The Ice Book is a miniature theater show, a shadow pop-up book that comes to life in with a touch of flickering magic. Shadows play and lights mesmerize. Armed only with sheets of paper and light, a story of mystery and magic is beautifully told in a shadow-and-light play designed to give a live audience an intimate and immersive experience of film, theatre, dance, mime and animation.
Behind the impressive project is a very dedicated and artistically brilliant duo, Davy and Kristin McGuire. Enamored by old pre-cinematic optical illusions (zeotropes, magic lanterns) and inspired by early 20th century Russian fairytales and German expressionism, they set out to complete this project in four months with a small amount of money. And it’s a tall order: They had to buy an instruction book on how to make pop-ups.
Here’s how they summarized the project:
All we had was a 5D Mark ii, an old Macbook with After Effects, some builders lights and a green cloth that we improvised as a makeshift green-screen. Before we started we had no idea how to make pop-up books let alone how we could combine them with projections. With a lot of care, love and arguing the idea eventually came to life.
Go behind the scenes and see how brilliantly humbling the “film set” is, from the makeshift green screen to the cardboard “stage” to project the light into. Kudos to Kristin who did all of the meticulous paper cutting (from one X-Acto lover to another: It must’ve taken ages!).
I’m certainly humbled by the ingenuity, simplicity and dedication poured into this project. I leave you to be awed by it.
The 2011 Levi’s® Roadwear campaign is an interactive journey—in essence a road trip across America—of the band Mermonkey as the three band members make their way to a much anticipated gig. Candidly-shot videos, snapshots and stories are presented in a map/scrapbook format that overlaps their “road map” with high-resolution Levi’s product shots.
Developed by by BBH Asia Pacific, the website utilizes the band’s adventurous spirit as a tool to explore Levi’s products. Utilizing Google Maps technology, photos are scattered throughout the interface and toggling between “Terrain” view and “Denim” view allows you to see the dual-layered map: You can zoom in on Levi’s apparels “mapped” as the campaign journey and uncover stories explaining the product design.
Douglas Hamilton, copywriter from BBH, said:
“By navigating the rips and stains on the denim, you could unlock the stories that lie behind each and every mark. Traverse each of the ‘continents’ and you’ll piece together the story of an aspiring band and their ups and downs on the road to fame and fortune.”1
To top it off, there’s also an evolving love story between two of the band members; the full story will unfold over the coming months as different levels are gradually unlocked. But of course you have to come back to see what happens.
The overall execution, with its short films capturing spontaneous moments throughout the road trip, manage to convey the Levi’s brand, its grit and its spirit of youthful abandon. Through this campaign, denim indeed holds stories in every rip, stain and crease.
Big day at Squeaky HQ today: Just launched Crowdbeacon, a potential game changer/ relocation application and it got some tech blogs going.
What is Crowdbeacon? Crowdbeacon answers questions with the help of your local community, and aggregated answers from other location-based services.1As a service that’s focused around answering different sorts of questions like finding a good Mexican cantina, or getting a massage while on vacation, it links you to a specific local community and crowdsources other Crowdbeacon users and businesses in the area to get good, real answers.
Yes, businesses can sign up too. Business owners can answer questions when someone asks a question within six blocks of their business in their categories; They’ll get the question via push notification on their iPhones. Some businesses will definitely try to get “beaconers” into their store-front and turn them into customer but according to Erick Schonfeld, Co-Editor of TechCrunch, “others will realize that simply offering up their knowledge can generate goodwill and good buzz.” In addition to businesses providing answers, “Crowdbeacon will also surface related tips from FourSquare, reviews from Yelp, and shopping info from local shopping search engine Wishpond.”2
I spoke to founder Robert Boyle about this social Q&A service, how Crowdbeacon can help people, and the brand’s future goals. Oh, and for those who are itching to try their hands on start-ups, he drops a few nuggets on how to do that, too.
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What ignited the spark in you to start Crowdbeacon? How did the idea come about?
Robert Boyle (RB): The idea came about because we recognized that there was a practical vacuum in the market for a location-based service that was a utility. This isn’t in any way knocking existing LBS leaders, but my background is in solving practical problems—and we felt like combining location and communication was a way we could solve the practical problem that comes with being in a foreign place when you need to find something that is time-sensitive or location-specific.
How do you define success for Crowdbeacon?
RB: Well, it depends. For Squeaky, launching a product like Crowdbeacon is a huge success because it lets the world know the kind of talent that the Squeaky management team has been cultivating for years—so that’s a win. For me personally, I will define success by a successful exit (i.e, $) or changing the course of human history—and with Crowdbeacon $ is more likely than the latter. 🙂
What is the best way to achieve long-term success for this venture?
RB: The best way to achieve long-term success with Crowdbeacon is to grow slowly. Our job at first is to introduce the concept that communication can power location, and see how users deal with this proposition. Once we’ve done that, we’re going to raise our first round of capital and deploy “launch teams” of 10-15 people in major US markets to provide real expert/influencer feedback for users in those markets on the ground. From there, we will grow based on how effective our product and marketing is… but if we stick to the plan of listening to users and iterating, long-term success will come.
How can you prevent mistakes or do damage control?
RB: You can never fully prevent mistakes—we’re all humans—but the important thing is when you are doing damage control is to remain laser-focused on your goal; which for us at Crowdbeacon means changing the way people feel about the potential of location and how important communication can be in this paradigm. Also, I have a saying that my wife hates which is that Proper Preparation Prevents Problems… the 4P’s… so I try to be as prepared as possible to avoid damage control and mistakes, or else I look like a self-righteous dick.
Where did the funding/capital come from and how did you go about getting it?
RB: We are very proud to say that Crowdbeacon is a fully-bootstrapped startup that was funded entirely by Squeaky Wheel Media.
What has been your most satisfying moment in realizing Crowdbeacon?
RB: I would say the moment we realized that we could incorporate the Twilio API to get “notifications” to local businesses was the most satisfying moment for me personally. Specifically, our product is focused very heavily on driving consumers to local businesses based on what they need – in exchange for these businesses helping users find what they are looking for – but we knew that most local/small businesses are not as tech savvy as our internal team of nerds… which was a giant problem. The moment I realized we could connect with Twilio to call the businesses, and that we could automate the entire process, was the most satisfying moment because it ended with a huge problem being solved. Also, launching. Ha.
What makes you happy?
RB: Family, friends, food and money. Also, I like working.
Well, amen to that! Stay tuned for updates because Android is coming—hopefully very—soon.
The Data Visualization Series is where you’ll find information graphic and data visualization projects, trends, people, stories and perspectives that inspire me.
Background:
Data visualization is on the rise recently. You see excellent examples showcased on digital magazine (e.g. GOOD Magazine) or commissioned by corporation (e.g. GE Data Visualization) and organization/institution (e.g. The World Bank, MIT). Discussion & expert panels emerged (e.g. AIGANY) and debates started (e.g. Data Visualization vs. Infographics). It seems appropriate to start a series of posts highlighting the work, the concept and especially the people behind them.
What is an infographic? It is a visual representation of information, data or knowledge that are effective, both artistic and clear in conveying the information to the audience. I’m talking about the good ones, of course, and you know it’s a good one when complex information are explained quickly and clearly, and made you want to explore/interact/play with the data. And with innovative thinking, data visualization brings forward “new and more powerful mechanisms of perception and persuasion.”
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Recently, I came across some published infographic & data visualization works that are just stunning. They made me wish I did them. (Sadly, I didn’t.) So this is what I can do: Highlight the people behind some of the best ones I’ve seen lately. Today, it’s Nicholas Felton from Feltron.com.
Nicholas Felton frequently designs information graphics for numerous corporations and publications. His work has been profiled in publications including the Wall Street Journal, Wired and Creative Review.
He is best known as the author of several Personal Annual Reports, produced since 2005, that collate countless measurements into a rich assortment of graphs and maps reflecting the year’s activities.
These annual reports showcases not only gorgeous end-of-year visualizations of everything he did from travel to dining to number of pictures taken. Fun and a lot of darn work! So it makes perfect sense that he co-founded Daytum, an elegant and intuitive tool for counting and communicating personal statistics.
The web-based application “lets you ‘Collect, Categorize, and Communicate’ datapoints for any random activity you feel like tracking… and generate endless Feltron-esque visualizations.”1 Of course it comes with an iPhone app just in case you have to update on-the-go.
Back to Felton’s Annual Report, recently it became part of MoMA’s Talk To Me exhibition. MoMa considered it because “it fits our idea of great design: Felton is not only using elegant design to tell an emotional story, but it is also a parody on the corporate Annual Report. By distilling a human being’s emotional state into quantitative information, the visualizations are trying to make sense of how he feels on a given day and along the course of one year. The piece has provoked us to reflect on how we process information.”2
Felton successfully create something interesting and innovative out of things most people find mundane and often discard as useless. His elegant visualizations can be had via the limited-edition, hand-signed and numbered books so you can physically hold these beautiful visualization up close. (p.s.: The 2009 Annual Report is sold out, selling like hot cakes. It’s OK, I’m waiting for the 2010 report.)
Lorem Ipsum has consumed our creative juices. It’s time to stop.
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Lorem Ipsum has been the print industry’s standard dummy text for at least five centuries by some unknown printer. It was popularized in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets and, in the last decades, by desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker. But I’ve about had it! Designers, Lorem Ipsum makes your brain lazy.
Designers relied on Lorem Ipsum to fill up their beautiful design interfaces. I’ve dealt with design projects where I see designers showing me designs with nice bells & whistles but very little substance. I hired designers based on their portfolio—most coming fresh from great design programmes—which showed great promise of creative ideas and executions. However, a lot of designers fell into the rut of daily designer’s deliverables: They came up with great designs, tackle the creative challenges as far as interfaces go, but fell short in embodying the brand they are designing for.
Some of you may ask “So what?” and here’s my answer:
Words are a great passion of mine. I was one of those designers who think beautiful designs will allow me to express the brand, and until I get the content from the client, FPO will do. And that isn’t just limited to images. It affects copy too. Then I found that the client gave me the copy from their existing website. And it’s crap. So I ended up where I started. That’s when I realized that design has to be jump-started with the right copy.
A lot of web designers in today’s generation do not have the experience of working in the “old school” form of creative environment: Ad firms, where you sit in the room for hours and came up with the right taglines, the right keywords, the right “feel” for the brand. I was lucky to be briefly involved in one where I learned that words are a powerful thing.
Words make you form an idea, a state of mind, a brand. As a starting designer a decade ago, I often came up with fun filler copy to get a chuckle out of the clients, which was a bonus because most of the time it came from my research efforts to understand the client more. Mind you, this was the day before every brand had a website. I found that the research helped me understand the brand better and by writing my take on it, made my design better and my client happy.
With that in mind, as years go by and my responsibility greater, I started writing the copy for website contents to help my designers come up with the right design, starting from the smallest design elements. And it helps.
With a creative brief, my designers see what the client wants after we aligned and realigned their brand presence. However, creative briefs often left a big hole in “What should the website really say?” department. It may be the smallest details, but for the client, every little things matter. And it should.
We, as the creative agency, should be the one responsible for helping the client shape their brand. The right word, the right call to action, the right user experience.
I often sit at my desk, hunkered down, reading lines and lines of the client’s brand documents, doing environmental scan and researching what is said about them. And that helped spark that little spot in my brain that made me go, “Ooh! This is what we should be doing!” And that’s not an image or a color or a page layout. It’s a few words forming the right positioning for the brand. And that makes a heck of a difference. The right positioning makes your client know you’re thinking and breathing their brand, and that you are being their advocate. I’ve had a client who loved a section name we came up with in the first design round. He was so happy he used the word “love.” That’s when you know you got it right.
So go ahead. Write something. Write something great. It’s worth your while.
p.s.: However, if you HAVE to use Lorem Ipsum (sigh…), you can find some options here. Don’t forget to check out Gangsta Lorem Ipsum if it fits your personality better.
