💧 The Free Water Project, Read Reddit like a Newspaper, and Sci-Fi Typography

Maybe we'll get water for free!

Hey everybody! Hope your Monday is off to a great start. Did you have a great 4th of July weekend? Blow off some Roman Candles while keeping your fingers intact?

We watched fireworks here at Westhaven in Franklin. It’s a really cool modern town in the “middle of nowhere.” It has a grocery store, fire station, restaurants, a coffee shop, and other stores - all in the middle of a neighborhood! Oh, did I mention that a ton of residents drive around in golf carts? It’s pretty cool!

Sadly, everything is pretty expensive. If you’re fond of fantasizing, here’s the website

What did you think of that list of marketing tools I sent out last Friday? Did you find it helpful? Please let me know! I want to start providing lists “of value” every week in addition to my weekly newsletter.

Oh! This week I have two missions for YOU. I would love your help to grow this newsletter - and in exchange - I have a little prize.

First Mission: Refer at least 7 friends to join The Land of Random - and I’ll send you a personal Birthday Email customized to your interests!

How will I know? Send me an email with the email addresses of the people you referred.

Boom.

Second Mission: I’m creating a new landing page for The Land of Random. Would you be willing to give some feedback about the newsletter + social proof if available? Please fill out the form if you are able. :) 👉 Feedback Form

Well, Let’s dive into today’s topics shall we? Grab that Monster Java and let’s go!

💧The Free Water Project

Imagine this - You’re out visiting a new city and you want to buy a water bottle. You see a cart that’s advertising free water. You go over, and someone offers you a can of water. You take a look - and it has an advertisement for a local restaurant. You think to yourself “I should check this out sometime!”

That’s the idea behind freewater.io. Here’s their mission

Better Than Free Inc. is a philanthropic marketing agency that uses free alkaline water as a new type of advertising medium. We’ve transformed traditional packaging into ad space which enables a new type of media experience when you use your smart device. Most importantly, ten cents from each beverage will be donated to charity to build water wells for people in need. We only need 10% of Americans to stop buying bottled water so we can build water wells for a billion people. (Source) 

It’s a really cool idea, and I think it has some serious merit - especially when you consider how much advertising costs for some industries. People are bored - and they will stare at a water bottle before they drink it. Heck - if you throw a QR code under your ad they may even scan it and go to your website - especially if you’re offering a special deal.

I look forward to seeing where this company goes! Will it introduce an entirely new medium for advertising?

Check out the website at the link!

📰Read Reddit Like a Newspaper

Sometimes, I’m just blown away by people’s creativity. You can now read Reddit like a newspaper! This really cool website called the Unim.Press lets you check out a bunch of subreddits like an old school newspaper.

I love this so much I want to mount a TV that refreshes this every day. Honestly, I don’t understand why Reddit doesn’t look like this. Sadly, every time you click on something - it takes you to the actual Reddit site. It’s in black and white - but when you highlight pictures they turn into color!

The project is open-source on Github.

Check out the website at the link.

🎙 Sci-Fi Typography

There’s a really wild Sci-Fi graphic novel called XX coming out by Rian Hughes that’s gonna make you weep with joy - especially if you like Typography and graphic design. Here’s a screenshot from Steven Hellers interview with Hughes on Design Observer. Look. Look at this beautiful page.

Here’s a snippet from the Interview

SH: Will you describe the plot and how this intersects with your experiences and interests?
RH: The book is an intersection of several things that fascinate me: one, the expressive possibilities of type, their “tone of voice”, and how this might be leveraged for an extended narrative; two, a love of the ‘transformative’ hard science fiction typified by Arthur C Clarke, and his extrapolations about what might happen once the human species encounters alien life, and three, a need — which I’m sure all designers share — to create something in which the design is the “thing in itself”, the reason you pick the item up, rather than just a dressing for someone else’s idea or product. (Source)

I promise - I almost shouted “Huzzah!” at that last part. This book is a manifestation of intrinsic design - created for its own sake as an expression of the creator, not as a way to enjoy something else. I love exploring these kinds of designs - I often find that these are the ones that designers truly pour their heart and soul into.

Hughes goes on to discuss this exact idea.

You pick up a novel to read the novel, not some other thing the text is selling. But in graphic design, there is no genre, no object, in which graphic design is the whole and entire purpose of the exercise (unless you’re one of those graphic designers who pick things up purely for the design — but we’re weird). Us designers already know this. We buy design books to ogle the beautiful work, not admire how many copies that book cover shifted, or how successful that launch for that new carpet cleaner was. That is not why we got into the business in the first place. So we need to peel graphic design off the face of marketing and make it the thing in itself. This is what I have tried to do with XX — create a form of narrative design, a “novel, graphic” (as the US blurb has it). (Source)

I don’t know about you, but I’m probably going to try and preorder this beautiful work of fiction. It’s available on Amazon, both in Kindle and hardcover. This is definitely going on my coffee table - after I pore over all 992 pages.

Here’s a link to the interview. Lot’s of good stuff in here!

🐙The Land of Random

Found some Good Stuff for you this week.

Tiny Home with Climbing Wall

Why go to the climbing gym when you can make your home itself the rock wall? Oh - and make it a portable tiny home so you can take it anywhere. Honestly, this would be awesome.

Poolside FM

You may remember that I shared Nightwave Plaza several months ago, but I just discovered Poolside FM! This website puts the A in Aesthetic and the V in Vaporwave. How did I just discover this?

Generate Headlines for Free

Who needs a copywriter? Generate headlines for free with Headlime. You can only generate a few for free - but hey - they’re all gold. The first plan is $10 a month - and definitely worth it if you need to move fast on projects.

A Hacker’s Reflection on Prison

Imagine being ahead of the curve in technology as a hacker - then going to prison (an informational desert) for 10 years. That’s the premise behind GhostExodus’s thoughts on the past 10 years of the internet. Fascinating!

Halo: Medieval Edition

There’s a Youtube trend of remaking music as medieval covers. It’s awesome.

🎵 TikToks You Can’t Miss

This little frog be fishing

Let’s all be honest. We all heard the Mandalorian theme like this

How the Old Laptop sounds during the Zoom Call

These cute little Tortoises are eating lettuce

Disney enforcing Social Distancing with Storm Troopers