Some creative video work

As some of you guys already know I'm a painter next to my communication and design work. For my profile TMOCS I just finesed this video.

Our own iPhone website

As I told you before I'm quite a big Apple fan. And for that reason my business partner Janko created a iPhone/mobile device version of our companies website. We've tried to create a versie of our site sutable for a mobile device. And because internet browsing on a mobile device is quite different so is our iPhone website.

Check it all our at:
http://www.interneytcommunicators.com/iphone
Needless to say the best experience is guaranteed using and iPhone.

Links:
Internet Communicatos iPhone version

Zaha Hadid

An architect how can also design shoes. Realy great sets made for the brand Melissa.

Links:
Coolhunter

Wierd poster

Something I saw in The gym last week. It looked a bit like a old USSR poster.

Great book - de beste muziek verhalen van 1945 tot nu

I was reading this book. Great stories of artist and bands from the past

My fireplace

I try to figure out how to share photo's I've taken with my iPhone. Basically it is quite a workaround. First I had to send my photo to my Flickr account and from there to this blog. I ran into a iPhone app. that could do the job in one step. But I didn't want to spent the 8 euro's on it.

Bwt. This is a test photo of my fireplace.

photo.jpg
Originally uploaded by theman68

TMOCS

Finally got my iPhone

I've been waiting for my G3 iPhone for a couple of weeks . But was worth waiting for. This is my blogpost strait from my iPhone.

Royal Bank Of Canada Commerical

Again a quite nice peace of animation. This time created by the great people at Fx&Mat for the Royal Bank Of Canada:


Links:
Fx&Mat | blog
Fx&Mat | showreel

TMOCS

"Dirty" Diesel XXX party clip

Diesel is by far the most outstanding jeans brand when it come to creative and edgy advertising. They always seem to surprise me. And this time they did it again. Where I probably would stop even considering this as a creative option the moment it was popping up in my sick brain. The creative people from The Viral Factory just went along with the idea. And it is so funny.
Enjoy


Links:
http://www.diesel.com/xxx/
Diesel XXX party viral

TMOCS

Google G1 vs Apple iPhone

Google introduced there new G1 mobile phone yesterday in New York. And already there are quite a lot of experts around the globe comparing this phone with the Apple iPhone.
Claudine Beaumont from the British Telegraph did quite a good job on it. For me as a Apple fan there still is one phone that rises above it all.



Links:
Apple iPhone
Google G1
Article | Claudine Beaumont | Telegraph
Blog | Claudine Beaumont

TMOCS

Bolt the new Disney blockbuster

This November Disney will release the 3D animation motion-picture Bolt. Bolt is a dog (German Shepherd) and a TV star. The story looks a bit predictable. Bolt will accidentally be shipped to New York form where he will have to find his way back to LA. Together with a little hamster called Rhino how lives in a plastic ball. Until recently there was just a movie trailer available but now there is more,... check this link to find out. By the looks of the trailer and a new teaser-clip the animation-movie fans will have something to talk about this fall.



Links:
http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/bolt/
Bolt New Teaser

TMOCS

Somethings I have to look at,... twice!

Sometimes I have to look twice. Sometimes even for a third time. What a great composition this is. I'm not quite sure if I get the message and that's a bummer,...



Link:
http://www.1861united.com

Doyald Young

Very interesting books by Doyald Young. I wonder if they come in a bundle. Because I have a very hard time to decide which one I would buy first.


Link:
www.doyaldyoung.com

TMOCS

Storyboard small film

At the moment I'm working on a storyboard for a short film. It's a three minute movie about the re-branding of a binding and lamination company. The story of the movie is about the new owners of this company and there attempt to make this twenty years old company there own. Re-branding is in very important step in that process. The project is produced by me and my company Internet Communicators and will be finessed in november of this year. Keep following this blog for more info on this project.



TMOCS

Guidelines for Online Success | Book Review

One of the latest popular new books in the web-design community is Guidelines for Online Successby Ed. Rob Ford and Julius Wiedermann. Pretty heavily promote through design blogs like Cpluv.com and Reform Revolution to name two. The book has a promising title. As if all the secrets of successful web-design and online project management would be revealed to you by reading this book. The authors and co-writers of the book are big names in the web-and multimedia world. All the reason for me the buy a copy. From the looks of it this wasn't just a paper-bag but a nicely designed 'designers book'. With a cool strap on it an a fresh inspirational cover. For me this is a look and feel I can relate to when it come to a book created for visual, creative people. By the time my copy arrived I was even more pleasantly surprised. The pink flu-wed title on the cover looked even better in reality than it did on the picture at Amazone.com (this is where I could get the best deal money wise for this book). And the book was really a book, big, solid and in a nice format. The strap made it feel like a sketch dummy, again very appealing to people working in the creative industry. When I opened the book I found that the most important topics related to 'online success' where categorized through a tab system. Again very well done. And by flipping through the first pages I was very surprised by the nice and shinny heavy paper that was used. To put it all together. The layout and the materials used for this book a excellent. I love holding it, turning its pages and looking at it. For me as a visual person books do have to be more than just a badly designed paper-bag. And in a book like this, carefully designed I can find my way easily.

But there is one thing about any book that goes a step further than the nice look and feel. A book needs to have some depth. The content needs to be just as appealing to me as a reader as the way it looks. Maybe even more appealing on second thought. And this is where this book is moving of the tracks. The contents of this book are not very outstanding our surprising. Don't get met wrong, even with a title like this I was not expecting to learn something from this book I did not already know. But the contents of this book are very poor in some ways. As I mentioned before I am, like most designers and directors a visual person. I like to look at pictures and don't like reading large portions of text. But in this book, visuals (mostly screenshots from websites) are too much leading. And the stories, tips, do's and dont's are in most cases wide open doors. While I was reading/looking through my copy I started realizing a couple of things. First, you need to know what a certain website is all about. How it looked on a computer-screen. How it felt using it before you can relate to it's magic looking at a screenshot of that same website in a book. For me I walked through over 90 percent of all the sites highlighted in this book in the last years. So I had a constant feeling of deja vu.
And second a real downer for me was the fact that most of the sites in this book are over a year old. I can understand why, production wise. But looking at the old Fantasy Interactive site was very disappointing. Again don't get me wrong the old Fi site was a great peace of work. But it is old. That company was ready for a new site, totally different from this one. And I believe they had a very good reason for it. And that reason was not just the fact that 'they' changed over the years.

I know that every once in while a book like this is been released. I believe the first one I had was back in 2000. I couldn't find my copy of it on my bookshelf anymore. And I believe the reason for it is very clear. A book filled with screenshots and wise words is old before its days. And I was hoping Guidelines for Online Success would be different but it is not. On the other hand maybe it is just me, maybe I'm standing to close to the fire. Maybe I'm the nerd that was scanning all the famous web-design portals too many times a week in the last six years. Which could be the reason I'm not to surprised about the contents of this book. Maybe I'm not the audience this book is aiming at. But than who is?

I believe at this point in the web and multimedia history we are standing on the verge of a new period. And this books shows us what the pioneers of web-and multimedia design created in the past. And a lot of those projects are the foundation for where we are at right now. In that respect this is a great book. It is a historical peace which I love to look in to on a cloudy winter evening close to a burning fire place. Reminiscing about those days, the early days of web and internet creation. And I have to forget all about the prestigious title. On the other hand looking at the past can be very helpful if you are looking for (online)success in the future.

Links:
Guidelines for Online Success at Amazone.co


TMOCS

Browser 2.0 AT&T Pogo

For a while now some creative people in the design industry are looking at ways to improve the web browser. There are basically two paths to take when it comes to looking at this subject. The first one goes like this. Why would we bother people with browsers? How really cares about them? A browser is invented in a time an age in which we had no other choice than to reveal information through a peace of software like a browser. Right now in 2008 technology is speeding up to a point in which we can do almost every data request without a web browser. So get rid of that horrible peace of technology...
That is one way of looking at web browsers.

But the people with AT&T are looking in an other direction. Why not make this peace of software better, easier to use, and more friendly. I bet that was the general idea at At&T when they hired Fi to work with them on Pogo. A new, modern browser with a strong visual approach to internet surfing.

For me, I ran into a web page that was promoting Pogo. An I subscribed as a Beta user. And after some weeks in received an invite to join the Beta testers community which I did. I installed the browser and I was pleasantly surprised about the way it was taking over setting I had created in other installed browsers like Firefox. The complete bookmark-section was imported and became visible in some sort of dock which reminded me of the Apple dock. Great concept that dock-thing and very useful. The look and feel of the Pogo browser is great. A typical peace of Fi craftsmanship. Nice icons designed in a very specific style. Great way of working with color in the different parts of the application, nice animation especially in the 'history' section. All visual aspects are well done just like you can expect from a company like Fi.
But (yeah there is a but here) the whole browser is quite slow. And the way in which you have slide through your bookmarks is not really handy. For me as a bookmark-junkie it is like hell. First I have to slide through my bookmark collections. When I reach the collection I was looking for I get twelve thumbs for the first twelve sites I bookmarked in that collection. With two arrows on the top of my screen I can click my way deeper into my selected collection. Not very handy. Where you can slide (yes, with a small slider) through your history, you have to click through your bookmarks. Next to that, even do it is great to see thumb-visuals of my bookmarked websites when in scroll over them I like a description-field with the name of that particular site. Because I don't remember by the looks on a thumb-visual which website I bookmarked. Sure I can click on a thumb to get at information but by doing so I created a small pop-up for that thumb which I have to click away to continue. To many clicks if you ask me.

A great feature in this browser is the 'springboard'. This is like a multi-paged homepage,... I don't have any other way to describe this feature. It allows me as user to create a splash-page in which I can store all my favorite sites. Do not mistake 'all my favorite sites' with my bookmarks this is different. Say I like to read a certain blog everyday, I can attach it to the springboard. I like to visit a movie portal every day, stick it next to the blog on the spingboard. And I like to check my Gmail account regularly, there is my third springboard item. Springboard is a really handy and cool feature.

In staid of a tab-system which you can find in almost every web browser these days Pogo has a very nice looking site-dock at the bottom of the application screen. This dock shows thumbs-visuals of the sites you selected. You can add websites to that dock while working. A great way to actually see the sites you would 'normally' select in a tab-system. This dock can be opened and closed depending on the users needs or preferences. This part of the application fits perfect in the whole visual approach of the Pogo browser. Nice detail, you can read the name of the sites in the dock by scrolling over the thumb-visual.

When I look at the Pogo browser in general I believe this is a nice peace of software. Not to far away from what users would expect a browser to be. The development team did a great job using techniques that where available. Especially when you look at all the dock-like features there is no doubt Apple and Apples approach to UI solutions was an inspiration for these guys. The big question I have has more to do with the reason why this browser was developed in the first place. Why would a company like AT&T start a project like this? Everyone knows that most of the computer users work with the browser provided by the operation system of choice. Meaning the manority for users works with MS Explorer. I know Firefox is doing very well (13.8% of all use in June 2008 according to Futureshock.com http://www.future-shock.net/html/showStats.asp) but with figures like that even these guys are still no real competition to Microsoft Explorer. And looking at the way Pogo is created I don't see no reason why companies like Mircosoft and Apple would not 'copy' the best Pogo features for there own use in the future.

Links:
http://www.pogobrowser.com/
http://www.internetcommunicators.com/

The Man