The paperback would make a great gift for the season, but for now it’s only available as digital edition (PDF, ePub & Mobi).
I couldn’t resist the visual goodness and the chance to get inside the mind of one the great designers on this field (Jon designed Firefox’s logo) and rewarded myself with one.

From ideation to drawing tips, web or application icons, this is one of the best references on icon design available, further confirmed by the great feedback on Twitter.

I'm only about halfway through The Icon Handbook by @Hicksdesign, but it's already worth it. Fantastic job: http://t.co/JpxLuidV

2011/12/20 4:59 pm via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@jasonsantamaria

Jason Santa Maria

The Icon Handbook - http://t.co/MlHGJMnh - After first 30 pages I can recommend. Icon design has great wisdom for game designers.

2011/12/21 7:51 pm via RockMeltReplyRetweetFavorite

@flarkminator

Mike Birkhead

Euro RSCG Amsterdam and Perfect Fools claim to have created the world’s first Twitter Race for Citroën, with users tweeting the driver into where to go next.

The livestream will be on Citroën’s Netherland Facebook page and you can follow the updates on their Twitter account.

Now we just to need make this happen on reality shows. Just kidding.

Source: Perfect Fools

Within  W+K Amsterdam there’s the business unit The Dam Armada, made up of a team of creative developers and designers, turning ideas into products, the first one being FERRY.

Created for designers and developers, the tool consists on FERRYScript (the exporter)  and FERRYDocker (the interpreter), converting PSD layers into a production ready set of png and XML files, interpreted by FERRYDocker ready for iOS interfaces.

The tool is on sale now at http://ferry.thedamarmada.com for 14.99 euros, saving a developer a few hours a month of chopping and slicing.

Yet, there’s one an advertising agency founder that has been forgotten, that 50 years ago was already discussing issues like sustainability or escort bayan interconnectivity. Oh, and he also brought to San Francisco an obscure canadian academic named Marshall McLuhan.

The giant i’m writing about is Howard Luck Gossage. A critic but also reformer of the advertising industry, his thoughts are remarkably modern and fit to our interactive age:

“The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them. Sometimes it’s an ad.”

“Our first duty is not to the old sales curve, it is to the audience.”

“Copywriters are very strange people who have only reached copywriting after eliminating every other means of making a living through writing”

“If you have something pertinent to say, you neither have to say it to very many people –only to those who you think will be interested–nor do you have to say it very often. How many times do you have to be told that your house is on fire?”

“First, what is the difference between seeing an ad on a billboard and seeing an ad in a magazine? The answer, in a word, is permission”

“To explain responsibility to advertising men is like trying to convince an eight-year-old that sexual intercourse is more fun than a chocolate ice cream cone.”

To revive  the thoughts of this great ad man, young british director Ashley Pollak has launched a crowdfunding effort to make a documentary about his life. Donate at http://www.indiegogo.com/hlg and get your perks suchs as being one of the first to appear in the credits or your own private screening session. And it’s cheaper than his book on Amazon.

“In which a guy clearly does not set out to change the world, but does so, then denies he ever did, and has a whole bunch of people over for drinks who will all go on to become famous and miss him for the rest of their lives” — Jeff Goodby

So much that i even considered ending the blog, but when reminding myself what it was like back in 2006, the blogging bug came moda back again. The previous months i’ve tried to write long form posts that went beyond the simple Tumblr, but it turned out harder to keep a regular frequency. On this comeback, i’m going back to the roots, highlighting interactive campaigns and focusing more on social media.

For those few who haven’t unsubscribed the blog (and still love Google Reader, despite the recent changes), thanks for sticking by. And let me know what else would you find interesting for me to write about at A Source Of Inspiration.

The trailer above should be enough to seduce fans, but why stop there? And instead of the regular blockbuster campaign why not appeal to the geeky teenager and entice the astrophysicist within? That’s exactly what the agency Hide&Seek, Warner Bros. and Oxford University did, “bringing hardcore astrophysics and superhero movie fans together”.

At StudyTheSkyes.com, fans and aspiring astrophysicists can be explorers of The Zooniverse, a science project that allows internet users analyse photographic data generated by some of the world’s largest telescopes, and pass their findings for the research teams. Os as some say in marketing lingo, crowdsourcing. But in a geeky-milky way

So how does this relates to the character Green Lantern? Well, because the task at hand (tutorial above) would be looking for ‘bubbles’ produced by the formation of stars, that show up as … Green Rings.

Yeah, i know it’s geeky, but also a refreshing approach to movie campaigns.

If the above gorgeous piece of film wasn’t enough, now follows Radiolab Hyper Audio Player, based on the same episode.

Henrik Moltke took the amusing conversation of radio hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, built a custom HTML5 player, mixed it with Popcorn.js (a javascript framework for multimedia assets) and added the collaborative features of Soundcloud, the music sharing platform.

If we’re used to think of semantics regarding hypertext, this experiment ‘shows’ how this semantic value can be added to multimedia content. For instance, when a comment or image is added by Rabiolab on Soundcloud track it generates the corresponding visual cue on the player, incorporating Creative Commons images. Another feature uses one of Henrik’s experiments Hyperdisken, to get the show transcript.

Interactive creativity is not only about visual; sources can be found in audio also.

To excuse myself for lack of preparation, i’ll share the original presentation, with presenter notes so you could get a few more ideas about Advertising, Propagation and the importance of Application Programming Interfaces. Below, the SlideShare version.

And congratulations to Ricardo and his team for pulling such a great event.

The best young scientists from 13 to 18 years old can now enter the competition and submit their creative projects, with dozen of prizes going from a National Geographic Expedition or a $50,000 scolarship to a personalised LEGO color mosaic or a Google Chrome Notebook.
Google also provides several resources and materials to help with the projects, showcasing their collaborative web services, and even get teachers involved.

We need more of this stuff from regular business.

Disclaimer: sponsored post for UnrulyMedia

Photo credits: Made By Many

An iOS application, it turns the iPad into a portable sign, as you signal to people around you what you’re about to tweet or the hashtag you’re thinking for whatever conference might be rolling at SXSW. For those guilty of making backchannel noise at conferences, you can now do it in style

From voting to sharing your favorites, there’s a lot to explore, on a perfect example that blends both social with personal media.

P.S. if that wasn’t enough, the agency did afterwards another Instagr.am mashup with a full page takeover that collects on a dashboard the photos taken by their atendees at the event.