Marco wrote about viral marketing a few weeks ago and posted a picture of his customized Nike shoe. I wanted to post on a related topic. I taught an information design class at Parsons this year that integrated with the marketing curriculum. That cross-over initiated a lot of conversations about market segmentation, positioning and target audience. One of my students showed me the Converse One website and I used it to make my own Supermetric shoe. So yes, this could be a viral marketing seed for our new brand name.  However, I’m completely fascinated by this shoe as an example of mass customization. I remember Greg Lynn talking about the impact of computer controlled manufacturing  on the formal language of architecture. He recounted a history of manufacturing in which the uniqueness of hand craftsmanship gave way to a generic aesthetic driven by industrial processes. While mass production is still the basis of volume driven businesses it’s interesting that something can look different while being structurally similar enough for mass production. My pair didn’t cost much more than an off the shelf version. I wonder what the actually production cost is.

I’m going to start a series about inspirations—First off will be the great little book “A Giacometti Portrait” by James Lord. I read it for the first time while I was in Architecture school and I practically inhaled it. This might sound strange but it’s highly entertaining to see one of the greatest artists of the 20th century struggle on a daily basis trying to fulfill his own high expectations. The book is a bit like a Felini movie without the allegories, nakedness and costumes — just the pure suffering of the genius.

From the back cover: James Lord sat for eighteen days, while his friend Alberto Giacometti did his portrait in oil. The artist painted, and the model recorded the sittings and took photographs of the work in it’s various stages. 

Here’s a little excerpt from around the middle (sic!) of the book:

“I’m very tired today,” he said. “I was up till five and then I didn’t sleep very well.”

Once having started to work, he soon said, “I’ve got to destroy everything again.”

“That was to be foreseen,” I said.

“Not to this extend. Look at me! Merde! I’m right back where I was in 1925. It’s absolutely impossible to reproduce on a canvas what I see.

“Of course,” I said. “Which simply brings us back again to the fact that one cannot hope to copy nature.”

“But that’s the only thing worth doing,” he said. “It’s the only thing I’m interested in.” 

On my search for good news today I found a piece of source code to help me get a better read on the emotional state of the world. The people at Flaptor created a tool to reveal trends on the Twitter platform. Lots of fun to use and it updates automatically so you can check back here for your daily report.