Honda - Difficult Is Worth Doing

For the first time in a long while (apparently the heydays were the 1950s), Honda last night aired a live TV commercial. It arrived on my TV screen out of the blue.

What they did really pushed the boundaries for live TV and more importantly, live advertising. In under three and a half minutes, their skydivers spelt out HONDA and introduced us to their upcoming slogan: Difficult Is Worth Doing. I can associate with this tag line, it rings true for myself, definitely for Multimedia anyway.

The event lasted the duration of the ad break and afterwards, I honestly thought that that's how adverts should be. OK, it's costly to put on a full three and a half minute advert, but it was effective. Instead of the stop and start, constantly repeated messages that are played to us every break, this is was new, innovative and really impressed me. You sit up and pay attention.

Over the last few years, we've come to expect some interesting,
intriguing stuff from HONDA and this live ad will continue to carry
forth that reputation.

Part of the Identity module required us to form some sort of branding
for ourselves. I got quite into it, and enjoyed crafting my Identity
brand. Cut to HONDA and I have real admiration. They think totally out of the box.

In the past we've had the cog parts that all ran into each other and cause a chain of events:

This was definitely something that got you talking the next day.

We've had the choir imitating the audio of a car journey:

Recently we had a rubix cube inspired one, where they built a model of a car from blocks.

In all, I have real praise for the Honda advertisers. They break the mould for adverts, and not in a bad way. They make quality pieces of work. Admittedly it's not so clear as to what what they're selling (can you name three of their cars?) but the brand name sticks in your head, it has a following and a reputation now in terms of advertising, and I'd thereby assume themselves as a company as well.

So with the new strap line being ushered in, we can only hope for bigger and better things to come. I predict that in the same way I sat and watched their other adverts, on it ending, I'll think to myself - "wow". Well done, Honda.


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prime creative - online web analysis

Another day, another snazzy Flash site found- Prime Creative

First things first, it is a feast for your eyes being rich in colour, generously sized and including motion effects.

This opening image reminds me of the Pushing Daisies ident. I like this look. I've found it used before, and think the lush, natural scenario of blue sky, green grass blades contrast very well against your geometric, box computer screen.

Also, this may be one of the first few sites I've come across that uses full-screen Flash. It really makes a difference. Everything is big, you can see it all, and it gives it a commanding presence on the screen rather than the usual sites which are flanked with borders.

On clicking the links on the right hand side, the page flows down (or up) very nicely. This popular technique provides a sophisticated, professional feel when clicking and going to the desired section.

A sense of distinction comes with the change in image from page to page. The main page has the landscape look, 'about' has the artistic strokes/swirls, next are celebratory, party-like lights for 'creative', followed up by hundreds of buttons for 'marketing'! Again, these all dominate the screen, being large and detailed. A critic might note that these make the text more difficult to read, which is true, but it is all still legible. Just requires focus!

Design rules for websites usually lean towards using static layouts with continuous colour schemes. This provides an anchor for the user to familiarise themselves with whilst navigating. Here though, I don't think that by avoiding the same colour (by this I mean background) rule makes Prime Creative a bad site. By far, it lends itself to the site and works in it's favour.

The only downside I can find to this site is that the 'careers' section oddly links to a bog standard (and in comparison to what you've just experienced) bland page that merely provides an email address. This could be very simply updated, as it isn't too dissimilar to the 'contact' page where they provide details, in addition to a contact form. It dents the continuity which otherwise runs well throughout the rest of the site.



It was only on visiting this site that I learnt of the dba. Along with BPif, these are quite good credentials to associate yourself with.

In all, I like what prime creative are doing. They seem a little different to the boxy, geometric flash sites elsewhere on the net. I think their name goes a long way in confirming this - creativity is their prime motive. I

After seeing this, I think I'd like to have a go at full-page Flash. It seems so more in your face (in a good way) and really shows off the advantages of Flash - rich media content, online.

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Un.titled.co.uk - creative design agency

I came across this site the other day and was thoroughly impressed.


www.un.titled.co.uk

Firstly, if the site looks good on arrival, normally by means of the colours, or typeface, and layout, I'm usually looked. Thereafter, if you have nice fade on/fade off and smooth panning of pictures, I'm hook, line and sunk!

They have worked for many reputable companies, to name but a few, Kickers, Nike, Lacoste Footwear... oh and NTU! They made the really good quality Art and Design handbooks they gave out on the Open Days.



Funnily enough, this is another example of a Midlands based group I've managed to find (Jam-factory). I don't know if it's just me, but I always presume good work, and so good folk always live and work in London, not from Leicester, my home town!


It is all in black, with a continual layout, so reflects a real professional feel (black has connotations with that for some reason). Furthermore, even the little touches of the over and off states of the buttons fading on and off, instead of just going on and off, make for a more qualitative look/feel.

In all, this has made it's way into being another of my favourites.

Un.titled definitely deserve being named - very, very good.

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ingenious

I just spotted this logo and well, as you can see from the title of this post, thought it very good!



This got me thinking, because it's humorous little things like this that actually make a more noticeable impression when you first see the logo.

I remember back in 2006 (so so long ago!) there is was the introduction of the Punto logo:



At first I couldn't see it, but look again, and there's a little man sitting down driving! Ingenious!

As you can tell, I quite like logos. Whether it be shiny ones, clever ones (the FedEx has an arrow in between the e and x symbolising the next day delivery), or just nice ones.




But back to chair, the 'literal' design idea is actually very good if you can get it right.

Anyway, random post over.

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Scribefire

Another browse through a second yr, online environment student blog and I found out about this neat little add-on for Firefox. Instead of having to go to blogger.com and log in etc, I am typing this at the bottom of my browser, whilst a video uploads to youtube, for example.

There are option to link a youtube video...

I can add an image from Flickr...



Below, I'll give it a tag...

...and above I've given it a title.


This will certainly make blogging easier on the fly, say if I find an article etc. Now all that's left is to press publish, and hopefully "bob's ya uncle".

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InteractiviWii

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7264353.stm

Interesting thoughts around the idea of giving access to the user. It reminds me of the argument to do with copyright, or should that be copyleft?

It is slowly but surely starting to happen - homebrews are becoming available, online or Xbox Live in particular being a great example. And why not, who says you have to be an official Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo games developer to be able to make cool games for people to play?

Allowing home made content seems a more organic idea to me. Ok, it could be abused by people just making rubbish, but then again, it could also turn into a gold mine. Let creativity prosper!

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slide.com

On browsing through the second year blogs, I saw a sliding banner that looked really good. Luckily, this really good looking banner is available for free at slide.com.

It is really simple to set up, there are several styles, themes, effects that can be applied, and you can pretty much grab images from anywhere (facebook, myspace, flickr, bebo, oh and the now old fashioned C: drive!)

I made a quick one with a simple sliding effect to showcase some of the colour and light images I collected for SPP1.

Very useful utility in my opinion. I predict it will be used quite a bit!

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Unravel the Mystery - evaluation

So it is done. Its been a long time in the making, but I've handed in my work, all completed.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/1/10/1690508/unravel%20the%20mystery.swf

(swfup has disappeared and I'm at a loss to find a functioning uploader, so I'll just have to provide the SWF to download)

This post is basically all the extra bits that I couldn't fit into the limited 1500 word report.

Firstly, as with the last time I encountered Flash, I experienced the see-saw effect; going from hating Flash to really liking it! The learning curve this time around was far higher than before, although the basic 'gotoAndStop' was still used a lot!

I am very happy with what I've made and think it's a good standard for an entry piece. My favourite bit is the home scene. It looks good to me being quite shady, especially with the shadow being cast on the wall. Furthermore, the idea of using a folder to contain all this, and making a character profile sheet just gives it that more 'confidential document' type look. From being a complete 3DSMax novice at the start of '08, I feel pleased in the progress I've made.













What worked well (once I managed to sort it, quite simply really - use a stop function at the end of each video!) was the video glasses, and being able to select what video to watch. I was restricted in Identities Part 1 as it was a straight forward AVI, whereas this time it was all about user interaction. We are beginning to enter an era of on demand video, and so I thought it quite a nice touch to be able to choose. Add to that the fortune of being able to maintain watching using the glasses viewpoint means it is all the more cooler.



One slight downside to this though is that a few of the intros used the letterbox effect, and meant that it sort of looked a little odd having the two black bars across the top and bottom, and then the fading grey effect on top. Never mind though -people might not notice anyway?!
Another favourite thing of mine was the logo section. Not only was I able to doodle and play around with quite a few designs, once I had hit on the design I liked, I decided to implement a style that is popular now - the faded reflection.

Strangely enough, the sketch for my final logo was a last minute, just chuck it down on the page one. This seems to have happened a lot in this project - ideas at the top of my creative output weren't always the ones I selected!



I feel the reflective technique gives it a sleek, shiny, glossy, modern look, and does so in quite a subliminal way. Of the examples I perused to practice this technique (Apple, AVON TV ad) I had never in my head been able to nail what I liked about it. It was only once I noticed the reflection and the way it imposes a sort of surface for the item to be sitting on that I thought I wanted to implement on my own logo. I really like my logo, the colours and circular shapes all blend and interweave nicely, and the bold 'ae' stands out, drawing attention. In addition, the sources of inspiration were of a good standard anyway, so by combining predicted a good result (hopefully!)

I really like playing around in Powerpoint and inserting motion graphics. Sometimes though it was quite frustrating: I'd find a look that all looped in, and synced on screen nicely, then I'd change something slightly and it would all knock it off and I'd already Saved the new version over the original. Luckily I'd recorded a copy of it so could refer back. This is one pointer I need to remember - save many, many times, under different names! I've been stuck in the habit of just pressing Save for the last how many years in my computer life, meaning it overwrites the good work. So like back in school, I'll set myself a target: Use Save As and append the file name!

I would have liked multi-faceted audio to accompany the motion, but as there is a lack of good quality and free sfx online, I edited on Audacity - reversing, slowing it down, fading it in. I am now content with the finshed AVI, and intend to continue developing my work in this area.



My favourite section of all is 'Crack the code'. I think it is an ingenious way of revealing aspects of my Identity. On the one hand you were required to sift through the information, using the descrambling method (something that I find fun and intriguing and really appeals to me). The poem also individually helps sell another fragment of my Identity (I like being creative with words and writing, probably due to being a fan of reading) and then once you find the word, it reveals another fragment of my personality! But what?! ...you'll have to find out!

For the main piece I included background sound from a mystery/detective genre (if at all there is one!), which hopefully helps building and signifying the theme of the piece. However, as the music isn't fundamental I decided to make available the choice to turn this on or off. - In my own experience, background sound can get annoying and tedious. User testing comments similarly shared this point of view, in that, if you need to focus, you don't want it on auto repeat and playing the same thing seven times over.

I did encounter a few downsides for Identities part 2. In my original designs for the MINI game, I wanted to use a countdown clock which would reduce the score awarded, depending on how quickly the user responded. - Pretty much a standard feature in online Flash games. However, I think I was slightly over ambitious in trying to achieve this, as the coding was complex and not really what you'd expect a noob to comprehend! As a result, I decided to leave this out, but if I were to do this project again, this is a feature I would definitely attempt to implement, so to reflect the standard of what competitors in the market are doing.

My intention for the code section was to be that the user found the letters, dragged them onto the answer area, and once all assembled it would display 'Complete'. Coding wise, this required using hit target areas or calculating x and y co-ordinate areas. I did try to get this to work, and received no 'Compiler Errors', but it simply wouldn't happen for real. The letters would just sit there! I managed to make a work around, a different input method - a text entry box, which works adequately, but it would have been nice to achieve what I intended.



Lastly, as we were loading our interactive pieces onto disc, my first trials of executing a working preloader just wouldn't work. It would just go straight to the main home page, completely bypassing the loading stage. It escaped me, as the coding was all correct and nothing erronous. On browsing through several preloader tutorials, I found the reason to be that the disc required no downloading! It wasn't on a server! So code with some var figures, posing as data that needed to be downloaded, meant that for the sake of the disc the preloader would work!



I tried to include a little animation of some finger prints appearing, or footsteps walking up the page, but my motion tweening technique are not as up to scratch as I'd like. The shape tween would let the heel of the shoe and ball of the foot appear, but it filled it in a peculiar manner, so I removed it altogether. I know that there is a technique of altering how it appears, but at this stage in time, felt that the interactive sections needed more focus.

As a side note, I chose to use the wording 'the answers you seek are LOADING' as other sites that I've visited used an enticing message and it spurred me on, increasing my interest. So hopefully using this technique on my site will have the same effects.

So all in all, I feel I have learnt a lot through this part of the Identity module - techniques, design processes, software skills. And add onto that my completed site! It has spurred me on to carry forward what I have learnt and experiment with Flash, making more sites, which I feel have the potential to be better than the standard html format. The interactive site has also confirmed (initially it made me seriously question!) my ambition to take up the Online Environment pathway next year. So here's to bigger and better things to come!

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3DSMax meets Flash CS3. The result - really cool

On having a random browse of the net, I found this informative flash blog. It informs of all sort of intersting flash stuff.

What caught my attention for being amazingly cool was this interactive 3d cube. I find it just captivating to watch (spinning as well as the diffused shading effect surrounding it), then add on to that the ability to navigate around it (smoothly, slowly, quickly - depending on your input), and then the linking to different sites, which altogether make it very professional in my opinion and altogether very good.

Luckily there is a video tutorial link, so there's nothing to stop me having a crack at making one.

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