05/26/2017

Native Creative: A New Way to Soar Over Dubai, Heinz Channels Don Draper, and Much More

By James Kwon

Here at Figmints we feast on the new, the outlandish, the inventive, and the eyeball-widening joys of the Internet. Every other week, we meet as a team to share the most interesting things we find online. Anything goes. It could be a well-designed website, a video or an article that gives us goosebumps, a new brand making waves, or something else entirely. So sit back, relax, and enjoy our pu pu platter of cool stuff from the world wide web.

 

Interactive Map: Explore the Skies with Dubai360

 

Dubai has exploded in popularity over the last few years as it continues its steady climb up the most visited cities chart, beckoning the inner wanderlust of travelers worldwide. Well, now your dreams of experiencing the exotic city may be more feasible than you previously imagined.

Dubai360 gives you a glamorous glimpse of everything the city has to offer, teleporting you to an immersive, ultra high-definition environment with endless avenues of exploration.

Video: A Mind-Warping Explanation at the Grandfather Paradox

The grandfather paradox is a famous thought experiment which has you traveling back in time to kill your, well… grandfather. If your grandfather dies before your birth, then your very existence would be undermined and ultimately, impossible. Wait, it gets more twisted. If you kill your grandfather and cancel out your existence, how would you have gone back to kill your grandfather in the first place? I’ll leave you hanging on that cliff while the folks over at MinutePhysics explain the potential solutions to this brain-scrambling paradox.

 

ARTICLE: Paypal and Pandora Duke it Out over Their Precious “P”

Ever since the relaunch of their brand identity in the fall of 2016, Pandora has been under siege by PayPal due to the similarities between the brands. While the monograms aren’t carbon copies, the two blend in with one another at a quick glance, posing challenges when shuffling through your apps on your phone. Needless to say, PayPal isn’t happy with Pandora’s new direction and is taking them to task in court.

Website: Customizable Endless Tunnel Experience

This mindlessly beautiful digital experience will take you on a ride to nowhere in extremely enjoyable ways. This is one you’ll have to go see for yourself but be forewarned, there’s no light at the end of it.

 

App SpotlightMoment – Track the Time You Spend on Your Phone

It’s nearly impossible to pry phones out of our hands nowadays. A quick glance at Instagram here, checking email for five minutes there, the distractions feel as unavoidable as breathing at this point. The amount of time we pour into our handheld lifelines can add up quick, which is precisely the problem the creators of Moment set out to address. Track your time, set notifications, and prescribe time limitations to keep yourself from falling into a bottomless scrolling session.

 

Gallery: 34 Advertisements that will Make You Double Take 

There’s no better way to get your creative juices churning than by looking at what cunning advertisers have cooked up for our consumption. Sure, we see banal, lifeless ads every single day that ooffersnothing worthwhile. However, when advertising is done right, it can inspire new design ideas, strike you with novel messaging techniques, and, at its best, make you double take.

 

Ad Campaign: Heinz Takes a Play Out of Don Draper’s Book 

Our reality and the liquor-infused, smoke-filled reality of Madmen will finally cross paths thanks to Heinz. The culinary conglomerate has announced its plans to run the ads Don Draper pitched to fictional Heinz executives exactly as they appeared on the show. Take a look at the clip below to wet your appetite and read more about the legitimately poached campaign here.

 

 

Ad Campaign: Heineken Makes the Case that Beer Brings People Together

In one of their most recent advertising campaigns, Heineken lightheartedly reminds us that regardless of how different we seem on the surface, our similarities run deep. The missing ingredient for better understanding one another? Taking a little extra time to hear the whole story.

 

 

Aritcle: How Did the Largest Professional Messaging Platform Get Away With a Name Like Slack?

Naming a business is one of the most underrated and difficult aspects in branding. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not as easy as casually brainstorming over drinks if you want your name to secure a sustainable competitive advantage for your business. There are levels to the name game. Slack is a great example of a name that could be disqualified on the basis of its myriad negative connotations. But, as Igor points out to us, connotations both negative and positive may not hold as much water as we think.


That’s all we’ve got for you this week, tune in next, next week for another edition of Native to discover more cool things on the internet!