hsm's multimedia lounge

Nathan Shedroff wrote a lot about ways of organizing things in his “Information Interaction Design: A Unified Field Theory of Design”. He even gave a very good example of them in Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC. I read it about a couple years ago and it amazed me.

Now I need to implement it in real life. Our agency won a 3 nominations tender for Ukrainian House redesign. And the concept of redesign has a special LED multimedia column inside the building.


The idea of the column is to show somehow all 49 000 000 Ukrainians on it. And I need to define the organization of all the names and their animation on the multimedia column. It looks like impossible. But it’s an interesting challenge.

I took a look at Winona Ryder's page at imdb.com. Not very good movies in her recent filmography from my point of view. Looks like she needs a new manager.

I studied today two Adobe products: Version Cue and InCopy.

First is the server for handling file versions. Good for small workgroups.
Second is the solution for more productive collaborative editorial workflows on the publishings.

Version Cue is really good thing. However I couldn't start CS version on my PowerMac G5. I started it on our dualcore mac and my powerbook. The main question now is how can we install WebDAV on our FreeBSD server and work with it using our Adobe products.

InCopy was not so impressive for me. Since, editorial workflow is totally new for me, I found a lot of things little bit over-complicated here. However it did its work. Together with Version Cue - it could be very interesting solution.

While Apple moves to Intel, Microsoft gets the same problem with shortage of IBM G5 processors as Apple a long time ago. That's the funniest news I read today. Below, Steve Ballmer showing how many G5 processors they do not have:

Just after getting MacOS X Tiger, I found a Quartz Composer in Developer's Applications. It is very interesting multimedia tool based on OpenGL, Core Image and Core Video. While MacOS X provides libraries for any application to work with these technologies - Quartz Composer is more like demo tool to show the abilities. But very powerful one. It uses visual programming interface to allow program any composition with a mouse - just drag blocks from library and link them.



Using this tool you can create really amazing things: 3d, particles, screensavers with RSS feeds, slideshows, video&audio broadcasting, interactivity, etc. Small file size. There are only instructions what to do. Source can be played on any Tiger in QuickTime.



You can get almost the same results as with Apple Motion, but without paying $299! Take a look at Zugakousaku samples.

But there is always some "but":

1. No timeline. You can imitate it with triggers, but it's not something to make you more creative.
   
2. As for possibilities demonstration tool - Quartz Composer gives you more then you can imagine. But still there are always some limitations, bugs, etc. in it. So you can get better results just programming and using the same libraries. Visual programming is a programming anyway.
   
3. There are some VJ tools made on Quartz Composer. But they are not perfect and even harder to use. I wish there will be VJ tool with timeline. But we already have Apple Motion.

Anyway, it's amazing tool. Worth of trying.

About two months ago I got a task for creating a brand style for an Event Agency called "Adult Games". The problem was that I had a very strong link between "Adult Games" company name and vulgarity only in my mind. There also were problems with other associations. And the challenge was to find other associations strong enough to destroy this sexual link.

We made a special questionnaire for them to define the emotional components of the brand. Here are the results:

Temperature: Hot
Intensity: Hurricane
Acceleration: Yes
Light: Bright
Freshness: Yes
Season: Summer

And the keywords they choose to describe the brand:

1. Friendly, Vibrant.
2. Moving, Professional.
3. Vital, Welcoming, Fresh, Energetic, Aggressive.

And here is the result of the work:

It was clear that after acquisition Macromedia brand will be replaced with Adobe one.
But still it's sad to see it in action.

We were comparing basic images of ESC2005 and ESC2006 yesterday. After discussions we agreed that our image is more conceptual. Let's compare.


Athens 2006:
The 2006 design is a combination of different elements. ERT, the Greek host broadcaster, is combining the unique history of Greece – represented by the Phaistos Disc (a well-known ancient artifact) – with a wave motif that represents the cyclical sound waves of music. The outcome is a multi-coloured, rounded look and feel.

The different shapes and forms will begin to form a pentagram with its lines made up of five colours. Each colour represents a different element of Greece.
Gold represents the golden sandy beaches; green stands for the country’s beautiful natural heritage with its picturesque villages; white represents the brightness of the Greek sunshine; red is for the passion for life and hospitable spirit of the Greek people; and blue represents the sea – a central part of Mediterranean culture.

The party-like atmosphere of Eurovision is represented by the slogan:
‘Feel the rhythm!’

Kyiv 2005:
Once in a year the vibrant fiery light of fern flower blooms.
Once in a year the unity of the European communities culminates in a song extravaganza.
Once in a year there’s a chance to win the Eurovision award – to find a wonderful fiery bloom of your own.
As the legend goes, the fern flower florescence is of extraordinary beauty.
Once in a year at midnight the flower opens and burns like fire, shimmering with all the colours of a rainbow.
The one who finds the flower is blessed with wisdom and happiness, and receives a gift of prescience, allowing him to comfort people.
A brand new world opens for him...

About two years ago I was thinking about the bad usability of most mobile phones. It's very unnatural position for a big finger to press small buttons on the bottom. And solutions seems simple for me - just turn usual phone upside-down - screen will appear at the bottom and buttons on the top. Most of the remote controls have all their buttons on the top and a free space (just like for display) at the bottom.


Today I saw Selena mobile phone from Bang&Olufsen. It does even more: you can rotate and use it any way you want - usual or upside-down. There are many other unusual solutions in the phone. And it is difficult to say how usable the software in it or the navigation wheel. But physically this phone is more native for fingers.

Today, I was cleaning the KyivStar screensaver. I wanted to make it as clear as possible, the way we did it for Eurovision Broadcast. Looks like the result is much better then the previous.

There was an article in the ArsTechnica about Apple Aperture. Not very good product from the author's point of view. And I was a little disappointed. But in the same time I had some feeling that the author paid just a little attention to the main benefit of Aperture - reviewing and selecting - the way no other software can.

And then I read a comment on the Slashdot with two key sentences:

• A pro photographer is paid for his "eye"/ability to capture an image that is so desirable, someone wants to pay for it.
  
• Maybe the better article choice would have been to collect feedback from pros instead of assuming he "knows" all about it?
  

I totally agree with the commenter from Slashdot. Can't help waiting to get Aperture.

By the way, there are limitations to RAM amount for running Aperture. There is a trick to avoid them:

open the file info.plist (on the Aperture.app bundle)

<key>AELMinimumRAMSize</key>
<string>1000</string>
to
<key>AELMinimumRAMSize</key>
<string>700</string>

You can use your amount of RAM instead of 700 mentioned above.

I slightly changed intro just for fun and uploaded the Flash source.
intro.zip (12 KB).

Thinking about previous post, I found another interesting thing I made and it was also rejected. It was 2" recap video transition for Eurovision Song Contest 2005 in Kyiv. The transition should cover full screen at least for one frame, so one video could replace another seamlessly. Both Art-Director and I worked over it and found very interesting solution by chance. The transition created very strong wow-effect and we understood impossibility of recreation of the effect in any other video. It was rejected by Creative Director because of this fortuitousness - no idea in background and impossibility of reuse. So the lesson we got again and again: first think - then create ,)

Today I worked over our agency website Flash intro. There are 500 rectangles filled in the given shape and appearing & fading from left to right. The idea looks interesting, but there is a lot of work in animation should be done. The motion is not perfect.
112 lines of AS code and 3KB SWF file.



Update: Our Creative Director currently rejected this intro. Because every realization needs an idea for background. The idea should bring something useful. Beautiful effect itself worth nothing. So I started thinking more globally now ,)

Very funny image came to my hands:



I think next two wishes are Apple and Google ;)

Today's picture is a part of Periodical Publishing CMS Flash interface.
It will allow editors and publishers work more productively on periodical editions such as magazines, newspapers, etc.



I always had a passion to interface design. But professional programming (taking into account every detail) could be a pain for me. When everything is clear and there is no logical problems - it's hard to make myself working over things which can be easily given to somebody else with detailed instructions. As an example - creation of Virtual Isometric Multi-User World - took 6 months of Flash coding for me.