Madison Ave. Collective » News

“Square” payments: game changer through great design

Lainie Turner — Tue, 24 May 2011 16:40:08 +0000

Square launched a new “credit card case” app earlier this month, generating serious buzz. With Square, anyone with a bank account can accept credit or debit card payments by downloading the app and plugging a little plastic cube into the headphone jack of an iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or Android phone. After a quick swipe of the card through the reader, the merchant turns the device over to the customer to sign his or her name on the touchscreen using a finger instead of a pen. The customer can add a tip, either by percentage or a particular amount, and then enter their phone number or email address. In the best case, the receipt message will buzz in the customer’s pocket as an email or SMS text message while walking away with their purchase. Customers are charged as usual by their banks or credit card companies, and Square settles up the net funds with merchants each night instead of at the end of the month. The swiper and application are both free and include access to an online dashboard with analytics that help merchants track exactly what they’ve been selling.

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.

Google Motion lets you control Gmail with your body

Lainie Turner — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 02:35:17 +0000

Google is always exploring new frontiers. Just in time for April Fool’s Day this year, they introduced a new (now in Beta!) technology that allows you to control your Gmail with your body.

Check out Google Motion here. And be sure to click the “Learn More” link in the Coming Soon paragraph, for even more entertaining photos.

Sharing in Julie Manning’s victory

Jeff Jimerson — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 22:15:26 +0000

Earlier this month Julie Manning convincingly won the Corvallis Mayor’s race with over 71% of the popular vote, and we can’t help but think Madison Ave. Collective had a teensy bit to do with it.

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.

Big night for the MAC

Jeff Jimerson — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 19:02:26 +0000

Last Thursday the MAC made another impressive showing at the 2nd annual Willamette Innovators Night (WIN). Not only did we have quite possibly the loudest booth in the exhibitor’s hall (thanks to Matt Riopelle’s playlist and a pair of Bose speakers hidden under the table), but our own Chris Nordyke and Ron Sparks gave two very entertaining Ignite! presentations.

For our booth, we teamed up with Mark Giordono at HP/MagCloud to offer visitors 25% off the printing cost of any magazine-format publication. (If you missed the show, you can still save by using the coupon code MADCOLLECTIVE. Head over to MagCloud.com to learn more about printing possibilities for your business.) Booth visitors were also given copies of our hot-off-the-press 2nd edition MACtivity book, which includes Madison Ave. Collective’s newest members Dave Bassett, Sean Brown, and Amy Dasso. Swing by our office to get your copy. Not only are these ever-popular books FREE, we also like to think they’re priceless.

Finally, the MAC is grateful for the opportunity to help design some of the WIN 2010 promotional materials. Several months ago, Matt and I began working with Mark Van Patten and others from WIN to create the posters, handouts, postcards, and buttons for this year’s event. While we were setting up our booth last week, Mark came by and said he had something to show us. He walked us over to the keynote presentation hall, smiled proudly, and pointed to a WIN logo the size of King Kong being projected on the wall. Now that’s what I call a happy client.

Big thanks to Dave for capturing some great photos that night. You can see the full set at our MAC Flickr page.

Phantastic Photos

Jeff Jimerson — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 22:24:51 +0000

Last week the gang at Madison Ave. Collective gazed deeply into the lens of Dave Bassett’s Canon 1Ds and smiled, inquired, explored, held silly props, laughed, wiggled and wagged (or was that shimmied and shook? I forget). Needless to say, we now have some darned handsome photos.

Results of the portrait sessions can be seen here and here, as well as in the soon-to-be-released 2nd edition of our ever popular MACtivity book. Some production shots are below.

Big thanks to Dave for being willing to pull the trigger two or three hundred times for each of us. I also hear that someone captured audio from a few of the sessions, but let’s hope that tape never finds its way onto the internet.

Election Results

Jeff Jimerson — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 07:39:37 +0000

It was a long election night, but the results are finally in. Never mind the Oregon Governor’s race, we have a new MAC member!

I am please to announce that Amy Dasso has won the 14th seat at Madison Ave. Collective. Running unopposed, victory was hers from the beginning.

Way to go, Amy! Welcome to the club.

Buyer Beware

Lainie Turner — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 19:29:36 +0000

Many at the Madison Ave. Collective are Early Adopters. Who doesn’t love having the latest, shiny software to make our lives more productive? That’s why I want to give you a heads up about this review by David Pogue, Tech Editor at the NYTimes. His bottom line is: you should skip Microsoft’s new Office 2011 for Mac, because it’s actually worse than the current version, Office 2008 for Mac.

As commenter Scott Moore writes from Seattle, “After having used Office for Mac for two years now, and having worked at Microsoft, it’s my feeling the company has killed Office for Mac on purpose.” He thinks the glaring issues with this release amount to sabotage of the product for the Mac market.

But then, maybe you went over to iWork long ago …
(Apple just started offering a free 30-day trial of iWork. Coincidence? You be the judge! :)

Welcome, Dave and Sean!

Jeff Jimerson — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 05:03:16 +0000

This is a little belated, but wanted to throw out an official public welcome to the MAC’s newest members, photographer Dave Bassett and videographer Sean Brown.

Two cool cats who are cool behind the camera. Welcome to the club, boys!

VideoEgg buys SixApart

Lainie Turner — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 22:31:14 +0000

Ad network VideoEgg has purchased blogging network Six Apart and formed SAY Media, a new company that will create advertising campaigns it is billing as “conversational and interactive.”

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.

Come celebrate with us!

Jeff Jimerson — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:05:13 +0000

Has it been two years already?

This Thursday, August 26, Madison Ave. Collective is celebrating our second anniversary. You, faithful reader, are invited to celebrate with us. View details and RSVP here.

Bring a guest and stop by anytime between 4–7pm. This open-house party will be held at the Madison Ave. Collective world headquarters in downtown Corvallis, Oregon.

The party will feature munchies from Block 15, treats from Rocket Queen Cupcakes, fun pics from Smile Booth, and cool people like YOU. Oh, and something else we think is kinda fantastic, too. (You’ll have to show up to find out.) Hope to see you then!