BrandArt

I blogged a while ago about Follow Your Instinct shortly after it came out.  It opened up amazing posibilities because it was the first creative use of buttons embeded in Youtube videos.  BooneOakley’s new website is another example. What’s incredible is that BooneOakley has completely committed to Youtube as their format. Their youtube site will reach people browsing youtube who aren’t in advertising and demonstrate that they understand the power of social media sites like youtube.

Two of the web development techniques that together account for many of the improvements to the appearance of our favorite sites on the web over the last five years are Image replacement and CSS sprites. Behind the scenes, both of them creatively use existing code like <span> tags and CSS in new ways. Image replacement lets websites display type in fonts that may not be available on your computer, while CSS sprites create more efficient and attractive roll-over effects.An article in CSS Tricks discusses image replacement and one by David Shea explains how CSS sprites work.

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.

The same technique used in a campaign that won a Cannes Lion this year is available online.  This ASCII-O-Matic program is part of a whole site called t.y.p.o.r.g.a.n.i.s.m. that is devoted to the idea that type is alive.  It’s one of seven different typographic experiments.  They’re working in a place where type, graphics, motion, sound and web design meet.

This site has been up for about a year.  I thought this was a pretty remarkable site when I found it today.  Eliminating the mouse click is an inspiring idea for web design, but I think everything should be built this way.  It’s just a more pleasant experience to navigate a page without having to click or drag anything.  There’s a lot invested in clicks because they are how financial transactions are closed and how marketing efforts are measured.  Click-less web design can’t become reality until web surfers become more accustomed to navigating without the click.

You probably already know about I love typography. It’s a great site that inspires and teaches us about typography. One aspect the site doesn’t seem to cover is online typography. As somebody who is a student of web design and typography, that’s unfortunate. The web is overtaking the importance of print in our daily lives, but it’s also becoming better at accommodating typographic design. CSS has definitely improved web design and the internet is already full of examples of innovative typography. Here’s a site that compiles a lot of information about using CSS typographically.

So CS4 is out.  You can donwload a beta version of the new Dreamweaver here.  CS4 Dreamweaver has menus that follow the patterns developed in the other CS3 programs.  Live View is a new preview function for Deamweaver that should make web development easier.  Photoshop CS4 is able to paint 3D objects and Flash CS4 will make it easier to work in 3D.  At the Brandcenter we won’t be upgrading for quite a while but it’s interesting to see how the tools of the trade are developing.

This video is a commercial for a new cell phone that takes advantage of the ability to annotate videos on Youtube. I'm a little skeptical about this campaign because it could offend women, but overall I am impressed with the way this video takes advantage of interaction. Annotations are going to open a tremendous number of possibilities for movies or commercials. You can check out a tutorial on how to use annotations here.