A friend of mine at the Martin Agency sent me an email today about the launch of their site for Geico called Caveman's Crib. The full motion video site shows the cavemen from their tv commercials getting ready for a party and lets you explore his apartment. Martin has never really had any strong interactive work and I have always felt that could really put interactive to good use with Geico. This site takes a step in the right direction and s a huge step forward from the very forgettable work they did for Discover Card. But even this site falls short of anything new or original because it feels like a lot of other sites you have seen before for companies like IKEA and Audi.

Labels: Design and user experience, Integrated advertising, Online advertising review, Site review

musicovery is a new beta site that puts a nice relational visual interface on browsing music. You use a panel to choose the genre, era range or make your choice on a two axis chart that maps tempo and dance beat. This then produces a colored web of results you can navigate through and listen to the music.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional experiences, Site review

Wieden + Kennedy’s Amsterdam office has created a stunning new commercial for Coca-cola called "The Happiness Factory". The spot was created by PSYOP and follows a young man buying a soda through a Coke machine and the adventures of the coin and bottle through an imaginative world inside of the machine. It is a visual feast which is missing from most of the advertising in this category and you can't help but feel like this is the next evolution of the animated Polar Bears have bee seen in several previous commercials. The concept stays centered by keeping the bottle of Coke as the focus of the world but I have to wonder if the gap between this imaginary world and the real world where consumers buy Coke will be too big for this commercial to have an effect on sales or brand equity.

Labels: Offline advertising

Career sites have always been a boring text driven experience that rarely give you any insight into the company or position you are reading about but Accenture has decided to take a different route with Backstage at Accenture. The concept of the site is that you can interview 6 different real employees of Accenture to find out more about the company. The concept is sound and the site makes good use of Flash video for all the employees and host. The problem is that like so many other sites and advertisements that have tried this approach it rings hollow as the employees all sound and act tightly scripted and it keeps you from buying into the fact that this is a real backstage look at the company. It is nice to see that they did do more than just talking heads as all the sections have small trivia games you can play which make the site more than just a passive watching experience. The production value is very high as the video as well integrated and 3D animated set pieces keep things clear and add some life to the different sections.

The biggest let down is what should be the star of the show - the job listings. They appear almost as an afterthought being listed on the right hand side of the page with only a simple and clumsy 'previous' and 'next' interface to move through the list of jobs. You have to figure out to click the 'close' button in the upper right to go to the real careers section which is the standard site you have seen a million times before and was probably designed by someone in their IT department.

Labels: Design and user experience, Site re-launch, Site review

Blogger Darren Barefoot has published a hysterical Second Life parody called First Life. It boasts 6.5 billion residents, free membership and the first 3D analog world without server lag. Plus you have to love a site where the call to action is "go outside. membership is free" As an added bonus in this litigation crazy society it is wonderful to see a compny with a sense of humor as Linden Labs, creators of Second Life, sent a "Proceed and Permitted" letter (the opposite of a "Cease and Desist") to Darren. I have to go order my First Life t-shirt now.

Labels: Digital culture, Viral

UNIQLO has launched another new site with MIXPLAY. You can choose from 15 different beats and instruments to create your own personal fix. Each of those beats and instruments is linked to a Flash video clip of a dancer and a colored parka. You can then find out more about the parka if you are interested. The site is fun to tinker with but doesn't come anywhere near the creativity of the main site which is still one of the most impressive Flash sites I have seen. The main site heroes the product as well but does it in a unique and compelling way that it is far more effective than MIXPLAY which feels tired and like you have seen it before.

Labels: Design and user experience, Site review

The Mexican agency Grupo W is at it again. They are the group who brought us the addictive Stuntman site which I wrote about in a previous entry and is still one of the best uses of Flash video I have seen. Actioncity is a well rendered environment that is interesting and fun to explore though it is not very deep.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional Flash

Though not as funny as the "Truth in advertising" short film from a few years ago this is still very funny and you can easily put client and co-workers faces to each one of these personalities.

Labels: Good read

I seem to be behind the times when it comes to buying naming rights. Today I found out about the story of the GoldenPalace.com and that they bought the rights to name a new species of Money as the GoldenPalace.com Monkey. I had previously only been aware of them when they bought the divine grilled cheese and the fence from the "grassy knoll" where JFK was shot in Dallas.

The Callicebus aureipalatii monkey, "aureipalatii" meaning "of the Golden Palace" is a new species found in western Bolivia's Madidi National Park. The species was discovered on an expedition by Dr. Robert Wallace of the Wildlife Conservation Society and rather than choosing a name themselves they auctioned off the naming rights. GoldenPalace.com was one of over a dozen bidders and their winning bid was US$ 650,000. The money goes to a good cause but it seems like everything is for sale anymore. I am also very much aware of the fact that I am part of the problem since even though I find this all a little insane I am giving them the press they wanted when they bought the rights.

I have written the praise of TASCHEN books before and I received the latest book from them today and they continue to impress. Advertising Now! Online is the most complete and best collection of best-in-class online advertising I have seen. All 448 pages are well laid out with large photos and the work is organized by subject. Each chapter also has an article from one of the agencies in the book about their biggest campaigns and what went in to creating them.

The best thing is that the book also contains a DVD which shows all of the work in motion which brings it to life and shows it the way it should be seen. Before this I have always enjoyed the books from ONE show every year but this is a much more international and complete collection and something should is a great desk reference for online advertising designers.

Labels: Exceptional creative, Good read, Great resource, Integrated advertising

I was cruising through my bookmarks today an revisited the site for newly renamed Barkley advertising agency. The site was not anything exceptional but a feature in their work section did catch my eye. It was the first time I had seen a portfolio that gave the user the option to be able to socialize the work found there. In this case you can add the work to sites like Digg and Technorati. I like the thinking and the possibilities doing something like this opens up.

Labels: Design and user experience, Site re-launch, Site review

So you think you know all about white space? This article on A List Apart shows how micro and macro white space push brands upscale or down and enhances legibility in print and online.

Labels: Design and user experience, Good read, Great resource

Saw the new site for Gringo today who is an interactive agency from Brazil. I have written about them in the past for their work on the Middle Finger Pub. Their new site has an interesting interface where from the main menu the content is loaded onto sides of a 3D cube. They have a lot of really good work that is worth checking out. I especially like the work they did for the Acura MDX.

Labels: Design and user experience

The Altoids site has been fantastic for years. I recently found it again in my bookmarks and really liked what they have done with the new content and visual design update. It does a really good job of creating an engaging web site for a product that easily could have something very informational and boring. The production value on all the content in the features sections alone is fantastic and I would recommend spending the time to click through all the sections of the site.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional creative, Site review

Toyota has launched a very cool new site for their Hybrid Synergy Drive System. You have to get past the pedestrian landing page that runs their latest TV commercial to find this site that is very well designed and executed. The content is a near orgy of information design that takes what could be very dry content and makes it engaging. The largest and most interesting section of the site is the community which is a collection of user generated content where consumers post their reasons for having a hybrid vehicle. There are 10 different ways to sort the posts and each different filter is displayed in a new interesting and well designed display.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional creative, Exceptional experiences, Unique interface design

Grey Advertising created an interesting holiday card that you can customize for yourself. The Grey countdown clock originally counted down to Xmas and the New Year but you can also set your own dates.

Mini Cooper has created a really cool outdoor ad in Italy. A life size fibreglass Mini was attached to ramp in the billboard that moves the car up and down to create a Yo-Yo effect.

Labels: Offline advertising

There has been a lot of technology hype lately with all the game console launches but today Apple again proved that they are in a league all their own. Anyone who saw their press conference today knew that their unveiling of the iPhone was going to change cell phone forever and continue to help Apple's computers gain ground on the PC world. I personally have never seen a product annoucemnet that was so universally met with the same reaction - I WANT THAT! We will see the consumer craving stays true till June.

On the recommendations of a co-worker I downloaded the latest offering from Yahoo today which is a beta version of a mobile app called Yahoo! Go. Go is a bundle of the best of Yahoo!'s services like Flickr, maps and web mail. I downloaded the version for Blackberry's and I have to say it is impressive though it did have some bugs to show for it's beta status. Click here to watch the tour and check it out for yourself. I will have more once I have had a chance to bang on it for a while.

The brilliant truth campaign rolls on with a new site called Hairy Mail. You can use the back hair of a Robin Williams stand in to either freehand a message to a friend or type it in and let the site do the work for you. The purpose is to convey the fact that cigarettes have the same sodium hydroxide found in hair remover.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional creative, Integrated advertising, Online advertising review

I love it when I find someone who is just nothing short of a master craftsman and I found that tonight when I saw lab.mathieu-badimon.com. It was so impressive it took me back to the first time I saw the work of Jared Tarbell on Levitated.net. Mathieu Badimon is a French designer and his labs site is a collection of great actionscript experiments that are extremely well produced and designed. So often sites like this are just an exercise in actionscripting and nothing else but the Mathieu adds a wonderful design layer that really sets this site apart. Also check out this dashboard and Web site that are equally well executed.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional Flash

In December the stars aligned and I became the proud parent of the seriously overhyped and horribly launched Playstation 3. I had been drooling over it since it was unveiled so I decided to buck the trend and not put it on ebay to try and cash in on the pre-Christmas hysteria.

This choice had sparked a spitied debate at work with my boss, who stood outside the Toys R Us in Times Square to get a Wii on launch day, accuses me of choosing style over substance by getting a PS3. I spent a lot of time thinking about it and there is certainly some truth to that statement. I will give the Wii credit for really doing something different but for me the controller seems like gimmick I would get tired of in a few months and only be left with a system with substandard graphics.

After spending some serious quality time with the system I am impressed. I have spent most of my time playing Resistance: Fall of Man which was created by my favorite developer Insomniac Studio. They created the Ratchet and Clank series for the PS2 which was one of my favorites and they do not disappoint with Resistance.

It is a system you buy for the potential of what it can do much like when I bought my PSP. The PSP spent the first year of it's existence with one of the most horrible game line-ups I can remember and only recently really started to come into it's own. I still think the Flash enabled web browser it is a vastly untapped channel.

So if you are in the mood to throw down with an online game of Resistance or Madden send me a message at Gates-O-Hell.

I spent the day yesterday so thankful I have moved back to New York as I went through the Design Life Now: National Design Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. The Triennial brings together the experimental designs and emerging ideas in animation, new media, fashion, robotics, architecture, product, medical, and graphic design which have been at the center of American culture from 2003 to 2006. Several of my personal favorites included the work from Pixar, Kidrobot, Apple computers, Santiago Calatrava and Joshua Davis. It was one of the most fascinating exhibitions I have ever seen and I would recommend every designer come to New York between now and the end of July to see the exhibition.

Labels: Digital culture, Great exhibition

I came across an interesting site today called SIRE that is dedicated to stopping child abuse in the Netherlands. It is a linear experience that walks you through 7 different scenes highlighting the statistics of each kind of child abuse. Even though the experience is a linear and the interaction is limited the high production value makes the experience compelling and makes you want to explore more about this terrible subject.

Saw the IM Studio site today which is an average site that is brought to life by some very nice 3D animation. The studio's mascot is the star of the site with numerous funny transition animation. The rest of the site pales by comparison as the navigation isn't intuitive or consistent.

I am not a Blackberry fan. I never found them the least bit appealing but found one on my desk when I started my new job. I never use it for anything but a mobile calendar that helps me remember the conference room of my next meeting. Maybe it is because I am a design whore and they are I find them ugly with keys that are too small for my big fingers. If Apple came out with one I would probably be all over it. I was intrigued by the new Cingular Blackjack commercial I saw the other day. The visually stylish simplicity and hip groove draws you in while the device in manipulated like a deck of cards to show you just enough hints of the it's functionality to draw you in. Once I went to Cingular's Web site the interest quickly faded as the device is not nearly is cool in real life as it if looks in TV commercials but what is new there.

Labels: Offline advertising

Consumer generated content is a painfully well documented trend that appears to increasingly regularity in all forms of advertising these days. A new microsite for the Volvo C30 is one of the first sites that appears to embrace this trend that can be good or bad for your brand.

The microsite for the C30 let's you express your love or hate for the new C30. Before we go and get too excited about that statement your love or hate is limited to rating 16 short films which are the centerpiece for the site. Most of the films are positive but a few are negative and you can agree or disagree with the position of each film. Once you scratch the surface you see that while Volvo is taking a risk with this direction it is a small one and I would say it is more for the PR it will attract. Since the opinions are limited to voting with numbers it doesn't really deliver a platform to let consumers really express themselves in any meaningful way.

Labels: Consumer generated content, Design and user experience, Site review

Monoface is a fun site that lets you experiment with a variety of facial features, faces and hair-dos to create funny combination which you can then save to the gallery.