the biggest shift since the industrial revolution?

An exciting video for sure, but may overstate the point a little.

I have been thinking about a conversation I had with a client yesterday, and after watching the video, I think I have put my finger on something that I was trying to get across but had not quite nailed.

I have been using the Internet for a very long time. One trend I have noticed is for people to get very excited about the latest tools available online. I strongly believe that these are fads.

In the early 1970s, a tool was created on the Internet called “finger”. If you are wondering what finger was, look at Facebook (or read a message from the creator). I remember using Finger avidly in 1996 but haven’t heard a thing since. As I understand it the creator stopped using it in the late 1990s). I raise this example to point out that there are fads on the Internet; tools come and go. That does not mean that “Social Media” is a fad trend (its been around since the seventies), mearly that it is not a revolution, so much as an evolution of the existing technology.

Effective marketing is done through communicating with your target audience. There are two keys to doing this successfully: identifying your target audience, and identifying how your target audience is already communicating. In the past, newspaper, and magazines have been effective means of advertising with an audience because the audience is clearly identifiable, as well as offering you a means to communicate to the audience in a means they are already using. The same applies for radio, television, and all forms of internet communication.

What this video is pointing out is not a revolution in the use of the internet, but the continuing evolution of the Internet. What we are seeing is not a revolution of social media, but a continuing trend for existing communications to transition to cheaper and more convenient mechanisms.

Think outside the flock,

The Plaid Sheep

Take a bunch of 9-11 year olds, put a pencil in their hands and watch them draw wonderful things. Okay, usually it doesn’t quite go like that; there’s the moaning and whining about not be any good at this or it’s too hard. Where did the love of drawing go?

A few years ago I was asked to teach a drawing class to upper elementary school kids. Almost all these kids told me they couldn’t draw. I realized that these kids, like most adults, were unhappy with the outcome of their drawings that they eventually stopped trying. I set to work to change this attitude one small step at a time.

My best resources for this were:

• Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes
• The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards
• Draw Squad by Mark Kistler

At the end of the eight week session only one of my 42 students had not improved. The others were proud and amazed at their success. Happy kids, happy teacher.

Drawing is not always about talent or lack of it. It, like most things, is about practice, practice, practice.

PS The Plaid Sheep

Design in print. Design on screen. The problem arising in the early draft sessions is the customer gets distracted by the actual printed words and becomes unable to separate them from the design.

One of my favourite resources is http://www.lipsum.com/. It is a generator of Lorem Ipsum dummy text. I use this generator in the early stages of all my mock ups. You are able to generate a user defined number of paragraphs, words, bytes or even lists to keep the eyes and attention of your clients on your layout and design.

PS You may want to give your clients the heads up on the dummy text otherwise you may get panicked messages about everything being written in Latin! Been there…done that. ..The Plaid Sheep.

I love to write. I love to draw. The feel of the paper, the movement of the pencil….it is a wonderfully tactile experience that I just can’t seem get from a mouse or a keyboard. This brings me to a new item that’s atop my wish list; the Digiscribble Mobile Note Taker.

Unlike other digital pens I’ve seen. The Digiscribble Mobile Note Taker remotely captures handwritten notes and diagrams in its flash memory without being connected to your PC or laptop.
Now, if it can only learn to understand my handwriting (everyone in the office is in fits of laughter, rolling around on the floor) I think their trying to tell me something.

P.S.The Plaid Sheep