If you’re having trouble getting calls through to your member of Congress, an app called Stance says it can help. You just record a message, and it keeps trying until it can deliver that message to voicemail. There’s a big caveat on that, though.
A one-day sale on jeans, a Razer Gold Box deal, and your favorite affordable vacuum lead off Thursday’s best deals from around the web.
One of the most dystopian trends in recent years is the crowdsourcing of emergency expenses online. People need surgery, can’t afford it, and are tasked with fundraising their own medical bills. Now you can ask for money directly on Facebook.
Some designers wax poetic about how design is intrinsically inseparable from art and some even will go as far as calling themselves artists. Not Firstborn executive creative director Dave Snyder. Snyder has never believed that art is part of design. For him, the moment you bring in someone else’s interests—like a brand’s!—it becomes design, not art. Maybe the sacrilegious sentiments stem from the fact that he studied marketing and advertising way back in school. “If I had gone to school for design, I don’t think it would have worked,” he says of his career. “I really needed to learn the business side of things first and then later on in my career discover true graphic design “gurus.””
The outspoken Snyder has built his career around the concept of design being a great business strategy. His current role is dedicated to pushing that process forward and helping brands like Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and Jet.com reposition themselves through good business solutions that are equally beautiful (as evidence by the boatload of awards Firstborn has won in recent years).
We sat down with Snyder to get his insight into the current state of digital design and the difficulties interactive designers face compared to print designers.
Tell us about what Firstborn does and what principles it stands for.
Firstborn is about design and technology—that’s the one constant that’s always been. We have always been digital from the ground up.
The biggest change that happened in our industry was that agencies had to decide whether to go either into design and technology or just “own” social. A lot of people decided to focus on what I would say was the easy money—the social media stuff. It was the: “We’ll go ahead and manage your Facebook and Twitter and come up with campaigns around that” mentality. We wanted to focus on being able to build out the capability to reshape businesses. We have never really embraced any kind of social media support, and we don’t want to create disposable content. We want to create stuff that is actually worth watching and consuming as opposed to being tricked into watching something. We are currently focused on the larger platform type of projects, such as how we can use digital to effect a larger business view or a repositioning. This has proved to be an important shift.
How do you believe digital is contributing to design today?
Design in the most classic sense is a potent business strategy. That’s not to say it’s only about business efficiency. Everything needs a high level of craft, but even that can’t put lipstick on a pig and make people believe the pig is not a pig. Ultimately, design can differentiate one business from another.
It seems that digital agencies are shifting service offerings towards brand building. Is that a fair assessment? And why?
At Firstborn it’s branding, communications, and digital. More and more I don’t see the difference. Your brand is your digital product more than anything. It’s a very blurry type of world but what we do more of now is the actual brand repositioning of large brands and express that through some kind of digital platform or product. With some physical services you spend more time with the app or site than the service.
How is interactive design different from other disciplines in design?
I think it’s more complicated than many other disciplines, mostly because you have to deal with the reality of third party developers, user behaviors, marketers and the way it changes constantly when our devices change. I’m not down-playing paper design as there’s stress on both ends, but ultimately the complexity between the two is extremely different. You also have to deal with the real issue that someone has to code it, and it has to work with someone, so there are more variables and it’s more fluid.
Firstborn created a platform for Green Label Sound, Mountain Dew’s outpost in the world of youth culture.
Where does art live within the world of design now?
I have never believed that art is part of design. One is a commercial interest and one is a personal interest. The one thing a designer does most is deal with other people’s interests. When you have to compromise and deal with business realities, that’s being a designer. When you are solving a problem, that’s being a designer. I don’t like to conflate the two.
What are the pros and cons of working on a longer term project?
The thing I am most concerned about is how it affects my team. The more things you can get in your book the better as a young designer, and when people get stuck on a project for a year, that sucks for that person and their portfolio. A lot of times when you are in these bigger projects, the realities of business can really squash creativity and lead to something a little more conservative, so you need a balance of something fun as well.
Longer term projects are a different kind of challenge, but it’s definitely where the financial stability is. It’s also interesting from the perspective of how you can affect the business of a company that is much more substantial than yours. When you work on longer business transformation projects from the ground up it allows you to act like an entrepreneur without taking the risks of being an entrepreneur and it gives you a blank canvas.
As a partner, how do you balance innovation and risk for your clients?
That is honestly just a frank conversation from all parties and involves really understanding what the business goals are. I have learned a lot more about that as I’ve got older. I need to understand what drives their business and how we can play within that and craft a solution. You have to understand that somebody’s job is on the line if your idea doesn’t work. It comes down to understanding what risk really feels like and how that might affect you personally.
What steps does an agency have to do to earn the trust of a client?
It’s something I wrestle with. When you are younger you think you have it all figured out and you’re not really taking into account all these other factors— market conditions, someone’s boss, etc. A lot of it has nothing to do with the consumer. A couple of things I’ve learned over the years are learn where your clients’ bonus comes from and you’ll have a better opportunity to position your ideas in a way that will earn them more money. And consider time and experience and the perspective it gives someone. It’s all about finding a balance.
Besides trust, what skills does a partner need to gain the most value from their agency or team?
Brutal honesty and a very candid relationship. Clients need to understand our business like we need to understand theirs. Most agencies are there to genuinely make better work for clients. The pitch process is where a ton of this could be worked out. Understanding the dollar amount they have directly affects the solution we pick so being honest about that is really important.
In a recent campaign for Mountain Dew, Firstborn drew a connection between DEW fans and action sports.
I think what we and the industry as a whole needs to do is convince clients to put some of the money aside for iterations. Do we do that at Firstborn all the time? No. But it is something we are trying to move towards this year as I think it is a fundamental flaw in the way business works and I feel that 50% of a budget should go towards tracking and improving. I don’t feel big businesses are ready for that though.
Gizmodo Jeff Bezos Had a Good Ass Day | The Slot George W. Bush Thought Donald Trump’s Inauguration Speech Was Some ‘Weird Shit’ Too | Deadspin Golden Knights Owner Wishes Las Vegas Didn’t Spend $750 Million On The Raiders | The Root The War at Morehouse |
Tax season is in full swing, which means tax scams are in full swing. The IRS just released an alert for seniors to watch out for phone scams, specifically. If you have grandparents or aging parents, you may want to let them know.
You need jeans. Everyone needs jeans. Right now, get some from brands like Lucky Brand, Lee, NYDJ, Calvin Klein and more for a lot less during Amazon’s one-day sale. There are jeans for as low as $20, plus shorts, skirts, dresses, and plus size thrown in for women and a couple Big & Tall pairs of jeans for the guys.
Working out with your partner isn’t always easy, especially if you’re at different levels of fitness or what you want to focus on isn’t the same. These are both reasons why I don’t usually work out with my boyfriend, but this weekend we gave a bodyweight couples workout a try and it was really successful!
Student loans are a massive burden for a lot of people, so when you hear “student loan forgiveness” your ears probably perk up. It’s not very common, but yes, there are some scenarios in which your federal student loan might be forgiven. Let’s check them out.
I’m always searching for ways to counteract my type-A, future-focused tendencies that make me a tangled ball of stress. Try meditation, they say. I’ve tried sitting still, focusing on nothing in particular and thinking about not thinking. I’ve had some success with it, but the real breakthrough came when I started…
Razer makes some of your favorite gaming mice and keyboards, and a huge chunk of its lineup is on sale in today’s Amazon Gold Box.
One day, we might get representatives in Washington that value their constituents’ privacy over corporate profits, but until then, it’s as good a time as any to sign up for a VPN service. Luckily, it costs less per month than a typical trip to Starbucks.
Deadspin LaVar Ball Is A Great Showman And An Unabashed Dickhead | Gizmodo How to Hide Your Browsing History From Your Snooping ISP | Jezebel No More Wedding Gifts | The Root Sean Spicer, Joe Walsh and Bill O’Reilly: Your Hatred for Black Women Is Showing |
You’ve probably heard of Global Entry as a faster way to get through customs, but it only works when you’re coming back into the U.S. of course. Luckily, the U.S. isn’t the only country that has a program aimed at making customs go more quickly—some European countries do, too.
Welcome back to Ask a Lawyer, wherein I, a lawyer, respond to your questions. Got a vexing legal issue? Send it over, or drop it in the comments below.
If you’ve ever prepared a steak and wished you could see what the meat actually looked like on the inside before you cut into it, Cook My Meat can offer a glimpse.
I ran a marathon a little over a week ago, and while I’m glad I finished, it totally kicked my ass. A new study from the Yale School of Medicine might explain a bit why. Besides the sore muscles, running a marathon wrecks your kidneys for a few days.
Victims of car accidents can end up replaying disturbing memories in their minds. But these intrusive memories, one aspect of post-traumatic stress disorder, may be preventable. All you have to do, according to a new study, is play Tetris after the accident.
Congress decided that your ISP should be allowed to sell off your private browsing data, but the solutions to get around this are a bit complicated, costly, or just a pain. What’s a lazy-internet person to do? Use Opera.
In theory, we give gifts at weddings for two reasons:
Last Tuesday, I ate some green beans, a Clif bar, and one homemade sous vide egg bite. That’s 500 calories. I swear I don’t have an eating disorder—it’s just how you do things on this diet I’ve been trying. On Wednesday I was back to my regular 2000-ish calories and feeling fine.
For the most part, car buyers have wised up to the fact that extended warranties are usually a waste of money. This is bad news for the dealers selling the extras, so many of them are changing their vocabulary. Don’t be fooled, though: most finance products are rarely worth the cost.
OxyLED’s OxySense motion-sensing closet light is one of the best-selling products in Kinja Deals history, and it’s easy to see why. You can stick it anywhere, it turns itself on and off, and it’s super cheap. Today, add two individual lights your cart (not the 2-pack available on the page), and get both for $15 with…
If you’re the sort of person that’s ditched clunky laptops in favor of a svelte tablet lifestyle, you’ll be happy to hear that Google has finally optimized their calendar app just for the iPad.
