Studio/Artist Exploration: Brooke Jagoda

I came across a cool site that is the portfolio of a Canada/ Switzerland based digital design studio called In the Loop. The first thing you notice is how the word "Loop" follows your mouse. I liked how their color palate is mostly greys so it's a little sophisticated but the shape of the word "Loop" is much more organic looking and takes you back to wanting to play with Playdough.

The first thing I checked out was the tab titled "Works". They had quite a long client list. Most were
unidentifiable European projects. The only client I recognized was for Air Canada were users were encouraged to participate in the game-like interface that ultimately entered them into a contest. I didn't spend a lot of time investigating that site though. I was more intrigued with how they set up their own site.

After a little browsing around on my own finally discovered what the little icon is at the bottom center. You roll over it and it pops up to display more ice-cream shaped icons. When you roll over those you realize it's supposed to be like a game where you have to go and unlock the items to advance. I had some fun going along with it because a couple items were just goofy and others you had to tweet about the site or go and "like" it on Facebook. The one I liked the best asked the question "Who's the king of pop?" and then it promted you to type it at any time even though there was no field to type it in. And it worked! All I had to do was type Michael and I was able to advance a little bit.

From reading each of the developers descriptions under "About", it seems like they both have a big passion for designing digital media and creating a richer user experience. Well it worked for me! I feel like their work is set apart from others' because of the non-linear manner in which you can navigate their portfolio. I feel like the experience clean, and yet playful and innovative.

Here's another example of their work:

Siboire
This site had a nice layout, I liked the colors and the images they used throughout. It's a website for a brewery in France.  Everything is in French so I can't really tell how the information is organized. One thing I managed to come across was a description of their beers. On the home page there's a set of tiles you can click on. It's the center one with the light bulb. They don't only use images but also video of the head spilling over. Then you used the hand to swish to the next one. The only thing is that it takes forever to load.