Frames!

Here are some frames I found and played in Photoshop, saved as gif to have a transparent background. However, as already noted in the group blog I'd rather use the new frame as it comes from stockxchng and it should be copyright-safe. I mean our project is non-commercial and we plan to use mainly images older than 70 years, but there is always some risk... Copyright is complicated...

MORE SKETCHES

RESEARCH! and Hit counter

Hit count to start with- An example of hit count which could be also used on our website. I took it from: http://www.freehitscounter.org/hit-counter-html-code.php and slightly changed the code.

Research-

I read One Show Interactive Vol.10. Advertising's Best Interactive and New Media.
[The Onle Club(2008) One Show Interactive Vol.10. New York: One Club Publishing.]

I found some enormously interesting ideas on interactivity in new media, especially liked the following ones:

1) COCK-A-DOODLE. http://www.cock-a-doodle.co.uk/

client: Everyman Institute of Cancer Research (their static website is veery predictable and stands in opposition to the doodle campaign)

agency: Poke. London

Cock-a- Doodle allows the audiences to select shape of fallus and then draw and remake it into something else, for example into funny face. When you are happy with the transformation of the selected cock, you can save it and it is later seen by others who can vote for their favourite cock-a-doodles. Audiences are also enabled to share their doodles with friends!

Very dynamic and interactive environment and similar to our intents to include drawing pad where our audiences will be able to play with our logo.

2) Silencing the Squeeks

Client Henkel

Agency DDB Brasil

There are some annoying sounds which can be removed by using spray. Simple and clever- by pressing on the sources of sound audience can switch off the sound (SOUND OFF button).

3) Snooze Control- a banner

client FedEx

agency Atmosphere BBDO, New York

A banner that takes time from your computer clock and allows you to set an alarm. Useful!

4) Full Flame- burning website

client Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

agency McKinney, Durham

The website was burning for 3 days when a new one was being placed. Interesting way of informing that the service is under development... and food of thought how to destroy our project when it gets out of date. Should Vanitas burn as well?

And finally, quotation from Kevin Swanepel, the president of The One Club:

"Today's advertising needs to be engaging, entertaining, relevant, or it will succumb to the attention deficit disorder of today's multitasking consumer.

New media outlets and channels are coming to market (...) making it possible for advertisers to create branded content in the forms of games, videos, movies. The new communication entertains and allows one to one interaction with the consumer and the brand." (p.4).

This last sentence is important and I would like to make the project easily digestible and pleasant for the audiences... and if I have enough time I would love to make a Flash game.

here is my recent discovery

http://www.2dplay.com/

Some sketches and ideas

Here are some of my early sketches of the interface. However, I forgot to include a space for the countdown so it will have to be amended anyway.

Plus ideas for logo. The logo will consist of a simple shaped arrow with a bold rim and a name Vanitas written inside. It will be black and white, open for the audience to add colours in the interactive "game".

On Tuesday we agreed on the name VANITAS for our brand. The name was found by accident whilst browsing the website of Rijks Museum.

LOGO research notes
"by not being able to pin down the meaning of logo we start experiencing it holistically(...) in the way we would experience a mythic story. " (Danesi, 2006). For example Apple- logo is playing with the associations of eden, Genesis and sin...


As Danesi wrote, the best logos consist of simple forms or basic geometrical shapes. These are more aesthetically pleasing and recognizable.

Therefore I suggest an ARROW- a simple shape! innate! and can be arranged in interesting ways.


NAME

Vanitas is a Latin word for vanity, futility and was often used in 17 century arts to express concerns about the brevity and futility of the earthly human life. We could relate to the idea that life does not last for ever and we should start making the most of it ASAP. And do not worry about the things we are not able to afford as we do not really need them to achieve happiness. As Epicurus argued in his philosophy, people can become happier thanks to simple life. In our project we could also relate to the ideas of Adbusters to make people more aware of the fact that advertising often plays with our emotional needs to sell us stuff. What I think is important is to avoid the raging claims of his Kalle Lasn who wanted to beat "the archetypal mind polluters" such as McDonald's or Marlboro (as cited by Danesi 2005). In our project I would love to offer positive energy which is more constructive than just "fighting against".

If we stay with the idea of constructing the interface using the symbols of transience from 17 century art (skulls, still life, books etc.), we could stroke the swf content within the website with a frame like this one here. (image from:www.shutterstock.com)

Relating to the countdown. I found an interesting link online that creates a countdown for your website. I generated a trial version and placed into an HTML script. This is how it would look like on the black background. It is worth noting that that it is possible to eliminate the white rim (good news), but impossible to get rid of the other stuff (bad news). However, if we decide it is not sufficient I will have to get through tutorials and create our own flash-based countdown.

Proposal

It took me a while to put the my proposed theories in a logical order, but here it is- the proposal!


Concept
The main aim is to produce an online advertising campaign. We want to advertise the idea of transience. Using various digital media tools we aim to make our website interactive so that the audience could get involved with our final product. In order to encourage traffic to our website we will attempt to use other media as well such as wiki, social networking sites, e-mail, posters.
About the company
Our company is called GHERKIN PRODUCTIONS. It is vital to stress that the name is not related in any way to the product. The evolution of ideas can be observed at our blog (http://gherkinproductions.blogspot.com/) where we regularly post our research and findings.


Inspirations
There are three main sources of inspirations for our project.
Firstly, we want to relate to the fast development of the Internet and its impact on the life of society (Meyers and Gerstman, 2001). As a result of the technological progress also the future of advertising lays online. According to Henry Jenkins (2006) the traditional media lost their power to attract the consumers and the companies have now placed an emphasis on the Internet to advertise their products. Jenkins mentioned Coca Cola consumers who used the Internet as a platform for sharing their own personal stories about the product. We also want to create a space for interaction.
Secondly, as Gavin Lucas and Michael Dorrian (2006) stated, the media landscape has changed over the last few years and became more interactive and audience involving. As a result, the consumers are now invited to take part in “something relatively new between the advertiser and consumer: a conversation” (Lucas and Dorrian, 2006:18). More and more brands become interactive platforms for their customers to discuss the product like in case Apple (Interbrand, 2009). Our project is informed by the idea that “creating a brand, and designing the service behind it are becoming inseparable” (Wolff Olins, 2008). We want our audience to be able to engage with our ideas and be able to play and customise our logo.
Finally, we want to play with the theories of culture jamming and subversive advertising. As informed by the Adbusters (2008) and Lasn (2000) we aim to use the idea that advertising often cynically draws on our fantasies and dreams; it tries to make us think that through consumption we can become happier. Our idea is to create a website which emphasizes the temporality of life and therefore we are selling transience. We want to subvert the cynicism of the advertising industry, and replace it by linking transience to encouraging people to celebrate life and take advantage of it. We want to create a forum for people to post pictures of what they cherish; we will create a stencil the audience will be able to use in their pictures (as done for example by The Bubble Project or The Burger King Brands). By encouraging people to post pictures of what makes them happy we in turn want them to celebrate life. Our main objective is to show that happiness is to be gained through simple life, as opposed to the consumption of products. We could link it to the optimistic philosophy of Epicurus (Sharples, 1996).


Target Audience
We want to include as large amount of people as possible as we would like them to interact and contribute to the development of our website. We will be focusing the promotion of our campaign amongst our student body through posters around the university as well as e-mails through the university e-mail system. We have also planned to create a wiki account to be used to get the users to generate and edit content surrounding the idea of transience and interactivity. Our audience is not limited to young people and students. The only requirement is computer literacy and access to the Internet.


Project Timeline
PRE-PRODUCTION- Establishing ideas, - Opening and contributing to blog; - Researching ideas of interactivity, mainstream advertising, culture jamming and subversive advertising.- Consolidating our ideas into one combined theme, which is relevant to the brief, and one that we can use as a basis to begin the initial construction of our piece. -Sketches, drafts, etc.
PRODUCTION- Refining the pre-production ideas, amendments to storyboard.- Work on images and other visual material.- Design of logo in Adobe Illustrator. - Work on interactive SWF files.- Placing the elements in Dreamweaver. - Opening a WIKI and linking it to the website.- Design of posters in InDesign. POST-PRODUCTION- Placing website online. - Sending e-mails to the rest of students in the module; messages on Facebook, group. - Printing posters, placing them in computer areas of the university to encourage traffic to the website.
Short Project Description
Our interactive website will be created using Adobe Flash and Dreamweaver; it will have “an expiry date” and encourage users to think about how to start making the most of life now. In order to demonstrate interactivity the content of our website will largely be user generated, for instance we want to incorporate the wiki and make use of social networking site such as Facebook. The website will make use of digital audio.
As mentioned, other media will be also used as part of the campaign.
Relationship between theory and practiceIn our project we aim to marry theory to practice and deploy theories on the contemporary media and communication.


Bibliography:

Adbusters (2008) 'About Adbusters.' [Online]. Available from:http://www.adbusters.org/about/adbusters[Accessed 07 March 2009].

Danesi, M. (2006) Brands. New York and London: Routledge.

Habermas, J (1989) The structural transformation of the public sphere : an inquiry into a category of bourgeois society /translated by Thomas Burger. Cambridge : Polity Press.

Interbrand (2009) Branding Studies. [Online]. Available from:http://www.interbrand.com/studies_list.aspx?langid=1000[Accessed 07 March 2009].

Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence culture : where old and new media collide. New York : London : New York University Press.

Lasn, K. (2000) Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America. New York: Morrow.

Lucas, G. and Dorrien, M. (2006) Guerilla Advertising. Unconventional Brand Communication. London: Laurence King Publishing.

Meyers, H and Gerstman, R. (2001) Branding @ the Digital Age. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave.

Rosenzweig, G. (2002) Sams teach yourself Flash MX ActionScript in 24 hours. Indianapolis: Sams.

Sharples, R. W (1996) Stoics, Epicureans and sceptics : an introduction to Hellenistic philosophy. London : Routledge.

The Bubble Project. (2008) 'Manifesto'. [Online]. Available from:
http://www.thebubbleproject.com/[Accessed 01 March 2009].

The Burger King Brands (2004) 'The Subservient Chicken'. [Online]. Available from:
http://www.subservientchicken.com/[Accessed 25 February 2009].

Wolff Ollins (2008) 'BrandNext'. [Online]. Available from:
http://www.wolffolins.com/brandnext/[Accessed 06 March 2009].



have some nice visual ideas; and readng book about design techniques with special focus on logo&graphic identity (Citron, 2008). We already discussed some deas for logo. I suggested an arrow and it was agreed by the group.

I think it could be very suitable shape as Danesi (2006) wrote that the best logos are usually simple geometrical shapes.
more details soon...

Ideas on interactivity and project

As Lucas and Dorrian (2006) wrote, the media landscape has changed recently and moved into more interactive and audience engaging. The advertising has also shifted from conventional brand communication such as television spot to approaches which collide with Public Relations.

It is no longer a one-way communication in predictable venues; advertisers are now seeking to draw the attention of the people in new surprising ways. As a result, the consumer has become invited to become involved "in something relatively new between the advertiser and consumer: a conversation" (Lucas and Dorrian, 2006:18; emphasis added). Relating to the trend described by Lucas and Dorrien I think it's good if we also try to engage our audience into a dialogue.What sort of dialogue could that be? Of course, something moderated by us, a sort of "chat" that would link with the product we want to sell, namely transience.

I have checked the exact meaning of transience and it is
1. an impermanence that suggests the inevitability of ending ordying
2. the attribute of being brief or fleeting [syn: brevity]( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/transience)

It got me thinking about... about life that we often take for granted and forget that it might end abruptly tomorrow or any other day. Therefore we should start enjoy it consciously ASAP! And don't listen to all the advertisements which try to lure us that happiness is impossible without product X or product Y. Hey, my observation is that the less we have (in material sphere), the happier we are (or is it just me?!)

Instead of thinking about what we still need to purchase, why don't we focus on small things that give us pleasure and joy? CARPE DIEM, seize the day, start living your life fully today.
It instantly made me think of the optimistic philosophy of Epicurus- just to provide a link: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/)

My idea now is to sell the prospect of happiness/joy which can be attained NOT due to consumption of a particular goods as advertisers would like to convince us.

Also, I was thinking about the promotion of our online campaign. I think we could use similar way as Crispin Porter and Bogusky (http://cpbgroup.com/) agency in Burger King campaign in 2004. The link to the Subservient Chicken (www.subservientchicken.com) was sent to 30 people who in turn sent it to their friends and after few days the website was seen by thousands. After we create our campaign and place it online (ideally at least few days before the deadline) we could send an message to friends on Facebook and invite them to have a look at the link & forward it if they like it. We can also send an e-mail to everyone at uni to encourage traffic to our online campaign.

Two more things. First one is already mentioned WIKI. I really think it's cool if we set up a wiki where the users can generate and edit content. One of us will have to take care of it and moderate it. The other thing is about the stencil as in case of The Bubble Project mentioned before. As we agreed together, we will produce a stencil of an arrow which can be used by the audience to take pictures presenting the small things etc. that give them joy. The pics will be published at the website, also it would be cool if one of us takes care of receiving & placing them online. But I'm sure we will sort it out along the way.