In the race for interactivity, the humble PDF is down, but not out. Actually, it’s not even down.
The proof is the latest release from my new client, the Texas-yet-worldwide marketing consultancy Turning Minds. Titled Embracing Twitter…So It’ll Embrace You Back, editors Ben Henick (@bhenick) and Justin McCullough (@mccJustin) curate an anthology of wisdom about business use of Twitter, from foreworder Liz Strauss (@LizStrauss), Phil Gerbyshak (@PhilGerb), Becky McCray (@BeckyMcCray) and Chris Garrett (@chrisgarrett), just to name those whom I’d heard of before helping out on this book. 
I took the task of the overall design and production, exploring non-Flash interactive capabilities of the PDF format for maximum compatibility. The PDF standard has a lot going for it, and there’s little reason why ebooks can’t pick a few entrees from this menu. I truly had fun doing it, and look forward to topping it.
The scariest challenge was the final one: how to get the size down beneath 8mb, so it could be easily attached to an email. My experiments brought it down from about 30mb to a svelte 1.9mb, with almost no loss of content. I learned tricks I’ll be able to apply in every similar job.
To see the results for yourself, and to pick the brains of these 36 experienced Twitter practitioners, download your free copy, and tell all your friends. You’d be doing everyone involved a favor — including me.
In an effort to jump-start the economy, a site called the Dollar Rede$ign Project wants to overhaul the branding strategy of the USA, starting with the currency. Graphic designers looking to make a name have taken a shot at it — from replacing wigged politicians with other people, to more European abstract patterns, to innovative slogans.
To me, this is not re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but re-upholstering them. The problem is fiat money — money that only has value only because 435 politicians say it does. That can’t hold up much longer, and I suspect is a contributing factor to our current problems.
click to see the full assortment
So my design calls for clear plastic wafers, 1 millimeter thick, in which is embedded one-millimeter cubes of pure gold (valued today at 75 cents) or silver (valued today at 6/10 of a cent). The faces of these cubes are exposed from the plastic, for contact chemical tests in vending machines or small hand-held devices. The only criterion for acceptance is the mass and purity of the gold. The rest of the design is a convention, voluntarily adhered to as an industry standard. The shapes and sizes aid in identification in one’s pocket. In past currency, the function of portraits, patterns and scrollwork, aside from adornment, was complexity, to thwart counterfeiting. With gold and silver, these are no longer necessary.
Also, note that it is not issued by the Treasury in Washington; it’s issued by a bank, as money used to be, especially money based on gold and/or silver.
It’s time graphic design thought outside the rotogravured paper rectangle that has value only because a graphic designer put a number on it.
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