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Zoology – beautiful simplicity of poetry and design
Born Magazine is dedicated to collaboration between art and literature and their latest creation called Zoology is a collaboration between of the poet Sasha West and designer Ernesto Lavandera. The visual storytelling style has beautiful simplicity of design and motion with dots reforming into multiple images to match the language of the poem. It is refreshing to see something simple and beautiful that was created to just be a pure experience devoid of call to actions and sponsorships.
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Mickey Goes Open Source
Walt Disney Animation Studios recently launched an open technology site where for the first time they are giving the general public access to some of the innovative technologies, talks and white papers developed in their studio. All of the information is based around advanced 3D animation with topics like Geodesic Curve-Based Mesh Fairing and Geometric Fracture Modeling in BOLT which may be too much for most people but I find interesting as a former 3D animator. It will be interesting to see if this new openness is going to extend to any other areas of their creative teams and process.
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Virtual Homeless
I was walking through the city the other night and came across a really interesting interactive installation that was a projection being shown on the side of a building of a homeless man laying on the ground. After a little while a message pops up asking you to move the virtual homeless person via a text message. Intrigued I sent the text message, a door appeared and the man got up and went through it. I then got a text message to my iPhone with a code I could use to donate to Pathways to Housing.
A little research revealed that it was created by Sarkissian Mason for Pathways to Housing in response to the fact that they saw a growing number of charitable donations were being made via mobile text codes after they redesigned their web site.The projections will appear on New York buildings through March and you can get location details on Pathway to Housing’s Facebook page.
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Harmony HTML5 Drawing Tool
So with all the uproar over Adobe Flash and Apple all you hear about is HTML 5, HTML 5, HTML 5… This is the first impressive demonstration of HTML 5 I have seen which is a drawing tool called Harmony. It only has 10 different brush styles but they are diverse enough that you can do a lot with them. It was created by MrDoob.com with the invitation to play with the code and if you come up with a cool new brush he will add it to the tool.
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I love Mike Hughes
Anyone who has followed advertising for any period of time will instantly recognize the name Mike Hughes as one of the leaders of the Martin Agency in Richmond Virginia. Since joining the agency in 1978 as a copywriter Mike went on to becomes Creative Director and under his leadership Martin grew from a regional ad agency to a national powerhouse with clients like GEICO transcending advertising to become pop-culture icons.
Over the course of my career I had heard stories from industry friends about Mike and they always sounded a bit too good to be true. After one meeting him I found out they were all more than likely completely true.
I first met him a number of years ago when I was summoned to Richmond to interview for their newly formed interactive creative director position. I arrived at the agency, checked in at the front desk and based on past interviews I sat down to wait for some mid-level assistant to come and escort me to conference room for the days festivities. Instead I was greeted by the man himself and we adjourned to the coffee shop next door to the agency and we spent the next two hours talking. It consisted of 10 minutes flipping through my portfolio and 2 hours of one of the best design and advertising conversations I can remember. So even though we couldn’t get a workable deal together on that job it was evident why he has been so successful and why everyone speaks so well of him.
So as someone I greatly admire, am proud to be able to call an industry friend and an extremely worthy adversary on more than a few pieces of new business, I am very happy to congratulate Mike on his induction into the One Club Hall of Fame this week. If you want to share some love of your own check out WeAllLoveMike.com where you can leave it in this interactive yearbook style site.
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Facebook Redesign circa 2006, sort of…
First, sorry for no posts lately. The new year brought a reorganization at work that has ben buried in new work and responsibilities but the posts will start flowing again soon and I have a lot of good stuff on deck.
Today I saw an interesting article that from December 2006 to February 2007 the agency IA were in touch with the product manager at Facebook trying to redesign their site. The contract was never signed and they kept their designs in the drawer until now. I always find this proposed redesign exercise to be interesting but the problem with all of this is that the designs they posted aren’t from 2006. Saying that “The web is not the same anymore and neither are we.” they took their “sketches” and created these comps “to contemporary design standards”. For me this makes the quality of the work really hard to judge because without the original wireframes you can’t tell really get a sense of how pure the designs are or how much they were effected by the adaptation. None the less it is interesting to read the thinking behind the work.
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Nikon moves one step closer to Minority Report
I don’t know anyone who didn’t want Tom Cruise’s virtual desk in movie Minority Report and the new Nikon Cool Pix web site has us one step closer to that dream. The site uses your web cam to let you explore and manipulate your photo libraries on the site with gestures like what you would use on their Cool Pix camera which amazing just like the ones you use on your iPhone. You can experience the demo with some sample photos here. The element that isn’t pictured here and is probably the coolest executions are that in addition to the Web site they also put the technology into ad units and for use on other sites like Flickr through a simple bookmark. It’s a really nice tie-in from the product to the interactive experience that lets you experience something on the camera without ever having one.
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Dear Adobe, want Flash on the iPhone & iPad? Here’s the plan…
In the little over three weeks since the announcement of the iPad and my subsequent article on Apple snubbing Adobe Flash I have had a parade of emails and conversations with friends and colleagues about the subject. Honestly it has quickly grown tiresome to rehash the same points again and again. This feud between Apple and Adobe has all the maturity and poise of two small children pouting over a spilled glass of milk, holding their breath till they turn blue and pointing the blame at the other one. So in my limited wisdom I have hatched a four step plan to end all this bickering and discussion – Adobe listen up and take notes.
1. Go to nearest Apple Store with Adobe corporate American Express and buy and iPhone and iPad.
2. Pull your best development teams from creating new real time effects or in-application Papervision 3D clones that will do nothing but continue to inflate Flash Player and we will only use for one project so we can say we know how to use them.
3. Have development team create a mobile version of Flash Player that will run on the iPhone and iPad without destroying the battery life or being a complete resource hog.
4. Hold very publicized press conference showing how well new Flash Player works on said iPhone and iPad. End press conference with “And we are waiting to hear from Apple with timing for when they are going to adopt this new player that addresses all of their issues.”
Like all good plans it is simple and takes control of the conversation by putting Apple on their heels for a change. This one is free but next time you are on your own…
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Dodge recalls their logo. Sort of…
I certainly understand protecting your brand, your logo and your image but in this case attorneys for Chrysler aren’t going after another car brand but Lake Mary High School in Seminole County Florida. The Lake Mary Ram’s logo is an exact lift of the Dodge Ram logo and are insisting that the school spend tens of thousands of dollars to phase out the logo from everything from the gym floor to school stationary. So the question is should be take this hard line even with a case like this where the offender isn’t even using it for commercial gains or is this the right call to protect their brand?
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Square Finally Gets Mobile Sales Right
There have been a lot of iPhone apps trying to get mobile sales right but I think that Square may have finally really gotten it right. Their solution is a combination application and small hardware card reader that fits in your iPhone audio jack. It is really well thought out, simple to use and you just have to watch the video to see how cool it is. On top of that their demo video may be the best product intro video I have ever seen.
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