Microsoft's power of advertising

...or "Let's make a really crap advert and get people talking about it"...

Well that's one way I guess. I just thought this was eye wateringly cheesey. I was waiting for the punchline to arrive but it never came. It seems that this really is the advert pushing a Microsoft product which I, frankly, couldn't care less about mostly based on watching this ad!

Ha, ha, ha! It's so much FUN using Microsoft products! Ho, ho, ho!

Thanks to PR.

How are your Photoshop skills?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/sep/12/philippe-ramette-interview

The Eight Principles of Success

Very neat, short film by Richard St. John outlining his ideas about the journey through to success.

Only 3mins 55-worth a look as it's straight-talking and inspiring.

Verdana is the new futura then?

What were IKEA thinking of? Using a font like Verdana, which is primarily a screen font, across all their media is bonkers. I know that often there is a dynamic that needs addressing between the main corporate font which is used in printed matter and a 'replacement' font to be used globally in Powerpoint slides, Word processing and the like and particularly websites which really can only display a small number of font styles. So what to do? Often a similar type of font is chosen for the online use/Office use which either closely resembles the corporate font or complements it nicely. That's one way.

The other way is to blanket use one monolithic font across everything, like this use of Verdana by IKEA. The great advantage, of course, is that it's cheap. Times are hard for IKEA too after all. The down side is that we, the consumer, know it's cheap.

Is this a wise, functional choice based on sensible cost cutting in a tough economic climate or the easy way out?

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1919127,00.html