Archive for the 'Brands & Blogs' Category
Marty at dConstruct 2010.
Going into it’s 6th year, dConstruct 2010 invites and brings together leading industry figures to explore the power of design thinking. Held this year on September 3 in Brighton, England, dConstruct is the affordable one day conference for those designing and building web applications.
Marty Neumeier, Director of Transformation at Liquid Agency, has been invited to speak at this exciting one day event. His latest book, The Designful Company, explores how complex business problems we face today can’t be solved with the same thinking that created them. Instead, we need to break away from traditional management approaches and start with designful thinking. In his session, Marty will explain why designful thinking will become the new best practice, and how you can leverage your unique position as a brand-builder to transform the way business does business in the 21st century.
Follow dConstruct on Twitter for the latest updates. Find out who the speakers are here.
No commentsMarty Neumeier at Brand ManageCamp 2010.
Brand ManageCamp 2010 is an intensive two-day conference that features the most engaging and dynamic speakers in branding. This year, Marty Neumeier, Director of Transformation at Liquid Agency has been selected along with twelve peers to speak at this renowned event in Las Vegas, September 21-22.
Created by experienced branders over eight years ago, the Brand ManageCamp marketing conference has become a place to generate new ideas today’s brands need in order to survive. Industry mavericks, best-selling authors, world-renowned experts – these leaders in innovative brand thinking will cover a wide variety of topics to help broaden perspectives, generate fresh, actionable ideas, and become a stronger marketer and a more dynamic leader. Some topics will include: Determine where to spend your precious marketing dollars, Drive innovation and creativity through a discipline of inspiration, Get big results by thinking and acting small, and much more.
“Industry professionals attend this conference because they want fresh inspirations on how to take their brand to the next level,” said Marty Neumeier. “I’m both honored and excited to be able to share what I’ve learned at an event like this.”
Marty will be speaking on Wednesday, September 22 about “How to build a culture of nonstop innovation” from his latest book, The Designful Company. In an era of fast-moving markets and leap-frogging innovators, companies can no longer merely “unlock” wealth. Today they have to actively “create” wealth, or end up in the fossil layers of business history. As a result, brand-builders have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play a key role in the next management revolution.
Find out more about Brand ManageCamp 2010 here.
No commentsThe 2011 REBRAND 100® Global Awards.
Marty Neumeier, Director of Transformation at Liquid Agency has been invited by REBRAND to be one of ten jurors selected every year for the annual REBRAND 100 Global Awards.
REBRAND is the first, and only expert-led, global resource for case studies and programs focused on effective brand transformations. It has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, CNNMoney, FastCompany, Yahoo! Finance, other publications and various media.
The REBRAND 100® Global Awards is the highest recognition for excellence in brand repositioning – and the first and only competition of its kind. Businesses, brand strategists, and various organizations have come to value knowing they are among the best in the world when it comes to effectively meeting strategic goals and building loyalty and strong connections with their targets.
Global organizations, Fortune 50 corporations, small businesses, accomplished entrepreneurs, respected nonprofit organizations, cities, and renowned universities from around the world are regularly represented in the REBRAND 100 Global Awards. Past winners have been based in Brazil, Canada, China, India, Italy, Lebanon, Romania, Australia, and the United Kingdom, in addition to the US.
Once a year, an esteemed panel of international design and business leaders is selected to jury the competition, with the ultimate goal of showcasing the most effective brand transformations to the world via RERAND.com and credible broadcast media. “I’m thrilled to be a part of this competition,” said Marty Neumeier. “Branding and design has been my passion for so many years, and to be selected as a juror along with nine other peers from around the world is really a honor for me.”
See this year’s juror panel at: www.rebrand.com
No commentsKnowing. Making. Doing.
As I said in my book The Designful Company, if you want to innovate, you have to design. Yet design is a foreign language to most business managers. This is because the principles of traditional business management principles evolved to serve the needs of the industrial age. They rely on a mechanical two-step process for making decisions: knowing and doing. You “know” something—from a past experience, a case study, or a best practice—and then you “do” something.
The problem with this process is that what you “know” is limited to either “what is” or “what was,” while innovation is all about “what could be.” It’s impossible to know what could be without the process of design. To generate new ideas, the design process inserts a middle step: making.
Through the act of prototyping—using sketches, models, maps, mockups, simulations—the “making” step puts options on the table that weren’t there before. It pushes back on what we think we know, and also changes what we’re likely to do. It shifts the emphasis from “deciding” the future to “designing” the future. In a business climate that requires perpetual innovation, industrial-age thinking is useful, but woefully inadequate. We also need design thinking.Here’s a simple pair of slides you can throw into your presentations when you build a case for a more innovative culture. Download slides.
12 commentsLiquid Agency’s industrial design work is honored by IDEA 2009.
We’ve definitely won our share of design awards over the years: Our work has been honored in many design competitions for projects that have included identity, packaging, publications, environments, retail merchandising, and interactive design. That said, we’re particularly proud of the recognition we received at the IDEA 2009 competition…and in this one we only achieved “finalist” status.
The IDEA awards program. For those of you who don’t know, the IDEA (International Design Excellence Awards) program has been honoring design excellence since 1980 – and is considered one of the most prestigious design competitions in the world – recognizing design excellence in product design, ecodesign, interaction design, packaging, and concepts. Out of 1631 entries from countries all over the world, this year’s jury, an international cross-section of design leaders led by Andrew Hartman, Philips Design’s design director, selected 349 finalists.Liquid’s work was entered in the competition by our client – Olive – with whom we collaborated in the designed of two products, the Opus 4 and the Melody 2. Although we did not walk away with the top honors, we’re super excited about making the finalist list. After all, this is the very first time we’ve entered an industrial design competition…and the IDEA program is probably the toughest one in the world – so, being a finalist is something to brag about, especially when you consider that we were competing with companies like Samsung, Apple and HP – and that other finalists included Intel, NVIDIA, and Pioneer!
Liquid Agency has worked closely with Oliver Bergmann, Olive’s founder and CEO, to develop his company’s brand from the very beginning. Our involvement started with the design of the brand identity, the website, the packaging and the marketing materials…and has grown to include the industrial design and the user interface. With Liquid’s help, Olive has created products that achieve a harmonious balance between sound clarity and aesthetically striking design. As a consequence, Olive has developed a cult following among music enthusiasts and has earned the “Editor’s Choice” title from numerous national and international publications including Sound & Vision, Digital Trends, and PC Magazine. Olive’s products are frequently featured in magazines that range from Forbes to Wired, from RollingStone to Business Week.
“We’re proud to have played a part in Olive’s success,” said Alfredo Muccino, Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of Liquid Agency. “Olive’s role in the music industry has been to champion the quality of the music experience, and that has included paying attention to details in the form and function of the products, as well as the sound. We’ve appreciated being part of the design teams that have developed such amazing products. Being a finalist in IDEA 2009 is a great honor, and an affirmation that our dedication to excellent design is recognized at the very highest levels.”The Opus 4 can store up to 6,000 CDs worth of music – which you can enjoy in true hi-fi quality – a far cry from the compromised sound of MP3s. Essentially, Olive is committed to offering all the convenience of digital technology without compromising any of the sound quality – therefore delivering the best possible music experience. Made with heavy gauge aluminum that eliminates vibration and operating noise, the design of the Opus 4 includes a color touch screen located in a unique angled front which allows for better access and visibility. The top of the system features a distinctive silkscreened typographic pattern made of words representing a variety of musical genres, which adds an elegant detail to the already sophisticated form factor. The Melody 2 is a player that connects to the Opus 4 wirelessly extending the music experience to any room in the house, and its design language echoes that of the Opus 4. To take a peek at the winners of the IDEA competition and the other finalists, click here.
No commentsSteal This Idea: Culture Quiz
Culture Quiz
By Marty Neumeier, author of The Designful Company
Transformation is in the air. Business leaders across industries are recognizing that “old school” management isn’t up to the task of nonstop innovation. As a result, companies that were once run from the top down are steadily shifting to a more networked style of management in which employees and customers play a greater role in driving innovation. Networked cultures tend to be more creative, more agile, and better able to anticipate the needs of customers.
How do you create a culture of innovation? By recognizing one simple fact: If you want to innovate, you’ve got to design. Design and design thinking are the tools that create new products, new services, new business models, new markets, and new industries. The best way to leverage innovation—as outlined in my latest book—is to build a “designful company”. (Buy the book.)
To find out where you are on the culture curve, take this simple test: Share a total of 10 points across each of the 10 pairs below. For example, if your company is more siloed than collaborative, you might score it 6 and 4. When you’ve finished, add up the two columns to measure your progress. If your totals come out to 60 and 40, for example, you could say that you’re 40% along the path to an innovative culture.
Olive’s products by Karim Rashid in HOW!
We were flipping through the pages of one of our favorite trade publications - HOW Magazine - and were pleasantly surprised to see some of Olive’s products featured in the June issue. Liquid is the branding firm behind the Olive brand…and it is our goal to make sure the brand gets noticed and is differentiated.
We have worked closely with Olive’s management since the inception of the company in the development of its brand identity, product design, interface, website, marketing, etc. Although the company is still small, it has built huge awareness amongst audiences interested in high quality sound – and we’re happy to see that the brand is starting to also reach the design community.
As part of the effort to build brand differentiation we suggested working with notable designers to further evolve how Olive’s products looked. The first one that came to mind was Karim Rashid. We’ve worked with Karim on other projects and we enjoyed it very much. Karim is not only one of the world’s best known designers of furniture, architecture and objects of desire…but is also an accomplished musician who DJs at events all over the globe. He agreed to collaborate on one of Olive’s products, the OPUS No.5, and the result is a series featuring Karim’s complex techno-patterns and singularly vibrant color palette.
To learn more about Olive and the latest products we’ve designed for them, visit olive.us…or check out the Olive Case Study on our site. And to wonder at the latest creations by Karim Rashid, visit karimrashid.com, you will find that this prolific designer is set on changing the way that we interact with just about everything around us.
Of course, if you’re a designer you probably already subscribe to HOW Magazine…but if you don’t here’s a link to sign up: HOW Magazine.com
No commentsGoogle Advertising?…
Google, arguably the worlds most impactful brand (it’s a tough argument these days), built this incredible brand without the use of any traditional forms of advertising, nor has Google used many forms of “marketing communications” in general. Until today, I’d never seen a banner ad, like this banner i saw in a forum this morning:
Could it be that Google has abandoned their aversion for advertising, and will we begin to see more outbound marketing communications from this outstanding brand? If/when you find other Google advertising, or interesting competitive advertising please add comments to this post!
No commentsLooking forward to Liquid Brand Summit 2008.
The Liquid Brand Summit 2007 was great!
The feedback we’ve received from many of the attendees has been extremely positive. And the experience was also great for us at Liquid. The summit was a wonderful opportunity to discuss topics about branding that are dear to our hearts. It gave us the chance to share challenges and solutions with people that face the same issues every day, and to put together a set of Best Practices.
We’re already starting the planning process for next year, and we’re evaluating potential dates and locations. We’re also updating the Liquid Brand Summit site, which will include some of the critical content from the original site + a dedicated blog + a photo gallery. Check it out!
Social Media & Conversation Marketing
A new book on Social Media covers the biggest trend in marketing.
Derek Gordon, VP of Marketing at Technorati suggests taking a look at a new book titled “The New Influencers” by Paul Gillin. The book is mentioned in an article by Dean Takahashi who covers the technology business for the Mercury News. The book covers the relatively new trend of “conversation marketing”, which has been facilitated through blogs and social media. The author shares many viewpoints with Derek Gordon, who facilitated a session on “Blogs and Social Media” at the Liquid Brand Summit 2007, including the notion that companies need to be more transparent, stop trying to control messages, and start joining the conversation in a meaningful manner. Now you have something to read poolside!
