Could this payment system have as profound an effect on how people pay for stuff in the real world as the iTunes store has had on the distribution and sale of digital media? FastCompany reports on the design-driven solution:

Jack Dorsey is the brains behind Square and the cofounder and chairman of Twitter. Here’s how Square got started: Jack’s former boss and good friend (and eventual co-founder) Jim McKelvey lost a sale for his hand-blown glass because he had no way of accepting credit cards. The problem was one many people had–the barriers to setting yourself up through conventional processes to accept credit card payments were too high for many people. So Dorsey set about seeing if he could create a better system. The result was the Square reader, which launched a year ago and which allows just about anyone to set themselves up to take credit card payments. Even you. Planning a garage sale and want to enable people to pay for your gerbil cages and Shawn Cassidy LPs by credit card? No problem. Square’s for you.

“”I don’t think a lot of financial institutions have spent a lot of time thinking about design,” Dorsey says. “Design is not visual. It’s about simplifying and getting something down to its essence.”

I like the idea that if I am selling a sofa on Craigslist I can take a credit card without going through a huge merchant qualification process with my bank. But I especially like that now I can let small business clients know this solution is available and likely to change the way customers expect to transact business.

Try it out here, and be sure to share the best ones with the rest of us*.

*Disclaimer: The Madison Ave. Collective has no current plan to change its name.

Talented graphic designer, Tim Monson, got us there last week and we couldn’t be happier. As a surprise for being numero cien, Tim will be receiving a copy of Sell With Your Ears by our own Bill Zipp. Comes in real handy growing a small business. (And if you haven’t registered for Bill’s free marketing workshop on March 17th, that will come in real handy too.)

So if you are a business that needs the creatives, geeks, and guides that Matchbook contains, all it takes is click, click, and a boom for access to all three figures of them. That’s a load of talent. That’s our big, grownup Matchbook.

Fred Meyer shoppers: meet the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

Among the gawkers I observed were: A woman holding a cute baby; a guy wearing a skirt; a Boy Scout with his dad, also dressed like a Boy Scout. There were lots of kids. Lots of old people. Beaver fans and Duck fans. There was even a man holding a wiener dog.

So here we have people of all ages and walks of life getting excited about … hot dogs, and demonstrating their excitement by taking photos to presumably share with others. I don’t even eat hot dogs, but I’ll admit the Wienermobile looks cool. It’s shiny. It’s big. It’s definitely not something you see every day. (I overheard one woman exclaim, “It only comes by once every ten years!” Apparently, I just witnessed the Halley’s comet of frankfurters.)

Watching others embrace the Oscar Mayer brand today has reminded me of something about marketing. Years ago, I suspect whoever first thought of this silly idea was poked fun of. That is, until the hot dogs began selling like hot cakes. And then that crazy person was given a big fat raise.

Brilliance is easily confused with crazy thinking. So what’s your Wienermobile? I gotta think about that question for my business, too.

But first, I gotta get back to my homework.

The Manning for Mayor team approached the MAC this past Spring when they were looking for help developing an identity for the campaign. They needed a logo to represent Julie’s friendly personality and strong leadership abilities. The identity also needed broad public appeal, but had to stand out amongst other local and national political races. The result was a balanced combination of hand-drawn letterforms and all-caps Futura in two shades of blue. The colors go quite nicely with Julie’s eyes, don’t you think?

The campaign liked the logo so much they also asked the MAC to develop a website, a brochure, a series of newspaper ads, and lawn signs to help get out the vote.

Representing the MAC was Rebecca Badger (marketing strategy, project management), Ron Sparks (web development), Danielle Anthony (photography), and yours truly (graphic design).

Big congrats to Mayor-elect Julie and all her supporters. She ran a great campaign and she’ll make a great mayor. We’re honored to have been asked to play a part in her victory.

Six Apart, founded in 2001, was at one time one of the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley—its founders speaking at global conferences such as Le Web and TED. It owned LiveJournal, designed MovableType blogware and the TypePad blog hosting service and Vox, the latter of which the company will shut down at the end of September.

The SAY Media website went live yesterday, Wednesday, Sep. 22, with this message:

The SAY Media platform brings together VideoEgg’s rich advertising platform with SixApart’s suite of content creation and aggregation tools to power advertising campaigns that are more conversational and interactive. The result is advertising that is more efficient, useful and social.

In a blog post today, Sep. 23, new CEO Matt Sanchez rushed to reassure Typepad bloggers who just want to blog for fun, and don’t do it to become “conversational and interactive.” Whew.

Many of my favorite TV commercials use the Incongruity technique to create something that not only strikes your funny bone but makes you remember the advertised product/service. (Again, see Old Spice Man: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.)

Remember “Think outside the box”? Today, you wouldn’t think of using that phrase with your clients, but you could offer to come up with something “crazy fresh.”

The next time you’re thinking up a new ad, design, or pitch, or even a new way of styling a photo shoot, think about how you might use the Incongruity Theory of Humor in your own work to create something memorable—something that “sticks.”

Something viral this way comes? (with apologies to Wm. Shakespeare)

FUD was first used in IBM advertising decades ago, asking the prospective customer whether they believed their job would be safe if they chose to buy another company’s computing products. Microsoft, ever the innovator (!), adopted the technique and soon became known for using FUD in all their ads and promotions.

The reason that many ads still use FUD to drive their messaging is that in lots of cases it works. It plays on paranoia and our human instinct to want to fit in. Studies show that when we are made to feel uncomfortable, one of the things we do is spend money to feel better. (Extra points for ads that weave humor into the FUD message; see Old Spice Man.)

OneLove is a way of thinking about the opposite kind of messaging—advertising that shows a product or service that brings more joy into your life. Apple’s advertising uses OneLove messaging. Think about iPad ads; they don’t say “Your friends will shun you until you own one of these.” Instead, they just show happy users doing fun stuff. Consider ads for Disney World, or for the Toyota Sienna, or for Foster’s beer, or for your favorite sports team. They are a celebration of life, reminding you of the joy you can experience if you buy those products.

As we can see, both types of messages work. It all depends on the target audience and how the advertiser wants them to feel. The next time you see an ad think about what it’s doing. Is it making you feel good? Or bad? And what does it make you want to do? (“Turn off the TV” is one of the acceptable answers.) What do you think would be the best type of advertising for your client? (Hint: first, think about who the target audience is.)

Prompted by an outcry over the use of Papyrus for the subtitles in the movie AVATAR, this article from last week’s BBC News Magazine online relates the passions—pro and con—that were provoked. Various other heinous examples of crimes against typography are included.

In 2009, the Swedish retail giant IKEA changed its signature typeface from Futura to Verdana—a font that had been created by Microsoft specifically for screen display.

As in other cases, widespread outrage ensued, with bloggers and tweeters madly weighing in:

“On Aug. 26, Romanian design consultant Marius Ursache started an online petition to get Ikea to change its mind. That night, Verdana was already a trending topic on Twitter, drawing more tweets than even Ted Kennedy.”

It must be noted that some opinionators were more sympathetic.

While typography has a rich history that goes back to the earliest written forms, new typefaces are always arriving on the market, making it tempting for designers to stray from the classic choices. And, sometimes, with good reason. Depending on the target audience and the branding message, it may be perfectly reasonable to select one of the very latest typefaces, especially if it can be effective across a wide variety of corporate needs—website, business cards, magazine and billboard advertising, price tags, serial number labels, Hi My Name Is badges, exterior and interior signage … the list goes on.

I found some great Best and Worst lists. Here’s one that I particularly like because it includes my favorite two Worst examples—#2 and #3, where companies invested in a logo redesign when what they really needed was an overhaul in corporate practices.

If your scroll wheel (or your two-finger touchpad action) is in good shape and you have an extra half hour, check out these collections from Smashing Magazine, an online resource for web design.

• 80 gorgeous typefaces for professional design, in no particular order, based upon suggestions from designers and web developers all over the world (scroll past the well known fonts at the top of the list to see more unusual examples later in the list)
• 60 effective typefaces for corporate design, offering a much quirkier selection than the first list
• 30 new typefaces for corporate design—just what it says: new typefaces

I saved the best for last, but this one isn’t strictly typography. If you have read this far, you may be interested in two visually engaging articles on Writing Systems And Calligraphy Of The World. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here. My bet is, you’ve never seen such an array of writing samples from so many historical language roots and from virtually every corner of the world.

Calligraphy from illuminated Armenian Gospel manuscript

(Bonus points if you noticed which typeface I used in the numbers in my thumbnail illustration at the top.)

Now, what sort of fun things can I/you/we do to attract more attention and get more business? Maybe instead of searching for new ways to become better, faster, cheaper, smarter, cooler, whatever-er… we should just start thinking a little bigger.