Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

I'll be up front--this post is somewhat (ok, mostly) half-baked. If you're ok with that, then read on.

For websites, I've been thinking about what each one's "mug shot" is. What is that basic, fleeting image that makes a site memorable and recognizable? What are the immediate cues that help you identify with and orient yourself on them? And, what features are important? Eyetracking studies sort of get at this, but not entirely.

So that was the windup for this pitch:

I want to see people draw (from memory only) what they think the Amazon.com looks like. Email them to me (tmoy at capstrat dot com) or upload and tag them on flickr as "amazon-most-wanted". Link them up in the comments if you're cool and saavy like that. And if you want, include some thoughts. But be brief.

I'll post the results in a few days or when I get 10 submissions, whichever comes first. I won't cite your name unless you want me to.

A few guidelines:

1. Use your head. Don't look at the site or anyone else's ideas before drawing yours. It will be way more fun to see the difference in interpretation. 
   
2. Finish fast. I'll give you 3 minutes. Trust me, I can spot cheaters.
3. Ugly=beautiful. Keep them rough and incomplete.  Visio or illustrator is fine. Even better is some crazy hackjob in powerpoint. If you've got a  cameraphone shot of a napkin sketch, hook it up. If you can't draw (really, you can), write me with some phrases and keywords that help explain what comes to mind when you think of Amazon. 

Lets see 'em. 

Have you ever noticed how some designers take notes? I work with a lot of designers in a strategic communications agency and we talk a lot about how to help our clients meet their goals. Much of what we do is story-telling through design. In our agency we do an enormous amount of brainstorming in special brainstorming rooms. 

When we are running through dozens of ideas for a particular client several days after a brainstorm some of our designers will pull out a moleskin or sketchpad they used to record the session. In that book are a multitude of doodles or sketches having what seems to me to have nothing to do with the brainstorm we both attended.

Our designers will open to the page and read back through their sketches, recalling exactly what happend in a strikingly accurate blow-by-blow.

I am so impressed by that. It is like a parallel syntax they use with fluency.  What's more, in much of our work, it gets used in our creative concepting and its smart.

So, if you are in a brainstorm and your designers are doodling, don't worry, its their way of taking notes, passing time, rapid prototyping and rendering a flurry of ideas into an indellible picture for later.