Looks matter more than ever. We’ve all heard critics and consumers wax poetic about iMacs, iPods, and even Target toilet brushes. Interior design has become a national pastime, and shows such as Trading Spaces, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy enjoy a popularity that Bob Vila could only imagine.

In her recent book, The Substance of Style, author Virginia Postrel argues that we increasingly make purchasing decisions based on how products make us feel. “In a crowded marketplace,” she writes, “aesthetics is often the only way to make a product stand out.” In other words, for more and more companies–even manufacturing companies with relatively prosaic products like Kortec’s–design is becoming extremely important. It can sometimes be the difference between success and failure.

These days, even an investment research firm like Morningstar is keenly aware of making a good appearance. In the early ’90s, founder Joe Mansueto hired the late Paul Rand (a renowned graphic designer who created logos for IBM, ABC, and UPS) to design the Morningstar logo–narrow red lettering with a rising sun as the O– for $50,000. “Keep in mind this was back when our revenue was only a couple of million dollars. It was a lot to spend,” says Mansueto, but he reasoned that it was for a high-quality product that he wouldn’t mind keeping for a long time to come.

The arguments for good design are especially compelling for consumer products, particularly those made by smaller companies that don’t have big advertising budgets. Big brands like Coca-Cola and Budweiser spend lots and lots of advertising dollars to create an aura around their products. For smaller companies without that luxury, their entire chance to convey a message about themselves to the customer is often in the look of the packaging.

For an expanded version of this article on the importance of logo design, visit www.Logo-Mojo.com.

        

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Beginning C++ – Stanford and Other Video Tutorials

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c++ programming tutorial 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nziy2_U5JQI

May 10, 2007 – 9 min reconnetworks.com

This video gives a brief introduction to basic commands and you get to make a program that takes 3 numbers that a user inputs and averages them.

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c++ Programming Tutorial 2 (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPKmFdNP5_A

June 01, 2007 – 8 min reconnetworks.com

Part 1 of 2, new tutorial going through loops, switch statements, if else statements and applying them to another fairly simple program.

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c++ Programming Tutorial 2 (Part 2 of 2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIy3oOguh_0

June 01, 2007 – 9 min reconnetworks.com

Part two of the second programming tutorial

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c++ Programming Tutorial 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW3c-AO4g7s

July 03, 2007 – 10 min reconnetworks.com

Going through some new stuff, including rand.

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c++ Programming Tutorial 4 (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHg1OD5p6xc

July 13, 2007 – 7 min reconnetworks.com

Going through the use of functions, pointers, how to make fullscreen, and changing colors per line.

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c++ Programming Tutorial 4 (Part 2 of 2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noQxpoW4Arg

July 13, 2007 – 5 min reconnetworks.com

continuation of part 1 of 2

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c++ Programming Tutorial 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsW2p9E3hgk

July 27, 2007 – 7 min reconnetworks.com

Continuation of 4 so to speak, going through pointers a little more in depth.

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C++ for Particle Physicists by Paul Kunz

http://www.wlap.org/cern/lectures/tech/c/

This series of 13 lectures was presented at CERN in Geneva by Paul Kunz from Stanford University. The lectures are very clear and start with the basics in an attempt to teach C++ to Particle Physicists. Each lecture is about an hour and a half long. By the end of the course, one should be able to read most C++ code and be well on their way to writing it.

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Bjarne Stroustrup’s Video Lecture on C++0x Standard

http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/media/C++0x%20-%20An%20Overview.html

Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup is the original implementer and designer of C++. In this hour-long lecture, he outlines the rules of thumb (guidelines, principles) that are being applied in the design of C++0x. He also presents the state of the standards process and handles numerous questions.