Scout Motors partnered with local coffee shops to buy coffee for Columbia today. Pretty cool event, and we are happy to have Scout in our community. Thanks for the free drink today! (And the stickers.)
I bought a wireless CarPlay adapter for my car and it’s awesome. I can’t believe I didn’t buy one earlier.
Some thoughts on the Cracker Barrel rebranding fiasco from a visual identity researcher
My Ph.D. research is focused on consumer response to logos and visual identity, so as you can imagine, I’ve talked about Cracker Barrel1 a lot over the last few weeks. Everyone has an opinion and is eager to share it. I held off writing this because the social media chatter was just chaotic, but now that things have calmed down, I wanted to share some quick thoughts based on my research.
People care about logos.
In my forthcoming study on logo attitudes with a sample of 1,000 American consumers2, over 60% of respondents agreed that if their favorite brand changed their logo, they’d want to know why. Cracker Barrel did a really poor job of explaining why they were changing their logo. It seemed to consumers like change for the sake of change and when challenged by consumers (plus a really strange political...
Most of our neighbors have doorbell cameras and motion-activated cameras around their house. We don’t. This morning, one of our neighbors showed us a clip of a guy walking through our yard and trying our car door (which was locked). He then went to their house and tried to open their car doors. Now, I’m wondering if we should have security cameras, even though I think it’s a privacy nightmare…
I switched from the Tiny Theme to the Mythos Theme for my main blog. It’s really nice, but it’s going to take me a while to fully customize it.
I loved newspapers and magazines when I was young. My first job was delivering newspapers. Publication design led me into a design career. But times change, and I’m sad, but not surprised that the Atlanta Journal Constitution will stop printing physical papers.
I’m working in the School of Journalism’s grad student suite for the first time in a while. It’s so quiet up here. I’m going to try to work from here one night a week. It’s a nice change of pace from coffee shops or the kitchen table.
I really want to use Ulysses or Scrivener for my dissertation, but I’m hooked on Zotero’s citation management integration with Word. And the process of connecting Zotero with Scrivener seems… complicated.
I’ve been in two active shooter situations. One turned out to be a false alarm, but it caused a real stampede in a crowded mall. The other was a murder-suicide on campus that caused a lockdown. While I wasn’t really in danger in either situation, the feeling of panic sticks with you.
An active shooter on the University of South Carolina campus. I know my daughter is safe, but so incredibly terrifying.