From diveintomark.org this morning:
And you can trace that all the way back, 17 years, through the Great Browser Wars, all the way back to February 25, 1993, when Marc Andreessen offhandedly remarked, “MIME, someday, maybe,” and then shipped his code anyway. The ones that win are the ones that ship.
It’s fascinating. Go read the whole piece if you’re into HTML nerdery: Why do we have an IMG element? [dive into mark]
This is a great video of the presentation Polish designer Jacek Utko gave at TED this February.
I disagree with his premise that readers are only leaving because they don’t want to pay for yesterday’s news and advertisers are following them. I think the technological shift in publishing is far more pervasive than the disdain for old news. The truth appears to be that people want information when and where they want to consume it, and paper is a chronically inefficient method for satisfying that need.
But this video highlights a stopgap to the inevitable end for print, and I think portends a far more interesting future: whether on paper or online, designers should be given a bigger role in the presentation of information across publications. This is a great example of rethinking the role of design from scratch.
Had a meeting at a new agency today — 2Plural/evive. I don’t know what their name is, actually. The letterhead says evive, and looks cool as a palindrome, but the website is 2plural, as is the moniker on their cards. A bit of identity crisis there, about which I’m sure there is a good story.
On the flip side, Joe Klegseth (pres), Courtney LeBoeuf (account manager), and Stasia Brownell (project manager), appear to be quality people in a budding quality agency. If I was looking for agency marketing and branding assistance, this is a company looking to build and extend an already impressive reputation; I’d certainly give them a holler on the short list.
Check ‘em out. And thanks for the coffee and snacks!
Massive Friggin’ Annoyance Factor: All the niceties aside, why does every single marketing and branding agency have to lead with a completely bombastic Flash website? It’s heavy, ostentatious, pretentious, and it completely gets in the way of the message you’re trying to tell. 2Plural/evive is certainly not alone in this, they just come as the latest example of agentius adobus flashititus, an overwhelming need to prove to potential clients that you can deliver content in a medium that completely hides the fact that you have nothing of substance to say.
That, and if you try to visit the site in your iPhone, you’re plum out of luck.
