HT's Branding Blog

Creative Review - Coca-Cola's Facebook Riddles

2012-03-08T09:31:00.001+03:30

Coca-Cola has over 40 million fans on Facebook, and has recently been playfully interacting with them on the site by posting a series of enigmatic riddles. Fans that solve the riddles are then directed to a set of charming Coke 'sitelets', that aim to "provoke small moments of happiness"...

The campaign is the brainchild of Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam. The first riddle posted on Facebook was as follows:

It’s warm and sandy, right under your feet
By this crackling fire, good friends will meet.
Fun music is played, by women and men
You’ll think to yourself, “When can we do this again?”
There’s nothing more that I desire,
Than hanging out at A _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .com

The riddle was accompanied by an image of a bonfire, and fans quickly worked out that the link was abeachbonfire.com.

The sitelet for this riddle uses bold graphics to simulate a virtual beach bonfire, complete with a soundtrack featuring crackling flames, breaking waves, guitar sounds and the gentle clink of Coke bottles……. Read More

ADC_Graphic-Intervention_25 years of international Aids Awareness Posters

2011-05-22T02:02:00.001+04:30

Original post on Imprint

Posters from Roudaki Hall - Tehran

2011-05-14T13:33:00.001+04:30

we are collecting these posters with the Idea of publishing the complete set as a book in the hopefully near future. Here are some samples. If you want some of the original tiff’s just drop me a line.

He is Merciful / او بخشنده است/ Mohammad Ehsaei

2011-05-11T01:36:00.001+04:30

Hi everyone I am back with Two works from Mohammad Ehsaei. Quranic Text , religious symbolism, distinct Persian Style of Calligraphy executed with the technique of paintings or rather illustration. They are stunning as they are among the best specimens of a modern take on calligraphy in Iran, BTW there is also a Blue one but we didn’t have time to take a photo.

Photographs by Shadi Ghadirian

2011-05-02T02:04:00.001+04:30

عکس‌های شادی قدیریان
گالری راه‌ابریشم
افتتاحیه: ۲ اردیبهشت ۱۳۹۰، ساعت ۱۶ تا ۲۰
۳ اردیبهشت تا ۱ خرداد ۱۳۹۰
ساعات بازدید: شنبه تا چهارشنبه ۱۵ تا ۱۹ / پنجشنبه ۱۷ تا ۲۰   
خیابان لواسانی غربی (فرمانیه) بین شهروند و خیابان آبکوه، شماره ۱۰۳

Shadi Ghadirian's photographs
Silk Road Gallery
Opening: 22 April 2011, 16-20
23 April - 22 May 2011
Visiting Hrs: Saturday to Wednesday 15-19 / Thursday 17-20
No.103, Shahid Lavasani Ave

Shadi is one if the better known Iranian Photographers working today -- a visit may prove well worth it.

نگاهی به پوستر تئاتر در ایران/ A look at Theater Posters in Iran

2011-05-02T01:45:00.001+04:30

با حضور حمید سمندریان، ابراهیم حقیقی، محمد یعقوبی، امیر اسمی و آرش تنهایی
خانه‌ی هنرمندان، تالار بتهوون
دوشنبه، ۱۲ اردیبهشت‌ماه ۱۳۹۰
ساعت ۱۸
خیابان طالقانی، خیابان موسوی شمالی

With Hamid Samandrian, Ebrahim Haghighi, Mohammad Yaghoubi, Amir Esmi & Arash Tanhai
Beethoven Hall, Iranian Artists Forum
Monday, 2 May 2011
6 pm.
North Mousavi St., Taleghani Ave.

This is this afternoon 6 pm. Any takers?

Bahrain - the photos that started it all

2011-03-19T02:34:00.001+03:30

Australian real estate company moving very interesting -- albeit macho inventory

2011-03-18T06:38:00.001+03:30

1 - 15 Queen Anne Court

2 - 19 Binda Place

The Star of Manners and Letters

2011-03-03T05:38:00.001+03:30

Illustrations by Aazarnoush Ebraahemiroushan for The Star of Manners and Letters (Iran, 1986). The book features "a selection of 4 poems by a famous contemporary poet teaching a code of morals."

From the International Children's Digital Library

Languages of Iran

2011-02-27T14:29:00.001+03:30

Click here or on the Picture for a full size pic

User experience is not just about your website « Boagworld

2011-02-27T14:18:00.001+03:30

Meet Jill. Jill is in the market to buy a reasonable quality digital SLR. She’s fed up with her point-and-shoot camera and wants something a little more sophisticated. However Jill doesn’t want to rush into a purchase as digital SLR’s are not cheap. Instead she has been researching the options online.

Jill bought a camera. However, that involved a lot more than just visiting a website.
Video

Eventually she discovers a video review on YouTube for camera that looks perfect. The video has been produced by a company called “Professional Cameras”. The review was very thorough and provided her with all the information she required.

User experience is not just about your website « Boagworld

Morteza Momayez Founder of Modern Iranian Graphic Design

2011-02-23T18:19:00.006+03:30

teza Momayez (Persian: مرتضی ممیز, August 26, 1935 - October 25, 2005) was an Iranian graphic designer. He was one of the founders of Iranian Graphic Design Society (IGDS)[1] and held a membership to Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) [2]. He was the president of Tehran International Poster Biennial and Editor-in-chief of “Neshan” [3][4]. Throughout his career, Momayez initiated many cultural institutes, exhibitions and graphic design publications. The renowned pioneer of graphic design in Iran, Momayez received the Art & Culture Award of Excellency from the president of Iran in 2004.

Morteza Momayez was born on August 26, 1935 in Tehran, Iran .His father was Mohammad-Ali and his mother was Kochak. He got his bachelor in painting from school of Fine Art at University of Tehran in 1965 and his diploma from Ecole National Superier des Art Deco in Paris, France in 1968[5].

Awards:
2004 National Award of Art achievements from the Academy of Art in Tehran.

Nocturnal Letter by Mohammad Zohari cover design by Morteza Momayez

References:
^ "Iranian Graphic Designers Society".
^ "Alliance Graphique Internationale Membership Database".
^ "IGDS Farewell to great master".
^ "Neshan Magazine's Organization".
^ Moshki, Saed: Signs [Persian: Neshaneha], Yassavoli publication 2005
Text from Wikipedia - see the wiki page

(Persian: مرتضی ممیز, August 26, 1935 - October 25, 2005) was an Iranian graphic designer. He was one of the founders of Iranian Graphic Design Society (IGDS)^[1] and held a membership to Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) ^[2]. He was the president of Tehran International Poster Biennial and Editor-in-chief of “Neshan” ^[3]^[4]. Throughout his career, Momayez initiated many cultural institutes, exhibitions and graphic design publications. The renowned pioneer of graphic design in Iran, Momayez received the Art & Culture Award of Excellency from the president of Iran in 2004.

esphahan 5am

2011-02-19T07:17:00.003+03:30
an insomniac, a pocket camera, and some of the finest Islamic architecture in existence.

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Ghazieh shekle aval shekle dovvom /قضیه شکل اول شکل دوم – abbas Kiarostami

2011-02-19T01:17:00.001+03:30

Ghazieh shekle aval shekle dovvom via Vimeo

تهران انار ندارد - Tehran has no more Pomegranates

2011-02-19T01:12:00.001+03:30

A film by Masoud Bakhshi

Iranian films at 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival

2011-02-19T00:56:00.001+03:30

Founded in 1957, the San Francisco International Film Festival is the longest-running film festival in the Americas, featuring some 150 films and live events with more than 100 filmmakers.

This year there are three Iranian films participating in the festival; Nader Takmil Homayoun’s TEHROUN, Mohammad Rasoulof’s THE WHITE MEADOWS, and Babak Jalali’s FRONTIER BLUES.

THE WHITE MEADOWS

Mohammad Rasoulof s The White Meadows is a mesmeric, discomforting journey – punctuated by enigmatic motifs and metaphors – through a nightmarish bleached-white landscape of barren salt marshes. Defying any genre, the fable-like tale follows the odyssey of a man who sets out by boat to collect the tears of the inhabitants scattered across an archipelago of stark, inhospitable islands on a nameless sea.
On March 2, 2010, Mohammad Rasoulof was arrested in Iran along with filmmaker Jafar Panahi and 14 others as part of the crackdown in response to post-election disputes.

FRONTIER BLUES

Frontier Blues takes place on Iran’s northern frontier with Turkmenistan. It consists of 4 stories. Alam is a 28 year-old Turkmen man who lives with his father and works in a chicken farm. He is teaching himself English in order to marry a girl called Ana and take her to Baku. Hassan is a 28 year-old Persian man who lives with his uncle. His only companions are his pet donkey and tape player.

Kazem, is Hassan’s uncle and he owns a clothing store but the clothes he tries to sell never seem to fit anyone.

A 55 year-old Turkmen minstrel is the subject of a book of photography by a photographer from Tehran. His wife was stolen by a Sheppard in a green Mercedes many years ago.

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Standing strong (boston.com)
The Circle (chicagoreader.com)

The House is Black / خانه سیاه است

2011-02-18T09:06:00.000+03:30

Image via Wikipedia

1962, 22 Minutes, Black and White, 35mm

It is the only film from Forough Farrokhzad, possibly Iran's most noted and controversial female poet. A look inside a leper colony, the documentary short has been called "the greatest of all Iranian films" by Jonathan Rosenbaum, and is (now) frequently referred to as one of the lynchpins of the Iranian New Wave. Following an opening statement accompanying a black screen that simultaneously warns and invites viewers to gaze upon that which society has deemed horrifying, Farrokhzad trains her lens insistently on the decay of human faces in bleak honesty, observing the lepers' flaccid eyelids (incapable of doing the biological job of protecting the eyes behind them from flies), the crusty, flaking stumps that used to be their feet, and their exposed nose cavities completely devoid of cartilage (one of them casually and surreally exhales cigarette smoke from the orifice). While showing the leper community forging an ersatz societal representation of normalcy. Old gents playing board games, women dressing up and donning make-up for what appears to be a wedding march (and once you've seen a woman apply mascara to the inside of her eyelid, the image will not soon leave your head), kids tossing a plastic ball around the courtyard.

Farrokhzad soundtracks her images with an alternating narration. A male voice (whose detached matter-of-factness brings to mind a contemporary Jean-Luc Godard at his most bemused) unpacks the medical implications of the condition, gently reminding the audience that leprosy is a treatable condition, provided the proper expediency, in what constitutes the film's most salient instance of activism. But between the clinical dialogue (in every sense of the definition) are snips of poetry by Farrokhzad, read by the author herself, that elevates the colony's plight to the level of that Old Testament paragon of unanswered and cruel kismet: Job. If Farrokhzad's poetic sensibilities were said to be both preoccupied with Eastern mores and influenced by Western modernism, then The House is Black authoritatively

clears the path for such aesthetic dilettantism. -- Eric Henderson

Via UBUWEB

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Jafar Panahi's reward for bringing cinematic glory to Iran? Jail | Hamid Dabashi (guardian.co.uk)
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Directors of the Decade: Ramin Bahrani (filmexperience.blogspot.com)

A Journey Round My Skull: Persian Handstands

2011-02-18T06:15:00.001+03:30

A new series exploring elements of Iranian Visual, architectural, and literary styles from The Safavids onward.

Mihr Ali, Fath Ali Shah, Qajar Painting, 1813-14
above and below images come from wikimedia

Mihr Ali, Qajar Painting, 1813-14

Anonymous, from the Shahinshahnameh, 1810
(detail of freaky camels)

Muhammad Hasan Afshar, portrait of Nasir al-Din Shah, with cherubs, 1854-55

Muhammad 'Ali, portrait miniature of Muhammad Shah, c. 1845

Unknown (again the Shirin painter?), A girl standing on her hands

These paintings come mostly from two books: Qajar Paintings (1972) and Qajar Portraits (1999) (the latter going for an obscene $500 on Amazon at the moment).
Read about Qajar art on wikipedia.
From a Sotheby's auction: "Court painting in Qajar Persia gave particular importance to the representation of women. From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, royal artists were attracted by European depictions of female subjects, borrowing certain poses, imagery and stylistic techniques into their own work."
Women were often the focal point of the Shirin Painter, and I can't wait to dig up more of his acrobats. Qajar Paintings contains a group of these, but not in color (hence that last scan).

Read more: A Journey Round My Skull: Persian Handstands

The Force

2011-02-04T23:55:00.000+03:30

Top 10 Digital Advertising Innovations of 2010

2010-12-25T03:57:00.001+03:30

As Mashable contributor Jesse Thomas recently noted, Silicon Valley is quickly becoming the new Madison Avenue. Looking back over the past year’s advertising landscape, it’s not the individual campaigns that stick in the mind as much as the use and pioneering of new technology.
This year was a transitional year in which much-hyped mobile advertising began to be a serious player, Apple once again changed the business and brands began fostering real, two-way conversations with consumers.
Here’s a look at some of the top new technologies that redefined advertising in 2010.

1. Old Spice’s Response Videos

Old Spice, a perennially troubled brand at Procter & Gamble, had watched Unilever’s Axe steal its thunder for most of the past decade. Miraculously, the brand was able to become relevant to a new generation of male consumers thanks to a clever ad campaign. The “Smell like a man, man,” ads featured an over-the-top confident Isaiah Mustafa, who somehow was able to make men insecure and be likable at the same time. If this was 1999, that would be the end of it, but agency Wieden + Kennedy offered a nice interactive twist: The agency and Mustafa shot more than 180 videos responding to consumers’ inquiries. Talk about breaking the fourth wall: For those raised on traditional TV advertising, it was like Mustafa was re-enacting Jeff Daniels’ role in The Purple Rose of Cairo — a matinee idol who popped out of the screen and into real life.

2. Bar Code Scanning

Marketers and mobile advertising firms had been trying for a while to foster the use of QR codes — logos that consumers could scan with their phones to access online content. But for makers of packaged goods, such codes take up valuable real estate on packaging. Stickybits and another firm called CauseWorld addressed this issue with new technologies that read bar codes. The former struck deals with both Coca-Cola and Pepsi as well as Campbell’s Soup. The latter worked with Procter & Gamble and Kraft on a program in which consumers could amass “karma points” for scanning the codes, which earned contributions to consumers’ favorite causes. Truth be told, the bar code readers don’t always work that well and it’s unclear how many consumers will take the time, but, by using bar codes, the two companies provided another big step toward mobile-enhanced interactive shopping.

3. Location-Based Advertising

Marketers were eager to catch on to the popularity of services like Foursquare (), Gowalla () and Facebook Places, but successful programs were few and far between. Starbucks’ was a notable failure. The company rushed in with a program that offered $1 off any size Frappuccino for its mayors. The program resulted in a 50% increase in checkins at Starbucks locations, according to Foursquare (), but many Starbucks locations appeared unaware of the campaign. Similarly, the first big promotion for Facebook Places, a jeans giveaway from Gap for the first 10,000 customers to check in to the program at a Gap location, encountered similar problems. On the other hand, SCVNGR may have found a winning formula with a more game-oriented approach that drew the likes of American Apparel, AT&T and Coca-Cola. The combination of new, perhaps slightly arrogant tech companies and inconsistent messaging at retail, however, is likely a short-term problem. Look for much more location-based marketing campaigns in 2011.

4. iAds

With its untouchable veneer of cool and its domination of the market of high-end, consumer-friendly, cutting edge gadgets, marketers are positively salivating about the idea of getting on any Apple platform. With the introduction of the iPad and the iPhone 4, Apple obliged with a new, full-screen rich media environment that CEO Steve Jobs described as “mobile ads with emotion” and positioned as a format for ads that consumers would want to watch.
With an eye on quality control, Apple set the bar high: Advertisers reportedly had to spend at least $1 million and as much as $10 million to run an iAd. But, the company may be relaxing a bit. This month, Apple opened iAd development with iAd Producer, which let marketers and their agencies create iAds even if they didn’t know HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript.

5. Promoted Tweets

As Twitter established itself as the third of the social media Holy Trinity (along with Facebook () and LinkedIn ()), the company set its sights on a business model. With great fanfare, Twitter () introduced Promoted Tweets in April. Taking a page from Google (), the idea was that people searching for various terms on Twitter would see the sponsored terms along with organic results. Marketers like Coca-Cola and Virgin America experimented with the program, with laudable results. (Coke reported a 6% engagement rate for its campaign, while Virgin America posted its fifth-highest sales day ever thanks to Promoted Tweets.) By year’s end, like Apple, Twitter appeared to be democratizing the program. This month, a form for prospective advertisers appeared on Twitter’s site. The company is expected to start implementing that turnkey solution in earnest early next year.

6. Group Buying

Not for nothing did Google offer to shell out upwards of $6 billion for Groupon. The two-year-old company is profitable, popular and on to a winning formula that can be executed on a large scale. Groupon, which offers deals if a certain amount of consumers take part, proved the latter in August through its first national deal, with Gap to sell $50 worth of apparel and accessories for $25. While previously, the site was known for local daily deals with small businesses, the Gap program was a huge success. In one day, the company sold 441,000 Groupons, netting about $11 million. At the moment, Groupon is the biggest player in this emerging space by far, but the interest from Google will no doubt spur deep-pocketed competitors to file in.

MORE on: Top 10 Digital Advertising Innovations of 2010

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Twenty2 Digital - Development out of this world!

2010-12-23T16:09:00.001+03:30

Twenty2 Digital - Development out of this world!

JPEG 101: A Crash Course Guide on JPEG

2010-12-16T01:31:00.001+03:30

JPEG, a compression algorithm optimized for photographic images, is something we encounter on a regular basis. JPEG is not limited to a certain amount of color (unlike GIF, for example) and is popular due to its variable compression range, meaning that you’re able to more easily control the amount of compression, and consequently, the resultant image quality. In this guide, we will discuss the important things you need to know about JPEG.
Quick Overview of JPEG

Here is a list of things you should know about JPEG:

JPEG is a lossy compression algorithm; this means that it discards some data from an image to reduce its file size
JPEG is often pronounced as "jay peg"
JPEG is an acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the organization that developed the JPEG format
.jpg and .jpeg are the most common file extensions of images compressed using JPEG compression algorithm; they are the same, but old DOS systems have a 3-character limit on file extensions — modern operating systems recognize both .jpg and .jpeg
Other file formats that use the JPEG compression algorithm are .jpe, .jfif and .jif

Semantics and Disambiguation: JPEG vs. JFIF/Exif

Many people refer to any image format that uses the JPEG compression algorithm as a "JPEG file." However, most image-capturing devices (such as a digital camera) and image-editing programs actually create a file in the JFIF or Exif format. For all intents and purposes, when people say "JPEG file" or when a software application says they’re saving your work in JPEG, you can just think of it as a file that uses the JPEG algorithm, whether it’s really JFIF or Exif.
Why Use JPEG?

JPEG allows you to control the degree of "lossiness" by adjusting compression parameters. This way, you can achieve very small files with just the minimum amount of quality that you really need.
The second important advantage of JPEG is that it stores full color information: 24 bits per pixel (that means 16 million colors). GIF, another image format widely used on the web, can only store 8 bits per pixel (256 colors). This capacity for storing colors is why JPEG compression is great for displaying images that have rich colors and that are photographic in quality.
JPEG Compression

Opposite to the PNG format (which uses a lossless compression algorithm), JPEG uses a lossy compression method ………………
Read more: JPEG 101: A Crash Course Guide on JPEG

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Marketing, Branding is key to survival in Asia

2010-11-23T17:45:00.001+03:30

By: Kristie Thong, Singapore
Published: 9 hours 38 min ago
BRANDING ASIA
Regional - Emerging multinational companies in Asia will need brands to survive in the future, according to a new report from the Economic Intelligence Unit.
Companies in emerging Asia have grown into large businesses rapidly without using brands, as they were at the right place at the right time, but this will not continue. As cost advantages erode and Western counterparts with honed brands intensify competition, Asian companies will need to change their business models.
Called 'Brand and deliver: Emerging Asia's new corporate imperative' the report suggested branding is not only about succeeding in local markets, but also about going global, and businesses without a strong brand identity will find it difficult to do so. Meanwhile, branding strategy is not well understood in Asia. According to brand consultants in the region, many confuse branding with advertising, and they regard brands as their reward for building a successful business. More on:

Marketing, Branding is key to survival in Asia, ASIA PACIFIC, MARKETING, Branding Marketing, Brand reputation Marketing, Research findings Measurement Media Marketing, | Market-interactive.com

The 7 Trends that will Rock Marketing - The Bonafide Marketing Genius Strikes Again

2010-11-14T09:48:00.001+03:30

The 7 Trends that will Rock Marketing by Graham D Brown
View more presentations from Graham Brown.

via slideshare.net

Graham Brown (author of the above presentation and founder of mobileYouth) and I share more than a few opinions in common, the primary one being this:

The era of marketing "AT" people is over. Smart marketers know this and are pursuing ever-inventive ways to market WITH people instead. That means creating experiences, not ads. Conversations, not campaigns. Meaning, not "messages."

For some marketers, this notion is unthinkable. Even terrifying. They'll be the ones posting scathing comments to this post later today ;). They'll be the ones writing articles about how print ads in newspapers are more effective than engaging with people via social media. They'll also be the ones adding words like "social media savvy" to their resumes six months from now when they realize that things just aren't going back to the way they were. Time, technology, progress...marches on.

I'm thrilled to hear that Graham is working on a book that takes a closer look at the social, cultural, and technological influences that are reshaping our industry—not to mention numerous others. Maybe if I'm super-nice to him, he'll even send me a copy—digital format, of course ;) In the meantime, I encourage you to flip through the deck embedded above and put some real thinking into the 7 trends Graham is highlighting:

Full article: The 7 Trends that will Rock Marketing - The Bonafide Marketing Genius Strikes Again

World’s Top Ten Identity Firms « Identity Forum

2010-11-14T06:34:00.001+03:30

by contributor Andrew Pourtov

Andrew has addressed this invitation to Identity Forum’s eighteen Contributors — but of course everyone is welcome to jump in.

We are different. We have different age, education and experience. We have grown with different cultural values. Our taste was influenced by different designers. We took part in different projects. We have the different approach. Let’s share our experience, and each choose the top-10 identity firms in the world. (I think this will provide more interesting information on each of us, than what is written in our short bio’s.) Here are my choices:

Firm Why?

1. Chermayeff & Geismar logo

2. Landor Associates brand driver

3. Cato Purnell Partners dynamic identity

4. Wolff Olins non-standard

5. Pentagram typography

6. Chase Design calligraphy

7. Total Identity design systems

8. MetaDesign logic

9. QWER revolution

10. Siegel+Gale simplicity

Make your own choices and share them with us! (Please also explain — in a word or two; what is the firm’s greatest point of strength?)

World’s Top Ten Identity Firms « Identity Forum

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Firm	Why?

1. Chermayeff & Geismar	logo
2. Landor Associates	brand driver
3. Cato Purnell Partners	dynamic identity
4. Wolff Olins	non-standard
5. Pentagram	typography
6. Chase Design	calligraphy
7. Total Identity	design systems
8. MetaDesign	logic
9. QWER	revolution
10. Siegel+Gale	simplicity