Vootie's blog

We've been hearing a lot lately about the relative value of global brands, with Apple easily taking the top spot in recent rankings. But when looked at from the perspective of simplicity, apparently Apple comes up short, beaten out by Amazon and even, gasp, Dunkin' Donuts. This conclusion is from Siegel+Gale's third annual Global Brand Simplicity Index (PDF), which claims to "demonstrate consumers’ demand for simpler communications and experiences across industries and around the globe."

Beatles fans will immediately recognize this as one of the tracks from the groups's 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Apparently John Lennon purchased a 19th century poster in an antique shop and from that drew many of the lyrics of the song. So then why not a limited-edition reconstruction of this now-lost poster? You can purchase prints from the kiteprint.com site or simply enjoy the making-of clip, which reveals an almost fanatical devotion to historical process. The poster is shown below.

There's just something compelling about panoramic images. And while there's certainly no shortage of tools to create these, newcomers are always welcome that manage to combine simplicity and image quality with a low price point. Enter Occipital's 360 Panorama for iOS and Android. This dumbs things down nicely by simply requiring the user to tap the screen and pan, with the app creating a panorama in real time. Once complete you can save or share it, with viewing possible as a photo or an immersive experience. Fun stuff.

Just when you think you've seen everything, you stumble across something like the work of Bologna-based Il Dito, a pseudonym which is apparently Italian for "the finger." According to UK-based site Metro, the artist has explained this unusual approach to portraiture thusly: "In Italian someone could say I wanted to 'hide myself behind my finger' - it's a metaphor to indicate a not-very-effective hiding place. I used this metaphor to say we all try to hide ourselves behind an image of us we create. That's my finger, the changing masks everybody wears in playing life... especially famous people." Works for me, since there are certainly worse Italian metaphors based on body parts. I've posted a few fave portraits below from the many to be found on the Ditology site.

Or does it? Check out the AIGA|Aquent Survey of Design Salaries 2012 to see just how well (or how badly) you're doing, compared to your peers. You'll need to be an AIGA member to access all the data but those of us who aren't can still peruse the top-line results.

The Pentawards has as its mission the global promotion of packaging design. Brigitte Evrard, Pentawards co-founder, states that: "Packaging design is a very demanding and difficult discipline, as it is subject to the laws of a market more and more focused on cost reduction and short-term profitability. Packaging designers must often do a lot with a little. The goal of the Pentawards is to reward designs originating from all markets, from mass-market to luxury."

Last weak, to great fanfare, Adobe launched its Edge Tools and Services initiative, designed to make us forget the firm ever championed Flash as a technology for creating cross-device rich media. While the two-hour presentation above is well worth watching, I've sketched out below the high points of what Adobe delivered to save you some time. The main thing to keep in mind, which Adobe has not done enough to make clear, is that all the Edge applications and services are free. Yes, they're part of its Creative Cloud subscription service, but you can access them via the free level, which is not a trial. If you're really short on time just jump straight to Edge Animate, since it's simply a great little tool for creating web animations.

If there were any lingering doubts that Adobe still saw a future in Flash, this week's announcement of a slew of software and services that focus on the development of mobile-ready content and apps based on HTML, CSS and JavaScript have put those to rest once and for all. Part of the repositioning process is Adobe's involvement in initiatives that promote noteworthy work created with this trinity of web standards. One of the latest of these, The Cutting Edge Project of the Week, is currently featuring a nicely done movie promotion site for ParaNorman, which spans desktop, mobile and tablet displays. An interesting side note is that the main character in the movie was animated by using parts created with a 3D printer.

Print publishing is far from dead but there's little doubt that the digital flow of information poses a relentless threat to something as quaint as ink on paper. But what if those static pages could serve as a frictionless gateway to additional digital content — wouldn't that provide the best of both worlds? Startup firm Layar is betting the proverbial farm that that's indeed the case and recently introduced its rather ingenious Layer Creator.