living identities

Tim's a nice man. Well, we've never actually met in person but he always comes across very well in the world of 26. Tim has written a book with Moving Brands all about their idea of living identities that evolve as the business does and as the communication challenge changes shape. How to bring that to life in an interesting way? Why, pimp the cover up with augmented reality. I'm looking forward to seeing the video, because I was really excited by augmented reality a while ago. And 95 per cent of stuff from the last six months has been rubbish. There's only been a few examples of it being creatively interesting or of monetising it well. With lots of people (like Katy for instance) talking about the relationships between web and print, this seems quite timely (as does the subject of the book, by the way). There's been lots written about the digital future of books and on-demand publishing by people much cleverer than me. But I like the idea that you could use augmented reality on the shelves at Waterstones. Maybe even embed the film preview or bring the protagonists to life by pointing your book camera at a display computer. Or, even better, make something augmented and social, in the way that Berg's The Incidental is social map making, or that Tim's Kidmapper project is a new way of thinking about book clubs. And that kind of thing.