-agency as a designer for several years. Rest assured, there are better jobs in advertising.

Today Design: 8 beliefs to learn by heart
» Specialize and know your trade
» Go for quality, aim for the top
» Creativity is 20% of talent and 80% of sweat
» Keep it simple and long lasting
» 1 + 1 = 11 Work togheter
» Always look for the big idea
» Creativity is solving problems
» Don't promise what you can't deliver

To me, Today Design might be the best brand design agency in Belgium. Yes, the best. Sorry, Base, Coast, Flink, Today is now. Off course all of this is just my truth, not The.

Meeting Tom Andries
Already looking forward to the next Shapeshifters my mind was drifting off to the talk I had at the Beursschouwburgs' bar last time. I was very inspired by speaker and co-founder of Today Design and arrogantly told him that he uses too much modernist fonts in his work. No, sorry that's a lie, but I opened the long talk with marking that he is clearly a big enthusiast for Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk, as I am as well. It is my all time favorite. I used it for the title of this blog, and I used it for the title of my kids blog and greetings-card. Of which, by the way, I still owe you concept and design walkthrough. Eurgh, well soon to come, I promise.



Who is Tom Andries?
He started his career at Marketing Design Brussels and later founded the creative hotshop Vulcan. He became creative director of Redstar Design Antwerp (design department of LDV United, a WPP company) where he created some famous logos and brand identities like the well-known A for the city of Antwerp, Veritas, Indi, O’Cool, etc. He then set up Today Design, his own brand design agency that features companies such as Sony, Brussels Airport and Gamma on its client list.



Shapeshifters and the history of Today
After dwelling a little on his influences and his formative years, he moved on to show the work he had done for various bureaus and clients. This included some very well known identities in Belgium. The second part of his work dealt with assignments for his own office Today Design. Especially interesting were the many “before” and “after” examples he showcased, and seeing the brands in real-world applications. Seeing the incredibly simple and tiny doodles which were at the origin of elaborate branding campaigns was fascinating. Furthermore I was shocked to find out how many logo proposals he actually submits to his clients. One example he used had 36 variations!



If you're not a designer you might think of proposing 36 logos as evident but tweaking the same logo representing a brand enough to have a destined look from another proposal enough and making 36 of them is one hell of a job! You should be drooling with respect already. Anyway, after putting all effort into making several proposals comes the hardest part: killing your darlings. If you work in advertising (as a designer) more often than not other people decide for you which can be liberating yet frustrating at the same time.



Talking about this with Tom. At the bar of the cafe. I told Tom how I struggled the reign of the ad-agency when I was a designer. Putting all your energy into the making of several proposals, being overruled in decision making by some fancy 'smanshy' fart director who never designed himself, and never having the feeling they are really happy with whatever you came up with killed me at some point. It made me never want to design for somebody else but myself. In the end I became an art director myself, lucky those designers working with me...
Anyway when I asked Tom how he survived he said: "patience, stamina, endurance and biting the dust until you're respected enough to overrule them". Hmmn, well all I could think was "good things come to those who wait".

Specialize and know your trade
Tom and Today focus on Brand Design. They, Tom and Geert, sail their studio under the flag: "Craftsmanship in Brand Design". By singling out this one expertise they acquired an expert skill in creating a graphic brand image. Over the years they worked for several bigger ad-agencies around the country. But while sipping beer and gin I noted that Tom and Geert, who were both at LDV at the time they dreaming about a start-up, weren't too eager to get things going. Starting up a studio and focusing on 1 facet within graphic design is a rather risky thing to do if it turns out you don't have enough skills or network to sit it through. Jan Baert, creative director of VVL-BBDO, encouraged them to do so. Ensuring them with a load of jobs to get the studio going. The backup and insurance of someone holding a strong position within the industry is golden, especially when that industry is called advertising. You must understand that no ad-agency really has brand specialist designer in-house. They're too expensive, or can't bear the eye on the shoulder at work.
I think choosing the Brand Design specialty is their strength. And there are several reasons to explain:
» strategically there are no questions asked about what your business is
» specialists can focus on what they do best, and work with higher hourly costs because they're considered experts
» ad-agencies love small expert studios like this because they can deliver quality work that pays off, by taking a large fee on jobs they don't have to spend much running time at. Ones the creative director and strategist give their blessing the job is frankly done.

Being an independent studio might be considered taking a financial risk at first but growing mature the founders can largely benefit from it, or sell and move out. Also creatively it comes with a large freedom as designs of expert studios are considered a good job more often than not. So, whole different ball game than working in-house as a designer.



The brake of dawn starts Today
I think designing your own identity is very liberating. You are your own, you are the brand, you breed the brand. But with all this freedom comes it's burden. Namely, all other designers judge you on your own identity. The agencies rather look at your work first, but with all the fame you can reap with the work you do your own identity will pop into the picture one way or another.
Building a new identity takes 3 major and markers to put down: your name and logo, your strategic story and accompanying baseline, and, a very recognizable creatively visual style.
» name: Today
» the logo: the negative space of the letter "o" in "Today" is filled and the letter is dropped down the baseline on which all letters of that line 'stand'. By doing this the letter "o" abstractly looks like a rising sun. The big idea here is shaking hands with the line: "the beginning is always today".
» strategic and baseline: Craftsmanship in Brand Design
» style: large modernist typographic elements, using the Proxima Nova, combined with a firm body serif, using Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk. The typography in the identity is always combined with destined full color solids to work with the forms of the fonts in use.

The work of the day, Today
I'm just going to briefly walkthrough and complement some cases with additional info. In my opinion the work must speak out for it's self.


caption: a serious facelift of the Pegase identity. Today literally beamed this brand from the fifties into the 21st Century. Fresh and strong with a tasteful touch of decency.


caption: the logo represents Brussels at the crossroads, the junction, the hub, the center-point of a united Europe. Also, bit tongue in cheek, it represents the top of an umbrella because Brussels tends to beat London when it comes to counting the gallons of water falling from the sky.


caption: a very important id for the Belgian economy is this one, Brussels Airport, bacause there has always been a bit a controversy where and what it actually was. People used to use several names for the airport before this brand settled, so a clear marker was a warm welcome to many travelers landing in nescience of Belgium, Brussels, Zaventem and it's surroundings (geography).


caption: all of the staff operating in the airport became part of the idea of "airport as a safe haven, a place to feel comforted, not to mention at home"


caption: city marketing is more often than not a blank laugh but in Antwerp they got off to start with a good base, namely, a logo that was manly enough to stand and totally in touch with it's feminine side by being very spontaneous and hospitable.


caption: this identity had to be fixed and locked into a system that would lend the possibility to keep playing around with in order not to tire the identity to wear off soon after it was launched. So Today deadlocked a very solid baseline grid that leave open a broad myriad of opportunities to whoever designer later has to work with these assets.




I hope you have enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed Tom's lecture and don't forget: today is the beginning of the rest of your life.

Proximus Generation Movie Project

Sometimes some things take balls to post, when you're in advertising sometimes some things take balls to publish. I'd like to file some respect to Koen, Johan, Jonathan en Carl and of course all others at Famous who participated to this project as well.

So, Famous is back huh. Not only are they re-participating in award-shows (read here: dutch newspaper extract, sorry), they've recently filed something that smells to like cyber-award potential, IF. Yes, if.

The IF
Proximus Generation Movie Project is one of those projects that relies on crowdsourcing (*). It is one of those projects that needs YOU, the crowd, the audience, to sharpen the raw diamond, to accomplish the mission. Last year Doritos posted a contest asking all Doritos lovers to post their 30sec spot to Crash the SuperBowl. The producers of the winning spot would win a grand money prize and of course become famous because of the broadcasting of their spot at the SuperBowl. But crowdsourcing (*) isn't your key to success. The WIFM is often overlooked because these projects often come with a lot of maintenance and need a huge push in media. And just being a participator isn't always enough as a push to get people into posting their stuff. Also, if the project entirely depends on the participation of the crowd than the idea melts away like snow under a blistering sun. So far there hasn't been too much activity at the PGMP but that might pick up as the spot has just been launched. The WIFM here is to see yourself on tv,... and that's it. I really wonder if people will be eager to invest their time to embrace Proximus. Proximus claims to be the "official sponsor of friendship". They smartly cover their ass from launch calling it "an experiment" :)

Let's dig into how the project works, fairly simple.
The CTA: Participate and we'll broadcast you and your friends on tv, starring our commercial.
First choose a layout-frame on the timeline. Take a picture of you and your friends exactly like the frame you selected. Post your picture to the website and admire yourself on tv within a few weeks.

Common crowd give it your best spot and pinch that creativity otherwise we'll be eating some very crappy tv-stuff in april. Luckily the frames for the final vid will be rated by the visitors.

(*) Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

You totally look like your avatar

Seb is one of those colleagues at BBDO who's always up for a laugh, small chatter or some jokes. Bald and tattooed he toddles up and down the alleys of our agency. If I get it right Seb is an illustrating fanatic who started to work as a designer at DuvalGuillaume early 2006. Shortly after he switched jobs to work as an art director supporting the e-department at Duval. As opportunities crossed his path his started working at DDB last year. Now, finally, he has teamed up with his copywriting friend we all call Wikke. Good vibes here at BBDO have triggered Seb to start dating his pencil again. Once a day he draws one illustration. An illustration on our obsession with being online, using the web, procrastination, following or being followed. Our obsession with being loved. Digest his daily drawings at Every day sebstyle.

Some of the explanatory text on the drawing is in dutch so some of you won't understand it, but I think the illustrations speak out for aliens as well... A small translation perhaps?
• I blog therefor I am ... ugly
• That untagging ... how does that work?
• You totally look like your avatar!
• Internet everywhere ... Toi .. let .. pa .. per (googling)

About: The Death Of Web 2.0

On Feb. 14 Robin Wauters, a famous Belgian blogger and writer @techcrunch, wrote an article called: "The Death Of Web 2.0". Finishing that article he poses this: "I’ve never had anything against the phrase "Web 2.0", but I wouldn’t miss it a bit if it were never used again."

How about you? Would you miss the phrase Web 2.0?

Given this question, I replied in comment:
"I so totally agree with Robin. No, I wouldn't miss it if it were never used again. And yes, as a matter of fact I do kinda have something against the term. Let me explain why. In my opinion the web was always about whatever web 2.0 is about. I mean, the web was intended to be as it is now, or must I say as to what it is evolving to. Men wrote about the web long before it was even established and they foresaw this evolution. Web 2.0 was not a new thought or thing whenever the term was coined. It was just that in a certain point of time somebody coined a term that confirmed good progress in the evolution of technology. The web has been 2.0 from the beginning and gradually maturing. One could say that the web had aged significantly from the point the term was coined or started to be picked up by the majority of people that use the net. To me the term is not dead, it simply never existed. The net is and will always be the web, never a newer version but constantly evolving. A newer version is an upgrade of something, made by a team (of developers) and released at a certain date until it is outdated and replaced by the newer version."

Posts about the death of Web 2.0 go back as far as 2005 !!
So please guys, STOP USING that term, thanks.

Major design review on Belgian newssites

Personal insights and learnings on designing portals and verticals.


This screenshot is an 'unpublished' design of one of the major Belgian newssites.

I tend to write long posts on topics I want to cover thoroughly. But I know some people don't like that, or have the time to read them. So I'd like to start with a small wrap of my most important remarks on designing newssites, portals and verticals.

• minimalism tends to swamp your content when the ads are strong, noisy and colorful.
• design within 950x600, in other words: don't make people scroll horizontally, the dimensions of most used monitors are still at 1024x768
• don't let elements of the main navigation menu disappear under the fold. Yes the fold is still considered at 600px from the top (see previous topic)
• visually guide people to the most important features, don't unisex all buttons for the sake of consistency. They need this guidance.
• where's the interaction? Few portals are equipped with features to make good articles rise to the homepage. Most available features are only included in footers of the full stories, not the short ones. I want to browse and favorite quickly and read full stories later.
• give advertisers value for investments. Don't bury the adspace under the fold or blankly out of the design, it looks shitty and people won't click it. i hate banners too but they raise money to both parties.
• big images are nice but don't let them suck up all the space on your homepage. Give larger versions of the image on secondary pages.
• don't swamp the navigation with subsections! (but of course, that's a remarks for the editors, not the designers)
• to me everything need to be pixelperfect, yes, so don't ever use Helvetica as a screenfont, thanks.

Why this post?
Recently GVA en HBVL renewed their websites. GVA and HBVL are two local newspapers by a publishing house called Concentra. Now, a renowned Belgian blogger, reveals an unpublished screenshot of the redesign of a major Belgian website called 'De Standaard Online'. Though nowadays I'm mostly occupied thinking out e-strategies and broader advertising campaigns, I'm still very intrigued by usability, design and information architecture as to me these should be hand in hand with the ideas of communication concepts.



I fell in love with usability reading "Don't make me think". Grew mature with understanding usability by working on the architecture of a major vertical called Hebbes.be. I structured and designed the portal, under guidance of Jonathan Detavernier, when I worked at Snow by LG&F.


Full throttle and review on all major Belgian newssites.

GVA en HBVL renewed their websites.
I never read either one of these papers but the agency I work for creates direct mailing and interactive promotion campaigns to push new readers into buying these papers, so naturally the redesign caught my attention. The redesign was done by Netlash. Ever since the launch my fingers had been itching to post an article on this topic but due to a lack of time I hadn't so far. During the first week of launch the website had a link labeled "we would like to hear about your feedback on the redesign of this website". Unfortunately the space for posting that feedback was restricted to 300 characters. And for some reason I'm unable to find that link again now, guess they must have buried it.




Although GVA and HBVL are two newspapers targeting a local crowd still they look almost exactly the same, why is that? In my opinion they should take a clear visual distance from each other. Antwerp is not Limburg! Talking to a different audience must result in a different design. I understand the papers want to relate to one another but still the skin should be visually differentiated. The images used for the major article are far to big. Using an image as wide as 515px is literally killing all other content and it brings no extra value to the overall look at all. The font was too tiny but they've solved that, thanks to reader feedback I guess.
Also, the portfolio image of Netlash shows that the original design was intended to split the center column passing the fold. Above the fold the main article would be accompanied with a series of less important but pushed articles on the right. Passing the fold, or below the fold, the articles would spread and use the entire width of the center column without using a decent divider to split from that fold, resulting in an unclear usage of the images in the articles below the fold. Because of this the images of the articles below the fold could be mistaken as from other articles. Luckily this has been altered in the currently used design.
I also tend to as myself why the skyscraper is out of sight when I'm browsing my 1024x768 monitor. Why they've introduced a huge IMU (466x466) further down, splitting the content like a hellraiser. And why there is no focus on the local news as this is their proposition. Or have they changed being a newspaper by the people, for the people and with the people?

'De Standaard Online' alpha.
Yesterday Michel Vuijlsteke posted a screenshot of an unpublished design of 'De Standaard Online'. 'De Standaard' is a major Belgian newspaper, Michel Vuijlsteke a consultant (information architect) at Namahn. I recall being contacted by Patrick, for participating on this redesign, somewhere between August and September of 2007. Patrick had great plans on redesigning and restructuring the newspapers their company, Corelio, was publishing. Since Corelio has launched 24.be. 24.be supposed to be an aggregator of newscontent based on NetVibes. I heard recently that the plug was pulled, and thus 24.be no longer gets pushed. It never ever really got off. Now, about 18 months after I first heard of the planned redesign of 'De Standaard Online' a first design is on a loose. I kinda doubt the strength of this so called alpha version considering the time invested researching and designing this vertical. But hey, these things can take a long time to get up off their feet within an organization the size of Corelio. It just crossed my mind that this post could as well be a deliberate leak just to get some feedback from the designer-groundswell.



Michel Vuijlsteke argues that this design proposal looks like a "NYTimes Light". I feel him in this statement but still I'd like to give the designer of this so called "alpha" some credit. Though I miss the skyscraper and the leaderboard being pasted in, I like the way the navigation is build up from the top down. Not using a vertical column but few horizontal rows that guide your through, nifty. This is not quite the case over at NYTimes, which uses that vertical column to stash some topics that might just be very important to me. Of course all credit should be going to the NYTimes, who have no doubt heavily influenced lots of media-companies on what approach to choose for marketing their papers well. Next to that it must be admitted that NYTimes keeps trying to innovate in many ways.
Why do I miss the 3-ad (= combination of a skyscraper, leaderboard and imu on one page) here? Not because I'm in advertising or because I love banners, no, not at all. I just know they might prove to be very important as they can generate a good income for the publishers, plus they add up to the value of bringing the information online instead of jealously keeping it away from the internet. The advantage NYTimes has is of course the fact that the banner-ads on their home-page are valued higher which results in a smaller size banner that still pays off. In Belgium we have to plaster the place with 3-ads to pull of some conversion. Yes, we all agree that it looks horrible but until further notice we're in for large size banner-ads.



Anyway the alpha definitely overrules the old one. The old one is too orange to me. Displays a horrible vertical navigation that is way to bulky And it doesn't give me enough articles to scan at the same time. I hate scrolling remember.
In my opinion every journalist should have it's own blog under the flagship of it's publisher. this way they can push their articles individually and create specific value for readers and advertisers, that is if you are especially interested in a certain style of writing or a kind of niche news — specific topics.



So @mvuijlst, @bartvanbelle, @talkingheads and @Pietel ... What's your opinion on De Standaard Online Alpha design?
- I would like to see some guidance by color.
- The 'most read', 'most recommended' and 'most recent' is a plus no doubt. certainly the significant space it gets on a 'topshelf'.
- I'd use more smaller inserts of some articles to enrich the provided content above the fold. For example I'd skip the U2 picture and put two article links there.
- I'd add sharing and bookmarking options on the articles of the homepage.
- I'd make it more visually clear that the 2 vertical navigation bars under the logo relate to one another.
- I'd push my search up to the top of the page creating extra space where the search is now.
- I'd use clear dividers separating the articles from one another.
- I'd label the pushed articles clearly so I know in what section they belong if I scan the homepage briefly.
- I'd try to experiment with mashup-widgets to get live-feeds, tweets or streams from my editors and journalists to the homepage, or a subsection.
- Would be nice if the 3-ad would match the entity of the content and design, and not be 'on-top' or outside of it.

'De Morgen' by far.



To me 'De Morgen' should be awarded for being the best serving online newssource in Belgium when it comes down to design, usability and interactivity.
The articles are clearly labeled on topic. One blink of an eye can tell me whether the article is on "economie" or "binnenland", should be expanded in my opinion but they're there. Also, the stream of recently posted articles has received a clearly important and readable spot within the entity of the content. Maybe the pushed article's image is too large but it doesn't quite bother me here because a lot of the other content shows. Too bad I have to scroll horizontally to get a full view of content and ads when I'm surfing 1024x768. They use a sharing button like most newssites nowadays but they nicely keep the other features tied to each other in the footer of the article. 'De Standaard Online' for example uses their sharing button in the footer and other features next to he header. I tend to find that a bit confusing. Just fyi: 'De Morgen' uses the AddThis for sharing, others like 'De Standaard Online' use AddToAny. They're basically the same. The horizontal navigation is a plus to me.

HLN: big as in butt ugly.
I tend to skip the review on HLN but I can't. Why can't I? It is simply the biggest one around. Not in size of course, but in traffic volume. I recall HLN being the biggest newspaper, and news site, in terms of readers, for a long time. Before that it must have been Skynet or MSN, but in my opinion they cheated a bit by installing their page as the default homepage upon installation of Belgacom or Windows.



HLN, you can't be running high with excitement, or into good taste if you like the design they used to skin they're content. No doubt the ugliest portal template I've ever seen for a 'vortal' with nationwide usage.
It is wrong. Top down wrong. The colors, the crispness, the structure, the architecture (maybe not quite, as people tend to find their ways in), the loudness of shouting out the news loud and clear, is wrong. But who am I to judge the design of a newssite that attracts most readers in Belgium. Dear Persgroep, don't be mad at me, please :)
In stead of going on and on about how I hate the HLN design let me point to a Norwegian newsportal.



SOL.no is the biggest news website in Norway. Their site, at first, looks as horrible as HLN but in fact isn't quite so. As a matter of fact, to me it is a very slick portal giving you instant access to many articles touching a broad range of topics. The reader is immediately introduced to plenty of info without scrolling AND the ads are nicely incorporated by the unity of the content. Advertisers are offered a wide myriad of possibilities for advertising and marketing their communication concepts, products or brands there without having to push away the information that actually attracts the reader. Win win I would say. By the way their style sheets are set to overflow:hidden so there is no horizontal scrolling for users on monitors smaller then 1024x768. A role model.
Sol.no got renowned for their banner campaign that struck like a meteorite at the Cannes Festival in 2008. The concept is as simple as it’s ingenious: the banner content changes continuously, thanks to an especially created program. A copywriter, whose task is to animate the banner, writes or draws on a pad and the information is transferred to the banner on the screen, exactly as it is and in real time. You can imagine displaying a banner with live feedback on the current content of the site you are browsing tends to catch your attention and will get rewarded by your click.

BBC for you and me.



The modular system of the BBC newsportal is my all-time favorite amongst the newssites. It is open to participation, suits my needs if I really want it to, and feels very intuitive to every profile of reader. Of course they didn't have to struggle pasting in a 3-ad and they haven't managed to entirely remodel the content into this system. The homepage links to the old grid of the BBC newsportal.



Of course I would be a dork for excluding this very nice papervision designed example by MSNBC, Spectra.

Make money with Google AdSense

I've filed my resignation yesterday. Ever since I've added the Google AdSense engine on my blog money came floating in like water through a broken dam. There are numerous Success Stories to prove that I'm not the only one making tons of dollars with the AdSense system.

Some rich bloggers make millions and still they don't have the dignity to answer poor bloggers' questions. Shame on you rich bloggers. You should help others... @bnox for example recently tweeted: "Tired of questions about how much money you make with your blog?". So selfish.

Little disclaimer

It's Nice That publishes 1st magazine

I've been following It's Nice That for quite some time now. I've started following It's Nice That by spotting this article. It's Nice That simply posts images on newly found and mostly/sometimes interesting artists, designers and illustrators and writes a small paragraph on what the post is all about. Informative and, to me, a great source of inspiration.

It's Nice That has been publishing 1 year now. To celebrate that it publishes a booklet with their reap of the most interesting topics and posts. I'd been thinking about doing something likewise for a while but I just haven't found the time to do it. Making of wrap of 3 years of posting is of course a whole other ballgame so I've let it be, though I have thought of pouring my top ten articles in a .pdf... if only time would be on my side.

It's Nice That

About: social media platforms and sharing applications

A lot of people (friends, family, clients, peers, contacts, mates, colleagues, superiors, etc.) tend to ask me about what is this or what is that when it comes down to 'social media'. To newbies it is like they've just been awakened by some terrifying animal. To regulars it is like they've discovered gold. Some go talking mad with web 2.0 mumbo jumbo and others give long explanations and examples about what to do with these emerging and established services.

I hate it when people go raving about a new service or platform, though I admit doing it it myself sometimes. It's not about this service or that new platform. It is not about whether it is new or groundbreaking. It's about what you can do with, or more importantly how you can use it to create value to you, your friends or relatives, your brand, your company etc. If it doesn't bring anything to the table, just let it be. I'd like to help some people to get back down to earth when they are talking about social media services and applications. They are mere tools for sharing and interacting. They enable the possibility to keep up with what your friends do, they enable participation. They are not the essence of what is going on. You are, remember.

So next is a list about about. It is about all there has to be said about the most renown services in the realm of social media. Of course there are thousands and thousands of platforms to be listed, one more famous than another, but to me these are the babies!

• To me Delicious is just a favorites folder.
Delicious by Google description:
The world's leading social bookmarking service (formerly del.icio.us).
Delicious by Delicious about:
Delicious allows you to bookmark a page and add tags, or descriptive keywords, to identify it. You can then share your del.icio.us page with colleagues and your saved bookmarks will be grouped with similary tagged pages from around the web.

• To me Facebook is just a diary.
Facebook by Google description:
Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends,...
Facebook by Facebook about:
Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected. Millions of people use Facebook everyday to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

• To me Flickr is just a photo album.
Flickr by Google description:
Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world. Show off your favorite photos and videos to the world, ...
Flickr by Flickr about:
Flickr - almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world - has two main goals: 1. We want to help people make their content available to the people who matter to them. 2. We want to enable new ways of organizing photos and video.

• To me Friendfeed is just an aggregator.
Friendfeed by Google description:
Allows you to build a customised feed of made up of content your friends on other collaborative sites have shared, including news articles, photos, ...
Friendfeed by Friendfeed about:
FriendFeed enables you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends. FriendFeed automatically imports shared stuff from sites across the web, so if your friend favorites a video on YouTube or uploads a photo on Flickr, you get a link and a thumbnail of the video in your feed. FriendFeed makes all the sites you already use a little more social.

• To me LastFM is just a music library.
LastFM by Google description:
The world’s largest online music catalogue, with free music streaming, videos, photos, lyrics, charts, artist biographies, concerts and internet radio.
LastFM by LastFM about:
Every track you play will tell your Last.fm profile something about what you like. It can connect you to other people who like what you like - and recommend songs from their music collections and yours too.
When you recommend some music to a friend, or you tag it, or you write about it - even just listening to it - you shift the song's importance on the site. It'll be recommended to different people, because you've listened to it. It'll move up our music charts and maybe more people will hear it because you thought it was good.

• To me MySpace just sucks.

• To me Twitter is just a messaging service.
Twitter by Google description:
Twitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time.
Twitter by Twitter about:
Twitter is a unique approach to communication and networking based on the simple concept of status. What are you doing? What are your friends doing—right now? With Twitter, you may answer this question over SMS or the Web and the responses are shared between contacts.

• To me YouTube is just a moviebox.
YouTube by Google description:
Share your videos with friends, family, and the world.
YouTube by YouTube about:
YouTube is the leader in online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email. Everyone can watch videos on YouTube. People can see first-hand accounts of current events, find videos about their hobbies and interests, and discover the quirky and unusual. As more people capture special moments on video, YouTube is empowering them to become the broadcasters of tomorrow.

Ok, I knew you 'experts' wouldn't be satisfied so here's an extra list of services I'm in on, happy now?
digg - furl - magnolia - netvibes - picasa - stumbleupon - tumblr - shelfari - swurl - hyves - wishlistr - commandshift3 - rssmeme - visualiseus - slideshare - hashtags - technorati - seesmic - twitturly - identica - mybloglog - garagetv - netlog - curbly - vimeo - scrnshots

Change in advertising

#update: following Famous on Twitter is @FamousBrussels, not @Famous.
Thank you Goedles

Tim and Joeri., originally uploaded by Pieter Baert.

This morning, Famous has released a creative inauguration speech on advertising. The 'creative inauguration' is published on a sub-page of the Famous website. A widget is offered to implement the text onto blogs and other digital media, so it is made portable, nice. But the entire text was published in the form of a ticker which scrolls just too fast to be comfortable for reading. Therefor I posted it here in this post. The text is a very nice example of creative writing. Would you wonder. Tim Driesen is Co-Creative Director @FamousBrussels, an agency renowned for obtaining many creative awards through the years. Though last year they've announced not to participate to creative award-shows anymore. I thought that was a joke at first, but it wasn't.

Former Creative Director Paul Wauters left Belgium to train new Creative Directors for the TBWA Group in Italy. And so Tim and Joeri will take his place as Creative Director team. Tim and Joeri aren't new to the Famous crew. They'd worked there for over 5 years before moving to Mortierbrigade about 2 years ago. So now they're back at the agency that helped them grow to become Belgium star team in advertising. Tim and Joeri got famous when the agency was still called LG&F. They struck numerous creative awards including many Gold Lions.

My guess is that Tim and Joeri will introduce a new young drive of enthusiasm @FamousBrussels and soon will take part at bigger competitions like they did before. I briefly worked with them when I was at Snow by LG&F, they're great, good fellas. To insiders they're also know as 'the usual suspects'.



CHANGE IN ADVERTISING

“My fellow creatives: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust advertisers have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our creative ancestors.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Advertising is at war, against a far-reaching network of scepticism and fear. Our creativity is badly weakened, a consequence of irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare advertising for a new age. Freshness of mind has been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our productions are too costly, our art schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use or don’t use our creativity threaten our agencies.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our industry — a nagging fear that advertising’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation of advertisers must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, fellow creatives — they will be met.

In reaffirming the greatness of our industry, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of the rich and famous. Rather, it has been the risk takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labour, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and creativity. These men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked until their heads almost exploded so that we might become better creatives. They saw advertising as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions.

This is the journey we continue today. We serve the most prosperous, powerful brands on Earth. These multinationals may be less productive than when this crisis began. But our minds are no less inventive, our services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our creativity remains undiminished. But our time of standing still, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking the advertising business.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of our industry calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new ads, but to lay new foundations for fresh creativity. We will build more and far better websites. We will restore television and print advertising to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise CRM’s quality and lower its cost. And we will transform our art schools and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions — who suggest that advertising today cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this industry has already done; what creative men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the same arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our advertising is too creative or too dull, but whether it works — whether it helps products to be sold and brands to be made heroes. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, campaigns will end. And those of us who manage the advertisers’ budgets will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between advertisers and their agencies.

To the advertiser’s world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those marketing directors who seek to sow conflict, or blame their companies' ills on advertising — know that consumers will judge you on what you can build, not what your agency can sell.

For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

For as much as the advertising industry can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the people in every agency upon which our industry relies. It is the selflessness of workers who would rather work long hours than see their company go down which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the creative team’s courage to start all over again, but also an account handler’s willingness to question the client’s demands, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and creativity, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and research — these things are old. These things are true. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every person working in advertising, that we have duties to ourselves, our industry, and creativity in general, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of working in advertising.

In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our trainees' trainees that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of creativity and delivered it safely to future generations.”

Tim Driesen, Creative Director – Famous.be

Kinepolis: the extra mile

The extra mile, indicating the formidable length of my post on the e-strategy of Kinepolis, was perhaps a bridge to far what concerns webcopy. "Overnewsed but uninformed" totally fits the Zeitgeist. While nosing around on the internet you've probably noticed that often lots of people are covering one specific subject without passing on founded knowledge on the matter. Let alone giving insides or writing down something nobody else would possibly be able to put down in words. Luckily this wasn't entirely the case on this particular event. We had passed a great deal of 'bashing about', pissing on Kinepolis, repeatedly echoing each other on what was wrong with Kinepolis. Now, thanks to some fantastic bloggers and the therefor crucial event the echo-chamber had morphed and fresh thoughts had been released. "Overnewsed but uninformed" was my motto for digging really deep into the backgrounds that jumped this conversation. All that to share with you a deeper understanding of what is going and how this all came into place.

I know reading on the web isn't quite as inviting as reading a book. In the zone untenable by my own enthusiasm. The post was loaded with several sidestories and inside information leading away from the core idea that particular post was messaging.

Having finished writing it already dawned on me but I was to eager to hit the 'publish' button so I did. During writing I changed my status on LinkedIn into "writing a book on the e-strategy of Kinepolis, the largest host of movietheaters in Belgium", so I was very well aware of the fact that the post was stretching out that extra mile not a soul would reach to read. This morning I received an e-mail of friend and colleague Pietel. He informed me that he was interested in reading the story but pointed out that I should stick to 1 idea per post. He suggested extracting sidestories and indirect information on the topic into different posts, splitting the story, making it easier for readers to gain access to the original post, core of the topic within the vivid conversation roaring about Kinepolis at the moment.

@Pietel: you are right, having to scroll about 3 seconds to meet the bottom of the post, about 7 times an entire screen down the fold of a standard browser-window (1024*768), is a little pushing daisies.

Thus, this has been taken care of. The original post was split up into eatable pieces of blogwriting. Some of you might argue that the core post is still too long but I didn't want to alter the work I submitted on this topic.

I hope it serves your cause and treats your time with pleasing aftermath. Hereby the list of posts embracing my thoughts, observations and insights about a recently started conversation on 'Kinepolis':
» Think of it as Jujitsu. The ins and outs of Kinepolis' latest e-strategy. (original post, insights and background on the conversation)
» How it all started
» Calling in the bloggers
» Martial arts
» Marrying an agency
» Who is Druppels
» To media or not to media
» Join the conversation