Introducing Brain-Rust TM

GDUSA presents this blog by the folks at Brain-Rust TM, which is a responsive designed portal for communication mavens with a desire to expand their knowledge and professional development by integrating online and offline marketing tools, into highly active avenues of new lines of profit. Via this blog and elsewhere, Brain-Rust will provide direct and in-direct benefits for you to add to your skill set, expand your client’s marketing options, and enhance your profit generating skills.

Brain-Rust via this blog will provide two levels of continuing education and a benefit driven summary. Level One is the Second Learning Cycle. A simple quick read that is short and to the point that offers an immediate exchange of knowledge. Level Two is the Expanded Learning Cycle, which provides an expanded, in-depth supply of information (still brief) that you can review and read at your leisure or when you have the time and feel the need to “learn.”

The Brain-Rust Mantra:  “Monkeys are trained, people are taught.”

ANY INDESIGN OR QUARK FILE CAN EASILY BE CONVERTED INTO AN APP.

App Studio allows the designer to Design, Develop, Automate, Manage and Publish, an interactive data rich app in three easy steps: Create, Upload and Publish.

7-Second Learning Cycle: You need to offer additional services to take advantage of the tablet and “app” revolution, look to appstudio.net as a first stop in your learning experience.

Expanded 7 Learning Cycle: App Studio conducted a 50-city tour, entitled “The Digital Revolution.” The information provided during this 3.5-hour (held in New York City at MOMA) presentation was useful and could be adapted to your “new business pitch or sell speech.” Allowing you to present to your clients a well versed set of information protocols including defined business motivators needed to gain YOU market share.

Following the presentation was a rich, interesting discussion including key Q&A’s and a more detailed tutorial of the various app studio product mix.

Appstudio.net offers a series of subscription options (A free trial is offered on their website) that allows you to adapt an InDesign or Quark file easily and effectively converting it into an interactive publishing app and yes, much more.

Many of the “bells and whistles” tools offered within the national tablet publishers are offered by App Studio. You can design across multiple platforms, iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Android tablets and Android Smartphones, including engagement building tools like; videos, galleries, newsstand, in-app purchasing, SDK, and all the main tricks of the trade via App Studio. You can include image galleries, video imagery and some other very cool “eye candy” solutions to introduce your static design to the world of interactivity.

Direct Benefits: If you are designing a brochure, direct mail effort, newsletter or a magazine, you can use appstudio.net to convert those static designs and creative elements into a mobile-based interactive version. It can also be adapted to nearly all the formats of mobile, tablet and Internet marketing tools you can wish.

In-Direct Benefits: Offering new services that can bring additional business and profit to your efforts. You can expand the scope of your skill set and enter the world of mobile marketing with more then a bang, but with a creative event that is based on skill, knowledge and profit.

Sounds too good to be true, you make the call. Need more information regarding the subject of this blog contact: www.Appstudio.net

App Studio rates on the Brain-Rust Digital (10 finger scale (yes we include thumbs) a 6.

Learn more about Brain-Rust contact: Brain.Rust.2013@gmail.com

Images courtesy of AppStudio.net, Copyright 2013 BrainRust.2013@gmail.com

Guest Post by Matt Cokeley

Tomorrow’s experts in mobile app design will be those with the early interest, energy and courage to experiment today, however, there is some trepidation in most areas of our design community on how to best approach this new beast without being bitten. As Creative Director for Mag+, I hear about these insecurities all the time. My goal is to provide people with enough guidance and information to take the leap and create mobile applications.

If you work with InDesign, you are already halfway to becoming a great mobile app designer. The additional tools required are free and only a few keystrokes away.  Here are 5 other tips to get you going once you’re plugged in.

1. Why Are You Doing This?

Know why you are moving into tablets. Too many teams rush in thinking this will be a viral hit and that their work will save the business. It won’t. It takes time to build recognition and extend your consumer base. Tablet readers are different than print and web consumers. You need to consider their use habits as you decide how to tackle your project.

2. Consider How Mobile Extends Your Brand  

As an extension of tip one, remember, this design is for the same brand, however, it is an entirely different product, and should be considered as such. You are competing against not just other apps similar to yours, but with Angry Birds, the Facebook app and numerous other distractions. Gauge your design and your business needs and what you can get your customers to do on mobile, and then commit, full-on to making that experience fantastic and immersive so that people keep coming back.

3. Start Simple

Bells and whistles are enticing when you first explore powerful software. Embrace the technology, but temper your design to evolve with the expansion of your consumer base. It takes time to adjust to the design dimensions of a tablet, and the interactivity. What used to be 8 pages in print will now be 12-15 pages in this digital world.  A great example of a fairly simple design that does quite well is the touchscreen edition of the K-Composite magazine, great readership, great response using the very basic Mag+ tools.

4. Be Consistent

Custom digital design requires human resources. Whether you’re adding staff or working with what you’ve got, it’s important to deliver on a schedule and within budget.  Even though I encourage you to be creative and nurture this new app, don’t be so overambitious that it becomes the project you delay, because you lose users all too easily. If you succeed at consistently delivering a smaller scope, manageable app on time, budgets to execute cooler more interactive things will grow too.

5. Analyze and Adjust

The great thing about tablet apps is that this type of design has direct response analytics built right in. What does this mean for you as the designer?  You get direct feedback on the performance of many of your design elements. You can see that your videos have been view 95 percent of the time, what features or content people simply don’t engage with and then ask yourself, “Why? Why did this element not perform as I hoped? Is it worth modifying? Or is another element performing so well, we can focus more effort on that?”

My recommendation is to plan to design two or three issues, analyze the data and your iTunes reviews and then adjust your design.

Go Create Some Mobile Apps Already!

That’s all for now.  Go forth and kill it. If you are designing mobile now, shoot me a link to your app. I’d love to see it. If you aren’t, let me know if I can offer any advice.

About the Author:

Matt began his journey designing for a small direct marketing firm in Princeton, New Jersey – but New York City was calling his name. His creative drive took him to Maxim magazine, Popular Science and the Bonnier Technology Group. After time, innovative lessons, and some boundaries pushed, Matt joined touchscreen publishing pioneer Mag+. He currently runs Mag+ Studios, the creative services division of Mag+, and performs client training and technical support for 1,000+ Mag+ apps worldwide.

Today is the actual date of GDUSA’s 50th Anniversary, the moment the first edition rolled off the printing press.

We like a party as much as anyone, so we’ve been celebrating all year; we’ll continue to do so right on until the final moments of 2013 fade away. To honor the community we serve, we’ve conducted a series of 50th Anniversary surveys to more than 40,000+ creative professionals about who you respect and what you admire. These have truly resonated, not as scientific truths but as fun, informational and provocative lists. We reprise some of the results here today and announce new findings.

Thanks to all of you for putting up with us for this past half century; wait ’till you see what we have planned for the next 50 years.

“Failure is built into creativity… the creative act involves this element of ‘newness’ and ‘experimentalism,’ then one must expect and accept the possibility of failure.”

Saul Bass, Born May 8, 1920