Frances Frei, who joined Uber last June as the company’s first-ever SVP of leadership and strategy, is leaving the company, Recode first reported. Frei’s plan is to remain as an advisor at Uber while moving on to create a new leadership development program for people of color and women at other companies. Read More
Netflix’s original content ramp is showing no signs of slowing own – in fact, if anything, it’s speeding up. Netflix CFO David Wells says that the streaming company wants to have somewhere around 700 original shows and movies on the service in 2018, using that previously revealed budget of around $8 billion earmarked for original content. Wells, speaking at Morgan… Read More
Doogee’s Mobile World Congress press conference is mostly what you’d expect from a company you’ve never heard of: small, low key, in the second basement meeting room at a hotel across from the convention center. It’s a bit like the smartphone farm system, the company’s hoping it can gin up enough awareness to rise above the din of news from the world’s… Read More
BMW wants to bring personal assistants to the car, but it doesn’t want to build its own. Instead, it wants to work with Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others to bring the best features of their platforms to its cars. “We don’t want Alexa to drive our car. That’s not a good fit,” Dieter May, BMW’s senior VP for digital products and services, told me during… Read More
Facebook is trying to play extra nice with local news publishers by putting $3 million behind the launch of the Local News Subscriptions Accelerator. The three-month pilot program will help 10 to 15 U.S.-based metropolitan news organizations gain more digital subscribers both on and off Facebook. Read More
The FTC announced today it has settled with PayPal over a complaint about the company’s handling of privacy disclosures in its peer-to-peer payments app Venmo, its lack of disclosure over the speed with which customers could access funds, as well as other issues related to the security and privacy of customer transactions. News that the Federal Trade Commission was looking into… Read More
Israel-based BrainQ is a new neurotech startup hoping to take on brain-computer interface (BCI) companies Kernel and Neuralink. But it’s early days in this industry, including for BrainQ, which plans to use a non-surgically embedded EEG machine to gather data and help improve outcomes for stroke and spinal cord patients. Read MoreMobile World Congress 2018 (or MWC) is always guaranteed to provide you with some of the coolest (and weirdest) gadgets of the year.
2018 was of course no exception with Samsung unveiling its Galaxy S9 smartphone. Yet in addition to being the home of the flagship smartphone this year’s MWC produced some truly weird products, most notable of which was Nokia’s ‘banana’ phone.
To help cut through all the dry press releases we’ve rounded up the most exciting (and bizarre) products unveiled at the tech conference in Barcelona.
The Samsung Galaxy S9 may look similar to last year’s device but there are some major new features. For the Bitmoji lovers it can now turn your face into a giant 3D animated emoji which you can then send over WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
It also has a brand-new camera which features the world’s first dual-aperture system on a smartphone. Simply put that means the Galaxy S9 can now let in more light than just about any other smartphone around, resulting in sharper, brighter photos even in the dark.
This is a real thing. We’re not sure why but it is. Using the latest food printing technology an inventor has created a machine that will let you upload a selfie of yourself (or anyone) and then it will print a full-colour version of that image on top of your favourite coffee of choice.
Now it should be noted that the black and white selfieccino does already exist, however this is inspiring gadget takes things to the next level by upgrading your coffee to glorious coffee.
The less said about this the better.
Known rather affectionately as the ‘banana phone’ at MWC, Nokia’s 8110 rekindles our nostalgic love for one of Nokia’s most well-known designs: the ‘slider’ phone.
Running Nokia’s own software, the 8110 is a ‘feature phone’ which means it’s not a smartphone. That being said it does have 4G, can work as a WiFi hotspot and comes with days of battery life.
The Vivo Apex concept phone may be just that, a concept, but it represents what will arguably be the next big breakthrough in smartphone design.
You see in addition to being one of the first truly bezel-less smartphones around it’s also one of the first to contain a fingerprint scanner actually built into the display itself.
The technology involved is pretty remarkable and while Vivo are being reasonably tight-lipped about it we do know that it works by placing the equivalent of a large camera sensor under the display. The display then lights up which in turn allows the sensor to capture the fingerprint.
This is something that was rumoured to appear on the iPhone X but instead the company opted for its FaceID technology.
As screens get larger and bezels get smaller, something has to give. For the iPhone X it was the infamous notch at the top. For Huawei, it’s something else entirely.
Rather than sacrifice the screen on their stunning new laptop, the company decided to move the webcam completely. Where to? Well it’s now hidden underneath one of the keys on the keyboard. You simply press it in and it pops up.
There’s just one problem though, it’s fixed and fixed at perhaps the worst possible angle for every human that doesn’t have the jawline of a Greek statue. Whoops.
Dig out your passport because Disneyland Paris is about to undergo a huge expansion based on your favourite films. The Walt Disney Studios Park will be home to three new areas based on Marvel, ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Frozen’.
So far developers have been fairly tight-lipped about what the areas will include, although we do know a new hotel - called Disney’s Hotel New York: The Art of Marvel - is on the horizon, which will nod to the worlds of ‘Iron Man’, ‘The Avengers’, and ‘Spider-Man’. We’re hoping there’s also a ‘Black Panther’ reference or two along the way.
The park’s transformation will cost a whopping €2 billion (£1.76 billion) and take more than three years to complete. As well as the three film-inspired areas, the investment will give visitors new attractions and live entertainment experiences to try.
Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, Robert A Iger, made the announcement of the expansion after meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, who seems pretty excited about the development himself.
The developers have said the expansion marks one of the most ambitious transformation projects at Disneyland Paris since its opening in 1992. But die-hard film fans will have to wait a little longer to see the finished product, as the expanded areas will roll out in phases beginning in 2021.
Not content with revolutionising electric cars, space travel, renewable energy in the home or high-speed transportation Elon Musk has another big plan to change the world.
Called Starlink, it’s an ambitious plan to cover the entire globe with superfast internet using a vast network of satellites, the first two of which were placed in orbit this week.
First envisioned by Musk back in 2015, Starlink has managed to move from paper to the launch pad in less than three years.
As of June 2017, the International Telecommunications Union states that only 51% of the world’s population has internet access.
Rather than wait for nations to increase their infrastructure or for land-based technology to progress, Musk proposes going from 51% to 100% using a single system.
How does it work? Quite simply by blanketing the globe in a vast network of over 10,000 satellites.
To give you some idea of how momentous a step up that is from the norm, the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that there are just 1,738 operating satellites orbiting our planet (that we know of).
SpaceX has already launched two test satellites affectionately named Tintin A and Tintin B.
If and when Musk is able to get the initial number of satellites in orbit that he needs (around 4,000) the network can then start delivering fast satellite-based internet to anywhere around the globe.
Depending on whether Musk and SpaceX can get FCC approval, the initial satellite network would be in place and ready to start delivering internet by 2024.
Now there are still some unanswered questions. For starters we have no idea how much it’s going to cost both SpaceX or us as potential customers.
According to a 2015 interview Musk did say that he expected the user terminals to be anywhere around the $300 mark. This of course does not take into account any monthly fees.
What we do know however is that if Tintin A and Tintin B both prove to be a success then you’re going to be hearing a lot more about Starlink over the next few years.
Four people have died in car crashes amidst heavy snow across Britain.
Three were killed in a crash in Lincolnshire and another man died after a collision in Cambridgeshire on Tuesday morning.
The Met Office said several centimetres of snow had fallen in some parts overnight, with between 3cm and 4cm in Newcastle and Northumberland.
Motorists have been warned to take extra care on the roads and drive in a manner suited to the snowy conditions.
There were 20 collisions within three hours on Lincolnshire’s roads, including a school bus with 45 pupils on board, police said. The children were unharmed after their bus collided with a car and veered off the road near Deeping St James.
A spokesman for Lincolnshire Police said some of the roads had “very icy conditions”.
Seventeen cars were involved in a pile-up on the A120 between Colchester and Elmstead Market, Essex Police said. One person suffered minor injuries in the incident on the Clacton-bound carriageway, which occurred at 10am.
Many schools across the country were shut, including more than 200 in Wales, 131 in Kent and 62 in East Sussex.
Farnborough in Hampshire saw the lowest overnight temperature, of -8.9C.
Trains have also been affected by the snowfall, with cancellations and disruptions on lines across the country.
Southeastern, which operates in Kent, has cancelled dozens of trains, including several to London St Pancras, London Victoria and Cannon Street, while other companies affected included Southern, Greater Anglia and Great Northern.
British Airways has cancelled dozens of flights from Heathrow Airport, while easyJet warned disruption to its flights was expected.
Amber warnings for snow were in place for the south east and north east of England and the East Midlands until midday, while a yellow warning covering much of the country is in force until midnight.
Forecasters are predicting 5cm-10cm of snow will fall for most areas of the UK, with up to 40cm possible for higher ground in Scotland.
Met Office meteorologist Emma Sillitoe said: “There will also be further disruption throughout the day as these showers become widespread across the country.”
Conditions are not likely to improve for several days, with forecasters warning that snow will continue well into the week.
Retailers said they have not seen widespread panic buying, after some shoppers reported supermarkets were busier than usual.
An amber snow warning is in place for the North East and Scotland from 6am on Wednesday to 12pm on Thursday, with up to 40cm of snow expected to fall during that period.
Forecaster Frank Saunders said parts of the country could see their “coldest spell of weather since at least 2013, and possibly since 1991”.
It is expected that the mercury could plummet to -15C by midweek where there is snow on the ground, rivalling temperatures forecast for parts of northern Norway and Iceland.
From Thursday, forecasters predict that another weather system, Storm Emma, will bring blizzards, gales and sleet as it meets the chilly “Beast from the East” later this week.
The storm, named by the Portuguese Met Service, will move north through Europe and is due to hit the UK on Thursday and Friday, and will be “significantly disruptive”, bringing the risk of power cuts and transport delays.
A record number of people made a recovery from mental ill health after receiving NHS talking therapy last year, with almost half of people completing a course of treatment for depression or anxiety recovering, a new report has revealed.
The annual report on Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services (IAPT) defined recovery as when a person begins therapy as a “clinical case”, meaning their symptoms of mental ill health are severe, but symptoms are no longer classed as clinical by the end of their course of treatment. Symptoms are defined as “clinical” or “non clinical” measured by scores from questionnaires tailored to the patient’s specific condition.
The review, published by NHS Digital, revealed 1.4 million people were referred for IAPT services during 2016 and 2017. Just under half (49.3%) of people made a recovery, which is a 7% increase compared to the period of 2012-2013, when records for this service began.
While the Mental Health Foundation welcomed the news, the charity told HuffPost UK the figures can’t be used to show patients are making a “permanent recovery” from anxiety or depression as they perhaps would from a physical illness, as “our mental health is always fluctuating”.
The report on the effectiveness of talking therapies comes a week after a major study found antidepressants are an effective treatment for depression.
Talking therapies available on the NHS under the IAPT programme include cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), individual counselling for depression, couples counselling for depression and mindfulness therapy.
The report found more patients are getting care for mental ill health within six weeks compared to the year before. Of the 567,000 referrals that finished a course of treatment in 2016-2017, 87.5% waited less than six weeks for their first treatment and 98.2% waited less than 18 weeks. This compares to figures from 2015-16, which were reported at 81.3% and 96.2%, respectively.
Despite the overall increase in recovery rates being good news, the figures revealed a pronounced difference in experiences of patients from different ethnic groups. Recovery rates for patients from the white ethnic group stood at 50.2%, for black or black British it was 44.9%, for those of mixed multiple ethnic groups 44.5%, for Asian or Asian British it was 44.2% and for other ethnic groups 41.7%.
The NHS director of mental health, Claire Murdoch, welcomed the report, stating the health service is “reversing years of under-investment” to tackle mental illness. “Putting mental health on a level footing with physical care remains a priority for NHS England, and from April this year every part of the country will be required to increase the share of their budgets going towards mental health care,” she said.
“No one would claim that the transformation we all want to see will happen overnight, but with a rising number of people getting successful treatment for common conditions like depression and anxiety, it’s clear that we are making important progress.”
Commenting on the report, Mark Rowland, a director at the Mental Health Foundation, said while the charity “welcomes the strong new evidence about the effectiveness of talking therapies”, we should be aware that “recovery” from mental illness is not always the same as recovery from physical illness. The results of talking therapy may not be permanent in the way treatment for a broken leg might be.
“Our mental health is always fluctuating as we pass through life’s difficulties and pressure points. What these results show is that talking therapies can be very effective in helping people recover from periods of mental ill health. This isn’t necessarily permanent recovery, but the skills learnt in talking therapies are lifelong and can equip us to better manage our mental health successfully,” he told HuffPost UK.
“Sustaining good mental health is a challenge we are all faced with. There’s no one size fits all solution, it’s about finding the best combination of approaches that prevent us getting unwell and help us recover when we do.”
You can read more about the use of the term “recovery” relating to mental ill health on the Mental Health Foundation website.
Useful websites and helplines:
There will need to be a physical border with Ireland after Brexit if the UK leaves the customs union, the former head of the World Trade Organisation has confirmed.
Speaking to MPs, Pascal Lamy dismissed the idea the UK could operate an invisible border on the island of Ireland while also having different trade tariffs with the EU.
He shot down the Government’s plan for a “virtual border”, saying such a customs arrangement does not exist anywhere in the world.
Lamy, who served as WTO Director-General from 2005 to 2013, also suggested Northern Ireland should be given the ability to set its own trade policy by the UK, but this would still lead to either a customs border with the Irish Republic or with mainland Britain.
Lamy’s comments came just hours after Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson compared crossing the Irish border to moving between the London boroughs of Camden and Westminster.
Speaking to Parliament’s Exiting the EU select committee, Lamy said the UK’s decision to leave the customs union and Single Market, “will necessitate a border.
“There will have to be a border because you need to check the goods and the people.
“You have to check, if there are duties, that duties are paid.”
He added: “I don’t see any solution with no border at all.”
Lamy suggested one solution would be for the UK to give Northern Ireland the power to operate its own trade policy.
He cited the example of Macau in south-west China, which has a seat at the WTO as Beijing has allowed it to operate its own trade and customs policies.
Yet he acknowledged that even that arrangement would see the need for a border, either “north/south” or “east/west”.
“That’s an extremely politically complex question,” he added.
When asked by the DUP’s Sammy Wilson if a physical border along the land boundary is the only way of complying with the requirements of the WTO, Lamy replied: “Yes. That’s my view.
“I find the concept of a virtual border extremely interesting, attractive. But I’ve never seen a virtual border.”
He added that Sweden and Norway – respectively inside and outside the customs union – has border posts.
When asked if he could think of any examples of a “completely invisible” border between countries separated by a customs union, Lamy replied: “I can’t think of any examples of this kind.”
On Monday, Jeremy Corbyn said Labour would keep the UK in a customs union with the EU after Brexit, citing the Irish situation as one of the motivations.
In a speech at Bloomberg on Tuesday, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox described Labour’s position as “a complete sell out of Britain’s national interests” and would leave the UK “in a worse position than we are today”.
The Duchess of Cambridge shared a joyous reunion with a midwife who assisted during the birth of Princess Charlotte.
Kate embraced Professor Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent after spotting her among the guests during a visit to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) in north-west London today [Tuesday 27 February].
Professor Dunkley-Bent was photographed in uniform outside St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, London, following the birth of Princess Charlotte in 2015. It was reported at the time that the pair had built up a rapport as Dunkley-Bent had also been present at the birth of Prince George in 2012.
As she left, the Duchess, who is expecting her third child, thanked RCOG president Lesley Regan and added: “It was so great to see Jacqui as well,” according to The Express.
Professor Dunkley-Bent is currently head of maternity, children and young people at NHS England and national maternity safety champion for the Department of Health. She is also visiting Professor of Midwifery at Kings College London and London South Bank University.
The Duchess has become patron of RCOG and the Nursing Now campaign, which aims to support nurses to become leaders so they can play a greater role in health policy decision-making.
In a speech given during the event the Duchess said that launching Nursing Now to help promote the vital work of nurses around the world meant a lot to her personally.
“My great-grandmother and grandmother were both volunteer nurses,” she said. ” They would have learned first-hand from working with the Voluntary Aid Detachment and the Red Cross about the care and compassion that sometimes only nurses can provide.
“Decades on, nursing has come a long way and continues to play a significant role in all our lives. From what I have seen from visits to hospices and hospitals across the country, nurses are always there. You care for us from the earliest years. You look after us in our happiest and saddest times. And, for many, you look after us and our families, at the end of our lives.”
During her visit the Duchess watched medical trainees demonstrate how they would perform keyhole surgery and stitch up skin following a caesarean.
Presenting Kate with a certificate to mark her patronage, Professor Regan said: “On behalf of everyone here present, I would like to extend our very best wishes for the birth of your third child.
“I’m confident that you will receive excellent care from the wonderful team at my own hospital, as indeed you received for the births of Prince George and Princess Charlotte.
“Thank you once again for visiting the college today, becoming our patron and for showing such passionate interest in our work.
“We look forward to a very long and fruitful relationship with you and your family.”
You have decided it is time to start monetizing your website but don’t know where to start. There are many eCommerce solutions on the market although the majority of these come with high ongoing fees or alternatively an initial lump sum cost. Many people have heard of using PayPal to accept payments in exchange for goods or services but have you considered using Stripe? Your customers can pay using a credit card for your products and services. The transaction is processed by Stripe.
Stripe is one of the best payment gateways to accept credit card for an online business and is currently serving businesses in 25 countries around the world. If you decide Stripe is the perfect payment platform to use on your website, this article will help you set up a simple online store from start to finish for free. Alternatively, if you decide to use PayPal to accept payments from your customers, click here for tips on setting up an online store using PayPal.
You’ve decided that the Stripe payment gateway to accept credit card is the right choice for your online business. Whether you are currently running a blog or have just began setting up a WordPress website from scratch, the Stripe Payments plugin will allow you to accept payments from your customers in exchange for goods or services.
The Stripe Payments plugin is a free eCommerce solution for WordPress that gives anyone the ability to sell simple products or services from their sites. It is a light weight plugin that has all the features needed to operate a simple online store. This free plugin gives you the ability to create ‘Buy Now’ buttons for any products or services you wish to offer and then accept all payments using credit cards (the credit card payment is processed by the Stripe payment gateway).
The Stripe Payments plugin is perfect for business owners that intend on selling simple products to their customers. Each product has a separate payment button that lets the customers purchase the item quickly using a credit card.
Using this plugin you can create a shop page similar to the one below. Your customers can use the search bar to find a specific product. You can allow your customers to specify the quantity they would like to purchase, otherwise you can specify a set quantity.
The Stripe plugin gives you the ability to also sell digital products from your website. After your customer purchases a digital product, they will be given a product download link.
When a customer clicks on a ‘Buy Now’ button for any of your products/services, they will be shown the Stripe popup checkout window. This is where your customers will enter the credit card details and finalize the purchase.
You have a WordPress website and you are ready to start selling products or services.
In this scenario, a woman has been writing a blog about multiple dog breeds for sometime. She has decided that she now has enough traffic to start monetizing her site. She would like to sell three different dog bowls. The following steps will outline how she could create one of her three products:
Step 1) Install and activate the Stripe Payments plugin.
Step 2) Ensure you have created a Stripe account and configured the basic general settings required.
Step 3) Under the ‘Stripe Payments’ menu, click the ‘Add New Product’ button.
Step 4) Give your product a title, description (if you choose) and a price.
Step 5) Choose a set quantity or allow your customers to specify a quantity.
Step 6) If you are selling a digital product select the appropriate file. In this scenario, she is selling a physical product so she would choose to collect billing and shipping information instead.
Step 7) Add a product thumbnail (if you choose).
Step 8) Customize the button text (if you choose). By default, the button text will read ‘Buy Now’.
Step 9) Publish the product you have created. This product will now appear on your shop page. You can use the shortcode inserter to display your product on any post or page on your site (see information below).
Once you create a product using the Stripe Payments plugin, you can then display this product on any post or page. This works well if you have a landing page and would like to promote your product at the top or bottom. This feature allows you to promote your products from pages that receive high volumes of traffic.
Use the shortcode inserter to select the product you wish to sell off that post/page.
Admin can view all orders and further customer details. If you choose to collect shipping/billing details all this information can be found by clicking on a specific customer order.
That finalises the documentation on how you can create an online store for free. To find out more and to download the Stripe Payments plugin (for free) click here.
This short film from 1968, set to Classical Gas, shows 3000 years of fine art in just three minutes. As the final frame of the film says:
You have just had all of the Great Art of the World indelibly etched in your brain. You are now cultured.
As mesmerizing as the film is, especially for 1968, the backstory is perhaps even more interesting. Mason Williams, who wrote and recorded Classical Gas, saw this film by UCLA film student Dan McLaughlin and arranged, with McLaughlin’s permission, to have the original soundtrack replaced with his song and to have it aired on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on CBS, then the number one show on TV in America.
The impact of the film on television opened the door to realizations that the viewer’s mind could absorb this intense level of visual input. It was a double shot of a hundred proof music and video that polished the history of art off in three minutes! It was also the beginning of the fast images concept now called kinestasis (a rapidly-moving montage technique set to music) that has over the years been exploited so effectively by television commercials, documentaries, etc.
Curiously, a similarly produced film called American Time Capsule also aired on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour that year. Directed by Chuck Braverman, it showed 200 years of American history in less than 3 minutes:
McLaughlin’s film was produced and aired first (he made it in 1967) and was the inspiration for Braverman’s film (see the relevant snippets from David Sohn’s Film: the Creative Eye) but Braverman made a career out of the technique.
I was actually working in the same building as [Tommy Smothers], at CBS as an assistant — really as a messenger — trying to get into the cameraman’s union in the news department. They literally made the Comedy Hour just upstairs. I called, made a meeting, and Tommy looked at my other work and we discussed doing a film on the history of the United States — American Time Capsule. I made it and it aired on the weekend before the November ‘68 election and it was a huge hit. It catapulted me into a career. Not only did it appear on the Smothers’ Brothers Show, which was huge, but it appeared on The Tonight Show within a few weeks and then 60 Minutes picked it up. So I got a reputation right away for being the king of the fast-cut montage. I ended up doing dozens of commercials and lots of title sequences.
My favorite use of the technique is in the trailer for A Clockwork Orange:1
But anyway, getting back to Mason Williams and Classical Gas, after the success of the 3000 years of art video, he wrote a sketch about video jockeys playing music videos on TV:
As a result of the response to the CLASSICAL GAS music video, in September of 1968 I wrote up a piece for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, projecting the idea that someday VJ’s would be playing hit tapes on TV, (as well as DJ’s hit records on radio), a prophesy of what was, 13 years later, to become MTV.
All this film and media history, just barely surviving in YouTube videos, video descriptions, partial scans of out-of-print books, and interviews & obituaries scattered willy-nilly all over the we, what a mess. What a fascinating mess. (via open culture)
Who made this trailer? Kubrick? His editor? Braverman? A Warner Brothers employee who was in charge of making film trailers and was a fan of Braverman? I couldn’t find any info on this.↩
In a new video for Vox, Phil Edwards talks about one of my favorite low-tech technologies: dazzle camouflage. Instead of trying to hide warships with paint the color of the ever-changing sky or sea, dazzle camouflage aimed to confuse the enemy by disguising the silhouettes and headings of ships.
World War I ships faced a unique problem. The u-boat was a new threat at the time, and its torpedoes were deadly. That led artist Norman Wilkinson to come up with dazzle camouflage (sometimes called “razzle dazzle camouflage”). The idea was to confuse u-boats about a ship’s course, rather than try to conceal its presence. In doing so, dazzle camouflage could keep torpedoes from hitting the boat — and that and other strategies proved a boon in World War I.
More recently, this strategy has been used on people’s faces to thwart facial recognition and on Cristiano Ronaldo’s football cleats to confuse opponents as which way he’s moving his feet.
Tags: art Phil Edwards video World War I
Japanese graphic designer Shusaku Takaoka takes famous artworks and cleverly incorporates them into movies scenes or celebrity photos. If you scroll back through his earlier photos,1 you can see him experimenting with various techniques before hitting his stride around September of last year.
One of my favorite things to do is scroll back through Instagram accounts like this to see the evolution not only of the work but of their self-presentation. You can often see the moment where they go, “oh shit, I’ve got lots of followers now, I’d better think more about what I post here”. See also the unbearable lightness of being yourself on social media.↩
Fonts in Use took a crack at identifying the crazy quilt of typefaces used on the label of Huy Fong sriracha.
The most prominent Latin text elements are rendered in a variety of informal script typefaces released by American Type Founders in the 20th century, namely Balloon and its shaded counterpart, Balloon Drop Shadow, as well as Brody. Smaller text on the back of the bottle is set in Impress and Tekton.
And they threw Arial in there for good measure. Oof. Don’t miss the first comment about the label’s Chinese fonts; “In the West, PMingLiu has become a prominent component of what some might call the “Asian diaspora aesthetics”. In East Asia, it is seen as the signature for those typographically unenlightened.”
P.S. No one knows who drew the label’s iconic rooster. And remember when people were stockpiling Huy Fong sriracha due to shortages? Simpler times.
Tags: design food typographyOne of the world’s largest financial institutions, JPMorgan Chase is obviously known more for money than media. But CMO Kristin Lemkau still sees, and is excited about, the bank’s future as more of its own media company.
Since anyone can put anything on YouTube, digital technology has democratized distribution. Chase already has that and now they’ve got content, too, including a self-produced show called “Kneading Dough.”
“We’re not just looking to get our ads out there, although our ads are good,” Lemkau told NFL sportscaster Erin Andrews at a WHOSAY event during the ANA Masters of Marketing. “We want to have real shows where people understand why Chase is there and I don’t have to put my ad in the middle of someone else’s money episode.”
Lemkau explained that in the past, when brands ran ads on TV, people were generally going to watch them. Before Netflix, Hulu and even TiVo, you watched shows when they were on. Changing the channel to skip ads meant potentially missing a few minutes of the show.
That’s obviously no longer the case. Last year, Facebook found that 94% of people use their smartphones while they watch TV, so you can’t even guarantee that people are even watching whatever they’re watching.
“Most advertising is still interrupting someone’s experience. That’s why you’ve got people blocking ads and skipping over ads and things that are tricking people into watching their content,” said Lemkau. “Where there are ways that Chase can actually be a part of the show, not in a product placement, I’m going to hold up my credit card. But where if people are interested in making the most of their money, we have a right to be there, and the consumer will accept it.”
The evolution of the ad unit represents that switch from interruptive to permissive. Lemkau considers Google and Facebook to be examples of the latter. Scrolling is easier than changing the channel; if you don’t want to watch an ad, you’re not going to.
“Kneading Dough” features people like tennis legend Serena Williams and Cleveland Cavalier LeBron James. On the surface, they don’t seem particularly relatable, as two of 2017’s highest-paid athletes. However, both come from humble beginnings and became very rich very young, and subsequently made financial mistakes just like everyone else.
“They have a very different set of wealth than your average person, but their journey has been the same and people loved watching it,” said Lemkau.
“People don’t care if content is branded, so long as it’s good,” she added.
To her point, YouTube’s third-top trending video from 2017 was seven minutes of guys landing tricky shots, throwing ping pong balls into cups. That video was actually sponsored content from Oreo to promote the brand’s Dunk Challenge. More than 115 million people have watched it and it’s still not even the top ad from last year. A Samsung India spot takes that honor, having racked up more than 208 million views.
The content’s main theme is not saving you money, a standard financial marketing tactic Lemkau finds patronizing.
People think about money in terms of spending and saving and managing,” she said. “Our brand purpose is to help you make the most of your money and the key phrase here is ‘your money.’”
Being their customers’ financial partner means only advertising in the right places. Lemkau famously championed brand safety by removing Chase ads from fake news sites. She’s also reduced the number of sites the brand advertises on to 5,000. From 400,000.
The entire strategy is to give people the products, advice and tools to make their best financial decisions, and only giving those on the websites that make sense. At the same time, Chase recognizes that the decisions are ultimately the consumers’.
“This is about helping you make the most of your money,” she says. “We want to be the wingman.”
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German robotics firm Magazino, creator of robots meant to work alongside people in warehouses and the like, has raised $24.8 million to continue development and deployment of its TORU and SOTO robots. 