Ze Frank - Thinking so you don't have to

Ze Frank is at it again. I first ran across Ze when I saw the classic and hysterical Flash site How To Dance Properly. I saw him again last year when he gave the best and funniest speech of the keynote for Macromedia MAX in Anaheim. Now Ze is back with the The Show with Ze Frank which is published Monday through Friday and features current events, knowledge, humor and duckies. Do yourself a favor and head over to iTunes and subscribe to this video podcast because it is the funniest one I have ever seen. I sent it around to the other designers in my studio and they are all addicted to it now. Have fun.

DO THIS BEFORE YOU DIE - Dinosaur BBQ

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a foodie. I love to cook and if I wasn't a designer then I would take a shot at being a chef. Most people plan vacations around sightseeing - my wife and I plan our trips around restaurants.

The Dinosaur Bar-B-Q was started in 1983 by three bikers, bound together by the love of good food, a 55 gallon drum cut in half and for five years traveled motorcycle shows, fairs, and festivals up and down the east coast selling BBQ. In 1988, burnt out from the road, they settled into downtown Syracuse and opened up as a take out BBQ joint. By 1990 they doubled their space added a bar and the Dinosaur I love was born. I landed at college in Syracuse in 1991 and over the next four years Dinosaur was the backdrop for a lot of my best college memories. Give me amazing BBQ, a jukebox full of great blues and good friends and I am in heaven.

Since leaving college I have thought about the Dinosaur often, had cases of their sauce shipped to me in Texas, study their cookbook Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, An American Roadhouse and tried to figure out some way to get back for more. They have added locations in Rochester and most recently New York City at 131st street in Harlem. So the fates aligned and I recently went back to the city for my birthday and got to relive the glory days at their newest location and finally let my wife understand why I have been prattling on about this place for years. Check out the menu and if you are ever in Syracuse, Rochester or New York City do yourself a favor and have the best BBQ in the world. Then repeat the Dinosaur Good Eatin' Prayer with me - Get down on your knees and put up your paws, thank the good Lord for the use of your jaws.

Roddick vs Pong

Ogilvy has created a new American Express campaign with tennis phenom Andy Roddick to promote their brand and the Rogers Cup. The campaign has Andy playing a match against the white bar from the classic Pong arcade game. The TV spot is funny and one of the better ones I can remember in the AmEx celebrity series.

You can then go online at www.stoppong.ca where you can try and beat pong yourself. It is basically just a re-skin of the old pong you know and love but if you hit the "3" key you can play the game in 3D which is a nice twist. I did have some technical problems in Safari since I had to resize the window and reload the content before the vertical control kicked in.

This is one of the better integrated campaigns I have seen this year. Ogilvy let's customers watch the TV and then step in to that world with the interactive.

Maximum MGM Grand

The MGM Grand hotel is Las Vegas recently redesigned and relaunched their web site and it finally brings well designed and engaging site to a Vegas hotel. I have always been shocked that they spend billions on sprawling Las Vegas casinos but they have some of the most boring and poorly designed sites in the hotel industry. I do know some who like the site for the Wynn Las Vegas but for me the load time is far too long for the static photo content and there has to be a better solution than the dual scrolling nav.

The major enhancement to the MGM Grand site is the "Maximum Vegas" video tour of the property. They clearly spent a lot of money to shoot the video and add the post production effects. I like the unique circular interface you can use to control the video and move to different sections of the hotel. After the video the rest of the site is a bit of a let down as you don't find anything else that is even close to that interactive or engaging. The content tier pages also have a curiously large image header which servers no content or design purpose and adds needless height to the page. Hopefully this new site will raise the bar on what consumers expect from Vegas sites and we will see even better things in the future.

MGM Grand - Maximum Vegas

Improve your resume

Came across a great article over on Sweet 403 today called "Improve your Resume: Land a Job at a Boutique Agency". I look at a lot of resumes every year and this article does great job of hitting all the major problems I see time and time again.

Improve your Resume: Land a Job at a Boutique Agency

Sharing your secrets

Secret deodorant has launched a new TV and online campaign called "What's Your Secret". The concept is to "look into the souls of strong women, whose candid secrets reflect their character." The commercials are reality TV clips of two people where one reveals a secret they have never told the other one. The tag at the end of the spot asks if you are strong enough to share your secret at their microsite - www.shareyoursecret.com. The microsite then lets consumers confess their own secrets online and you can search the confessions by keyword or the senders first name. Confessions that have been sent by SMS will also appear on the Reuters digital billboard in Times Square.

I do really like the very integrated design of the campaign as the TV drives consumers to the web site and site is able to then extend the concept. I like the non-traditional nav on the site that adds flair but I am not sure why it is necessary since the site design has an abundance of usable space. The Time Square extension to the site is interesting but that concept has already been executed in a more compelling way by Lexus and Nationwide insurance.

Share Your Secret

Mapping the news

Marumushi.com out of Shibuya, Tokyo has created a brilliant new online application called Newsmap. It visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator by using visual relationships between data to reveal unseen patterns in news media. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. The news can be viewed by country through the tab at the top of the page, by content through the color coded tabs at the bottom right of the page and by day with the calendar at the bottom left. The genius of such a simple interface and color coded display is that when you divide information into quickly recognizable colored groups you reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.

Check out News Map

Feric Studio

Came across the illustration work of Eric Feng today. His site is no great shakes but I love the look of his work.

Feric Studio

Sportslist.ca

I love how simple and clean the art direction is on these ads for Sportslist.ca. The site a place where the best high school athletes can attract college scouts online. Unfortunately the site isn't anywhere near as cool as the ads.

Subservient Chicken Jr.

WeeMCee.com is the latest microsite from Burger King which surfaced this week. The site was done by Campbell Mithun in Minneapolis who does BK's kids' advertising.

WeeMCee.com is a plastic hand puppet that dances around to different music tracks you select from a short list of choices and has the production value of a student portfolio project. Even if you can overlook that problem then you find the interaction on the site to be non-existent.

You can't help but draw a comparison to Subservient Chicken and that is a whole other issue with me. The best I can say about that grossly over exalted site is that it was an idea that could only be done online but let's cut the crap about how it redefined online advertising. Great online advertising has to be a balance between a unique creative vision that resonates with consumers but also has the commercial responsibility that these ads have to produce results. Subservient Chicken produced a lot of great press for Crispin Porter but for weeks no one knew it was for Burger King and you can see by their plummeting financials that it damn sure didn't help them sell any more chicken sandwiches.

So while WeeMCee lacks the production value and entertaining interaction found in Subservient Chicken, it is sure to follow in it's footsteps when it comes to the BK brand and sales figures.

MillionDollarHompage.com takes it to the streets

The creator of the milliondollarhompage.com has now spread into a real world version of his simple but genius site. MillionDollarHomepage.com is a site devised by a 20-year-old 'minipreneur' where he sold 1 million pixels on his site for $1 a piece. He sold out the entire page and earned over a million dollars in advertising sales. The idea is so simple but effective that it just hurts that you didn't think of something like this. Now the concept has been applied to a building developed by the Sandberg Institute with companies like Nike and Apple on already board.

McTime

Designed by ad agency Leo Burnett with the input of an engineer, the billboard features a real sundial whose shadow falls on a different breakfast item each hour until noon, when the shadow of the McDonald’s arches are dead center. The billboard is near the intersection of Clark and Addison in Wrigleyville, Illinois (outside Chicago) and will be up until August.

Adobe Releases Flash Player 9

In case you missed it, Adobe released Flash Player 9 a few weeks ago. The key differences for Flash Player V.9 over 8.5 is the support for ActionScript 3.0 and the upcoming Flex 2.0 framework. In addition, there are basically two Virtual Machines in this release which were built to detect and operate based on the architecture of your Flash movies. So, now begins the fun of testing, re-testing and troubleshooting.

Ask Dr. Zzzz

BBDO Detroit has recently launched a new TV campaign and web site for Chrysler Motors to promote their new round of sales incentives. The campaign centers around Dr. Z who happens to be real and is Dieter Zetsche the chairman of DaimlerChrysler. The TV commercials are uninspired and Dr. Z comes across like a low grade Joe Isuzu. I thought I would see if the web site was any better. AskDrZ.com let's you do two things - watch the commercials and read or ask Dr. Z a question. The interface and display of the questions reminds me those old text based adventure games like Zork since the majority of the site is made up of lists of text. You can see recent questions or search the database of over 1 and half million questions he has answered. As you read and search through the questions you quickly find yourself thinking that none of them came from a real person as they are all too carefully crafted and written to be believable. This is another case of where user generated content falls flat since there is no information users will connect with and there are no insights that will keep them coming back to the site. None of it makes me want to buy a car and aside from the logos across the bottom of the page I couldn't find one link to a car maker or car model to take advantage of the pricing incentive. In the end AskDrZ.com is a snore and you will be looking for your favorite bookmarks after only a few minutes.

AskDrZ.com

You want Flash tutorials?

Here is your chance to influence the direction of this blog. I have tons of Flash tips, tutorials, code tricks and more that I would be happy to share if you are interested. So leave a comment or e-mail me and let me know if you want this kind of content and what you would like to learn about.

Urban Silo

Took some time to explore the site for Urban Silo which the site for Jim Elliott who is a creative director in Seattle. The look is clean and the interface made up of various numbers of hanging tags is intriguing and original. My only complaint is that I wish the interaction with this interface was more fluid and forgiving. It is a simple thing but many times it is hard to get the right tag to the middle of the circle which the only position you can click on a tag to explore it. This problem is fixed once you have selected a tag as small arrows appear which let to scroll through the tags one at a time. The interface also does require a decent amount of exploration to find which items are clickable, how to move between the different levels of content and what those items or symbols will do.

I love the ability to blow up and drag around on the work so you can see the detail which is something that is lacking from so many other sites. The site creates a fresh new look at how an interface can work and makes great steps to improve on what a portfolio site can become. It is the worth the time to check out.

Urban Silo

Papa Johns at your door

I saw this promotional piece that was done by Saatchi & Saatchi and thought that it was really clever. I love this kind of stuff that is smart, original and makes sense for the brand no matter what medium it is using.

Left Hand Brewing

Nice use of video and 3D animation but they pay for it with the long preloader time. The Our Beers section is the best part of the site as the rest of the content is flat and not terribly engaging by comparison.

Left Hand Brewing

New Mastercard branding

I saw today where Mastercard has followed in the recent steps of Intel, Volvo, and Kodak by updating their logo. They also went a step further and changed their name to MasterCard Worldwide from MasterCard International and introduced a new corporate tagline, "The Heart of Commerce.". Unlike the other brands I listed, I can't say that I am a fan of the new logo. I just spend all my time trying to figure out what the new circle over the middle of the logo is supposed to represent. Their branding site describes the circle as "intended to reflect the company's business as a franchiser, processor and adviser". Somehow I don't get all that from a circle. What are your thoughts on this?

A new look at time

Dolche & Gabbana has launched a new site for their line of watches. The site is yet another example of a non-traditional interface that has great design style but does not let that style get in the way of the usability.

D&G TIME

Coffee and a nose job

DDB Canada did this guerilla advertising for a plastic surgeon in Toronto. It is the first interesting advertising I have ever seen for any plastic surgeon. If it is effective or insulting is up to you.

Annie Lennox

I really like the site for Annie Lennox for the U.K. which I came across my accident today It is a great example of using your content as your interface which a concept I have been using more and more in my own work.

Annie Lennox

MullerPhoto.com - simple but engaging

I came across the online portfolio for Michael Muller today. It is simple enough at first glance but roll over the main image. It is a simple technique that doesn't get in the way of the content but still adds an interesting twist to the site.

MullerPhoto.com

Great Pepsi Guerilla

I am a huge fan of finding ways to use technology to further the impact of traditional mediums like outdoor and print. BBDO created a subway poster that has a fully functional headphone jack imbedded in it, which plays samples of various exclusive tracks. There are close to 100 posters playing 12 different tracks running in Toronto and Vancouver from now until the end of summer. Very cool stuff.

Canadians build better home delivery

About three years ago the CBC in Canada launched a unique online magazine that repurposed television and radio content into one online edition. It only had 33 issues but is still one of the best examples of a compelling online magazine. If you haven't seen it before it is worth checking out.

CBC Home Delivery

Travelers In Synch Challenge

Fallon has launched a new site for Travelers Insurance called In-Synch Challenge. The site is an interactive 3D experience for risk managers that at times feel like a cousin to the Sims. The site will test your knowledge of safety, security and maintenance issues for a starter home, family home or small business. Much like the Vodafone sites, this sites uses high end 3D animation and live action video compositing to create a fun world you can interact with. It actually makes insurance... Interesting.

Travelers In Synch Challenge

Cosmo on crack

Up until now I have tried to keep my rants focus in the area of design and professional life but after an experience earlier this week I have decided to deviate if only for a while.

Having decided to kill some time at my local literary mega store a few nights ago, I wandered the rows of book aimlessly flipping through every manner of book, and magazine. Stopping to chuckle at the headlines displayed in bright type on the front of every womans magazine, taking special attention to look over the cover of the head of the class in this department - Cosmopolitan.

I have long been a believer that if you looked at the increasing rise in divorce and compared it against the rising readership of the magazine Cosmopolitan you would see a frighteningly similar curve. As I am sure most any man already knows where I am going with this as he has at one point or another found himself embroiled in a seemingly endless and unprovoked argument about something as deep and meaningful as why a little satanic Cosmo quiz your girlfriend or wife has just completed says his romance IQ is below par and she wants to know why.

I continued to ramble on through the stacks when I happened to wander by the long row of clearance books. I came upon a book that left me standing there in the aisle scanning the store with the hopes of finding even the most remote of acquaintance to show this find. I had an expression that could have only compared to the slack jawed bewilderment of a young teenager when he first found his father hidden stash of Playboy magazines.

The book, whose title and author I am going to omit, looked much like a high school math book contained a long series of very official looking and scientific formulas that read like Cosmo on crack. The book professed to be able to allow the reader to be able to use these formulas to determine such things as “How likely it is that your man has had an affair at work” which was based on taking elements such as the number of years he has worked there, number of women in the office, number of ex-girlfriends and come out with the percentage of likelihood he has had an affair at work. While I was spinning from the thoughts of the fights this could generate I read on to find chapters like, and I couldn' make this up if I wanted to, "“How to determine your mans future net worth by how he makes love"”, and the king of the hill "Determine how much your man would pay for you if you were a hooker". I think I can say with a good amount of certainty that I will never want to figure that out and why the hell would you ever want to sit down and figure this out.

They say that to be a true support of the freedom of expression you should support the ideas you think are the worst or hate the most. I think I just found my new life’s work…