Photographer and mathematician Nikki Graziano overlays graphs and their corresponding equations over full color nature photography. This set of engaging compositions reminds us of the elegance and “art” of math, and its essential function as a descriptor of natural phenomena. Click through the image below (and keep clicking) to check out the full “Found Functions” set.
By Nikki Graziano
There’s an interesting infographic put together by Focus.com that highlights the state of the Internet across a number of different screens. It’s so big that I invite you to go check it out at the source here.
I’m not going to wax philosophical about Diesel’s new “Be Stupid” campaign. I’ll let you all decide for yourselves.
I’l just say that once you get past the initial, well, stupidity of it all, it’s actually kind of refreshing. Isn’t the proposition being made here essentially what every trendy “lifestyle brand” asks of its consumer – to eschew rational thinking and do what they feel. I mean, there’s no purely logical, rational reason to buy $150 jeans. You buy they because you just want them.
For a second opinion, here’s Ken Carbone’s take from Fast Company.
In light of the iPad announcement, I couldn’t resist looking back at how far we’ve come.
The other night I quickly read Michael Pollan’s new book(let) Food Rules. It’s a quick, easy reminder that we as people should be eating things that look, feel, and act like food. On paper, these rules make sense but today I read an article that really brought the idea of eating real food to life for me (check the great pictures out here).
The thing about Pollan’s rules are that they’re all so simple, they’re easy to overlook but incredibly powerful at the same time. I bring it up because I also read and hear a lot of concern over the consumer. Will they begin to spend again? What will they buy?
Looking at the food pictures from Good Blog I realized, the answer is easy to overlook and powerful. Brands should keep it simple. Consumers don’t necessarily need every variety and innovation known to man. They really want stuff that works well for a reasonable price. So many products don’t live up to this idea while striving to be lower calorie or greener or new and improved.
If you haven’t checked it out, Food Rules is a great, short read (under an hour) and has some good lessons that could be applied to the world of advertising, branding, and product development in addition to eating.
Working for a market research firm, inevitably you see things from a market research perspective. I remember distinctly thinking that NBC must have done some extensive research before trying the Leno in prime time experiment. Jay actually mentioned the research that was conducted earlier in the week during his monologue:
“They said, ‘how about prime time?’ I said, ‘that will never work.’ No, no, we want to put you on at 10:00. We have done focus groups. People will love you at 10:00. Look at these studies showing Jay’s chin at 10:00. People will go crazy.”
Now I don’t want to pile on NBC and obviously I have no idea how extensive the research was, but this seems like a potentially good example of placing too much weight on a research study instead of utilizing research as a component of an overall decision making process. Let’s hope that NBC didn’t make a decision with hundred of millions of dollars worth of consequences based on a couple of rounds of focus groups. But feel free to mention this example the next time someone complains about a product launch not going as well as the research predicted. Below is a link to the article with more quotes from Jay Leno.
