Business

Students completing degrees in creative subjects could be forgiven for feeling pessimistic about their chances of getting a job straight away, particularly as most are expected to undertake work placements for very little or no money, just to obtain the experience they need to get an actual job. So why aren’t universities teaching the skills ...

I’m sure it’s every product owners dream to actually become ‘the norm’ for a certain activity, use or channel. For example, “Do the Hoovering”, “Just Google it“, and even “Facebook them“. So, with this notion in mind the article I read last week about Standard Chartered adopting the iPhone for corporate use really struck a ...

On my MA seminar debate last week at Goldsmiths we discussed the ‘author function’ in relation to value-creation in the economic context, interrogating the notions of originality and distinctiveness posited by Foucault in his essay “What Is an Author?’. Curiously, that topic led the group to challenge the definition of brands, in the classic sense, ...

I had the pleasure of heading over to Area 15 in NoDa on Oct 17th for the second edition of BarCamp Charlotte. BarCamp is a user-generated conference, which encourages attendees to pitch for their chance to present a session on a topic of their choice. “The name ‘BarCamp’ is a playful allusion to the event’s ...

I was gobsmacked when reading about the [real] possibility of Comic Sans being chosen as the official typeface for the 2012 London Olympics. Following the controversy surrounding the Olympics logo, 2 years ago, the idea of using a typeface with such an unsophisticated aesthetics comes as another blow to the design community. The Olympic Delivery ...

Having just recently installed Live Sync, after a long and hard thought whether to indulge myself with Windows products. I begun to enjoy my first steps in exploring the capabilities in which cloud computing could help improve the way that I work. Cloud computing is here and is spreading fast, while an ongoing battle for ...

During the late 90’s when the .com revolution was in full swing, I remember Iceland jumping (rather belatedly) on the bandwagon and renaming all their storefronts Iceland.co.uk as if this was all you needed to make an Internet business. Not sure how many storefronts Iceland have left to put back to their original format, but ...

A photographer friend of mine told me today he didn’t want to be a photographer anymore, but instead, was going to be a ‘digital imaging poet’. Sounded like a great idea to me and we arranged to ‘touch base about it offline’ later (during one of our regular ‘idea showers’). We’ll no doubt be ‘getting ...

In the wake of the sub-prime crisis, waning consumers confidence, and a sluggish global economy, the idea of a recession will impact the branding industry in two ways:

As my first entry on Dusted blog I wanted to post a small article on branding so that it would match the headline somehow: Can customers sell brands to themselves? Are companies reaching out or cutting corners when they ask their own customers to participate in branding?

The private equity firm, Terra Firma, held their Annual Investor Conference today at the Unicorn Theatre, London and Dusted were tasked with creating all the large-scale branding for the event. This included external hoardings and window displays as well as the stage graphics, which were the backdrop to the keynote speech by Al Gore. The ...

So why does Google really want to buy Feedburner? I think the main and most obvious reason is because Google has realised that most of us are now getting and speed reading our content via a RSS Reader, instead of reading the originating websites/blogs that display Google AdSense or Rich Media adverts. Take the Dusted ...

As someone who is about to become a parent I know the task of picking a name is tricky at best. But if you couple the usual pitfalls (“I knew an Oliver at school and I didn’t like him”) with modern dilemmas such as “will my child’s name have good Googleability” you really do have ...

Google has finally brought their e-payment system to the UK. Google Checkout is a simple way to add e-commerce capabilities to your web site. Previously Checkout was only available in the US. For more information on the UK version visit the Google Checkout tours for buyers and sellers.

In order to develop useful web applications it’s a good idea to analyse some stats to see what users are doing. If you love data…Have a read of these Hitwise stats

It seems that the future of search engines is to get personal. Personalised search engine startups like Rollyo and Eurekster have big competition with Google’s Search History and Yahoo’s Search Builder.

Not content with dominating the global coffee market, Starbucks have launched their own record label. Hear Music™, which was previously the brand under which they released a few compilation albums sold in store has now become a full record label. It isn’t known whether any artists have been signed.

Following a 3-way pitch, Dusted have been appointed to design the annual and quarterly reporting for three of Terra Firma’s investment funds.