Design Exploration of marketing and print companies

I started in graphic design over 20 years ago, when all graphic artists worked in print. I have experience with silkscreen, offset, litho, flexography, rotogravure, and web printing. Even though I now work digitally, almost 95% of my work ends up in print. Therefore it is no wonder I am drawn to companies that have a strong print background. For my design exploration I have chosen two companies that have strong print backgrounds, but have decided to have their web sites developed using Flash.

The Curiosity Group is a creative marketing agency based in Portland, Oregon, with strong roots in traditional print media, but has adapted their approach to include digital media. The interface of their site is simple, and whimsical using a flying elephant as a pre-loader, and other seemingly non-sequitor images that reside on the pages.

The core philosophy of Curiosity Group is to combine passion, creativity, and humanity to the projects they work on. This is evident by some of the non-client projects they produce that promote the green movement.

The Curiosity Group produces both traditional print media and digital media for clients as diverse as Apple, Microsoft, Disney, Dreamworks, HP, Nike, CBS, the LPGA, and Flash music videos for bands. They also maintain a blog called killedthecat.com (as in curiosity killed the cat) that details many of the ongoing projects at Curiosity Group.

The one drawback to their site is that is very heavy on graphic content, and the pre-loader takes forever before you are redirected to the page you want. Be prepared to be patient, even if you have a broadband connection.

Chromozone is a large format display printer, producing graphic displays for tradeshows, point-of-purchase displays, and retail signage located in the UK. They started out as a photographic printing specialist. Going digital in 1992 they expanded their business to become a color bureau service provider in 1993.

The Chromozone site is quite intriguing using color, shapes, and movement to draw you in to explore. The site has a traditional menu layout across the top, but that ‘s the only thing traditional about it. The site has more of a game-like feel about it. It even utilizes an overview in the lower-left corner that helps you know where your mouse is in relation to the ever-moving links on the page. Each time you visit a new page the transitions draw you in with an explosion of color, shapes, transparency, and depth. Just moving the mouse around gives you the sense that you are free-floating, or swimming.

Chromozone uses high-end large format printers to produce displays for their clients, and they have produced a high-end Flash site that is fun to play with, and their site is cutting edge just like their printers.

Jeff Ryan

Tin Man

I chose to do my design exploration on a web site that promotes the movie Tin Man. This visually stimulating and effective web site features the artistic visions of nine acclaimed international artists in collaboration that brings to life the world of L. Frank Baum’s classic adventure, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Unlike anything the author imagined a century ago, the artistic realm portrayed in Tin Man is much farther over the rainbow than ever before. Tin Man is boldly re-imagined for the new millennium with a darkly menacing world populated by wicked sisters, cowardly psychics, brain-drained inventors and a menagerie of other fantastical inhabitants.

When first entering the web site you’re immediately sucked into this twister that continuously draws you into this beautifully, different universe. I think the web site conveys exactly what’s it’s meant to. It’s easy to navigate around in and give you control of everything you see. Its beaucoup of information on characters, plot, scenes, and even the acclaimed nine international artists is not only coupled with information, sound, and visuals but also small movie clips as well. I really think the web site was developed beautiful in sync with and for the movie.

Monster Lab

I chose my second design exploration on a web site design for a brand new action RPG (role-playing game) for the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS called Monster Lab. Monster Labs web site & game, developed by Backbone Entertainment and published by Eidos, in my opinion, are targeted to more of a younger age group of children and teens.

In the web sites supernatural world, an evil scientist, Baron Mharti rules the region with a cruel hand. The player takes on the role of an apprentice scientist who must perform a vast array of intricate experiments to create their very own monster from over 150 monster parts offered. Taking control of their monster, the player can then explore the land; searching for ingredients to make more monster parts, hunting out other monsters to defeat in combat, uncovering quests to embark upon or simply competing in the numerous mini-games available.

I think the easy to comprehend instructions; the addictive games themselves, accompanied with the look & visual effects of the site really draw the youth in and entice them to go out and buy the game.

Design Exploration

I chose Freedom of the Seas website and Steven Wolf's website for my Design Exploration.

http://www.freedomoftheseas.com/ Freedom of the Seas has many features that are very interactive. Such as when you are looking at the boat with the magnifying glass, when you move over it, the magnifying glass reveals what is behind the glass. The loader appears to be a movie clip that loads what seems to be water in an anchor. There are many movie clips that are integrated within the webpage and the buttons you can click on. When you click on certain buttons it appears to be a tween that makes the image/background appear to fade in. Making interactive websites like this keeps customers and consumers involved in what is being presented and not becoming bored with what they are looking at.

http://stevenewolf.com/ Steven Wolf is friend of a friend. His website has many interactive options. When you open the website music starts to play. The buttons when you rollover them pop out and over to the right. There are a lot of movies and pictures that coincide with the buttons you can click which will keep users interested in what this person has to offer.

Design Exploration: Simon At Palm Place

The restaurant website at http://www.simonatpalmsplace.com/ is a full Flash website, using flash to call movies from the navigation menu, similar to our next mini-project. The website uses high quality photography to create a "super-hip, sophisticated" brand for the restaurant, with gorgeous artsy photographs of delicious food plates along with a puzzling but fascinating photo of the scantily-clad restaurateur looking a little like Angelina Jolie in a dominatrix role. The navigation features a gallery of highly artsy, appealing food photos along with more extreme attitude, scantily-clad woman. In the end, you can't help but wonder whether the owners are fabulously whimsical with a tongue-in-cheek portrayal of "simply irresistible" food and woman, or perhaps they are just entirely too full of themselves. In either event, I have no doubt that you would be drawn to this restaurant if you hope to mingle with the spectacularly chic and talented.

The navigation of the website is very simple and appealing. The imagery is "clean", attractive and creates a strong sense of place. The quality of the photography implies sophistication and high quality food and service. The incongruent photos of men and women in pink beehive hairdoes lounging poolside outside the restaurant create an allure that makes the viewer want to go there, if only just once, to see if it's really as hip as it implies. The website provides all the basic information needed for someone who would like to eat or drink at the restaurant, but the photography and attitude is the real story here.

Design Exploration: F1.com and Thnlizzyonline.com

F1.comThe Formula One website was the first example I looked at for my Design Exploration. The site is a combination of both HTML and Flash. The overall look of the site is sleek and strait forward with menus being easily identifiable and readable. The site is made to sell the brand that is Formula One, though F1 is a racing series it has the image of being the pinnacle of racing around the world. It is the most expensive, luxurious and competitive racing series around and so the site tries to sell this idea. The site design is geared toward people already slightly familiar with Formula One to some extent but there is a section for introducing newcomers to the sport. There are data bases for statistics about individual races, teams, drivers, seasons, and tracks. Another big part of the site is the pictures it hosts. Because Formula One is just as much about performance as it is looks there are hundreds of picture galleries and thousands of pictures as well as videos a visitor can go through. The only problem I have with the design of the site is the complete lack of color. though there are color highlights the site is 90% gray scale and so sometimes feels drab especially when looking at sections where there is little color highlighting.

Thinlizzyonline.com
I was listening to Thin Lizzy on Youtube while writing the first part of this Exploration so as a joke I decided it would be fun to look at their website. I was presently surprised at what I found. I was expecting to find some botched FrontPage job. What I found was a well designed, sleek, easily navigable website that showed off all you wanted to know and did so through an extremely interactive Flash 10 design. The site uses the new 3D elements incorporated into Flash to have many turning menus and rotating scenes. The color choices are indicative of both the time Thin Lizzy came up in during the 70's and 80's and even of today. The site has a bit of the iTunes look with primary colors and the bubble feel that do make it feel a bit too cute for a band like Thin Lizzy though. Overall the design is very well thought out and there is really nothing that is glaringly wrong with the design.

Design Exploration

  

  I have decided to research Twix.com as well as Billabong.com for my design exploration. Starting with Twix.com, I choose this site because of it's large scale high def video game experience. 

 

 While visiting another site I saw a banner ad that intrigued me to check it out.  I had remembered the goofy ad of the dorky guy who runs into the good looking girl at the party and has to stuff a twix in his mouth while he came up with correct answer to give the good looking girl to get her back to his house.  I thought it was kind of funny so I clicked the ad and entered the Twix.com website.  When I arrived I noticed that there was an interesting preloader of one of the main characters chewing a twix.  I found that to be funny and somewhat entertaining, the downside is that you have to watch him while the game loads for about 2 minutes.  Once the game finally loaded the video begins and puts you into a situation of getting the girl back to your house.  At a certain point the conversation leads to a question of saying the right thing in order get the girl home.

  The Designer faced a few issues while creating this production.  Number one they had to display a large scale high definition video on the web, this causes long loading times, and in some situations freezing.  The overall design of the site was very simple, using various movie clip pre-loaders and stop actions to achieve the goal of this game.  I found it to be simple and effective but difficult to load for those with out a fast internet connection.

  Billabong.com uses flash to represent their entire line of products and media.  The design is very complex and uses various movieclips and background images to spice up their presence on the internet.  I would imagine that the designer had a lot of brainstorming and an entire team of designers to complete the production of this website.  The general design of the site remains the same throughout the site but new movie clips and pre-loaders are engaged when navigating through the various pages.  

  In conclusion if I were to choose between the two designs I would choose Billabong.com because it seems to have more effectiveness.  I felt like I wanted to purchase Billabong products after visiting their site which makes it a success.

Design Exploration: Disney.com

The Disney channel website, Disney.com, is home to all of the Disney Channel shows. After watching my little sister (who is 10) check out this website almost every day, I thought it worth writing an exploration on.

On first loading the page, there’s plenty to look at and plenty of choices on where your next click will be. In addition to Disney.com’s own navigation, there is graphical navigation across the top of the page for some of Disney’s top shows and movies. I find it cool that when you hover on each one, they “pop” forward in an animation and their scheduled air-time/more information is displayed across the bottom of the graphic. Also, clicking on each will take you to the home page for its respective show or movie.

Despite so many small areas containing some kind of information or other, the website is very well organized and easy to navigate. After all, they had to make it easy to navigate considering that children would primarily be visiting the site.

The home page for each show contains it’s own specific content, information about the show’s characters, games, and videos, as well as photo and download pages. It’s all very eye-catching and very, pardon the pun, “flashy.”

I can see how the designer(s) were surely challenged in making the Disney.com website and make it so appealing for its target audience, namely kids. With a plethora of mini-games, videos, and a near-endless amount of odds-and-ends to click on, you never have the chance to get bored while visiting the Disney.com website.

Flash exploration : The Darkness website

One of my favorite video games for the PS3 of last year is The Darkness. started as a comic book in the year 1990. the game is very graphic so you need to put your birth date to get in, must be 18 to enter bla bla..

the loading screen is the logo of the game. there little loaders in the corner so you now its working. the site give of a very dark and creepy feel to it. the best thing i like about the site is the darkness image in the back, when you click on a link the image grow. the cool effect the site has is the sound with the typography. the font moves with the sound give you the feeling of the speaker. the music mach's the feeling. the rollover ability is used on every item in the website. the mouse is also the Amer in the video game. graphical links for take how it pops up is also very cool.

Design Exploration - Max Payne The Movie

Max Payne The Movie Site

Max Payne Graphic Novel Trailer

Max Payne was originally a video game with a huge fan base. The video game is a 3rd person shooter with many cinematic scenes in the game. These scenes would play after completing certain objectives. Even while playing the game, you are like ”Wow, this would make a really good movie.”

The purpose of the website is to reach new audiences and familiarize them with the story of Max Payne. I think the design of the site successfully sets the mood for a homicide detective roaming the streets of a major city. The site matches the in-game cinematic scenes, with dark and shadowy images, mostly black and white. I like that the site includes the Concept Art section, which shows how the movie chose it’s locations to match the concept art.

I liked the navigational buttons that were gray and slightly tilted and with broken lines running through them. I portrayed a sense of dismay and a broken spirit. I also like how the audio level has small lines to adjust the volume, when taking a screenshot I actually misread it and thought that is said Ammo lllllll. hehe

I also really liked how they used the transitioning from different pages within the site. It resembles the famous “bullet time” effect that director John Woo developed for “The Matrix”; and which Max Payne was the first video game to adapt this technology\idea. The “bullet time” was one of the reason Max Payne was so popular so it was nice that the design team incorporated it into their web site.

The graphic novel site was a great idea. It is a very entertaining way to get people familiar with the story of Max Payne. It shows the viewers what they can expect from the movie. And they won’t be surprised when they see the weird angel like creatures from the video game. The graphic novel also helps video game fans to get used to seeing Mark Wahlberg as Max Payne.

Check out the Graphic Novel Here

To see the official Max Payne Movie Site Click Here

Design Exploration- Barcinski & Jeanjean

Barcinski & Jeanjean is a two-men interactive studio based in Amsterdam. Their passion is creating innovative interactive experiences, as you can tell by their site. Their names are Mark Barcinski and Adrien Jeanjean. They met each other when they started as HTML freelancers at EuroRSCG Interactive Amsterdam in 1999. After a few years, Flash 5 appeared with interesting ActionScript capabilities for programmers such as the two of them. They soon specialized in building Websites, Banner Campaigns and Games in Flash. In 2004 they started a Freelance career. They grew into all-round Multimedia Engineers, expanding to other fields of interest such as Video, Audio, Interaction, Design and Concept Creation.

Here are some clients of theirs:
EuroRSCG 4D
Framfab
Lostboys
Proximity
Oer
Clockwork
IBM

You can view the site either normal, or in 3D (with the proper glasses, of course.) Their site is basically set up to be viewed in 3D. They even had some glasses made with their company name on them. The whole thing is centered on the two men, with examples of their work twirling around them. They even keep you entertained while you wait for the site to load, by letting you play pong while you wait (also in 3D.) The site is viewed in a 360 degree panorama style. Theyre standing in the middle of Amsterdam, right around the corner from their studio. The site is innovative and shows off their style, and right away lets you enjoy every little detail. Its creative but not crazy, and fun but still simple. Plus, if you get bored you can always go play some more pong.

NEUTRAL HABITAT RECORDS

Neutral Habitat Records has a very edgy intro page using 3D flash animation.

Once the landing page has opened at http://www.neutralhabitat.com ,scroll the menu bar, select a category, and watch the space ship uptake your command,very cool.

Imedia Studios created Neutral Record'swebsite and is a very forward media studio owned by David Masters. Another project David has worked on is http://tomcruise.com.

Tom Cruise's website allows you to navigate through media that has been on the Big Screen,and

has flash animation as a background.This site is really amazing and a well organized website using many flash elements. Video streams and links function with ease and speed.

BY Patricia Brady

Exploration -Cross-Market Advertising

                                                            Effective Interactive Cross-Market

                  Advertising

SBE has taken Cross-Market advertising to a new level, Los Angeles based and driven by CEO Sam Nazarian, it has three major divisions which effectively bring the interrelated world of modern hospitality,restaurants,special events,nightlife,real estate development and film production all together for the connoisseur of LA.

SBE acquires,develops and manages hotels, restaurant, nightlife and real estate through specialized divisions,and together with Bolthouse Productions and elements Films,the three operate in "synergistic equilibrium". SBE has already moved beyond So.Cal and many target markets in line with the upscale consumer it targets.

http://www.sbe.com/will welcome you to its home page with a pleasant skyline view of downtown Los Angeles created with flash and 3-D animation.There you may navigate through the street and enter any storefront that interest you. Once inside a division you will then be able to sort out where to go and can visit the location by link.Here you are able to plan dinner the night out,or find a film of interest. IT`s almost as if you have a private concierge at you fingertips.

By Patricia Brady

WDDG (World Domination Design Group) Exporation

Shirley Stevenson
Flash 1, MW class
WDDG.COM Exploration assignment
Oct 15th, 2008


wddg.com (World Domination Design Group) is based in New York, and is a premier flash design company that specializes in advertising, ana-games, and their project portfolio includes for large company’s include:
1.) Altoids
2.) Aguent: Studio Smackdown
3.) American Express: Seinfeld & Superman
4.) Ban: Deodorant
5.) Burger King: Chicken Fight & Need for Feed Game
6.) Cingular: Make me dance mini-site
7.) Ebay: The Power of all of us campaign
8.) Emerald Nuts:
9.) HP: You n& HP, and Forward campaigns, banners, and micro-sites
10.) Kelly Services: Find Frank a Job games, targeting college graduates and the
younger audience.
11.) LEGO: Advertising, Ecommerce, Animation Games
12.) Maverick Recording/Records
13.) MI:3 – Project Shadow with MTV for Mission Impossible 3
14.) Saturn: produced a mini-site called Saturn Sky
15.) Toyota: Put it in Play (High Octane) real life car games
16.) Virble: Dynamic WORD search game
17.) Volkswagen: force of good campaign for the new Beetle Bug
18.) Wrigley: Candystand.com gaming

When I first visited the WDDG.com site it started playing and old stat-icky video which I wasn’t very impressed at first, but after a few minutes the video site went from old grungy videos to dynamic video clips of the past projects portfolio.

The WDDG.com site is a 100% interactive video site that guides you through their company information, project video clips, and their portfolio of some of their award winning projects. WDDG projects have won many awards for best design sites and games. Their site ended up really catching my interest with all their videos and flash design, so I ended up staying almost 2 hours visiting this site and watching all the videos in their portfolio. I would recommend that if you have time to visit the wddg.com site and browse through their portfolio of projects. WDDG also heavily recruits in their site so if anyone wants to live and work in New York this company would be a good place to submit a resume.

New Media Exploration: Paper Critters

Paper Critters (www.papercritters.com) is an online application that allows users to design, customize, and create their own custom paper character toys through an online interface. It incorporates Flash CS3, ActionScript 3.0, 3DS Max, and uses the open source Papervision3D engine. Users can also share this experience by using the application to save and collect creations or by e-mailing Paper Critter movies (see the video “dance jose luis” upon launching the site). It functions equally well as arts and craft project for children and as a tool for artists to design some pretty awesome toys.

Choose the “Toy Creator” button if you want to start making a toy. A collection of tools, such as a freehand marker, a shape creator, a library of stencils classified by style, and the ability to upload an image, creates as much potential for customization as possible.

Or you can choose “The Colony” button to view an interactive gallery of all the toys. The site contains more than 15,000 publicly viewable submissions.

It was designed and developed by JR Fabito as his final project at the Academy of Art University MFA Computer Arts New Media program. He currently is one of the speakers at the 2008 Flashbelt Conference and is stoked that he gets to make cool stuff and play with Flash all day at RED Interactive Agency and get paid for it.

One of the most challenging aspects of the project for him was designing the set paper toy for the application because it had to translate well in both digital and analog forms. Digitally, it had to work well with the 2D nature of the site’s “Toy Creator” and also within the technical limitations of Flash. Additionally, the final paper model had to accurately replicate the digital version without being too complex to fold and put together in the analog world. The final solution became a box-like figure where users can design on each of the five different sides in a flat view and preview the final product in 3D. The simplicity of the model allows effortless folding and a 3D gallery where users can see and interact with up to twenty user-created toys at a time.

Design exploration: Red Bull Flight Lab

Here is something you can add to your "Things to do online when I should be doing homework" -list. Red Bull Flight Lab is basically an online game with a simple principle: build your own plane and fly it. Flight Lab was designed for Red Bull using Papervision3D (3D engine for Flash platform, don't ask me for details..) by an agency called Less Rain, and the site has won a number of awards, including the FWA Site of the Month. 

The first thing that caught my attention and made me stay on the site was the choice of music to go with the introductory video on the opening site; I liked the contrast between the classical piece and the insane looking pig they were building, as if there was something graceful in seeing it fly around. The overall design is simple and effective because it focuses on the main purpose of the site without distracting and cluttered advertising or an overwhelming amount of information jumping at you from every corner. 

It is in the "Build" section of the site where the experience truly begins and you start to get the hang of it. You are given a basic aircraft with separate parts for body and wings and you can redesign everything from the shape and color to the material of the aircraft. Changing the building material from, say, scrap metal to pizza box changes the whole background look of the site and includes a detail, such as a glass stain on the pizza box material. Underneath the building platform are rows of aircrafts designed by other users and clicking the paint brush reveals a long row of colors to choose from. As you scroll through other designs it dawns on you that you can pretty much build whatever you like, from a flying giraffe to your next door neighbor and this is where addiction begins. The navigation on the site is very simple and easy to use, although some items may be difficult to find at first due to their inconspicuous design. The whole building experience is complemented by appropriate sound effects, some of which come from navigation, some from touching different items on the screen, and some that are entirely independent "construction" sounds. 

I liked how instead of a boring scrollable paragraph explaining the game, the "Fly" section gives you a few clear tips on how to fly your aircraft, which you can choose to skip and perform an elegant crash into the water, like i did. The scene in which you fly is also very simple in design but achieves its goal because the fun part comes from the interaction of you trying to make your design fly. If you look closely you'll see that the scenery is made from the aircraft building materials, another nice detail. The "Hangar" section gives you information about the designed aircrafts and their pilots (designers) and you can look the the archives (in the upper right menu with login and register) and browse through designs worldwide or by country, and check out highest scores (in the same menu) by pilot or by aircraft. 

The overall design and structure stays consistent throughout the whole site, and even the pre-loader gives the visitor a taste of what's coming up by having a metallic look and a few screws with the Red Bull logo. The only part changing as you navigate through the menu is the middle part of the page, so the visitor is not taken away from the site in between sections and forced to look at a boring pre-loader. The sliding information bar on the bottom of the home page informs the visitor about upcoming Red Bull events and provides a connection between Red Bull's Flight Lab and a real life event, as if to say: "if you liked this lab, check out are events". Once you've played the game it is also tempting to go to Red Bull's actual website ( a link also on the bottom of the home page) to see what else they offer. Because the link is not at all forced on the visitor and doesn't draw unnecessary attention to itself, the incentive to go and look up information comes from the visitor, not the company, which is a nice change from the exhausting advertising of so many sites today. As it turns out, Red Bull has various other online games, but none of them offer such a comprehensive experience as the Flight Lab, which potentially draws new customers to the company without aggressive marketing. The Flight Lab is, at the least, a great way to kill time, even for people like me who have never tried their energy drink.

Design Exploration - Halo 3: Believe

A lot of hype surrounded the release of one of the most anticipated games of the decade. So basically, there was essentially no need to advertise Halo 3, since most of the hype and fan base had built up since the release of the first Halo game in 2001. So the question was, how do you promote and inform those who had never heard of Halo 3 or its two other games?

Microsoft and Bungie created a promotional campaign called Halo 3: Believe. Its main purpose was to promote and inform new audiences without them having to play the two previous prequels of the game. Additionally, it allowed the fan base to build up even more hype around it and ‘enjoy’ it up to the release dates.

The marketing ads revolved around a large, hand-made diorama depicting a battle that is featured in a location in the game. It features hand-made figures of humans and aliens in an all out epic fight with terrain scarring and also features the protagonist (the main character whom the fans get to play as) in it. A website was listed at the end of each TV ad.

After seeing several TV ads I decided to check out their website at: http://halo3.com/believe/shell.html. In essence, the website is an interactive flash tour of the diorama. It allows people to explore the diorama through a series of controls and, of course, interact with certain elements in the diorama.

Initially it asks you what country you are in and also asks for age verification since the game is rated M for Mature and contains a lot of blood and violence. When you go past the loading screen, you are greeted with a very nice intro movie. This movie includes several masking methods (with parts of the diorama in the background) along with text that appears and informs the viewer a little bit of what they are going to expect afterwards. After the text, the ‘camera’ flies you into the diorama of the city and leaves you at the beginning of the tour essentially. It gives you instructions on how to move around the diorama, basically dragging your mouse in a certain direction or even using the arrow keys to navigate around the diorama.

This site features an interactive viewing of a fly-through of the New Mombassa diorama, including areas with 180 or 360 degree views rather than just a linear tour. Throughout the tour, there are figures you can interact with that give information about the alien species, weapons, vehicles, and other essential items that are featured in the game. There are also videos that feature a mockumentary "Making Of", detailing the making of the diorama and also “first person accounts” of who ‘were there’. This website also features the ability to take 1280x1024 screenshots of any moment in the diorama, including the 360 degree views, as well as downloading wallpapers of the character profile views.

The color and the music contribute to the theme of the site, which is a dark and grim future where man is struggling to survive against a coalition of alien species bent on seeing man’s extinction. The color used is mostly dark, with varying shades of dark colors throughout the diorama as well. The music revolves around a sad and depressing feeling, and along with the sounds of gunfire, adds the feeling of struggle and determination to survive.

Studio Exploration: mono

mono

mono is an advertising agency based upon the belief that simpler is better. They don't encourage more complexity, but less. Not more services, but more innovate thinking. The company was founded by Michael Hart, a writer, Chris Lange, an art director and James Scott, account management. Chris and Michael are one of only a few creative teams to win an Emmy for a TV commercial. Their "Stay curious campaign" for PBS is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The mono agency is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They produce websites, print ads, collateral, identity, broadcast, environment design and non-traditional advertising. Their clients include General Mills, USA Network, Blu Dot Films, Hitachi, Flexcar, PBS, AMC, and many more.

The mono agency website, mono-1.com, is an excellent use of Flash. It is well organized and simple to navigate. It presents an enormous amount of information in a clean and concise way. Unfortunately for mono, the domain, mono.com is in use by a German kitchenware design company, which may cause some confusion for mono clients.

I was initially attracted to mono's work when I saw their New Years Greeting card. It is a Flash based digital card featuring the portraits of their employees, called monoface. You can click on the head and shoulders, eyes, nose and mouth of the portraits to change each section to a body part of another employee. Or you can shuffle the face with one click and see one of 759, 375 possible faces. They have done an amazing job of matching the skin tones in all the photos for a seamless match. Flash works perfectly for a project such as this because it is so fast at loading all the images.

Another innovative mono website is thegoodfoodfight.com. mono produced this for General Mills as a part of the eatbetteramerica campaign. Thegoodfoodfight.com became a viral hit with over one million registered members. This is a game in which you choose the healthy food that you wish to throw and the person you wish to throw it at. You then proceed to have a food fight with a lunch lady, a sushi chef, or a hot dog vendor animated over a background of healthy recipes. When the food is thrown, it splats on the recipe background. When the character throws back, it splats much larger against your computer screen. The characters taunt you as your throws miss them. There are sound effects for splats, clangs, and breaking glass. This is a wonderful use of Flash animation and a great way to present healthy food choices.

mono did a touching heroes broadcast piece for Sesame Street. It could have been done in Flash or a similar program. It displays individual snapshot photos of famous people such as Neil Armstrong, Amelia Earhart, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, when they were about 4 years old. The black and white photos on black or gray backgrounds have fade transitions from one to the next. The sound track features music, famous broadcasts, and quotes or lines from speeches of the featured people, such as Martin Luther King saying, "Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last." Text on the screen says, "Every child is a story, yet to be told." This fades to text reading, "Over 35 years of believing in the potential of every child." The Sesame Street logo then fades in. It ends with a color photo of an unknown contemporary girl, who represents every child. This was a very moving and beautiful piece.

I think what sets mono's work apart is that it is so well designed, clean, organized, innovative, fun and simple to understand. They get the point across in the simplest way possible. And simple is best.

Design Exploration: Absolut Vodka

Creating advertising for vodka poses a set of interesting problems. Vodka has been around for a long time, so there is no need to educate the public about the product. As for extolling the virtues of vodka... what do you say? Fast-acting? Extra-Strength? Cures social anxiety? It's even good in spaghetti sauce? Instead, liquor campaigns focus on image. Rather than promote a product, they promote a lifestyle, and, in this case, a fantasy-based lifestyle out of reach to their average consumer. For Absolut, the image is cool, urbane, sophisticated, successful, chic, discerning, jet-setting, glamorous, elegant, wealthy -- all of those adjectives that are generally associated with social success. Absolut achieves this through color, scale, motion, technology, sound, celebrity tie-ins and signifiers. www.absolut.com

But before we can get to how any of this a pop-up appears. Absolut asks the user to input their age to ensure the viewer is old enough to be exposed to the content. Then a "terms and conditions" page appears and the user has to click to affirm that they have read and understand the terms and conditions. Next, the user has to verify their age again. On the verification pages, in very small type, are requests to drink responsibly as well as some links to recommended reading regarding the effects of alcohol.

Currently the site opens to the "Kanye West Vision" titled "In an Absolut World" (The viewer also has the option to click the button to go to the "Main Absolute Site.") Kanye West embodies all of those glamorous traits Absolut is connecting to its product. So does John McCain. But in their differences lie the heart of the Absolut campaign. West, having well-publicized run-ins with the law, has an edge, an enticing whiff of danger (even though McCain is scarier.) West is young, handsome and, most importantly, he is associated with sexual conquest. When you click to "View His (Kanye's) Vision" a short video plays in which Kanye enters a crowded room, grabs not one but two women who willingly accompany him and by the time he is across the room, he is dancing in the center of a pack of beautiful women. Meanwhile a chubby, pasty-faced male with a body language that screams "looser" ducks into the restroom, where he prepares to drink a potion made from the contents of a packet labeled "Be Kanye." An Elvis impersonator enters the scene, ingests the potion and becomes Kanye. Message accomplished.

The site is black, a color suggesting sophistication and elegance. The site navigation, which has some problems with disappearing buttons and rollover errors, is subtle as are the forward and back buttons in the slideshows. The small size and subtlety of the basic navigational elements reinforce the sophistication of the "Absolut World:" users/members don't need any hints or prompting to make their way. Motion and technology add to the glamour and up-to-the-minute chic of the site. 

Sound is featured throughout the site and changes with the content. Generally the sound is music, in some cases the user can download the music. There are parts of the site where text appears and is read out loud at the same time. (This could be helpful. Absolut has an enormous amount of content, a person could ingest major quantities of Absolut while exploring the "Absolut World.") A button to turn off the sound is also available, an option which pleases curmudgeonly viewers like myself.

Finally, the celebrities and other signifiers continually reinforce the image of social success. Absolut is well-known for its artist tie-ins such as Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst. The Flash site expands on that concept with an interactive multimedia experience.

Viewers can look at the campaigns Absolut has developed over the years, check out recipes for drinks (you need recipes?), access a list of occasions for drinking (including getting dressed up for a party), inspiration for drinking, forums on drink mixing and a blog.

Cheers!

Paul Neave

www.neave.com

I liked this designers website I found while trying to do my explorations. He has a lot of cool little programs he put together using flash on his page and some of them really gave me a lot of new ideas about what I can do with flash.

Paul Neave has a lot of interactive art on here some where you just move your mouse around, others incorporate your microphone into it also. I liked how you can use your own voice to interact with the media you see on the screen.

Another thing I liked about this guys site is the game section where he remade some classic arcade games like Asteroids in Flash. Even though this Asteroid reproduction was not created by any of the original creators of the game, and was made in flash, it really gives you a feel for the original game and some of these other ones on here are pretty fun too.

Studio Exploration: Elemental Studios

Elemental Studios (www.elementalstudios.co.za) is a multimedia production company based in Cape Town, South Africa. Their work is focused on high impact imagery and animation, as well as 2D and 3D, brand creation, and identity development mostly in Flash animation, Flash web design, content managed websites, and various styles of presentation and Flash games. Their signature motto is to “always adding that little extra which takes ordinary to extraordinary.”

The group started working in the industry in 1995 and through the years gained valuable experience, which prompted them to start Elemental Studios in 2001. Being based in South Africa, they are able to offer economical prices for foreign clients and work with a lot of US and UK companies. They are dedicated to give great client satisfaction as well as producing results on time and in budget. The staff consists of designers, directors, writers, animators, illustrators and both front-end and back-end internet specialists. Their creative clientele includes the film industry, modeling agencies, production companies, photographers.

Clientele:

Consumer Insight Agency: A groundbreaking research agency that goes beyond the conventional approach. Note: A very interesting Flash interactive screen; as you click on each tab on the left hand side of the screen, you get drawn into the center of the world. Then once you click the last button, go back and click the very first one. Try it, you’ll see what I mean.
www.the-cia.co.za

Translate SA: A colorful ecommerce site that creates multi-lingual magnetic products.
www.translatesa.co.za

Adam and Matt: Creative team of Art Director, Adam Livesey and Copy Writer, Matthew Brink. Note: check out the sounds—click on the magenta “Radio” tab.
www.adamandmatt.co.za

Way Ahead: A well established stills production company in Cape Town. Note: I love this bubbly designed site. There’s a flowered button “the way ahead here” that helps you navigate throughout the site.
www.wayahead.co.za

Liquid 10: Q10 is a revolutionary anti-aging product currently being manufactured in Germany.
www.liq10uid.com

Lights, Camera, Virtual Action! Graphic Novel Comes To Life

Lights, Camera, Action! At least for film (and still photography as well), this philosophy still holds. I became a photographer because I couldn't draw my way out of a paper bag. So cameras, photo equipment became my medium of choice.

Now that I'm learning Flash, I'm back in the 'motion picture' realm once again. Thing is, I'm quite attached to my cameras, and quite used to the concept of still images. Imagine my surprise and delight, stumbling upon these great examples whilst recently pursuing my voluminous stack of emails: Animation that uses photography as its drawing tool (with a little help from Photoshop)!

A series of artworks illustrated that you are about to see, is Stephen King's "N is Here," a graphic novel comes to life, complete with an interesting soundtrack. Stephen King is a wordsmith extraordinaire-- he creates unusual stories that preys on the fears we all share, and brings them to life (pun intended)! What's notable is that this erstwhile author of horror stories is actually experimenting with new ways, rather, new methodologies to deliver his material.

What makes this series unique and challenging is this: Each episode is less than 2 minutes long, and ends with a rather dramatic closure. The soundtrack enhances the experience, which doesn't usually exist with a graphic novel, adding dimension and mood to the illustrated scenes. I like to call this still frame animation. It's retro approach with restrained motion, lends itself a certain charm-- not usually in seen in current graphic novel adaptation.

In addition, the graphic novella has built in marketing, to better encourage the viewer to be on the lookout for the next chapter. This viral marketing campaign conducted via the web, is a form of 'branding,' a way of preselling Stephen King's upcoming book, "Just After The Sunset," coming out in November 11, 2008, with other stories, including the current presentation.

What makes this series work, is the attention lavished on details. For example, the ability to give a photograph a 3-D feel: there must be a foreground, middle ground, and lastly, a background of sorts. There's an aura of believability that also comes into play with the use of selective focus. The character in the middle ground is sharp, whereas the background is softened, much like that of viewing the scene in reality.

Stephen King's Animated Graphic Novel: "N Is Here"

New media Exploration: Flash To Go

http://flashtogo.com/google.htm

FlashToGo

While searching for Flash sites to evaluate for this blog, a site that promised to allow “non-tech” users to build, “edit, update, and publish” flash websites with ease caught my eye. “FlashToGo” is, of course, an e-commerce site, but the website is well designed, quick to respond and offers endless free trials of some of its tools.

The intro page is a clever animation of a “talking head” hyping the product along with basically the same information in print. The animation is well done and responds to the mouse even after the character has finished speaking.

The website itself is clean and easy to navigate. Most of the links are very quick to respond. The “test drive” pages are easy to understand and choices load and reload quickly. You don’t have to join or sign up to try the free test drive.

Of course, even though there are a multitude of choices, you can only have so many combinations and your own creativity isn’t involved much, but this site is aimed at businesses that want a savvy web presence quickly without needing the software or the Flash knowledge required to use it.

The variations you can play with are based on good sound design principals, and you can change small areas of color and add music to your site design.
I found it a good idea stimulator to use as a jump off point for future projects.

I also think it’s a wonderful, and in my opinion, fairly priced option especially for small businesses that want to get a professional looking website up and running in a short period of time. I’ve seen other sites and software that promise to do the same thing and they fall short in terms of design, flexibility and user experience.

The support section is easy to find and helpful. I am most impressed with how the site uses Flash itself to become a website that generates websites! “FlashToGo” has been offering this service on the web since 1998, and if it continues to put creativity and technology to use as effectively as they have thus far, who knows what the future holds!