Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically and as such, may contain various spelling and syntax errors

Germaine: [00:00:00] And hello to a new episode of the future podcast. Um, my name is Germaine. And my name’s Kelsey. Uh, we’ve got a bit of a different format. It’s a new, new episode, new season new format joined by Kelsey on this episode. And, um, moving forward, we’ll be joined by Kelsey as well. Uh, if you aren’t familiar about who she is, uh, you’ll see her very active in the Facebook group link down in the description or, or, you know, notes of wherever you’re watching or listening to this episode.

Um, I mentioned the change in format. We’re doing something a little bit different, um, sort of reminiscent of the last week on Tuesday series that we used to do, um, where we want to talk, all things, marketing, [00:01:00] design, and business, um, just like we do in the Facebook group. Um, and we’ve got a lot of news this week, Kelsey

um, I don’t know if you’ve taken a look at what we were going to be talking about, but there’s a bunch of, uh, logo design, like redesigns, um, Twitter sort of stuffing up their whole app. Um, finally we talk about the .au domain. Um, I’ve been, I’ve been waiting out for it for probably the last 18 months and we’re gonna get it

soon ish, but not soon enough. And then a bunch of WordPress and, um, acquisition news of businesses that are very important to us getting, getting acquired. Um, so let’s roll into that. Let’s start off with, uh, the new Chandon logo. Um, let me, let me make sure that anyone who’s watching, we’re going to be sharing the, uh, various things that we’re talking about as they, as they come [00:02:00] up.

So, um, just hop on the video, if you, if you want to look at what we’re looking at, um, and if you’re listening to the podcast episode, you might have to, uh, you might have to watch it later on. Hopefully you won’t miss out on too much. Um, what are your first thoughts, Kelsey?

Kelsey: Um, well, actually, before we go into first thoughts, should we explain what brand new is for anyone that’s not familiar with the site perhaps?

Germaine: Oh yeah, very good.

Uh, spot. So brand new is one of my favorite places to look at sort of the most up-to-date news on logos, really logos, packaging design, um, they don’t sort of venture too far away from that, which is, which is lovely because it’s nice and specific. Yeah. Um, and it’s, um, an awesome place. They’ve got their own podcast as well.

Um, I can’t say I’ve listened to it too much

Kelsey: It’s sort of a community built, um, [00:03:00] blogs sort of thing. Is that how it started off where it was people sort of spotting different logos in the wild.

Germaine: Yeah. I don’t know. I’ve heard of, I know there’s like one main guy. I think his name’s Aman, he posts a lot of this, a lot of, um, the various logos, but, um, I’m not sure if it’s, I mean, now it is definitely community source.

Like you can go in and add news and Aman adds his own news and you’ll see sometimes where he sort of thought, oh they’ve changed the logo, but realized, I mean, um, foreshadowing us talking about Haagen Dazs rebrand. Um, as it turns out Haagen Dazs was using the new logo, um, in other, uh, geographies, but not in the U S until recently.

So, you know, it’s sort of a somewhat somewhat community source, which is, which is nice. And, um, the comment section is full of really good comments, advice, and feedback and reviews from quite experienced people as [00:04:00] well. So even if you’re a graphic design student or learning logos and brand design, um, it’s a fantastic place and a fantastic resource, but, um, is, is that how you would describe brand-new does that cover all the positives in your eyes

Kelsey: yeah, I’d say so. Um, and I mean, the only other thing is for me, I use a free version, so I don’t get all of the information at the bottom, but I think it’s something like two bucks a month or something, if you do want to see that extra detail and really like delve into all that information.

Germaine: Yeah. Because there’s different, like Aman goes into his thoughts and, um, really extrapolates on just that simple sort of what starts as a, as a logo or redesign.

But like Kelsey mentioned, I think it’s a few dollars. I do have a membership. I’ve been telling you, Kelsey, that I’ll get you a membership for a little while. Now I’d have to organize that soon so that you don’t have to look at the, you know, just the, just the images

Kelsey: we’ll get there at some point. It’s kind of fun.

[00:05:00] I like to make up my own story behind it when I watch it. When I look at them,

Germaine: well, jumping into it, we’ve had this on the screen for, for a little while now. It’s the Chandon. Uh, I mean, it’s a, it’s a complete logo redesign, I would say. Um, or, you know, un-design depending on who you’re talking to, they’ve gone for just the words, Chandon.

Kelsey: Yeah, I think of my first comment when I saw it, it was yesterday or something was, it just makes me think of Chanel. It seems like the same font, the same thickness. And obviously it starts with that C H so I’m not sort of sure. I mean, it’s in the same area, I suppose. It’s sort of being like luxury and fancy that works for them, but unsure, it seems like they kind of just copying the same kind of word mark.

Germaine: I mean, a lot of, um, higher end life though, I guess Chandon, I wouldn’t necessarily call Chandon a luxury brand, but they’re part of Louis Vuitton, [00:06:00] Moet Hennessy. So I guess they’re a high-end beverage. Um, so a lot of them do, I mean, this, this is somewhat reminiscent of the Louis Vuitton, like the word mark for Louis Vuitton as well.

Um, so not a huge departure in that sense.

Kelsey: That’s true. Um, I’m kind of sad. They got rid of that star though. I’m liking that star.

Germaine: Well, this is one of those logos. I think that they could’ve done a done a refresh, maybe even pulled out that, like that the star and this sort of vague C shape with the trail of the tail of the star.

They could have very easily pulled it aside. Um, you know, expanded or enlarged those elements a little bit to make, uh, the overall, um, usefulness of it on sort of newer applications, um, a bit more viable, because I think that that would be a big reason. Like if you asked me for what the Chandon [00:07:00] icon used to be, I wouldn’t be able to point it out.

Um, because it’s a bit, I don’t know it is slight it is very minimal, but it is a bit extra with sort of the shading and the shadowing. Um, so I can see why they’d want to move away from it, but not so far away. Plus I, I mean, you could almost just get rid of the, um, graphic details and keep that Chandon word mark, maybe thinking a little bit, but you could have almost even done that no?

Kelsey: Yeah, I think so. Um, it’ll be interesting to see the application of the old logo versus the new one on the wine bottles. Have you seen any versions of those?

Germaine: I haven’t seen the old version. Um, Um, going further down. Yeah. And then they changed the star here as well. From what used to be a five pointed star with a sort of, uh, one of the points um a bit, bit sort of, um, extruded

yeah. It’s [00:08:00] the shooting star, right? But now they’ve gone to a, what is it? A seven pointed star that I don’t know. It looks like every other star.

Kelsey: What is where Chandon come from? What’s the actual country it’s based in?

Germaine: Good question. I’m trying to just really have yeah, have wineries everywhere, but I mean, I assume France, um, but I might be wrong.

Uh, yeah. Combined traditional French techniques. Not sure. I guess it goes to show we’re not really, we’re not really Chandon drinkers.

Kelsey: I was just looking at that seven point star though, thinking maybe it was, this is a very Australian thing to think, but like Southern cross star related or something, but I don’t think it’s obviously not an Australian brands, so

Germaine: that doesn’t yeah, I’m the 99% sure it’s not Australian, but I might be wrong. I might be wrong. Moving further down they have some interesting [00:09:00] elements. Um, obviously, I mean, we’re not reading necessarily into their reasoning around this, but it’s not immediately obvious. Uh, okay. Apparently it’s map visualizations and now at a high level, I, it’s not making me connect, you know, map visualizations and alcohol, but

Kelsey: I wonder why they’re going the map visualization, visualization, um, like it would make sense I think if you had an alcohol brand that had so many variations and like different flavors that were, you know, they made like tequila and they made vodka or something and you sort of lean into that traditional locations for those drinks, but it’s, you know, it’s all sparkling, which I feel like everyone associates with like France and that’s pretty much it.

Germaine: Yeah. It’s um, I don’t know either. It’s probably something that you could, you could read into. But looking at [00:10:00] you, you did mention looking at the, um, you know, old ex, um, old logo application on the bottle. This is what it used to be used to look like. Um, I mean, pretty, pretty classic, nothing necessarily too exciting.

I’ve definitely seen, uh, more interesting, uh, bottles, alcoholic, beverage bottles. Ah, here we go. Side by side. Um, it does look a little bit better and I think that the map visualizations there in the background as well, that

Kelsey: shape, not that you’d look at it and go, that’s a map visualization

Germaine: high level, isn’t it?

Kelsey: Yeah. That old one definitely looks dated compared to the new one. Um, but then, I mean, I think actually they’ve done it quite well. I was going to say that you do risk losing that sort of traditional old fancy kind of vibe when you do a brand refresh like this, but I think they’ve done it quite well to like, keep that not super premium, but like premium [00:11:00] enough that you’re not just going to pick it up on a regular Saturday kind of thing. It’s sort of special events and all of that. And I still kept that vibe around the bottle which is good

Germaine: it is good. But then, and then there’s that star? The, I must say I do prefer the old star. I wish they’d kept that. And then Chandon side, it’s a star though. It doesn’t really leave a lot of room for, um, standing out in the alcohol bottle market or the alcohol market is very crowded.

Um, and then that sideways, I guess, I guess the benefit of having this, having the, um, logo sideways is that it’s much larger now. Um, though, I mean, going further down. They’ve I think this application of, um, you know, a very, very, uh, low contrast color palette I would call it is interesting. [00:12:00] Um, well, it’s just the, uh, you know, it’s very, it’s consistently pink.

Like it’s very muted. Yeah. That’s probably how I’d described it. Um, but again, I guess, you know, Chandon, I don’t know the market, but I would assume they’re not necessarily competing against many others. Um,

Kelsey: I have to say, that pink is a very millennial pink, which is for somebody that’s right in that demographic, very nice to look at.

Germaine: That’s probably what they’re going for. The bottle in the middle here is what stands out to me the most. I wish I saw, I wish more of the applications like this, where the names just popping and so is that star? I think it looks very high-end.

Kelsey: It definitely looks like the fancy end of what you’re looking at. But I mean, I would still go to the pink one, personally they’ve done their research well I think.

Germaine: Yeah. They’re sort of hitting that demographic, um, in some more up-close imagery for those who are watching, um, the [00:13:00] video and then

Kelsey: Oh, I see what they’ve done when you pour it, it looks like it’s well, you know, you can actually read it.

Germaine: Yeah.

Kelsey: Actually, I think Coca-Cola and like some other brands do a very similar thing, don’t they? But coke has it I think going up the cans so that when you’re drinking

Germaine: Ah, of course, well, overall, I mean, it’s, it is another, another logo that we’ve lost to the sans serif a simplified word that we’re increasingly going into. Um,

Kelsey: I think it definitely comes down to how they apply it as well. Like in first glance, when you just say Chandon in black and that’s it, it’s just like, well, what’s the point, but seeing it in application and how they’ve used it on the bottles, I don’t mind. I’m still confused with the geographic maps.

Yeah.

Germaine: I mean, like you look at this, like, what we’re looking [00:14:00] at at the moment is an example of a, of a billboard like transit railway, um, billboard and. To me. Um, it looks a bit, same, same, um, doesn’t necessarily,

Kelsey: I forget the brand. As soon as I walk away, I’ll just be like, oh, what was the brand like I kind of remember some colors and stuff, but,

Germaine: not really.

Yeah. It’s quite muted and like, okay, I see someone really happy. They’ve hit, you know, a tattooed person they’ve hit the, hit the multicultural sort of diversity angle. Um, but then the Chandon bottle in this, in these images are really quite small. Ma maybe, maybe they’re so well known and their market is, you know, so, so tight and everyone’s aware of, you know, every Chandon buyer has, is already aware of Chandon and already buying Chandon maybe.

But, um, yeah, I it’s it’s okay. I would say. [00:15:00] And then, um, interesting, interesting. There’s some interesting comments as well. As we mentioned, um, before you can, you can check out the brand new comments as well into some other opinions, but I don’t know. Um, what would you rate it if you had to rate this as a, as a rebrand, um, as a rebrand that as a rebrand and then as the new logo, how would you or a new new brand?

How would you sort of rate rate them?

Kelsey: It’s a bit of a tough one because looking at all of the marketing material that had an imagery that we’re using, it looks quite young and fun, which makes me think that they’re trying to shift from that captured audience that you said they’ve probably already got, which I imagine is a much older demographic.

And maybe they’re really trying to get that younger demographic who would respond to something simple like this versus that older, almost like nineties kind of design style. So I feel like if they’re going for that younger, [00:16:00] maybe even younger than like millennial, I probably say like, seven out of 10, they haven’t had to do too much, but like, you don’t have to do too much sometimes as long as you get the supporting marketing right. And the supporting branding right. So I don’t know. It’ll be interesting to see whether you sort of see them more in, um, liquor stores and things, or if they sort of die out a little bit, not that they die out, but, you know

Germaine: yeah. If they stay a bit more static than perhaps they wanted to be, um, yeah.

Seven out of 10, I mean, I’d probably go like six. That’s to say that it’s not, it’s not bad. So, you know, it’s not, I’m not, I’m not going to sit in the middle, but if I, if you know, it’s, it’s okay. Um, it’s a little bit better than okay. Maybe, but, um, nothing too interesting and exciting there. Um, very much the classic, um, rebrand that we’ve seen of established brands these days for they’re going to that sans serif [00:17:00] where they’re going to something a bit more hip and vibrant and millennial though, at least we didn’t see, you know, a color palette, similar to Dropbox where every single bright color is a part of their color palette.

And, you know, you get lost in just a lot of nothing, but

Kelsey: I mean, I think you’d get a bit concerned if a champagne and that kind of realm, sparkling wine company started introducing bright colors because then you’d be like, all right. And how much sugar is in this? How crazy am I going to get after I drink this? Like, what’s going to happen to me. If you keep it muted though, it really like lines up with what you’re actually drinking.

Germaine: Yeah. That’s true. That’s true. I think, I think, um, you’ve got some good points there, so sounds like you’re a bit more of a fan than I am.

Kelsey: Perhaps. I probably fall into the demographic though.

So when I was looking at all the imagery, I was like, oh yeah, this is kind of cool. It doesn’t say a lot. And I probably wouldn’t remember it if I wasn’t looking at it deeply now, but, I don’t mind it.

Germaine: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, moving on, [00:18:00] um, I’m trying to decide whether we should talk about the, uh, Twitter redesign or not. Um,

Kelsey: I mean I’d like you to explain it to me cause I’m not really a Twitter fan and I don’t use Twitter, so I’m not super across what they’ve redesigned. All I know is that there was a big backlash.

Germaine: Yeah. Okay. Cool. Let’s let’s take a look at it. So this I actually spotted, um, from the verge.

Um, if you don’t read the verge, I definitely suggest, uh, changing your life and starting to watch the YouTube and reading, reading the verge. But, um, essentially their headline reads Twitter is changing the contrast of buttons again after complaints of eye strain. So the general, um, sort of consensus here is that they came up with a very intense color palette, um, where if you look into, um, let me just click through [00:19:00] and see if there’s a good sort of visual representation of it all. Here we go. Um, let me just change that over. So if I, show

Kelsey: it was interesting. I’m just looking at that tweet that it said um changing the colors to make images and things stand out more, that’s almost like, I mean, we, we discussed in the office the other day about Instagram switch, shifting away from photo sharing. I wonder if Twitter is sort of looking at their media approach and how they sit in that market.

Germaine: Yeah. I mean, you know, you mentioned you’re not really on Twitter, neither am I. I go into it every once in a while to, um, um, Message, you know, Samsung support or one of the support channels, because it’s so public that they tend to get back to you within 24 hours. Um, um, but I don’t know. I mean, Twitter, there’s clearly still a market for it. I’m, I’ve never been a huge a user. [00:20:00] Uh, I think, you know, a lot of journalists are on there, so maybe, maybe, maybe we’re missing something or we are not quite the demo, but this is an example of

Kelsey: in particular in Australia.

Yeah. Yes, because I mean, I don’t, I’m not sure that ever really took off too much in Australia, but definitely in America you see that being used a lot.

Germaine: Yeah, definitely. It’s much bigger over there. um still journos over here in Australia. Use it to use it a fair bit. Um, but this is the redesign that they were talking about.

Very high contrast, as you can see, Kelsey, uh, if you’re not watching the video, um, It’s, they’ve just gone. I would say that’s probably outright black buttons, black text. Um, and then a lot of white. So there’s no, there’s not a lot of shades of colors. Um, it’s just the Twitter, blue, black, a gray, and I’m not spotting any other colors, are you?

Kelsey: No. Um, I mean, I’m trying to figure out what the issue is at the [00:21:00] moment, actually looking at these cause they look fine to me, but again, I, I’m not usually used to the interface of Twitter.

Germaine: Well, what the issue issues been is that because of the high contrast, when you’re looking at it, like when you’re looking at just a screenshot, you don’t really get that impact.

But then imagine seeing this like scrolling through and everything’s just black, white, like everything’s really stark. Um, That just puts a lot of pressure on your eyes because there’s no hierarchy there. Right. So images stand out, but then everything else, images and buttons stand out. Everything else is just lost. Like everything else is jumbled in together. And that’s, that’s really the issue. Um, they also launched with it a new type phase called chirp, um, pretty cute, cute name at least. Um, but you know, it’s, it’s, um, generally been [00:22:00] yeah, not, not well received. They’ve gone back to the drawing board. They’re sort of changing things around a little, uh, again, um, there’s talks about it, not being a very accessible sort of website any anymore, um, there’s reports of people getting eyestrain, headaches and migraines due to the high visual contrast, which

Kelsey: I mean, you’re spending too much time on the apps then if you’re getting something that

Germaine: I wonder if it’s the app or um, or if it’s the website that’s worse. Um, well there you go. I haven’t, I’m not on Twitter as you can see.

Not, not often enough to be, um, signed up, but, um, I guess this is a reminder to look at contrast ratios. I think, you know, balance it, balancing it up. And, um, we always talk about this in the office. Talk about. What, what things are shouting out? Is there a hierarchy? Is everything shouting together? Well, if everything’s shouting together, um, imagine a room full of a hundred people shouting. You’re not going to notice anything or [00:23:00] notice anyone. So it’s, it’s I guess a bit of a lesson in, you know, balancing out a whole color palette and taking an intentional sort of approach to design there.

Um, the next thing moving on, um, is news that I’m very, I’ve been so excited about this for so long. Um, I, I think I probably mention it. uh, Every other week at the office.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Germaine: Biding my time and

Kelsey: I thought you were just making stuff up for a while cause I was like, I’m not hearing anything about this.

Germaine: And what it is is that the um .au and they’re calling it .au direct. Uh, this is a newsletter directly from the Australian domain authority or administrators, whatever they call themselves. And, um, essentially, uh, they’re announcing that from the 24th of [00:24:00] March, 2022, we’ll be able to access a new domain namespace that instead of .com.au you can just get a .au um, which is about time. I think I noticed the other day that New Zealand has a .nz um, so I dunno why it’s taken us this long.

It was originally supposed to happen earlier this year, and then they blamed COVID. They blamed coronavirus for, um, not, um, launching it, which I don’t really know how the coronavirus effected it, but to be, but to be fair, I don’t really know what the inner workings of, um, releasing a .au domain, um, are. Um, and then when we go into it, I know if you’ve already got a .com.au you you’ll be prioritized, you’ll be allowed to get an exact name match. Um, so you’ll be able to get your .au uh, versus, you know, someone else getting it, um, off you or sort of stealing it off you. [00:25:00] Um, they actually backdated that cutoff date so that you can’t register a domain now to just get the .au in the future.

Um, so essentially, you know, I assume that’d be a three to six month period. Um, and you know, they mentioned here that it’ll bring Australia in line with many, many other countries, including the UK, Canada, U S and New Zealand. So about time, um,

Kelsey: does that, um, follow the same rules as .com.au in that you have to have a registered business to get an au?

Germaine: Uh, I don’t think you need to have a registered business to get an au I think, um, you might need to prove residency potentially, um, But, but I assume if anything, it would make it even more, um, did they even, you know, wrap up the rules a little bit and make it a bit tighter to, to get, um, a .au um, but as they mentioned here, you know, .com.au will continue to [00:26:00] function.

Um, and then they do mention, you know, eligible people continue to be able to register new, um, domains under .com.au, .org.au, and so on and so forth. Um, and, uh, yeah, they go into here, you know, priority status to register the exact match of the existing domain. Um, and you’ll get six months to do this commencing in March, 2022.

Uh, all I can say is about time and I can’t wait. Yeah, well, we’ll have a bunch. I mean, I would, I would say that if you’ve got a .com.au you should probably use that six months to decide to definitely get a, get a .au um, um,

Kelsey: it’ll be interesting to sort of see whether the general public, who maybe aren’t aware of .au, whether they’d see .au and assume that it’s a typo or something for a little while. Like, I [00:27:00] wonder if there’ll be a bit of a change process of people trusting .au over .com.au

Germaine: Oh for sure. I think, I think, I mean, I still see people including the www dot, you know, um, and we haven’t needed to do that for a long time because most websites just, um, Revert to a www dot less version of it. So it doesn’t really matter.

Kelsey: Definitely guilty.

Germaine: Um, and yeah, so, and you work in the space somewhat. So, um, I, I, I, I think there will be a bit of a bit of a period where people will sort of imagine just, just, just assume that you forgot the .com part of .com.au and, um, at least for the first six months, it wouldn’t matter too much because you get, you have a chance to register your yeah, alternative. Um, but I could imagine, you know, longer term, like someone going to futuretheory.au and if we miss, you know, if we don’t [00:28:00] renew .com.au you know, does that then become the property of which it would become the property of whoever chooses to buy it. If we don’t choose to renew it. Um, is this a case of, you know, are we, are we just doubling how much. Um, companies have to spend, or individuals have to spend to maintain

Kelsey: because you wouldn’t want to lose .com.au so many people will still be familiar with that for probably years. Let’s be real. And if you’re switching to just au all of a sudden, you’re going to have issues with somebody sort of stealing your name or damaging your identity or whatever. Like there’s so many different things that could pop up from that. That’ll be interesting.

Germaine: Yeah. And saying that though, I’m just thinking, um, I’ve seen a lot of .ca sites and a .nz sites, but I’ve only seen .co.uk. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a .us or I’ve never visited a .us site. Oh, zoom. No, no, no.

It’s .us. .com is just [00:29:00] a commercial, like it stands for, I think it’s a short form for commercials. Um, so Zoom’s the only recognizable, uh, company using a .us domain. Um, But, yeah, I wonder if maybe I’m just really close to it. So I’m the only one who’s excited about a .au release and no one else’s holding out for it.

Kelsey: Um, I mean, I feel like it opens up some new opportunities. If the name’s not already taken in .com.au to do, you know, a lot of companies will use the au as like part of the name? I think it opens up a little bit there. I mean like one I can think of, they’re not an Australian company, I don’t think, but Tableau it’s what we were talking about earlier. I think that incident I use, so they could use that for .au I don’t think they’re Australian though. So that doesn’t really matter.

Germaine: Well, it could be if you know, cool. Um, use of like, you know, like the .ly or the .io’s of this world, um, maybe, maybe, maybe you’re [00:30:00] onto something. Maybe it’ll create this new sort of, um, Um, waterfall of companies with a .au um, though not many words in English end with .au

Kelsey: no, it would definitely have to be a unique business name. That’s not really an actual word, I think, for it to work like Tableau, for example, that’s not obviously a word.

Germaine: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Um, moving on to the next one, Yoast SEO gets acquired by new fold digital. Now I saw this and I’d be lying if I said that this hasn’t caused a lot of concern in my world and in the, in the sort of circles that I’m a part of, uh, in the online world. Um, um, has this had sort of any effect in, in your sphere, Kelsey, as someone who doesn’t necessarily work on WordPress sites too much?[00:31:00]

Kelsey: I’m not even a hundred percent sure what it really means. Um, be great if you could explain it because to me, it’s just like if some company has, I mean, I know of Yoast, but you know, a company has been acquired by another company.

Germaine: Yeah. Well, I guess so the problem here, isn’t so much the acquisition, um, companies get, as, as you, as you sort of insinuated, it’s just one company buying another company it’s sort of doesn’t really matter. Um, but my concerns here are so Yoast SEO for those who don’t know are very trusted, probably the biggest, most trusted, um, SEO or search engine optimization plugin on WordPress in the world. Um, they’ve got 140 employees maintaining a plugin that, you know, people can use for free and choose to pay for. So that, that gives an idea of what sort of scale, um, and, and how trusted they are. Um, this is from WP Tavern. They’ve been, um, [00:32:00] they’ve been acquired by new fold digital. Um, and so the issue here is who new fold digital is, um, more than the fact that Yoast has been acquired. Um, so if we look into it a little bit further, um, new fold digital, as you can tell from their website, uh, have, what is that like, uh, 18, that should be different. Um, and those are just the ones that they’ve, you know, that they’ve put on here. So they haven’t mentioned Yoast on here yet, for example. So they might be other names in there. Um, oh yeah. And some really established names. I mean, crazy domains, which is, um, Australia or there’s an Australian counterpart domain.com web.com blue hosts, um, Vodian like all these are names that, I mean, at least half these names I’m familiar with.

Um, but New Fold digital is actually, um, Formally endurance [00:33:00] international group EIG. Um, if you’ve ever heard of blue host, which is, um, everywhere when you’re looking for web hosting, because they’re, they got really cheap deals, you would have heard of EIG. And now, now they’re called New fold digital. These guys are not, not known for their, uh, good business practices.

Let’s put it that way. Um, and so the fact that they’ve acquired Yoast plugin, that I’ve trusted, basically every single website, um, WordPress website I’ve built, you know, has been trusted with Yoast. Um, the fact that it’s, you know, they’re an open source. They’re on an open source platform, which is WordPress.

Um, and suddenly they’re being taken, uh, bought by this company who is known for trying to milk as much money out of their customer system. So it makes me wonder, like are we going to have to go back and remove Yoast and install a different SEO alternative? There [00:34:00] are other alternative plugins coming up, like rank math, but, um, I mean, Yoast is just so simple.

Kelsey: So you think they’re going to affect how Yoast sort of operates as the company?

Germaine: I would be surprised if they don’t. I mean, they haven’t disclosed yet how much they’ve purchased Yoast for. Um, but, um, I think they’re going to want to make some money back. So, um, they’re gonna start integrating it, you know, they’re going to start saying, okay, you can, what you used to be able to do for free, you need to pay us for and so on and so forth. Um, some of the comments here sort of getting to how much of, you know, musical chairs is going on in this world. Um, you know, this person here talking about the fact that they’re not a fan of the business practices of EIG, um, and that they’ve changed names and that he’s [00:35:00] doubting that they’ve, that much actually changes, um, past the name here.

Um, so this is a bit of a heads up for any of you building, WordPress sites. So, you know, if you have WordPress sites, I’m not saying I have a better alternative. In fact, that’s what I’m, I’m sort of scared. Um, I don’t know.

Kelsey: I guess that’s why they would’ve been so keen to take it on because then they do sort of have that massive market share and they’ll just have that power to be able to be like, all right, start paying us or good luck finding something else.

Germaine: Oh, it’s, it’s, it’s, um, it’s a monopoly and not, not, not because, and this is the thing though. It’s not a monopoly because they forced installed themselves or make it hard to, you know, um, remove Yoast it doesn’t even come like pre-installed on WordPress. Um, they’ve got such a monopoly just by being so good.

Um, and, and, um, the team [00:36:00] behind has been trusted for so long, but, um, I hope, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if a year or two years down the line, the, the original sort of CEO and the core team, the guys who founded and run Yoast decided to leave for bigger and better things. Um, and, um, You know, they’ve got like right here, it says they’ve got over 12 million active installations of Yoast.

Um, that is a lot that is, if everyone in Australia had a, had a WordPress site, um, half the population would be using Yoast. So it’s not small at all. Um, but, uh, it’s it’s as you know, the world of business, um, the world of WordPress. So just something I wanted to make sure that when we talk about it and it’s a bit of a heads-up, um, we will, of course, as we S if we find a better alternative, we’re going to talk about that.

But at [00:37:00] this stage, just be aware that this has happened in the past. It’s to, it takes 12, 18, 24 months for the company who’s just acquired another company to, you know, let the dust settle and start really ratcheting up how much money they want to milk out of you. So maybe we have a bit of time, um, but this is maybe an opportunity to start developing a competitor.

Maybe, maybe, maybe rank method, is it? And I need to try it out again. I haven’t given it a chance, um, in the last two years.

So, um, moving on to another acquisition, um, yeah, definitely given another guy, another acquisition. Um, Poddit have you heard of Poddit?

Kelsey: No, I haven’t.

Germaine: So Poddit is a, um, well used to, uh, allow you or help you with finding guests for your podcast. Um, here’s the article from PR week, um, Poddit had a Facebook group, um, had, you know, they’ve, they’ve supposedly, um, I [00:38:00] think it was, they had about six and a half thousand members, which is nothing to sneeze at. Um, it was only founded Q1 last year. I really, really ramped it up. They had a website we’ve, we’ve found guests. I’ve been invited to be guests on different podcasts thanks to Poddit but, um, it’s recently been acquired by pod match. Um, and this, I wanted to talk about not so much because it’s an acquisition of another company, but, um, I think it raises interesting sort of, um, Questions about podcasting and, um, podcasting sort of has been around for a little while. It’s I would say in over the last few years, it’s hit the mainstream and now we’re starting to see a bit of, a bit of consolidation of companies that provide podcasting or podcasting affiliates.

Kelsey: Especially from the pandemic, I’d say that it’s like sped up. Absolutely people listening to podcasts. And I mean, for me, I got so onboard with podcasts during the [00:39:00] first sort of wave or two.

Germaine: Yeah, I mean, well, this is a company called like Poddit. It just was started up, um, as the pandemic, the starting up. So, um, and then to be a great time and then to be sold is obviously, um, just shows how big podcasting has become, um, I I, yeah, I just, I just wanted to bring it up and sort of, um, put it out there.

I, I thought they’d put it on the team behind what it did, a really fantastic job. Brent, who’s the founder, there were sort of, um, changing, um, and optimizing the app, um, um, very regularly. Um, I do wonder though, you know, as, as we, as the pandemics become just part of life, whether, um, people and listening to podcasts as much, and whether they’re they’re exiting just as a lot of these other companies start to exit, like, um, the have been a lot of high ticket purchases and acquisitions of podcasts and [00:40:00] related services, like Spotify buying, anchor, and so on and so forth.

Um, and that was like in the middle of the pandemic. Not that, not that we’re out of it yet, but, um, would you agree, Kelsey, that we’ve sort of. That that, that, that boss around podcasting has waned off a little bit since like peak pandemic.

Kelsey: I actually think I disagree. I would say that people, I mean, I think there was probably a bit of a spike during the pandemic where people really got on board and podcasts and went, Hey, this is cool.

Like I’ve never really looked at this for, as I got bored of, I don’t know, watching Netflix or whatever. And I think now people would likely be, you know, looking for podcasts on their drive to work or, you know, where they would previously just put on the radio or put on a playlist. They’re probably now more turning to podcasts like I know I do that a bit and I’m pretty sure you do it more in the form of YouTube videos, but same sort of concept where you’re wanting to actually listen and take in a lot of [00:41:00] things. Um, and I think about, I think I’ve talked with your friends about this actually, and they’ve all sort of said the same thing where they’ll listen to the podcast, like on their lunch break or on the way to work or sitting on the train, cause you might have, you know, an hour to kill or something. Obviously this is like Melbourne or Sydney or wherever you are, but, yeah, just killing time

Germaine: It’s sped up adoption. And then those individuals, who’ve got the habit of listening to podcasts, aren’t necessarily, you know, losing that habit, they’re keeping it. Um, so I guess maybe it speaks for the consolidation of podcasting more than the fact that we just, we, we’re going to see more of these different entities merge and become one as, um, podcasting becomes a bit more, a bit less spiky, a bit less hot, but still very much relevant.

Kelsey: Absolutely. Yeah, I think there’s, I mean, I think a lot of people are jumping on a bit late with creating podcasts as well. Like I know that there’s been, I think I follow a few influencers on Instagram, for example, and [00:42:00] some of them have started up podcasts in the last few months, which is probably a bit late to be jumping on it, but you know, there’s still definitely demand, and I think there’s still people keen to get involved in that.

Germaine: Hmm. Hmm. Moving on to, um, some more WordPress news. WordPress cracking down on the use of the WP. So, um, if you’re, you know, Yoast is, is, is one plugin that doesn’t use WP, but again, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a plugin out there called WP SEO. Um, the biggest one that comes to mind is WP rocket, um, which is a caching plugin that is quite mainstream. Um, and essentially people have found that when they push a new plugin, a new WordPress plugin with the WP in their name and slug, um, they’re getting rejected or they were getting rejected. Um, this guy Joe Youngblood which is such [00:43:00] a cool name.

Just, I just have to mention that, um, on Friday, Friday the 13th, so less than a week, Um, was horrified. I mean, horrified is I think a bit too dramatic for this instance, but

Kelsey: Can I just say, that whole sentence, Joe Youngbloog had an unpleasant surprise on Friday the 13th and it was horrified.

Germaine: Very dramatic. Um, and I’m not saying it’s necessarily, I mean, this is from a website called coy Wolf. So, um, coy wolf.news, spooky stuff on there. And quite, I mean, I’m going to say it’s a bit sensationalist, but, um, this is more interesting again, talking about Yoast in the past or just just a few minutes ago. Um, because like, so WP, um, essentially is a trademark of automatic, um, which is a [00:44:00] company founded by Matt Mullenweg.

The guy who created WordPress. WordPress has wordpress.com and wordpress.org. We’ve written heaps of articles about. Um, talked about it and gone on about it in the past. Um, but essentially wordpress.com is a, is a company is a for-profit company. And then wordpress.org is a open source project. Um, I’ve always felt weird because they’ve owned the they’ve, they’ve had a restriction on, um, the use of, uh, I think it’s the use of the name or the word WordPress, um, has been somewhat controlled, especially on domain names. I think they’ve had a trademark for awhile and now the same thing’s happening with WP. Um, so this again is just to keep you WordPress developers and builders and people who have WordPress sites, um, Um, on notice a little bit, just to say there’s some interesting things happening. Um, [00:45:00] automatic has bought, you know, woo commerce. And again, there’s a bit of consolidation happening here that might not necessarily be a good thing is what I’m saying. I think, um, when there’s an open source, um, service, uh, platform that is so significant, so big, such a, you know, like WordPress is, um, when for profit companies get involved, they have to be for profit and, you know, they have a certain set of priorities.

Um, and this might seem small, but, you know, why, why, like, I, I dunno. What, why do you need to lock down the use of the term WP? Like the two letters, WP?

Kelsey: Yeah, I was just trying to think through that because I mean, I can sort of see two sides, one side you’ve got WP and all these developers using WP and people recognize WP is WordPress. So that’s just like free advertising really. On the other hand, you’ve got all [00:46:00] these rogue people using your sort of brand and then it’s like, you don’t have that control over your brand as WP. So then it sounds like they’re really just trying to gain control of their brand. Given they’re so large now maybe previously they didn’t feel like they should be doing that because they were, I dunno, still building or something. I mean, they’ve been a massive company for quite a while, but maybe now they’ve just gone. All right. Let’s take control of our brand and stop other people,using it as WP or whatever form.

Germaine: Potentially, potentially. I mean, um, I, I just looked it up charitable so we uh, interviewed one of the co-founders of charitable and that domain is WP charitable.com I believe.

Um, yeah. Dot com. Um, so, you know, they’ve been using WP for a long time. Um, I don’t know what you would find if you go to charitable.com without the WP, but, you know, if they would have really started enforcing it, um, I just, I just think it’s not quite, not quite fair is the wrong [00:47:00] word, but I think it’s, um, you know, it’s a bit aggressive, um, is

Kelsey: Are they stopping people that already have WP or is it just new registers?

Germaine: Um, looking through it. So, uh, they’ve broken down some of the things that, that we’re aware of, um, um, of, you know, when it comes to this WP, um, what they’re saying is that three months ago, the workforce foundation, um, requested that the volunteer team block plugins from using the term WP at the start of their name, um, the WordPress foundation itself does don’t have any legal rights to the term WP only WordPress, um, because WPS aren’t as a trademark in a few other industries. Um, and then, um, despite that the plugin teams started block block, Um, [00:48:00] plugins using WP. So that includes, um, plug-ins also that like WP mail SMTP, um, because it starts with WP, which is again, a plugin that we’ve, we’ve used a fair bit. Um, and then apparently there are various legal teams hashing it out. Um, so it’s not necessarily that they’ve got the, the, where the trademark yet, but, um, potentially they’re trying to get it.

Um, in 2010, Matt Mullinweg um, established the WordPress foundation and then took ownership of the trademark WordPress. And then, um, people just stopped using the, the, the word WordPress in the URL. Uh, So, yeah, I mean, it doesn’t seem to be clear yet. It’s I don’t think anyone’s actually, um, come out and said, okay, you can’t use it, but, [00:49:00] you know, it’s, it’s sort of like, it hasn’t passed as a law at a high level, but then for all intents and purposes, it’s being blocked because if the plug-in team, like, if you can’t push a plugin with, with WP in it, you might as well not be able to like, if it, it might as well just be a rule, right?

Like there’s nothing, there’s, there’s no point. Um, yeah. It’s um, interesting. And it mentions here that the WordPress foundation holds the WordPress trademark, not automatic. So, um, Yeah, again, a bit messy because the WordPress foundation is a not-for-profit organization, automatic as a for-profit company that, you know, wants to make money automatic.

I think potentially I might be wrong, but fairly sure. Automatic, even owns tumbler. Um, so, you know, they’re, they’re very much a real company.

Kelsey: I thought Yahoo bought tumblr?

Germaine: Um, yeah. [00:50:00] Um, it’s been sold. Yeah, I can confirm, um,

Kelsey: I forgot tumbler existed, to be honest. Cause I don’t know who really uses it anymore.

Germaine: No. A lot of, a lot of people have forgotten about it. Um, and it’s all, it also automatic also owns long reads, which is, um, a, like a storytelling platform that, um, I know had some popularity, at least at one point. So, um, oh, this is funny. I’m just looking at, I’m just looking at the automatic site. Let me, let me share that in this tab. Um, And, uh, funny enough there’s WP job manager, which is probably a WordPress. Yeah. There you go. A WordPress plugin that is owned by automatics. So I wonder if we’re going to see that change, um, moving forward as well, because you would assume that, um, you want to have a consistent rule, um, ruling [00:51:00] across, across everything for everyone. So, um, yeah, I think, I think that’s a little funny though.

Kelsey: It’s interesting

Germaine: moving onto the next one. Um, do you eat much ice cream, Kelsey?

Kelsey: Uh, I do love a bit of ice cream.

Germaine: Just a bit?

Kelsey: I’m trying to limit myself but it’s not going very well, especially now that we’re in a pandemic

Germaine: in lock down. Yeah. Especially more recently. Do you have, um, do you have Haagen-Dazs much?

Kelsey: Um, I mean, it’s be fancy for me.

I usually go to the cheap flight Coles or Woolies kind of brand, and to be honest, and sometimes splash out and treat myself, but not usually with Hogan does.

Germaine: Yeah. Haagen Dass. I mean, it’s a pretty big company it’s established in 1960. I think basically everyone’s aware of Haagen Daz. Um, they’ve recently refresh their branding.

Um, as you can see here, we’re back [00:52:00] on brand brand news website to talk about this. Um, this logo though seems to have been used elsewhere, quite extensively in other other geographies that isn’t the U S um, it’s also paired with this nice little packaging refresh here as well. Um, the, the general look and feel is, um, looking the same, um, more or less, um,

What do you think?

Kelsey: I quite like it. Um, I like that they’ve added a bit more spacing around the word mark. Um, I don’t know. It’s, I’m kind of sad that they lost the gold because it’s fancy, but then like the dark brown is also quite a fancy kind of feel and it’s more natural and like food colored, I suppose.

Germaine: It is more [00:53:00] muted. They’ve done a good job though, with the newer graphics. Um, I love if we’re looking at the packaging at the moment, um, for those who are just listening and they’ve got, um, a example of, um, the, like the strawberry for example, is a nice, like they used to have photography that had the fruit of the strawberry. Um, but they’ve now just made it a bit more tasteful, her pun intended. Um, and, um, the graphics, I think a lot more modern,

Kelsey: I do like the differentiation and across the three that we’re looking at the moment, which is strawberry pistachio. And I’m not to pronounce that because I’m terrible at pronouncing things.

Um, but yeah, sort of having that pink, green and, um, caramel kind of color, I really liked that they’ve tied that up together

Germaine: and that’s beautiful

Kelsey: oh and there’s little strawberries in the artwork [00:54:00]

Germaine: it’s a really nice refresh there. I would say if, you know, Haagen Dass wanted to lose their, their design, um, and just have a word mark. They’re probably one company that could get rid of like the, the little graphical detail if they wanted to.

Kelsey: I dunno. I think I really liked that they’ve kept it and they haven’t gone to, um, like the Chandon style. Yeah. Cause they’ve really kept the same imagery, the same overall feel of it, but they’ve just changed the colors and added more spacing. So like the right level of redesign without

Germaine: Refresh. Yeah. Yeah. Then you would redesign it, which is, um, which is fantastic. And I think, yeah, what they’ve done with this artwork. I’m a huge fan. I think it’s very tasteful again with the pun but, [00:55:00] um, and everything’s just, just right. If you asked me,

Kelsey: Looking at the white chocolate raspberry, when we’re looking at, at the moment it’s, um, showing like it’s got gold edging on the lines, which is cool. So it’s kind of kept that gold from the old logo without needing to have that in the actual logo. So they’ve still sort of kept that style a little bit,

Germaine: the general look and feel still. Yeah. Haagen Dass. Um, this is, yeah, I think, I mean, if I had to rate this, I’d give it a nine personally. I think they’ve done almost. Yeah, they’ve done almost everything. Perfect. Um, almost, um, but yeah, they’ve done a very good job. All they have to do is, uh, reduce their prices so that we can eat Haagen Dass a lot more. And I will give it a 10 out of 10.

Kelsey: Maybe I’ll consider it more with this new branding.

Oh gosh, I was just looking at that gold one it looked really [00:56:00] low quality. Ah, maybe that’s because it’s a GIF. Okay.

Germaine: Potentially, potentially. Um, but yeah, you can see in this example, like they’ve just neatened things up a little bit and tightened things up a little bit.

Kelsey: Yeah. Cleaner lines as well. I think the old one has a very uniform stroke width. The one variant has like some variation in it. Some parts of it like the loop, for example.

Yeah. That’s nice. A bit more organic.

Germaine: It’s just the subtle details. And then just the spacing’s a lot nicer, um, with the whole shape and the graphic.

And the last thing I wanted to cover. Um, do you read Gawker? Have you read Gawker, Kelsey?

Kelsey: I can’t say I have. Um, the names sounds somewhat familiar, but no,

Germaine: I mean, I’m sure there will be people in the audience, [00:57:00] um, who are a lot more aware of what Gawker is than I am. Um, but from what I can tell, and from what I’ve found is that Gawker is a, essentially a blog used to be really popular. People used to read it all the time, uh, fell out of favor a little bit from what I’ve seen, you know, the types of things they used to sort of cover would definitely not fly these days. Um, would it, isn’t the kind of content that people would at least at least that’s what of this world out there. There might be an audience for it, but there’s also, there’ll be a group who would, um, who would cry out against Gawker. Um, Anyway from, um, again from brand new, um, they’ve shown this refresh, um, this, this is for me, at least one instance where you know, about times um,

Kelsey: That is shocking. I don’t think I saw that old logo. That’s dreadful. [00:58:00]

Germaine: It is horrible saying that though. I, I do wonder if they could have kept the box like this, this, a similar approach and created a more minimal version rather than going in again, the Chandon-esque this, this one’s a bit more, has a bit more personality, but it’s really just a, uh, a direction that I don’t know. It just seems to be very commonplace nowadays, especially on blogs and magazines.

Kelsey: Yeah. It’s definitely that same modern approach everything’s sort of falling into the same. Line, I guess. I mean, anything’s an improvement on the old one though. Like there’s not a single colour in that old one. That’s nice to look at

and the contrast ratios are off.

Germaine: Um, I actually wonder what, what the application of that logo, the old logo would have been or look like in the past, but again, maybe I’m not across Gawker [00:59:00] as or aware of Gawker as much as maybe I should be. Um, so maybe if it’s such an old, um, such an old blog that back at one point, it was, it was, um, very relevant and very sort of on trend, maybe early two thousands, late nineties I don’t know.

Um, looking at their website though, now to me like their logo was fine fast, this website. Oh man. I am not a fan. Um, especially like. I mean, this, this is a single post is what we would call it. So this is just a welcome to Gawker from, um, a letter from the editor. Um,

Kelsey: oh, this isn’t the homepage.

Germaine: No. So let me jump to the home page because it was

Kelsey: like, I was looking at, on my screen and it was, yeah, I was seeing that and I was like, why is this so different?

Germaine: Yeah. So this is the home page. Um, uh, just, I don’t know. I’m, I’m confused. There’s a [01:00:00] lot of fonts. There’s a lot of colors. There’s, it’s, it’s doing a lot and doing nothing at the same time. I think this is, this is sort of the, the bad Twitter redesigned on another level. Like if you took Twitter’s redesigned with a high contrast and then just added more fonts. I think that’s where we end up with, you know, it’s doing that thing that I mentioned with, um, color palettes with like a whole bunch of bright colors as well. Um, it’s a bit all over the place. It’s quite a brutalist sort of approach. It fits within the grid. Fantastic. But you know, just because you, I, I love grids.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s so organized and so perfect. But, um, it’s what they’re doing within these grids. Like I just don’t know what’s going on. Um,

Kelsey: yeah, I think on like first impression, it’s difficult to understand what’s [01:01:00] happening, but I would probably say if you were a regular reader of Gawker you’d probably adjust this pretty quickly.

Um, ’cause like looking at this more and more. You’re like, okay, I can see that there’s the heading is the center associated image on the left and then like a little bit more info on the right. And then this kind of some like extra words for whatever reason. I mean, obviously the authors in there, but like,

Germaine: I love the extra words for whatever.

Kelsey: I don’t know. I mean, I’m looking at chomp chomp and I’m sort of like, okay. I thought maybe that was a category. It could still be a category. I’m pretty sure in the menu system, they’ve got a category that’s literally just Chrissy Teigen. Um,

Germaine: teigen?

Kelsey: Teigen

Germaine: is it Teigen?

Kelsey: It’s Teigen. Yes. That was a big thing where she corrected at one day. Cause nobody pronounced it. Right. But it’s Teigen. Although knowing me probably stuffed up that pronunciation anyway.

Germaine: So looking at the menu. Yeah. There’s Chrissy Teigen. There’s NASA. Um, let me see. What’s kind of

Kelsey: not sure whether they’re categories,

Germaine: [01:02:00] no, that is literally linked to the NASA site. Um, This is a link to, this is still onsite. So this is going to a slash Teigan tails. So maybe it’s like a Chrissy Teigen.

Kelsey: That’s interesting, cause she definitely got like canceled across a lot of social channels. Maybe they’re trying to revive her or something

Germaine: is Gawker parody site?

Kelsey: No, I’m pretty sure it’s real, but it’s like, um, I think it just takes that sort of modern approach of, from what I understand, looking at the S that modern approach to media where it’s like, yes, it’s news, but also we’re going to inject our personality into this, and you’re going to get sort of more opinion news than just like facts

Germaine: because that’s giving you the facts is a bit boring

Kelsey: yeah, it’s a place you go where you like, want to know details, but you’re also like it’s entertainment at the same time, but not being like women’s weekly kind of vibe of just like pure trash, at least there’s like [01:03:00] potentially some editorial integrity. Maybe, although saying that I hadn’t read anything so I could be way off.

Germaine: Yeah. I mean, there’s what, it’s just, I just don’t know what’s going on and okay. Granted, I am not the regular reader, but I, I think, um, most, if not all websites and brands should try and, um, you know, at least be somewhat welcoming, um, to almost any audience. I get it. You want to be, you know, you want to talk to and communicate to your target audience, but looking at this though, I don’t know that it necessarily speaks to a specific audience either.

Kelsey: I feel like everything they’ve done in terms of design and what I imagine they’re like writing style is, is on brand. Actually, I feel like, I mean, when it comes to Gawker it’s a bit of an odd name, isn’t it? And it’s very like just the whole [01:04:00] vibe of it. I can’t, I can’t explain what it is, but the whole vibe of it seems to very much fit together.

But I don’t think that that fits in with the kind of stuff that you’d be interested in reading so I can understand why you’re looking at this, just like what’s going on. And then in terms of being welcoming, I feel like that sort of would definitely go against the Gawker brand. And I think a lot of brands really tried to lean into like, not being as welcoming or like not fitting into that classic mold because that attracts that group of people that really just want to be away from that.

Germaine: Cause it’s like a rebellious teenager vibe. Yeah,

Kelsey: that’s true. But like also trying to be like a high end editorial kind of thing, which is a weird mix, very artsy. Yeah. Brutalist, as you said before, that whole vibe.

Germaine: Yeah. I wonder though, in comparison, like there’s a woman kind of magazine, which I think is, um, see, this is what I’m talking about.

I mean, this is a bit, this is maybe a bit more in the opposite direction [01:05:00] for me, but, um, I’m just trying to think of sort of comparison sites.

Kelsey: Yeah. I mean, I think too pedestrian TV, like that’s something that I definitely, um, consume myself and I think, I mean, the whole publication is aimed at, um, millennial kind of people, I suppose.

Um, this is probably slightly more mainstream. I think they were bought by like channel nine or channel seven or something. So they’ve kind of come back into the main, but they’re very much like sarcastic headlines and they lean on like memes and writing style is very much like swear words and Batchie recaps and stuff like that. That’s kind of trash, but then they also get some like really hard hitting stuff as well.

Germaine: Right. Okay. Yeah. I mean I’ve heard of pedestrian, um, again, doesn’t yeah. I’m, I’m not loving them when I hover. I, I can’t there’s no, it’s not reacting to my mouse. Like it’s showing me that it’s clickable, but it’s not [01:06:00] necessarily, it almost looks no, let’s, let’s not go down that rabbit hole.

Um, I don’t want to offend, but, um, I will offend about this. I just don’t know what’s going on. I think I agree with you, Kelsey. It’s got a certain aesthetic it’s hitting that aesthetic really well, but you know, I don’t know that maybe, maybe there’s a market it’s, it’s definitely not for me. Um, but you know, from what I could tell, they’ve hired sort of a new team they’d been purchased by another company recently.

So maybe this is all part of that, this rebrand, um, even the use of. Almost meme photography, um, within, within the articles.

Kelsey: And I’ve got to say, like, looking at this, I feel like they definitely run the risk of it becoming outdated quickly. Not that it’s like in date or whatever, but you know, at some point this is not going to appeal to even their demographic.

I feel like fairly soon and they’re going to have to be updating it quite [01:07:00] frequently to keep on top of the latest trends of website design, because it’s very much in that brutalist trend that we’ve talked about. And there’s a lot of websites that follow the same kind of design, but I think it will become outdated pretty quick.

Germaine: Yeah, definitely like this, because this is very much like on trend and they’re going to have to do something about it. Um, if they, um, want to stay relevant moving forward. But, um, yeah, that, that’s a, that’s an interesting way to finish up this, this episode. Um, was there anything else you wanted to mention or talk about before we wrapped up Kelsey?

I think that Springs to mind, I feel like I’ve got everything out that leaves to get out.

Awesome. All right. Well, on that note, um, thank you for listening to this episode links for, to everything that we talked about, um, in the description. Um, and, um, I think we’re ready to roll the outro.

We’ll catch you [01:08:00] next episode. .