Fan of Chatroulette? Me neither but many excitable teenage boys enjoy nothing more than the thrill of searching through the hordes of other young men, to find an elusive pair of women’s breasts.
The viral campaign for “The Last Exorcism” takes advantage of these helpless souls. Enticing them in with the prospect of a young lady undressing and then scaring the living hell out of them, as she transforms into a demon possessed by the devil.
With already over 200,000 YouTube views, The Last Exorcism is receiving global recognition on a shoestring media budget.
There is seemingly a “technological revolution” released every second day in the digital industry, however every now and again something pops up which really makes people take note.
With the release of Facebook Places last night, it seems we are really entering the next phase of social media, a more diverse level of real-world interaction, as well as a completely new level of targeted marketing.
Places takes the existing concept of applications such as FourSquare and takes it to where people already are, Facebook.
While primarily aimed at iPhone users for now (Android and Blackberry versions are planned), Places introduces location-based services to the world’s most popular social network.
Places enables users to share their current location with friends, find out where their friends are, and discover new places of interest. Users can also add their own places of interest to the platform, whether it be a business or a residential address.
With the current “keep up or fall behind” state of digital design it is more important than ever to be seen as a leader in the industry.
There is so much amazing technology at our disposal that what seemed impossible 12 months ago is now totally achievable with a touch of creative thinking.
We have to strive to continue pushing the possibilities of what current technologies can achieve. It is about taking the standard information available to us and using it, or presenting it in a new manner.
While Facebook Open Graph Plugins are relatively new to the scene, there has already been some really top examples of putting them to use in a manner that benefits the user (as opposed to using them for the sake of using them).
I love digital. Its what makes me tick. The ability to extend a brand online through interaction and engaging content. The ability to touch your audience in ways which were unthought of just 10 years ago.
And lets face it it is still the early years for digital. We are still stumbling around in the dark making sense of technology and behaviours that are entirely new to us complex and unique bipeds.
However, there is one thing that humans have being doing for a long long time… and that is story telling. We love a good yarn, be it to pass down life’s learnings to our offspring or to just entertain. So to celebrate here are some brands that ‘do story telling’ really very well.
A great example of social media and how it can bring people together.
Orange have teamed up with Poke London, to try and set a Guinness World Record for the most tagged photo ever on Facebook with GlastoTag. The site features a massive photo of this year’s crowd at Glastonbury, shot from The Pyramid Stage during half time of the World Cup match between England and Slovenia. People who were there can connect to the photo through Facebook, zoom in and tag themselves and their friends in the 70,000 crowd.
You can even filter the tags to show just your tagged Facebook friends and feel a sense of pride that you were all involved in the event. You might even see friends that you didn’t know were there.
How was it done? The 1,300-megapixel panoramic image was taken in just under a minute using a whopping two Hasselblad H4D-50 cameras mounted one on top of the other and rotated at 10 degree increments, going back 350 metres – to take in the whole crowd. The 36 images were then stitched together – making a pixel perfect memory of Glastonbury.
There are currently 4,200 tags on the photo and over 4,870 Facebook ‘likes’ for the page. With over 180,000 people at Glastonbury, and an estimated 70,000 people in this image, this can only keep increasing, making a huge impact across people’s home pages and conversations of memories on Facebook… as well as creating an association of the event with Orange.
After attending The Future of Web Design conference in London recently I can safely say it is a pretty exciting time to be involved in the digital industry.
As was to be expected there was a lot of discussion about the capabilities (and limitations imposed by particular browser/s) of HTML5 and CSS3. Admittedly, it is very exciting to be able to utilise these tools when designing for the web, however a few of the speakers touched on some points which I think are of much greater importance when it comes to the real future of web design.
Paul Boag mentioned that we should forget about the new technologies for the time being and focus on improving our Marketing, Copywriting, Contextual Understanding, Strategy, and Psychology skills. This is very much in line with what I believe makes a good designer, so I thought I would use this as a basis for what I, personally, would like to see for the future of web designers.
Over the coming weeks I am going to discuss in detail the often overlooked attributes which I feel make a successful designer in the creative industry.
What I hope to achieve is an increased awareness of the design industry outside the specific “digital space” and a more considered approach to the use of the new technologies which are available to us. Ultimately I would like us all (as creatives) to work towards avoiding an era of over-used CSS3 effects and being faced with a repeat of the original Photoshop filter overload.
So, while it is easy to get excited and spend all of our time learning the new technologies, I urge you to hold back and concentrate on improving your foundations skills before anything else, and only utilise the new technologies when the right project comes along.
It is now my fourth week at the manor, so I thought it was about time I write my first blog post… and seeing as though I am We Love’s new copywriter – what better than a blog about writing for digital…
Writing for digital is very different to writing for offline communications.
You have to get right to the point, and fit what you have to say in a fairly small space. Copy has to be short and concise – clarity is key, if users are going to engage with it. Traffic to your site will be turned off by a big block of copy – users won’t spend time reading and reading, so it is important to keep copy to a few key points.
When writing for digital, don’t stray away from your brand guidelines and vision. They are just as important as in print copy. Your audience need to relate to your brand and are used to the way you communicate with them. Stick to the core elements of your style guidelines for digital, or you will confuse your audience.
Users will tend to skim content when reading websites but you have to remember that they are a proactive audience and are on your site to seek information. Break up copy into short paragraphs and use appropriate subheadings where required.
(Miso Funky, lovingly handmake homewares and accessories. The copy on their site is short and concise but still has a personal touch to it – posing questions to engage the user and create a relationship to build on.)
A bit slow getting this on the blog, however a couple of weeks ago I attended the Future of Web Design in London.
This was a really interesting event, and was great to see so much talent come together in the same room.
There was a lot of interesting discussion on emerging technologies and design approaches, as well as an insight into the minds of some of the other leaders of the industry.
Props go out to Carsonified for putting on such a top quality event, all the speakers, and to all those that attended.
I will be following up with some opinion-based articles on a few of the topics broached at the conference in the coming weeks, but thought this would be an opportunity to show a couple of photos of some of the lighter side of the 2 days (My apologies to Ryan and Elliot for the “blown out highlight faces”)…
Things have been a bit quiet on the blog lately as everyone has their heads down and are working hard. It’s a pretty exciting time here at We Love and I thought it would be a good time to have a look at what’s in store for the future, not of We Love, but for the Digital space as a whole.
It seems the majority of design bloggers have already formed their opinions of what 2010 and onwards has in store for web design, but I figure it’s time I throw my thoughts and learnings into the mix.
The importance of a company’s digital presence is becoming increasingly important. According to Forrester,* 67% of online customers said their opinion of a brand was affected by their ability to accomplish tasks on their website. Now is the time to re-assess how we are utilising the digital space and ensure we work harder to align it more with how people actually live, we need to make sure we can offer users a reason to visit our sites rather than just expecting them to want to.
In no particular order, it seems to me that in the following 12 months and beyond we will be seeing an increase in the use of the following –
Embracing the fact that the web is now totally portable and can be used almost anywhere, designing for mobile browsers is continuing to grow in importance and we will see more and more mobile specific design considerations in the future. According to Nielsen, 40% of iPhone/iTouch users access the internet more on their mobile than their desktop.
Geo-Mapping
Utlisation of geo-techonology to personalise, and in turn create more humanised, digital campaigns across all digital platforms to reach those who are most interested in what a brand has to say.
