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Several years ago, I happened to be in San Francisco during Salesforce’s annual conference. It’s stupendously big with over 170,000 (!) attendees. Though, I only realised the event was on when I walked around downtown and noticed hundreds of people carrying the same Salesforce-branded backpacks. On my way home that evening I found white and blue-coloured lanyards, stickers, reusable water bottles and USB drives scattered around bus stops and park benches.
The industry for promotional products is huge – $24bn per year in the US alone. Competition is fierce which means cheaply produced products are sold at rock bottom prices. A branded cotton tote bag, when bought in the thousands, usually costs less than a dollar. The sheer variety of branded gimmicks on offer is pretty staggering, too: golf balls, slippers, fidget toys – if there is room for printing a logo on it, a factory somewhere in China stands ready to produce them in ginormous quantities. And if you think the pandemic has disrupted the swag industry, you haven’t seen their “exciting new product range” of branded face masks, hand sanitisers and USB-powered thermometers.
In the past, I’ve been as guilty as anyone of enabling this industry. I have a stack of t-shirts, canvas bags and stickers to prove I attended conferences and visited headquarters. Especially tech companies love t-shirts and stickers as physical tokens to, I guess, ‘validate’ their existence in the real world.
With ecological alarm bells going off all around us, though, is ‘everyone loves a freebie’ still a justifiable marketing strategy? Are we still okay with events that attract over 170,000 people handing out free backpacks filled with crappy merchandise? Besides being an environmental tragedy, it’s creatively lazy and uninspired.
Events could adopt an experiences-over-possessions ethos and invest their marketing dollars in less tangible but more memorable perks. It could be as simple as having a professional photographer take great portrait shots of attendees or a restaurant giving out samples of a local specialty. Some years ago, an event here in Melbourne offered an optional night tour of the local zoo which involved some fancy interactive storytelling. I’m usually not a fan of zoos, but it was pretty magical. I ended up meeting some lovely folks and learned more about Australia’s unique wildlife.
As gatherings are slowly returning, I wish event organisers and companies would stop using cheap, disposable gimmicks as a lure. We’ve made strides towards more inclusive events and organisations by demanding a code of conduct and transparent D&I policies. It’s 2022 and we are well and truly in eco emergency mode. So let’s extend that sense of moral obligation to do the right thing also to the environment, shall we? – Kai
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Introducing Pardon SPONSOR
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Pardon Inc. is a modern family office, venture studio and creative agency. Our growing portfolio of brands includes Likemind, The Discoverer, and NEW. We embrace art as a driving force in all we set out to do, from launching original ventures to expanding our early-stage investment portfolio. To learn more about current opportunities at Pardon, visit our careers page.
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Apps & Sites
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Free, open-source analytics
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My current hosting package includes a ‘one-click’ install of Matomo – an excellent, feature-rich, free and open-source analytics tool. It’s a great alternative to Google Analytics that respects users’ privacy and lets you own your visitor data.
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This macOS app allows you to create mini browser tabs as menu bar items to, for example, have your social feeds or favourite news site always at the ready.
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I still haven’t tried it, but some friends found it surprisingly soothing: this app lets you and a friend watch videos synchronously. Hook it up to your streaming app, like Netflix or YouTube, and start watching together. You can even turn on your webcam to, I guess, watch each other while watching together...
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Climate innovation database
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The Solutions Explorer is an extensive database of over 1,300 innovative pro-climate projects from all over the world, “assessed by independent experts for their environmental and economic performance”. From carbon-positive concrete alternatives to e-bike sharing programs – if you believe we should innovate our way out of the crisis, this is a great resource to find intriguing prototype projects to get involved in.
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Worthy Five: Glenn Garriock
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A video worth watching:
Captain Disillusion’s detailed breakdown of how we perceive colour and how that applies to working with colour on screen.
An Instagram account worth following:
The Blup keeps me up to date with new culture trends that I am slowly growing too old to fully understand.
A book worth reading:
How to get on with your colleagues by The School of Life is a practical guide to better collaboration. It’s full of actionable thought experiments and insights, and it’s even more important you understand the different viewpoints of your colleagues if you work remotely.
A recipe worth trying:
Gin Basil Smash, a cocktail that everyone initially screws their face up at and then orders another right away.
A podcast worth listening to:
I’ve really been enjoying the Change of Brand podcast which talks to the people behind rebranding projects such as the ones of Mastercard, Kia and Starbucks.
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Books & Accessories
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Combining Indigenous wisdom & scientific knowledge
After mentioning Robin Wall Kimmerer in last week’s intro, several readers pointed me to her book that goes into much more detail on the idea of reciprocity: in Braiding Sweetgrass she shows that “the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.”
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Design as a tool for positive change
If you think designers need to become a lot more critical of how their work affects the world as a whole, this book might be for you: Good by Design collates projects and insights with the aim of effectively transforming the way we live. Friends of DD enjoy a 10% discount.
Become a Friend to access specials like this.
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Overheard on Twitter
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2019: avoid negative people
2020: avoid positive people
2021: avoid people
2022: a void
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Food for Thought
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I’ve read a lot of essays, interviews and commentary on AI ethics, but this is the one piece everyone should read, developer or not. Without being technical, Jenny Zhang illustrates the many ethical considerations and moral dilemmas we face heading into a future where decisions are increasingly outsourced to machines. “I can understand the philosophical appeal of a system, financial or otherwise, that promises that you don’t have to trust anyone but seemingly neutral machines. But embedded in that promise is a core belief that everyone is untrustworthy, and that a system based on humans trusting one another will always be worse than one in which we never have to take a risk on interdependence. I can’t prove one way or another whether this belief is correct. I do know that a worldview that sees human nature as intrinsically bad and immune to improvement is incredibly bleak.”
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The digital world is often portrayed as a clean, low-impact space that operates without major consequences on the world in which we actually live. Here Christopher Butler argues that the two worlds are competing against each other, as our digital experience depends on our actual reality to continue to exist. How’s this for an opening paragraph: “The digital world is a parasite that we hypnotically spoon-feed like a baby from what we assume is an inexhaustible puree of attention, time, content, energy, and resources. That we don’t see it this way – that we see our relationship to the digital world in almost exactly inverse terms – has created a profound civilizational threat that masquerades as an opportunity.”
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This older post by writer and co-newsletterer Anne Helen Petersen spoke to me, not just because it’s about the ritual of running (which also plays a big part in my own life), but also because exercise is one of the few hobby-like things that I’m able to return to on a regular basis without it feeling like a chore. “It’s weird to think of yourself as privileged to know what you like. It’s certainly privileged to be able to know it and have the means — the time, the money, the wherewithal, the health — to pursue it. But one of the saddest predicaments of the current millennial moment is feeling desperate for something that isn’t work, but having no clue how do figure out what else there is.”
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Aesthetically Pleasing
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I really enjoy these photo-realistic paintings by Danish artist Steen Larsen who uses street sceneries as a source for his artwork. Don’t miss some of his other work, like the Seascapes series or the stills of San Francisco.
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Ukrainian artist Tatyana specialises in creating tiny things. Using a range of materials, she recreates small versions of food, clothing and other objects that fit into the palm of a hand.
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With 7 weights and 14 styles, Romek is a robust serif font family designed for a wide range of uses from branding to editorial design. It reminds me a bit of Monocle’s primary font, Plantin.
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Did You Know?
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Some evidence suggests that the economics of music streaming is making songs shorter.
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In his research project on song length, Dan Kopf found that popular music tracks have become shorter in recent years, suggesting that the incentives of streaming services play a role. On Spotify and Apple Music – which made up 75% all US music revenues in 2018 – artists are paid an estimated range of $0.004 to $0.008 per stream regardless of its length. So shorter songs may lead to more streams which could result in more revenue.
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Classifieds
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Brands Mean a Lot: a weekly commentary on branding spanning everything from home office playsets to menthol cigarette bans. Crappy illustrations included to drive the point home.
Dang, how’s that New Years resolution holding up? Still showering with that same ‘thing’? Let us upgrade your experience: come shower with us.
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The Week in a GIF
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Reply or tweet at DD with your favourite GIF and it might get featured here in a future issue.
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