Fluidesign Blog

I don’t know much about the publication, but I really enjoy the well-designed layout and type in NewWork Magazine. The site even offers scans of the issues and neatly organized them into sleekly scrolling pages. It was disappointing to find no zooming function, since I wanted to see the fine (and probably finely kerned) type.

But then I realized even that wouldn’t solve this problem, something that has defined the web design industry. We’re limited to a screen that simply won’t allow the type of freedom a large-format paper does. To compensate, we have scrollbars and zoom. But the experience is different. I’m still looking at the composition in the browser window that’s in another frame, the operating system. Plus, I would never interact in the same unreserved way with a pricy piece of printed glossy paper as I would with a blog. I don’t have an answer or a solution, but I’m sure that just as much as web has impacted print, print will do the same to the web. After all, there is such a variety of great print design. It probably also relates to the medium itself, the web is still young compared to print. I’m confident web design will one day be more original than print design, partially because I like working under constraints, including large format.

I love when a brands are immersive and astounding, making the viewer/consumer/user want to be a part of it, live it, spend time with it, be it. That is what the UK-based brand Agent Provocateur is all about. Buy into their lifestyle and you will no doubt, be oozing sex appeal in no time.

Their store and website have been a favourite of mine for a long time. They are known for their high-end lingerie, made famous by controversial advertisements, racy window displays, pushing sexual innuendos, making men want to loosen their collars and older British women fume with fury over the AP store window they pass on the way to have their afternoon tea.

Their brand is one of the most cohesive and well-orchestrated I’ve ever experienced…from their store experience (sales women in fitted short pink lab coats sauntering about in their fishnet stockings and stilettos) to their online presence (photographs of women wearing AP lingerie, encouraging viewers to fantasize they are voyeurs in an erotic cult club in paradise).

Take a visit on their new site and play the peeping-Tom game. To drive sales and word-of-mouth, they also created a smart ‘cloakroom’ feature allowing users to drag items off the models and store them for purchase, while any part of the party could be captured, downloaded and used to create customized wallpaper.

All of this ruckus has built up quite the talk around town, has kept their brand in the spotlight and attracted massive international media coverage, making them the only truly credible lingerie brand on the fashion map.

How come some brands are more loveable than other brands? Perhaps because some brands facilitate an easy way to get all intimate, emotional, and passionate with them.

Take these two interactive, immersive, game experiences involving a very intimate act, kissing.

Here at the Happiness Factory, you get to control some ridiculously adorable puppy creatures on their adventure path, to ultimately win each level by kissing the gold at the end of the rainbow, in this case the bottle of coke. The whole experience is awesome, try it out here. Let me know if you can taste the coca-cola, k?

(Shift Control won the Webby for this one.)

Mentos came up with a pretty clever fight game concept where you have to out kiss your component. I’d say there’s a place in everyone’s heart for a well played passionate kiss fight. You can try it out here.

(Props to BBH.)

Last Friday marked one of my twice yearly trips to the movie theatre to take in a flick the old fashioned way. First I’d like to point out that seeing a movie in the theatre really is more fun! It’s easy to forget this when you only venture out of the comfort of your living room two times a year.

And second you should TOTALLY go see The Go-Getter this week! (trailer here). It’s a beautiful little film about, well, self discovery by means of a road trip I suppose. And yes the concept has been done before, but honestly who cares? The cinematography is light and ethereal, the characters are believable, and the music (mostly by M. Ward) is perfect. It’s an all out feel good indie movie and it’s only playing this week in LA, New York, Portland, Toronto, and Orange County.

It’s gotten great reviews from Rolling Stone, The New York Times, New York Magazine, and the New York Daily News… AND for you office-mates, it’s playing not a half block from the office at the Laemmle Monica 4 on 2nd street.

And while I am a teeny bit biased, (one of the producers is a friend), you should still GO SEE IT. NOW.

If you don’t Zooey Deschanel will shoot you.

Ever wanted to create your own isometric pixel picture, but didn’t know what the word isometric meant? Well, now you can fulfill your wildest dreams with Cubescape!

TwitterFountain is a pretty cool visualization mashup tool for twitter and flickr. Plug in the keyword you want to show tweets of, and then pick a keyword to show flickr photos in the background. I suggest conferences/panels/parties project it during the event. It would be awesome to see live tweets and photos for #conferencename, riiight? At least the ADD in all of us think so.

Anyway, let it load to get overloaded on ponies:

Even if I’m a developer, I like art. Particularly Pop Art, Surrealism, and impossible structure from M. C. Escher.

These paintings are great. But for us, living behind a computer screen, we’d like to see animation and arts in many different ways.

This morning I discovered 3 videos that I’d like to share with you.

First, a 3D exploration of Guernica, Picasso’s painting:

Then, a short film animating a character from Guernica in other artists’ paintings:

Finally, maybe not the most artistic but the funniest:

I like to see these types of videos where old art takes life on screen.

If you have been reading our blog, you may have read that we went to EconSM a couple weeks back. There, Dalton Caldwell, CEO, of Imeem said that they are currently not profitable, but they do have a long-term plan. He also briefly mentioned that in the near future they are going to allow developers to create applications on the site (you know like facebook apps, but on imeem) and allow them to use the site’s music within the apps (cuz they have the license to do so). Well, this was officially announced yesterday, see “Imeem Adds OpenSocial to Media Platform”.

I think this is particularly interesting for brands that want to use music to define their brand, reach out to their target audience, and create a cool, fun application. Could be anything right? A game, a video, really anything that combines the brand with the music on the site. I am sure there will be some cool ideas that come out of this.

However, maybe Imeem should charge developers (or brands) to use the music. But maybe this is in their long-term plan on becoming profitable. Because, really, aren’t the musicians going to want a kick back too? Well, I want the music industry to start making money again, so my vote is charge ‘em.

And for your thirsty mind, check these stats out:

More info on music industry stats here.

So, as I mentioned here, Twitter can be most useful for multiple things. We created an account like @lotd but for celebrities. So if you’re on twitter and you see a celeb, tweet who you just saw and where to @celebspotted. Then all people following @celebspotted will get updated whenever a fellow twitterer is lucky enough to have a remarkable celeb spotting.

And if you’re not on twitter and you like to follow (or stalk) celebrities, nows da time to join.

The infamous Sarah Lacy interview of Mark Zuckerberg is clearly old news in the blogosphere by now. But in catching up on nerdy tech gossip you probably didn’t notice, sitting pretty in the eye of the maelstrom, your friend and mine… Mr. Brock Batten! Good times.

(Image from cnet, and thanks goes out to perez for his always inspiring image treatments.)