casual design – design is casual

interactive design for web, video games, and apps.

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new web august

Along with many people, I had been sensing a lack of “seize the moment, disruptive, take over” type advertising lately. It is not a bad thing, I was writing it off to the usual reasons of companies not spending as much, or it’s too silly in a time when companies should be understanding what their customers want.

Behold, now there is a beacon to which we can look to satisfy this void. And for that, the glory goes to Old Spice.

Old Spice went ahead to infiltrate the many available channels, all at once, in order to really dominate in front of large crowds – Old Spice, an unlikely company with not much to lose and overdue for some freshness – ahem.

I would like to express some thoughts about this recent work from w+k. I think people in advertising are impressed by the amount of skits, because it verifies that, with how fast things can be produced and distributed when you have at least a few fundamental resources in place, this type of work is possible. And they might also think it uses just the right amount of gimmicks, or brand of humor currently popular online, short attention span required, to appeal to a mass audience, and what more do we need? I like it because it is silly.

Also, many don’t expect big companies like Old Spice to take a risk on putting their product in front of an audience by using the same means of producing, uploading, commenting, posting, communicating, to reach the very same people who use these same means every day. The antiperspirants maker did take over the Internet pretty well, so that part of the strategy worked, if that’s what they were going for.

We will be seeing more like this, but it’s not really the type of creativity I get super excited about from w+k. I think Tokyo Lab creative ideas/experiments, mainly for Nike, end up coming out the best.

I have to hand it to everyone involved in this campaign for realizing the concept, and I’m sure they have learned a lot, and Old Spice will surely benefit from all the activity, since I’m sure many people will be flattered by all that went into the advertising.

I, myself, am not certain these viral boosts are very helpful beyond an instant. Perhaps, for a long running company, it can provide a short pulse of life into their business, and can afford to have a little bit of fun every now and then.

To really have a lasting effect, its more important how honestly the company puts effort into creating a great product, interacts with their customers, and how those relationships improve our lives. So thank you for the laughs, old spice, and w+k, I will continue to wear a deodorant that doesn’t have quite so many chemicals.

new web april

It’s here! The first time I have featured a website that I worked on – 4 Color Rebellion. I would have featured them anyway, so I am delighted to have had a hand in their latest redesign.

Designed by what amounts to the entire staff of creative, critical, journalistic, and mostly video game and comic book fanatics, ourselves, along with the 4CR community. I came in during the rough cut, going through a few iterations of how to best cater to this community of discerning video gamers and bande dessinée appreciators. Over three years in the making, I helped in strategy, web design, css, html, WordPress theming, plugin customizing, and a few other things.

We really went all out, including some ajax, jquery ui, and social treats like open id and forum integration to satisfy the need for a clean simple, fun place to get a fix. Catch the latest news and releases. Purchase new games through the website’s own Amazon store, read and view videos of honest reviews and opinions, inside jokes, all while interacting with other members, voting on your favorite articles and increasing your own status to win prizes by uploading news stories and contributing comments. This website has it all and it has been fun to get into this community and I will be contributing and continue working with them on the next phase.

Below is a screenshot of the previous version. It was loved, I’m glad the redesign will accommodate the next exciting generation of 4 Color Rebellion.

new web january

Just am thinking about the Flash Platform Game Technology Center. I hope it takes off and doesn’t linger around. I had fun playing bunnibunni. It is simple and has a lot of nice little touches that you get used to and makes the game worth playing for a little while, a nice casual game with easy saving and resuming.

The world of web is as exciting as ever. Looks like adobe and apple are close to the fairly easy creation of an app on any platform and viewable on any device. An example would be creating with the flash platform for the flash player or air, iphone app, android app. This will be a fairly significant achievement, and will speed up the digital world a bit as these apps are easier to build and more and more people will be using them as india and china gets on the internet through their devices.

If anyone would like to experiment with this, let me know.

In the process of finishing work on a video game review website that incorporates a fair amount of community features. Lots of skinning and customizing themes and plugins.

new web july

foodnerd

The Food Nerd is pretty cool, using web video to present family recipes.
I particularly enjoy this one for Green Chile Chicken Enchiladas:

new web july

The web is always evolving and always getting more interesting. You will find the latest inspired web projects right here at design is casual.