Tag Archives: video

The Art of

For the past year, PBS has been exploring internet culture in its web series, Off Book. Here are a few videos that look at the art of being a designer through interviews with creatives at the top of their field.

The Art of Web Design, featuring Jeffrey Zeldman, Jason Santa Maria, and Whitney Hess.

The Art of Logo Design, featuring Steven Heller, Sagi Haviv, Kelli Anderson, and Gerard Huerta.

The Universal Arts of Graphic Design, featuring Debbie Millman, Emily Oberman, Drew Freeman, and Steve Attardo.

Check out the full series for videos on typography, coding, color theory, and more.

Coming soon to a bookstore near you

I love going to the movie theater. There’s the smell of the buttery popcorn, the familiar routine of bickering over where to sit with my husband, and then the lights dim and my attention is captivated—it’s time for the movie trailers.

That sneak peek at special effects, snappy dialogue, and carefully crafted score promotes upcoming movies to an audience who are highly likely to come back for the rest. So what happens when you take that experience and translate it to books?

I have been coming across more and more book trailers lately, and it makes me curious about the strategy behind them. These are online videos for traditional books, promoted by both authors and publishers. It’s a creative idea, especially when a video link is easily shareable on social networks and the like. Here are a few examples:

What do you think—does a book trailer make you more likely to buy and read the book, or are you satisfied with the sneak peek?

The Wilderness Downtown

Google Chrome and Arcade Fire recently teamed up to create The Wilderness Downtown. Using HTML5 and the Chrome browser, this “interactive film” is personalized with images of the viewer’s childhood home.

Choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing, 3D canvas rendering… this Chrome Experiment has them all. “The Wilderness Downtown” is an interactive interpretation of Arcade Fire’s song “We Used To Wait” and was built entirely with the latest open web technologies, including HTML5 video, audio, and canvas.

Check out the video for yourself, and then learn more about the process at Chrome Experiments.

Advice for Young Creatives

Behance asked attendees from the 99% Conference what they wished someone had told them when they were just starting out. The result is five minutes of great advice for young professionals about collaborating, running with ideas, and much more.

The story of a search

“Impress a French girl.”

That’s just one of the search terms in “Parisian Love,” a story from Google’s Search Stories series that captivated audiences when it aired during the Super Bowl. Now that creative storytelling tool is available for everyone, thanks to the Search Stories Video Creator on YouTube. Simply search, add music, and then share your story with the world.

I gave it a try, and it really is as simple as Google says. I was done in about 10 minutes, which included the time it took me to brainstorm my “Grecian Holiday” story.

Even Sesame Street is getting in on the search story action, with this story from the one and only Cookie Monster.

What’s your search story?

Logorama wins Oscar

The landscape is dotted with Malibu trees and MSN butterflies, and your AOL friends walk down the sidewalks while Michelin Man cops cruise the streets. This is the world of Logorama, the 17-minute film that took home the Oscar for Best Animated Short on Sunday.

Directed by French designers and filmmakers H5, Logorama features approximately 2,500 logos. When Adrian Shaughnessy of Design Observer reviewed the film in January, the heavily branded world depicted in the short caused mixed emotions:

I was struck by how many of the logos on show are rather wonderful — fine examples of the art and craft of graphic design. But this only served to reminded me of the essential conundrum at the heart of being a graphic designer; namely that the job is to create seduction and allure for our clients regardless whether it is a true reflection of reality or not.

Check out the world of Logorama for yourself to see how many of the logos you recognize thanks to our branded reality. It’s currently available for sale on iTunes, and you can also watch a preview on YouTube or Vimeo.

The power of storytelling: Google’s “Parisian Love”

For many people, the Super Bowl is less about the football game and more about the creative (and expensive) commercials. In fact, every year a group of advertising professors at Michigan State University rate the Super Bowl ads. And if you followed the Twitter buzz about the ads, you won’t be surprised that their No. 1 pick was the first TV ad for Google.

“Parisian Love” won over the audience with the way it tells a love story through a man’s Google searches. The ad works brilliantly because it is true to the Google experience while employing storytelling to make it emotionally captivating.

Unlike other commercials, “Parisian Love” wasn’t developed specifically for the Super Bowl. It’s part of a series of “Search Stories” by Google, and it first aired on YouTube more than three months ago.

We didn’t set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it’s had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience. Source: Google Blog

What do you think? Did Google’s story of searching for love win you over, or does another commercial deserve top recognition?