The Branded and Gilded Life

Halt. Who goes there?


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Back in the day, there were only a few places when you had to prove your identity before entry.

The internet has made it a daily requirement.

You log into your email. Your bank account. Ecommerce sites. Ticket booking sites. Your messenger account. Your social media handles.

I'm sure you can think of more

Sure, most of us have automated it by saving login credentials.

But when you change phones or upgrade laptops, the routine repeats.

Remembering the details for one site is easy.

As the numbers add up, confusion compounds.

Now apps are available to handle the problem.

They promise that you'll have to remember just one password and the app will log you into every other site by default.

But the login sentries have a mind of their own.

Try changing the password on banking sites.

A fresh set of instructions is unleashed . One Capital letter. One special character. One number . Too long. Too short.

Try doing that through your one size fits all password app. On desktop and mobile.

As well as on the TV screen for your streaming sites.

This is a billion dollar opportunity waiting for an elegant solution.

Do you know of one?

Mario's homecoming

You decide the obstacles and preset the course 

Create it on the game screen. Then set off Mario or Luigi in hot pursuit.

Controlling a Mario toy car through the game device.

And add additional drivers and objects through Augmented Reality or AR

Mixed reality by Nintendo arrived in October in the US'

Games are taking the first tentative steps out of screens into real environments

Control the game from your screen and have Mario or Luigi zipping through your house.

You can vary the game and the course by adding new points of interaction.

Start with a simple course plotted around the dining room to complex ones that go under tables, around the sofas and cupboards or beds, for that matter.

Earlier, you drove remote controlled cars controlled from a joystick.

Now Nintendo has expanded that joystick into a screen and created the game environment within it.

And you can unleash it into any room in the house 

I don't think parents will be too pleased. But kids will be delighted.

Pokemon made you step out of the house in search of AR characters.

Mario and Luigi will now run rings around you at home

The lost art of Letraset

It was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it phase in typography. A bit of history.

The transition from solid block type to fonts on a computer

Today, designers see hundreds of typefaces as a drop down option from a menu

They change spaces between words, left align, center align or justify the entire layout with a click.

Serif can change to sans serif in an instant

Now imagine doing all of this one letter at a time.

All type decisions to be made on a blank sheet of paper.

If you made a mistake, you started all over again.

Letraset produced sticker sheets with different typefaces.

Agencies had to keep an inventory of type sheets 

Commas, full stops and punctuation, all in sticker form.

Art directors learned typography by painting each type form in art class.

So they understood typefaces like scultpors understood stone

Even then, they had to position everything perfectly.

Placing the Letraset sheet on top of the artwork being created to rub each letter into place. 

Until a whole sentence was formed

It was precision work after the rough design was approved.

Computer typesetting arrived in the 90s and Letraset was no longer relevant

The slow cooked era of creative production was over

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The Branded and Gilded LifeBy Connecting the not-so-obvious branding dots