3 ms·

I keep seeing this over and over on numerous landing pages: Why do people run ads for other companies? Do you guys get Apple hardware at a discount and must sho

by eiji 14y ago

I keep seeing this over and over on numerous landing pages: Why do people run ads for other companies? Do you guys get Apple hardware at a discount and must show them in your pictures? This has nothing to do with being for or against any vendor. It's alienating your users, and you never want to do that. Brands communicate emotions, it's risky to expose yourself to that. Or is that on purpose?

Shenglong 14y ago
I don't believe that's necessarily true. This is more passive than active, and piggybacking off an universally recognized brand can be quite beneficial. Apple has spent billions of dollars crafting a brand that inspires trust, quality, and modernness - and regardless of how an individual feels about Apple on a conscious level, the strong majority probably associate those three things with Apple products. Slapping a Macbook Air in their design passively speaks to viewers by saying "we're a quality brand, you can trust us, and we're the future in this outdated industry." If you look around, you'll actually see that a lot of successful startups (usually post-first generation) piggyback off one aspect or another of established brands.
- toddmorey 14y ago
  I think you are right about the brand transference, although to be perfectly honest, we hadn't thought it out that far. Our real reasoning was simply to clearly delineate the screenshots from the rest of the page. It would be fascinating to A/B test laptops and no laptops to see if there's a perceivable difference.
reinhardt 14y ago
"This has nothing to do with being for or against any vendor." I think it has everything to do with that specific vendor (not your comment, the unpaid ad). When was the last time you saw a landing page featuring an Acer or Asus laptop? "Brands communicate emotions, it's risky to expose yourself to that. Or is that on purpose?" It's clearly on purpose. The (desired) communicated emotion is along the lines of "we're hip and trendy and use only the cream of the crop".
mnicole 14y ago
Apple's hardware design is much less distracting for mockup presentations and given the OS, the type is more legible (see below). As a designer, I don't want my work pasted onto a ThinkPad with all of the blinky lights, colored buttons and aged edges taking away from the intent. *This is not to excuse designers who don't test their typography under ClearType, but rather if there's a way to make my work look better naturally, I'm going to use it.
- qu4z-2 14y ago
  Do you have some sort of basis for claiming it's less distracting? I mean, I get that it has a certain visual appeal, and I readily accept your font claim, knowing little about font rendering. But I'm not at all convinced that an Apple laptop is less distracting than a Lenovo laptop. After all, we're discussing it in the comments, aren't we?
  - mnicole 14y ago
    We're discussing it because people would rather believe that it has something to do with elitism rather than sheer simplicity. Google image search shows that most Lenovos suffer the same fate with the edges, unless you're talking about the IdeaPad, whose screen is flush, but the juxtaposition between a white keyboard body and a black screen would be too harsh for me to use it in a shot.
bpatrianakos 14y ago
Oh come on. The Macbook Air is sexy no matter what your "brand politics" are. It just makes your screenshots look more beautiful than say putting them on a picture of some plastic laptop you find at Walmart... or Best Buy... or everywhere. Why put it on a computer at all, you may ask. It gets people imagining themselves using it on a physical device. A screenshot can be beautiful and persuasive by itself but having one on a piece of hardware allows you to imagine using that hardware along with the software. And if both the hardware and software are beautiful then it makes the effect more powerful. Honestly, I don't see how it alienates anyone unless you're actually against the vendor. I mean, you say you aren't but let's be real. It comes off like that's where you're coming from.
- saurik 14y ago
  > Honestly, I don't see how it alienates anyone unless you're actually against the vendor. So, I have nothing against the MacBook Air (in fact, I love it, and am typing this comment on one: this is my favorite computer I have ever owned, by far); however, I know a lot of my friends do (believing Apple machines to be the anti-thesis of computers, etc.), and they are the kinds of people who might be in the market for useful software. I guess you can say "those people are closed-minded: I don't want them using my software", but with that attitude you very rapidly realize you wouldn't want to sell to anyone (often including yourself, once you really approach the problem of avoiding closed-mindedness with an open mind ;P). To me, an abstract device would work just as well.

by eiji 14y ago

Shenglong 14y ago

I don't believe that's necessarily true. This is more passive than active, and piggybacking off an universally recognized brand can be quite beneficial. Apple has spent billions of dollars crafting a brand that inspires trust, quality, and modernness - and regardless of how an individual feels about Apple on a conscious level, the strong majority probably associate those three things with Apple products. Slapping a Macbook Air in their design passively speaks to viewers by saying "we're a quality brand, you can trust us, and we're the future in this outdated industry." If you look around, you'll actually see that a lot of successful startups (usually post-first generation) piggyback off one aspect or another of established brands.

toddmorey 14y ago
I think you are right about the brand transference, although to be perfectly honest, we hadn't thought it out that far. Our real reasoning was simply to clearly delineate the screenshots from the rest of the page. It would be fascinating to A/B test laptops and no laptops to see if there's a perceivable difference.

reinhardt 14y ago

"This has nothing to do with being for or against any vendor." I think it has everything to do with that specific vendor (not your comment, the unpaid ad). When was the last time you saw a landing page featuring an Acer or Asus laptop? "Brands communicate emotions, it's risky to expose yourself to that. Or is that on purpose?" It's clearly on purpose. The (desired) communicated emotion is along the lines of "we're hip and trendy and use only the cream of the crop".

mnicole 14y ago

Apple's hardware design is much less distracting for mockup presentations and given the OS, the type is more legible (see below). As a designer, I don't want my work pasted onto a ThinkPad with all of the blinky lights, colored buttons and aged edges taking away from the intent. *This is not to excuse designers who don't test their typography under ClearType, but rather if there's a way to make my work look better naturally, I'm going to use it.

qu4z-2 14y ago
Do you have some sort of basis for claiming it's less distracting? I mean, I get that it has a certain visual appeal, and I readily accept your font claim, knowing little about font rendering. But I'm not at all convinced that an Apple laptop is less distracting than a Lenovo laptop. After all, we're discussing it in the comments, aren't we?
- mnicole 14y ago
  We're discussing it because people would rather believe that it has something to do with elitism rather than sheer simplicity. Google image search shows that most Lenovos suffer the same fate with the edges, unless you're talking about the IdeaPad, whose screen is flush, but the juxtaposition between a white keyboard body and a black screen would be too harsh for me to use it in a shot.

bpatrianakos 14y ago

Oh come on. The Macbook Air is sexy no matter what your "brand politics" are. It just makes your screenshots look more beautiful than say putting them on a picture of some plastic laptop you find at Walmart... or Best Buy... or everywhere. Why put it on a computer at all, you may ask. It gets people imagining themselves using it on a physical device. A screenshot can be beautiful and persuasive by itself but having one on a piece of hardware allows you to imagine using that hardware along with the software. And if both the hardware and software are beautiful then it makes the effect more powerful. Honestly, I don't see how it alienates anyone unless you're actually against the vendor. I mean, you say you aren't but let's be real. It comes off like that's where you're coming from.

saurik 14y ago
> Honestly, I don't see how it alienates anyone unless you're actually against the vendor. So, I have nothing against the MacBook Air (in fact, I love it, and am typing this comment on one: this is my favorite computer I have ever owned, by far); however, I know a lot of my friends do (believing Apple machines to be the anti-thesis of computers, etc.), and they are the kinds of people who might be in the market for useful software. I guess you can say "those people are closed-minded: I don't want them using my software", but with that attitude you very rapidly realize you wouldn't want to sell to anyone (often including yourself, once you really approach the problem of avoiding closed-mindedness with an open mind ;P). To me, an abstract device would work just as well.