Nathanael Wolfe's digital stuff » social media

Get Satisfaction

Nate — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 02:24:54 +0000

Get Satisfaction went through a major rebranding and recruited me to help update/reinvent their brand presence and introduce a new marketing initiative for their rapidly growing social media product.

I worked on all visual marketing efforts including media kit, banner ads, event signage, emailers, stickers, shirts, case studies, product integration comps, infographics, marketing website, photo shoots, and generally anything that needed to be designed.

design, photography

Analog Magnets Go Digital

Nate — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:10:31 +0000

So I was having a chat with my friend Josh a few nights ago about how the iPhone has a very distinct component base and that there should be a simple magnet set to build ideas. I love the set of iPhone app magnets, but wanted a simple iPhone cutout that I could place a on top of a picture. While thinking about actually making these magnets, I thought about other heavily engrained digital experiences we have, and their call-to-action, so of course I had to make a Youtube playhead, Youtube timeline, and a Facebook “like” button. This was going to be a fun little experiment.

Conclusion

Adding elements of specific digital experiences really do change the way one experiences the medium. Take this simple photo on my refrigerator of my girlfriend (far left), and her cousin (birthday boy), father, uncle, and grandmother taken in the late-80’s:

By adding some of these new elements, the experience of a simple photo suddenly begins to change. I began with adding an iPhone screen with a call-answer screen in the middle, and found that I naturally began to think about voice, and what the man centered in the screen would sound like on the phone, and what he would be calling about. I then completely changed the parameters and added a YouTube interface on top of the photo, which suddenly made the photo feel much more real, and I naturally began to see the birthday party play out in my head. Thinking about what happened before and what might happen a few seconds after that frame.

YouTube creates some amazing popular pop culture references, so I had to create T-Pain and Obama magnets to add some social dynamics within the photos as necessary. Who doesn’t want an auto-tune birthday party!

This was a fun exercise to remind myself how much the medium affects the message, and that just the flat remnants added to a still photo brings some of their unique qualities into experience. If you would like some of these magnets, let me know, and I’ll what I can do;)

My Digits

Nate — Fri, 21 May 2010 06:30:11 +0000

I recently bought a new pair of Nike+ shoes along with the sensor kit, but arrived home to realize I had only bought a replacement sensor for the shoe. I stared at my ipod, wondering if perhaps there was a way in fact to receive the signal. There isn’t, so I sat there, feeling totally defeated, almost as if running wasn’t worth it. This is crazy, because in fact it did not prevent me from exercising or even the quality of the exercise in anyway, like lost headphones may have. Was it really because I wouldn’t log a few miles? And eventually I had to agree it was. Because now I had a means to record a part of my life that wasn’t easily measured before.

We have happily found ourselves snuggling with named objects that connect us to each other. Phones, laptops, gadgetry, these pieces of technology record us in numbers and start to visualize parts of our lives that we simply guessed and estimated before. I have a Mint account that measures monetary habits and financial information. I check-in on Foursquare so you know where I go physically. And with a sensor in my shoe, I know my running habits. These were once all estimations, but now I have pie charts and graphs that parse and label my life. Im quantifiable and measurable more than ever before.

The cover of the New York Times Magazine recently featured an interesting article by Gary Wolf that explored this very phenomenon among the most extreme cases. He attributes this sudden influx in self-monitoring to four recent changes: Electronic sensors became smaller and more effective, people began carrying computers (mobile phones), social media became mainstream and popular, and finally, the digital “cloud” began forming. These new services now carry popularity with friends, spark competitions, show progress, and help you quantitatively look at things you don’t have to think about anymore. Definitely worth a read.

Social Objects of Desire

Nate — Fri, 21 May 2010 05:36:49 +0000

Yesterday I was awarded a virtual badge. I had accidently become an Adventurer in foursquare by checking into 10 different venues. The unexpected achievement made me smile, but then got me wondering while I got such a good feeling for a very simply designed icon that now proudly sat in my virtual profile of foursquare.

To some degree I earned it I guess. The badge was a combination of virtual and physical accomplishment. I certainly walked many miles aimlessly through San Francisco “exploring” the city yesterday. But really?

Welcome to the world of Social Objects, an ever-growing playground of online visual toys created to illustrate or add feeling to our interactions. Facebook has gifts, a socially recognizable form that a friend is willing to buy to represent attention, thought, and friendship. On twitter, the act of retweeting has become a sort of socially recognized “kudos” to the original tweeter. Flickr, and YouTube have a favorite or “thumbs up” to add to your favorite video or image, a way of distinguishing success to both parties. Remember Mafia Wars on Facebook? Who thought a text-based mafia game would become a 100 million dollar phenomenon? The game builds from actual friends and is completely badge-based. And of course Foursquare, the first truly successful geo-tagging game that awards people for checking-in and physically moving a lot. The list goes on.

These objects aren’t unique, but rather infinitely abundant to anyone willing to earn them. So who cares? Well it’s the interaction these icons represent, the interaction of an actual person who thought and spent time to accomplish the badge. The emotional quality these images, badges, or tokens bring to the virtual space. It seems we, as “real” people are always finding subtle ways to gain achievement and to reward one another in a socially recognizable way. We are emotional creatures after all.

Best Photo Ever

Nate — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:13:56 +0000

Before leaving SFO, we picked up our friend Phil, who flew in from Salt Lake City — the four of us will be camping and exploring various places down Highway 1 this week. Before we settle down and get jobs Nate and I will be doing a bit of adventuring in the states, so stay tuned to the blog for a bit of Americana travel writing and photos.