JabrWoky - Following the white rabbit since...

Handwritten Messages

Good old putting the pen to paper by hand seems to be working for Cobra. Click image to read the appeal of the ad.

Overheard...

in the office today...

"Flickr is static YouTube."

Are You Dirty or Are You Clean?

You can click above and find out.

Now That's What I Call Brand Loyalty

Spotted in Singapore two weeks back. Hello Richie Rich Kitty!!

A to Z of Favicons

You might have seen these little icons on your url bar, like I have, when you open your favorite pages. It had caught my eye and it was interesting and cool. I had never bothered to think beyond that about them. Now Dan Taylor (via Russell Davies del.icio.us) has a great entry on that little piece of design or favicons (favorite icons) which we all are starting to appreciate and love. I learned from Dan's entry the little details about them - that they are 16 by 16 and the smallest logo face in the world. I am not a designer, so I am baffled to learn that representing your brand effectively in just 256 pixels is undoubtedly an enormous design challenge. Dan has concisely dissected the four approaches that have emerged to tackle this.

It seems the web has spawned another visual signage, one that could easily escape our eye in the first instance, but as we get used to it, we start looking for it. And surely, soon we would start expecting it on every site. It will be a key distinguisher like the company logo on the corner of your business card  or those little studio logos (like Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox) you find on the credits on movie posters.

Now all this has made me think of what would be my little logo look like. I have no idea as I write this. But several ideas and visuals are circling in my mindspace. In the blogosphere, would that translate as putting your 256 pixel emoticon next to your url?

In the meantime, to have some fun click on the image of the A-Z of favicons and try correctly to name the brands to win some prizes from Dan.

Hope Springs Eternal

"In China, 50 million kids are starting to play basketball. They haven't bought their first Nikes yet, but they will."
- Charlie Denson (Nike brand president)

[Source: Forbes Online, Feb 2 - 2007]

humble beginnings

The Internet Archive is a brilliant resource to dig into and unearth how some of the most prominent websites of today used to look in their infancy. It almost gives you a feeling like flipping an old photo album and commenting on the bad hairdo of your favorite cousin in 1984.

This is what Yahoo looked like on it's birthday on Oct 17, 1996:

Google had only two lines on its homepage, the day it debuted on Nov 11, 1998:

And when you clicked on the first line it took you to this page (which is a lot more cluttered than the simple Google front page of today):

On Oct 22, 1996, the original search engine AltaVista was born like this:

How the times they are a changin'...

the art of leaning back

"On the Web today, you have to know what you're looking for, lean forward and click. But we wanted people to be able to just lean back and watch."

These are the words of Fredrik de Wahl, who is the ceo of the eagerly awaited Joost. And teaching you the art of leaning back and enjoying your free time is what Joost is promising.

[From this Time article]

my flavor

If you are ice cream fan, Ben & Jerry's allows you to play around and create your own flavor on their website. Another little example of how brands can connect to their fans and let them have some fun.

Being a Ben & Jerry fan myself, I sure kicked some free time playing around and creating my own flavor with good-old vanilla, some honeycomb bits, caramel swirl and macademia nuts and what-not. (bring out the real kid in you!!)

Best part is you get to name it like how Dave Matthews Band and Phish and Stephen Colbert got to do it for real.

Embrace the Singapore Bling!!

americone dream

Finally, Stephen Colbert gets his chance to create his own Ben & Jerry's flavor. He goes for vanilla ice cream with fudge-covered waffle cone pieces and caramel.

Ben & Jerry's calls it "The sweet taste of liberty in your mouth." And we get our sweet share of Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream.