In today’s branding circles, there are the image geeks and the type geeks—the latter of whom frequently extol the virtuous presence of a perfectly crisp finial or manual kerning. For an increasingly visual reader demographic, typography can speak louder than the words it treats to convey the more elusive essentialities of a brand—personality, tone, age. But too often in this space, form trumps function; beauty rules purpose. It’s rare to see a typeface that is as lovely as it is legible—it’s even more rare to see a typeface that is lovely, legible, utilitarian, and on-brand. It’s this reality that makes the story of the Castledown font—created for students learning to read and write at the Castledown Primary School in East Sussex, England—all the more unusual.

Neil Small, a former teacher-turned-headmaster of Castledown Primary, was frustrated by a not-uncommon concern in our era of universal design: standard library fonts used in workbooks were dull and hard to read for students with dyslexia. When he first contacted Colophon Foundry, a London type studio, he had a clean typeface in mind— one shaped closely to young learners’ natural writing patterns. His request came with an extra layer of complexity and seeming impossibility: Small believed that the right font could be a learning tool in and of itself—a scaffold that would improve all students’ reading and writing practices.

Colophon designers Edd Harrington and Anthony Sheret spent a month with Castledown students, immersed in observing the minute details of their letter placement, pressure points, licks and type preferences as they traced out their letters and first words—contextualizing their findings against accessible design tenets. The namesake custom design they unveiled has now been in use at the primary school for a year. And beyond making it indeed easier for all students to trace, replicate, and read without issue, the Castledown typeface has become the school brand —its friendly curves and inclusive feel extended to a whole new audience of readers via the Castledown Primary website and print collateral.

While a month-long, audience deep dive isn’t always possible in type design, attention to the subtlety of real-life “typography” is and should be. The otherwise unnoticed oscillations of a pencil, or the intrinsic, human patterns of letter formation are precisely what make for designs that go beyond brand, legibility, and utility to refreshingly personal intimacy—the kind that translates across workbooks, mediums, and audiences. In this case, the story of one primary school’s pursuit of a deeper purpose through workbook type design provides an inspired lesson in visual communication—the kind that all true type geeks and branding experts can get behind.

Even in the age of real-time customer service, where crucial contacts and tips are shelled out—en masse and by the second—across Facebook, Twitter, and 24/7 chat lines to resolve issues, it’s always a bit dazzling when the head honcho of a major brand reaches out to address a singular customer (and arguably, more so when the interaction prompts a discernible pivot in brand strategy). Those are the moments in which it seems that the two-way conversation goes analog—as though to remind us all that no company is faceless and every solution is borne of two (or more) living, breathing people just hashing it out.

Today, we have another proof point for the content marketing binder, c/o of Jenni Avins for New York Magazine. Last summer, Avins, a freelance journalist, authored an impassioned open letter in The Cut to Jenna Lyons, President of J. Crew, requesting a re-release of her favorite J. Crew scoop back swimsuit from the 1990s. Influential channel and J. Crew’s reputation for great customer interaction aside, an email response from Prez Lyons came two days later. Paraphrased, Lyons suggested in her prompt and personal missive that Avins’ letter was the request that tipped the scale on the re-release of the suit.
A year later, the scoop-back that millennial dreams are made of has been reissued for sale, with print advertisements featuring a handwritten note from Lyons to Avins. Nice brand play for J. Crew, but an even better lesson for all content creators out there.

A customer request—distributed via the right channels and touching on a canny audience pain point—can move brand strategy, define new markets, re-launch a product and even make for a personalized response or two from a president (or THE President). Today, we all have voices. Make sure yours is heard loud and clear above the fracas, and your wish can very well become a brand’s command.

Bored by reading the newspaper because it just takes too long? Don’t have enough time to finish the latest Malcolm Gladwell novel, let alone stuff a sandwich down? Dying to boast to your friends that you read as deftly as a college professor? There’s an app for that. Rather, there is soon to be, courtesy of a co-opted launch between Samsung wearables and Boston developer Spritz.

After three years flying below the radar, Spritz is ready to unveil their techie solution to address two barriers to widespread, mobile readership—the time it takes to read (largely due to excessive eye tracking of words on a surface) and the space lots of words take up (on 640 x 1136 px or smaller mobile screens). Their innovation is a compressed visual frame that streams one word at a time in 13 characters of space.

It’s easy to judge this app by its small, simple cover—until you try it yourself. Taking saccades out of the equation by applying a new method of word alignment (science!) really does mean something big. A beta test on their website offers an enticing glimpse into the promise that readers will be able to clock up to 1000 wpm—in the ballpark of what seasoned speed readers record. Even if you’re resolutely in the middle of the Spritzing pack, you’ll still be able to read at roughly the clip of a high-level executive.

But far more than just another novelty app promising to make us fitter, happier, and more productive (readers), Spritz could be revolutionary for brands and content creators—tomorrow’s delivery mechanism for eloquent, immersive, mobile storytelling within the span of a quarter minute.­

We decide within 15 seconds whether to read, listen, or view on—whether a new journey is evocative enough to compel us to subvert our primal and indolent desires. So find the right narrative for your story and filter it through Spritz. The space of 250 game changing, ice-breaking words is your new brand conversation.

I’ve been watching Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight show since it started airing (which is great, by the way) and three weeks in, there’s an interesting trend emerging. He rarely has a guest on without doing something “highlight reel worthy” with them. Last night, for instance, Billy Joel’s on. On other shows (Leno, Letterman, etc.), they’d do an interview, then after the break he’d perform. Jimmy Fallon does both of these things too, but then he took out his iPad, fired up an app, and he and Billy Joel record a 4 part harmony doo-wop version of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” on the spot. It was awesome – and I’m sure I’ll google it when I get to the office and share it with the rest of the Captains. (type in jimmy fallon billy joel and see what happens.) So why is that so special? Because Jimmy Fallon nearly always does something with the guest that is worth saving, and more important, sharing. Why just do another interview when you can dig deeper, get creative, and make something highlight worthy?

I would ask the same question every time you make a piece of content. What is going into this that is “highlight worthy”, that will be saved, shared, remembered? Too often, content marketers that wouldn’t be caught dead making a sign for the local dry cleaner’s window are creating content that is just about as creatively inspired and memorable. It doesn’t matter if it’s a video with high production values or a white paper for industry insiders, dig deeper. Make sure it’s highlight worthy for your audience, whoever it is. If you don’t, it’s just noise. And will be about as memorable as just another couch interview with some actor on some late night show that no one will remember next week.

In recent weeks, the biggest brand error didn’t come from JCPenney, in a #tweetingwithmittens redux, or from Jimmy Kimmel, with another dog-in-wolf’s-clothing publicity stunt. It came from energy giant Chevron—the brand that will go into the books as having proffered pizzas as apologies to residents of Bobtown, Pennsylvania for a fatal fracking explosion and 5-day fire that tore through their rural southwestern Pennsylvania community.

After a February 11th well explosion shook Chevron’s Lanco 7H site in Bobtown, it took a week for emergency crews to control the fire that seared across the gas pad, combusting a nearby propane truck in the process. On the 16^th, 100 of the residents closest to the well site received consolation letters from Chevron with a coupon for—wait for it—one free pizza and a 2-liter of soda from the local Bobtown Pizza (limited time offer, expires May 1, 2014).

Today, two weeks later, a broken well continues to leech gas and Bobtown mourns the loss of a local site worker and worries about the safety of the air they breathe.

Even before Deepwater Horizon, big energy companies had been on rebrand pushes with nods to their investments in “human energy” (Chevron’s tagline), “people power”, “safety” and “responsibility”. And yet, as BP knows too well—a brand is truly defined in its moments of crisis; when it is called to answer for its mistakes. When its response is 100 $12 gift certificates to a grieving, endangered community, that’s a lot more than a brand error. A resident of Bobtown said it best: it’s a “slap in the face”. Delivered with a sting to those who have a lot to lose—and have already lost—to the corporate machine.

Check out this infographic from our friends at the Content Marketing Academy Linkedin group, and be sure to pay them a visit or join an ongoing discussion.

Much is being made in the digital media world about the shift from product design to user experience design. This article from Fast Company does a great job of laying out some of the most essential ideas behind quality user experience design, including ideas like designing with a long-term vision in mind, and being focused on the customer (but not necessarily being driven by the customer).

But these ideas go beyond designing products and digital applications, they apply to any work we as content marketers do for our clients. Whether you’re creating a new look and feel for a brand, or writing a set of e-books, or even something as simple as renaming a company, you should always be thinking of how the work will be experienced by the end-user. How does a certain color palette make the viewer feel? Where and how will the reader consume an e-book? What does a name look like when someone says it to someone else?

These aren’t revolutionary ideas, but you’d be surprised how often we stray from thinking about experience, and focus too much on creating polished products that are pleasing from a design or strategic perspective. One of the best examples of this idea of experience is Uber. They crafted a company with the intention of changing an experience, not changing a product or service.

If there were any question about whether or not YouTube and social media were helping bridge divisions between cultures, I’d say the verdict is in. Jennifer Grout, a rather white woman from one of the whitest and most WASPish corners of America, came within the width of a blond hair to winning Arabs Got Talent, losing out only at the last minute to a Syrian dance troop.

The other performers in the finalists all performed songs and dances with Western influences, but Jennifer happens to love traditional Arabic songs, so that’s what she sang. Many Arabs criticized the contest for allowing Jennifer to perform at all. But a far larger audience, people from throughout the Arab world, praised her for crossing cultural lines and celebrating Arab traditions, demonstrating again the universality of music and the power of today’s media.

It was only a few years ago in the span of human civilization when the only gesture one country could make towards another was through some stiff diplomat (no offense, John Kerry). Now the gestures can be made with the lilting melody of an Arabic love song, sung by a Bostonian, and experienced by everyone, everywhere.

In an effort that could only be described as the cat-loving Interwebs topping itself, Christmas Cats TV is entering its final live streaming day, scheduled to wrap up at 2 p.m. PST. Get your wondering eyes over to ChristmasCatsTv.com for a glimpse into what your nutty Aunt Edna’s festive living room would look like full o’ felines, with your dopey cousin Rudy on the camera. Once you get there, you’ll see why it becomes almost redundant to mention that most of these kitties are wearing miniature ugly Christmas sweaters that would do any Williamsburg hipster proud (no surprise, this visual treat comes to you from some arty warehouse in the big BK).

Courtesy of Sony’s Legacy Recordings in partnership with the North Shore Animal League America out of Port Washington, New York, Christmas Cats TV is part promotion for Legacy’s classic Christmas albums, part seasonal adoption drive for the States’ largest no-kill rescue and adoption shelter. And you’re hearing it first here: the cats, the cat lady, the gross elf, and Phil Collins will all be available for adoption starting tomorrow. Sweaters included. Get your adoption bids in early, because there is likely to be a full-on bidding war. J/k about the sweaters. And the bidding war. But quite frankly—North Shore chose very attractive, friendly (cat) actors. People should pay good money for those little guys.

All cattiness aside, there’s something that makes us all feel a bit warmer and fuzzier when we see a content campaign in the name of good. I don’t know if Sony and North Shore have thought this far, but why not crowdfund the continued streaming of Christmas Cats TV, and extend the adoption drive over the month of December?  It would feel good to give back for a content gift like this. And it would feel even better to give more very deserving animals a home this holiday season.

One of my favorite moments in film is in “Annie Hall,” where Woody Allen confronts a know-it-all in line at the movies with Annie, and pulls in Marshal McLuhan himself to tell the guy he’s wrong.

I had one of those moments today when I read that Toyota was coming out with a concept car powered by hydrogen fuel cells. I blogged back in July that branding for a hydrogen car should focus on the fact that the only exhaust from this technology is water. Several bloggers scoffed at the notion. But Toyota, the world’s number one automaker, has validated my statement through the actual design of their new concept car: they shaped it to resemble a drop of water. Their current name for the vehicle is a placeholder until they launch a real consumer car sometime in 2015, but the shape of their car is the first step in their brand development, something even more fundamental than the name. Now they can build on this to make a really compelling consumer brand, just as they did with their groundbreaking Prius. Thank you, Toyota, for being my Marshall McLuhan.