This video is a beautiful, mesmerizing piece of work. Objectively, it is little more than some candid, street footage (admittedly taken in Manhattan) spliced together and laced with a nice soundtrack. Tthose words technically do describe the video — which could easily instead have formed something banal and pedantic — but instead of a snore, the video is a work of art. The magic ingredient — the alchemy which transforms slo-mo candids of people walking down the street into a lush painting of a city in motion – is the convergence of talent, determination, and vision. And the result is a work of art instead of 3rd-rate documentary filler.
The video is impressive not only as a piece of art, but as a vivid example of how an artist (or designer, or artisan) with vision can make great things with even a minimal amount of tools. Sahuc wasn’t using fancy, high-end equipment. He didn’t have a lighting crew or a budget. He took what he had and made it work.
In other words, as designers our work is not limited by our lack of a new G5 Mac, or CS4, or even our programmers’ (un)willingness to build AJAX interfaces with rounded corners. No. If we can mine our instincts and skills to hone a clear vision, even the crudest of tools can be used to create elegant, enchanting results.
I love this story. This “graffiti artist”, Poster Boy, took his very limitation – no money to buy supplies – and from that limitation established his art form. I think there is a lesson there for everyone who works in a creative field. Often, when presented with a blank sheet, a huge budget, and to deadline, the result is stasis, wheels spinning and gears churning, but no true progress. Meanwhile, when faced with limited resources and a hard deadline, so often the result is inspired (though not always polished) work.
You can debate whether Poster Boy is defacing property or committing a crime, but you cannot argue that his work is creative, funny, and thought provoking. The fact that his only tool is a razor blade makes it all the more remarkable.
I guarantee that you will love this video. For a high-def, albeit briefer, version, visit Capacity’s site.
Although it is tons of fun and entertaining to watch, what is most compelling is the huge leap forward displayed here in the notion of what a logo and a brand can mean. Conventional ideas of brand identity, shaped by decades of emblems and tag lines, still seem to confine it to a word mark or a glyph. This campaign demonstrates how much more fertile ground there is (for the right brand, of course) to define and display the vibrancy of their identity.
The idea is that Cartoon Network is a palette of characters (the Noods) who interact – and not just a cable chanel with an animated bug in the corner of the screen. It is brought vividly to life by first showing us cute but featureless dolls who are then injected with personality by pops and bursts of color and motion. The brand is alive. It is interactive, fun, and playful. (Of course the phenomenal soundtrack plays a key role). Try and get that message across with a logo and a tag line.
For more background and analysis, a good write up from CartoonNothing:
The latest jewel in [LA-based Capacity's] crown is a massive rebrand for Cartoon Network built around Noods, blank Dunny-esque figures created by the crew at Kidrobot. Props to CN for dreaming up such a clever, collaborative concept.
Capacitys CN montage starts off in a minimal white space but builds in complexity and vibrancy as more characters, environments and seasons are introduced. [...] Yoda reducing General Grievous to a puddle of paint [is] a clever way to deconstruct the underlying concept of the rebrand.
The frenetic soundtrack (also created by Capacity) tinges the entire montage with a playful 8-bit tone and moves things forward with a cheery optimism befitting such a grand undertaking.
Here we have a conceptual version of Ford’s second generation Sync system, to debut next week at the Detroit auto show.
Beyond the flawless voice recognition capaciy, there are two striking things about this video.
First, the natural language the model uses to control the SYNC system. The ability to use voice commands without necessarily utilizing specific code words is a vast leap forward that really can move this technology from the hyper-focused capacity it now occupies, to a vast frontier of mobile applications. Delivery drivers and iPhone tools are two that pop to mind.
Second, the example shown in this video exemplifies how new cars are transforming from transportation tools to a pseudo-office, with all the comforts, tools, and connectivity we once associated with a luxurious office space. It seems that in this new age driving is, uhh, taking a back seat.
Apple was, of course, the big news in the technology world today. Most inspiring of the product updates was iLife 09. Specifically, iPhoto has added some powerful new features to enable users to organize and find photos in their library. The new tools, Faces and Places (in addition to Events, from ‘08) bring new, better ways of organizing and finding your pictures.
The fact that they tie into your Facebook and Flickr accounts, and use built in geo-tagging to support these functions, is icing on the cake. But for a designer, these features are case studies in the profound impact of user-oriented information architecture (or Domain Language, as Paul describes it in his fantastic post over at 37signals). From the post:
A domain language is the set of words that reflect the way you cut up a domain. It consists of the pieces you sliced and the names you chose to give them. This language defines an application and makes it special.
Rather than stick with the old, tried and true – but ultimately dysfunctional – means of organizing pictures (roll and album) the new iPhoto app uses location, face recognition, and of course Events to cull together these artifacts in ways that are meaningful to people, rather than databases.
Each chance we have to examine and perhaps create IA (or domain language) for a new website or other app, we have the same chance to truly examine the way people think of the products or tools they’ll be using, and to ensure – or at least try – to make our language fit the way they think of things, and not the other way around.
