Back to the brink

We're back from the summer break firing on all cylinders in stark contrast to the world's financial markets which seem headed over a cliff like so many very large bloated lemmings. I guess we can always retreat to the farm and get ready for some sort of Mad Max /Waterworld style post-credit crunch world.

We spent our holidays soaking up the clear mountain air and sparkling spa waters of Switzerland and the Sudtirol so at least we have returned calm and collected and ready for the usual pre-Christmas rush.

Prior to the break we delivered branding and customer satisfaction studies and now we're on to website development and usage and attitude studies, the latter with Galician kids - our projects are nothing if not varied. The success of our gastronomic dictionary for tourists has also led to another much larger print run so our office currently resembles a warehouse while we organise distribution.

One topic that keeps popping up in marketing these days is neuromarketing. As I expounded in a recent post, this discipline is in its early days and it may require some patience before we see any breakthroughs. The Economist provided a recent update on the application of neuroscience to economics and the important role of emotion in much decision making (see financial markets again).

Our web development study has got me looking at information architecture and web trends again which led to my coming across a neat map based on the Tokyo subway created by a group of Japanese designers that maps the key sites and streams of development online.