February 26, 2010
Coca Cola / Open Happiness from LAUNDRY SERVICE MEDIA on Vimeo.
My client Joseph Zentil and his team did a video shoot for Coca-Cola’s “Open Happiness” campaign.
“Open Happiness” – Coca Cola
YouQuote
February 23, 2010
Role: Concept / Design
YouQuote is an application concept in which users would vote on user-generated quotes. The ‘YouQuote’ with the most votes is awarded Quote of the Day, Quote of the Week, Quote of the Month, and lastly, Quote of the Year. I submitted this concept as part of MipTv’s Content 360 competition in the Engaging Audiences category. Below is an extract from my proposal which will help clarify:
Project Description
It is in our nature to quote others. It helps us gather a better understanding of what we’re trying to communicate. It is to no wonder that there are countless ‘quote of the day’ calendars and applications all over the internet. We archive them for a reason: we feel they mean something to us and that they genuinely teach us something.
We now live in the information age. Information is being spread faster and on more mediums than ever. Quite literally, it is in the palm of our hands. It’s worth thinking about who says what and what value it has, not 10 years ago, but today.
Think about the Retweet function on the Twitter platform. Users press a button to tell their friends about something they find important to them. But how important is it really? How many people in total will actually find it to be important? This question is being asked by today’s marketers and social media specialists. It’s time to find out.
YouQuote is a system where users can submit a ‘quote of the day’ to be voted on by other users. The highest voted YouQuote will be featured on the home page. Our goal is to get users engaged creatively, academically and culturally; to prompt them to share with others their thoughts, receive feedback on these thoughts, interact with other users, and promote a collective voice.
Uniqueness of the Application or Content Idea
YouQuote is unique in so much as it is transforms a familiar function and theory, the retweet, into a user voting system whereby it isn’t news feeds or URL’s we’re sharing, but rather, our own thoughts. It is heavily influenced by current trends. It would be based on a very similar 140 character update system as Twitter but as a platform, I would emphasize the connection of having a quote of the day – something said by you that’s important to us – something relevant and time sensitive. Whether or not the system will require a user account is still to be determined.
Potential for Wide Spread User Involvement
The project’s success will be held in user interaction. Simply put, if people use it, it has potential to go viral, but if people don’t use it, it is worthless. However, it is important to understand that 1) with the popularity of Twitter and emerging personal androids, the time is now and 2) momentum will be difficult to gauge – this kind of project can take off at any point in time.
Quality of the Idea Description
Twitter is in it’s prime and is only getting better. The popularity for a 140 character phrase is what users crave. The idea is there. People retweet news and phrases of interest to their followers – similarily, youQuote users vote on user sayings for others to see.
Thought Given as to What is Needed to Develop the Idea
The disadvantage of having a user login system is the requirement of more space and a more complex database but more importantly, it slows down the process. The advantages of having it are that it will help reduce spam and can hopefully encourage users to genuinely use the system and continue to use the system. In any case, the system will require an intense validation routine to weed out non sense.
The project will require at bare minimum one designer, two developers, and a project manager. It will also require testing groups and a marketing campaign focused on online and print advertising.
Added Value for a Media Company or a Consumer Brand
A database of users looking to have their words heard caters to specific industries that could benefit from advertising on the website.
Coca Cola Advertising Spending 2008
February 20, 2010
Vector Illustration taken from http://coca-cola-art.com
The above design was an exercise I made for myself to do some research and work on my typography and layout.
Seeing as I had these numbers at hand, I had to ask what actually happened in 2008 – what products were they marketing and spending all this money on? Well, in 2008 Coca Cola made a few key moves. First, they discontinued Coca-Cola Blak. Second, they issued a series of updated plastic bottles reminiscent of early glass bottles. Consequently the following year in 2009 their bottling operations in Skopje Macedonia won the “Best Bottling Company” award. Seen above is the traditional glass bottle originally scultped by Earl R. Dean in 1915.
Kingdom
Role: Concept / Design (Website and Branding Guideline) / CSS / Javascript Development
Kingdom is a project I conceived of in late 2009. It is a system in which users vote on a series of diverse but age targeted polls concerning technology, politics, the arts, culture and so on. The results of these polls would be produced in real time and be viewable to everyone.
Here is some copy I have extracted from my proposal that may help clarify:
Have you ever thought how much power citizens have got from the Web 2.0? Blogs and tweets are changing public discourse. Facebook petition groups help sway law. Kingdom aims to contribute to this initiative and give the public space – space to have their voice be heard. Kingdom is a house of knowledge. Make your voice known and find out what the rest of us are thinking. Engage in discourse and make a difference.
Collis Ta’eed – Envato.com
February 18, 2010
Chances are if one of my friends are looking for online software tutorials I will reccomend one from the Envato Tuts+ network. I’m not the only one either seeing as “Tuts+ serves up over 13 million pageviews a month across its many subsites on subjects like graphic design, web development, audio production and motion graphics.” But it doesn’t end there.
The company is also host to a diverse marketplace where digital producers can sell Wordpress themes, stock audio, After Effects project files, Flash templates and more. If that’s not enough, Envato is also home to a series of educational, informative, and inspirational blogs. They even publish their own work under the name Rockable Press. Their collective efforts have garnered them favorable mentions in Digg, The Washington Post, Macworld, PC World and BBC.
It should be obvious then that Envato is one of today’s coolest and most significant development companies out there. The abundance of resources they offer to freelancers is unmatched. They represent a true example of what Web 2.0 is capable of – what collaboration, teamwork, and user participation can amount to.
When the company’s Marketing Manager Cyan Ta’eed replied to my interview request I was excited to get some insight into how Envato started, what their core mission is, and more than anything, what made the Envato spirit come to life (of course, as an aspiring UI designer in awe of the Envato brand, I had to ask some design questions too). I’m sure you’ll agree that Collis Ta’eed, CEO of Envato (and husband to Cyan) provided the very insight I was hoping for.
Image taken from http://www.twitter.com/collis
1. Did you go to a university or college? If so, what did you take?
I sure did, I went to UNSW to study Math for four years (though it took me five because I kept skipping too many classes!) Luckily I got to do some computer science courses too which have been useful over the years for working with developers, the math on the other hand hasn’t come up too often :-)
2. How old were you when your first project ActiveDen went live?
I was … *counts years* … 26!
3. How many people were involved in the launch of ActiveDen? What roles did they play?
There were four of us, myself, Cyan my wife, Jun who is my best friend and Ryan who was our developer on the job. I was the main organizer and designer, Ryan the developer, and Cyan and Jun did strategy and marketing. A little while later my brother Vahid also joined us to help with organization, especially with the hard stuff like accounting! But as in any small startup, we’ve pretty much done whatever needed to be done and often shared or exchanged jobs. The five of us are all still here and still mixing and matching jobs even to this day!
4. What inspired you to start a network of educational websites?
To be honest it was almost by accident! To begin with I was just putting up some tutorials I’d made, but it turned out they were quite popular. From there we started thinking it should be a whole site on the subject – Psdtuts+. When that became super popular, we thought we’d extend the franchise out to have lots of educational sites.
I’ve always loved education as it’s such a rewarding type of work. I also really believe that teaching is one of the best ways of learning. Certainly when I used to write tutorials on Psdtuts+ and later on Nettuts+ I always ended up learning lots of stuff myself!
5. How important is the interface design for the success of one of your websites?
I think it’s very important to have a great UI design as it helps set the tone for the site. It gives visitors an immediate impression of who and what you are. The wrong design can send all the wrong messages. And a badly designed interface can make a site very hard to navigate and use.
Having said that, there are some very famous examples of sites (MySpace and eBay in particular) that have had massive success with some less than perfect interfaces :-)
6. Can you describe a typical afternoon in the office?
A typical afternoon these days is mostly meetings and email for me. I sometimes joke that CEO stands for Chief Email Officer because I seem to spend a huge amount of time doing that these days! Now and then I still get to do some design, but with every passing month and year I seem to do less.
7. How has Twitter and other social media affected your website traffic?
I think Twitter has become a great source of traffic for all our sites and certainly is a great way of getting news out there. More useful to us, historically speaking, has been Digg. Although it’s very difficult to get on there, and these days the site seems to have waned a lot, the traffic from Digg helped get both FreelanceSwitch and Psdtuts off the ground. I think Twitter is probably doing the same thing for newer sites as the number of Digg links I see around these days is relatively few.
8. Who designed the Envato logo? Can you explain the meaning behind the Envato name and logo?
That was designed by me! The word “envato” has no inherent meaning – which is actually why we picked it! A blank word leaves a lot of space for creating a fresh brand in people’s minds. The leaf is there because our marketplaces in particular have always been based around animals (Activeden has a fox, ThemeForest a bear, and so on) so the leaf represented this by adding an element of nature. It also just looked kinda cool :-)
9. Do you know of any other similar networks or websites to the Envato network?
I don’t think there are any other networks quite like us in that we have a very diverse and eclectic range of sites spanning digital goods marketplaces like ThemeForest, app review sites like Mac.AppStorm, a gallery at Creattica, and of course tutorial sites at Tuts+.
10. Any there any short or long term projects in mind for the future?
Lots and lots! Right now one product we’re developing is an editable directory of apps and app developers for AppStorm.net. We’ve also got our new Creative Sessions site which has been in the pipes for a long time and is almost ready!
But probably the thing I’m most excited about this year is organizing some face to face workshops in different parts of the world so we can meet up with the Envato community offline! It’s going to be lots of work to organize as we really don’t know much about real world events, but it should be very cool and very fun!
Commentary on Facebook Redesign
February 15, 2010
The website is generally accessible. In fact, no matter which direction your eyes look there are links to primary functions such as profile, messages, events and so on. However, there is one significant exception: the center of the interface – the content which displays the social relationships and in sum, the core experience of the system.
Questionable components of the new interface:
1. The Logout should not require user interaction – it should be in plain sight, not in a drop down menu.
2. The same goes for my Inbox. Users shouldn’t have to navigate to an icon drop down (not even the word Inbox!) and click ‘See All Messages.’ I realize the left navigation offers direct access to the page but having alerts on the icons guide users in that direction when they desire to send and check received messages. It becomes habit.
3. Moving the home and profile pages from left to right leaves the user confused.
4. Events placement. The 3 column system only works on so many levels. Having the events bottom right in dull text format makes them easy to oversee. Events represent the material form of the friendships users maintain online and should be prioritized.
5. Redundant functions. I mentioned that the website is generally accessible, but perhaps too accessible – the subtraction of redundant links could offer a less cluttered interface, clearer focal points and an overall better experience.
