That’s because the type of shredding I’m talking about involves paper and making sure your confidential information is safely destroyed.

Normally shredding wouldn’t be cool or that much fun, but when you do it with The Papervore shredding goes to a whole new level.

Let’s shred!

Created by Pigeontail Design, not only is the shredder, well a shredder, it’s also a really sweet modern style coffee table to top it off.

A cross functional, coffee table shredder where the shredded junk mail becomes a cornucopia of colors that only enhances the design of the table…. I’ll take 2!

If you don’t believe me when I say this thing is pretty cool, just check out the awesome video they made:

The Papervore from Pigeontail Design on Vimeo.

The company makes some great stuff so go visit them online and @Pigeontail on Twitter. And if you are looking for a new site to help you find ways/things to spend all your paycheck on, definitely go check out The Swag Mag and at @TheSwagMag where I found out about the shredder.

You can thank us later for helping you find some cool new stuff.

Domino’s definitely seems to be getting more and more confident about its improvements to its pizzas. This includes both the changes to the crust, sauce and cheese blend we posted about a couple of months back, as well as the actual visual appeal of the pizzas coming out of the restaurants across the nation.

So what does a brand like Domino’s decide to do at that point? Well, launch another ad campaign centered around showcasing the “realness” of the brand, essentially reinforcing to consumers how much of an open book the brand is and how proud of their recent changes they are.

The contest, referred to as ‘Show Us Your Pizza’ also integrates a contest with the campaign, allowing users to submit photos of their pizzas for a chance to win $500 if their pizza photo is used in an ad.

The program is tied in with Facebook and is currently awaiting the 3rd assignment to be pushed out to Facebook fans who have “Liked” the brand. Appears that they have over 5,000 of those right now, which of course is good for the brand as they can now continue to market directly to those fans through Facebook in the meantime.

Another facet of the campaign is that according to the article linked to above on AdWeek, the campaign is also a response to “Web sites like “This Is Why You’re Fat” that show unflinching photos of real food orders that contrast with the more idyllic images found in advertising.”

I’m not going to lie, as a bunch of foodies here at HQ, a number of us find our way to that site quite often and I’m sure a lot of other people do too. Some of the stuff you see on there

DEFINITELY

looks nothing like what it does in ads, no matter how crazy a dish might be.

Given that the brand is apparently paying attention to what’s going on over at This is Why You’re Fat, I’d say the next evolution in this campaign is seeing what the craziest pizza someone could actually come up with is. I can think of a few Quakers who might see what they could come up with.

Either that, or Domino’s brings back the Noid!

Anyone want to start petitioning for that with me?

Another awesome Arcade Fire experiment, this time paired up with Google.
The Wilderness Downtown

So, the crew over at Forbes.com just unleashed a list of what they consider to be the best-ever social media campaigns.

The list, including everyone from Blendtec Blenders (featured above whose sales rose 700% since the campaign in 2006) to Smirnoff, to Old Spice to Ikea, Vitamin Water to Careerbuilder, BMW to The Blair Witch Project, Burger King to, well, Burger King (both the Subservient Chicken and their Whopper Sacrifice campaigns), is pretty comprehensive.

Now, some of the campaigns I don’t necessarily agree with as being the ‘best’ but that’s probably a whole other blog post….

Honestly though, if you haven’t been paying attention to what brands have been doing in the social media space the last few years, I definitely recommend you take a look through the image slide-show and write-ups on each. It’ll paint a broad picture for you of how social media continues to push various limits when it comes to driving consumer engagement and building effective marketing strategies.

On a side note, I did notice however that the Smirnoff campaign for ‘Bros Icing Bros’ that we talked about here didn’t make the list. Oh yeah, that wasn’t a social media campaign from the brand, or was it…? (I know a whole bunch of people that still dispute that.) Either way, even if the brand wasn’t involved with it as they claimed (which I can understand why), it sure was one heck of a organic, social-media driven campaign that apparently sold the product to a whole new consumer segment, bros.

All in all though, a fun read, so check it out.

The ladies of the world would like to remind you that we tend to be impressed when you’re dressed with same intention. How do you accomplish snappy dressing in this day and age of 24/7 casualness (she types, noting oops she is wearing jeans)? In one easy step: simply go to Put This On and read/watch everything there. Done!

Put This On, Episode 1: Denim from Put This On on Vimeo.

Yours Truly,
The Ladies.

P.S. Please purchase this immediately.

They’re actually kinda like my personal version of a York Peppermint Patty, (think back to the commercials in the 80′s) except I don’t end up on top of a mountain with heavy snowfall coming down. Instead I end up in the tropics somewhere.

I also like zombies. Zombies pretty much rule because they are the most versatile monster in all of the horror movie genre. Sometimes they move slow and aren’t too smart. Other times they move fast and are smarter than the human beings that are trying to outrun them. (Side-note: If you want my personal list of best Zombie flicks, or want to dispute Zombie flick greatness, email me or hit us up on Twitter. Alright, back to the point of the post now.)

So when you take Starburst, the brands bagpipe-toting spokesperson and a zombie commuter riding a city bus who continues to contradict the Starburst guy, it makes for a fun commercial.

Best quote from the Zombie to the Starburst guy: “You are boring me to death, and I’m already dead.”

So, have some fun and check out the spot.

“Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?” – High Fidelity

I read somewhere that brain activity is way higher when reading, or even being read to, than it is when watching TV or movies, because your imagination is much more engaged. For my presentation, I argued that the shock of seeing Alex rape and pillage his way through A Clockwork Orange on screen was less powerful than reading it, because as all good suspense writers know, NOT seeing something is going to freak people out way more than seeing it. You let their imaginations spin the tale for you. Plus, this is America! It’s 2010, not 1971. We see unimaginable violence on screen all the time! Surely we can gift the Alex on the page with some pretty wicked deeds culled from our collective TV and film memories? Doesn’t holding up the violence of A Clockwork Orange next to movies like Kick Ass or The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo almost make Alex’s little on-screen rebellion seem quaint?

“What we were after now was the old surprise visit. That was a real kick and good for laughs and lashings of the old ultraviolent.” – A Clockwork Orange

Context matters, always has. Clearly High Fidelity in the context of my brain was a different animal than it was in the context of my classmate’s brain. Perhaps he was able to find empathy for the people on screen by picking up on their body language cues, and I was more able to project personal experiences and fears into the text, finding connection that way.

In an experiment which I have blogged about before, the same people who ignored a street musician on their way to work might have sat rapt and attentive at his concert performance later that night. They would have given him a hundred bucks’ worth of their time, because that’s what you have to pay to see Joshua Bell. There is an interesting phenomenon in that; paying exorbitantly for an experience in a velvet-cushioned concert hall, you feel like it is somehow more valuable than getting that exact same experience for free in a dirty subway station.

But, to be fair, one would never expect to see the best violinist in the world busking in the Metro on their way to work.

“In his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Kant argued that one’s ability to appreciate beauty is related to one’s ability to make moral judgments. But there was a caveat…to properly appreciate beauty, the viewing conditions must be optimal.” (Source)

As designers, we deal with context all the time. Poorly-chosen context can ruin everything. Where is the message going to be displayed? What will potential viewers be doing when they see it? Driving to work? Trying to look up something online? Zoning out in front of the TV? How do you make your message enticing in the midst of the task the viewer is trying to complete? What might the viewer’s mood be? Print designers control their context by choosing form, (will the message best be conveyed in a book, a poster, a business card?) but have little control over where their design shows up once it leaves their hands. Web designers slice out their own little environment within the context of the World Wide Web, (should it be a pop-up, a banner ad, a fullscreen website, a Flash game?) but have to contend with the overwhelming choice of the Internet, not to mention a user’s system and font limitations, and ability to locate what they’ve designed.

In the end, like the books vs. movies project, it’s all going to come down to the individual. Their experiences, opinions, location and mood will color everything they see. “Know your audience” seems like Design 101, but sometimes the sheer scope and breadth of what that really means can overwhelm. So what can we do? Seems to me like finding that answer is the whole point of being a designer, so I suppose to repeat a well-worn trope, we must simply keep calm and carry on.

What might that evidence be you ask?

Well, apparently the next Superman comic is going to be set in none other than The Queen City according to the crew over at Cincinnati.com.

In addition to deciding once and for all, who is the chili king, Skyline or Goldstar, Superman will also be partaking in all that is Cincinnati from a run in the 2011 Flying Pig, to enjoying a burger at the legendary Zip’s.

It’s unknown at present whether he’ll be taking up residency on the West or East side, but whatever his choice is, it’s certain that there will be quite a stir caused.

So again, if you haven’t realized it yet, Cincinnati truly is pretty much the coolest place on earth. First ever professional baseball team; check, we got that covered. Flying pigs. Yep, we’re good there. Ties to the entertainment industry? Um, what other city can claim that one of the best movies ever was set in it (yes, I’m talking Airborne)? I still say it’s a travesty that it didn’t get an Oscar!

So again, I’m telling you Cincinnati rules. We didn’t need Superman coming here to prove it, but hey, it doesn’t hurt.

You might think that your emails are perfect and that your recipients don’t misinterpret what you’re saying, but you might want to think again.

According to research done by behavioral science professor Nicholas Epley, who is with the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, people only correctly interpret emails slightly over 50% of the time.

Consider some research done by Justin Kruger, a professor at NYU, which found that people only accurately ascertained the meaning of emails (distinguishing sincerity from sarcasm) roughly 56% of the time (as the professor said “A rate not much better than chance”) and you’ll see we’ve got a problem on our hands.

It’s no secret that the issue with email communication is the context you read it in. You are in a vacuum. You read words on a screen without being able to hear the senders tone or see their nonverbal cues (anything from body language to facial expressions). This misinterpretations can lead to negative impacts on business in and out of the workplace, with business clients, as well as friends and family.

So what do you do about it?

Well, you couldcreate a program that helps deal with your email tone. Think grammar or spell check, except for tone. As the story points out, Matt Eldridge apparently was a good salesman in person, but turned people off when he emailed them and could thus not close sales. So, to deal with his issue, he created the ToneCheck program.

Apparently, the program scans the phrases in your emails for emotions and ‘loaded phrases.’ How does it know what a loaded phrase is? Well, through an initial ‘tone tolerance’ check after downloading the program, you can set levels for various emotions that you are willing to communicate.

Is this interesting? Yes. Do I think everyone needs this to help them with their tone? Not really. Sometimes you can easily determine if your emails tone is wrong by, well, just reading your email before you send it.

I mean, take this example on the ToneCheck homepage. Some people might actually write this, but I’d like to think these sort of email communication issues would be few and far between:

Bob,
You should get off your pedestal and listen to your sales team.
They do support you and will do what needs to get done.
Sincerely,
Mary

That’s pretty much the most emotionally confusing email I’ve ever read. First, it seems like Bob’s getting yelled at, then it ends with a ‘Sincerely’ which seems more sarcastic than truly sincere.

So, all in all, I guess I’m intrigued by the application. Heck, I wrote a blog post about it and a lengthy one at that. The research shows that something like this would be helpful, so I can’t dispute that. The cool thing about the program is that apparently, as more people start to use it, it becomes smarter and richer with what it can offer and catch in terms of poor tone, as its database continues to grow.

It’ll be interesting to see where it goes from here. Maybe in 5 years it will even be something that’s built in to our email programs.

Thanks to @kcdunstan for the heads up.

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