By Andrew Bush, via a lovely little designer’s blog, pretty.pretty.paper. There is a huge page full of these beauties on Andrew Bush’s site.

This got my synapses firing this morning.

The experiment was made within the context of Marginalia Project where you can find more info, including source code.

I don’t know much about the publication, but I really enjoy the well-designed layout and type in NewWork Magazine. The site even offers scans of the issues and neatly organized them into sleekly scrolling pages. It was disappointing to find no zooming function, since I wanted to see the fine (and probably finely kerned) type.

But then I realized even that wouldn’t solve this problem, something that has defined the web design industry. We’re limited to a screen that simply won’t allow the type of freedom a large-format paper does. To compensate, we have scrollbars and zoom. But the experience is different. I’m still looking at the composition in the browser window that’s in another frame, the operating system. Plus, I would never interact in the same unreserved way with a pricy piece of printed glossy paper as I would with a blog. I don’t have an answer or a solution, but I’m sure that just as much as web has impacted print, print will do the same to the web. After all, there is such a variety of great print design. It probably also relates to the medium itself, the web is still young compared to print. I’m confident web design will one day be more original than print design, partially because I like working under constraints, including large format.

After clicking “follow” I got this direct message:

The Onion directed this message at one of the people that they follow/that follows them:

What an interesting approach, huh? As you can see, The Onion read that one of their readers was having a bad day and then sent them a relevant humorous Onion article.

The Onion gets it and is paying very close attention to their community, responding in creative ways, really extending their brand, and of course increasing web traffic to new and archived content!

TechCrunch did an interesting analysis today (below) of social networks and their valuation. It clearly shows a huge discrepancy depending on how various social networks were valued. For example, Myspace, the #1 in the US and #2 worldwide (after Facebook passed them in May) is worth anywhere between $3B and $19B.

So what does all this mean? It means that this industry is still very new and still trying to figure itself out. It also means that whatever the exact calculation, social networks that gain traction have a tremendous potential and value!

Tim Walker at the London Design Museum. Prints and books of his beautiful fashion photography are available here.

I love when a brands are immersive and astounding, making the viewer/consumer/user want to be a part of it, live it, spend time with it, be it. That is what the UK-based brand Agent Provocateur is all about. Buy into their lifestyle and you will no doubt, be oozing sex appeal in no time.

Their store and website have been a favourite of mine for a long time. They are known for their high-end lingerie, made famous by controversial advertisements, racy window displays, pushing sexual innuendos, making men want to loosen their collars and older British women fume with fury over the AP store window they pass on the way to have their afternoon tea.

Their brand is one of the most cohesive and well-orchestrated I’ve ever experienced…from their store experience (sales women in fitted short pink lab coats sauntering about in their fishnet stockings and stilettos) to their online presence (photographs of women wearing AP lingerie, encouraging viewers to fantasize they are voyeurs in an erotic cult club in paradise).

Take a visit on their new site and play the peeping-Tom game. To drive sales and word-of-mouth, they also created a smart ‘cloakroom’ feature allowing users to drag items off the models and store them for purchase, while any part of the party could be captured, downloaded and used to create customized wallpaper.

All of this ruckus has built up quite the talk around town, has kept their brand in the spotlight and attracted massive international media coverage, making them the only truly credible lingerie brand on the fashion map.

1. Don’t friend request your users.

When a person joins a new social network the last thing they want is to be bombarded with strangers friend requesting them, let alone your community manager hitting them up. Really, what is the point of that, so your users have “friends”? Not needed. I am sure your users can find their own friends if you provide an easy way to find friends (i.e. allowing them to find their facebook friends on your site, search for people with similar tastes or live in the same area, etc.).

2. Don’t bother us by saying something totally useless.

When your community manager says something like, “I really like that dress you just favorited”, it sounds like she/he is just kissing our ass and we categorize it as spam. Instead, monitor your user’s activity and exchange in a productive way for both you and your users. If a user has not been active, you can reach out to them and ask if there is anything they would change about the site to get them to use it more.

3. Don’t bombard us with your seed content.

It’s great to get seed content on your site, especially when you are teaching your users what good content looks like, but when there’s 5 people who are adding all the user generated content, your site looses value. Try doing a soft launch in some major cities and enlisting a diverse group of people to balance out the content.

4. Don’t sit back, act all pretty, and rely on your community to do the dirty work.

It’s great to give your community the ability to flag comments, profiles, photos, etc, but don’t rely on them to do all the work. Spam is probably one of the most annoying parts about social networks and it’s your responsibility to monitor and delete and solve the problem permanently.

5. Don’t ignore your most passionate users.

There is always going to be some users that absolutely “get it” and use your site the most. These people are most likely going to spread the word about your site and these are the people who will have great feedback. When they send you feedback, write them back right away thanking them and keep in touch with them.

In conclusion, please make sure your community managers are engaging with your users in a productive, caring, and honest way. And as mentioned previously here, make sure you are monitoring and responding to your community when they are not on your site as well.

Dropclock is a motion screensaver that expresses every minute of real time with heavy helvetica numbers dropping into water in super slow-motion.

Art Direction / Design : Yugo Nakamura
Film Direction / Edit : Erica Sakai