Tall Tales & Falsehoods

To be a good designer, you need to surround yourself with good design.

Tron vs. Saul Bass from Hexagonall on Vimeo.

By looking at various examples of logos we can see a few different things that make logos effective.

As you can see in the above gallery, styles will emerge depending on your design capability. By defining your design style, and doing your research you are able to evolve a logo way beyond its visual appeal. Try to add multiple layers to your logo and identity design.

A while back (Sept. 2, 2009) Dan Conover wrote a post on “The Key To Darbas” soft launch . Within that post he mentioned some ideas that I found to be very interesting concerning Community Licensing. At the time that I initially read the post, I was also teaching at Horry Georgetown Technical College. I was only about two weeks into my first course when he made the post, but I saw a direct correlation to the way he was thing about an open community and to a problem that I found my students were having.

As you may know the cost of textbooks for higher education are expensive. Not only are they expensive, but they are also time consuming to produce and in some cases inaccurate by the time they come to print and find there ways into classrooms. One of my goals as an educator was to use the same tools that I work with as a marketing professional. I found the idea of “Teaching Paperless” to be a great goal and I set-out to do just that. I used my personal blog as a tool to communicate with my students about daily assignments and used online media resources as means to show “real life” and “real time” examples of the subjects in which we were talking about. I would pull the main key points from the book and post them as topics of discussions as well.

I found myself leaning more and more away from the book and more into “real life, real time” examples. Upon talking with other higher education professionals I found this to be the case for them as well. It wasn’t so much as pulling away from the textbook as it was providing supplemental materials for their students that contained “real life, real time” information. Is there a way to use new technology, not only as a new media teaching tool, but also as a concise delivery method of up-to-date digital customizable textbooks?

I think digital media, real time data, accuracy of information, disbursement of information and payment/profit models all exist in loose connections. These individual parts could be pulled together to form a new business model for Higher Education Textbooks. Having real time data and examples that are customizable by individual professors or department chairs to coincide directly with there programs content is a great resource. With a pay-per-click model for article and video downloads, I believe you would have an affordable textbook solution that stays current from semester to semester.

A rough breakdown of the model:
• A higher education portal in which articles, papers, documentation, examples, videos, tutorials and references exist in a database.
• This information is produced by scholars, teachers, writers and professionals all within there field of study.
• Each of these professionals are a part of the program and sign up for an account to be vetted by the staff.
• All information is broken down by categories and tags and cross referenced for similar articles and media.
• All articles are considered “live.” In other words they can link to extra information, outside resources etc.
• There is a 2 pronged rating system for each article. The first being rated on by the professor that has choose the text in the past and the other rated on by the students who had to use the article.
• The professor/department chair chooses which articles, videos, pictures examples to include within there digital textbook. (This could be done on daily bases, weekly bases, semester bases.)
• The digital textbook is available for download with multiple options.
**Not sure if this is where the payment module fits in or at the end user. More market research is needed.
• The professor then uses the information contained within as a teaching tool.
***The second option for payment is if the end user actually clicks to read the article, watch the video etc. then payment would be posted.

How this business model is different
• Customizable textbooks
• Up-to-date information
• Interactivity
• Pay module
• Multiple format options (PDF, post-to-blog, direct complier editions – Kindle, iPad ) {Need more research – time, money, effort to compile multiple formats}

Keys To Success
• Making it easy to have higher education professional submit articles and get paid for articles used. This would open up textbooks to a whole new world of writers. Short stories, articles and essays could now be revenue source for professors who haven’t gone down the road to traditional textbook publishing. If you can get a few big name professors, schools and department chairs behind this with submitting articles I think it will open the door to all kinds of relevant submissions. Professors are continually doing work within their field. They have up-to-date numbers, theories and proposals that may or may not get picked up in journals. This gives them other opportunities to get there findings out there.
• Showcasing that textbooks are not just text, but rich video, photography and sound lectures can accompany them.
• Real life, real time” articles and data
• Multiple formats of textbook delivery.
• A good rating system and recommendation system for professors trying to compose a textbook.

Competition
All seem to have a rental service
http://www.chegg.com/
http://www.alibris.com
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/textbooks/index.asp

A few Links

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/media/textbooks-in-the-ipad-age-will-cool-tech-beat-renting/19362200/
Good background and research. Talk about a slightly different model.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/06/09/not-everyone-ready-for-the-digital-textbook-revolution/
I think the commentator of the story has it correctly. I see the business model changing from traditional publishing to hyper-activity media publishing.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/188427/interactive_textbooks_headed_to_ipad_report_says.html
This article points out some very valid points. I like to think that the proposed business module would make textbooks more affordable and would send more profits direct to the writes and contributors.

http://seankheraj.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/textbooks-in-a-digital-age-the-history-of-canada-online/
He gets the point but still never address the cost option of the books.

http://www.good.is/post/the-demise-of-the-200-textbook

Conclusion
While this idea does not tread on any new ground, the payment module and higher education community involvement gives the project potential.  More research is needed to see if it is idea that will be accepted within higher education. Professors and universities tend to run in closed circles, so it will be key to find out if they would be on board with a business model such as this.  If initial reports are positive the first step would be to compile a formal proposal outlining all key elements. In doing so this would help in looking for venture capital funding and educational grants.

Initial Contacts
• Dan Conover, this is the brain child of his initial idea. Has great resources and insight into the newspaper industries “pay wall” model.
• Nakia Pope, professor at Winthrop University. He is highly involved in the education side of teaching and would provided valuable insight.
• Richard Miller, an IT Specialist at University of Virginia. He used to work as assistant editor at HarperCollins Publishers.
• Paul Reynolds, local entrepreneur, computer programmer and has published applications on proposed delivery devices.
• Dave Slusher, highly involved in all things digital and wife is a former Coastal Carolina University Professor
• J. Wynia, possess great insight into theoretical technology and business idea generation.
• Joel Watson, computer programmer. He used to work for the Charleston library system.

I am very interested in the cost of food. Not only from the point of view that I am a consumer of said goods but also form the point of new ways of generating the same amount of food for less. Most say that food cost comes from the shipping from far off destinations coupled with environmental concerns. Food shipping also has a huge impact on the carbon footprint.

There has been a lot of press about grow/eat local. This concept is very appealing to me. While there are tons and tons of ways to do this, urbanites have started to buy small plots of larger land tracks to grow and maintain there own food supply. This is also accruing in large city’s on rooftop gardens and city parks. Would this idea be appealing to fellow Horry County citizines? I don’t really think so but it may.

I have at my disposal about 8 acres of land located off 701 S right outside of Conway. What if I made a urban farming location where people could rent out smaller plots and plat there own crops? Have it where all tools, water, fertilizer are all supplied. Also have on a hand a “real farmer” who could coach folks the ways of growing crops properly. You could charge for the service and make it as easy as possible for people to become “Weekend Farmers.” As long as you make the place nice, free of backbreaking work and give growing advice you could make it work. I think people are scared off from the up front cost of equipment, the thought of loosing their crops due to inexperience and actually doing back breaking work. If you supply the knowledge, the equipment and a helping hand people would be more inclined to join up. {You could possibly create it like a co-op where all crops are put into the overall pool of crops and each family gets there own share. (But I haven’t thought this idea out fully so I will hold off for now. Too many negative thoughts as far as “Share Cropping” is concerned.)}

Taking it one step further you could also have live stock where each” Weekend Farmer” has his/her own cow, hog and chicken. You would then get the eggs from the chickens and each season get the beef from the cattle and the pork from the pig.

The idea is not that far of a stretch. You already have people renting out horse stables and while this is for recreation the same principals apply except now the recreation is “gardening.” You are making it fun, enjoyable, family time and eco-friendly.

What do you think? Would you become a “weekend farmer?”