Tom Ajello™

Published an in-depth breakdown of the leading #GenAI image tool strengths and weaknesses. I'll apologize in advance for Adobe Firefly 🤣 https://lnkd.in/eQR7E42H

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Cross pollination/Multitask It takes what it takes. If I am to multitask---my visuals can too. To illustrate: Here’s “BRUTUS” my Chevy G/10 from 669’s “Respect the Van” series. He was re-dressed and branded for another group’s application. “WHY?” They were looking for something different, yet they needed wiggle room within the budget. To accommodate those efforts, I offered up one of the RTV vans to play assist. No creating from scratch—the boat (in this case a van) was already built! Multitask/Cross pollination is not a water-down---- It’s stepping UP and stepping into possibilities and opportunities. In business, wiggle room and redirect are vital. Afterall, it’s more than a van in a visual—it’s a “team player” and a visual that will speak to their avatar audience. It also hit a price point that was favorable for all involved. That’s a WIN. You’d be amazed how many different scenarios happen within the studio. Every project has its own needs, and no request is (EVER) off the table. You don’t know unless you ask! ----------- I’m Scott Fisk---from Studio 669, I create visuals that knock DOWN the doors of “normal”, making YOUR audience scream for more. DM me “Go Time” -Let’s discuss getting YOUR brand next level. It’s a (FREE) no obligation conversation.   💥 If you enjoyed this post, give me a follow! And I’ll drop cool into your feed on the daily. That's a promise. #designwork #branding #strategy 

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We have compiled a list of the seven ways in which AI can help you craft a superior user experience. https://lnkd.in/eN2yMpkQ

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It’s easy to underestimate the headspace cost of complexity. Too much content or too many templates and flows can make it hard to see the forest through the trees. Be ruthless about simplifying and breaking content up so you can focus on refining and optimizing and gathering data to learn what’s working—and what’s not.

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This idea is long, long overdue. "Design belongs to everyone" - no, it does not. While I'm all for democratization and co-creation, I would say that the skills and contributions of design-educated, war-tested designers are both insanely undervalued and grossly overlooked. Doing this comes at a major cost, a major cost to the relevance, significance, and bottom line of EVERYTHING you're creating without them. Design isn't here to make things pretty. It's here to make things WORK. So let it, and let us, do our jobs.

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I've been a longtime fan of the Design Better Podcast, so want to give a huge thanks to Elijah Woolery and Aarron Walter for having me on the show! We had an in-depth conversation about how sound can impact brands and their product experiences, as well as my approach in developing these ecosystems that are often overlooked. If you're curious to learn more about audio branding and ux sound design for product experiences, be sure to give a listen! Link to show in the comments section. #uxsounddesign #uxdesign #audiobranding #sonicbranding #productsounddesign

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Final prep for tomorrow’s inaugural Authorship workshop ☕️✨ We’ll dive into: 1. How to foster the Author’s Mindset 2. What’s your story to tell? 3. How to write with ease and impact I’m so excited to meet 100 future authors 🙏 If you’re curious about writing a book, you can still sign up at bit.ly/authorship2024

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From Average to Great How we took a solid image concept and elevated it to new heights Welcome to my series: Creative Makeover! 💡 In edition # 2, we took a plain Jane ad creative for a risk detection software and gave it a glow-up. 🎨 Refined Color Palette: The dark blue backdrop with white text creates a striking contrast, improving readability and visual appeal. 📐 Balanced Layout: Center-aligned text and thoughtful spacing give the new design a polished, professional look. 👓 Clarity: The high contrast between the white text and dark background makes the content more readable, especially for the main message. 🔤 Typography Upgrade: Modern fonts with varied weights establish a clear information hierarchy. 🔍 Emphasis on "GENAI": The purple box highlighting "GENAI" in Image 1 draws more attention to this key term. The result? A more sophisticated, authoritative image that effectively communicates GenAI's value for government agencies. It's a perfect example of how small design tweaks can make a big difference in visual communication. What do you think of this transformation? #b2bmarketing #demandgen #LinkedinAds

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The future of presenting lies in crafting an immersive user experience and technology is hinting at what path that might take. The push to virtual broke down so many walls in presentation design and delivery. Even large organizations were forced to rethink the way they delivered and what they delivered, right down to ditching their beloved title and bullets. Even though PowerPoint is the eight thousand pound gorilla in the marketplace, clients and the latest advances in software show the promise of a new approach to delivering insights and experiences in a modular way. What if the keynote was simply an entry point in the user experience? If breakouts were moments to gather practical tips and deliverables along that path and workshops were moments created to interact with fellow users to learn and hash out strategies and actions with opportunities to follow up and connect later on? What kind of journey would you like to take and how would it unfold? In person, virtual, over a day, or gradually, over weeks and months?

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While building Toast Now, we followed a process that focused less on specific timelines and more on getting to 1,000 raving fans. I often hear from designers, in particular, that getting to just the right experience is tough especially in companies that are not “design-led”. In many ways, the discussion ends up centering around the right *design process* to get there. The reality is that great products are built not with design-led but with experience-led mindset that’s core to the way the whole triad works, ships, and iterates. Here’s how we built Toast Now. We roughly focused on three key stages: 1. Get to 10 raving fans. We started building Toast Now with 10 or so customers. We had a release out within the first month or so of kicking off the process. When I say building *with* customers, it’s literally the case. We had customers on WhatsApp groups with the product triad (product, engineering, and design). We got feedback daily. The goal was to get them to be daily active users who can’t stop talking about the product and have so much value to get from it. Once we got there and felt confident in the core experience, and even though we were far from a complete product, we expanded the circle slightly with the goal of getting to phase 2. 2. Get to 100 raving fans. Almost the same process with the exception of opening up more systematic ways of delivering feedback. We had an in-app google form that piped feedback directly into a Slack channel that we monitored all the time. Every single piece of feedback was read and actioned. It allowed us to continue to work closely with customers while making sure what worked for the initial small group actually scales. This phase is more about the way we scale the way we learn from varying different types of customers and personas than actually scaling the product itself. From there we got to phase 3. 3. Get to 1,000 raving fans. This is basically a private beta (what we now call “Test Kitchen”). This allowed us to scale similar mechanisms of feedback but also ensure that as we scale, what we learned both scales technically and most importantly, scales to different types of customer segments. By the time Toast Now went GA last November, we had both the confidence and testing to know it’ll land the way it did. The key here is three things: 1. Gate by quality not timelines. 2. Build for a small close group of customers that’s willing to build with you. Continuous learning is the key. 3. Focus on raving fans, not just early adopters. We’re building Sous-Chef, Toast’s AI Assistant for restaurant operators, exactly the same way and it’s exciting when you start seeing the initial signals of raving fans.

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Extraordinary #product imagery comes from respecting the details. See our value proposition here (and some cool visuals too): https://lnkd.in/gs_RY9yP #cgi #render #3d #visualization #marketing #productmarketing #video #animation Made in California with KeyShot

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Sometimes, my job is designing a logo, and sometimes, my job is designing a space. We've created some fun brand experience installations for our partners that I'm really proud of (and have pushed me outside of my comfort zone). Read more about our approach to crafting identity-driven spaces in my latest blog. #BrandScape #DigitalRelativity

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There has been a rising tide in human-to-machine interaction. In the months and years to come, what could be the best approach to this evolution? Should we aim for an intellectually advanced AI with no emotions, or should generative AI have emotions to connect more with customers? This podcast, "Speaking of AI," discussed this. Personally, I believe we need a blend of intellectual and empathetic AI. Listen to the Amelia podcast with Nick Orlando, Ken Fleischer, Joshua Schechter and Matthew Portillo and share your thoughts!

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✨ What’s your signature hallmark as a designer? Share it below. Design isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about originality, integrity, and innovation. And as designers, we walk a fine line between being inspired and staying uniquely ourselves. In today’s episode (114) of the Design Business Freedom Podcast, we explore what it truly means to be inspired versus what it means to copy. 🎙️Here’s what’s inside: ✔️ What is the fine line between inspiration and plagiarism? ✔️ Why defining your design hallmarks is essential. ✔️ How to bring originality to every project without losing your signature style. This episode is your reminder to dig deeper, push creative boundaries, and honor the privilege of designing something truly one-of-a-kind! 🎧 Tap the link below to listen now, or catch it on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 https://lnkd.in/dtxG-xRx . . . #interiordesignstyle #interiordesignerlife #designhallmark #designbusinessfreedom

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New York Times Cooking 50 Greatest Hits, According to You On Sept. 17, 2014, an ambitious new app made its debut: New York Times Cooking, which collected thousands of archival Times recipes in one elegantly designed, easy-to-use place. In the 10 years since, Cooking has grown into a whole universe of food, videos, personalities, newsletters, cookbooks and comments — with you at its center. You’ve invited us into your kitchens and made us part of your lives. To mark the anniversary, here are 50 of our best recipes according to you, our community, with reader comments threaded throughout. It’s not a ranked list of our most popular recipes by traffic numbers alone, but a wider, more curated view of Cooking. These are dishes that have emerged as classics and racked up five-star ratings, recipes that became popular just about immediately after we hit publish, went viral on social media and inspired the most memorable comments. But we easily could’ve filled this list with 500 more. There are so many you’ve loved, in so many ways.

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