May 20, 2011 • 1:02 pm • POSTED BY Mike Medoro
I don’t know if anyone followed the The Dark Knight viral campaign a few years ago, but it was pretty awesome. An entire viral marketing campaign was developed for the movie that included promotional websites and trailers highlighting screen shots of Heath Ledger as the Joker
Looks like today, another viral campaign was started for the Dark Knight Rises which comes out next year. If you tweet the hashtag #thefirerises it will reveal a promo photo here www.thedarkknightrises.com/image.html that is made up of everyone’s profile picture on Twitter.
Read about how it was figured out here:
www.superherohype.com/news/articles/167341-activity-on-the-official-the-dark-knight-rises-site
May 20, 2011 • 12:57 pm • POSTED BY Tammo Walter
Going through a German newspaper this morning I came across a story that not only sparked my interest to dig a little deeper but also made me think this is so crazy it’s worth it to share.
The following story is about Mike the headless chicken or also known as Miracle Mike. A Wyandotte chicken that lived for 18 months after his head had been cut off. Yes, it lived for 18 more month after its head had been cut off with an ax in 1945 by owner and farmer Lloyd Olsen in a little American town called Fruita in Colorado, USA. First it was believed to be a hoax but not long after it hit the news it became clear that it was indeed strange reality. So what happened.
Expecting his mother in law for a visit on September 10th 1945, good old Lloyd went out to slaughter a few chicken. He knew his mother in law especially enjoyed eating the neck therefore he wanted to keep as much of it as possible. The first doomed chicken in line was a rooster named Mike. Once separated from his head, Mike ran off, still alive. Knowing that this is not abnormal Lloyd moved on paying attention to get the job done with the other chicken. But, damn Mike didn’t die and even after spending a night in a box to keep his disturbing appearance away from his mother in law Mike was as lively as ever. Now being intrigued for how much longer that poor rooster could survive Lloyd started feeding him with a pipette. After a week he wanted to know what the hell was going on and drove Mike 300 miles to the University of Utah.
There doctors there realized that Lloyd had chopped off the head but he had missed a jugular vein and most of the brain stem. And on top of it a blood cloth prevented that poor Mike didn’t bleed to death. With the attention Mike had gotten within a week alone in Fruita Lloyd and his wife Clara figured they could probably make a buck or two with the headless creature and started traveling the country. Mike became famous and was featured in magazines such as “Time” and “Life”. However, Mike’s career came to a sudden stop at a motel in Phoenix sometimes in March 1947 on their way back from a tour. Dealing with a severed trachea Mike couldn’t get enough air and choked to death in the middle of the night.
While Mike’s fame faded shortly after his death his spirit was awakened in by Fruita’s chamber of commerce sometimes in 1999 when looking for a hook to draw tourists attention. Now why did I read about this on a Friday morning in a German newspaper. Because thousands of tourists from around the world celebrate every year in the 3rd week of May the “Mike the Headless Chicken Day”. So, every looked for a weird event to attend? Get yourself out to Fruita, Colorado for the 2012 “Mike the Headless Chicken Day”. Find more information about it here: Fruita, Mike, “Mike the Headless Chicken Day”.
May 17, 2011 • 7:09 pm • POSTED BY stephen penning
Peter Schafrick is an award-winning product photographer who specializes in capturing liquids in motion. We had the good fortune to work with Peter on our latest De’Longhi work.
De’Lognhi has expanded its product offering to include things like food processors, hand blenders and irons. What is great about these products is that their features allow the user to complete tasks with ease and express their creativity. We aimed to capture that idea of expression and possibility with these images.
May 13, 2011 • 3:14 pm • POSTED BY Brian Tennyson
Restraint is sometimes the most difficult design principal to adhere to. It is especially true when designing the relationship of complex information. When we set out to create this site for Quirk Books, we wanted to create a very simple front-end. In doing so, we managed to present ourselves with very complex logic to solve in the back.
There was time when it was painstaking to create the most simple of website functionality. Want a user log-in? No problem, just need to set up security, database, lost password process, etc. The introduction of capable open-source systems has allowed us to focus on improving a site, and not wasting time and money developing the most simple and basic functionality in a website. We have been developing on the Drupal platform for a few years, but always found the admin to be a bit cumbersome for a non-web user. That lead to a client having to rely on us to manage a site, which is not a good solution for either of us. With the release of Drupal 7 and our partnership with Quirk Books, and we decided it was time to turn it loose.
Quirk needed a site that they could update multiple times a day, link up with their various social media outlets, and relate content within the site across their unique categories. On the surface, it looks really simple. Under the hood, it is an extremely customized and complex display of relationships, views, and taxonomies that took almost twice as much effort as we anticipated.
In the end, we have a site we are really proud of, and to their credit, a client that was willing to get their hands dirty to fill it with great content.
Cue that funny music now. You know da, da, da, da, dananana… Thanks Raymond Scott.
May 13, 2011 • 1:00 am • POSTED BY mpark
Last week I was honored to be a reviewer for AIGA Philly’s 13th Annual Feedback student portfolio review. For fifteen minutes each, I met with eight graduating seniors who looked very promising for the design industry. A few had the beginnings of a great portfolio, and the rest still needed a little more tweaking to strengthen their body of work. Understandably, the past month has probably felt like an infinitely accelerating train where the last stop was AIGA’s Feedback. The printing, the cutting, the gluing and repeating have probably taken a toll on these emerging designers. Trust me, we’ve all been there, but it only gets better.
After the review I spoke with fellow reviewers, and I was able to collect their feedback to the graduating seniors which I’d like to share with you. Take it or leave it, it might help you land your first big job. (FYI, 160over90 is still hiring.)
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1. Don’t forget to present your portfolio as a narrative. Tell your story through your work, and guide the viewer in an interesting and engaging way.
2. Vary up the pacing of the portfolio. Instead of presenting five websites in a row, throw in a printed piece in between to show variation and diversity.
3. Try not to include projects that were type exercises. They’re exercises for a reason: To help with bigger and better projects worth presenting. We’ve all done type exercises but they don’t belong in a portfolio. Which brings me to the next tip.
4. Curate your portfolio to a limited number of pieces. Instead of presenting 20 pieces, limit yourself to your strongest 10-12 pieces. You can always show the rest on your personal portfolio site.
5. Pay attention to how you visually present your work. Try not to shoot your book covers or packaging projects on your wrinkled bedsheets. It can be distracting. You can always take it outside and use natural lighting if you have to instead of the harsh flash that most digital slr cameras have.
6. If you have a portfolio book, try to keep it to one project per spread. When looking at two different projects on a single spread, it becomes difficult to focus on one piece.
And the last tip for you:
7. Don’t save your strongest piece for the ‘grand finale.’ In an interview, you may not have enough time to show your entire book. Bring them up to the front where you can spend the right amount of time explaining the concept, the process, and the final product.
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These are just a few tips that I gathered from my experience at Feedback Thirteen. Again, take it or leave it. It’s ultimately up to you on how you want to present yourself and your work. To all the graduating design students, congratulations and good luck!
Special thanks to Dave Copestakes and Gigi McGee and the rest of the AIGA Education committee for organizing this great event!
May 12, 2011 • 3:37 pm • POSTED BY tammon
The photo department has spent the last three weeks shooting for some of our higher education clients. All the walking and long days equated to some interesting photo crew moments. Enjoy.
