by Mark O'Brien | Jul 22, 2016
One of the reasons we love what we do is that we get to hear every conceivable rationalization for subjectivity, arbitrariness, and disregard for the target audience. Case in point: We recently created a new corporate identity and corresponding collateral materials...
by Mark O'Brien | Dec 17, 2015
It’s apparent from a post I read recently — “Design is Not a Service” — that there must be some sort of potent and pernicious hallucinogen making the rounds. The author of the post, seemingly in the throes of an overdose of the stuff, ranted through...
by Mark O'Brien | Oct 14, 2015
I was right on the verge of doing something drastic. And I wasn’t taking chances: I had a full can of Drano, five cyanide capsules, two guns, five razor blades, a noose, and a Barry Manilow DVD. A client — a provider of enterprise software and services — had...
by Mark O'Brien | Oct 2, 2015
In the two weeks since this post was published — “It’s the End of the Line for the Ad-Supported Web” — the crying has been conspicuous by its absence. Who could have been surprised, let alone despondent? We, in fact, did this to ourselves....
by Mark O'Brien | Sep 3, 2015
Given the accelerating pace of change, especially technological change, we should have expected this. Even if we’d noticed nothing but the changes in contact-lens technology, we’d have had to recognize that anything was possible; that the limitations...
by Mark O'Brien | Aug 13, 2015
I was intrigued by a headline I read the other day: “The 3 Business Models That Matter for Connected Hardware Startups”. True to the headline, the article under the headline went on to list … well … you know. I recognize the likelihood that I...