Quick Response Code (QR Code)

QR Code scanning is on the rise. The bar code scanning app/tool ScanLife publishes reports and findings throughout the year.

QR code scanning increased from Q2 of 2010 to Q2 of 2011. In Q2 of 2010, ScanLife saw about 10 scans per every minute of that Quarter.

Then in the same Quarter of the next year, there has been a significant increase. In Q2 of 2011 ScanLife found have been 60 scans per every minute of that Quarter! Quite a significant increase. Break that stat down, ScanLife is seeing one scan per every second of the day!

These stats go to show QR Code scanning is on the rise and that your customers and consumers are on board!

The availability of Apps for everything you need, and plenty that you don’t, is staggering. Every 25 minutes, another iPhone App is submitted. More than 3,000,000,000 apps have been downloaded from the App Store by iPhone and iPod Touch users worldwide – that’s roughly 2 for every person in China. 34.3 million iPhones have been sold worldwide.

If you lined up all the iPhones that have ever been sold, they would stretch from New York to California.

The top three free apps are Facebook, Google Earth, Pandora Radio.

The average number of apps an average iPhone user downloads per month is 11.

The opportunities for design are immense with the outbreak of apps – from the development of the icon to the full graphic interface. As with any form of communication, the hierarchy of information and the navigation through the information is critical to the success of an app. If it looks great but doesn’t make it easy for the user, it will fail. A critical element for the design team is to step back and forget they know anything about the app so they can view it as a new user would throughout the design and development process.

It seems as though so much of news today is broken down into tiny bits of information that can fit into a ticker along the bottom of your TV screen or as a side bar in a magazine. Though we are sure that we are capable of absorbing more than a ‘tweet’, it seems to be delivered in these little bits of information.
661,509 visitors saw the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen’s Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition. It is the eight highest attendance in Met history!!!
A 98 year old San Francisco woman, Sensei Keiko Fukuda, earned judo’s highest black belt. She is only the fourth person now alive to hold the designation.

Do you need more information than that to satisfy your interest? With the web, you can take that snippet and explore to your heart’s content to find more details. Perhaps it’s good. Maybe we absorb a greater variety of things with these little bits of information than if we could only concentrate on a few feature stories. Does it spark our interest in areas that would otherwise go unnoticed?

Reading the snippet of a 98 year old woman being so active was extremely inspiring. I didn’t really need to read much more than to simply know that that level of activity and concentration was possible at 98 years!

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” from Shakespeare’s lyrical tale of “star-cross’d” lovers, Romeo and Juliet. We’re in the midst of a naming study for one of our clients, so we are reviewing literally thousands of names and words and what their implied meanings are. In doing so, we had to share somethings.

There’s the one we all wonder about – why a parkway isn’t called a driveway and a driveway isn’t called a parkway. Harmless enough. Probably hasn’t caused too much concern other than just wondering who mixed up the signs originally. Haven’t really seen any situations where someone inadvertently parked their car on the parkway or drove over the speed limit on a driveway.

But then there is “Vitaminwater” as the name of a product. Ok, vitamins + water – what could be bad? Actually, must be good for you because vitamins are good for you and so is water, right? Alas, that is not so apparently. According to the manufacturer’s lawyers “No consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking that vitaminwater was a healthy beverage”.

Huh?? You think you are making a healthy choice, but a bottle of “Vitaminwater” contains 33 grams of sugar, making it more akin to a soft drink than to a healthy beverage. Yes, that is less than a Coke Classic , which has 40.5 grams for 12 oz. Forty grams of sugar is the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar. 10 teaspoons of sugar is the equivalent of 20 sugar cubes. Drinking one Coke a day for a year results in the consumption of 32 pounds of sugar.

And try to find any nutritional information on their website that talks to the calories and sugar content.

The word ‘calligraphy‘ is derived from the Greek words ‘killi’ and ‘graphos’, meaning ‘beautiful and ‘writing’. Calligraphers strive to express harmony and emotion through the forms of letters. Even if you do not understand the actual translation of the calligraphic word, you are instantly drawn to the beautiful art of the letter forms. This is why calligraphy is known as ‘beautiful writing’. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Calligraphy today in the Western World is often associated with custom invitations, weddings, fine art, and logos. Capturing the attention of people passing by was this beautiful bit of calligraphy as part of a store window display in Greenwich, Connecticut. A rare treat to see a contemporary use of calligraphy in this unexpected setting. We’re so accustomed to computer generated typography that hand drawn calligraphy makes us stop and take a look to enjoy the elegance and rhythm of the lines.

Summer brings sun, warm breezes, swimming, hiking, biking, beaches, lots of outdoors and of course, the bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables.

This year, we are celebrating this bounty that also includes the release of the Amco Houseworks “Corn Desilker” product. This is part of the line of packaging that TFI Envision had designed for Amco Houseworks. This product works perfectly with farm fresh corn and compliments the Amco Houseworks “Corn Cutter” and Amco Houseworks ”One-Step Corn Kerneler”. So enjoy the summer.

The invention of the printing press can not only be credited for a revolution in the production of books, but also for fostering the rapid development in science, art and religion through the transmission of texts. The earliest dated printed book known as the “Diamond Sutra” is believed to have been printed in 868 CE or possibly before. In 1041, movable clay type was first invented in China. In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with replaceable moveable wooden or metal letters.

Since the mid-1990s the Internet has had a drastic impact on culture and commerce, including the rise of near instant communication by electronic mail, instant messaging, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) “phone calls”, two-way interactive video calls, and the World Wide Web with its discussion forums, blogs, social networking, and online shopping sites.

A daily question –  whether to print or not to print. Many people sign their emails with a notice suggesting that you ‘don’t print this email to save paper’. It is something that we all need to consider. Do organizations/companies need to print an annual report or just distribute it as a PDF via email or posted to a website? What do you think?

Good design, whether it is for packaging, brochures, website, in-store display, requires an understanding of the communication hierarchy. What should be read/viewed first, second, third, and so on. Understanding the strategy behind the piece is critical to creating a design that effectively communicates the messages.

In 1879 in Paris, Louis Émile Javal observed that reading does not involve a smooth sweeping of the eyes along the text, as previously assumed, but a series of short stops (called fixations) and quick saccades. In recent years, the increased sophistication and accessibility of eye tracking technologies have generated a great deal of interest in the commercial sector. Applications include web usability, advertising, sponsorship, package design and automotive engineering. In general, commercial eye tracking studies function by presenting a target stimulus to a sample of consumers while an eye tracker is used to record the activity of the eye.

The basic understanding that humans do not necessarily read in top to bottom, left to right order, is fundamental to the need for a communication hierarchy. That hierarchy is supported by the strategy driving the need for the specific piece. That is what makes good design and a successful piece.