I ran across this post from James Thomas of the Bicycle Design blog last night. It shows a prototype Trek Stop (think truck stop) that’s currently located outside a bike shop in Madison, WI. Think of the Trek Stop as a vending machine merged with a mechanic’s bike stand wrapped in the styling of a gas station awning. The vending machine sells all of the basics you may need while out and about on your next ride including tubes, patch kits, water bottles, etc. I could see these units being a success in areas where bikes shops aren’t currently found - in dense urban areas, near parks and trails that handle a lot of cycling traffic, or near mass transit hubs. Overall I think it’s a great concept whose time may appropriate with the cost of gasoline on the rise and the renewed interest in bikes as viable commuting options.

We are essential to success in this increasingly complex, technology-fueled age.

We are evangelists for the combined power of technology, creativity and communication.

We know that good design is not a luxury. It is a necessity.

We are the high priests of a new economy driven by the consumer, hungry for ideas.

We create simplicity out of complexity.

We use our talent to define, inspire, plan and create.

We are driven to see the entire landscape, identify patterns, and create sustainable solutions.

We believe in the nobility of creating solutions that are elegant, effective, measurable and beautiful.

We stand between people and the information they need, the things they’re seeking and the human connections they crave.

Ken Hanson is the founding partner of Hanson Dodge Creative, America’s leader in creating Brand Experience Design, Marketing and Technology focused on the Active Lifestyle Consumer.

I was doing some online searching the other day about passion and inspiration – key concepts of both innovation and communication – and I went to www.ted.com, a site dedicated to spreading ideas, to see what was new.

Each year, some of the world’s greatest thinkers and doers share their insights on general themes at the TED conference in Monterey, California. Each year, these speakers share both their passion and their knowledge on fascinating topics, and you can find them online.

TED stands for Technology, Education and Design and has an interesting history. The first TED conference was organized by Richard Saul Wurman in 1984, and after a six-year hiatus, it became an annual event in 1990. Wurman had already made a name for himself by developing the popular ACCESS travel guidebooks. The concept for these books was to present information the way we seek it — in this case, by location. Wurman coined the phrase “information architecture” and demonstrated the concept with this series.

The TED conference grew from Wurman’s observations of a convergence trend among three disciplines: technology, education and design. He saw potential in bringing together the greatest minds in each, to share ideas and explore new concepts. At the time, he was also an ongoing host and participant of the International Design Conference in Aspen, which was the leading multi-disciplinary business and design conference. TED took the concept further, as an invitation-only event. Additionally, each speaker is challenged to “give the talk of their lives” in 18 minutes.

Now, you can watch and listen to these presentations online. The content is presented in video and audio formats. You can search the content by theme, speaker, popularity or volume of online discussion. Once you discover TED, It won’t take long to find your favorite presentations or speakers. Here are a few of mine: Majora Carter: Greening the ghetto; William McDonough: The wisdom of designing Cradle to Cradle; and Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce.

Best of all, the videos are released under a Creative Commons license, which means you can redistribute them freely and legally. To me, this proves that the TED people are truly more interested in spreading ideas than trying to sell something or promote a hidden agenda.

The convergence concept couldn’t be more relevant today. Branding, like everything else, is increasingly social and technological. TED is a valuable resource for our work, but it’s also a source of inspiration and information about the increasingly complex and connected world-at-large. And for many of us, those small moments of inspiration and connection are what make us passionate about our work, and our lives.

Six months ago Hanson Dodge Creative began working with Humminbird on the complete redesign of their website. Our research and resulting strategy recommendations were simple:

- Selling online was critical to future success of their business

- Consolidation of the systems and data captured by the website would streamline the process of updating and communicating directly with their customers

- They had a community of enthusiasts who loved their product and wanted to engage with them directly

- Rich content and media was key to providing a deeper customer experience

The result? On January 10th we launched the new Humminbird website. Our client wrote a great blog that details the new features and functions of the site. Here is an excerpt from that post:

Here are just a few new features:

• New e-commerce store: Shop for and find the Humminbird products and accessories you want faster with advanced search and filtering. Experience our products with our new gallery viewer and download product manuals.
• Updated Support section: Register your Humminbird products, find Frequently Asked Questions and download the latest software updates.
• Leading Innovation: Everything you need to know about why our technology will help you catch more fish or locate structure.
• On the Water: Join our community: share in stories and information with our new blog. Plus, Meet our professional team and watch them in action on HBTV. You can also win Humminbird gear by sending us your Side Imaging screen shots!
• Company: Learn a little bit about our roots – check out our official area for media, including press releases, awards and job opportunities at Humminbird.
• Find a Dealer: Want to experience our Product in person? Check out our new dealer locator to find a dealer near you, it even maps the results!

Our website is built on a platform that allows us to continually update, refine and refresh the information. So please come back again and again, or you can always get latest news and updates sent to you directly by subscribing to our newsletter and our blog RSS feed.

We hope you like the improvements and as always welcome your continued feedback.

Thank you and enjoy.

Behance Network, a national creative network dedicated to inspiring, educating and promoting creative professionals, is featuring HDC’s Trek ‘08 site today.

While this may seem like a mere design-insider-pat-on-the-back, it’s a tremendous honor to be selected as a featured site. Sites are chosen by a small team of professional, well-regarded designers, developers, product designers, and researchers.

Features like this remind us that – while technology and branding are critical – beautiful and effective creative is what makes a site stand apart.

Hearty congratulations to Trek, Dan Herwig (for his work and submitting the site to Behance) and to the rest of the Trek team. Well done, folks. Well done.

More about the Behance team:
We advance the philosophy of Productive Creativity in three ways. First, we seek out and learn from exceptionally product creative people and teams. Second, we synthesize the best practices and insights we learn to make them accessible to the broader creative community. Third, we publish articles, design products, run seminars, gather resources, and plan other initiatives to promote Productive Creativity in the creative community.

The greatest way to spread Productive Creativity is to feature it. We are constantly on the lookout for creative professionals that are “getting it right” and making ideas happen. We feature the work of these productive people and teams, along with their insights, in the Featured Section of Behance.com.

Earlier today, Hanson Dodge Creative launched the first iPhone-optimized site that we’ve created for one of our clients, Trek Bicycles. If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, I invite you to pop over to the site and take a ride. We’re really excited about the new site and are fortunate to work with forward-looking clients who engage us on projects like this. These are the types of projects that make being a designer or developer worth it.

Yesterday, the New York Times published an interesting article that spoke about a spike in Google’s traffic on Christmas, ostensibly from users who had just received iPhones for the holidays. The traffic from iPhone users eclipsed that of established, entrenched mobile OS providers. Here’s the really interesting part of the article:

“The data is striking because the iPhone, an Apple product, accounts for just 2 percent of smartphones worldwide, according to IDC, a market research firm. Phones powered by Symbian make up 63 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, while those powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile have 11 percent and those running the BlackBerry system have 10 percent.”

So, with just 2 percent of the market, the iPhone already registered higher web traffic volumes than platforms that when combined, hold 84 percent of the current market. From my design-centric point of view, I can only deduce that people with existing smart phones do not use the web functionality of their phones and that the interface design of the iPhone makes mobile web browsing a viable, if not liberating option.

We’ve seen the same trend. In fact, it’s even more pronounced than Google’s numbers. In our own traffic logs, and in some of our clients’, we’ve noticed a meteoric rise in of the number of iPhone and iPod touch users. Overall, we’ve seen iPhone and iPod touch users, with .2 percent of traffic, register an order of magnitude higher than the next closest OS - Symbian, coming in at .02 percent. This is an unscientific look at the numbers, but it does seem to indicate that the iPhone is in a league of its own when it comes to mobile browsing.

For those of you who love lists, here’s how we see the OS traffic levels shaking out currently. Again, the jump to the iPhone and iPod touch was an order of magnitude from the closest competitor, Symbian. Any platforms not listed were below .01 percent of traffic.

1. Windows
2. Macintosh
3. Linux
4. iPhone/iPod
5. SymbianOS
6. Danger Hiptop
7. Playstation 3
8. Palm OS
9. Nintendo Wii
10. Sun OS
11. Playstation Portable

For me, this project was the first one that really made me believe in the future of the mobile web. I’ve been designing for the web for a decade now, and although I’ve done my fair share of mobile projects, none of them ever felt like a viable substitution for a full browser-based experience. The iPhone is changing this, and will hopefully pressure other mobile platforms to improve the browsing experience for its users.

Ever wonder about the origins of a product you’re about to purchase? Things like: who made it, where it was produced, environmental or community impact, carbon footprint info, etc.? Wait no more. Those of you who crave info and want to make more eco-informed buying decisions could soon benefit from the output of a emerging consumer trend “(Still) Made Here,” as reported by Trendwatching.com – a favorite haunt of mine.

“(STILL) MADE HERE encompasses new and enduring manufacturers and purveyors of the local. In a world that is seemingly ruled by globalization, mass production and ‘cheapest of the cheapest’, a growing number of consumers are seeking out the local, and thereby the authentic, the storied, the eco-friendly and the obscure.”

It’s early but some well known brands have already experimented with attaching “Life Story Labels” to their products. The information included on these labels range from freshness dates to child labor percentages (let’s assume that manufacturers that employ child labor won’t be adopting Life Story Labels in the near future). Others are taking the opportunity to create new brands/companies around the consumers desire to purchase whatever does the least harm.

Timberland had capitalized on the opportunity in early 2007 by adding a “nutritional label” to each shoebox, educating consumers on where it was made, how it was produced and what effect it had on the environment. They also pose a question to would be consumers by asking “what kind of footprint will you leave?” (more…)

According to Michael Lombardo, author of “the Leadership Machine,” “There is enormous complexity at the leadership level of organizations today.” Lombardo’s work suggests that in addition to setting goals, building strong teams and keeping an eye on cash, today’s CEOs and company presidents need to be more sensitive to diversity issues, learn to think differently and drive innovation, and they need to be more directly involved in managing the challenges of e-commerce.

E-commerce? Wow! Part of me thinks it’s about time. After all, Forrester Research has been projecting continued double-digit growth in e-commerce for years. They go as far as to say that, on average, e-business will represent 10-15% of the typical business’s revenue opportunity within the next three years.

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It’s been a few months since I attended Interbike 2007 in Las Vegas which, for those of you who aren’t familiar, is one of the largest bicycling industry trade shows on the planet. All of the big bicycle manufacturers are there with their new bike line-ups for the coming year and all of the accessory and clothing manufacturers vie for the attention of bike dealers in hopes that they’ll pick up their product lines. It’s a great opportunity to see what’s going on overall in the industry and peep the newest innovations and products before they hit the general consumer. It’s also the perfect place to notice trends that will shape the industry for the next few years. Since the show, I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the trends I see in bike design and marketing.

Change in the bike industry traditionally starts on the fringes and then gets picked up by the mainstream market, so it’s fitting to look at some of the smaller players in the field to see where they see opportunity for new products and ideas. Passionate, small players are the ones willing to take risks, so its interesting to see what opportunities they see in the market. The following report is my unscientific, off-the-cuff observations of developing trends in the cycling industry.

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