I don’t usually get too caught up in industry events and awards, but this time it’s for a teacher who helped shape my career. (And it doesn’t hurt that I have work being displayed either.) The Art Directors Club is celebrating the second year of its Grandmasters awards by distinguishing four professors who have helped to shape the newcomers to our industry over the years. The four people being honored this year are:
Deborah Morrison, University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communications Tom Ockerse, Rhode Island School of Design Hank Richardson, The Portfolio Center Ron Seichrist, Miami Ad School
Each professor asked a few of their former students (I had Deb Morrison at UT Austin before she moved on to Oregon) to submit samples of their professional work to be displayed at the ADC gallery. I was fortunate enough to be asked by Deb to include a bit of my work in support of her teachings. If you make it to the opening, keep an eye out for the truTV work from POKE NY.
A while ago, this video called Did You Know? made waves across the interwebs. It put some startling data in front of people in a compelling, digestible manner thanks to the work of Karl Fisch and Scott McCleod. If you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth watching:
And now, it appears the pair have taken their expertise into the realm of social media. Challenging traditional media’s view of the social world with the question “Is social media a fad?”, the newest installment uses the same impactful presentation style to demonstrate the value of social media for brands today and in the future:
JetBlue is regularly at the forefront of the air travel industry. They were one of the pioneering brands on Twitter. They recently launched a deals-via-Twitter feed, @JetBlueCheeps. And now…well now they’ve raised the bar even higher. I just noticed the following tweet via @JetBlue:
At first I had to wonder why it would be worth it. But that lasted for all of about 3 seconds when I realized that I’d just paid $335 for a single round-trip flight in January. For a few bucks more, the All-you-can-jet pass would cover that trip and another weekend jaunt to wherever I want that JetBlue flies (according to the fine print, the pass includes domestic taxes and fees, though international flights will incur a extra cost to cover those).
It appears that this might be a test-run for a further program as it’s only available for travel from Sept. 8 to Oct. 8, 2009 - I’m going to venture a guess that perhaps this is a slow season for the airline. But regardless, for the cost of a ticket-and-a-half, you could take a serious vacation. Or fund your business travel for the entire month.
Personally, I think it’s a great idea. Go JetBlue!
This is a fantastic little Venn Diagram from Bud Caddell. It’s also the first of a bunch of notes on social media, infographics, etc. that I’ll be sharing here moving forward. Don’t think it needs much more explanation.
Blogger Samuel Degremont has put together an impressive post (read the Google translation to English here) outlining the proliferation of information on Twitter, and how this new medium has changed the game. His analysis is based on this post by Jeff Jarvis which used the spread of the news of Michael Jackson’s death to explore the idea. Degremont has taken the idea a step further, applying the same notion to the news surround the Iran elections.
More interesting in my mind, though, are his infographics of the before and after (Twitter) view of information proliferation (perhaps this is the beginning of BT and AT?):
Before Twitter
After Twitter
There’s no question that Twitter has changed the info stream. I get most of my world news from Twitter now before it ever hits the major news networks. Degremont does, however, raise an interesting question around how trustworthy this crowdsourced information is, and the manner in which information gains context when it comes from a variety of (often disconnected from one another) sources. Thoughts?
