What did you do in 2011

As LinkedIn claims, 2011 was a year of change. Compared to past years, it was a kind of slow paced zen contemplation year, yet full of real stuff: new things, that I’d never done before, visual arts, digital signage, old and new friends, great music. I’ve spent most of the year in new products development:

Designing and producing new digital totems like StandOut for private banking, Almondo, which we installed in the largest retail malls in the country, the limited edition of Lumina and the high-end ZilverBlade. Now they call us “the totem people”…

• several branding and SEO projects (thanks to the good old word-of-mouth “channel”),
• playing old musical instruments and designing a new MIDI controller
• visiting few new countries and islands…
• plus thousands of tiny happy moments in the land of the Penguins.

There was too much contrast, not enough time for close friends and far away destinations. I’ve missed writing, playing music, more travel adventures with an enduro bike, but this will happen after the ski season is over.

Lets hope we’ll find the balance in 2012. Less time on the branding laptop and more creative time at the studio and on the road. More music in the near-field studio monitors and more near-field communication with friends, tablets, totems, allowing us to wirelessly exchange information and make transactions at stores and banks.

It’s worth to do the hard work to figure out how to make life better. Thank you for all creative and corporate presents plus a pile of notebooks to write a handful of goals that seem important

Wish you all a Happy, Healthy and Wealthy 2012 and don’t let your dreams be dreams!

So, what did you do in 2011?

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In few countries, you’ll have even a record button, which can be used to record your performance and share the piece with the world. I just captured my first take. The only suggestion would be to improve the sound latency in the Flash, add/ overlay some keys for percussion and hope we’ll have a great music instrument in 2012!

Our next-generation midi controller UMO1 will be shipping in 40 days

See you in the jazz club tonight

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Digital content creation and management – trends, strategy, technology and tools – digital signage, interactive totems and retail kiosks. Coming soon at your favorite Mall.

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screen time increased 2 times for the last 3 years

Leisure time? Screen time is getting close to 72% of the pie. According to few research studies released this month, on average we spend:

• 3.2 hours a day on social networking, microblogging and video sites such as Facebook and Twitter
• 2.5 in front of traditional TV, timeshifted DVRs and online video
• 4.6 with PCs and mobile devices at the office and home

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Let me introduce you to EXPOSE — the world’s first all-glass multi-touch kiosk with 25″ full-HD digital signage display and built-in surround sound system. Designed and manufactured by BrandTouch Europe, its less than one inch thick body integrates hundreds of hardware modules and software applications for your bank, boutique, hotel, trade show, event or residence.

With its ultimate HD multimedia, intelligent analytics, mobile CRM, hundreds of connectivity and application options, EXPOSE is the perfect ambassador for every brand, striving for top visibility and excellence.

Check www.brand-touch.eu for more info.

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Top Brands

Every third import in the united European market is suspicious counterfeiting with infringed brand or design rights. The global loss is $30-50m just for one brand and billions per year for the top 5 cosmetic brands, mostly in less developed markets. Seems when your brand is 120 years old and you sell in 210 countries, you have an attractive critical mass to be attacked by counterfeiters, even if your licensee produces the goods in the same Chinese factory where the fake products come from.

What would you do? You develop a brand integrity strategy, you invent optical quality packaging, laser-focused quality control, nanocoatings, sophisticated visible/ invisible color shifting labels, individual 2D barcode tagging, transparent packaging, licensed factories and exclusive authorized distributors. You constantly secure, enhance, deter, partner and do brand ID trainings of law attorneys, National Customs Agency officers, The Border Police, NSCOC (National Service for Combating Organized Crime) agents.

Thanks to Turcu & Turcu law office, we had a chance to meet dozens of brand integrity managers and government, police and customs agents, monitoring and protecting global brands such as Sara Lee, Timberland, Samsung, Epson, Eli Lilly, Nokia, Estee Lauder, Coty Prestige, L’oreal, Lacoste, Chanel, General Motors, Levi Strauss, Puma, Daimler, Adidas, Bvlgari, Harley-Davidson and many others.

Sofia is a part of a worldwide network of administrative and brand integrity investigators and I was happy to see so many fake website knock-downs, seizes, raids and litigation programs. With more than 75 000 annual counterfeiting cases for Europe only, you can be sure that buying a fake Estee Lauder perfume, full of sulfur, ammonia, phosphorus, potassium, titanium and horse/dogs urine as a binder to keep the alcohol and oils, will not be the best bargain to make you girlfriend happy, especially if you don’t wanna see her face and skin burned tomorrow. It’s not only a brand protection or tax/unemployment protection issue; it’s your own health and consciousness.

Keep brandmoving. See ya at the top!

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I decided on a TabletPC because I didn’t want to be chained to my desk at the office/home when you can design and sketch digitally everywhere – on the plane, on the beach, in the mountains, in the café –  sketching your ideas, stories and the life that surrounds you….only a TabletPC can give you that freedom and experience. This devices are the perfect match for creative professionals – a digital sketchbook where you can do everything we used to do in our studio + much more – getting notes and digitizing content, sketching logos and websites, painting with thousands of brushes and canvas types, sculpting and rendering 3D models with endless choice of materials and lights, designing business presentations, CNC toolpath, SWOT/ web analytics/ SEO reports for customers  and of course the casuals – web surfing, video conferences and Skype calls,  music, emails, eBook reading, office apps  - all of this on the move, out of the office, on the fly – wherever you want to go. Once I grabbed a tablet PC, I never looked back (currently spending less than 3 hours per week at the office). Designers love to use simple things like stylus (pen one end, eraser on the other) or fingertips in 90% of the cases, using a PC as natural as possible.

The first major UMPC improvement came last year with Dell Latitude XT2 and HP TouchSmart tx2, packing a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo behind a 12.1” multitouch screen, 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 320GB disk, secured with a fingerprint scanner, which I enjoy every day. The only drawback is that the 256 pressure-sensitivity works only in a couple of applications, while  Wacom Intuos4 has 2048 pixel-level pressure sensitivity, with several different brushes  and even detects at which angle you hold the stylus to the surface.

After Apple joined the “tablet” party with it’s iPad this month (a pen coming soon), the slate PC market will grow exponentially, but the creative professionals are (almost) forgotten. The NetTabs are only larger media-focused readers/ phones, so I have to use my old convertible C300. After Acer discontinued all their tablet PC recently, I’m still searching for the ultimate tool for creative professionals:

• Large Screen – 12.1” SXGA  is my favorite and it really does matter. The larger the device, the more useful it is, as far as you can carry it in a standard office bag.
• Wi-Fi, 3G/UMTS – I can leave with a Wi-Fi + Bluetooth connectivity , a tablet is not a second phone plus you can always speak in speakerphone mode. Data plans will come down when 4G is spread in 2013
• Rigid design and Battery Life – you can choose from 2 to 10 hours. Just cut in half what the vendor says or get a second battery to secure your new customer while making your great presentation.
• eBook Reading – while electronic paper is still the best display type for reading if you read a lot, but  we need a devices that work well for both books and multimedia, artists don’t think in black and white.
• Win 7/ i7 applications – content is critical, applications are critical. We need a working tool to make us $$$ per hour, not a plastic toy. Multitasking? Intel does, iPad doesn’t. Games, TV and videos are different story for other devices.
• Pens, Brushes, Rugged, Waterproof… – sometimes a feature makes the device. If you want to use it outdoors, in the rain or charge it in the car?  Get a Motion computing tablet
• Price? $500 to $5000. My first generation Acer was very expensive, this year we’ll have a convertible for less than $500!

Toshiba Portégé M750 and Fujitsu Lifebook T4310 are nice office tablets,  Motion J3400 and Duros 8404 are great rugged tablets with the best outdoor display on the market, iPad and Pegatron are nice entertainment media tablets, but I can’t see the ultimate device for creative professionals. Rather than buying a dust-collector, I will wait until the end of the year, hoping to see the best tablet PC. Lenovo U1 Hybrid is really close to the perfect one!

What’s your tablet PC experience?

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the perfect One

Many philosophers have thought there is no universal, ultimate perfection – the perfect One is different because everyone has different wishes. Other argued that the perfect One is flexible enough to be able to meet the wishes of anyone or at least the wishes determined by the majorities. Evolution theories, fairy tales, magazines and movies propagate ultimate beauty as essential for well-being and survival. I have to admit, there are some “beautiful” features, which are fundamental signs of health, growth and evolution, beauty as certified quality – attractive attributes, that positively correlate to quality, healthiness and fertility (no, not the hour glass 0.7 waist to hip ratio or the ultimate celebrity features):

Wise & Intelligent – mature, insightful, trying to go beyond your exact search, seeking to get a sense of what you’re looking for and pull up the best, based on understanding, experience, trends and hot topics.

Organic & Natural – with a good sense of humor and ear for music, optimistic, attuned, deleting all things against us (like grudges, past, etc.)

Warmhearted & Broadminded – talkative, sincere, funny, patient but passionate, caring but sensual, outgoing but easy-going.

Intuitive & Creative – energetic, one who makes us feel like we’re the best one in the world and one who can complete us, encouraging to change for the better.

Diverse & Flexible – one with multicultural heritage, self-confident and inspiring, trust-worthy and surprising, mission-critical and adaptive

Beautiful & Humane - curvy and asymmetrical, kind and polite, with a sense for the most relevant actions to current challenges and problems, especially in extreme situations, where coolly observation is required.

Focused & Suggestive on the best traits and strengths, outsourcing the rest to third parties, helping to find the best way to the desired topic.

Communicative & Sharing knowledge, experience and solutions, supporting your common world of interests, goals and everything, which contribute to higher soul/body/ lifestyle levels.

Now finding the perfect and successful one is easier than ever. We can search, create, enjoy, present to the right friends and audience and archive, if necessary. She has a great voice, keeps us well organized and comprehensive, increases the assets and reduces the maintenance costs – an outstanding solution for us, our SMB or even our brand. She is multifunctional, solving problems in minutes, with a wide supporting community of friends and contributors. She offers intuitive management, fast and easy to use, without advanced knowledge, attended by detailed life-books/ manuals?…

HolyMoly - who is she: a perfect Woman, Muse, Content Management System, Search Engine, musical Composition or all of the above?

Never mind, she is always on the road to perfection. See ya at the top!

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December was full of rebranding projects. We helped 10 brands – most of which with over a decade of history – to start the New Year with rebranded identity and websites (links and case studies coming soon).
After thousands of answered question concerning their brand strategy, web architecture, site structure, layout, design, content, ranking, long-tail keyword clusters, tags and gadgets…in the end of the day the formula of industry perfection, profit explosion and business optimization is brilliantly simple and repeatable:

   80% quality traffic share
+ 80% customer’s mindshare
= 80% marketshare

Not only to survive, but to grow and thrive the highly challenging “downturn” economy, we need a systematic approach and focus to identify the current values and capitalize on new opportunities, far ahead of the competition.

So, what will work for 2010 is absolutely the same top 10 trends, which worked perfectly in the last 3 years:

Brand strategy – a clear and solid foundation for your sales. Leverage all channels and maximize your current resources and business growth activities with measurable, brand performance metrics.

Innovation – creative thinking, mindmapping, drawing, playing music – one hour a day, away from the stressfull  office meetings and negotiations.

World-class design. Good design means clarity, clearly differentiated value proposition, performance, function and service, sales and trust. Quality in products, customer experience and content is the king. Brand reputation through word-of-mouth – the queen. Satisfied customers – the key to repeat business.

Budget & time to cut operating costs – everything which helps to cut costs and improve performance. Focus on what you do best and outsource the rest. The core fundamentals – strategy, KPI’s and most profitable customers. Outsource areas that are not your business’ core competencies. Let the experts do the work. They are better, faster and more cost-effective.

Digital media as the main channel for reaching your customers. Web & mobile are now mainstream, faster, cheaper and easier to target your perfect customers with immediate, real-time and measurable results.  Forget print and postage delays and fees. Go wireless, invest in digital and grow organic.

Reach the top of the Search. 1.3 Billions of indviduals are searching for a specific need every day. If you are not found by your target audience on the first page of Google, you don’t exist. Being on the top leads to serious sales. Digital users research and digg before they buy. Leverage Web 2.0 tools to allow the customers to engage, share, follow and become fans of the brand. Get the best brand awareness, market research and real-time knowledge about your customers for free! Local or global – search engine optimization and top ranking are sophisticated, time consuming and change on an hourly basis, so better outsource them to an expert.

Build the Brand. Top companies make absolutely certain that brand is a central management principle, the platform on which your customers make their buying decision. Any time  they touch the brand via any channel, it must consistently and credibly communicate its promise and value.

Move to the SaaS cloud, digg the CRM Database. Make sure your have a detailed platform, deeply integrated with all brand channels and Web 2.0 interfaces.The new world of permanently online, social & knowledge hunting communities provides you with endless opportunities.

Leverage the good old analytics – we define and measure progress toward critical organizational goals,  offline and online metrics, established in the strategy. Try and improve – new layouts, design, titles, copy, meta… Only  results matter.

Wherever you are, enjoy your holidays! Cheers for a great 2010!

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