9.blog

content at condiment

It’s been a lot of talking about Condiment’s editorial lately. It is a digital magazine and marketplace about shopping unique, upstart and independent lifestyle products with tips and insight about getting the good life through little extras — an amazing furniture item, great blanket, something incredible adding to a meal, killer beauty products. This is shared in the slant that readers are individuals. I don’t want to tell people what they must have or not - I want to help them find what their must haves are, and share some ideas or examples of what that could be.

So you’ll see articles that show a range of different things, tastes, styles, ideas like this: 

It is very rare that anything included in articles each week is ‘my’ own style or taste. Though I like everything that’s picked and definitely play a role in content on Condiment, it’s all about what might be interesting to different people.

It makes the content fun to create.

this pretty tree covered my car with purple flowers, last night after a party

this pretty tree covered my car with purple flowers, last night after a party

this was my favorite article design on condiment this week 

this was my favorite article design on condiment this week 

condiment this past week

This past week’s edition of Condiment 

There’s a look at how advertising is approached on Condiment in this week’s edition

interesting

There’s been an article bouncing around the internet about the NSA/government monitoring many website and traditional telephone calls and services. 

It has seemed to cause a lot of discussion and outrage among people in the software side (websites, social networks, etc.) of the internet platform. Which is kind of unusual, as the industry has declared ‘privacy was dead,’ and that consumers didn’t care about having any privacy. 

Maybe this is providing that they’re not being monitored by a government. It seems brands and corporations doing so is acceptable, including most of the software side companies online.

But the thing about the internet infrastructure is that it is automatically doing it at the infrastructure level, and it’s not just your social network or software (website, apps, etc.) you use but the platform itself.

The government has access to it and can monitor it too, and likely already does.

a friend of mine was asked if he could recommend a woman entrepreneur to be featured in a story....

a friend of mine was asked if he could recommend a woman entrepreneur to be featured in a story. he picked me. kind of cool, at the interview over lunch today

my contribution to the chalkboard wall at lunch today

my contribution to the chalkboard wall at lunch today

amazon

It is so interesting to watch Amazon in operation.

It’s not the noisiest company and doesn’t have the same image in the market as the cool kids companies like Apple and Google. 

But it is really kind of killing it. Maybe even potentially killing Apple and Google at it.

It’s interesting to watch how quickly it does what it does and really, it does do it pretty well. 

Condiment on the Huffington Post this week

Condiment on the Huffington Post this week

the other startup business

A kind of cool aspect of working on Condiment is that I meet a lot of startups in the product lifestyle category. People with companies that make chocolate or some kind of house, beauty or other product item. It is such an interesting space.

Different people, companies, ideas, products, categories, all kinds of stuff. It’s a really innovative time in the market. 

There are also a lot of really cool, amazing people at the larger companies, or the ones that maybe aren’t startups including big brands. 

It makes the work a little fun. 

shift in content experiences

Content on the internet has always been in the forecast as the platform is ultimately an information delivery infrastructure. Publishing, broadcasting, etc. The internet’s infrastructure was always designed to do this, but the advent of its use came about around 2005, when the means to do so became easier and social networks solved a mass issue on the platform of connectivity and distribution. 

We’re entering the next evolution of this phase and its centering around in the shift in content experiences. The past was about solving the issue of cost-efficient, turn-key publishing and other tools. Now its what is possible in user experience, how content can be presented, consumed. 

A lot of the new software side companies and many major media outlets have changed the look and feel of their sites in the past year, where information, media, etc. are presented in new ways. Many have moved to more clean, simple and pared down content experiences, design elements and new ways of presenting pictures and information. 

It was one of the scenarios I had anticipated also when building Condiment for its 2012 launch a few years ago, and in part one of the most exciting. It’s kind of in a small way my interpretation of where and what I think digital content can look like in the evolution of content experiences online. 

This was my favorite article design on the site this past week:

I love that content can look the way it is beginning to around the web. It’s going to be cool to see how this continues to take shape and evolve. 

condiment this week

This past week’s Condiment edition 

something on condiment

Condiment has a marketplace that is slowly creating and curating a collection of interesting lifestyle products from unique, upstart, and independent companies. It had also been in the plan to make products as well, which was rolled out this past year with a small collection of art photography prints. The next collection came together at last today with five jewelry pieces by Condiment. I designed and oversaw creative down to picking the stones, metals and each element. I hoped to make something that was a range of what Condiment readers might be, versus what I might like myself alone. It was really fun!

The two necklaces in gold or silver are more clean and classic style. The gold and peach stone hoop earrings are so sweet and pretty. There’s a variation of the same style with silver and a deep blue teal which is a bit bolder color. Dragon fly hoop earrings are interesting and a little unexpected. The photo above was a snap taken just as everything was about to be more formally photographed. The line will be launched on Condiment’s marketplace this weekend. 

On the east side today

On the east side today

work

I don’t talk much about the consulting done at 9. It is a little bit of a smaller focus for the business. But kind of cool work. 

9 is hired to fix, scale, create, launch, position, transition, manage/support or sell other people’s businesses. It’s mostly digital but there have been/are a lot of traditional ones. It is a lot of strategy and talking or thinking than physical work but there are some things. 

There are usually a lot of different situations - early stage, late stage, reposition, growth phase, fix. It mixes things up.

The projects usually last a long time because it isn’t the kind of thing you can do easily or in a short time. The work is in some cool categories. 

Condiment is a project that is created and owned under 9 also. Its separate work and business but done all in-house.

There is a team. It makes it fun.

Condiment on the Huffington Post this week

Condiment on the Huffington Post this week

Even in winter somehow trees still look beautiful. Viewing...

Even in winter somehow trees still look beautiful. Viewing pictures of trees in the winter on a project this weekend. It's such a shame that we are killing off all the trees in the world. They're amazing. Check out this interesting read

thanks to all the veterans and memorial day

Thank you to all of the veterans, and their families. Happy Memorial Day!

wishes

wishes

condiment

I have been wanting to talk about Condiment.

It is a digital magazine that combines the traditional print media experience and a website experience in terms of format and design. I like blogs, and I like the blog format. It will always have a place in the world including in publishing. But there are and will be other formats and styles of media and that is going to eventually fully spill over to the internet. It’s already started in a lot of ways now, whether its realized or not. The internet hasn’t really changed much in the world except platform and reach. Otherwise, in reality, it is the same.

I wanted to play with and experiment in new ideas of what media could look like but still have it feel somewhat familiar in terms of user experience.

Every page on Condiment is custom design each week. Here’s an example of one from the most recent edition:

Article designs vary. Sometimes it’s just products, sometimes, it is copy. I love that creativity can be put into the experience.