Information Design

Audi TT Brochure Hack.

I love it when a group of designers and engineers come together and solve a problem that blends digital and analog worlds. For a while now I have been fascinated by using conductive ink, and paper to extend a digital experience tied to your phone or smart device.

Razorfish Germany was tasked with creating an interactive brochure to promote the features of the new Audi TT Virtual Cockpit. To do this they used the physical automotive brochure, conductive ink, and a bluetooth chip that synchronizes the brochure with your smartphone. The idea was to create a seamless experience that mirrors the actual virtual cockpit and extends the learning experience for your new TT.

This “Digital meets Print” idea shows how you can generate unique value for customers by intelligently linking the virtual and physical worlds together to extend the overall experience. For a bit more information on the “Audi TT Brochure Hack” Project Gallery has a website with a bit more info and some still images.

The Top 20 Cities for Startups. Mine Isn’t One of Them.

Financial company Intuit posted a very interesting infographic on their site recently. It shows the top 20 cities for entrepreneurial startups around the world. My city, Kansas City Missouri is not on the list. Neither are any other Midwest cities except for Chicago. 6 US cities did make the cut though. All the usual suspects including Silicon Valley. In the infographic below, there is one really interesting stat. Cities with large thriving arts and music scenes are better locations for startups. This gives me hope for KCMO since we have a very active arts community, and the music scene seems to be reviving. Now if we could just get the education system to value art and music as much as sports we might leap ahead of places like Bangalore India, or Santiago Chile.

Corporate Culture: The Difference is Our People.

No matter where you work, large or small, the ingrained corporate culture defines your work experience.

Over the course of my career I have worked for a number of companies. Some with great corporate culture, others without. The bottom line is, as an employee, or as a corporate leader, you have the ability to define and change the corporate culture of your work environment.

This infographic from NowSourcing shows what defines the corporate culture of three businesses that are consistently ranked as one of the top places to work in America. It’s something all companies should aspire to.

Every Minute of Every Day, Data Never Sleeps.

Every Minute, of every day, of every year, the activity shown below is happening on the internet. In our connected world its a fact that data never sleeps, and there is no sign of things slowing down. In fact these numbers will get bigger as time marches forward. According to the infographic, in the time it took me to write this, 347 WordPress blog posts were pushed out to the web including mine.

Image created by Domo