Doodling - it's not doing nothing.

Another interesting TED talk.
We had a digital strategy meeting yesterday, and it went on all morning and into the afternoon.
Although most interesting and engaging, there were naturally moments when my attention waned. However, on the advice of this talk, I tried doodling.
You know, of course, because I am suggesting you watch / listen to this, that it worked, that my attention was better than I know it would otherwise have been.
So, go on, pull out a pencil and cheap pad, and let the pencil wonder as you listen to this....

Luvie Awards for BBC World Cup Tracker

The BBC Team Tracker, which I built at Saint@RKCR/YR for the 2010 World Cup, has just been recognized again, this time at the Luvie Awards.

It featured in three categories, winning a Silver in their Sports section, and getting shortlisted in the Flash and Best Practices sections.

Although only shortlists, I am most happy with the Best Practices and Flash results.
Working on the V&A project, I was connected with a good few Golds for work last year, but these Luvie's really reflect upon the work that I did.
Well done and thanks guys!

Best Practices - shortlisted
"Best practices sites serve as an industry benchmark for the most current, innovative, and advanced practices in web development. Sites demonstrating unparalleled excellence across The Academy's six criteria: content, structure & navigation, visual design, interactivity, functionality, and overall experience."

Flash - shortlisted
"Sites that showcase an exciting and interesting use of Flash"

The Internet of Things

I have just started looking at programming physical interfaces, using a technology called Arduino.

Armed with my starter kit (suitable for ages 10 years and up), I have made LED lights blink (and even dim!), motors whir, and a small servo turn back and forth, controlled in my final experiment by a bendy bit a plastic (a flex sensor).
It's great fun, but now I want to make a variety of physical scenes, hook them up to the internet, and allow the world to control them by websites, tweets, Flickr uploads... and on and on my fantasies go.

All this is yet to come but is part of an attempt on my part to get a better understanding (and play with), the Internet of Things.
Simply, this is a term coming into currency that describes how physical objects in our lives are becoming increasingly connected. An example is that (if you have the right equipment), you can program your TV via your phone, whilst you are out. But this is going to be a world of smart devices where communication will go in both directions - your fridge will know when you are low on milk and text you whilst your out, reminding you to get more.

There was an interesting BBC Radio4 talk by Russell Davies on the 21^st September where he discusses his thoughts about this.
He also wrote a blog entry about what he had intended to say.
In his talk Davies quotes Clay Shirky, and it resonates deeply, so I leave you with it here:

"creating something personal, even of moderate quality, has a different kind of appeal than consuming something made by others, even of high quality"

Making Kids Games

I made a suite of kids games for Lloyds TSB whilst I was still at Saint.
For one reason or another they stalled them going live. However I have just found out they are now up!
You can play them here: Lloyds TSB - Billy and Stan London 2012.

Land Rover - 3D Driving

Just put another project live - a media serving site for Land Rover's latest concept, the DC100.

There are two vehicles: the standard DC100 (Tool), and the Sport (Cool) versions.

I programmed the 3D space and car driving engine using Away3D. Additional interface elements created in vanilla Flash (as3).

Lots of work optimizing the main driving engine to get fastest / smoothest performance whilst allowing for a (relatively) high poly-count so Land Rover's vehicles could look their best!

Media site:  media.dc100.co.uk
Agency:       FPCreative
Model optimisation: Sweet CGI

Facebook competition T&Cs

Currently working on a Facebook campaign for F1 sponsors Santander, who are sponsoring F1 :: Lewis & Jenson Santander .

The campaign includes some games (that's me), a video wall (me too), loads of information, and there are going to be some competitions (with great prizes!).

The Facebook guidelines for competitions are not entirely straightforward.
I found this very useful information at the bluedoor here.

Agency of the Year!

Saint, where i have worked for the last 3+ years have won Agency of the Year in the Revolution Awards 2011.
Feeling proud to have been part of it!

V&A Decode : Recode awards!

Fantastic news!

Recent work for the V&A museum's digital exhibition Decode : Recode was nominated for a D&AD award.
Sadly it didn't win, but it does get into the annual for this year, so i'm really chuffed.



Plus!
The work also won a Bronze Cyber Lion at Cannes!


There has also been loads of chatter about the work, including a NMA site of the week (83/100), and a feature in both Creative Review and Marketing Week.

Here is a nice wee video made by Saint that explains what it was all about.

Scoring for the World Cup

Recently i got to work on a great brief for the BBC, building their interactive World Cup wall-chart, which was coupled with a predictor so you could decide for yourself who deserved to win, and not worry about the actual football.

Here is the link: BBC World Cup: Team Tracker 

You can view match highlights and share links to main BBC site content, as well as sharing your predictions with friends via the usual Facebook and Twitter links.

The work was really challenging: technically tricky, lots of design input, and not really enough time.

Geekily, one of my favourite bits was finding a way to make a compressed encoding of the prediction (which had to have two team names for every match in the tournament, together with who you thought won and lost each match), which i got down to two characters per match. Really geeky, but it was a major issue and an elegant solution using base 32 characters.

There has been some chatter about the work, some liking the design, but mostly just ordinary people using it to share their predictions, which is at least one brilliant result from the competition...