Also, be sure to check out the concept sketches to see a little of the process behind the interface and interaction design. view process »

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
- robert frost

It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.
- thomas h. Huxley

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
- george bernard shaw

All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger, but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.
- niccolo machiavelli

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
- warren g. Bennis

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
- mark twain

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
- oscar wilde

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
- Niels bohr

Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.
- heinrich heine

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
- albert einstein

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
- richard p. Feynman

I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but i can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.
- herbert bayard swope

Many false step was made by standing still.
- fortune cookie

Named must your fear be before banished it you can.
- Yoda

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
- benjamin disrael

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
- mark twain

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- george bernard shaw

The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.
- viktor frankl

One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.
- bruce lee

Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.
- antoine de saint-exupery

What gets measured gets managed.
- peter drucker

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention if its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the over abundance of information sources that might consume it.
- herbert simon

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits if thinking.
- albert einstein

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.
- ralph waldo emerson

Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.
- Robert j. Sawyer

Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.
- ralph charell

Meetings are an addictive, self-indulgent activity that agencies habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.
- dave barry

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
- henry david thoreau

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.
- malcom x

The first rule of technology in business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
- bill gates

The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods ignoring principles is sure to have trouble.
- ralph wlado Emerson

Genius is only a superior power of seeing.
- john ruskin

I not only use all the brains that i have, but all the brains i can borrow.
- woodrow wilson

Creation is a better means of self expression than possession; it is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed.
- vida d. Scudder

This is the very perfection of man to find his own imperfection.
- st. Augustine

To be free, to be happy and fruitful, can only be attained through sacrifice of many common but overestimated things.
- robert henri

If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.
- frank wilczek

Being busy is a form of laziness-lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.
- Timothy Ferriss

There are endless approaches to planning digital experiences. Some teams place these decisions on various designers, developers, researchers and directors. Sometimes the user experience is drafted in a silo by information architects months in advance of any design work, and sometimes it’s improvised in the middle of a project’s creation. I can say there’s no single formula that works for every project. The best projects seem to achieve a delicate balance of planning, reflection and iteration. Predicting human behavior is arguably the most powerful skill you can have as an interaction designer, architect, engineer (insert title here). You can draft a 300 page functional spec document, with use-case flows, personas, and wireframes annotating every detail of every view, but if the final outcome doesn’t result in a positive emotional reaction then all you’re piles of strategy will be perceived as a failure.

It’s the balance of dreaming big and being pragmatic that that will help you reach meaningful goals. Big dreams tend to incur big production costs, and pragmatism often limits creativity. So it’s important to have a reliable set of tools that helps you to not only dream big, but also get the job done fast.

Here are a few resources to add to your UX toolbox to help you draft, sketch, research, revise and execute ideas faster.

1. Smashing Magazine: Sketching Templates

Smashing Magazine is pretty much a no-brainer for web designers and developers looking for round-ups. Here is a great round-up of printable sketching, wireframing and story boarding templates.

2. Balsamiq Mockups: Wireframes

Balsamiq is an Air app that allows for easy drag-n-drop interface wireframing. It provides a robust asset library, generates xml, and also has a pretty nice presentation mode.

3. UX Magazine: Psychology

UX Magazine is a community of gurus from around the world that publish articles on the psychology of users and much more.

4. UX Booth: Tips & Trends

UX Booth showcases tips and ideas dedicated to user experience professionals.

5. UI Patterns: Interface Parts

UI Patterns hosts a collection of categorized interface components that not only lists different ways of solving common design problems, but also rationalizing about how, when, and why such solutions should be used.

6. Slideshare: Presentations

Slideshare has a plethora of presentations from other industry professionals on user experience.

1. Pro Theme Design

2. Obox

3. Pliable Press

4. Elegant

5. Empire

6. Press75

7. Proud

8. Slimmity

9. Template Sold

10. Theme Forest

11. Theme Hybrid

12. Theme Shift

13. Mojo

14. Woo

15. WP Best

16. WP Zoom

17. WordPress.org

Here are a few words of wisdom that I try to follow:

• If you’re not proud of it, don’t serve it.
• Know your strengths and your weaknesses.
• Be aware of what is not obvious.
• Don’t do anything useless.
• Find the simplest way it can possibly work.
• Never ask anyone to do anything you are not willing to do yourself.
• Don’t talk about what you’re going to do. Show what you’ve already done.
• There is an answer for everything if you ask the right questions.

Creating Pleasurable Experiences

The Evoluce One is probably the best multitouch display surface I’ve seen. It’s hi-def LCD screen supports unlimited touch points and gesture controls that can be detected from up to half a meter away. That’s one step close to minority report! (And Steve Jobs thinks we have no need for hover-states on multitouch interfaces.) Evoluce makes a strong case that sometimes it’s better to NOT touch the screen simply because it’s more sanitary. Do you want to touch your expensive screen when your hands are messy in the kitchen, in surgery, in the gym, in a restaurant, etc. I also really like that it supports apps built in Flash, Silverlight, HTML as well as OS-specific gestures.

read more: Evoluce One product description

There’s a lot of documentation to dig through if you’re trying to target web apps on mobile devices, so it’s important that you choose a good starting point so you know what’s possible and don’t waste time doing things the hard way. To speed up your research visit the following resources in this order to learn how to get started creating web apps today:

1. Apple Web Apps

2. Oreilly’s Building iPhone Apps by Jonathan Stark

3. Preparing Your Web Content for the iPad

4. Safari Dev Center

5. jQTouch

Other Resources + Inspiration:

Designing for iPad: Reality Check
iPhone Web Dev on Google Groups
Well Placed Pixels
29 Sexy iPhone App Designs
25 Great Examples of iPhone Optimized Sites from Abduzeedo
38 iPhone Sites from Web Designer Wall
CSS iPhone

This Flash animation by Renaud Hallée showcases the rhythmic beauty of music.

The Music Ninja

We Are Hunted

Big Stero

Disco Dust

Gorilla vs Bear

There has certainly been a recent surge in twitter-related data visualization. People love to aggregate all the online chatter into visualizations that are easy to digest. This a good way to identify trending topics and popular thought. Tweetlection, built by Sense Internet, is a interesting new online tool that harvests and analyzes thousands of tweets each day so that you can see what Tweeters have been saying about the three main political parties in the past 7 days. They use interactive graphs to let you explore how twitter users have reacted to the events of the last week. You can drag and select a particular time period, use key words to focus on a particular topics and see how Tweet volumes for this topic have varied over time.

Kid Cudi, DJ Green Lantern & Broke Mogul – How To Make It In America: The Mixed Tape
Meshuggah – Alive, ObZen, Destroy Erase Improve, Nothing
Omar Rodriguez Lopez – Xenophanes
The Souljazz Orchestra – Rising Sun
Ellie Goulding – Lights
Cubesato – Sounds

Upcoming shows to catch in ATL »

Bear In Heaven + Cymbals Eat Guitars – March 11th @ The Earl
The Morning Benders – March 13th @ Drunken Unicorn
The Mercury Program – March 18th @ The Earl
Toro Y Moi – March 22nd @ Drunken Unicorn
Yeasayer – April 6th @ Masquerade
Red Sparowes – April 9th @ The Earl

Often, titles are either overly generic, too verbose, or altogether misleading.  I’ve come to accept the fact that names and titles are as interchangeable as jersey numbers on a basketball team. I’ve never been satisfied being the hands for other visionaries, playing songs in a cover band, or riding-bitch in a clown car.  I’ve always had a desire to collaborate on original projects that sit at the intersection of art and science.  Some people don’t believe that anyone can truly be successful unless you focus all your energy into one single craft. You’ve probably heard people say “Do one thing well”.  Well my response asks why not do many things well? It’s a matter of individual potential I suppose. The same people that preach “Do only one thing well” often perceive a multi-tasker as a Jack of all trades, master of none.  While, I do see value in being focused, I also believe that when your only tool is a hammer you will perceive all your problems as nails.  Why not strive to be a Renaissance-Man if it’s in your nature? What kind of world would we be living in if Leonardo da Vinci didn’t paint the Mona Lisa and invent the helicopter? What kind of world would this be if Benjamin Franklin didn’t create the lightening rod in addition to co-authoring the Declaration of Independence? (Discuss amongst yourselves) The point I’m trying to make is that life is not a series of forks in the road where you are forced to choose between the red pill or blue pill.  For me, life is more dynamic.

We live in a world that needs multifunctional smart-phones, swiss-army knives, 6-speed motorcycles, and athletes that have just as good of a short-game as a long-game. My professional path includes many disciplines including design, development, animation, leadership, fellowship, speaking, listening, instructing, and above all, learning.  Today, if asked “what is my tile?”, I would respond that I’m an “Interface Designer“.  What does that mean to me?

Interface Design

The planning and execution of digital interactions through words, sounds, graphics and motion to deliver compelling user experiences.

Here are a few other titles that I’ve had the awkward pleasure to be called in my modest career:

Designer
This term is too broad for me. The core meaning of “design” is to “plan” with intention and purpose. Design can be applied to any craft (fashion, music, food, graphics, architecture, etc.)  Any task that has purpose requires some degree of planning and thus some degree of design. “If you fail to plan then you must plan to fail.”

Interactive Designer
This title has historically been synonymous with “Web Designer” or “Interface Designer”, but more recently has evolved to describe the role of a user experience architect that applies behavioral sciences to the use of device interaction. Read more here »

Web Designer
Ok. Duh. This is the skill of presenting information for the internet. This title is becoming more diluted in a digital age where not every information system is connected to the internet at all times.  I think the title Web Designer should be left to spiders.

Media Designer
Media is a trendy term used by art schools to classify a curriculum that involves the “digital” arts. In the “real world” media can mean Print Media, News Media, Media Buying, Disc Media, Mass Media, and rarely relates to what someone learned in Art School Confidential.

Technical Designer
I’ve heard people use this title in a desperate attempt to describe the function of someone that understands programming but also has a keen eye for design. The problem I have with this title is that it’s redundant.  To be a designer, you have to be technical.  To me, the word “technical” implies “precision” more than “code”, and who wants a designer that isn’t precise?

Creative Technologist
While I do like this title, it’s not for me.  To me, a Creative Technologist is someone that combines a robust mix of technologies to deliver custom IT solutions.  This person is an engineer, a leader and a visionary.

Front End Developer
This title has been given to people that make sure that the data coming from the back-end gets displayed in the browser in an elegant manner. They make sure it looks as close as possible to the design comps and that users can navigate effectively. This title scares me because
project-manager types often pigeon-hole you as a “coder” if the word “Developer” is in your title.

Presentation Layer Developer
The Presentation Layer is the 6th layer of the OSI model and is a misleading title for anyone that’s not a network engineer. This term is one of the most widely misused and misunderstood titles applied to people that write html, css and javascript.

Hybrid
This title is intended for anyone that has both design and development skills. Executives may think this sounds good at first because they can pay one person for the price of two roles. This title confuses project planners and can sometimes sets expectations too high for one person to accomplish miracles in a short amount of time. Let’s face it; even hybrid cars will eventually die out when innovators manufacture a more efficient machine.

In conclusion —
My hopes are to continue influencing industry leaders to understand and accept the function of the Interface Designer. I want to help grow this discipline into a role that every team can embrace.  I want people to feel comfortable knowing what to expect from each team player. As the digital age continues to evolve so will the roles, skills and titles of future knowledge workers. My title is a moving target that works for me today.

Graffiti Analysis is an extensive ongoing study in the motion of graffiti. Custom software designed for graffiti writers creates visualizations of the often unseen motion involved in the creation of a tag. Motion data is recorded, analyzed and archived in a free and open database, 000000book.com, where writers can share analytical representations of their hand styles. All tags created in Graffiti Analysis are saved as Graffiti Markup Language (GML) files, a new digital standard used by other popular graffiti applications.

read more on BLK River »
visit Foundation Cartier »

Iconologic is a brand-design agency in Atlanta that does some excellent work for Coke, André Benjamin, and the Olympics to name a few. Their shop is located just a short bike ride away from my house. I will join this team on February 22 and will be working closely with a tight-knit team of designers and developers. My role as Interactive Designer will help bridge the gap between vision and execution for all things digital. I’m excited to start this new chapter in my life and make some magic happen with my new family.

Dear City of Atlanta,
Please pave Bellemeade Avenue. This high-traffic, two-lane bus route connects Howell Mill to Northside Drive and is in dire need of paving. This road is riddled with broken asphalt, puddles and potholes. Let’s be honest, there are better roads in Afghanistan. There have been many futile efforts by the city to patch the bad spots, but this road seems to get worse every day. It’s time to put some tax money to work and pave this highly used 1/2 mile stretch of road. Unfortunately, there’s no easy method to submit roads to get re-paved on the City of Atlanta’s website. The Report a Pothole service is inadequate at best. Nevertheless, I’m sure that Atlanta’s high-paid team of diligent researches will find my plea and resolve this issue in a timely manner.

Here are some of my favorites:

Holger Lagerfeldt Studio – Copenhagen, Denmark

Willisoundz Studio – Nashville, TN

Blackbird Studios – Nashville, TN

Amsterdam Mastering – Diemen, The Netherlands

Delta Lab – Copenhagen, Denmark

Infected Mushroom Studio – Los Angeles, CA

Infected Mushroom Studio – Los Angeles, CA

Keyboard Theatre – Singapore

Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studio – Los Angeles, CA

Simon Gogerly’s Hub Studio – London, UK

Tomas Braun home studio – Buenos Aires, Argentina

Stuart Price’s home studio – Kilburn, London

MSR Studios – New York, NY

MSR Studios – New York, NY

MSR Studios – New York, NY

Will.i.am’s Studio – Los Feliz, CA

Vibe Factory – Copenhagen, Denmark

Vibe Factory – Copenhagen, Denmark

Redshift – Essex, Connecticut

Lee Scratch Perry’s Black Ark – Kingston, Jamaica

Parliment – Portland, OR

Okia – Baltika kvartal, Tallinn

The Net Circle – Yi Chang Lu, Shanghai

Mono – Minneapolis, MN

Armchair Media – Atlanta, GA

Blend Interactive – Sioux Falls, SD

Dobla – Heerhugowaard, The Netherlands

Novan & Vesson – Coruña, Spain

JWT – New York, NY

Blu Dot – Minneapolis, MN

Greetz – Amsterdam, Holland

MetaLab – Victoria, British Colombia, Canada

Google -Stockholm, Sweden

Lab 13 – Palo Alto, CA

Sparkbase – Cleveland, OH

Adams & Knight – Avon, CT

Gensler New York, NY

Total Experience Design
Media Processing Workflow
Great user Experiences: Seamlessly Blending Technology and Design
Total Experience – A Design Methodology for Agencies
Syncing Audio, Video and Animations in Silverlight Applications
Great user Experiences: Seamlessly Blending Technology and Design
From Comp to Code: A Design Communion
Flash Skills Applied to Silverlight Design and Development
Developing Natural User Interfaces with Silverlight and WPF 4 Touch
Creating Effective Info Viz in Silverlight
Multi-touch Interaction Desin for Kiosks and Architectural Experiences
Prototyping Rich Microsoft Silverlight 4 Applications with Expression SketchFlow
Dynamic Layout and Transitions for Microsoft Silverlight 4 with Microsoft Expression Blend
Creating Great Experiences Through Collaboration

Session Abstract:
Discuss how to create innovative interface designs using Blend for Silverlight. See how to convert artwork to components with ease. Explore custom skinning, state transitions and fluid animation. Apply behaviors to change states and properties to dial in elegant interactions. This session might be your bag if you enjoy interface design, animation, xaml and no serious coding.

Vote here:
http://visitmix.com/opencallvote/Entry?entryId=LIGHTI011

IMPORTANT: You must select 5 entries for your vote to count.

Please vote for my man Roger Peters too:
http://visitmix.com/opencallvote/Entry?entryId=DEVELO061

The video below demos the dashboard and HealthVault connection, presented by Microsoft’s David Cerino at the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco.

Natasja Fourie
http://www.natasjamariafourie.com/

Seo Hiroshi
http://www.seohiroshi.com/

Jeremy Cowart
http://jeremycowart.com/

Ciril Jazbec
http://www.ciriljazbec.com/

Andrew G Hobbs
http://www.andrewghobbs.com/

Joshua Sterns
http://www.joshuastearns.com/

Simon Mark Whitten
http://www.smwphotography.co.uk/

Franziska Krieck
http://www.foob.de/

Henri Derudder
http://www.digitalic.org/portfolio/

Robin Skjoldborg
http://www.robinskjoldborg.com/

Erik Reis
http://www.erikreis.com/

Martin Chichov
http://www.chichov.com/

Saso Kos
http://www.sasokos.com/

Janis Breslin
http://www.janisbreslin.com/

Cristof Echard
http://www.cristof-echard.fr/

Moofe
http://www.moofe.com/

Fabio Lana
http://www.fabiolana.com/

Emmanuel Rouzic
http://www.emmanuelrouzic.com/

Cake Factory
http://www.cake-factory.com

Sean Kennedy Santos
http://www.sksantos.net

Vault 49
http://www.vault49.com/

Alexandra Hager
http://www.alexandrahager.com/

Rafael Assef
http://fillphotographic.com/

Jonh Wright
http://www.johnwrightphoto.com/

Timothy Hogan
http://www.timothy-hogan.com/

rw2 Studios
http://www.rw2studios.com/

When people hear the term “custom control” or “custom component” they usually assume that extra time and cost are involved in creating something custom.  Well, this is not always true.  In fact, you may actually save time by making your own UI that fits your exact need without the extra overhead.  The accordion control is a good example of a UI element where you may want to create one from scratch instead of using the default control as a starting point.  Out of the box, the accordion control does what you would expect, but skinning can be cumbersome and frustrating for designers.  You may spend a lot of time removing and replacing default skin elements,  and you don’t always see all of your content at design time, which can cause some guess work.   The accordion menu is actually pretty easy to deconstruct and emulate using states and behaviors.

view the demo
download source

So here’s how I did it:

1. In Blend, design the look and feel of your accordion menu.  Make sure you are happy with the first item in your menu before continuing further.  We will clone this first menu item to generate the others, so it’s better to get it right the first time. Add graphics, text, and whatever else you want.  After you are happy with your look and feel, add a button on a layer above your artwork and text.  You can easily make this an invisible button by editing it’s template and adjusting the alpha to 0%.  The reason we added an invisible button is so that we will be able to apply mouse events to our menu item.  Group all of these assets into a Grid.

2. You can now create each additional menu items based on your first item. Duplicate your first Grid and position each duplicate Grid below the previous.  Repeat this as many times necessary until you have reached the total number of menu items.

3. Create a state for each view of the accordion menu using the visual state manager (VSM). Create states for each expanded position for each menu item.  Add some animation between states.  After all, one of the main reasons you chose Silverlight is to provide a “rich” user experience.

4. Using behaviors, you can add the expand & collapse functionality to your menu. Add the “GoToStateAction” to each button by dragging the behavior from the Assets panel onto each button.  If you now select this behavior in the Objects-and-Timeline panel you can edit its properties.  Modify the behavior properties to define your mouse events and state targets.  I chose the “MouseEnter” event, but feel free to select from any of the event types.  Assign a target name to the user-control (which is the top-most parent container) and assign a state-name that the button should trigger.  For example, button1 will trigger state1, button2 will trigger state2, etc.

5. Now that you’ve created your menu states and added behaviors you can publish your custom accordion and preview in the browser.  Good luck!

I will be the first to admit that it takes some trial-and-error to optimize your process and technique. Patience is required, so don’t give up too soon.

If you want to see and example of a Photoshop design converted to a usable project in Expression Blend then take a look at this demo, presented for the Atlanta Silverlight Firestarter:

demo
source files

Thanks to Information Aesthetics, I stumbled upon the recent FIFA Earth visualization, showcasing more than 2 million daily soccer video games. This visualization easily demonstrates how big soccer is. I am impressed with how smooth the interface moves with such a large dataset.  Here’s what Andrew Vande Moere has to day:

Fifa Earth [easports.com] visualizes data from about 2 million FIFA 10 EA Sports football / soccer games played each day. The online “data visualizer” consists of 3 distinct live and interactive elements. “Fifa Buzz” shows recent Twitter messages that contain key words or hash-tags such as ‘Goals’, ‘Fussbal’, or ‘Soccer’, or any other number of searches such as players ‘Rooney’, ‘Benzema’, or ‘Xavi’ that relate to FIFA or football. These tweets are geo-located and time-coded and placed in real-time on a 3D football-shaped globe. “Live Competition” lists the total number of games played around the world (38 million and rising), number of goals, wins, losses, and draws, while it can also display the complete match history of every game played to date. Clicking through the “History” link of each team conveys a bar graph of past performance data. In “The World Plays”, countries are ranked accordingly to the play data.

The potential size of the visualized dataset is immense. With over 2 billion (!) video game matches played last year, resulting in about 40 millions goals scored, it brings the competitiveness of players together.

Pico is an interesting animation by visual artist Takafumi Tsuchiya featururing the Samurai Jazz Quintet (SJQ), an experimental Japanese glitch jazz group.

In other exciting news…Adobe annoucned an intersting work-around for iPhone development using Flash.

Flash Professional CS5 will enable you to build applications for iPhone and iPod touch using ActionScript 3. These applications can be delivered to iPhone and iPod touch users through the Apple App Store. A public beta of Flash Professional CS5 with prerelease support for building applications for iPhone is planned for later this year.

read more here

Diego Stocco came up with a quadruple-neck experimental instrument called “Experibass”.  To play it he uses cello and double bass bows, a device built with fishing line and hose clamps, a paintbrush, a fork, spoons, a kick drum pedal and a drum stick. Very cool!

Two of the leading 2D barcode technolgies are Microsoft Tags and JAGTAG.

Microsoft Tags are high capacity color barcode that serve websites at the snap of a photo, but you have to download the app to your phone first.  JAGTAG is a competing 2D barcode technology that does not require you to download an application prior to requesting tag’s related content.  See examples below:

Check out this animation from Google Japan demonstrating How Google Earth Works.  I like how well they are able to translate something so technical into such an easy-to-follow process.

see more here

The contemporary art museum, Fondation Cartier is currently exhibiting Grafitti Taxonomy: Paris 2009.
The project contains a repository of about 2,400 graffiti tags found in Paris France. Each tag can be explored to discover calligraphic-like similarities between individual text characters. The 10 most commonly used letters were identified for further study (i.e. A,E,I,K,N,O,R,S,T and U). From each letter grouping, 18 tags were isolated to represent the diversity and range of that specific character.

I just saw this behind-the-scenes footage today, but it has been up for about 3 months.  What you’re seeing is two typographers, Pierre & Damien, and a pro race pilot, Stef van Campenhoudt, collaborating to design a font with a car.  The car movements were tracked using a custom software, designed by interactive artist Zachary Lieberman.

Download the font here »
More pictures here »

Paco Rouge original:
Paco Rouge

Also, for fun, I mashed up a few additional sample tracks to experiment with different soundscapes. Featured artists include Yeasayer, Young Jeezy, Bower Birds, Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, A R Rahman, Of Montreal, and Radiohead.

Paco Rouge remix:
Paco Remix

• Create a version of Blend that can be installed on OS X.
• The ability to use tracking & kerning in typography.
• Allow a way to enable anti-aliasing through the interface (not just with xaml).
• Some sort of “Paste in Place” feature so I can paste an item into a grid without it inheriting its same margins from before. Instead it would past into a place that is visually the same as where it was. Meaning that the margins would have to auto calculate themselves to their new values.
• Allow users to drag project assets from any directory to any other directory inside the projects panel.  I can do this in Visual Studio but not in Blend.
• Allow the ability to export different file types from blend (jpg, png, wmv, mp4, etc.)
• Allow the 3D rotate tool to be manipulatable on objects on the stage instead of only the tiny orb icon in the 3D rotate panel.
• When creating custom styles Blend should promote using Resource Dictionaries by default to help generate cleaner and more maintainable xaml.
• When deleting items from an xaml control that uses a resource dictionary for it’s style, Blend should prompt a dialog asking “Do you also want to delete related style in resource dictionary?”  This will help reduce the amount of unnecessary generated xaml.
• Support for expanding and collapsing XAML nodes in the Blend code editor (Similar to Visual Studio).
• Set default border and stroke thickness to “0″ instead of “1″. (Why assume I want to have strokes by default?)
• It would be nice to have a “yes to all” option when re-loading files edited outside of Blend.  (It’s not very fun having to click the “yes” button 20 times everytime I do a svn update).
• Allow users to create their own keyboard shortcuts.
• Rectangles and Ellipses should not be organized with Controls.  They should be treated as “Shapes”.
• Combine Find and Replace into the same display window.
• Allow Find & Replace support for fonts, colors, and bitmaps. (not just text).
• Show total number of occurrences for find-and-replace when executing “replace all”.
• Add the ability for Shift+F3 to find previous result.
• Have a “wrap search” option for find and replace instead of only “Up” and “Down”.
• Allow negative values for text Line Height (currently throws a catastrophic failure).
• When drawing a line allow the user to hold the shift key and draw a perfect horizontal or vertical line.
• Be able to click and drag to select multiple keyframe on the animation timeline (like After Effects).  It’s not very fun to select 20 keyframes by having to shift+click 20 times.
• Enable proportional scaling on shapes and objects when holding the shift key.
  Ability to lock units to whole numbers (not having a zillion decimal places).
• Combine the “Translate Transform” and “Center Point” tabs into the same panel.  They serve a very similar purpose, and it’s currently confusing that these features are separated.
• Show a visual indicator on the stage for the Transform property “center of rotation”.
• In the Objects and Timeline panel, allow the ability to select/deselect multiple eyeball or lock icons in a single mouse stroke. (like Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, InDesign, After Effects, etc.)
• Be able to select and copy text from the results panel.
• The ability to double click a control to navigate into it’s template.
• Display a ruler so i can measure things in Blend.
• Add the ability to display guides so that I can visually align elements easier.
• Be able to show and hide the date picker user control in Blend.

The Atlanta Silverlight community came together to share tools, tips, and tricks of the trade for the 1st Annual Firestarter.  In addition to several notable local Atlanta presenters, we were also lucky to have the support of Tim Heuer from Arizona and Rob Zelt from North Carolina.  This was my first debut on the Microsoft circuit and my first time presenting an Expression Blend lesson.  I shared a session with Smarty Pants presenting “Lighting Up the UI”, which explores skinning custom interfaces, designer-developer workflows, animation techniques, and the visual state manager.

Lighting up the UI demo links:

view slides
view demo
download source

Virtual gravity is an interface between digital and analog world. Virtual data can be transported from a loading screen to an analog scale. Search terms can be weighed physically and compared. Digital data get an actual physical existence and become a sensually tangible experience.

Here is a short little film that I helped create recently for the Atlanta 24 Hour Film Race.

This was truly an honor to get to work with such a great group of people.

Team:
Zach Cowan: Director, Camera Op, Video Editor
Edgardo Santiago: Executive Producer, Audio Design
Holly Simpson: Writer
Art Director: Marisa Riojas
Jaimie Moore: Acting
Charles Barbour: Acting
Barry Bond: Composer
Stefan Sokal: Motion Design
Mason Brown: Lighting, Acting, Motion Design

Here are a few quotes to further illustrate some of the passionate oppositions recently published from both Flash and Silverlight platform advocates:

Flash platform advocate: published by: Jan Ozer

“…Microsoft needs Silverlight to succeed far more than most companies need Silverlight. From a marketing perspective, that’s like pushing the back end of a rope in the hopes that you’ll drive the front end in the target direction. It almost never happens.”

“If Microsoft dropped Silverlight tomorrow, most web site owners and ‘Netizens’ wouldn’t even notice, or care if they did.”

“Flash caught on because it provided design functionality that HTML couldn’t match and solved problems that no other technology could. It succeeded because website designers, developers and owners wanted it, not because Adobe needed it.”

Silverlight platform advocate: published by Alex Vanderberg

“The cost of delivering complex business functionality with Silverlight is likely to be significantly less than doing so with Flash/Flex.”

“Actionscript 3, as an object oriented language it lacks many features Java or .NET developers will take for granted.”

“Flash/Flex developers have years of experience of making good looking applications, but they don’t always write solid maintainable code. This is understandable, given the lack of enterprise Flex projects there have been to this point.”

For a more unbiased comparison read the article Flash vs. Silverlight: What Suits Your Needs Best? from Smashing Magazine.

The visual pattern 555 KUBIK is an expression of geometry and aesthetics through graphics and movement. This particular street projection is a perfect example of how motion graphics projected onto cityscapes can be powerful and engaging. I only wished that I could have seen this one in person.

Production: Urbanscreen

Art Direction: Daniel Rossa

I’ve been working in Expression Blend for a couple months, and I can definitely say that I’ve
“seen the light“. Sure, there are a few bugs for Microsoft to iron out, but I can certainly say the same thing for Adobe’s Flash. I’m not necessarily trading teams over to Microsoft, but I do enjoy the excitement of learning a new tools. The 3D animations and states are pretty nice and is very similar to what Adobe is doing with Flash Catalyst. While I still actively pursue flash-based rich media projects, it is an exciting time to explore Silverlight because of the large opportunity to take over market. Silverlight and Blend are so new that many interactive designers are reluctant to take the leap. Hopefully, more designers will start exploring Silverlight.

I’ve recently teamed up with the Atlanta Silverlight community, organized primarily by Corey Schuman, in hopes to get more people involved. We just recently launched SilverlightAtlanta.net, the online presence for the Atlanta Silverlight User Group. (The site’s theme is designed by yours truly.) This user group is an informal blend of developers and designers in the Atlanta metropolitan area interested in learning more about the Silverlight platform and its relative tools. The Atlanta Silverlight Meetup Group is free to join, and typically meets on the 3rd Thursday of every month. Check out the Meetup.com page to find out full event details.

If you have interest in becoming a part of The Atlanta Silverlight Meetup Group, or have any questions about the group, please visit our forums or consider coming out to the next scheduled meetup – we would love to see you there!

This animated infographic movie highlights the increasing tendency of food importation, and how this phenomenon influences the economy, the environment and our neighborhoods. The message is mainly meant for Canadians, but certainly applies universally.

read more project details

watch video here

Synethesia is defined as:

A neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.

This sensation is beautifully conceived in the short film Synethesia created by the directing duo Ian Kibbey and Corey Creasey, known collectively as Teri Timely. This short film is an incredible sensory mix-up of hearing colors, tasting words and reading sounds.

watch it here

This article takes the position that although technical skills are important, emotional intelligence is essential for effective leadership. What is emotional intelligence? According to Daniel Goleman, it’s made up of five components–self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill.

Click here to read the article summary by Matt Snow

The graphics above display the adoption of Flash player versions 6 through 10, as well as it’s feature adoption over time. Flash 10, along with rich-media competitor Silverlight V.2, were released in October of 2008. Flash 10 already has an adoption at roughly 75% of all internet users, while Microsoft’s Silverlight is still under 20% adoption.

This $14k system ($3k for each DVJ-1000 “turntable” and $8k for the SVM-1000 Mixer) allows you to mix DVD content, live camera feeds, set cue-points, and integrate beat-sensitive visuals effects in real-time. The mixer supports up to 4 av channels and the touchscreen gives you the instant power to manipulate video and audio with ease. This gear would have been a nice addition to my rig during my VJ & Light Jockey days at Capital City.

Reuben Margolin creates totally singular techno-kinetic wave sculptures using everything from wood to cardboard to found and salvaged objects. Focusing on natural elements like a discrete water movements, his work is elegant and hypnotic. You can see more wave sculptures at his site.

When I’m not rocking out to the instrumental scores of Mastodon‘s recent album Crack the Skye, I keep the groove fueled with the help of the fine fellows over at Disco Dust.  Other gems that have been inspirational of these past several weeks is Dan Deacon, Sin Fang Bous, The Dodos, and The Season Standard. If you like that kind of stuff then you should check out what the guys at Black Cab Sessions are up to. This site serves up over 50 rad one-take cab recording sessions from a few pretty outstanding groups. I am excited to see more channels for good music such as the Black Cab Session as well as the Take Away Shows, which also spontaneously records bands in parks, streets, and elevators. I like the spirit of curating rare moments of musical bliss.  I have hope for the future of the modern musical landscape. Good will overcome evil in the battle against sharing and spreading music thanks to everyone who makes it more accessible for the rest of us.

Keep up the good work and keep the tunes coming!

This pretty incredible light-art is created mostly with LED and Lasers.

produced by: Hack n Mod

Check out this hawt showreel for the SprintCam HD made by i-MOVIX. These shots capture video at 1000FPS, and are mostly recorded in  Stade de France, Paris.

Jesse Warden, seasoned developer and Atlanta native, shares his interesting perspective on the current climate for Flash and Flex work in the 2009 marketplace. Among many factors, shifting budgets have led to false starts on projects and result in devs having to look for new work to fill the void. His metrics include job offers during the month of March as well as the ratio of employers asking for candidates vs. the amount of candidates asking for opportunities.  Although it is no surprise that these are tough times for even seasoned veterans, he ends on this positive note of encouragement:

“If you do Flash or Flex work, keep your chin up. While slow, things are pretty decent all things considered.”

In addition, I am optimistic that the future will unfold a creative revolution fueled by the marriage of great ideas and solid execution. Volatility in the marketplace presents challenges as well as opportunities and 2009 will be the year that defines a decade by setting an important benchmark for the next generation of an eager industry.

The short film World Builder is about a man who builds a world for the woman he loves with a sophisticated set of holographic tools. This movie, by Bruce Branit, was shot in a single day followed by 2 years of post production.

Hello Monday is a boutique design show located in Denmark that does some hot print and web work. I love the approach to displaying their work as stacked strips of images. I also like that they display a radial color pallet for each project.

New York based shop, The Egg Republic, promotes their work with this slick new site. The parallaxed interface, 3D transitions, and hot motion reel are a few of the site’s impressive features.

Flickr Clock [flickr.com] created by Stamen is a visual browser for the videos that people have recently started uploading to the site. The videos are arranged chronologically, and drawn from videos that people have posted to the flickrclock group on flickr.

The bottom of the interface allows users to scroll back and forth in time, so one can get a broader sense of what the community has recently been posting.

Microsoft Surface Financial Services application is a joint development between Microsoft and Razorfish. It is an innovative and engaging solution to present banking products to customers within a rich multi-touch experience.

It is the first application to receive the official Surface certification and is now available on the Surface partner community site.

view more Razorfish Surface demos

Lee Brimelow, from Adobe, has been promoting Adobe’s Creative Suite-4 by arranging scavenger hunts all over the world called “dead drops”. The idea behind the dead-drop is that Lee plants a series of clues to lead people to where he has planted a copy of the CS4 Master Collection (valued at $2,499). The latest dead-drop has targeted London. The first clue is revealed by clicking on a hidden link on the last period in his announcement. This link loads a wav file, which is just a bunch of noise. So to inspect further I opened the wav file in Soundbooth and analyzed the spectral frequency display (shown above). This display mode allows you to see a visual message inside of the audio wavform. The message is simply a URL along with a username and password. After browsing to the URL and entering the username and password to authenticate the website provides GPS coordinates and says “Get a coffee and look out the window.” The site also has input fields with a submit button, so I imagine that there’s another clue visible through the window of a London coffee shop that’s supposed to be entered into the web page….and then more clues? I don’t know how far you have to chase clues to get to the treasure at the end of the rainbow, but clever scavenger hunt so far. I am certainly impressed with the “audio painting” to deliver his first clue. Apparently audio painting can be done using a program to convert pictures into sound. This process translates each pixel color and position into an audio frequency. Talk about a cryptic data visualization.

General Electric’s “Ecomagination” campaign just released a new site – Plug Into the Smart Grid. This interactive experience is a seamless mix of 3D graphics, animations, data visualizations and educational content. To add to the already rich and interesting content, the site also uses some augmented reality techniques to allow users another way to interact with the site.

here are some screenshots of the site’s data visualizations :
pie chart
preloaders
interactive map
bar chart

Universe in ’09 celebrates curiosity and creativity with a dynamic look at the very best ideas that give us reason for optimism in 2009.

You may also get a kick out of the ascii art if you view-source

The LightScraper is a custom built aluminum structure, fabricated with a layer or semi translucent mesh. The structure can be easily erected in various compositions in an outdoor or indoor setting.

A single computer and two projectors are used to bring the sculptures visuals to life. The LightScraper also acts as a giant musical instrument, people’s location influence the melodies emitting form the sculpture.

Visitors position are tracked via an Infrared camera mounted at the peak of the structure, and transposed into musical notes, the result is ever-changing melodies and visual delight.

more info here

Synoptic is a 3D interactive infographic based on a meteorological data set from Augsburg, Germany. Users can select environmental attributes to explore, alter time-spans, and detect patterns over time on a three-dimensional line graph landscape.

site by: We Ain’t Plastic

This demo was built with the FLARToolkit by Japanese developer Saqoosha. The shape recognition library is used in conjunction with the video camera to create a very unique interactive experience.

2008 has finally come to an end I feel very lucky to have seen so many good concerts this year. The music gods have certainly been generous in providing such good tours, line-ups, venues and new releases to bring joy to my ears and eyes all year long. Some of the most memorable concerts were Russian Circles at the Drunken Unicorn, Radiohead at Lakewood, Fleet Foxes at Millennium Park, Of Montreal at the Tabernacle and the stellar grand-finale with Eskmo, Welder, Telepath, and Bonobo at the Masquerade on my birthday/New Years Eve. The shows already look pretty bleak for 2009 so I may be forced to save more money this year. However, if I could wish to see any artists that I didn’t get to see this year it would be awesome to catch Sigur Ros, The Foals, Tracer AMC, or God is An Astronaut. Until then I’ll continue checking out new tunes on Last FM, MySpace, Pitchfork, Disco Dust, and Big Stereo.

So here’s my 2008 concert round-up. Other than maybe one or two opening acts, this should be a pretty comprehensive list:

A Hawk and a Hacksaw
All Night Drug Prowling Wolves
Atlas Sound
Boban and Marko Marchovic Orchestra
Bonobo
Deer Hunter
Dubconcious
Early Day Miners
Eskmo
Explosions in the Sky
Fleet Foxes
Future Ape Tapes
Gentleman Jesse and His Men
Headcases
Icy Demons
Les Claypool
Mars Volta
Mogwai
Morning Benders
Of Montreal
Ra Ra Riot
Radiohead
Russian Circles
Secret Chiefs
Sorry No Ferrari
Telepath
The Most Serene Republic
TV on the Radio
Walter Meego
Welder
Yeasayer

Having a wonderful time at Zach’s Mountain house in North Carolina. Eat drink and be merry is the flow of things here. The mountain air is fresh and the food is plentiful. Dish-washing champions Emily, Elisa & Courtney tackle dishes with the greatest of ease.

see more fun times here

The 2008 IQ Interactive holiday site is live! We had a lot of fun making this site and are proud of the results. The Merry Match game got 560 unique visits during the first day it went live, and it hasn’t yet been emailed out to our clients and mailing lists. In fact, we noticed such a unexpected spike in traffic that we had to deploy the site on a CDN at the last minute. Be sure to check out all of the custom holiday tunes in the sound menu. There are 12 total songs and 4 categories to toggle through.

Play Merry Match

Watch My Video

Watch All Videos

[edit]  The e-blast was emailed out Monday December 8 and got over 900 unique visits before 10 AM!!

Japanese TV station WOWOW has a feature on their site that lets you mix a video of a live Radiohead performance from the Saitama Super Stadium leg of their 2008 Japanese tour. This online music video mix tool is accompanied by an interesting set of data visualizations.

The video interface allows you to choose from 12 color-coded cameras to record your own “rainbow” (the song 15 Step is the opening track from Radiohead’s In Rainbows album). You can then play back your edit by clicking and dragging the playhead in the timeline, or view charts of the most popular shots.

create your own rainbow

This fun infographic video takes a look at powering batteries with sugar.
Nice work by Apollo Pony

download PDF

read more at the Digital Design blog

Photographer Lyndon Wade not only has some hawt post-production skills, but also has some big name clients. His portfolio has some interesting subject matter along with complete narratives within each image . The site navigation is simple and intuitive. I like that each photograph is deep-linkable so that I can send a single shot to a friend.

view portfolio

Sprint’s widget mosaic attempts to document the “now” . The interface resembles the iGoogle portal concept with a flash face-lift. The data is visualized with tiny bar charts, live camera feeds, data counters and various iconography presenting topics ranging from “Top words being used online”, “World energy consumption” to “Money being spent online” and “People stuck in elevators”.

The UNIQLO TRY experiment gathers video responses from a couple hundred Japanese women about bra size, makeup, and shopping and put it into a 3D world of short video clips. Questions appear at the top, you get a few random video responses, and then the animation zooms out to show you the rundown. The result is a mind-blowing interactive data visualization. It appears they are also producing another visualization soon with the results of the Heat Tech experiment.

experience UNIQLO Try

Nice agency site… Located in Montreal and Amsterdam, Sid Lee is a multidisciplinary creative advertising agency specializing in branding. Their online presence offers an approachable experience that effectively reflects the company’s ideals and process. The site also does a nice job of condensing all of their areas of expertise into a cohesive central product offering. Professional yet fun.

This recent ad from BMW combines video, typography, motion graphics, and some pretty slick data visualizations to execute a sophisticated little piece of eye candy. Oh, did I mention it features Michael Phelps!

watch the ad

read about the team & process

Project 7-7 is a new installation from the Belgian artist and photographer Wim Tellier, featuring six blow ups to complete one of the largest photography exhibitions in the world. The final installation will be photographed from the air seven times from seven different angles, covering the area of nearly 3 hectares (30,000 square meters). The website showcases the six photo-collages in an interactive gallery, while also promoting viewers to purchase segments from this massive installation.

Visit Project 7-7
site by These Days

Can it make someone gasp or cry?
Does it feel as special as a love letter?
Does it truly represent our time?
Will it still feel relevant in 25 years?
Does it say something that’s never been said before?
Does it compare to the masterpieces of other mediums?
Could it have gone further?

read more

Luke Budda

The interactive music & video experience from Luke Buda is an amazing display of sci-fi, folk-pop, imagination and delicious colors. The website Luke Buda was designed and developed by the New Zeland interactive agency Resn, and was recently featured on FWA. This is one of the cleanest integrations of 3D imagery, animation, sound, and video in a seamless experience I’ve ever seen. Luke Budda is the best thing since White Gold.

Intersections and diagrams are assembled to form a grand ‘association-chain-massacre’. which challenges itself to answer all questions of the universe and some more. Of course, it totally fails this assignment, but in its failure it still manages to produce some magical nuance and shades between the great topics death, cable tv, emotions and hamsters.

Lapin’s illustrations appealing retro-style, vibrant colors, experimental type, and layered textures are truly an inspiration to sketch outside the box. The loosely drawn sketches combined with precise detail present approachable illustrations that are both progressive and refreshing.

View more of Lapin’s work:
self-promotional site
notebook sketches
portfolio

The installation entitled The Nine Planets Wanted! , designed by ZAGO is being presented at the United Nations lobby September 9 – October 5.

The initiative launches the campaign One Planet One Chance, “allowing visitors to physically experience abstract data related to global warming and take measure of the inverse relationship between responsibility for climate change and vulnerability to its impact.”

Using key facts and figures from the 2007/2008 UNDP Human Development Report, the installation consists of 12 monumental beanbags (made from car interior remnants, natch), representing a comparative view of carbon dioxide volumes emitted around the world. (The largest of these beanbags is 9 feet tall!)

read more

Joshua Sterns
http://www.joshuastearns.com/

Natasja Fourie
http://www.natasjamariafourie.com/

Simon Mark Whitten
http://www.smwphotography.co.uk/

Franziska Krieck
http://www.foob.de/

Henri Derudder
http://www.digitalic.org/portfolio/

Robin Skjoldborg
http://www.robinskjoldborg.com/

Erik Reis
http://www.erikreis.com/

Martin Chichov
http://www.chichov.com/

Saso Kos
http://www.sasokos.com/

Janis Breslin
http://www.janisbreslin.com/

Cristof Echard
http://www.cristof-echard.fr/

Moofe
http://www.moofe.com/

Fabio Lana
http://www.fabiolana.com/

Emmanuel Rouzic
http://www.emmanuelrouzic.com/

Cake Factory
http://www.cake-factory.com

Sean Kennedy Santos
http://www.sksantos.net

Vault 49
http://www.vault49.com/

Alexandra Hager
http://www.alexandrahager.com/

Rafael Assef
http://fillphotographic.com/

This music video directed by OneInThree for ‘Wild Beasts’ second single of their debut album ‘Limbo Panto’ is a mesmerising & hypnotic tour de force. It pioneers an amazing mind bending visual technique called the ‘Droste Effect’ which is based on an uncompleted lithograph that Escher made in 1956. The maths behind the lithograph was so complicated that Escher was unable to finish the centre of the picture and so left it blank. OneInThree developed the technique from Josh Sommers code so that it could be applied to moving images and apart from a grade & online at The Mill did all the VFX themselves.

We came, we saw, we conquered! Dragoncon was a blast. I’ll have to say, that I had the most fun visiting the comic artist booths. It was pretty inspiring to see such a high concentration of talented illustrators and painters under one roof. I was excited to meet the guys from Atlanta-based Studio Revolver, and also got to meet the maker of Weapon Brown.

More fun at Helpthehoneybees.com

Vision, Offerings, News, Press, Awards, Jobs, Fluid Navigation, Impressive Work

G2 STUDIO – http://www.g2studio.net/index.php

• clean agency overview – (news, press,  jobs, vision, etc.)
• modular portfolio

SENSISOFT – http://www.sensisoft.com/

• portfolio

VAULT49 – http://www.vault49.com/

• portfolio

BBH – http://www.bartleboglehegarty.com/

• Strong content in portfolio
• sort options – (chronologically, alphabetically, by media, awarded)

DESIGN BOLAGET – http://www.designbolaget.dk/Default.aspx

• portfolio – big type, huge pictures, fullscreen nav & preloader
• top-ten list of what music they currently dig

X3 STUDIOS – http://www.x3studios.com/en/

• portfolio slideshow
• create your own wallpaper (truly interactive agency site)

KEAL INTERACTIVE – http://www.keal.com.br/v1/#/home/

• clear offerings – “what we do”
• fullscreen portfolio

FROM SCRATCH – http://www.fromscratch.us/#/home

• client extranet
• fullscreen video
• awards

4060 – http://www.4060.com.ar/

• offerings clearly outlined
• portfolio

CRITICAL MASS – http://beta.criticalmass.com/

• careers
• vision
• portfolio
• news
• offerings
• experience

DEVEIN – http://www.dvein.com/

• portfolio

MCBD – http://www.mcbd.co.uk/

• news
• approach
• portfolio

SEYMOUR POWELL – http://www.seymourpowell.com/

• vision
• new
• awards

SAIZEN MEDIA STUDIOS – http://www.saizenmedia.com/nightwish/

• portfolio

VARY WELL – http://www.varywell.com/

• portfolio

ANIMAL LOGIC – http://www.animallogic.com/#Home

• news
• vision
• careers
• client
• extranet
• history
• case studies

more agencies here –>

interactive_shortlist_2008

The clothing design company Closed GMBH, based in Hamburg Germany, recently launched a new site for their 2008/2009 collection. I am impressed with the fast load times, fluid navigation control, and intuitive interface in this seamless, full-screen experience.

check it out

visit G2 Studio

Coke Zero has done it again with the latest interactive promotion “Trust Your Buds“. The idea is to teach your virtual taste buds what’s good or bad. By playing the animated flash game you can unlock tasty content by using your onscreen tongue to grab targeted items, and are rewarded by scoring a good time. There are 3 levels, plus a bonus level. Overall, the Coke-Zero campaign continues to exemplify how an abstract execution of product promotion can be fun, rewarding, and effective. The aggressive Coke Zero campaign, lead by sites such as CocacolaZero.com and The Coke Zero Game, already challenge expectations of the typical beverage experience.

I also appreciate the explicit site requirements listed in the page footer. It’s a simple and polite way to raise the bar for your user-base, while also exposing your target audience…

Needed to play Trust your Buds are as follows:
broadband connection, Flash Version – 9.0.45, CPU: Min 3.0GHz Pentium 4, 1GB RAM, and allow pop ups. Have fun!

This animated movie illustrates a 1969 interview of John Lennon by a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan. The video was also nominated for an Oscar for “Best Animated Short” at the 2008 Academy Awards.

Armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, Jerry snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto & convinced him to do an interview about peace. using the original interview recording as the sole soundtrack, the movie titled “I Met the Walrus” suspends a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation.

It is rare that you see unique restaurant concept anymore. I am excited to discover “The Modern Toilet”, a restaurant in Taipei Taiwan. It accommodates 100 seats with each made from toilet bowls. The specialties at the restaurant accompany sink faucets and gender-coded ‘WC ‘ signs that appear on the three-story structure. The food is served in mini plastic toilet bowls. The toilet rolls that serve for wiping hand and mouth are hung above the tables, which may resemble glass-topped jumbo bathtubs.

more photos

Fontpark is the latest experience from the master, Yugo Nakamura. There is some pretty subtle, yet powerful interactions with each character.

One strength of mine is that I am usually extremely aware of my surroundings. This skill often serves useful when someone nearby needs help, or when there is good information to be learned peripherally. However, this awareness becomes a curse when I’m trying to work and there are too many distractions around me. One of the most distracting things is when others are goofing off when I’m trying to stay focused. The harder I try to focus, the more distracted I sometimes become. Sure, that sounds pretty typical of anyone, but lately I’ve been overwhelmed by others wasting valuable time to socialize, play games, and surf-the-web for extended periods, when it’s all I can to just to keep up with my workload. It nearly mocks all of my effort when other people spend a fraction of the energy I do and still get rewarded the same. It’s down-right offensive to hinder the productivity of others without good reason. If you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem. It’s especially frustrating when I see smart, talented people completely waste their potential on trivial entertainment, and instant gratifications. It drains my energy when I get too much interference from selfish takers only concerned with being comfortable, entertained, and treated special. Most people around me treat privileges as rights, and don’t look to make things better for themselves and others through hard work.

I stay humbled by seeing the constant flow of innovative art, science, and ideas generated every day by other people around the world, and find inspiration to keep working to hard so that I may also contribute greatness to the legacy of my generation. However, It’s difficult to lead a meaningful and productive career with constant distraction, and little support. Being an interactive designer/developer is hard enough without people working against you.