Idea Sandbox

Unity promotes cohesiveness. Variety creates interest.
A business lesson taken from classical music.
Ultimately, all composition comes down to a balance between unity and variety.

Too much unity, too much of the same thing, leads to boredom. But, too much variety leads to chaos.
This sentiment is attributed to Russian composer Igor Stravinski by music commentator Rob Kapilow.
While [...]

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This is Part 2 of a 2-Part article about illustrator, Chris Gash. (ChrisGash.com) Part 1 posted yesterday. Chris is one of the talented people who helped me re-design the Idea Sandbox website.
Chris was kind enough to answer some questions about his style, approach, and work. I hope you enjoy the discussion…
What lead you to pursue [...]

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This is Part 1 of a 2-Part article about illustrator, Chris Gash (ChrisGash.com). He is one of the talented people who helped me re-design the Idea Sandbox websites. Chris created the cool images that appear in the “starbursts” in the headers of key pages.

If you enjoy learning about “the work behind the work” – what [...]

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I snapped this a couple of weeks ago while shopping in Washington DC… L.L.Bean has it right. They’re not offering unusual discounts, slashing prices, cutting quality or any non-sense.
As Chris McCormick the CEO says… they’ve never played games with their prices. When the recession is over L.L.Bean will be able to look their customers in [...]

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Have you seen Dunkin’ Donut’s latest advertising campaign and website?

DunkinBeatStarbucks.com
They’ve asked “hard-working Americans” which coffee they prefer – and they evidently picked Dunkin’ Donuts. Just like the way Pepsi challenged the taste of Coca-Cola… Dunkin’ is taking on Starbucks.
In addition to advertising spots, they’ve got ecards you can send to friends and family to spread [...]

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The most popular post I’ve ever written for this blog was my July article about the Burger King Veg City tray liner.

[this is the tray liner provided with my Whopper] 
WGN-9 Morning News in Chicago just ran a piece on the wacky tray liners and used the graphics from Idea Sandbox for their story. (hmmm…. with [...]

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The Post2Post Virtual Book Tour featuring Tom Fishburne’s latest book, This One Time At Brand Camp: Marketing Cartoons by Tom Fishburne” begins onMonday, August 25!
Here are your five reasons for following along…
(1) Chris Wilson,
(2) Jackie Huba & (3) Ben McConnell,
(4) John Moore,
(5) Dan Roam, and
(6) Seth Godin
Each will be posting about Tom’s book!
Here’s the full [...]

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As the jingle sings… “Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us…” I hope this rings true with the agency behind the Burger King Veg City tray artwork I wrote about yesterday.
I’ve just sent an e-mail to the Munich-based firm .start who created the artwork. I’ve put in a “special order” asking [...]

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There’s a neat looking video game called SPORE due out this summer (7 Sept) by game designer Will Wright. It’s a simulation game – sort of like the Sims or SimCity… But the level of game play and user customization goes beyond pretty much anything that’s come before it.

The website describes…
“Spore, the highly anticipated game [...]

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According to Harvard Business Review the strategic sweet spot of a company is “where it meets customer’s needs in a way that rivals can’t, given the context in which it competes.
(Source: “Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?” by David J. Collis and Michael G. Rukstad, Harvard Business Review, April 2008, page 89)

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