HyperQuake

Artists giving away their music via free downloads on the internet isn’t anything new: Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have both jumped head first into experimenting with this. On February 14th, 2010, Blink 182 singer/guitarist Tom DeLong’s side project Angels and Airwaves (AVA) released their new album, available for free download. Appropriately enough, it’s entitled ‘LOVE’.

The band funded the whole thing themselves, spending about $500,000, sources say. If you are willing to do that, you are committed to your music no matter how good or bad people may think it is.

The whole concept of the ‘free’ download and releasing the album digitally only is more of a goodwill gesture towards the fans, with the hope of unlocking new revenue streams by enticing fans to pay for new content. In AVA’s case, this comes in the form of fan club membership ($20.85 every 3 months). By joining you get an assortment of early access passes to soundchecks, exclusive video and blog content, etc.

As a guy who still buys CDs and vinyl, I’m amazed to see how the music world is changing. Some bands and labels get it and are diversifying their ‘brands’ to cater to how music fans consume their product now, as well as trying to identify what that product will be in the future. If giving away your stuff for free is any indication, the product certainly may not be music. The reality is, even though listeners can donate after they download albums like this, I think most artists realize this isn’t really going to happen, or if it does, that it won’t amount to much.

Regardless of whether you like music or the bands who are giving stuff away, this is still an interesting situation, and since no one’s quite figured out the ideal model for selling modern music yet, you can bet that fun stuff is ahead.

It’s always fun to be in the news, and we’re excited to share the story with you: Recently the Cincinnati Business Courier, a weekly news publication covering all things business-related in the Cincinnati area, ran a small story about HyperQuake and one of our clients, iExplore.

If you’re even the wee-est bit of a typophile, you can’t help but have your heart set a-flutter by a really wonderful ampersand. The above comes from 300&65 Ampersands, and they have plenty of lovelies for your perusal.

For amps out in the wild, see The Ampersand blog, and for a ridiculously awesome ampersand font pack, head over to Haäfe & Haph. You’re welcome, font geeks.

This past weekend, Cincinnati saw the best and brightest in the local ad world come together to recognize the great work that took place in the advertising community across the region during 2009. Put on by AdClub Cincinnati, The Addy Awards (much like Santa), come only once a year bearing gifts of trophies and recognition to all the agencies in the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky whose design work is deserving of the ever-coveted award.

We’re proud to share that we were nominated in the ‘Advertising Industry Self-Promotion: Mixed-Media Campaign’ category and took home the gold for our brand new HyperQuake Identity System.

From a website redesign, to stationary and business cards, even a complete office environment overhaul, a lot of work was done this year in re-developing the HyperQuake visual identity, and we’re proud of our team that was a part of it and pumped for the recognition.

An excerpt from American Apparel’s tag cloud.

Whether you are a curious consumer and want to see what people are saying about the brands you use in your daily life, or you work for a brand and want to see what people first think of when they see your logo, Brandtags.net is where you want to go.

This site is great. Simple premise. You go to the site, see a logo randomly, enter into a box one word (the first word that comes to mind) and then move on. You can either choose to keep entering words about new brands the site throws at you, or you can go see what other users tagged a given brand with.

Using it is fun, but reading what are the most popular tags about a brand is even more fun and pretty darn insightful. You can also play a game where you guess what a brand is based on the tags (and NO, you don’t get a choice of logos, just the tags!). You can even add other brands if you want to submit them to see how people think of them and tag them.

The site refers to itself as “A collective experiment in brand perception.” Great stuff and very insightful stuff for those interested in seeing consumer perceptions.

Saturday 2/27/10, marks the 1st Annual ‘Race to Anyplace’ in Cincinnati, and HyperQuake is racing to it…or rather, in it.

11 determined souls from here in HyperQuake-Ville have volunteered to step up to the challenge to help the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society kick off the event for the first time in Cincinnati. The team will be participating in a 6 hour (Yep, you read that right!) relay-style Spinning event, peddling as hard as they can for 15 minutes at a time before switching riders.

The HQ team shirt

The event has been taking place in other cities across the country for sometime and now it’s Cincinnati’s chance to help the LLS in its fight against cancer. If you want to find out more information about the event, visit the events site here.

If you have directions on how to get to Anyplace (i.e. Spinning tips for us newbies), let us know, I for one can’t find it in the GPS and don’t want to get lost en route. I’m actually writing this blog post while I’m training, so back to that I go. Until then, perhaps we’ll see you in Anyplace.

Yep, that’s right, I said BREAK IT!

Daniel Tosh is funny. I like his comedy, it’s good stuff. His show Tosh.0, which aggregates some of the greatest web video clips each week and presents them to the world via a crazy 30 minute show on Comedy Central, is pure gold.

“Web Redemption”, where people who’ve made fools of themselves on the web via video (that more than likely others posted for them) get to go on the show and re-do their video, hopefully in their favor. Crystal Light Dancers, Average Homeboy, football player who tackles his own teammate. Truly awesome.

Last night, Mr. Tosh closed his show thanking the kind folks at Apple for giving him an iPad to try out. He then proceeded to do this, which is again, awesome.

The best part about that clip, that you don’t see because it closed out the last few seconds of the show, is when Tosh says “We never even turned it on.”

Redfixfive’s California office

If you’ve ever graced HQ’s halls, you might have noticed we’re undergoing some decorative changes lately. For folks looking for a little workspace inspiration, might I humbly suggest This Ain’t No Disco (it’s where we work).

If you’re more of a lone wolf-type, check out Where We Do What We Do.

Panhojda’s Cracow workspace

The happy chaos of Threadless’s Chicago office

So I’ve been a resident of Cincinnati for 11 years or so now.

I’ve been a punk rocker or sorts (minus the mohawk and facial piercings) ever since I got a cd player and starting rocking out about Nofx, Green Day, Face to Face, The Descendents….. The list goes on.

Put these 2 aspects above together and over the past 11 years I’ve been a regular attendee at punk shows here in Cincy, no matter where they are. From the original Void (literally a closet behind a rock-and-roll laundromat in Clifton) to RadioDown, to Bogarts, to The Mad Hatter, to Ripley’s, I’ve been to shows all over the city and during that time, I’ve often seen Pat Rice.

I remember thinking when I first saw her, “why is this old lady at this show?” As you’ll see in the video, she is 65 now, so at 54, I was seeing her at shows surrounded by 15-23 year old kids. I was perplexed, but also thought it was awesome because as my wife, family and friends know, that will probably be me at that age too.

The more shows I went to, the more I would see Pat. Again, I’d always think this was odd, weird, crazy, cool, awesome.

This video is about her connection with the local music community, the way she has become connected with it, the mark she’s left on various bands/kids at shows and just overall, the love that the music scene here in the city has for her and vice-versa. She’s become quite a figure, being recognized by CityBeat and asked to give out a Cincinnati Entertainment Award award among other things.

It’s great to see this video though and be able to see the story behind this person I always wondered about. Truly a unique story and a testament to some of the great people and great things people do for others here in the city.

Watch the video here.

“…I decided to ask some of today’s most exciting artists and creators what they do when the ideas aren’t flowing. I left the question fairly open ended and asked, What do you do to inspire your creativity when you find yourself in a rut? As expected, I was presented with an array of strategies, ranging from listening to Boards of Canada in a forest alone, to cooking up a storm (recipe provided) and waiting for the mind to clear.” Here’s what they had to say.