You know the drill: follow Upshot on Twitter to keep up on the latest SXSW Interactive news. It’s only three days away!
We’ve already mentioned that location is the watchword at this year’s SXSWi, but we’d advise you to keep your eyes out for news on QR codes as well. Longtime readers know that we’ve been [...]

Oy. Again with the busy day?
Yes, unfortunately (or fortunately?) we’re still a bit swamped, so today’s post’ll have to be a quickie.
So, we’ll let PSFK delight you with their spotting of these wine labels that let you Mr.-Potato-Head-ify (or is that Colorform-ize?) the bottles. Nifty!
A full post is coming tomorrow, we promise!

Maybe it’s because I just cleaned up some pretty significant soy sauce spillage at my desk, but I’m especially receptive to Heinz’s announcement that they’ve just reinvented the ketchup packet. (For the first time in 40 years, no less.)
Citing the old packets as “the bane of our consumers,” especially for those eating on the go, [...]

No need to dig any further – one glance at this package and you get the gist of Scanwood kitchen utensils. They’re wooden. They’re authentic. They’re natural.
(Of course, you can also zoom in a bit and see the “Designed in Denmark. Made by nature” tagline on the side.)
Scanwood’s packaging instantly drives the message home, especially [...]

We’ve got a sneaking suspicion that our readers will dig these vintage bottle designs created for Schweppes.
Apparently designed for on-premise sales in Australia, you can catch close ups of each bottle at TheDieline.com.

By now, you’ve certainly realized the importance of befriending the blogosphere for generating word-of-mouth about your brand (if that’s news to you, may we recommend a quick refresher?).
Of course, some blogger outreach programs are better than others.
We’ve previously called out a couple of innovative campaigns, including an amazing effort for the Coraline movie. In both [...]

It’s nothing personal. It’s just that your static, plastic gift cards are so… dull.
As gift cards became mainstream, and many went online, it became harder than ever to produce a gift card that truly broke through the clutter. Yet, a year after Target blew our collective minds with the gift card that doubled as a [...]

And you thought barcodes needed to be uniform!
Check out these clever little guys, courtesy of Japanese firm d-barcode. (There’s a larger collection over at The Dieline.)
Besides the fact that this breaks up the monotony of an art director’s day, there’s a benefit here for the brand as well. Remember when we mentioned the joys of [...]

Regular readers know we’ve done a lot of talking about delighting consumers with “hidden surprises” (non regular readers can catch up here).
We humbly suggest that the concept of an origami tea bag is just about the best (and most friggin’ adorable) illustration of this idea that we’ve ever seen.
Talk about delivering happiness in tiny little [...]

We’ve had a number of clients ask us about how to engage influential bloggers (besides bribing them, and subsequently getting busted, of course). Unfortunately, most of these conversations revolve around the “who” (who is the most influential blogger?) rather than the “how” (how do we really get the attention of the blogger community?). As demonstrated [...]