Lack of imagination. I could leave this blog post at that and just about everyone would understand and agree, but for the sake of those who don’t necessarily like to see ideas crumble due to a lack of understanding (myself included) I’ll expand a bit.

Sean X. Cummings wrote the article “Why the QR code is failing” going into great depth on this topic explaining that most people believe the QR code to be useless, though we shouldn’t blame the QR code itself for this but rather the people implementing it. Companies love to pepper these little pixelated boxes on their billboards, posters, fliers and commercials to get you to go to their website. What’s the problem here? That it goes to their website. We can all agree it’s just the same or easier to open up your mobile browser and type in the company’s URL than to bring up the QR reader app, take a picture and wait to see if it read it correctly. There’s no added benefit and no incentive to look at a company website by these means.

What needs to happen is a bit of creativity. Connecting your QR code to something that will engage the audience and make them want to utilize this technology rather than pointing them to a business card when they know just how to find you from your advertisement anyway. Don’t make them do extra work to get to an end they’ve already met. Cummings mentions using a scavenger hunt—great! Maybe it points to a hidden video that describes something about the area they’re in and how your company has influenced it. Sustainability is big right now, right? How about pointing the code to another video explaining the process behind creating the 100% sustainable flier your audience is holding in their hand and how they can plant it in a pot of soil and flowers will grow? There are a million ideas you could come up with for QR codes that are far more engaging and useful than the surface-scratching method of attaching your website to it. Tom Fishburn of The Marketoonist (whose image we’ve used above) provides a fantastic example in his article where QR tags in New York City’s Central Park have created a rich and unique interactive experience that brings visitors closer to this historic landmark. Don’t give your audience busywork. Teach them something, reward them with something, play with them. As Plato has said “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” What better way to connect with your audience?

Did I mention there are also branding and design opportunities for these drab black and white stamps themselves?

This year Baker took the Qualcomm’s corporate overview project and asked to create an online media story – one that would tell the Qualcomm story on a personal level. Baker wrote, designed and programmed the online corporate overview taking into consideration video, motion, informational graphics and other functionality to bring Qualcomm’s story to life, taking the user experience to the next level. Within the first 90 seconds of the introduction video, Baker humanizes Qualcomm’s technology through individual experiences with it. Baker has been able to effectively demonstrate the revolutionary power of accelerated mobility, connecting it to the human experience – the way the people interact today and in the future.

After working with Qualcomm designing annual reports for the last 10 years, the online corporate overview marks the end of a transition. Beginning in 2007 with broadening the Qualcomm audience using the annual report with an accompanying online annual report, to now, having a robust, full-featured microsite that is wholey indicative to the online environment. Check out more of the relationship Baker and Qualcomm have shared here.

Well, first of all, there are a lot of reasons.  But let’s just focus on a couple of them here.

We talk a lot about being communicators, storytellers.  Part of the reason we place our focus there is that it’s a characterization that exists beyond the medium we use to communicate — a story is a story, an audience is an audience.  We choose our delivery method from a broad palette of the most relevant media available to deliver that story, that message.  As such, an important part of our job is keeping our eyes on the horizon — when a new delivery medium becomes available, we have to know what it means to us (as a communicative tool) and to the world-at-large (as an experiential tool).

Enter the iPad, a brand new game-changing device.  Up until now, the “netbook” has filled an unusual market space: it’s a tool meant for the user that wants to carry a computer with them but primarily wants it for less processor-intensive tasks… web browsing, email, watching movies, etc.  Computer manufacturers answered this need in the most simplistic way possible; they provided hobbled machines, built in smaller cases with smaller screens and lighter materials — like less-capable laptops.  What Apple has done, is analyze the underlying needs of that user segment and create a device that caters exceptionally well to those needs.  If i might make a fairly obvious prediction, this is going to be the next “must have” piece of mobile technology — it’s going to be the device to have if you’re a college student, a frequent traveller, a commuter, an artist, a reader, a movie fanatic… the list goes on and on.  Only a month after it’s announcement, it’s relevance online in articles, searches, blog entries, etc., has proven the impact it’s already made, and it hasn’t even shipped yet.

One of the most exciting aspects of this device though, is what it means in the “printed page”/digital media arena.  Last month’s New York Magazine commented that the iPad was looking to bring “old fashioned printed page graphic design into the digital era.”  This is an exciting thing to watch.  For years, designers have been frustrated by the limitations of designing for the web.  In many ways, designing for print is far superior to designing for the web… we create a design that is confined to a target we choose, and once printed is “baked” that way.  From that point forward, the experience is (hopefully) exactly what we intended for it to be.  With the advent of web design, however, all of the limitations of the printed page were suddenly done away with –both the good and the bad — but along with that blank slate came the challenges of wrestling with variable page widths and lengths, different target resolutions, different color depths, different browser requirements, etc., etc.  We would never again be sure that two experiences of the content created would ever be the same, and experience is critical.

All it takes is one look at the demonstration of how a book behaves on the iPad, and suddenly the possibilities become clear… all the welcome boundaries, physics and behaviors of a real printed page, but with the additional capability of including video, motion graphics, links, etc.  A fixed display resolution, beautiful color depth and multi-touch interactivity.  And most importantly, everyone that has one will see your content in exactly the same way.  And that is a very powerful thing. A critical part of delivering a message is knowing that it will be seen as intended… the iPad provides us with a platform where we have that security.  It is going to be the go-to device for college students, early adopters, alpha consumers, frequent travelers, readers, movie watchers, web browsers — and most importantly for us, people that are empowered to be brand champions.

I don’t know about you, but mine’s already on pre-order.