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  • McDonald’s Minimal Global Packaging Redesign Explained

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    3 min read

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    Brands tend to reduce their footprint and minimize messaging after substantial growth. That’s not a maxim, or anything. Just an observation. Google, AirBnb, Slack and IBM — are a few that come to mind. But there are hundreds of examples out there. Tech companies have it easy, because their product is imbued with their digital identity.

    Food brands on the other hand require great packaging to propel their brand identity. A harmony has to exist between the packaging, the restaurant, and the brand. Check out Burger King’s big rebrand. It’s flat, simple and oozes nostalgia of the 80’s. Now McDonald’s has a new packaging initiative? Clearly they’re competing, right? Of course, they are competing in the literal sense, for our dollars, our mouths and our attention — but why the sudden renewed interest?

    We’re exiting the the pandemic, for one. Albeit slowly, and on the heels of the highest mortality rates in the world no less, here at home in the USA. But secondly, the world is changing, and the fast food industry is taking notice and investing like crazy in new food technology. Plant protein is in huge demand.

    Plant-based protein versions of the Big Mac and BLT are on the horizon. They’re closer to market than you think, and the fast food industry is about to explode in new varieties of alternative meat offerings. This is a huge deal. But while it’s compelling to vegetarians, and vegans — a large swath of American omnivores are not so easily convinced. To change their minds, you have to change their hearts. Burger King and McDonald’s are shedding the brand equity of the past 20+ years: fast, quick, and greasy — and trading it in for something new, something hopeful, perhaps impossible: fast and good.

    That’s a fucking hell of a tall order, I know.

    Rand Paul, did it with IBM in 1968. Despite being an immensely complex data organization, hand-built the machines that led us into the information age, and makes continuous breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, the company continues to grow and evolve his simple brand system.

    The fast food industry knows there’s an explosive growth potential just waiting to burst with the advent of plant proteins, and they’re laying the groundwork for the next 20-30 years of growth.

    Simply put, minimalism is the language that brands foam at the mouth for. It’s the ultimate designation for a successful product in any industry. I mean, just looks at Apple. The pinnacle of minimalism. The pinnacle of success. The champion of Americana. Capitalizing on that language, the fast food industry are willing plant-proteins into the mainstream. Will it work though?

    Adweek‘s piece on the packaging redesign has a great quote from the partners at Pearlfisher on the project. Which by the way, spanned nearly 4 years in development:

    No matter the region or language, we wanted the packaging design to communicate joyful moments while being immediate and universal.

    Hamish Campbell, vp, ecd, Pearlfisher

    Universal adoption of a packaging system will be key to success across all of their menu items. But, the packaging is only a small part revealed of a broader effort coming to the global face of the McDonald’s company. I predict we’ll see more and more of this minimal system Pearlfisher constructed very soon. I think we will definitely see plant-proteins and new offerings from McDonald’s coming to the forefront, with classic products like the Big Mac and Filet-o-Fish take a backseat to quickly evolving American fast food tastes.

  • Ross Perot Has Died

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    2 min read

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    From The New York Times:

    He began working at 7, selling garden seeds door to door and later breaking horses (and his nose) for his father at a dollar a head. When he was 12, he began delivering The Texarkana Gazette on horseback in poor neighborhoods, soliciting subscriptions and building his route from scratch for extra commissions. He did so well his boss tried to cut his commissions, but he backed off when the boy went to the publisher.

    He changed his name to Henry Ross Perot in honor of a brother, Gabriel Ross Perot Jr., who had died, just a toddler, in 1927. The family pronounced the surname PEE-roe, but in his 20s he changed that, too, making it puh-ROE because, he said, he got tired of correcting people. He called himself Ross; the media years later added the initial “H” at the beginning of his name, but he never liked it.

    In his lifetime, he worked at IBM, served in the Navy as a Lieutenant, founded two computer-data companies (one of which powered paperwork for Medicaid and Medicare), and donated millions to schools, hospitals, scientific research and the arts. He was a self-made billionaire Texan who didn’t make his fortunes on oil and that is a remarkable achievement. A venerable businessman, and later became something of a pseudo-Republican (having run for president under the Reform Party).

    Eagles don’t flock, you have to find them one at a time.

    In a sense, Ross Perot set the mold for many post-oil Texan entrepreneurs. His legacy of philanthropy continued with his children, and later led to the founding of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, my previous employer. While I disagreed with his personal politics, I retain a great deal of respect for the Perot family. Like many Texans I admire, he was really one of a kind.

    You can read more about his life and legacy here.

  • Weather Channel Walks Away from Facebook Videos

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    2 min read

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    From Sahil Patel for Digiday:

    “[Facebook video] hasn’t been beneficial,” said Neil Katz, global head of content and engagement at The Weather Channel, during a speech at the Digiday Video Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. “It has been good for Facebook, but it hasn’t been good for us.”

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    “We went along for the ride every single step of the way,” Katz said. “But we noticed, over the course of two years, that we were being paid in all types of currencies — followers, shares, views — that did not feel like money.”

    The Weather Channel was part of Facebook’s funding program for live and on-demand news feed videos and also produced three shows for Facebook Watch last fall. The Weather Channel’s deal to produce live and on-demand news feed videos for Facebook, for which Katz said it received a seven-figure fee, shined a light on how difficult it is to make money on Facebook. Paid to produce a predetermined number of minutes per month, The Weather Channel found it was only making $28 per minute of video produced. For comparison, Katz pointed out how the CBS reality show “Survivor” cost $45,000 per minute to make in 2009.

    Not surprised. Facebook is a one-sided business. It’s closed-off, full of trolls, your mom and dad, an echo-chamber of bad ideas, and where content goes to die. While IBM clearly isn’t as brash as Elon Musk it leaves me wondering, “how much longer until Facebook has a user-exodus crisis on its hands?”

  • Links: April 2018

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    5 min read

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    Time for another roundup of links:

    Don’t Fix Facebook. Replace It.

    It turns out that the data leak from Cambridge Analytica isn’t 5 million, it isn’t 87 million, but affects a whopping 2 billion users. Major bummer. This quote about sums up how I feel about it:

    What the journalist Walter Lippmann said in 1959 of “free” TV is also true of “free” social media: It is ultimately “the creature, the servant and indeed the prostitute of merchandizing.” But social media itself isn’t going away. It has worked its way into our lives and has come to help satistify the basic human need to connect and catch up. Facebook, in fact, claims lofty goals, saying it seeks to “bring us closer together” and “build a global community.” Those are indeed noble purposes that social media can serve. But if they were Facebook’s true goals, we would not be here.

    Advertising makes the world go round. No doubt about it. But let’s not beat around the bush, Facebook makes money. Connecting people is secondary to their primary goal — leveraging user data for advertisers.

    A Better Way to Put Words on Paper, IBM Selectric Ad

    A classic. You just don’t see ads like this anymore. It’s beautiful. Reminds me of the early Macintosh ads.

    IBM Plex C-Handle Mug 11oz

    Another IBM related link. In celebration of IBM’s new typeface, Plex they made this super cool mug. 10/10, would buy.

    Wesleyan Tetris

    This is a fun one. From Macintosh Garden:

    A Mac-exclusive bid to create the most vexing Tetris possible. It will lie, cheat, taunt you about your play (“Nice slide!”), give you preposterously unusable pieces, and find a creative “new way to screw you” on every level. While it never saw its intended commercial publication, a leaked development copy became an underground sensation.

    This version only refers to itself as Tetris by Randall Cook, but it picked up many other names as it spread: New Tetris, Obnoxious Tetris, Attitude Problem Tetris, Wise-Ass Tetris, Asshole Tetris and most famously Wesleyan Tetrisafter the author’s university. Recently, Cook announced plans to release the source code under the name Original Supertris.

    Scarfolk Council

    I discovered this one from Josh and Chuck at Stuff You Should Know. They’re a goofy bunch and easily my favorite podcast. Scarfolk is a misinformation-satire, specifically occupying the graphic design aesthetic of 1970’s PSA campaigns. From the Scarfolk masthead:

    Scarfolk is a town in North West England that did not progress beyond 1979. Instead, the entire decade of the 1970s loops ad infinitum. Here in Scarfolk, pagan rituals blend seamlessly with science; hauntology is a compulsory subject at school, and everyone must be in bed by 8pm because they are perpetually running a slight fever. “Visit Scarfolk today. Our number one priority is keeping rabies at bay.” For more information please reread.

    From Scarfolk

    You can watch the SYSK’s Internet Roundup episode here. The origins and inspirations of Scarfolk starts at around 7:30. Good stuff.

    The 1Password 7 Beta for Mac Is Lit and You Can Be, Too

    It’s here! Finally. The 1Password 7 Beta is out for macOS users. I’ve played around with it for a week now and it’s pretty nice. Very refreshing UI update. 

    More Sinkholes for West Texas?

    From Texas Monthly:

    A new study from two SMU scientists finds that oil and gas activity has made the ground unstable over a 4,000-square-mile swath of West Texas.

    Growing up in Texas, I can tell you — earthquakes are not common at all. Most of Texas sits upon several massive shale structures. As this oil and gas activity continues, there could be dire consequences.

    From the EIA

    SMU geophysics and researcher Jin-Woo Kim later says:

    If these shifts continue, they could lead to increased seismic activity in the area as well as the formation of new sinkholes, which would pose a danger to “residents, roads, railroads, levees, dams, and oil and gas pipelines,” according to Lu. Pipelines in particular are vulnerable to these shifts, and there are many of them in the area. “West Texas has one of the densest networks of oil and gas pipelines in the U.S.,” the scientists noted. Ground water could also be polluted as a result.

    Gothamist is Back!

    Hooray! WAMU gets DCist, and KPCC gets LAist! A great victory for the web and journalism. There’s a Kickstarter to help raise cash for WNYC + Gothamist. Fuck yeah.

    The Key Wrangler from CW&T

    From CW&T

    I came across CW&T (Che-Wei Wang & Taylor Levy) after HAWRAF (a design and tech studio in Flatiron) shared the photo on Instagram. CW&T is maker studio, seemingly focusing on solving unique problems at the intersection of art and design. The Key Wrangler is a rugged, solid piece of CNC’d titanium (or brass). At it’s core, it’s a carabiner designed for urban use. I love the passion and grit CW&T puts into their work.

    They’ve also done some cool projects in the past too. Such as this rad music project, 365 Days of OP-1. Very impressive. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything 365 days in a row except for maybe eating. 😬