Following up on Samara’s Awesome Paper Folding Parties and the killer igloo notepads that are the result of said paper folding, I present you with notepad2.0.

Taking notes is great and all, especially in one of Samara’s notepads, but the only problem is you need to read through them again to remember what you or someone else had to do and if you’re at all like me (slightly scatterbrained), sometimes it’s difficult to work out what you were thinking when writing said note.

Solution: Add a to do list to your notepad pages
Only actionable items are put in this section, then when you’ve been in meetings back to back all day and your brain is fried, you can review your notes and have a clearly defined list of To Do Items for you or other team members.

There’s a whole methodology surrounding this sort of thing that I won’t really go into, but I’m finding it works well for me so I thought I’d share. I’ve put together a PDF template that breaks your pages up into, Notes, ToDo Items and Ideas for Later.

It pretty much does what it says on the tin, the only thing worth explaining is the “Ideas for later” section.  In a brainstorm, lots of ideas get thrown around, some feasible and right for the brief, some awesome but off point for the task at hand. These are worth documenting for use at some point later on. Record them here so that in the future when you think “What was that cool thing that did the thing with the other thing” you can flip back through your notebook and presto, there it is! Booom!

Also, I’ve put a nice little dot grid on the notes pages for drawing your concept sketches. Yay!

Finally, you should probably check that your printer can run paper trough it twice so that you can still use the backs of your scrap paper and save a tree before you wind up in trouble with IT for screwing up the printer.

Here’s a PDF that I made especially for you. Enjoy! Now I can tick “write igloo blog post” off my list (see it works)

I was recently at an event run by Social Media Club Melbourne (free event), where I listened to Darren Rowse, Mr Pro Blogger talk. Now, I already thought he was ace, I follow one of his blogs, thats why I went, but he said something while talking about social media that I think can be applied to pretty much everything in life. I could misquote exactly what he said, but the crux of the message was “Give”. He said give stuff away. Not necessarily free shampoo samples or such things, but information. Blog posts that are all about “HOW TO…” do something.

You, my intelligent reader are no doubt aware of some of the most AWESOME free shit in the form of TED “Riveting Talks by remarkable people, free to the world” as they pitch themselves. They have embraced the idea of giving more than any other example I can think of. And lets face it, the internet is an Aladdin’s cave of free shit. So maybe I don’t need to tell you that Free shit is cool. Free shit will open your mind. Free shit has nothing to lose. You have nothing to lose with free shit. (Am I allowed to swear this much?) I’m talking events, activities, entertainment, workshops and exhibitions. You will go to an event you wouldn’t normally, simply because its FREE. You will open your mind to new interesting things that you had never thought of.

So I am whole heartedly encouraging you to give away as much as you can, you will reap the rewards. I am starting by giving you my list of 5 free things to do in Melbourne;

1. FREE MOVIES at Oustide In Cinema at the State Library (we saw Planet B-Boy, it was ace, I want to learn to break dance now)

2. FREE PERFORMANCES at the Arts Centre (check this one out Break dancing comp ok so its break dancing again, I may have been inspired by the film)

3. FREE ENTRY at Melbourne Open House – get into all those cool buildings you don’t normally have access to

4. FREE TV SHOW – be part of an audience at shows like Spicks and Specks, Thank God You’re Here, The X Factor, The 7PM Project.

5. FREE LOL at the Fed Square Laughter club

This time, the focus will be a bit less specifically digital. if there’s a big story to emerge from this election, it’s the speed with which the ALP was able to turnaround the mountain of goodwill they generated by ousting of John Howard, saying Sorry to the Stolen Generations and steering Australia through the global financial crisis remarkably unscathed. Even the potentially disasterous sacking of Kevin Rudd as party leader was offset by a wave of goodwill for Julia Gillard. How did they turn this into a disaster?

The reality  is that there are hundreds of reasons reasons, and they’ll be debated  for a long time, in forums more relevant than this one. This is not the place for policy. It is the place, however, to look at campaigns and brand  Brand was a huge factor in this campaign and  it really stuck out for me the way the ALP, particularly the Prime Minister, stuck to their message so closely. They hammered the same lines over and over again, and eventually it was to their detriment. In fact, they stuck to their message so closely they trashed their brand.

I realise this is a strange notion, so let me take a step back.  Modern political campaigning is about 2 things – controlling your message, and reacting quickly to polls. In doing this, parties try to win the votes of the vital swinging voters. The reasoning is that swinging voters are typically less engaged with the political process, so messages need to be simple and clear at the times when they  hear them. In this election in particular, the decision was made by both parties that, to a large degree, this would be all that they did. Neither party released much in the way of policy, as this would be potentially ripped apart by their opponents. They were obsessed with controlling their message in the media and with avoiding slip ups. This was compounded by Gillard’s team seeming not to focus too much on the successes of the past 3 years, probably because they were too closely aligned with Kevin Rudd.

Why it didn’t work, from a brand perspective, is that Julia Gillard didn’t have a strong enough brand in the first place. You can’t build a brand through soundbites alone, but you can damage one. The Labor party confused the goodwill and excitement shown to Gillard for genuine affection for her. They assumed everyone felt like them. But in calling the election so soon after she assumed the leadership, and focussing so solidly on keeping her on message and sanitized throughout the campaign, that the goodwill was never allowed to develop into affection. It turned the positive woman with a winning smile and a broad, working class accent into a politician. It meant that her conduct in the deposing of Kevin Rudd, whatever her role in it, remained as issue. In focussing on soundbites, Gillard was reduced to soundbites – she became less than the sum of her parts.

Building a political brand in Australia in 2010 is a many layered and at times not particularly edifying process. Chatting amicable with Kochie and Mel on Sunrise, jogging along Manly beach in fetching Red Speedos or pretending to enjoy a beer at the Rooty Hill RSL probably weren’t what the great thinkers of Athens had in mind in 200bc, but they are nevertheless part of the Australian democratic process.  As less Australian voters position themselves according to party lines (because the parties, by and large, don’t align themselves along these lines either anymore) and as the campaigns themselves become increasingly presidential, brand increases in importance. Consider how often you were asked whether you were voting for “Julia or Tony” during the campaign

To the credit of the Liberal Party campaign, they realised the importance of Tony Abbott’s brand early, and set about remaking it. his blokey, ancharonistic image, potentially a massive shortcoming, became a strength when it was contrasted with Gillard’s  childlessness, his wife and daughters a stark contrast to the colour Tim Mathieson.  The aggressively Catholic, stridently monarchist became a “normal” bloke, and was able to make sly digs at the lifestyle of Gillard.  Like Gillard, his campaign was light on policy, but rather than simply hammering his mention, but he filled the gap with what were basically branding exercises. Did he achieve anything, in real terms, by staying awake for the last 36 hours of the campaign. in real terms, no ; he was probably so dead on his feet by the end of it that he couldn’t have been trusted in control of a vehicle. but it was mentioned in every news story about him for the last two days  of the campaign – instead of “Tony Abbott visists several marginal electorates like every prime ministerial candidate has on the last day of the campaign since the invention  of the aircraft” the stories became “Superman Tony Abbott defies sleep and physical exhaustion to campaign for 36 hours….” The story was not about Tony Abbott’s policies, or even what he said or did – it was about his brand.

As cannily as the Liberals build Abbott’s brand while attacking Gillard, the biggest branding success of the election has been by the Greens . To a large degree, brand is the Green’s entire selling propostion; their policy is an afterthought. But this doesn’t matter to Green voters – what matters is what the Greens are perceived to stand for, and what being a Green voters . With its focus on moral and environmental issues , always positioning themselves on the high ground. While they can lay it on a bit thick at times (check the content of the twitter feed on their site – there’s links to blog posts about mulberry trees, for goodness’ sake) as a branding exercise, aimed at people uncomfortable with the political process. What would a Green government look like? Who knows – it isn’t discussed. But next time a major humanitarian issue takes place, will Bob Brown take a compassionate position The fact that a party made up at is core or hard core environmentalists and former communists was able to win the most urbanised seat in Australia, is a remarkable success and it is largely down to brilliant branding.

What do you think? Was brand a factor in the election result? Or is it just a simplification of a more complex issues? Can a candidate ignore their brand and still win the election?

Igloo Melbourne is looking for a Freelance Mid-Weight Digital Designer who lives and breathes digital. Someone with skills and ideas, who understands the fundamentals and is looking to collaborate with the creative team to deliver amazing work.

Were looking for someone who’s got the skills in all the standard industry software. Bonus if you’ve spent some time designing for Flash or could show us a thing or two about motion graphics.

If you’ve looked down the barrel of a project and thought “how the @#$% am I going to do this” and came out unscathed then we want to hear from you! We’re looking for someone with ideas but more importantly someone who can take a concept from a sketch and turn it into something incredible.

Working at igloo you will have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the creative process with a bunch of like minded individuals all passionate about driving the idea forward and having a great time doing it.

If you like the sound of this then send your Resume and Folio URL to: info@igloo.com.au

I thought I would share 5 great tools that I use everyday on my Mac. These are some handy things you can use to enhance your OS X experience.

1. TotalFinder

This neat little app is one that I can’t imagine working without.  TotalFinder is not a Finder replacement but an enhancement to the native OS X Finder.  First thing you will notice is the addition of Chrome style tabs.  This instantly takes all your finder windows and keeps them neatly inside a single window.  There are options for a dual pane view, you can drag and drop between tabs and you can pull a tab out to create a new window. You can try the alpha version for free here.

2. SecondBar

This one is for all the dual monitor junkies out there.  Having dual monitors is a great way to increase efficiency but one draw back is the absence of a menu bar on your second screen. Enter SecondBar. This simply mirrors the menu bar from your primary monitor and displays it on your secondary screen. Check it out here.

3. RightZoom

The little green plus button on the top left corner of all windows is something I’ve never really been able to figure out. Depending on what app your in it’s behavior is different. You would expect this button to enlarge your window to full-screen (like the expand button on Windows), but this is rarely the case.  RightZoom forces this button to work the way it should. Download here.

4. CloudApp

CloudApp is by far the easiest tool to share files I have used.  Either drag your file onto the little cloud in your menu bar or take a screen shot, then hit the paste key in your email or IM and you have a URL linked to your file.  Easy as that, and it’s also free!  They also have a web interface where you can see all the files you have added to your cloud. You can sign up and download here.

5. Drawers

This one isn’t so much a tool, but it is a great way to organise a busy dock.  Thanks to Stacks introduced in Leopard, you can create folders of shortcuts to your apps and then add a ‘drawer’ to that folder. Drag the folder of shortcuts to your dock to create a Stack.  Because the drawer icon sits on the top it  will appear to contain all your apps.  You can download the drawers of your choice here.  Also have a look here to enable a much nicer list view to go with your shiny new drawers.

I have blogged a few times lately about attempts publishers are making the price of content on the internet (here and here, if you’re interested). Traditional media sources and content producers have always struggled with creating a profitable online model, and the rise of the smartphone and the tablet both highlights the issues they are facing, and presents new opportunities for a solution.  Two more attempts at this solution have been getting publicity recently. First, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has announced it’s plans for a new, national US publication designed specifically for the iPad. The publication is will feature short, snappy news stories (take this to mean lots of pictures, little in the way of analysis) and has been created with the goal of “having young people read newspapers”.   The second thing which got me thinking about it was a story about a series of new magazines created specifically for tablets, called Nomad Editions. Basically, the idea behind is that they’ll produce 5 “editions” around specific topics (food, movies, surfing, viral video, etc), published weekly, which users will be able to subscribe to. It will be built using an interesting technology called Treesaver , which allows users to view ther same content, using the same addresses, on their desktop or mobile device.

These are both nice ideas, but they both seem inspired by a premise I’m not sure I agree with. Mark Edmiston, CEO of Nomad, claimed that Nomad was borne of that fact that “…people reading on their iPads, they’re reading a different way”. Rupert Murdoch made similar claims about his national newspaper concept. The implication in both cases is that the new technology necessitates new content, as well as new content delivery.

I don’t think this is so? Consider recent history. The dark days of 2000 and 2001 when digital music players, in particular the iPod, entered the market. They made listening to music more simple than ever before. They made buying music more simple than ever before. They made people likely to own more music, and purchase music more often.  But this didn’t translate to more money for the content producers, for tangible reasons  -  file sharing,  their product being sold more cheaply on legitimate digital channels and intangible – the availability of music reducing the premium nature of the product, and that which surrounded it (tours, t-shirts, CD singles, etc). The content didn’t change, the way it was consumed did.

So how do content producers stop this from happening to them? Content producers in some ways start from a more difficult position that music companies and musicians did, because they are already giving their product away for free online. However, they have the advantage of their product (in some cases)being relevant for shorter periods of time, and will only be consumed by the user once, it’s therefore less likely to fall victim victim to file sharing.

The content producers who win in this new environment won’t be the ones with the best new content, but the ones who can repackage their existing content most effectively. One most commonly heard cliches about the internet at the moment is that “content is king” (if you work in digital, count the number of times you hear it this week and let us know). But, somewhat counter-intuitively, I don’t think that will be the case for mobile phones and devices, for these early years at least. The content is already available for them, as they’re web browsers(duh).  But browsing on a page designed for desktop on a mobile device has obivous shortcomings. It’s the solutions that takes into account their visual possibilities and the various contexts and situations in which they’re used. A user looking for a quick news update on a crowded train is not going to tolerate a poor interface; an iPad user who’s into bikini shots will prefer a site which makes use of the full screen. Making the transition of your site to a tablet (or even an app) shouldn’t be the time to reconsider your content anymore than buying a new car should be a reason to change your footwear. If I was News Corp, I wouldn’t be looking to create a new brand for the iPad, I would be making my trusted brands as usable and appealing as possible, so that when my existing readers make the inevitable transition, in weeks or months or years, it is as seamless as possible.

Over to you designers…

EDIT – A great debate in this month’s Wired, which expands on many of the points raised here. Key quote – “the Web has had nearly twenty years to provide a viable business model for content, and so far it has failed to do so”

Here is the definitive guide to the election brought to you by the igloo digital design team. We look at the things that really matter. Like what font and colour is the brand in. How many followers has each party leader got. Who owns the digital space.

If people are going to judge our next leader on the colour of their hair, the sound of their voice or the type of swimwear they favour, then its our right, as designers to judge them font against font, brand against brand, HEX against HEX. And of course a few minor policy promises. Who is it going to be?

View a full size version of The Designer’s Guide to The Australian Federal Election 2010

If you are involved in a product driven business, you can’t afford to not be on the ecommerce bandwagon. I’ll try to clarify a few things.. Where did ecommerce come from, where is it going and how your business can get the most out of it now!

To some, ecommerce is relatively new; but to most adept internet users it’s been predominant for about 10 or so years, appearing around the infamous ‘bubble’ period. For many, eBay was the first real glimpse into the time saving marvels of maxing out a credit card without leaving your IBM 386 (complete with turbo button), but these days whether or not to sell it’s second nature to sell your products online.

According to Forrester, this year US online commerce is expected to reach $173b USD and by 2014, $248b USD with 8% market share of all USretail.

This may seem very impressive, but it’s been a long time coming. Let’s look back over the history of ecommerce and we start to get an idea about how long it has taken to arrive at this turning point.

Ready to make the plunge? Then read on..

The ecommerce industry is heavily saturated at the moment with hundreds of options for payment gateways and shopping cart builders so it’s hard to choose a viable option and once you have chosen, knowing how to build and run an effective store that cuts through the competition.

How do you choose which platform?

Igloo has worked with many incarnations of shopping carts and have had to deal with all kinds of horrendous ‘code’ but like all warriors, we have emerged victorious. There are a few viable options. We are big fans of Magento which has both a free and an enterprise edition and sports an impressive set of features. Other solid products are OSCommerce and OpenCart, but rather than me go through them all, check out this article comparing the top 10 open source options.

When the time finally comes to deciding which platform you decide to go with, draw up a list of the 5 most important features your ecommerce experience needs and start googling! We strongly recommend partnering up with an established digital agency, showing them your wish list and have them recommend you a platform, but at the end of the day, its most likely that any major platform can do what you need it do. It’s simply a matter of whether your chosen developers have the skills to do it properly.

As you can see in the Google search trends below, OSCommerce has been very popular in the past, but is losing ground to Magento and more recently also to OpenCart.  

Need some inspiration? How about a success story.

The Brief

In 2006 Domino’s launched their online ordering platform and was last in the category to go to market. They needed to close the gap quickly and asked the agency to develop a strategic plan that would enable them to hit their aggressive online sales goals, identify new digital sales, marketing and innovation opportunities, new audiences and differentiate their shopping experience.

The Solution

The most effective way to reach their goals was to become the preferred tool to shop for pizza on the internet. They set out to develop two ordering tools. The first, Pizza Tracker, became a best in class tool to see the progress of your order in real time. The second, Visual Builder, allows users a fun and intuitive way to create their pizza order. An animated visual representation of the pizza displays the nearly limitless number of possible combinations available.

The Results

Within  16 months the creation of the revamped ordering system and the integration of the online ordering tools resulted in a 70% increase in site visits, while online orders increased 1.5 times. The overall site conversion rate increased in excess of 50% and over 10 million new users registered on Dominos.com. These massive gains ultimately allowed Domino’s to move to first in terms of market share.

source: The Internet Case Study Book

So, what about the future of ecommerce?

At our work at igloo, ecommerce is often a natural extension of our clients’ online presence and this usually comes to life in the traditional form of an online catalogue of products. However I want to explore what the future of ecommerce is and where the potential lies in becoming early adopters.

micropayments

1. (economics) A financial transaction for a very small amount of money

As peoples lives become more and more web-centric, business are looking for new revenue streams. One of the founders of the Pirate Bay believes they have found just the right solution.

Called Flattr, its purpose it to allow members to store an online wallet. When the members find a website they like, they pledge a micropayment to that site. At the end of each month the members wallet will be allocated to the  chosen sites.

“The money you pay each month will be spread evenly among the buttons you click in a month. We want to encourage people to share money as well as content, It’s a test to see if this might be a working method for real micropayments.”  said Peter Sunde from The Pirate Bay.

adaptive payments

Adaptive Payments are one of PayPals more recent offerings however the freedom offered to developers will surely spread to other providers in the coming years. Some of the features of adaptive payments include:

Adaptive Payments offers a number of cool features, including:

• Pay anyone with an email address. Make payments to another person as long as they have an email address or mobile phone number, with or without a PayPal account.
• Receive payments from anyone. Customers, with or without a PayPal account, can make a payment as long as they have an email address.
• Pre-approved payments. Customers can pre-approve future payments.
• Chained payments. Send a payment to one individual, who in turn shares the payment with multiple individuals.
• Split payments. Divide a payment among a number of individuals.

They are just a few of the many exciting emerging trends in ecommerce. Hopefully you will have scope to explore these in your next project, but of course it’s not always feasible. A good agency will be able to guide you through these trends and recommend when it makes sense to push the boundaries.

How to get the most out of your ecommerce

Now.. you’ve chosen a platform and your site is getting built, how do you maximise ROI?

1. Most importantly, make the shopping experience simple and easy to use!
2. Put yourself in the shoes of the consumer. At every checkpoint in the development process, use the site as a customer and think about point 1
3. Capitalise on your market differentiator. Use every unique feature of your business in your arsenal to win customers
4. Photos > Text. Make sure your products are well photographed and look appealing, it will make a world of difference
5. Market your site! Launching your site is only the beginning. There is SO much competition in this space, you must put your marketing hat on

Hopefully you’re either inspired, or have a new appreciation for the possibilities of ecommerce. If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch.

Good luck and I hope your business can dominate the ecommerce space!

@dangraetzer is the technical director at igloo.

It ran on Gruen Nation on Tuesday night, again on Wednesday night is now all over the web from the age to the tube and within a few hours has no doubt become the ad that will help The Greens pinch a bit of power in what has been a lackluster, negative and uninspiring election campaign. Todd Sampson called it “the best ad the greens have ever done” and to top it off, the ad finishes with a line the Greens could run with for the next 20 years “If you think, vote Greens” Bang!

I think the success of what we have just witnessed, and what we may see on polling day, can be summarised by three key learnings;

1) honesty, integrity, positivity and a great idea will always win people. Watching the Labor and Liberal party slam each other only makes them look amateur.

2) You don’t need a big (any) media budget if you have a great idea. If idea and timing are right, the digital world can do it for you. This ad, will become ‘The Ad’ for the Greens despite ABC not allowing it to be run as on official campaign Ad. They don’t need to. With the election in just over a week, news stations, youtube, twitter and blogs just like this will deliver an effective and free media spend. Nothing beats people actually wanting to watch your ad and an ad you want to watch only needs to be seen once.

3) Owning the digital space can play a big part in election campaigns. 95 tweets to Julia Gillard and 47 to Tony Abbott at the time of writing tells me that neither of the majors have a strategy around digital. Good on ya Bob Brown, at least you have tweeted 327 times! The greens, without event meaning to, are now probably going to have the most impact in digital.

And, talking digital, why have I not yet been clicking on any compelling online election ads?

@tonyprysten is the creative director at igloo

What was stunning about this wasn’t  Abbott  ignorance of the detail of the policy, but the flippancy and complete lack of embarrassment with which he dealt with his lack of knowledge. By saying he “wasn’t Bill Gates”, he was implying, by proxy that technical issues were the concern of computer nerds, and that the details of the policy were beneath hin Which is stunning in both it’s arrogance and Abbott’s lack of understanding of how the real world works.

What Abbott doesn’t understand is about broadband speed is the question isn’t who in the electorate will be affected, but who won’t. What Australian business doesn’t now have a web presence? What person doesn’t pay bills or manage their finances online? What student doesn’t use the internet for study? In fact, who doesn’t go online as part of their day to day life?

The answer, evidently, is career politicians who have advisors to handle that sort of thing for them, and have never had to place an order, or pay a bill, or book a cab, or find a plumber online.  Rather than being the reserve of “tech heads”,  issues relating to broadband speed are part of mainstream life in Australia, and will only become more important.

To put the inappropriateness of the statement in context, imagine if Kerry O’Brien had asked Abbott a question about the wheat industry, and Abbott, unable to answer, had joked “Well, how would I know, I’m not Old McDonald?” Or if he had been asked an economic question and responded with “Who do I look like, Ben Bernanke? Ask a number cruncher, why don’t you?” Unthinkable.

Abbott can take some comfort in one thing, however. The man the ALP have entrusted to take him to task over this howler is Stephen Conroy.