Experimenting on customers on customer projects is rarely fun and almost never good. Experimenting for a good cause, and then using these skills for your customers – perfect.
It sounds great, sort of. First, push the customer to adopt the latest and greatest, and figure out exactly how to operate that sharp, spinning, cut-to-the-bone blade of innovation without gloves and safety glasses during implementation. Second, learn your lessons on their dollars, deliver a half-broken system that sparked a thousand promises, and work hard to get a second contract to fix the problems from the first round. [If this situation sounds familiar – maybe you need to find a different partner for services]
Of course, there are other ways. Like doing good and fun things to learn and become better at something (it helps if you are passionate about your work). This is where the ‘Poster’ comes in.
A couple of good friends run a pretty awesome [IMHO] design studio in Brooklyn called Hyperakt. One of the things I really like about them is that in addition to their paid work they also do pro-bono work for various causes, and some just plain fun stuff. A radial bracket World Cup Poster is one such project.
The poster is nifty. I like how it is dynamic – taking its final shape over the weeks of the World Cup tournament. I also like that this is a project hosted on KickStarter , gets socialized on twitter, and helps Hyperakt to better understand how to do such things for their customers, without experimenting using other people’s time and money.
What can I say? Let’s watch some futbol!