A few examples starting to crop up of apps making themselves more distinctive through great UX, including language.

The lovely new v2 of Path has some charming and subtle language touches. For example…

While Absolute Radio takes a more spirited approach, as befits their brand:

The best thing I’ve read this week is this essay in Pitchfork by Tom Ewing “on trollgaze, streams, and nanoculture” which really nails internet culture and tries to understand it as an artform in its own right:

http://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/8724-take-me-to-the-river/

Some killer quotes:

“One of the most energizing things about nanoculture is that it's a culture of making: building things, trying ideas out, and exploiting loopholes.”

“Replication is perfect-- the content is preserved unaltered. Imitation is imperfect-- the content changes as it spreads. On the side of replication are advertisers looking for a spot that will "go viral," Facebook and its "frictionless sharing," Apple and its beautifully sealed interfaces, and most content owners. On the side of imitation are fan communities, wikis, and the great meme-hives of the web like 4chan and Reddit.”

“Imitation is collaborative: It might be technically possible to dig back and find the originator of, say, Socially Awkward Penguin or Privilege Denying Dude, but the knowledge would be perfectly useless. Whatever life or value these things have lies in their reuse.”

“When something replicates, on the other hand, following the trail backwards can be illuminating, perhaps ending up at digital marketing agencies, PR people, or political groups. All of whom could exploit imitative culture too, but often shy away from it because control over the message remains so vital to them.”

“The effort that goes into making, for instance, a video where a herd of sheep form a giant LED display, seems absurdly disproportionate to the attention any given viewer will pay to it. Sheep! Lit up! Cool! The End!”

Very proud to have made it to second place in Campaign’s Digital Agency of the Year. Congratulations to AKQA for taking top spot again.

 

Here’s what they had to say about us:

 

Leading the charge from "the best of the rest" is Albion London, which has significantly grown its offering this year.

In March, Albion launched its first overseas office in Los Angeles, with Air New Zealand as its founding client. Later in the year, it also unveiled a "next-generation data marketing agency" called Albion Cell, which specialises in digital sales, eCRM and live data. Jetsetter.com was its founding client and the agency has since won work from King.com and the Financial Times.

Albion London itself also enjoyed a successful new-business year, winning nine pitches: Aviva, GLL, JustGiving, The Wall Street Journal, Unum, Soluto, Anthony Nolan, Adconion and Wonga.com.

It will come as no surprise that a lot of these clients are younger, more entrepreneurial brands. Now nine years old, Albion has managed to retain its entrepreneurial culture, remaining an agile agency that has its heart in digital, but isn’t afraid to explore other forms of media too. 

This year, the agency created quirky TV ads for Wonga.com and Unum, a series of online videos for Air New Zealand (featuring the sheep twins, David Hasselhoff and Playboy girls), one of the first European iAds for Absolute Radio and a campaign for Jose Cuervo in which the agency staged a number of pop-up gigs in Brazil with the band OK Go, which were broadcast live on Twitter and Facebook.

 The work shows how Albion has managed to successfully develop its creative output this year and why it is justifiably thought of as an agency ideally positioned for the future.

 

A nice tweet from AKQA's CEO:

@albionlondon @jasongoodman congratz on Silver medal and keep doing great work.

— Tom Bedecarre AKQA (@tombed) December 15, 2011

The @VirginTrains manager has just announced that this train is *too new* to have WiFi or mobile signal.

— Glyn Britton (@glyndot) December8, 2011