Head to either Dailymonster.com and you'll hit Stefan G Bucher's Daily Monster blog. Bucher is a designer who has worked with various companies including DreamWorks, Communication Arts, and others. He currently runs a design company called 344 Design. Originally Bucher created a blog with the intent to give some insight into his design process. As he began drawing irreverent ink blot creatures, he found that many site visitors gravitated to these drawings. Eventually he began a series of "daily monster" videos that captured him in the drawing process. Today his blog focuses almost exclusively on his monster designs and it is helping him to market a book about his monster designs.

Every now and then Bucher also creates something that he calls "open source" monsters that helps him to interact with his site's visitors. For these "open source" monsters, Bucher creates an ink blot and puts a high resolution scan of the blot into a PDF that visitors can download. Visitors build on the ink blot and send their interpretations back to Bucher to post on his blog. His site visitor's talent is amazing; they've created pictures of rabbits, odd party monsters, mermaids, jellyfish, and more.

Above: Some of Bucher's monster drawings seem like a cross between the illustrations seen in a Dr. Seuss story and those found in the books of children's poet Shel Silverstein.

Because of his interact with web site visitors, Bucher's site is much more active than the typical graphic designer web site. His site is more interactive than a typical blog with just comments. His site is more popular than scores of graphic design web sites. While it does take some skill to create the initial designs, scan the ink blots, and create some of the videos that show bucher at work, I don't think that overall, these activities are so far beyond the capabilities of most web masters. Like most things internet or marketing related, it just takes a bit of creativity and drive to see the process through. Technologically, if you have a cell phone or digital camera and the know-how to upload items to your site, you should be ok on that front.

In speaking with Stephan Bucher, I am reminded of another art project that I had previously seen online. Check out Readymech or the Furni BigChief. These sites offer little paper crafts that you can download, print, and put together. While I've been unable to find the exact art project that I had seen a several years back, the art project that I am reminded of offered similar box-like patterns to visitors. Visitors were encouraged to add their own graphics by using crayons, Photoshop, markers, whatever, to make their own creations, and send pictures of their creations in for a monthly contest.

The great part about offering something like this to site visitors is the additional fact that they indirectly promote your site. Just below, two videos that show some of the Readymech creations in action.

If you were a shoe company, an entertainment company promoting a movie or show, etc. can you offer a guide, templates or other items to get people "into" your product in a slightly non-traditional way? What about a contest where you get people to create customized shoes and submit them for online judging? (Just remember to add lots of text content describing the contest, transcribe some of the videos, etc.) The video below may inspire you a bit.

My point in all of this, is that Web 2.0 interactivity can be seen and used by just about any one. The production value can be fairly low. The amount of technology, widgets, etc. can be fairly low. You can create an interactive web site just by inspiring your site visitors and interacting with them. If you hit the right nerve, you can gain tons of links - which helps with rankings. You can gain lots of coverage on sites that might not have otherwise covered your company or marketing efforts.

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