As the cornerstone of a new brand identity, can we all agree that Yahoo’s “It’s You” campaign hasn’t exactly turned the world upside down since it was launched last fall, despite the apparent expenditure of much of the $100 million budgeted for it?

Which raises another issue. Yahoo last week filed for a trademark on the “It’s You” expression. The question: Why bother?

It’s not as if this branding campaign has been lighting the world on fire. Yahoo’s continuing problem as a brand nowadays actually stems from its history as one of the original

brands spawned by the internet. During the 1990’s, just being an internet brand was brand enough. There was America Online, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo (usually with the “!” back then) and a few grocery-delivery sites. Google hadn’t even really come on strong yet.Continue reading…

 The Oldest Trick In The World http://shar.es/mpZBL

1. BMW Group Designworks-USA

Cars are only one of the roads this consultancy travels. Top 50 No. 25

2. Ideo

From childhood obesity to climate change, no challenge is too daunting for this iconic firm. Top 50 No. 35

3. Rockwell Group

David Rockwell’s set design for the Oscars was such a smash he’s doing a sequel. His Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco opened to plaudits. Ditto, the Ames Hotel in Boston. And Sin City’s financially fraught CityCenter is grounded by Rockwell’s tree-house-like creation.

4. Pentagram

The firm dazzles for its partners’ range of work, from Lisa Strausfeld’s intuitive interface for the Litl netbook to Abbott Miller’s elegant identity system for the Art Institute of Chicago.

5. Ammunition

It ping-ponged from designing Barnes & Noble’s hot e-book reader Nook to developing high-performance earphones for celebrity clients such as Lady Gaga and Dr. Dre.

6. Fuseproject

In addition to new lamps for Herman Miller, new Jawbone headsets for Aliph, and the world’s fastest production-electric motorcycle for Mission Motors, Yves Béhar and his team got frisky, with a bunny-eared sex toy for Jimmyjane and an eco-friendly underwear venture with PACT.

7. Frog Design

When it wasn’t helping bring wireless communications to rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, Frog was planning workshops for MTV and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help kids brainstorm, peer to peer, on how to pay for college.

8. Potion

In 2009, Potion produced interactive installations that get computing out of the box: four for Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry and two for New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage. One used iPod Touch devices to upgrade audio guides, and synced headsets for visitors in the same area to make the museum experience more social.

9. Attik

This London firm gets the systems thinking that’s vital for executing large-scale projects. Its reboot of Coca-Cola’s brand-identity platform is now deployed worldwide. Lexus, Scion, and Nike are also clients.

10. WET Design

Its Dubai Fountain is now the world’s largest, with jets that shoot a record 50 stories high. Vegas boasts Lumia, the only fountain lit during the day (with stage lights, a first), and Focus, the world’s widest water wall (280 feet wide, 24 feet high). WET’s own campus has Los Angeles’s first permeable grass parking lot, meaning rainwater is captured and reused.

Source: FastCompany / Most Innovative Design Companies

If you’ve got an idea worth spreading, I hope you’ll consider this random assortment of rules. Like all rules, some are made to be broken, but still…

• You can name your idea anything you like, but a google-friendly name is always better than one that isn’t.
• Don’t plan on appearing on a reality show as the best way to launch your idea.
• Waiting for inspiration is another way of saying that you’re stalling. You don’t wait for inspiration, you command it to appear.
• Don’t poll your friends. It’s your art, not an election.
• Never pay a non-lawyer who promises to get you a patent.
• Avoid powerful people. Great ideas aren’t anointed, they spread through a groundswell of support.
• Spamming strangers doesn’t work. Spamming friends doesn’t work so well either, but it’s certainly better than spamming strangers.
• The hard part is finishing, so enjoy the starting part.
• Powerful organizations adore the status quo, so expect no help from them if your idea challenges the very thing they adore.
• Figure out how long your idea will take to spread, and multiply by 4.
• Be prepared for the Dip.
• Seek out apostles, not partners. People who benefit from spreading your idea, not people who need to own it.
• Keep your overhead low and don’t quit your day job until your idea can absorb your time.
• Think big. Bigger than that.
• Are you a serial idea-starting person? If so, what can you change to end that cycle? The goal is to be an idea-shipping person.
• Try not to confuse confidence with delusion.
• Prefer dry, useful but dull ideas to consumer-friendly ‘I would buy that’ sort of things. A lot less competition and a lot more upside in the long run.
• Pick a budget. Pick a ship date. Honor both. Don’t ignore either. No slippage, no overruns.
• Surround yourself with encouraging voices and incisive critics. It’s okay if they’re not the same people. Ignore both camps on occasion.
• Be grateful.
• Rise up to the opportunity, and do the idea justice.

Source: http://sethgodin.typepad.com