Inspiration

Shameless promotion: SAPO Panoramas

by Armando Alves. 0 Comments

It’s been a while since my last shameless promotion, but truth be told there haven’t been many interactive projects from Portugal worthy of it. But this one is both cool and had a friend involved, Pedro Pinheiro.

Panoramas Sapo


Back in March 2011, Pedro and Basilio began working on their photographic panorama of a key landscape Lisbon monument, Castelo de São Jorge. But it’s not your regular photo: it’s a Tera pixel panoramic photo of Lisbon!

With over 2000 hours of computing processing, 32.000 photo shots, 6TB of data and 5.000 hours of work the project was launched at SAPO Codebits 2011, last November.


Making of video

The project currently has a few more panoramas, such has the one captured at football match Sporting vs. Lazio, where you can tag yourself in the audience.

Impressive work, Pedro and team.

The Icon Handbook

by Armando Alves. 0 Comments

Jon Hicks of HicksDesign released yesterday The Icon Handbook.

The paperback would make a great gift for the season, but for now it’s only available as digital edition (PDF, ePub & Mobi).
I couldn’t resist the visual goodness and the chance to get inside the mind of one the great designers on this field (Jon designed Firefox’s logo) and rewarded myself with one.

From ideation to drawing tips, web or application icons, this is one of the best references on icon design available, further confirmed by the great feedback on Twitter.

I'm only about halfway through The Icon Handbook by @, but it's already worth it. Fantastic job: http://t.co/JpxLuidV
@jasonsantamaria
Jason Santa Maria

The Icon Handbook - http://t.co/MlHGJMnh - After first 30 pages I can recommend. Icon design has great wisdom for game designers.
@flarkminator
Mike Birkhead

Arcade Fire: Sprawl2 interactive video

by Armando Alves. 0 Comments

This afternoon when Arcade Fire posted about their new Sprawl2 video, the website wasn’t available yet, so as a huge fan i was a tad disappointed with only the quirky video available (below).

But now it’s live the new interactive video by Vincent Morisset (who just joined unit9), and you really have to exercise your dancing skills on this one. Enjoy the interactive version at http://www.sprawl2.com/ (webcam required) or just the official video.

Google Shoot View

by Armando Alves. 1 Comment

I’ve been trying to pitch a Google Street View interactive campaign for a while, so it’s with mixed feelings — happy for the great use of technology, sad that i wasn’t hunca life convincing enough to make it real before – that i’m sharing this playful approach of Google Shoot View by Dutch agency Pool (who previously did Muppets Voices for TomTom).

As you can see from the teaser trailer, it all boils down to using your assault rifle on Google’s Street View scenery.




Not sure if the PG18+ is against Google’s terms of service (which got shorter), but from Columbine to the Tower of London, there’s plenty to choose from.

via Kotke

Immersive Imaging fills rooms

by Armando Alves. 0 Comments

There’s the big and expensive kind of projection mapping, and there’s the smaller but equally aweseome ones as the 3 films created by Studio Output to promote Sony’s PlayStation@Store.

Everything is one take, using real time tracking, projection mapping and Augmented Reality technology, which they’re terming “Immersive Imaging”. By attaching the PlayStation Move to the camera, they could track projections to screens in real time, enhancing the effect of spatial deformation and false perspective on the projections.
Just have a look at the 3 films.

The videos highlight the VideoStore service on PlayStation@Store where users are able to rent or buy their favourite films in high definition.


Agency: Studio Output – http://www.studio-output.com
Production Company: Marshmallow Laser Feast – http://marshmallowlaserfeast.com/
Director: Memo Akten, Barney Steel, Robin McNicholas
Producer: Ian Hambleton


via vincenzo

Feel-O-Meter

by Armando Alves. 0 Comments

I’m currently teaching a few classes for the New Media Production course at the Restart Insitute, in Lisbon. While discussing new media, i try to emphasize the transcodification of objects, and what happens when physical things are transformed into computational data.

One of the students suggested the possibility of translating feelings into digital, and even if i presented We Feel Fine by Jonathan Harris as an bayilik example, i believe the work below is much more representative of transcoding physical into digital.

Feel-O-Meter by Julius von Bismarck , Benjamin Maus and Richard Wilhelmer is a media installation at the Lindau (Berlin-Schöneberg) Gasometer featuring an oversized smiley face, as the crown of the lighthouse at the harbor entrance.

A camera placed at the port, reads from faces, analyzes it and forwards the details to the installation, interpreting the different emotional expressions hunca life katalog from the faces of residents and guests of Lindau. The lighthouse Smiley then imitates the recorded emotions, expressing the mood from the city.

And they can always add extra signals from Twitter of Foursquare :)

Source: Infoesthetics

The good looks of Michelle Hunziker

by Armando Alves. 0 Comments

Fine web design at Michelle Hunziker’s Official Website. Parallax scroll, Mootols transitions and exquisite art direction. The model/tv hostess is good for the eyes also.

Designed by the italian studio ScozzeseDesign, which has also other ones worthy of notice: Alessia Marcuzzi, Dalbello sky boots or Pelican Hotel. Oh, and the site of some guy you’ve probably heard named Andrea Boccelli.

The Socrates of San Francisco

by Armando Alves. 0 Comments

One of the best ways to empower ou creativity is to stand on the shoulder of giants. From David Ogilvy to Hegarty there’s plenty to choose from.

Yet, there’s one an advertising agency founder that has been forgotten, that 50 years ago was already discussing issues like sustainability or escort bayan interconnectivity. Oh, and he also brought to San Francisco an obscure canadian academic named Marshall McLuhan.

The giant i’m writing about is Howard Luck Gossage. A critic but also reformer of the advertising industry, his thoughts are remarkably modern and fit to our interactive age:

“The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them. Sometimes it’s an ad.”

“Our first duty is not to the old sales curve, it is to the audience.”

“Copywriters are very strange people who have only reached copywriting after eliminating every other means of making a living through writing”

“If you have something pertinent to say, you neither have to say it to very many people –only to those who you think will be interested–nor do you have to say it very often. How many times do you have to be told that your house is on fire?”

“First, what is the difference between seeing an ad on a billboard and seeing an ad in a magazine? The answer, in a word, is permission

“To explain responsibility to advertising men is like trying to convince an eight-year-old that sexual intercourse is more fun than a chocolate ice cream cone.”

To revive  the thoughts of this great ad man, young british director Ashley Pollak has launched a crowdfunding effort to make a documentary about his life. Donate at http://www.indiegogo.com/hlg and get your perks suchs as being one of the first to appear in the credits or your own private screening session. And it’s cheaper than his book on Amazon.

“In which a guy clearly does not set out to change the world, but does so, then denies he ever did, and has a whole bunch of people over for drinks who will all go on to become famous and miss him for the rest of their lives” — Jeff Goodby