COMA

This is old but gold

In Odds & Ends

If you walk into a consumer electronics store today, you will still see lots of boxes like this. This has been around for years thought it’s always good to remind ourselves the dangers of poor design.

Designing the Obama Campaign

In Knowledge

As the Design Director for Obama’s 2008 campaign, Scott Thomas led a now-historic political campaign, in which branding, design, and the web played a truly pivotal role. Likening the experience to “building an airplane in flight,” Scott talks about the creative’s need for triage, the crucial role of incremental design improvements, and the importance of getting back to the hand and keeping things simple.

http://the99percent.com/videos/5821/scott-thomas-designing-the-obama-campaign

Paula Scher Quotes

In Odds & Ends

I came across some Paula Scher quotes today while doing some research on the web. Here are some which I think are really good.

On working with people

“There are smart people and dumb people. There are people who have energy and people who are lazy. They exist in combinations. If you work with a smart person with energy, that’s your best collaborator. If you work with a smart person who’s lazy, well, that’s a bit of a waste, but it does no harm. If you work with a dumb person who’s lazy, that’s sad but not problematic, because they will simply be ineffectual. But if you work with a dumb person with energy, therein lies the seed of disaster.”

On Helvetica

“I had rebelled against the Swiss international style because the act of organizing the Helvetica typeface on a grid reminded me of cleaning up my room. Also I viewed Helvetica, the visual language of corporations, as the establishment typeface and therefore somehow responsible for the Vietnam War.”

On 34 years in 1 second

“How can it be that you talk to someone and it’s done in a second? But it is done in a second. it’s done in a second and in 34 years, and every experience and every movie and every thing of my life that’s in my head.”

A place to call home

In Odds & Ends

We have moved into our new office. Took us a whole day to wait for delivery of our furniture, assembly and setting up. The MUJI chairs are pretty fun to put together but the bulky Melltorp tables is a painful affair. We really like how it has turned out as a beautiful and refreshing studio. Enjoy the photos!

Our New Studio

In News

Over the past year we have been operating from a variety of places, Pacific Coffee Company and Starbucks cafes, a borrowed space from Singapore Management University and each others’ homes. It was fine in the beginning as the amount of work we are doing increases, it has become increasingly difficult to keep track of things and properly manage projects. We needed a proper studio where the team can get together on a daily basis and focus without the distractions of home and public places. After much searching and viewing we are now finally moving in to the one we like the most.

The unit is located in Cosmo, a condominium at Guillemard Crescent which is connected to Guillemard Road and near to Geylang, the famous red light district of Singapore. We have rented a duplex unit on the eleventh floor which has bay windows all over allowing the place to be naturally illuminated in the day. The wind is terrific too as the condominium is surrounded by only low-rise buildings.

Work area

View from work area

Stairs leading up to 2nd floor

We spent the past two weeks sketching, planning and buying the things we need, like furniture and supplies. We wanted the office to look real good, sophisticated and designed by designers so we spent a lot of effort and time to get things right. We visited a variety of places such as MUJI and IKEA and purchased some really nice stuff.

White desk chair from MUJI

We found the MUJI chair at ION Orchard. They are priced reasonably, looks minimal but are surprisingly comfortable and do not feel tight at all. We got a pair of matching arms for each chair. The MUJI table which was promoted together with the chair is too pricey so we did not go for that one.

MELLTORP table from IKEA

We got the really nice MELLTORP tables from IKEA Tampines which looked really Japanese and could easily pass as a MUJI product. The simple design and straight lines compliments the space perfectly. We got a big and a medium one to fit a comfortable maximum of three persons.

The other stuff we got

We will upload more images once we have moved in and settled down this coming Wednesday.

Shashi Tharoor cited in the New York Times for Personal Branding

In Odds & Ends

Just a day after Shah Rukh Khan’s public challenge to overtake Shashi Tharoor in Twitter follower count, Shashi Tharoor was again cited in The New York Times, this time for personal branding. In the column Branding and the ‘Me’ Economy Anand Giridharadas talked about how the State Department in United States has allowed tech-savvy senior officials to maintain robust personal brands an how the personalizing officials can “strengthen the acceptability of the official message.” Shashi Tharoor among other diplomats were mentioned to have established a strong personal brand in the message-conscious world of diplomacy.

Who do you think has a stronger brand? Movie star or political messiah?

Shah Rukh Khan vs Shashi Tharoor?

In Odds & Ends

A couple of days ago ‘King of Bollywood’, Shah Rukh Khan’s announced his wish to overtake politician Shashi Tharoor at a function. “I had predicted this the day Shah Rukh joined Twitter. I will be happy rather than regret it,” Shashi Tharoor said in response. As the social strategy consultants for Shashi Tharoor, we thought we should offer our opinion.

While being two of the most followed Indian celebrities and share some similar fundamental objectives, Shah Rukh Khan and Shashi Tharoor are really quite different. They appeal to different audiences, are motivated by dissimilar ideals and their approach is starkly unalike. Comparing Shah Rukh Khan to Shashi Tharoor is like comparing Steve Jobs to Paris Hilton, there are surely more Paris Hilton fans than Steve Jobs fans. Shah Rukh Khan will be able to reach a much higher number of Twitter followers simply because of the potential in the vast number of Bollywood movie-goers compared to political aficionados. And looking at his popularity and the amount of hype he generated with his latest film “My Name is Khan” which I really enjoyed watching, overtaking Shashi Tharoor is definitely possible, but in my opinion hardly anything to shout about. What will be meaningful is the magnitude of the influence they will have on their really big groups of technology-savvy, educated and well-informed followers. It’s always good for people who have positive stories to tell to have a bigger audience.

Looking at the chart above which plots the growth of Twitter followers for both Shashi Tharoor and Shah Rukh Khan over the past three months, we can say Shah Rukh Khan is not going to catch up to Shashi Tharoor any time soon. So while Shah Rukh Khan tries to catch up we will work harder with Shashi Tharoor to extend his reach to as many as we can. Catching up is not going to be easy :)

We will be watching you and the Indian Premier League

In News

The Indian Premier League (IPL) has engaged COMA to provide social strategy consulting over the course of the 3rd season games which will take place between March 12 and April 25, 2010. The IPL, is a Twenty20 cricket competition created by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and chaired by the Chairman & Commissioner IPL, BCCI Vice President Lalit Modi and has recently been awarded the 22nd place in FastCompany’s list of 50 Most Innovative Companies 2010. It will be the first ever cricket tournament which will be broadcast live on YouTube. The final four Matches of IPL 3 will be screened in 3D across Movie halls in India.

COMA will be providing social strategy consulting services to the IPL which will include real-time sentiment tracking and analysis to help the IPL reach and serve its fanbase more effectively. Not only will we be watching the games, we will also be watching listening to you!

Press Contacts

Email to hello@coma.sg

See You at Business Evangelism 2010

In Odds & Ends

I will be attending Business Evangelism 2010 organized by RAPP and will be catching some really good speakers presenting their ideas. Here’s a list of speakers for tomorrow’s full-day event.

See you there.

Ben Live @ HackerspaceSG

In Odds & Ends

We were doing a marketing/promotional video for foound at SMU this morning with Danny (foound founder), YY (animator) and Ben (voice narrator) and after that we headed over to HackerspaceSG to chill and avoid the blazing afternoon sun. Ben, our business head and inspiring musician found a guitar lying around and we got him to play some songs. He put up a really nice performance and I recorded all of it.

Video after the jump

Like it? Tell Ben you love him by writing in the comments below. We are so going to make him perform more.