DESIGN, INNOVATION & BUSINESS

Image: Chineasy via FastCoDesign.

Chinese mnemonics: There are some 20,000 characters in contemporary written Chinese. Knowing about 4,000 is considered educated, standard literacy is 2,000 and basic literacy is 200 characters. Chineasy, a new system for learning Chinese characters, developed by Taiwanese London-based entrepreneur ShaoLan Hsueh, promises to get the novice to that level, using just minimalist posters. I haven’t used Chineasy, obviously since it is still in its successful Kickstarter phase, but I honestly think it can work because the only three characters I remember from two levels of Chinese, where the ones I learned with a story associated to their image: Country 国, student 学, and person 人. Read the full article in FastCoDesign.

Image: Wired.

The untold story of Google’s quest to bring the Internet everywhere… floating in balloons. Unveiled on June 15 and powered by Google X, Project Loon balloons plan to circle the globe in rings, connecting wirelessly to the Internet via a handful of ground stations, and pass signals to one another in a kind of daisy chain. Each would act as a wireless station for an area about 25 miles in diameter below it, using a variant of Wi-Fi to provide broadband to anyone with a Google-issued antenna. Read full article in Wired.

Photo: Idlewild via FastCoDesign.

Rebranding a NYC Bookstore to evoke the golden age of travel. Designer Andrew Colin Beck often finds “that brands have a super rich visual culture hiding deep below the surface that they’re not capitalizing on,” Idlewild Books in New York City was one of them, but now is wearing a fusion of this combined literary and tourist legacy on the sleeve of every book they sell. Read about this school project that became a beautiful rebrand for this travel bookstore in FastCoDesign.

Why innovations requires sales people? Geoffrey James argues that While some innovations may go viral (i.e. spreading from person to person), most innovations require a salesperson to help customers go through the often-difficult process of changing how they behave, otherwise innovation dies on the vine. Read full article in INC.

R/GA’s 10 steps to effective creative prototyping for ad agencies. These days agencies need to walk-the-walk and not just talk-the-talk when it comes to showing clients concepts. Working prototypes are far more accurate, compelling and tangible than slides in a PowerPoint presentation. Have a look at this 10 effective steps to get your team rolling in The Guardian.