Awareness is Where You Find It

This recent post on Advertising Age has nothing to do with building products specifically, but everything to do with creative ways to raise awareness.  Many of the "10 Most Unusual Advertising Placements" are examples of brand awareness advertising (as distinct from promoting a specific product).  A couple are really advertising venues in search of an advertiser.  What they all share is a clever rethinking of where to contact the potential customer.



The best of these ideas not only find a clever way to get noticed, but feature a fundamental appropriateness of the location they operate in, and a real connection between the way they communicate and the brand/product being advertised. Anyone could imprint their logo on the thighs of someone wearing shorts who sits on the bus-bench in #5.  The brilliance of it is using it to advertise a sale on shorts.  The same technique might also work for a gym, or a campaign for women's rights.  It wouldn't make much sense for a car company, though, and it might be downright negative for a brand of canned ham.

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Housing Research Center

A friend of Chusid Associates, Professor Ali Memari, Ph.D., PE has been named the Bernard and Henrietta Hankin Chair of Residential Construction  and director of the Pennsylvania Housing Research Center at Penn State University.

He is professor of architectural engineering at Penn State abd specializes in experimental and analytical evaluation of building structural and nonstructural systems for performance under environmental loads and natural hazards. He has recently done extensive work in building wall and envelope systems, including architectural glass curtain wall and glazing systems, cladding panels, brick veneer wall systems, various types of masonry wall systems, wood-frame, steel stud frames and structural insulated panels.

Ali and Michael Chusid have co-authored articles and collaborated on other projects. He has also conducted research to support our clients.

We wish him good luck in his new position.

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AIA CES Webinar: What CES Looks for in a Course Submission

There is a great continuing education opportunity coming up next week: 

Register today for “In the Mind of the Reviewer: What CES Looks for in a Course Submission” webinar on Thursday, May 31 at 2 p.m. EDT!
Please join us for an informative webinar on the course submission process. The purpose of this webinar is to help providers understand the logic of a CES course reviewer, in order to allow for better quality of course content and a more efficient course evaluation process. The first half will provide a refresher in the essentials of the CES Provider Manual through a PowerPoint presentation. All information that providers need to have ready before submitting will be simplified into a content checklist; and a procedural checklist will cover all of the technical steps in the submission process. In the second half, this knowledge will then be applied through an actual demonstration of the basic course review process. Five mock course submissions will be reviewed, ranging in quality from excellent to poor. Time will be allotted for questions and answers in the last part of the hour.


About the Presenter
Michael F. Tamara, Assoc. AIA is the Manager of Continuing Education Programs at the American Institute of Architects. He reviews courses submitted for AIA CES approval, and assists Providers of continuing education. He holds a master's degree in architecture from Syracuse University, and is currently studying for the Architect Registration Examination. 
Registration for Webinar


To find out about more continuing education programs offered for professionals in the design and construction industries, visit our CE portfolio page.

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The Power of Graphics

Human communication is increasingly visually driven.  Digital cameras, shooting still and video, are everywhere, and everyone knows how to use them, so visual instructions and explanations are becoming ubiquitous.

Shooting a video to explain an idea or process is tempting, because everyone seems to want visual communication.  However, a video of someone reading an explanation isn't really "visual."  It's just Text in Video clothing.  Truly visual communication is a a very different animal.

Sometimes, a good old-fashioned graphic, or a clever, new-fangled interactive graphic, can do the job very nicely, where a video might be quite a challenge to execute effectively.  Here are two examples that each tackle the concept of giving scale to large numbers and sizes.

Goldman Sachs' office building, next to towers of palletized
$100 bills representing Goldman's derivative exposure.
Each tower is $1 Trillion ($1,000,000,000,000).  

This page uses static graphics to great advantage, depicting the 9 big banks' derivative exposure in $1 Trillion towers of palletized $100 bills.  (You might want to read the entire page, too, for some interesting info on world economics.)
http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/derivatives/bank_exposure.html



This page uses flash to let you "scroll dimensionally" in and out of size, from the size of quantum strings up to the estimated diameter of the universe (as distinct from the smaller diameter of the "known universe").
http://htwins.net/scale2/scale2.swf?bordercolor=white

Both illustrate the concept of scale very effectively.  They also offer the viewer the ability to dwell over them as needed to comprehend what they are saying, a measure of control that videos distinctly lack (as in, "Yeah, I already know that, move on to the next thing.").

They also illustrate the value that a good graphics designer can have to enhance your marketing efforts.

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Evolution and Building Products

I have developed a new theory to explain how bipedal humanoids evolved from lower orders of primates that walked on all four limbs.

My theory is based upon recent findings that apes "show engineering skills when building", in the words of the BBC. According to the research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the United States of America:

Nest-building orangutans demonstrate engineering know-how to produce safe, comfortable beds

Nest-building orangutans must daily build safe and comfortable nest structures in the forest canopy and do this quickly and effectively using the branches that surround them. This study aimed to investigate the mechanical design and architecture of orangutan nests and determine the degree of technical sophistication used in their construction. We measured the whole nest compliance and the thickness of the branches used and recorded the ways in which the branches were fractured. Branch samples were also collected from the nests and subjected to three-point bending tests to determine their mechanical properties. We demonstrated that the center of the nest is more compliant than the edges; this may add extra comfort and safety to the structure. During construction orangutans use the fact that branches only break half-way across in “greenstick” fracture to weave the main nest structure. They choose thicker branches with greater rigidity and strength to build the main structure in this way. They then detach thinner branches by following greenstick fracture with a twisting action to make the lining. These results suggest that orangutans exhibit a degree of technical knowledge and choice in the construction of nests.

So how does this explain the evolution of humans that walk on the ground instead of climbing in trees?

Simple -- How else could a sales rep deliver samples if the rep had to use all four limbs for climbing.  ;-)

Artist Unknown

Abstract:

www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/04/09/1200902109.abstract?sid=98ebca9d-e99b-499e-aaf3-84536cf7d36f, accessed 2012-Apr-16, 

Authors: Adam van Casteren, William I. Sellers, Susannah K. S. Thorpe, Sam Coward, Robin H. Crompton, Julia P. Myatt, A. Roland Ennos

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