Fluidesign Blog

As announced today by TechCrunch, Flash files can now be partially indexed by the search engines. While this doesn’t mean that your all Flash site will rank the same as an all HTML equivalent, it is a huge step forward in reducing the most painful part of using Flash. Perhaps we’ll think twice now before simply denouncing Flash for our clients that also want top SEO rankings.

Chronotopic Anamorphosis from Marginalia Project on Vimeo.

This got my synapses firing this morning.

The experiment was made within the context of Marginalia Project where you can find more info, including source code.

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.

Finding ARPANET: The First (Physical) Site of the Internet from Brad Fidler on Vimeo.

Gee o golly gosh, congrats to Tripkick.com for making it to Time Magazine’s top 50 websites of 2008. Read all about it here.

For even more info on tripkick.com, click here.

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.)

This is a great commentary on the hyperreal bombardment of youtube “stars” we experience everyday. Weezer just literally brought them to life! Great concept.

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.

Brand Tags is a site playing off the idea that whatever it is people say a brand is, is what it is. All tags are generated by people like you, so have at it.

For example, here’s what people are saying about Nike.