One week ago today, at 7:10am PDT, the world officially came to an end.

What? You didn’t notice? Maybe because the sun didn’t become black as sackcloth, nor did the whole moon become as blood. You see, despite T.S. Eliot’s warning, the world did not end with a bang. Or a whimper. It ended with a tweet. Specifically, the first tweet issued by a certain Ms. Oprah Winfrey. Later that day, Twitter’s Chief Executive, Evan Williams, and Twitter’s chief celebrity twit, Ashton Kutcher, joined Oprah on her show to discuss the relentlessly advancing Twitter phenomenon.

And what is so apocalyptic about the convergence of Oprah and Twitter? Well, if the proximity of those two words doesn’t already send a shudder down your spine, let us remind you of the Pied-Piper-like influence Oprah wields over a huge segment of America’s mainstream. An endorsement of Twitter by Oprah could well be the inflection point beyond which there is no return. It’s easy to imagine, with the O-stamp of approval, Twitter once and for all breaking out of its tech niche and forging onward to world domination.

(more…)

You may have heard of Third Security, a venture capital firm and client of Big for the last couple of years, due to the business fame of billionaire founder R.J. Kirk. Not so long ago, Third Security told us they were looking for a website make-over; we, of course, were happy to oblige. The results recently launched, and can be viewed at www.thirdsecurity.com.

Imagine 12,000 new sets of eyes on your brand. And a 750% increase in your website traffic. Now imagine it all happening in a single day.

That’s exactly what a just-concluded social-media experiment did for us here at Big. You see, we wanted to find out what kind of numbers you could get by acting fast and seizing a social-media moment. The moment we chose? Lindsay Lohan’s savvy foray this week into (intentional, for once) self-parody. If you haven’t heard or seen, Ms. Lohan collaborated in the creation of a fake eHarmony video in which she spoofs her recent romantic break-up and her media image in general, in an apparent bid to own her narrative rather than let the media take its usual spin around her private life. Presented initially exclusively on the website funnyordie.com, the video received more than a million hits the first day.

(more…)

Wow. The Twitter backlash keeps going. Kinda makes us feel bad about this. So, to make nice, this post is only 140 characters. Like a Tweet.

Before we get to this Pepsi story (and trust me, it’s a doozy), a quick lesson in logo development: designing the logo is only half the job. The other half is explaining it. Because, more than with any other kind of design project, clients want an objective rationale for your recommendation. Which is understandable—as the ubiquitous visual expression of the brand, the logo is singularly influential in customers’ perceptions. So clients want some reassurance that your design really is the best choice for conveying the brand’s essence. What they would love is some kind of Rosetta Stone to translate the visual into the verbal, so they know without a doubt that green is better than blue, that a circle works better than a square, that a sans serif font is more appropriate than a serif.

Of course, there is no such Rosetta Stone, no objective conversion formula between the linguistic and the artistic. Some part of a logo’s effect will always be subjective. Still, there are some well established precepts you can cite for the client, some research-based tried-and-true correspondences. Like warm colors equal excitement, and cool colors connote sophistication. Sans serif fonts feel more modern, and slanted type suggests speed. There are a few other straightforward generalities you can mention with confidence, but if you keep going much longer, you’ll find yourself in the tall grass, pontificating with increasingly specious-sounding pronouncements that come across more like existentialist philosophy than marketing. It’s not deliberate obfuscation; it’s just the nature of the game. After all, you’re trying to talk about art, which, as they say, is like dancing about architecture.

But this Pepsi thing takes the cake.

(more…)