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On the internet, no one knows you’re an underage dog.
Remember the good ole’ days when you just clicked “Oh yes, I assure you I’m over 21″ to play the whiskey game or whatever morally questionable content with which you wished to interact?
Those days are no more! Introducing The World’s Most Invasive Age Verification Popup.
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Me. In Wired. Me.
Consider that a life goal achieved. I was hoping it’d be an illustration, but I’ll settle for a tweet. For now
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It’s only -28°, you big babies.
And because it is, you gotta get yourself some conductive gloves. They somehow allow your iPhone to read your soul right through the wool.
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Vine could do as much for #journalism as the invention of photography, dontcha think?
While everyone’s wringing their hands about porn on Vine—and I think you can judge a new medium’s potential by the speed with which it’s colonized by porn—I’m blown away by the potential Vine clips have for videojournalism.
Vine will be justified when it's used to document a revolution & that most vivid #journalism, video, spreads like wildfire through Twitter.
@EricaGlasierErica Glasier ♥@EricaGlasier Agreed. Missed the US prez inauguration by four days. Had it been there, @vineapp's value would have been super-obvious.
@wilalambreWil AlambreImagine the kind of images that will be captured and the speed with which they’ll be shared during the next Arab Spring. Revolutions will be televised after all.
Journalists—with their already-broad Twitter networks—should jump on this technology and test its capabilities now, before it’s time to do some serious documentary storytelling.
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.@urban_barn’s simple, low-tech answer to keeping the social ball rolling instore.
If social media’s done one thing to branding, it’s pushed customer service to the fore as a really important piece of brand interaction.
Customers, users, visitors now expect to be heard in real time, to have their questions answered, to chat, to interact with a brand. To be hosted.
I’m impressed with the simple way Urban Barn‘s integrated that kind of feedback into its retail experience: low key, low tech (yet new media)—guests have a chance to express themselves as befits the year 2013—right away and to a person who can really do something with the information.
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Flat design: a skinny diet of tasty, pointy, bevel-free rectangles.
So, flat is the new Rich Corinthian Leather of interface design.
Gone like the coffee cups in Scott Forstall’s office are the bevels, shadows, and textures of our recent nostalgia-fuelled skeuomorphic design tastes.
All hail glorious, silk-screeny rectangles of pure colour.
Letterpress, a flatly-design iPhone app.
But it’s not just because we’re fed up with all the realism doodads. Daring Fireball writer John Gruber suggests retina displays are the catalyst for our fresh new feeling.
The whole default iOS look — the textures, the shadows, the subtle (and sometimes unsubtle) 3D effects — is optimized for non-retina displays. It’s makeup to cover up the fact that 163 pixels per inch, though better than anything we had before the original iPhone, is still a crude resolution overall. Retina displays are no longer limited in such ways, and need no phony effects to create interfaces that are beautiful.
The trend away from skeuomorphic special effects in UI design is the beginning of the retina-resolution design era. Our designs no longer need to accommodate for crude pixels. Glossy/glassy surfaces, heavy-handed transparency, glaring drop shadows, embossed text, textured material surfaces — these hallmarks of modern UI graphic design style are (almost) never used in good print graphic design. They’re unnecessary in print, and, the higher the quality of the output and more heavy-handed the effect, the sillier such techniques look. They’re the aesthetic equivalent of screen-optimized typefaces like Lucida Grande and Verdana. They work on sub-retina displays because sub-retina displays are so crude. On retina displays, as with high quality print output, these techniques are revealed for what they truly are: an assortment of parlor tricks that fool our eyes into thinking we see something that looks good on a display that is technically incapable of rendering graphic design that truly looks good.
Technology pushes visual style forwards again—and just in time. I upgraded my Mac OS a week or two ago and almost fell out of my chair when finally confronted in person with the dreaded beige iCal. Shudder.
My designery friend Wil Alambre sent me this funny (or is it sad?) review of Windows 8, the “metro”-styled flatest thing out there. Don’t let its usability problems scare you away from a skinny rectangular diet. It tastes so good.
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Striking a balance between minimalist & rustic in a modern entryway {INTERIOR DESIGN}
Crosspost from our top secret house renovation Tumblr. Lots of design considerations/conundrums in remodelling an entire house!
Our current house doesn’t allow for a classic “entry vignette”: console table (with drawer for mail storage), basket (storage), stool (for putting on boots), art or mirror (for checking how you look before departing/arriving), vase/plant (natural beauty), and dish (change/keys).
It’s an important, elaborate piece of storage that keeps clutter down, helps you find your keys, and provides gracious utility and visual welcome at a home’s entrance.
There’s a balance to strike between modern/minimal & rustic texture that will hinge on choice of console & mirror—whether they match or contrast. Sacrificing a drawer in the console for style wouldn’t be ideal. But it’s exciting to examine the options!
White Mosco console at EQ3; Marina knitted pouf at Urban Barn; Jones reclaimed console table at Nyen Furniture.
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How whitespace makes you popular on social media. Wait, what?
Yep. Whitespace. You needs it.
Judicious, well-planned whitespace helps set up a clear visual hierarchy. And guess what naturally falls into place when your hierarchy is all clear ‘n’ stuff?
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How to identify & fix awkward whitespace in an interface design.
Awkward chunks of whitespace—typically passive leftovers created when dealing with the important elements on the page—distract & detract from a well-resolved design.
The 5 second test.
How do you know if you’re suffering from lumpy whitespace? Open your design and look at it for 5 seconds. If a section of negative space jumps out at you before your eye locks on meaningful content, you’ve probably left some space unresolved.
The grid will save you.
Weird rivers of white are often the result of deviating from your grid. Align everything in columns to the left, top and right of your design, and you’ll probably see the whitespace sort itself out naturally.
Everything should always be aligned to something, vertically and horizontally, unless you’ve made a very conscious decision that it shouldn’t.
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I’m JUST about to call bull$h!t on reclaimed wood.
Love the storied feel of reclaimed wood—companies supplying pretend vintage wood have even sprung up—but 9 grand for a table made out of an old snow fence? AN OLD SNOW FENCE? I don’t mean to be all “my kid could’ve painted that,” but my mom will be very disappointed she hasn’t been storing all her (apparently priceless) rickety old pickets all these years.
Edwin Blue snow fence table at 2Modern. Seriously.
Read More »@lindseywiebe PRICELESS! I’m ashamed to say I just about said “send me a pic!” Must. Resist. Branding. Of groovy old wood.
— Erica Glasier ♥(@EricaGlasier) January 13, 2013
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Illustrations from my FIRST first children’s book.
I’m working on my first 100%-by-me self published children’s book, but here’s some images from a recent collab with an author. It’s about an adorable dog.
Here’s a closeup (click through) of artwork so you can see the texture.
We used Art Book Bindery here in Winnipeg for printing, and they were great to work with.
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The real motivation behind Earls no-high chair policy?
I practically had PTSD when the article Earls Restaurants Doesn’t Want Kids & Doesn’t Care If You Know It slithered through my Facebook feed.
Butters is blissfully unaware that the staff at "Raisins" are paid to be "nice" to him.
My trauma: one sunny Father’s Day, I encouraged 3 generations of our family to give Joey (Earls’ sister chain) a try—I like the food and the stylish decor. Bonus: the teenage wait staff show up to 4% less skin than Earls’ skeezy youngsters do. It being a special day & lots of family members (including a young guy in their target market who hadn’t eaten their before), the bill would’ve been decent.
The teenagers delighted in telling me they wouldn’t provide a high chair to accomodate my then 2-year-old. Believe me, an easier time would’ve been had by all if they did supply a slightly higher chair. No one wants a liberated 2-year-old in a restaurant.
(Obviously, we had a crappy Father’s Day outing for our dad. And obviously I’m not exercising my economic power or social influence there again.)
I wasn’t up in arms about “my rights”. I was hurt and embarrassed. I’d been told to my face that I wasn’t wanted somewhere I wanted to be. Somewhere I was happily going to pay to be.
The comments on my friend’s Facebook all circle around the carcass of “lazy parents incapable of stopping their kids from shrieking during the meal.”
Comments from men, who are far more likely to have the liberty, economically & responsibility-wise, to “leave the kids at home”. And who, as a group, are very unlikely to relate to the experience of being told you don’t belong somewhere.
But I digress. The real issue here is one of branding. Earls and Joey ostensibly don’t want kids because it isn’t the image or environment they want to offer their (manly) customer.
But is “no children” a red herring?
Red-faced, with tears in my eyes, it didn’t strike me that Joes didn’t want to provide seating for all the members of my party because one of them was going to act badly. “Shrieking kids” didn’t occur to me.
It made me feel that the person they didn’t want in their restaurant was me.
And why would they want me—a 38 year old mom—there?
From a branding perspective Actual Women detract from the sleazy fantasy presented by the wait staff at these kind of restaurants. Actual Women resemble too closely the (apparently undesirable) fulfillment phase of sexual attraction—long term relationships and ultimately children.
And it puts a cramp in the *prostitution-lite leering/paying for attention transaction if Actual Women are around to glare at it.
I’m not sure if making women feel unwelcome is the Fuller family’s marketing strategy, but it sure feels like it. As a man walked into the washroom, I caught sight of some faintly racy wall art highlighting exactly what value women have at Joey.
* C.O.A.: I’m sure no actual prostitution happens at Earls or Joey. I’m using mean, exaggerated words because they made me feel like a reject and that’s not a very nice brand experience.
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The cure for post-holiday moping: Blue Monday retail therapy extends the holiday ecommerce frenzy.
After the frenzied blur of Online Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and (extended) Boxing Week Madness (aside—did you know Americans don’t have Boxing Week? And because we absorb so much of their retail culture, the ecommerce bonanza is now basically from November to January here in Canada!), I was listless and limp, unspent Christmas-derived gift cards burning a hole in my wallet.
Why the malaise? Blue Monday approacheth—the most depressing day of the year. The tree’s in pieces in the basement, the surprises have all been sprung, the turkey devoured, and acres of cold, stupid winter stretch out before us.
So I wondered, besides the wee hurdle of us all being on austerity measures from Xmas overspending, why don’t retailers capitalize on Blue Monday? And lo, in my inbox arrives the cure for post-holiday moping.
Watch for this to turn into a thing over the next few years. And for it to eventually merge with Valentine’s day for an epic 4-month online shopping season. If Canadian Thanksgiving ever catches on, we’ll never get off Amazon.
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Raise a glass to fewer ads in 2013.
Via photographer Ian McCausland:
“After hearing (Flickr) declared “dead” and “irrelevant,” this is a community of people that care about what they are putting up. So much so that many of them pay for it. Flickr is already the paid alternative so many people are clamoring for. Your photos will not be used to create “meaningful brand engagement.” Years after Flickr ceased to be an exciting business story, it remains one of the most important places for photography culture online.”
—Wayne Bremser
Like that bit about content not being used for brand engagement.
In 2013 I imagine more and more people seeking out ad-free environments, where their contributions are not called content.
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Cross-cultural copywriting, or the meaning of Canadian “eh”.
Whilst researching calls to action for my Red River Interactive Media class, I came upon a friendly piece of copywriting waving from the search bar of Airbnb.
This set me to thinking about the use and meaning of the Canadian sentence-suffixing “eh”.
Not to be all Inigo Montoya, but I do not think it means what you think it means.
Many Americans misunderstand how to use “eh”. It means “I’m sure you agree with me.” airbnb.ca
— Erica Glasier ♥(@EricaGlasier) December 20, 2012
Canadian “Eh” in Game of Thrones = Dothraki “It is known.”
— Erica Glasier ♥(@EricaGlasier) December 20, 2012
@ericaglasier also “and hey btw we’re friends”
— Lorne Laliberte (@creativekind) December 20, 2012
.@creativekind RIGHT! The essence of “eh” is “we acknowledge we are in agreement/friendship/support of each other”—wow that’s SUPER Canadian
— Erica Glasier ♥(@EricaGlasier) December 20, 2012
UNLESS it was being used as “hey”, short for “hey I’m talking to you”. Not really necessary since I’m clearly talking to you.
— Erica Glasier ♥(@EricaGlasier) December 20, 2012
TIL. rt @martinpi Funny, the German language “Eh” has the same meaning as the Canadian.
— Erica Glasier ♥(@EricaGlasier) December 20, 2012
“Eh” is solidarity. “Eh” is wry acknowledgement that we’re all in the same boat. “Eh” is oneness. #Canadian
— Erica Glasier ♥(@EricaGlasier) December 20, 2012
And then the internets served me true, koan-bonging clarity on ultimate Canadianness, and I was enlightened.
Read More »This is what it’s like to be #Canadian. twitter.com/EricaGlasier/s…
— Erica Glasier ♥(@EricaGlasier) December 20, 2012
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Facebook prepares to annoy you worse than you’ve ever been annoyed before.
Because she knew it would drive me crazy, Alyson Shane let me know that Facebook Prepares to Bring Video Ads to News Feed, Aims for TV Dollars.
I’ve always doubted that Facebook could make people dislike its environment so much they’d leave the one place where they can talk to their grandma, grade 8 friends & dog groomer all at once. Perhaps I underestimated the level of annoying Facebook is capable of.
While it’s all kinda speculative right now, here’s the horrific upshots of the AdAge article:
Facebook video ads will start playing automatically — a dynamic known as “autoplay”.
Against web conventions for a reason. The reason being it irritates the $#!& out of people.
The audio component of the ads activated automatically as well?
NSFW! (Nothing says “I’m effing around” like the blast of a totally-not-work-related commercial through your speakers).
The video ads are expected to grab a user’s attention by expanding out of the news feed into webpage real estate in both the left and right columns
Oh good. You can’t even look around it while it autoplays in your face.
Advertisers will be able to show the same video ad to a Facebook user up to three times a day.
In case you didn’t delete your profile after the first one.
Advertisers will be able to target these video ads to Facebook users whether or not the user or his friends has any relationship on Facebook with the advertiser.
Ah, the TV model! Can we get a TiVO up in here?
15-second video ads would become more prevalent elsewhere on the web.
Well…that’s good, right?
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Instagram: People are willing to pay for awesome.
If I worked as a qualitative social sentiment analyzer (social media person who reads tweets about a brand to judge people’s feelings), I’d tell Instagram to start buying friends fast.
Why is the formerly-hot photo platform so uncool right now? A bunch of things happened at once in photoland.
- Instagram pulled its Twitter Card, so you can’t see Instagram media inline in Twitter anymore.
Don’t underestimate the onerousness of clicking that link.It’s working to drive traffic to Instagram so those all-important future ads can get pageviews, but overall people from Twitter are consuming less Instagramy goodness.
- Twitter released its own pack of photo filters.
- Flickr released some awesome new app & got a ton of mysteriously well-timed media coverage.
- Facebook announced ads would be appearing in Instagram.
- Instagram updated its ToS to allow user’s photo content to be used as ads.
All this conspires to make Instagram worse than useless (the Twitter card thing), and more like a Facebook-style frenemy.
.@sizzlesays @instagram was magic. But the good news is there are many talented people out there who will give us an amazing alternative.
@GreeblemonkeyAimee Giese.@Greeblemonkey @sizzlesays I think "give" is the operative problem. Are we looking for awesome for free, no concessions to monetization?@EricaGlasierErica Glasier ♥If Instagram is an important social network to you, you might overlook all this. If, like me, you aren’t social there & just use Instagram as an awesomely-curated photo stream, you’re wondering what the point of keeping up a stream is, especially one that’s destined to become social advertising.
As I write, Wired is publishing things like How To Download Your Instagram Photos & Kill Your Account, and people are wringing their hands over Instagram’s various transgressions.
I understand they need to monetize, but frankly, @Instagram - this is BULLSHIT. http://t.co/YmpzCBul@GreeblemonkeyAimee GieseI don’t really care about the ToS; every platform costs something. The worst, to me, is walling off from Twitter. I don’t even filter my photos in Instagram; I use Camera+. So besides the ever-dwindling ability to spot some nice shots among all the fingernail photos, Instagram has less and less value to me as the week goes on.
Before selling out, the next popular revenue-free social platform should ask its users if they’d pay for premium to keep the service they love as-is. Let’s look for a business model that isn’t about selling user’s content. I think people are ready for it.
@EricaGlasier @Greeblemonkey I'm totally willing to pay for awesome. This doesn't seem awesome to me and no one asked me to pay.
@sizzlesayssizzlesaysDear @twitter. If I give you $100 can I have the newest features first? Please. Love Dave
@davewinerDave Winer ☮Read More »@EricaGlasier if someone is willing to pay to get instagram ad free it's called @Flickr :-)
@ianmccIan McCausland - Instagram pulled its Twitter Card, so you can’t see Instagram media inline in Twitter anymore.
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I am hard on iPhones.
There comes a point when you’re slicing your fingers to ribbons on the back of your phone where you think “A) Why on earth did they make it out of glass? and B) I needs me a new phone.”
Honestly, though, it was the potential radiation leak I imagined upon seeing the rare earth elements dangling out the hole at the bottom that prodded me to upgrade (for just a small fee. You know, a small one).
So the little mobile nuclear reactor has been retired, and I’m dolting my way around the iPhone 5. I’ve never been so excited to see my contacts.
I’m less excited that our historic collection of iPhone adaptors is rendered useless by the new pin style. I’m guarding this cord with the vigilance of…someone super vigilant.
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Why #IKEAWinnipeg rules. Because it does.
“Have fun blogging for the man, you whore!” sang my husband as he left for work this morning.
“Damn right,” I rejoined, curling up with my laptop, my tasteful birch IKEA USB stick packed with photos, and a cup of coffee.
Can you tell this is a press photo? This is actually the ABSTRAKT kitchen that we're purchasing for our century-old renovation in Wolseley. It's even shinier in person.
Winnipeg’s Really Big Deal, the arrival of IKEA, is finally a reality tomorrow night. In advance, the clever PR folks at IKEA had the media (both old and new) at a private pre-shop replete with champagne, Mise chefs serving meatballs, and a handsome discount for excited-but-trying-to-pretend-they’re-not shoppers.
IKEA's media swag bag contents.
I’m very impressed with the level of attention to the blogging community IKEA’s PR is paying. And I do mean paying. The swag bag, handed out to each exhausted shopper as they departed, was packed with an appealing palette of treasure (including delicious chocolates, thoughtful napkins to deal with the aftermath, tealights & pretty holders, and full foamy-coffee paraphernalia. And like a whole lamp and a lightbulb).
Does the actual media get a payday like this all the time? Refocusing career on retail journalism!
But smooth marketing-to-the-marketers aside (except for that “vending machine in City Place” thing today. Can you ever tell a Toronto agency is placing these things.), the store is going to be a real resource for designers. Like my architect, Clayton of Design-Built, who came with me. We purchased 5 PAX units for our upcoming Wolseley renovation, and finally got to interview gleaming kitchen appliances in person.The basic pieces of a home—stylish, modern kitchens and bathrooms, lighting, book cases like the gorgeous gloss-white EXPEDIT, shelving, and flooring are finally available at a great price point, in person, for Winnipeggers designing their homes. This is sooo huge.
So. Delicious.
Ordering these kind of things online can be a nightmare—EXPEDITs are double their cost to ship here, and you want to test the quality of large-ticket items like kitchen cabinets in person. Having the help of installers, planners & delivery all in our own city is going to make renovating our home so much sweeter and easier. It couldn’t be better timed.
And for the guy who unfollowed me on Twitter because I’ve become a corporate shill, let me tell you how much having access to good design in Winnipeg means to me.
In our first appartment, Kevin & I paid a fortune to ship BRODER and EXPEDIT shelves to start our lives together (in an organized fashion). When we got married, we marked the move to our new house (our first house!) with a road trip to Minneapolis for IKEA. When we got pregnant with our first daughter, we did it again—sooo uncomfy, that drive while enormously pregnant. But we needed a SNIGLAR crib. When our twins threatened to arrive, I was too huge to make it to the States, so our cousins in Calgary went to IKEA for us & got what we needed to welcome the babies.
IKEA has been a huge part of every big-deal life moment in our family, at an inconvenient & expensive distance. Finally, it’s here. I’m no shill. I freakin’ love this place
Oh, and on the topic of regional swagger:“I literally got tears in my eyes when I saw the big sign glowing warmly over Sterling Lyon Parkway.
I’m sure you know this but it means a lot to a certain swath of Winnipeggers that IKEA is here. Deep down we know it’s all about a land deal or something, but to us it means IKEA believes in us, in our love of design.
You’re probably rolling your eyes so hard right now. But it’s the complement to the swagger the city felt when we got the Winnipeg Jets back. It’s good for our self esteem
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It’s like Mondrian invented rectangles.
Asked to crit my skeuomorphs presentation, Tactica‘s Vergil Kanne thought
I loved it until the last slide. To me, Microsoft is doing just the same and the greco-roman architects by referencing a design pattern from the past.
Piet Mondrian thought that his sub-division styleshould be applied not only to painting, but also to other design, including city design. I always hated Mondrian’s dry design and sided with Dali (“Piet, niet!”).
But I dunno. Is it historicism or just a coincidence? Grids make rectangles. I’m not sure Microsoft could help it.
Updated: Lest you think I think Windows 8 is an example of good usability.
I’m just noting that they’re leaving behind the leather & drop shadows and striving towards something cleaner. Perhaps all that torn paper & leather biding makes things a little less confusing after all, eh?
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About me.
Interactive designer, illustrator & mom of twins (among other people; I know—it's crazy) I write about social media tech, mobile culture, advertising & design.
Chit chat.
Topics I write about.
- Ads/Branding/Retail
- Brand Journalism
- Culture
- Events
- How-To's & Top 10's
- Interaction Design
- Interactive Marketing
- Nonprofit SoMe
- Social Graphics
- SoMe Marketing
- SoMe Personalities
- SoMe Platforms
- SoMe Sociology
- Teaching
- The Mobile Web
- Visual, Art & Design
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