Ikea launched a 300×250 ad that contains over 2,000 of their products, making this banner, the smallest IKEA store in the world.

Two reasons why this is great:

1) Stays true to the IKEA brand.

When I think of IKEA, I think instructions that come in only picto-format (which I usually have to do twice) and making the most out of limited space. This ad takes a traditional 300×250 and makes it into a browsing experience (not quite shopping experience as you can’t purchase inline in ad) much larger than the traditional constraints dictate.

2) Brings the store to the consumer.

Getting someone to passively engage with a banner can be difficult (please look over here at me, I’m not a monkey that needs to be punched, I promise). Getting them to disengage with the website that they are currently on is even more difficult. This IKEA ad doesn’t require the audience to jump to the brand’s site on the first level of engagement. It lets the consumer browse through and let the viewer find the object that suits their fancy.

Where this can be improved is by creating the full purchase experience inline. Make it like a mobile app where space is limited, so you have to be smart about UX in your limited 300×250, yet make it fully functional.

Where professional teams can use this is porting the shopping experience for tickets and merchandise on affiliate sites. Buy the local newspaper website and have a fully operational ticket store (complete with discounts and offers) rather than just having a picture of the upcoming opponent.

Original post at Adverblog

I’m always on the lookout for new and innovative designs for sites. I think that is one of the many things that always intrigues me about the web. When people combine art with functionality. I’ve seen plenty of sites that make you just go, ummm what? “What does this do?” “Why am I here?” or “How do I get this to do something… oh look something shiny!” I do really enjoy when I find a site that really shines in functionality and design. (This is why I dig the guys at Substance so much. They do a great job saddling the two concepts, design vs function).

I found about a cool site through a ’round about way. @richjoslin posted a link to a design blog in a FriendFeed room “Web Design, The Good The Bad, The Ugly”. The design blog is called Cult Foo. They have a compliation of a bunch of different sites to check out. If you have 1/2 hour to kill, check it out (the tag cloud, literally, on the top with the fixed position and use of .png transparency is a nice touch). One of the site on there is what inspired me to write this post – Digiguru.

Digiguru is the blog/portfolio site for Craig Jaimeson in South Africa, a flash and front end designer. The site that he created is a full flash one with a clean calendar interface. It has several nice touches including Full Screen, permalinks using SWFAdress and smooth transitions. The site functions well, and allows him to create large graphics to convey his message instead of typing a bunch of paragraphs. I like this approach because if he doesn’t want to write a large dissertation, he doesn’t have to. That is where I feel blogging is difficult, writing something that matters. This is a simple way to convey a message, and if you need to add some text so you understand what the message is, so be it.

I would love to see is some sort of further organizing on the site. Either a tag cloud or even a stream of titles of posts so you know what some context the content is about. There aren’t any room for comments. This might be a tough thing to handle, but I think a timeline, or some way to inject two way communication would be spot on.

I would love to see if this could be an open source project. Now that would be cool. Be able to distribute this as a blogging engine/presentation engine… hell, I would even pay some cash for it. Not a ton, under $50, but if he’s looking to recoup his investment.

Let me know of other sites that have inspired you, as I’m always on the lookout.

This post is all over the place, so much I’m redoing this first sentence, bear with me as I have brain diarrhea in the next couple of paragraphs… I’ll work on being more succinct later.

Things are moving at a fast pace at the Portland Trail Blazers. Brandon won Rookie of the Year, we win the lottery, we launch a microsite, Greg Oden and Kevin Durant come into town this week. Hectic.

I’ve heard about Twitter for some time, but the guys at Substance who did the microsite suggested we use Twitter in the microsite as a way to push the info about the draft process and the inside look of what is going on. It’s been awesome. I can’t say enough cool things about Twitter. If you haven’t checked it out… do so today. We’re updating as frequently as possible and encouraging fans to sign-up for mobile alerts. When we update the feed, if you’ve subscribed via mobile, you’ll get a text message with our latest updated. My feed is here and the Portland Trail Blazers is here.

Also, we’re hiring at the Trail Blazers… I’m on the lookout for someone who I can off-load some of the production work that I get to, but don’t have enough time to really really push the design and interactive envelope. I’m looking for someone who understands where the web is tomorrow, not today. I really need someone with solid Flash skills and CSS background. I know, a tall order… BUT I’m hopeful. I am looking for an Interactive Specialist.

One person’s blog I found off of Twitter was iJustine at Tasty Blog Snacks. I have to say I’m impressed with the content and the use of video on the site. She does a great job of bringing you into the snapshot of her life by “lifecasting” (I like the video with the cam on her head talking to herself at a coffee shop admitting that she looks insane)… it doesn’t seem fake, but is far from boring. It’s not like watching some dude in his mom’s basement playing air guitar or talking about Open Source on how it will save the world. She walks around her normal day and edits it into video clips and broadcasts it. Very much like reality TV, but unscripted… or at least it appears so. I didn’t notice any stunt doubling.

BTW the video site she uses is Viddler. Totally dope site. I’ll do a post later about them.

So the hunt is on for another part of my team. I guess the guys at Substance and I will be competing, who can get the cooler person first. I think they have me beat due to the collection of electric guitars at their office. I think I have the organ from the Memorial Coliseum somewhere.I told you this was all over the place… and now, you can stop the circus music playing.

I live in Oregon. I walk to work sometimes (thankfully I live close enough). There is a problem with pollution (anyone see An Inconveniet Truth?)… so I’m seriously considering a hybrid for my next car. One drawback, and this is the superficial side of me coming into play, but the Prius is really not that attractive.

I’m not here to bag on the Prius… I wanted to talk about the social network that Toyota and multimedia firm Firstborn and ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi LA and Enjoy User Experience launched Toyota’s Hybrid Owner Site.

It’s a great place for people to showcase, in a stunning visual way, why they bought a hybrid. This is a great way for the Toyota customer to wave the flag on something they are passionate about and give the customer endorsement in an authentic way. This is stuff that brands thrive on. Kudos to everyone involved to bring social networking wrapped together to help the environment in such a stunning way… all in flash mind you.