Toluu

Annoying Design

a blog about the intersection of advertising, interactive entertainment design, and young consumers

We Want To Change The WorldNovember 18

HELL: Helping Everyone Live Longer is a non-profit that gives out bicycle helmets for free, no questions asked. It started when Zack Smith was looking for a voice — a way to quell the rage felt when a girl he loved was tragically hit by a car and killed while riding her bike in Allston, MA.  She wasn’t wearing a helmet. So Zack saw something needed to change, and that no one was going to fix it. He stood up and did something.

For a while after the Iraq war started, I jadedly decided that my generation had no balls. That because we weren’t rallying in front of the White House, and massively protesting with sheer social disobedience the way our parents did during Vietnam War, that we were a generation of lazy, digitally-obsessed slackers.

But Obama’s win is indicative of a culture that is quite the opposite. There’s a lot of talk about the Obama campaign’s use of social media to evoke enthusiasm that garnered his win. In essence what he did is say there’s no “top-down” or “bottom-up” – but that we’re all voters, and influence each other with our enthusiasm through word-of-mouth.

Maybe my generation, Gen Y, isn’t all that much of a bored generation after all. There are those who really care about doing things, differently. Better. With more meaning. Utilizing MySpace as a megaphone. A grassroots culture which u

Cable-less TV Watching (And Prop 8)November 12

I myself am not gay. But I do deeply empathize with the frustration gay Americans must feel when they’re told they they can’t have the same rights as “straight” Americans.

I also don’t have cable, or watch MSNBC. But came across Keith Olbermann’s commentary on Proposition 8. And his words, so well spoken, captivated me, and I needed to explore more.

So I found myself surfing the Web, jumping from site to site, tracking down ranom bits of information. And I realized, I was channel surfing. Here’s the trail of my web surfing:

• Friend posted YouTube video on Facebook (I watched embedded in F-book)
• I commented on her post
• I Googled for “Omar Khayyám” referenced at the end of the video
• Read Wikipedia entry on Khayyam
• Googled for “book of love and Khayyam”
• Read a WikiSource page with the full Rubaiyat
• Also found a transcript of MSNBC’s site of Olbermann’s commentary
• And 6936 Diggs for Olbermann’s video on the MSNBC site
• Googled for “Clarence Darrow”
• Visited a

The Wink Heard Around The WorldOctober 29

We all know Sarah Palin’s wink now, either from the self-declared maverick’s VP debate, or from Tina Fey’s brilliant portrayal on Saturday Night Live.

Tonight’s the evening for Obama’s 30-minute campaign ad, and here is probably the best ad from either campaign yet.

The simplicity of going with no voice over, and just music and text instead, gives power and a sense of importance to the ad as a whole. Plus, if there was a voice over, the inflection and tone of the voice might make the ad feel either too negative, or too monotone.

Even if you don’t read the three McCainn quotes the ad starts with, the one screen — “His Choice?” — followed by that infamous wink, well, that just sums it all up perfectly.

Watch the ad on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eUz13-pmTY
(sorry, embedding on my blog is kind of messed up right now)

Yahoo! Homepage Redeisgn: Reduced ClutterOctober 28

Yahoo! is doing a major homepage redesign, and here’s a screen cap I came across. Notice how clean and simplified it looks — with very clear sections for different types of user tasks and functionality, and minimal content — it really prioritizes what’s important, and cuts out the clutter. IMHO, this gives Google a competitive reason to redesign their page which now links to dozens of apps and services, but has been the same since like… 1901??

Here’s a blog post from Yahoo! with some more info.

Put Your Website Where Your Mouth IsOctober 27

Talk is cheap in any medium. You can’t just say you’re there to help your customers and not back it up with well-designed functionality on your site that provides real value.

And so when Obama’s website recently added a Tax Calculator to show how much people will save under his plan, I had to post about it:

Simple tools like these back up the talking points and campaign messaging with personalization and interactivity that aids understanding. A little functionality goes a long way, for Obama, or for any brand.