“Designers are the new rock stars!”
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 – On Wednesday night we spoke to a crowd of photographers, designers, and architects about our ‘number one hit single’ Anyone Can Swiss. The response to our presentation was quite exciting. We met some really great people, and enjoyed the 20 slide, 6min 20sec format, as it is in the vein of how we work: fast, to the point, and with maximized efficiency over all.
I had lots of great conversations with many people. If you didn’t get a chance to say ‘Hey!’, then drop us a comment below!
Thanks Everyone for a great evening.
Every two years, the AIGA has it’s Best of New England design competition. If you have been following our updates (or love/hate Helvetica) you probably have seen our project Anyone Can Swiss. Well, we can now call Anyone Can Swiss “Award Winning”.
That’s right, Dirk+Weiss has won a Best of New England (BoNE) award for outstanding design. The BoNE awards only go out the best New England designers with ‘knock your socks off’ work. Admittedly, the website for Anyone Can Swiss is not your typical graphic design project, but somehow, it felt right at home inside a graphic design competition.
Overall, we feel the judges connected to the bigger picture, and maybe even had a little fun with the project. That’s exactly what we wanted. Anyone Can Swiss is not just a “Perfect Helvetica Poster Generator”, it is a social experiment for graphic designers. Sure it pushes a few buttons, and causes some to ask “is this a joke? or serious?”. That’s the whole idea: contemplation and discourse.
We would like to thank the AIGA BoNE Show Judges and AIGA Boston for taking the time consider Anyone Can Swiss as an award winning design project, and creating an opportunity for us here a Dirk+Weiss to promote what we do to the greater design community.
Now what? Well, check out our Anyone Can Swiss iPhone app. Why the iPhone? We ask simply, why just be on the web, when you can be on the web and mobile? And we feel it is a safe assumption that many of the 40,000,000 iPhone users in the US are indeed, graphic designers.
First, thanks to all of you who have supported AnyoneCanSwiss by downloading our free Swissmaker 2.0 App. Our new build is on its way. This time, we have outdone ourselves.
There will be an update to the current free app, with some new abilities including:
- Multiple line text (instead of single line) input with line breaks to create “White Space”
- A status view that shows details of the Swissmaker Process
- Background information about AnyoneCanSwiss
We are also announcing the release of our SwissmakerPro App. This is a $0.99 upgrade to the current free app, and it introduces the new features listed above and two exciting new features!
- Pull a photo in from your library, and use it as a poster background
- Take a photo with your camera, and use it as a poster background
That’s right friends! The Swissmaker 2.0 App for your iPhone is now available for Free Download in the iTunes App Store. Since its approval this Saturday June 6th, we are averaging over 65 units downloaded per day!
The Swissmaker 2.0 includes the ability to create a “Perfect Helvetica Poster” from a single line of text. Then, you can save it to your photo library and share with friends.
How can we make it free? The same way the rest of the web can be free, with a twist. We have included inside our Swissmaker 2.0 app, an advertising model that incorporates a co-branding vehicle to help promote products and brands virally. As a participant, you only pay if your ad is viewed. We have a detailed reporting and advertising system plugged in behind this and all our up coming apps, powered by OpenX.
If you our your company is interested in advertising on the Swissmaker 2.0 App and co-branding with AnyoneCanSwiss, contact us.
Download it now! Fun at parties! Try it with friends! Now Available For Free Download — Visit http://www.anyonecanswiss.com for more details.
If you have not already seen our smash hit site AnyoneCanSwiss, please do check it out. In the first 48 hours, 11 thousand unique-visitor, poster submissions, we’re collected and shared on Flickr. And now, AnyoneCanSwiss, is going mobile.
Here at Dirk+Weiss, we have created a new iPhone app that takes the concept of AnyoneCanSwiss, and makes it mobile. In the next few weeks, you will be able to download your own Swissmaker 2.0 App to your iPhone from the App Store on iTunes. And did we mention, its totally free!
The app will not only make instant Helvetica posters, but will allow you to save the posters to you photo library on your phone. From there, the possibilities are endless! Email a poster to friends, or set one as your phone wallpaper. If any other app on your phone can access your photo library, it can also access your posters.
Also included with the launch of the Swissmaker 2.0 iPhone App, is an advertising model that can connect interested brands to a niche viral market. This process of co-branded advertising is a no-risk model in you only pay for the views you receive. If you our your company is interested in co-branding with AnyoneCanSwiss, send us a message.
Apparently, long time software developers are finally making bank by creating one of those $1.99 iPhone apps. I have now read countless articles about struggling software companies who are giving up their pc/mac box development, for the iPhone platform.
So what’s in an iPhone app? Well, from what we can see, besides some code and graphics, there is an underlying philosophy that has put up the white flag to proprietary software piracy. Software companies have, and are beginning to understand that there is no bringing down piracy. The old mentality and business model of “big box, big software, big price” has been eradicated by open, collaborative development, and the iPhone has brought the same software development strategy to a mobile and light weight, if not viral stage.
Lets do a quick calculation for an example iPhone app’s annual revenue:
200 downloads/day x 1.99/download x 365 Days = $145,270!
Now that’s the way to make a six figure salary.
Stay tuned for the Anyone Can Swiss iPhone app!!
This past weekend we had the opportunity to talk with new design students at the Art Institute of Boston. Nathan Felde, chair of the design department, invited us to come show not only current and past projects, but also talk about the current state of graphic design, and design in general.
Nathan started his presentation with an explination of the design program and the transition is is going through. Up untill recently the design department at AIB was on a different, if not anitquated track, for teaching design in the 21st century. Nathan’s theory of “Eventual Design” focuses on the hypothesis that design has moved beyond just objects and visual aesthetics, to behavior and interconnected goals. The role of the graphic designer for the 21st century is more involved than ever, in where the decisions of said designers, can effect all aspects of a brand, business and product. A comparison of design to Cybernetics was made.
Our presentation started thereafter. It seemed to be a nice follow-up to Nathan’s bit. We covered Ticknology, Kiosk, Contact+, and AnyoneCanSwiss. The students were definatly engaged and were humored by our AnyoneCanSwiss and the selection of posters.
Nathan feels that the our projects are artifact of the notion that with design training (graphic in particullar), a person can have a profound effect on all aspects of a project. In particullar, projects such as Kiosk and AnyoneCanSwiss, we feel are examples of this type of design theory. Kiosk is not only graphically designed, but also contains a buisness model and prototype, where previously a designers resposibilty would end at just the graphics.
Next week, Matthew will be attending AIGA’s Student Portfolio Review Day at MassArt, reviewing graphic design portolios of perspective students. Updates to follow with some photos of great design.
Over at the Art Institute of Boston, Graphic Design chair Nathan Felde has caught wind of Dirk+Weiss project “AnyoneCanSwiss”. When it comes to design and education, Nathan is forward thinking and always pushing his students to push forward professionally and personally. Nathan is also looking to better not just the students, but the faculty and staff as well, always making a case for adapting forward thinking to design and general curriculum.
Nathan has had an opportunity to work with the Dean of students at not only AIB, but also Lesley University, to whom AIB is affiliated. He has worked out AnyoneCanSwiss in two instances: one for incoming AIB students, and secondly for the Lesley Community of Scholars Day. This is the description of the Community of Scholars event by the Provost of Lesley University
“The Dirk + Weiss anyonecanswiss enables “Writing on the Wall” as an open graphic forum for expressing ideas, thoughts, wit, wisdom and musings of the participants. It is a virtual surface upon which we can all spontaneously write individually and review together. The choices of size, weight and position permit the writer to regulate rhythm and tone of voice of their message visually.”
Great idea. Visual surface = infinite ‘paper’.
This is the initial reaction we love. If you can’t get the pun, then go back to anyonecanswiss.com and swissify another poster.
The AIGA BoNE Show is a regional design competition for the North East. It happens every two years, and this year Dirk+Weiss has had pleasure to work on the planning comittee, by volunteering to power the BoNE Show 2009 website.
In addition, we have submitted our project AnyoneCanSwiss to the competition as a website and example of design discourse.
We feel that it is important to share this project with the greater local community, as it has sparked a large conversation of “technology and design”. This concept is often seen to be a road block for professional graphic designers.
More to come from AnyoneCanSwiss…
Keep those fingers crossed.
