Design Inspiration/Integration Jasmine Star

This portfolio site has a lot of interesting elements, notice:

Jasmine Star International Photographer

- The personalized branding loader. Without this you would be looking at a blank white page thinking maybe you reached the page by mistake.
- Integration of video as you jump around the page.
- Scrolling of photos on mouse over.
     - There seems to be some sort of limit in the middle of the page because if you mouse over on the left side the photos scroll one way and if you mouse over on the right the photos scroll the other way.
- Subtle picture in the background that completes the page but does not distract you.
- Even though there is a lot going on for each page everything is organized and legible.
- Links to other media are nicely located and accessible on each page.

- Feel free to explore her blog, it also has a beautiful design.

Princess Bride Sound Board

If there's a movie that's always been in my top ten, it's the Princess Bride.    Here's a soundboard built using flash presented on Albino Black Sheep. The site hosts a ton of content.  Mostly stupid animations that only a three year old would like, but there's some gems on there too if you take the time to explore it.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/princessbride

Rather Good

Rathergood is one of those websites that is considered the insane level of the internet.  The guy who runs it, Joel Veitch, has a strange sense of humor.  This site was brought to my attention because of a video he did called "Viking Kittens."  He had to take it down for copyright reasons, so instead I present Punk Kittens on his site.

http://rathergood.com/punk_kittens


Also of note is this strange video called "We Like The Moon."  I include it because somehow... some way.... the people at Quiznos decided to hire him to use them for commercials a few years back.

http://rathergood.com/moon_song


Here's the Viking Kittens presented by Ebaums World.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/flash/play/938957/

Studio Exploration

100,000 Stars is created by Google Data Arts Team.  It lets you explore the nearby stars, nearly 120,000 of them to be exact.  You can even identify and read about 87 of them.  Google is a massive company that dabbles in just about every aspect of technology.  I am very pleased to see them exploring a more creative side of technology.

100,000 Stars is built with THREE.js and CSS3D.  It deals with concepts such as depth of field.  The loading screen looks like something that could easily be done in Flash; it is simply a spinning blob.  Google's intent was to combine technology and data with art.  The interface is smooth and beautiful.  You are allowed to spin, whirl, progress forwards and backwards.  It really feels as though you are travelling through space.  Michael Chang goes into further detail about the process of this creation here: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/casestudies/100000stars/

You can find the 100,000 Stars project here: http://workshop.chromeexperiments.com/stars/?ModPagespeed=noscript

100,000 Stars won the Favorite Website Award for the entire month of January.  This should come as no surprise seeing as Google pushes the limits in most areas of technology.  It is very exciting to see Google popping it's head up in the artistic world and I hope to see more of them in the future.

Resources Exploration

http://www.youthedesigner.com

This website helps us designers with inspiration and tips for new media explorations. Not to mention all the endless possibilities for tutorials to learn new software programs for elements within certain programs. I believe it can be helpful for us designers because you are going to have those times you have lost most of your inspirations and design. So this website helps you with just that giving everything a designer may possibly need when it comes to help and inspiration.

http://www.tumblr.com

This social media outlet has some good use to it than you may think! I recently gotten a blog and seek often countless inspirations for designs on here. I love it especially when I having designer's block making it fun and interesting finding and sorting through photos and art others in the world have created or manipulated through various mediums. So social media is also one way designers can use to come up with fresh, new ideas that are perfect for such audiences that use such mediums. In return gives them an outlet to show off their hard but awesome work they so brilliantly created!

http://pltts.me

This website gives designers options for color schemes and what colors go with what. It is hard sometimes when you cannot get the colors to match. That is why this website can be helpful because it shows you many options for a certain color using the color wheel. Color is one of the crucial aspect of design so understanding to apply such principles in our design can help us reach out to our audiences better pertaining to what colors they like or fits according to their mood or personality. Reaching the right audiences effectively is the key to success in design.

Design Exploration

 http://www.13creative.com/portfolio.htm

I came across this women designer who's website it beautiful and welcoming. I thought it was cool because she used the design of a notebook and presents her pieces in a way that is fun and interactive! As a designer it is important that the content is just right but also its only half the battle its the design and interactivity that truly brings people to your website. She does that just right! Its not too much her content is just enough so you can get a jist of what she has created and learn about exploration of different names and their meanings behind it.

For example, in her born free baby piece she decided to have a good use of color for baby in way that it attracts mothers with the cuteness of it but also maintaing that continuity of simplicity. I like the fact that she chose simple colors easy on the viewer's eyes. I think she knew that and put it too good use!

Another example she has is the baby & kids company branding she did its simple color and playful attracting the right audience of who it is for. Mothers and families like the fun, playful design and her as a designer she did a great job on the logos and bags and cards by following the clean, simple design just right for babies and kids. Using brown and blues shows she knows what colors people like too see. It makes it nice and inviting.

By using such a color scheme it attracts the females and essentially like her overall design and in the end want to pay her to design baby announcements, cards, and etc. By doing so this audience in particular is huge and important because its so communial. Women tend to talk a lot and when something or someone has a cute eye for that fun, playful design they know she can do wonders because she understands her audience seeing as she is part of such group. It gives her insight on how women think and act which in return helps her with her designs being successful and essentially bringing in more work and gain publicity because the mothers will all love her and her eye for design. Her design sends out messages to her crucial audience she would be better of than if women were to ask a male designer to design a baby announcement. I do not want to bais but it totally makes sense that she chose such design to attract the right audience seeing as women share and talk a lot about everything all the time!

Interactive Media Artist Exploration

http://portfolio.andybest.net/

I found this guy through googled and had some cool portfolio pieces such as Webcam Lines which consists of a 3D effect making it look cool when viewing the video giving it a cool weird effect making me attracted to it. His work is solid has a lot of exploration with flash, 3D effects, and interactivity. For example this particular piece uses effects that allows the users to see color in a whole different light. This makes it so when people view his work it shows he stands out for coming up with crazy ideas such as interactive logos.
Also for another example he has another piece called interactive logo he made for Welsh Children's Television. He did a great job and bringing the color and effects of exploding or dissolving as tv screens blanked out would do. He knew that so he decided to go with that! By intergrating animation and effects he came out with a good piece of interactive design. By exploring such options helped him I bet to understand his audience better knowing what they want to see design wise. Interactivity is one way to get there especially in today's world.

This artist stuck out most to me because his portfolio is small but bold statement wise. He has a strong sense of design using all kinds of media from 3D effects, flash elements, and video not holding back. For an artist to do that is rare these days. The career is competitive and you have to not be afraid of exploring every option out there. For doing so it will push you as a designer better and in return gain a better understanding and eye for design in the end.

Overall, this artist has a good sense of design where you can tell he has done his research as a designer. Exploring new and exciting ways concerning interactivity and design. I recommend you check out the rest of his work he has some good ideas!

Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe announced it's Creative Suite is moving strictly to the "Creative Cloud" on May 6th.  The Creative Cloud isn't actually in the cloud, it just means that you aren't buying the software in a physical form, instead you are opting for a monthly subscription.  As soon as you stop paying the monthly fee of between $20 and $50.  The fact that you are being forced to do this means that eventually Adobe could end up jacking up the prices and because nobody actually owns the software, designers would be helpless to do anything about it.  The subscription based package also will effect users who don't need the newest software.  A cloud based subscription will deter people who are perfectly comfortable using older versions of the program, but could potentially encourage other companies to come out with new software comparable to Adobe's programs.
     In the long term customers who normally buy an update every two years could end up saving money in the long run.  A subscription to the Creative Cloud means that you automatically get every upgrade for the same monthly fee.

Don Hertzfeldt

This is probably one of my favorite animators of all time.  I remember first seeing one of his works at spike and mikes animation festival back when i was 12 years old, the title was Rejected.  some of you may be familiar with it, it consists of crudely drawn  characters depicting rejected commercial idea that Don had created.  Other works that he has done consists of billy's balloon, I am So Proud Of You, It will Be Okay, Wisdom Teeth, Its such a beautiful day, and so on.  i know for a fact that Don chooses to hand draw his animations on paper so all of the animated is not done with a computer.  But occasionally he will have a narrator for his story which would need flash for the assembly part of his short films.  He also tends to do silhouettes with burning paper of crumbling effects which might be done with an after effect program but i am pretty sure its actual fire or actual crumbling the paper.
  i thought it would be fun to show some of the videos if some of you have never seen its work, like any movie you seen flash will be there or else he wouldn't be able to mass produce his films across the world.

http://www.bitterfilms.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/t1i1b?feature=watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMsyOowMaEY&list=UUSCF9UABxj49kg2SEXUUZAw&index=1 

New Media Exploration - Process

Most of the major and successful design studios and agencies go through their design process quite similarly in around 6 or 7 seven steps roughly. They are tend to start with is the Discovery stage where the company will inquire as to know as much as possible about the client from every stand point possible whether its their view the customers view or the analysis of numbers generated from their previous sites and techniques if applicable. After the Discovery stage comes the Strategy and Planning stage. During this phase the team’s brainstorm and sets bars for success of branding and objectives obtained from stage 1. Next, comes the Design stage where the clients and designers visions come to life into a well-developed authentic piece of work. For the fourth part the studio will Make it Work though SEO search engine optimization and through other branding techniques. After all these steps have been worked out the go the Test/Launch stage where they make it cross compatible between all platforms such as phones, tablets, mobile devices, and computers of course. After the rigorous testing goes through they finally make their way to the final stage 6. This is the Assess and Evaluate stage where the let the guest interact and engage give feedback which allows them to improve, amplify, and refine the site as it grows with the company.