BrandArt

It has been a long time since I’ve posted here. I like having this blog attached to my portfolio site because it lets me post material that wouldn’t fit in my portfolio. Over the last couple of months a lot of work has gone into the portfolio side of my website while I’ve forgotten the blog. I’ve added more work along with videos to explain the integrated campaigns.

The process of putting together this re-design has taught me more about the limitations of Flash as a development tool (i.e. load times, and trade-offs between animation and easy navigation). This site, and the projects on it, wouldn’t have been possible without all the partners and collaborators and the people made the work better by sharing their honest feedback.

Here’s the widget component of our campaign.  I can’t believe we made a widget.  It’s ridiculous.

Scott Hansen is an artist/designer with a great blog at ISO50. He recently re-linked readers to a post about his work process.  The project was a print for Obama’s campaign fundraising.  Every artist, illustrator, art director or designer has their own unique process, but all creative disciplines require a meticulous attention to detail.  Real projects require deadlines, comps and approvals that shape the workflow but are outside of our creative control.  I have learned that improving my work requires changing my work process, and it’s helpful to read about how other people approach work.  Hansen’s process works for him, and it’s inspiring.

AICP is an annual award show that selects the best commercials each year to celebrate creative commercial film-making. The commericals that are accepted are considered art and become part of the archives of MoMA’s Department of Film. Tristan, Raquel, Holly and I were honored to create the campaign to drive AICP entries this year. Check out the campaign microsite at www.wtfass.tv/.

Nike's Kick Creator in Papervison3D is a great example of what can be done with this technology. Papervision3D itself is a big development for the Flash community because it dramatically increases the program's technical capacities. It's been around for a couple of years now.  Last year Papervision3D projects for Absolute and Sony Bravia won several awards including a Canne Lion. There are good tutorials out there now and I've found learning to use Papervision3D is easier than I thought. These are the one's I've found helpful:

Tutorials:

http://www.madvertices.com/

http://www.peterelst.com/blog/2007/07/07/papervision3d-in-5-minutes/

http://www.everydayflash.com/blog/index.php/2008/08/26/using-the-bend-modifier-with-collada-objects/

http://www.everydayflash.com/blog/index.php/2008/03/01/from-blender-to-papervision3d/

Papervision3D project:

http://code.google.com/p/papervision3d/

http://www.papervision3d.org/

http://blog.papervision3d.org/

I’m looking forward to learning Papervision3D, but as a future marketer, I have been a little skeptical about Papervision3D’s efficacy as part of a campaign.  Bandwidth is still an issue with larger Flash sites, and so far Papervision3D has mainly been used to improve navigation.  Papercritters was the first site I saw that used 3D in a way that made it more than just eye-candy.  Nike’s Kick Creator does this too.  RG/A has used Nike’s site to demonstrate how Papervision3D can be a strong marketing tool. Online 3D technologies will take off when normal people can create, send and print 3D models they make online.

UPDATE 6/12/09:

Since I started experimenting with Papervision I tried out Away 3D and I found this tutorial really straight forward. That’s how I ended up with this.

Over the summer I wanted to include a webcam app in a banner ad project.  It probably isn’t technically feasible yet to put a webcam in a banner but when a webcam can be used it opens up a whole new level of interaction online.  BBH put the webcam to good use on this microsite for Mentos.

Last week John Hegarty came to speak at the Brandcenter. Hegarty is a very accomplished British advertising executive, co-founder of TBWA, London, and founding partner of BBH. Hegarty showed his reel to the school and talked about what makes good work. In brief: simplicity, truth, irreverence, creating fame and great product demonstrations. He was very generous with his time and even met with several of us one-on-one. Thank you Sir John Hegarty for sharing your time and your insights into the advertising business.

It’s hard to like banner ads.  Most banner ads are annoying because that’s their tactic for drawing attention.  But when banner ads are done well we interact with them because they’re interesting.  Here are a few of my favorite from Banner Blog.  These ads earn our attention with their self-referential cleverness.  These ads don’t flash or dance; all these ads encourage interaction in an innovative way.

You probably know that Crispin launched a great campaign to change our perception about Microsoft.  They produced several different TV commercials that were seeded on the Internet, probably because even Crispin, with all their success at viral marketing, could not be sure which one would take off online.  The Seinfeld and Gates spots had the biggest impact.  Nobody knows anything about Virals is a very good article about the phenomenon.  Maybe it’s all random, like why I’m posting this Microsoft ad here.