A day in PARIS from Benoit MILLOT on Vimeo.
Archive for the ‘Design’ Category
cool.
Friday, May 14th, 2010Mediem. Worth the wait
Friday, February 5th, 2010I have been meaning to update my portfolio for sometime, but have been too busy contemplating the iPad’s implications on humanity. Well, I am glad I did – since I started to ponder the idea, my favorite new site and client Mediem has been through several iterations and is now way beyond portfolio-ready. Mediem is a platform for thoughtful online dialoguing. Basically, a clean communication and opinion-sharing user interface that encourages discussion amongst folks from every corner of the globe and of every religion, opinion and thought. Not your typical flame-war-ravaged discussion board.
Couple of things about Mediem, it is really cutting edge; agile-developed in Ruby on Rails by MWKrom, dreamt up by a handful of the smartest folks I know and a complex UI packed into just two elegant screens. This is no social network play, this intellectual-networking at a global level. We are all really proud of the promise, technology and design, please take a moment to check it out.
12 years & waiting – will the Tablet & Big Media deliver?
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010There is no doubt that the internet era has been exciting. I have designed, produced and maintained dozens of websites, some that are truly fantastic. The technology, reach and ongoing, living/breathing aspect to websites is very interesting and rewarding. However, from an interactive and design perspective, I preferred making CDROMs in the mid 90’s with Macromedia Director. The biggest difference was that they took over the entire screen like a video game and you had complete control of the design – no browser rendering liabilities. We could use vibrant sound and video with no lag-time, plugins or downsampling. They were beautiful.
I am not sure if web designers will ever have that kind of artistic control again. But maybe tablet magazine designers will . . .
The scuttlebutt is that the Conde Nast, Apple, Bonnier, HP and others are working on a new standard for the display and delivery of interactive magazines. Immersive and animated, these new publications could spell relief for the industry. My money is on Apple to extend iTunes LP/Extras (the tools/environment for album liner notes and dvd-esque menus for videos) to the magazines. Then sell the magazines in iTunes to be viewed on Computers, iPhones and upcoming table (iSlate?). I think all of this runs on Webkit (the rendering engine in Safari, Chrome and other browsers).
So, the magazines never really succeeded in evolving into websites and were crushed by online upstarts. And now they may evolve into digital versions of themselves sold over the web and authored for display in a browser-based technology? What is the difference?
Stubborn Editors and Art Directors.
Web-people have been firecrackers – loose standards, no timelines, typos fixed after the audience catches them and low costs and far reach. Print Editors and Art Directors are control freaks, not because printing does not allow for errors to be fixed, but because they are control freaks; they have integrity, they adore creating something and sealing it shut, something complete and extraordinary. Magazine publishers and creators want to work on one issue at a time, release them one issue at a time and be judged one issue at a time. And soon they can in the new world.
I want in. I see the browser becoming a place where you find web tools and somewhere else (iTunes?) for Media. That is how it is for TV, Movies, Art, Books, Photography, Music and almost every other media – websites do not cut it. I design a great deal of brochure-ware and always feel handicapped – if 2010 means full screen, deep multimedia, single rendering engine and stereo sound are the new aspects of interactive design, color me adrenalized.
True for firms as well as individuals methinks
Monday, September 28th, 2009Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
-Calvin Coolidge
http://goodexperience.com/2009/09/a-lesson-in-strategy.php by way of Swiss Miss
New Logo (and more . . )
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
This is not a poll, we will not be reverting back to the old, but I would welcome feedback on the new logo. Number One rule in logo design is simplicity – say as little as you can. It is the essence, like a good chicken broth. If we boiled your entire company, strained the juices, chucked the guts and bones and scraped the fat – what is left better taste good. I am happy with the new brand, we needed it. I am ready for change – 2009 needs to be wiped off the books and we can enter the teens in style.
How will multiple posts look?
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009We are building our blog on the live server, from scratch!
From almost every perspective it appears that live-development is stupid; unprofessional, poor-SEO, brand-damaging and more. But there are two overlooked reasons for Tide Rise developing our site in real-time and live to all:
- We have no development server.
- Real artists ship.
Coincidently, we are located in small village in Cambridge, MA and there is a little shop called Grey Mist that is moving out of their small digs into a bigger storefront 2 doors down on Huron Ave. We can hear their saws, hammers and sanding machines night and day and that is cool, it creates a sense of anticipation and reinforces the entrepreneurial spirit – so, now you can “hear” our tools in action while we build our storefront.
