Google recently snagged Andy Berndt from Ogilvy to head up their new Google Creative Lab. Not much has been revealed about what Andy will be doing there, but this interview with David Kaplan at Paidcontent.org starts to shed some light on what Andy’s philosophy is in regards to the future of advertising, and how Google fits in that picture.
Google has recently opened up their iGoogle themes so you can create your own custom themes. There aren’t a ton of themes right now, but there are a few designed by fuseproject designer Yves Behar, simplicity design guru John Maeda, Boing Boing writer Mark Frauenfelder, and Troy Lee. All are very pretty! I installed Behar’s which is a cool dynamic projection of the world. Very smart for Google to include these design stars in launching a new functionality from a marketing POV - I’ll bet that it will help in both the adoption and design of new themes.