The invitation-only site has taken the creative world by storm. It’s given users access to a seemingly endless world of “pins” that can be saved on their own categorized pinboards and titled however they see fit. See a recipe on a blog that you want to make for dinner next weekend? Pin it to your “foodie” board. When you click on it later you’ll be taken back to the original recipe. Planning a wedding and trying to find the perfect bouquet inspiration? Do a search for flowers and pin photos of gorgeous bouquets to your little heart’s desire on your “tie the knot” board. See a quotation that makes you laugh, cry or think of a friend? Pin it!

Silbermann and his co-founders took the visual bookmarking to another level. Users may “follow” friends (and strangers), and comment on each other’s posts, much like on other social networking sites. Facebook users may also recognize the “like” button on Pinterest, while Twitterers can use their beloved hashtags in their pin captions. A recently updated iPhone app and brand-new mobile capabilities for other smartphones make for easy pinning on the go. In other words, the idea that inspiration is all around us has been “pinned” down, and you can quite literally take it with you wherever you go.

As Pinterest continues to grow, brands are taking note and jumping on the pinningwagon too. The popular home goods retailer West Elm uses the site to pin not only their own catalog of products, but other inspirational images as well. From there, followers can click on or repin images that link to the West Elm website where visitors can easily purchase. It’s that simple!

Go ahead. Request an invitation here. And start pinning!

Once marketers buy into Brand Patronage, there’s an understandable temptation to go after the biggest stars on the biggest stages. From a PR perspective, you’re pretty much guaranteed a big splash if you grab yourself a Lady Gaga or Black Eyed Pea (both will be making appearances in subsequent Brand Patronage coverage). But, remember that Brand Patronage isn’t just about half-assed testimonials from megastars; rather, it’s about forging partnerships where both the brand and the artist can flex their creative muscles in a collaborative effort. For this to work effectively, marketers must be careful about choosing artists (and a medium) that are the right fit for their brand.

That’d explain why you don’t see Macallan scotch working with, say, Katy Perry. In fact, the brand isn’t working with musicians at all. Rather, they’ve created a series called The Macallan Masters of Photography, which enlists some of the sharpest shooters in the field to tell the story of the Macallan production process. The latest installment features a project from Albert Watson, in which he is tasked with highlighting the Spanish sherry oak casks in which Macallan is aged. Fortunately, the brand didn’t add any other stipulations to the project; even Watson remarked, “The freedom and encouragement given to me allowed the creation of a visual journey demanding complete artistic integrity.” Watson settled on a story about a couple traveling from a Spanish forest to Scotland, and the end product (as seen in the video above) certainly evokes luxury, refinement, and distinction.

Of course, highlighting the wood is a pretty straightforward way of bringing the brand into the exhibition. But, there’s also more subtle branding being done through the choice of the medium. Photography is a slow process (in terms of setting up the shot), has a rich heritage, and focuses on minute details when it’s done right. These elements are certainly consistent with the brand attributes that Macallan is trying to cultivate, so their choice of both Watson and the medium of photography are appropriate for the brand. The campaign also supports amateur photographers with a contest, which encourages consumers to submit their own photos to be judged by Watson for a chance to win Nikon equipment. It’s a picture perfect extension to an already-compelling campaign.

But Macallan isn’t the only marketer peering through a viewfinder for inspiration. The Dali Museum, which recently opened in St. Petersburg, Florida, also turned to photography to promote (and help fund) the new attraction, although their campaign presents a stark contrast to the slow refinement of the Macallan project. For one, the Dali execution takes the traditional camera out of the mix, opting instead for a twist on the mega-popular Hipstamatic iPhone app. While the standard version of this app allows iPhone users to add all kinds of analog effects to their photos, the museum’s version (named the GoodPak – shown in the image below) expands these features to include elements of Dali-esque surrealism. They’ve also got their own user-submission contest, judged by – wait for it – John Waters. (C’mon, you know you chuckled at that.) While there are some other goodies included in the GoodPak, the most good comes from that fact that all proceeds from the Pak’s sales will go toward the museum. For more info on the app, head this way.

You know we love projections. You know we love talking about them. But did you ever think we’d be talking at them?

Neither did we.

Check out the ridiculousness happening in the video above. It starts with an already-awesome projection-mapped building in Lyon, France, but things get really interesting when the creators drop a microphone in the audience. When spectators speak, shout, and sing into the microphone, the projection responds by warping the display according to the tones in the person’s voice.

Ho. Lee. Crap. That’s about as awesome as it gets. Enjoy this Friday-appropriate indulgence, and we’ll catch you next week.

Welcome back, friends of The Awesome Blog! Hope you’re as rested and refreshed as we are, because we’ve got a big year ahead of us.

But, since you’re probably easing yourself back into the swing of things, we’ll go light today. After all, even a seemingly heady trend like Driven by Data can be oh so easy on the eyes. Like, for instance, the above image created by an engineering intern at Facebook, which visually depicts a large sample of Facebook friendships around the world. In our 2011 Trends Report, we encouraged brands to curate data in “useful, actionable, and life-enhancing formats.” The above image’s beautiful construction certainly qualifies as life-enhancing by anyone who takes it in (the small version doesn’t nearly do it justice – click here to see the full size version). Still, there’s more than aesthetics at play here, as this image also powerfully communicates Facebook’s significant footprint around the world. From a branding perspective, doesn’t this image give as much credence to Facebook’s influence as the statistics about their 500 million users? Moreover, don’t the particularly telling gaps in China and Russia say more than any spreadsheet ever could? Every brand has insightful data about their consumers, and frankly, raw data about Facebook’s user connections isn’t much more boring than the spreadsheets you’ve put together. The difference is in the presentation. If your brand has unique knowledge in a particular field, communicating that information in powerful, visually appealing ways can drastically differentiate your brand from the competition. (By the way, if you’re interested in the nitty gritty about how Paul Butler created the Facebook image , here’s the full explanation.)

But even if your brand doesn’t possess stats worth sharing, you can simply be the best at organizing other content that’s relevant to your consumer. After all, Google’s billions have largely come from steering their users to content rather than creating their own. So, it’s not much of a surprise to see them pull together the video shown below, which is an extension of their annual Zeitgeist project that determines the top stories of the year based on search volume. This video manages to present the data as more of a story, as opposed to their typical tables that really only appeal to a small segment of sociocultural trend geeks (like us). It’s a far more engaging experience for the typical consumer, as borne out by the almost 2 million folks that have viewed the video so far.

• Sneaking in under the wire, our foursquare follow-ups sparked one heck of a response in the Twitterverse (even getting a shoutout from foursquare’s head of business development, Tristan Walker). In case you missed what the fuss was all about (which means you should be following us on Twitter, silly), we started off by looking at how foursquare was using location to deliver geographically-relevant, time-sensitive promotional deals to consumers. We followed that up with a peek at the possible future of shopper marketing and loyalty cards, in which deals are dependent on the behavioral habits of consumers instead of just their purchase histories.
• Speaking of sweet location conversations, plenty of folks were fans of this collection of innovative, location-based music videos.
• And speaking of online stirs, our take on the Gap logo dustup (and a completely different response to Chiquita’s logo tweakin’) proved popular in the lead-up to Gap’s infamous logo reversal.
• Finally, we understand if our trends report at the beginning of 2010 might’ve slipped under your radar. But, if you haven’t seen our free 2011 Trends report by now, I simply don’t know what else to tell you. Oh wait, of course I do: we’re going to keep coming back to them via webinars, Potty Postings, client-specific presentations, and follow-up posts here on the blog all year long. Cuz 2011′s going rock, and that’s just how we roll. We’ll see you then!

Here’s something sweet to tide you over in the meantime: a collection of wonderfully minimalist posters depicting different musical genres. The series, curated by Edit, assigned each designer with depicting a given genre using a single shape.

(Could we interpret this as a manifestation of Primitive Simplicity in the design world? I believe we could.)

Check out the fantastic work for yourself.

We thought we were doing you a service by tipping you off to the YouTube Show & Tell channel, which highlights the site’s best brand work and the creatives behind them. As it turns out, we were only scratching the surface.

YouTube also launched a channel called Play, which is a joint collaboration with the Guggenheim and HP that intends to recognize the most museum-worthy clips on YouTube. Last night, a panel selected their favorite 20 videos, which will now be displayed at Guggenheim museums around the world. If you’re looking for some inspiration, head over to the channel and click on the tab for the shortlist to see the contenders.

Then again, most people seeking high art in the streaming video world tend towards Vimeo, a site that caters more explicitly to high-end content. They had an awards festival of their own, and are now showing off the cream of their crop on the site, including the TRI▲NGLE video shown above. (By the way, any fans of the antics of comedian/musician/all-around-weirdo Reggie Watts should check out the coverage of the festival opening.)

We’ve said it again, and again, and… well, you get the idea. Online video, the sleeper of web 2.0 technologies, is coming into its own. Brands who still dismiss the medium as all skateboarding squirrels and kicks-to-the-groin are missing the big picture.

Gap just broke out a new logo. But rather than refreshing the brand to connect with a new generation of consumers, Gap managed to send the world of art directors into a tizzy. Many of these critics have aired their grievances in a refreshingly productive manner; a redesign contest at ISO50 already has about 200 entries. By now, the hubbub has caught the attention of Gap executives, who are now promising to crowd-source their way out of this debacle.

Ah, tapping the power of consumer-controlled conversations to appease a passionate micro community of designers. It’s trend-a-licious, isn’t it? (A handful of Pepsi and Tropicana execs are solemnly nodding in the distance.) Of course, this approach has its critics, too. An open call for logo designs could also be interpreted as the spec work problem gone awry (i.e. declining quality + no one paying designers = everyone loses). Is there a middle ground that will make everyone happy?

Possibly. And it’s full of potassium.

A recent campaign from Chiquita provides a thought-provoking possibility for this predicament. Visitors to eatachiquita.com get the chance to design their own labels, combining a couple hundred elements into essentially endless possibilities. (Over 25,000 possibilities have been designed so far.) The top-rated stickers will be featured on bananas starting in November, but any design you create can be printed on a variety of shirts and other swag thanks to a partnership with Zazzle.

There are quite a few moving parts to this campaign, so let’s focus on the pieces that most relevant to the situation currently facing the Gap. (Otherwise, we would rave about the brilliance of that Zazzle piece.) Both brands faced the basic question about whether to mess with logos that have been iconic mainstays in the advertising world. But while the Gap (and Pepsi, for that matter) went ahead and thrust their new design on an unsuspecting public, Chiquita hasn’t committed one way or the other. Their strategy seems to be: have some fun, play with the logo, and let’s see where this goes. Maybe they’ll need a redesign, maybe they won’t. Maybe a new logo will come out of this experiment, maybe it won’t. Actually, it probably won’t. But, if and when it’s time for a logo redesign, the brand will have one hell of a focus group to draw from, having many thousands of consumers telling them exactly what they’d put on a banana.

In addition, letting aspiring designers choose from a curated set of elements saves the brand from the darker side of consumer-controlled conversations – you know, the part where your brand’s critics mercilessly tear you apart via your open-ended campaign. Unless someone manages to compose a scathing rant out of cartoon noses, Chiquita should make it through this unharmed (and even then, you’d have to admire the effort).

But, perhaps most importantly, there’s now a sense of discovery when it comes to something as banal as bananas. That little sticker isn’t a whole lot of real estate to begin with, but it’s now become something for shoppers to stop and seek out. This is exactly the kind of thing we’re talking about when we aim to break through the autopilot of the normal grocery experience. You know where we’re headed with this, right? Yep, it’s a manifestation of yet another of our 10 trends for 2010 – delighting consumers with hidden surprises. Anytime you can deliver unexpected moments of joy via a friggin’ banana, you know you’ve broken through the clutter.

(For more background on how the Chiquita campaign came about, check out this interview.)

So, if you really want your web startup to stick out, don’t worry so much about innovation – just make your logo green and violet.