About IdeaMonster

Krop, Square Extension, Dust|box artist. Illusion of sense art group founder, creative director, open mind.

Failed facebook campaigns

Posted on October 11, 2010 by IdeaMonster

Sometimes if something spreads like wildfire it’s considered a success. But it’s not always so, as the recent facebook campaing for breast cancer awareness proved. Many of us noticed that our friends, girlfriends and co-workers had posted a facebook status like “I like it on the couch” or “I like it on the kitchen table” thinking there’s something sexual about it – and maybe a “hint hint” kinda thing.

Sure there might be a corelation between handbags and breast cancer (if there actually is) but how drunk would we have to be to understand it? The guys instead of encouraging their women to do a checkup will only scratch their heads in disbelief, and the women themselves are spreading the viral meme without really thinking about what it means (if anything). So it’s an idea that got out of hand and became something that it wasn’t supposed to be. Sadly.

Banksy directs “Simpsons” couch gag

Posted on October 10, 2010 by IdeaMonster

The most recent Simpsons episode had a couch gag that was a little different than usual. It was directed by british artist Banksy, who’s known for his strong views on the society turning a blind eye to a lot of mistreating going on. This time it was the simpsons being an evil corporation (or their merchandise to be precise) while lots of factory workers were treated like machines. This is of course true with most modern products (see apple’s factories in China and the suicides there) but the Simpsons’ producers have balls of steel to put something like this up. Good!

The tools that we use

Posted on September 28, 2010 by IdeaMonster

Moore had already predicted the rate of growth of the technology industry, but as it’s a theory we simply nod and say “yeah, that’s probably right”. So above you can see a spec chart of an iMac from 10 years ago with the new iPhone from this year. Since these tools (being computers and other things like the smartphones and tablets) are our main productivity machines nowadays it’s nice to see that we can do more and more with the power that they provide.

Source: gizmodo

Tablets tablets here we go

Posted on September 26, 2010 by IdeaMonster

As soon as the iPad came out I wrote an article here that explained why I think the web should change a little bit for an oncoming wave of touch based tablet devices. Apple haters of course thought otherwise, but now we can see more and more tablets coming into the market so we need to prepare ourselves for a little different approach. Web should be more “book-like” because sites like that will be more fun for both the tablet and computer users. That means it needs to have streamlined information in such a way, that we’re not blown away by the amount of content to perceive and grasp on the first glance, yet we know that a lot of content is there and is quickly and easily accessible.

RIM has announced it’s own tablet just yesterday, there’s a SAMSUNG galaxy Tablet out already, and there’s the iPad. These three are sort of the first of the much bigger wave since every PC manufacturer is currently working on a touch based tablet. That combined with a large decline in laptop sales, might be the first sign of what laptops did to standard PC’s a couple of years back. And we need to be ready!

Google turns 12!

Posted on September 26, 2010 by IdeaMonster

Today google has a birthday. It’s 12 years old to be precise. So we wish many more years to the “Oh-not-so-evil” corporation that has revolutionized search among other things and we try to remember what was before google. In case you don’t remember check out the shots below for a brief history lesson. If you do remember these it’s gonna be a trip to nostalgia-land along with snes consoles and websites with sprite-flame-gifs. Back then we even had “back arrows” on the site for navigation even though browsers had a “back” button. Oh those were the days! ;)

HotBot and Altavista ruled unquestionably in the times of the NetScape browser (now dead) and the very first iterations of Internet Explorer.

Microsoft pushes it’s creativity with Windows Phone 7 ads

Posted on September 25, 2010 by IdeaMonster

But isn’t this a little bit too far? I mean advertising a phone that you’ll use less than your current phone? Who are they trying to catch with that idea? Besides their current competition (iphone and android phones) are also very easy to use and have streamlined interfaces that allow people to just “glance” at the phone quickly instead of the old-time “stop-and-stare”. They might be a couple of years late to the party, just like with Windows. Oh and the interface of the main screen is pretty U-GLY… It gets a bit better when you’re in the phone functions but still somewhat “modern for the sake of being cool”. And we all know how it ends when someone tries to be cool so hard…

What does a package hear when it travels around the world?

Posted on September 22, 2010 by IdeaMonster

Well some people decided to find out and the results landed them some awards. See for yourself below:

Dictaphone Parcel from Lauri Warsta on Vimeo.

Animated short film, Royal College of Art, London, 2009
Dictaphone Parcel is an animation based on a sound recorded with a dictaphone travelling secretly inside a parcel. As the hidden recorder travels through the global mail system, from London to Helsinki, it captures the unexpected. We hear a mixture of abstract sounds, various types of transport and even discussions between the mail workers. The animation visualizes this journey by creating an imaginary documentary.

Dictaphone Parcel was awarded the Passion Pictures Prize in London, in February 2010.

See their website at http://www.cargocollective.com/lauriwarsta

when redesigns kill the project / how people get used to things

Posted on September 22, 2010 by IdeaMonster

We’ve seen it a couple of times already. Facebook made some changes and groups started popping up that were hoping to get the new design back. Some even issued threats that they’ll stop using the service if it’s not reverted tom the beloved original.

That clearly defines how people hate a change. Why blame them? It’s confusing when you come back to a familiar site to see it changed. As with music – you like what you already know- if you’ve used a site for a long time and see it many, many times you get used to the design of it as well. And it doesn’t really matter if the design was good or bad. It was “home sweet home” and people don’t like others redecorating their home. Now do they?

The whole subject came up because just recently some statistic were revealed about the popular site Digg. They had a steady 40mil uu daily and they drastically redesign the site. The result? a 26% decline in a few weeks in the US. That’s a lot of users.

So what’s the solution if you don’t want to stay behind with your design but you don’t want your viewers to go away? The simplest solution would be to keep changing small stuff constantly so people don’t have the time to get used. And if you keep the changes small the evolution will be easier to grasp than a revolution.

Examples? Think Google.

Photoshop and Illustrator on a budget

Posted on September 21, 2010 by IdeaMonster

If you own a mac you’ve probably already spent a lot of cash on it. So digging deep in your pockets you might not find another hundreds of dollars for photoshop and illustrator right off the bat. But fear not as there are alternatives that are getting closer to the moment in which they can become substitutes. Sure they lack a lot of functions of the big brothers, but for most tasks they do just fine and are both around 60 dollars. So you can get a whole package for a little over a hundred. Which wouldn’t get you even the cardboard box for photoshop CS5.

Limited functionality is being worked on constantly so if something’s missing that you need in these apps it’ll probably come up pretty soon in the next version anyway. Of course if you need Adobe you’ll have to go with adobe. But it’s good to know that there are alternatives, maybe not for all tasks but still alternatives.

For raster graphics you have the beautifully designed Pixelmator and for vectors there’s Vector Designer . Both cheap but pretty capable. Abduzeedo promotes pixelmator and have quite a lot of tutorials for it, but there’s also a “Learn” section on their website that you can check out to see for yourself if the app is good enough for you.

Cool little thing : “Line art” iPad app

Posted on September 21, 2010 by IdeaMonster

Well it also works on iPhones and iPods, but on the iPad it truly shows it’s potential. Now imagine that as a VJ app with a couple more elements and mixing techniques and you get yourself something truly remarkable. It’s also pretty cool for making backgrounds / website elements that are a little bit random. And it’s 100% free! Screens below:

Continue reading →

Is multitasking a poke on productivity?

Posted on September 18, 2010 by IdeaMonster

This is not actually about apple mobile devices at all. Sure they didn’t have any multitasking for a long time and now they have a pretty limited one (so it won’t drain battery). No, that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about multi-tasking on a computer. And as a broad term to multi-task can be quite a few things like writing an essay while listening to some mp3’s or stuff like that.

Do we multi-task?

The main problem here is whether we really need to multitask to get the job done. What comes to mind here is an example of doing a presentation or some paper and switching to a web browser to find data and references. But this is actually a limited multi-tasking since you switch from one app to the other to transfer information between them.

What else comes to mind? Well when designing it’s often necessary to be on sites like istockphoto or sxc to search for design elements. And listening to music helps sometimes too.

So what’s wrong ?

The main thing wrong with multitasking is social networking. Being either facebook or chats / IM’s that can take a lot of the attention away from the job that needs to be done. It can take a lot of time when a friend sends some funny link or someone engages in an important conversation. And thus productivity suffers. This of course is pretty obvious, but without the ability to multitask (like on an iPad a while ago) it’d be impossible to do anything BUT the job. And sure we can turn off the IM’s and facebook, but we usually don’t. Why? Because we can have them running in the background, so we do it.

Not many people have enough self control to really focus on one task anymore. We work on our computers with the tv on in the same room. Or work and talk on skype. Or work and switch to chat.
Sure the modern age has enforced people to do more with their time and do everything quickly, but there needs to be a limit or our productivity will suffer greatly.

So probably the best idea is to have partial multi-tasking (that won’t happen) or have a lot of self control if you don’t want to spend too many extra hours on a project.

What do you think? Do you “multi-task like crazy” ? Or do you somehow moderate yourself ?

Creative light-painting

Posted on September 14, 2010 by IdeaMonster

Here’s how technology can influence creativity. Those guys used an iPad and some clever ideas to lightpaint really cool 3d letters. Look for yourself in the video below. Now that’s creativity!

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

iPad brief review

Posted on September 13, 2010 by IdeaMonster

Since everything has already been said about how it’s beautiful, but no flash. How it has a long lasting battery, but doesn’t have a USB port. How it’s fast and portable but the operating system is a bit stripped.
Blah blah blah.

Since everybody knows all the tech specs already (and if not you can just look it up) I’m gonna focus on my impressions on using the device. Because in the end who cares if it does that or doesn’t do that if you hate every second spent with it. Allright then, let’s start from the basic.

It’s just a giant iPhone

No. This is like saying a soccer ball is just a bigger tennis ball, when both have different purposes and are used quite differently. What iPad is – is the revolution that the web was waiting for – not in the content and not in the delivery methods (that’s why flash doesn’t matter here) but in the form factor that’s easier and better for the web. It was the first big hit in the tablets but now, as I said before we’ll see a whole bunch of other ones, cheaper and more accessible. And in that respect it doesn’t matter if they run iOS, android or some crippled version of windows. Or linux. What matters is the way to interact with the internet is finally changing for the second time since internet was born. (this first one was text commands, then came the graphically intense websites and online videos).

So do I like it? Yes. In fact it’s become used more for everyday tasks than my laptop. I can carry it around me all the time since it’s pretty small and light, so I take my things with me everywhere. As simple as that, holding the internet in your hands is the way to go for the internet itself. And it doesn’t matter if you choose an apple device for that or something else. It has started and we’re sure even Nokia will make a similar device soon.

Creative youtube campaign for Tipp-Ex

Posted on September 8, 2010 by IdeaMonster

This must’ve been a lot of dollars pumped into google’s account by Tipp-Ex but the production quality and the viral potential are one of the biggest youtube can give you. Mainly because it uses one big flash made by the advertiser to just play some videos inside it. This is I think the first time youtube went in that direction and even though there’s a bottom line here that it’s still just a clever commercial, it’s worth checking out.

And you can do that here

There were campaigns similar to that one before of course, but not on that level of complication. For example the show “Dexter” had a campaign in which every youtube clip had hot spots on it to click, and there was a crowd moving within which you had to spot the main character and click on him. If you did you were redirected to another movie and so on. But that was done using just the typical youtube API so it probably wasn’t as popular as this new thing will be.

The main reason for success here is being surprised – when the hunter reaches outside of the movie you know you’ve been tricked but still you want to go forward. (that’s not much of a spoiler so don’t get upset about it ;p) There’s still plenty of room for innovation in online advertising and thankfully every once in a while we see that someone has come up with a fresh idea. Sure this one can’t be done with just a few bucks in your pocket like the “Jumping into jeans” or “Coke and Mentos” memes but it has more of that “I’m gonna send it to all my friends” action attached to it. And that’s precisely how a good viral works.

Know any other good examples of creative (meaning different than just a video) youtube campaigns ?

Facebook is the end of IE6 ?

Posted on August 30, 2010 by IdeaMonster

facebookie6
At a point in time, when facebook is the internet inside the internet, and when many people think of it as THE internet, rarely using anything else, an interesting thing has happened. Many had pleaded, many had wished for it (especially web developers), and even Microsoft urged for it. No success. Nobody was able to kill Internet Explorer 6, mainly because it’s preinstalled with windows XP and this is still what the majority uses. So all of the office computers, and all the home computers of casual users remained the silent majority of web browsing.

ie6compat This of course led to websites being done ESPECIALLY for IE6 and for the rest of the world. Twice as much work. Or actually more, since IE6 had it’s humors and wasn’t really following standards, so it was all a hit or miss scenario constantly. And as years have gone by, the usage of IE6 was shrinking, but not fast enough so it’d be convincing for a client to skip IE6 version of the site. Even at 25% of the market (and it still has more than that, significantly more) nobody would decide to skip IE6 version while building a site.

Well until now. A while ago youtube stopped supporting IE6, but most of it worked just fine in IE6 anyway.
Now facebook comes into play, and since it has all those apps and all those quizes the casual user really loves, they’ll see a big difference. And that alone – a decision of a website they spend half their awake time on – can lead them to upgrade. Sure firefox, chrome, safari and opera are better than any IE iteration, but for god’s sake! Make them upgrade to at least IE7 and that, as terrible a browser as it is – is still a huge step for the web world.

IE6 Rest in peace.