What We Write About +

What We Write About.

Author: Stefan B. -

think.

Why Pay­Pal stinks — And why we really have no better solution.

Pay­Pal is one of the lead­ing and most trusted online pay­ment brands on the planet. They processed $33.4 bil­lion in online trans­ac­tions in 2011. Nearly every e-commerce solu­tion uses Pay­Pal as it’s pri­mary pay­ment proces­sor because of its ubiq­ui­tous APIs. And many online shop­pers have a Pay­Pal account, allow­ing them to pay for prod­ucts and ser­vices safely and securely.

So, why do we have such a prob­lem with PayPal?

While Pay­Pal has made online shop­ping a breeze for con­sumers, the process for a mer­chant to set up pay­ment on their web­site is pretty con­fus­ing. For the aver­age online retailer/service provider who wants to use Pay­Pal for their online pro­cess­ing, there are a num­ber of options: Pay­Pal Pay­ments Pro, Vir­tual Ter­mi­nal, Pay­Pal Express Check­out, Recur­ring Pay­ments, etc. While it would seem easy enough to fig­ure out which option to use, the selec­tion process proves much more dif­fi­cult in prac­tice. Before the route to take, you must answer a series of ques­tions that even I, a rel­a­tively tech-savvy per­son, found con­fus­ing. Imag­ine being a first-time online retailer and hav­ing to nav­i­gate these rough waters.

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Posted: 04.20.2012|Posted by: Stefan B.|Comments (0)|
find interesting.

Pan­tone Brand Extension — A look at whether Pantone "blue" their brand extension efforts.

This past week­end, my wife and I vis­ited Chicago for our last hur­rah (aka Baby­moon) before we intro­duce our first child into the world.  We were also look­ing for some final items to add to our nurs­ery, so we vis­ited as many of the great fur­ni­ture stores avail­able in Chicago– which aren’t avail­able in Indi­anapo­lis. While brows­ing West Elm, I came across this table of trin­kets and gad­gets and one item caught my eye: Pan­tone toothbrushes.

Pan­tone is best known for their inks used by design­ers and the cor­re­spond­ing ink color books.  While I’m not dis­cov­er­ing Pantone’s reach out­side of color chips for the first time, I was shocked to see them brand­ing tooth­brushes.  As a side note, typ­i­cally in brand­ing, it’s impor­tant not to stretch your brand out­side of what you do well. You can end up dam­ag­ing your per­cep­tion by con­fus­ing your audience.

How­ever, when you have a ded­i­cated designer fol­low­ing, much like Pan­tone does, their audi­ence is already aware of what they do well, but is so proud of their prod­ucts that their will­ing to shroud them­selves, and even their dogs, in any­thing they pro­duce. So, I started dig­ging and found that Pan­tone has lit­er­ally extended their brand into every­thing from chairs, to clothes, to house­hold paints, to shoes, to mugs — and the list goes on. You can lit­er­ally cover your­self, your house, your car and even your mouth in Pan­tone branded products.

Arrested Development’s Tobias Funke couldn’t have said it bet­ter than this, “I think I just Blue myself!”

What com­pa­nies have you “bought” into that have extended their brands into mul­ti­ple facets of your life?

Posted: 03.14.2012|Posted by: Stefan B.|Comments (0)|
have on our wish list.

2012 Designer’s Wish List — Ten creative and "well-branded" items I want this year.

Each year, I have my eye on a few items I am really inter­ested in acquir­ing, whether they are tech-y or just plain cool. Call it brand mon­i­tor­ing, if you will. Last year, my list was more tech-inspired with the iPad and Apple TV at the top. This year, my list ranges from weekly cod­ing lessons to the highly unat­tain­able iPhone-controlled Cof­fee Faucet. Regard­less, most of the items I find inter­est­ing typ­i­cally revolve around well-branded prod­ucts or services.

My list is sorted by most attain­able (start­ing with one) to most unat­tain­able (end­ing with ten). It is also sort of in the order I plan on pur­chas­ing these items. Enjoy this year’s eclec­tic list and maybe some of these things will end up at the top of your list, as well.

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Posted: 02.14.2012|Posted by: Stefan B.|Comments (1)|
think.

Apple’s Lat­est Inno­va­tions for the iPad — Are iBooks the future of education?

E-books have been a grow­ingly pop­u­lar trend among adults and chil­dren for the last few years on tablets, such as Amazon’s Kin­dle and Apple’s iPad. As both com­pa­nies con­tinue invest­ing in brand devel­op­ment ini­tia­tives, the real power of these devices has remained untapped until recently.

When Apple first launched the iPad my ini­tial thought was, “finally, tech­nol­ogy that will help us get out of expen­sive, out­dated, heavy text­books and in to excit­ing and inter­ac­tive edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als.” I saw the poten­tial imme­di­ately and was ecsta­tic. The only prob­lem was that there was almost no men­tion of this until the release of the iPad 2. Sure, there were a few startup com­pa­nies excited for the new devel­op­ment plat­form and what this could mean for engag­ing our youth more effec­tively, but ulti­mately the cost to develop a sin­gle inter­ac­tive text­book was just pro­hib­i­tive. Why would any of the major text­book pub­lish­ers like Pear­son, McGraw Hill, and Houghton Mif­flin want to invest that kind of money when the cur­rent sys­tem works? Plus, the tech­nol­ogy was still rel­a­tively new and untested. So, early adop­tion was prob­a­bly not even on their radar.

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Posted: 01.26.2012|Posted by: Stefan B.|Comments (0)|
think.

Super Bowl 2012 — Unveiling the new 2012 Super Bowl Host Committee Poster.

If you know me well, when I catch wind of some­thing dis­turb­ing or what would seem counter to rea­son, I’ll tell you what I think about it. Today, I saw a tweet about the new Super Bowl 2012 Host Com­mit­tee poster and, being a designer and con­tribut­ing mem­ber to the Indi­anapo­lis visual arts com­mu­nity, I had to take a peek.

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Posted: 12.15.2011|Posted by: Stefan B.|Comments (1)|
are working on.

Brand Iden­tity Case Study — How we helped an IT Staffing company differentiate in their market.

SmartIT Logo
When Smar­tIT Staffing approached Tac­tic to part­ner with them and revamp their cor­po­rate iden­tity, we could not have been more excited! After research­ing their cur­rent brand, results indi­cated that the Smar­tIT Staffing brand lacked def­i­n­i­tion; thus, we saw an oppor­tu­nity to rebrand them using a more unique type-treatment that would shorten their iden­tity down to a clean and con­cise, “Smart”. The “IT” was directly inte­grated into the logo as a direct reflec­tion of how Smar­tIT works closely with their employ­ees and clients to cre­ate a per­fect partnership.

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Posted: 12.15.2011|Posted by: Stefan B.|Comments (0)|
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