Time Lapse Photography

Today I received my much anticipated remote timer for my D-SLR. To explain - a remote timer allows the user to set a continuous time delay, thus allowing for time lapse photos to be taken. It also means that as the remote is separate from the camera, it reduces if not eliminates camera shake, and produces (what should be if executed correctly) perfect repeats of the same scene. Ultimately these can then be put together in a sequence to produce a time lapse video. Below is an example of what can be achieved:

Alas, I'm an amateur photographer at best, so you could say I'm a complete noob when it comes to this. Originally I had intended on buying Canon's TC-80N3, however during further research came across a cheaper alternative online, mimicking all of the TC-80N3's functions for a fraction of the price. I figured that I would work up to buying the more expensive Canon replacement depending on how I got on with my initial buy.

I need to work out how to use this first!

I've been interested in experimenting with time lapse videos for a while now, however like many things, never seem to find the time to do so. After my last project where we compromised by using time delay video footage instead of individual photos, I decided that now would be a good time for me to pursue this avenue further, with the intention of being able to perhaps draw on this technique during future projects.

I'm more curious than anything, as to how easy this can be done. I'm not sure exactly how I may be able to incorporate this into my work within interiors, it may in the end be nothing more than an interest and personal hobby. Not everything I suppose must relate. Perhaps I'll try doing a short sequence of our studios; documenting our process of development.

I might even try it over my desk space at some point, while mind mapping, or during model building for our forthcoming project - I'll just have to see what takes my fancy throughout the semester. It would be quite a nice way to document work for presentation, as seen in our last attempt. As I said before though, I suppose I will just have to wait and see how this develops and how it may be of use to me inside and out of class.
I'll post up anything I make as soon as I can.

And A Merry Ecomas To You Too

What is everybody using as wrapping paper this year? Glossy printed paper, with bows? Metallic paper wrapped in string ribbon? All the aforementioned are attractive when wrapping up your Christmas gifts, however what about the eco option? Although collections of shiny presents attract people like magpies to pennies - at what price does this come in terms of damage to the environment? An article I came across in The Guardian questions what we can do.

Furoshiki gift wrapping may be the answer:

Several obvious benefits occur by choosing to take this route this Christmas - firstly, it saves money. This is a huge benefit with the obvious current climate, as you can reuse the material from gifts you receive. You can also recycle your old table clothes etc. by cutting them up to donate to your wrapping collection. Secondly, it entirely eliminates the paper waste that gets sent to landfill every Christmas. Win all round!

RecycleNow.com provide several tips as to making your Christmas more eco friendly. Aside from the above, they also have created a page, documenting the instructions needed to make gift bags from envelopes - something that also adds to the endless waste created at this time of year. Below is the video "how to" tutorial:

If wrapping your presents in a material alternative is not for you, and they are bigger than the envelope gift bag option, do not fear: there's always the homemade eco friendly wrapping paper option!

Furthermore, Yahoo! offer some ideas towards helping the environment and reducing your waste, including biodegradable stuffing - something that is regularly overlooked. Family gifts can be exchanged with a twist; as you can get the kids to draw their own patterns. Pathetically sentimental yes, but also quite refreshing - why do gifts have to be presented in a professional shop bought way? Homemade touches like that go down well with grandparents especially! 

At the very least - you can also use newspaper. It's waste anyway, and hey, if it's good enough for our now ex Prime Minister and family, then I guess it should be good enough for us too.

Aside from wrapping paper, there are many other aspects to Christmas. Decorations, Christmas dinner, and the gifts themselves. A novel idea I did come across was the Christmas tree made from 80,000 plastic spoons. The Telegraph shed some light on several of these topics, as well as on The National Geographic.

Lastly, I shall leave you with thinking towards the future. Tesco have provided 5 green resolutions to consider when choosing your New Years Resolution. Not only this, but there are links to the right concerning cutting your food waste levels, and 20 steps to greener living in general.

Happy Ecolidays!

Design Studies: What Came First, The Viral Or Design?

While YouTubing my weekend away as it's too dark and miserable outside to contemplate socialising, I came across this:

It's everything I've been looking for. It's for The Conran Shop, and it's a Viral advert that promotes designers.

Rubber Republic are a UK based company, whose sister site - Viral Ad Networks - provide viral marketing. Above is an example of their work. 

Established in 2001 they have gathered quite an extensive and impressive list of clientele; including the likes of Channel 4, Nokia, Hewlett Packard, O2 and PlayStation.  They "seed" your campaign online, by "infecting" popular pages - so to speak. For example, they may post links in forums based around a similar topic, where people who tend to read the related threads would then click on the video out of curiosity.

They also have a blog, which I from now on will be following as I'm hooked! 

Below is another good example, by Viral Agency for FedEx:

I initially selected this topic as a derivative from the Airwalk Casestudy, which was brought up in The Tipping Point, where Lambesis came up with a marketing strategy to promote Airwalk in an entirely new radical way. I have since researched into this, and intend to research further, with respect to deriving how viral ads can aid design. So far, from the examples I have shown here in my blog, and from the many, many more examples I have seen myself, I am currently at the conclusion that viral marketing can promote any product or service. This means means it is suitable for design, as some design is in the form of a product ( product design, textiles, jewellery, etc.), whereas other aspects of design come in the form of a service (architecture, interior design etc.).

What I have also come to realise however, is that viral marketing itself is in fact - design. It can be film. It can be graphic design. It can be an installation. It can be a product itself that gets distributed to promote something entirely different. 

It's limitless and infinite, and I fear I have only touched on the tip of the iceberg! 

Design Studies: Viral Ads - Continued

I had posted a rather lengthly post previously about viral ads and why companies chose to go down that route. While still in the studio on a Friday evening, I was surfing the internet checking out some other virals that are out there, so here are my findings and my thoughts on them.

Quicksilver Dynamite Surfing is a good example I just came across. No pun was intended with the previous mention of "surfing" the internet, however! What's clever about it, and somewhat unusual is the products Quicksilver aim to sell are not particularly depicted however unlike the Cadbury's example I gave before - there is a connection, as Quicksilver produce surfing (along with other "extreme sports") clothing.

I found that example on youtube, and via that came across EFFT, - a blog that is dedicated to collecting links to innovative marketing strategies.

The above is a fantastic example of where viral ads are headed. The only problem is, once something new and memorable has been done - thats it, it becomes redundant for future virals. The point is that your viral must be different to whats already been seen. How else are people supposed to remember yours for its originality, if a similar thing has been done in the past? Pushing the boundaries further and further into the realm of nonsensical advertising means it will eventually come to a halt, as eventually (and I hope not in my lifetime, as I enjoy them so much) there will  be nothing new to do. Below, I have included a behind the scenes video, explaining how they managed to create such a film. Find the original at: The Official Ralph Lauren 4D Experience – Behind The Scenes. There, you can also see the New York version.

Now, the silly dance routine has been done a million times over. I know what I have said above about not doing something someone has already done - but certain silly dance routines, in my book, never get that little bit too old. Enjoy:

Wedding Video

Evolution of Dance

American Music Awards Promo

Design Studies: Damn Cowboys

Today, Jonathan delivered us a rather interesting lecture on Visual Literacy. I say rather interesting, as I&ED got a playground ripping for approaching the latest task during the seminars as I&ED students, which, I thought, is reasonable given we are. If you had a pet that was acting suspiciously like something it was not, you would take it to the vet.

Kittens acting like fainting goats although, is acceptable - due to their entertainment factor.

I however, am neither a fainting goat or anything other than an I&ED student. So I act like one.

It was pointed out by Frances that we did in fact cover the basic points on the group mind map task during Seminar 2 with Hamid. Go Team IED! It's like Twilight, but with less glitter.

I'm kidding, I would quit if that was remotely true. Eugh.

So anyway, IED digs aside, a few interesting things were brought up. I remember as a child watching Western movies and thinking they were mean. Now, "mean" is not a particularly good word in terms of critiquing a film however even at a young age I did think it was inappropriate to convey the Indian party as the "baddies". Those bad American Indian guys who attack you, and you've got to shoot them because they are bad news - it's a matter of survival really. Not really. When you actually think about it, it's the white cowboys that invaded someone elses land and took over who are the bad side. It happens time and time again. South Africa is another example - farmers taking over the land, turfing the native residents out and staking at is theirs. Stick a flag on it - 'cause thats ownership. In reality it doesn't work like that - it doesn't mean anything. The U.S.A. don't own the moon and neither does anybody who comes along and claims anything to be theirs with no sense of purchase.

My favourite film that my Dad exposed me to as a child is Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles", because it points out and ridicules the preposterous claims of the Cowboy and Indian movies. In Blazing Saddles, they have a black Sheriff, and the white men managing the building of the railway line sing cotton picking songs:

Jonathan went on to explain how it is what you are exposed to regularly as a child that helps influence, shape and condition you into your adult beliefs. Women's thoughts are a good example at showing this; growing up to become house wives, dreaming of white weddings, looking after the children, and generally not pursuing an academic career. Lady bird books were used to illustrate this idealism of the 2 point 4 child household, with Daddy resting after coming home from work. This was rarely true when these were published - and far from the truth in most households today. The idea of what a home should be being publicised, and then thrusted into children's faces at school is actually more damaging as children will come to question why they are not the same as the pictures in their books. It is understandable most seek to provide their children with a regular person to care for them, but it does not always have to be solely a mothers job. A father is more than capable, or anybody else for that matter - so long as the care figure is consistent - so as not to make the child feel that they are being bounced from person to person, thus being less damaging.

So what was actually being discussed here? Visual Literacy as Jonathan put it, is not images, but what we in fact see in the image. Interpretation. The lady bird books were a good example of showing how people were lead to believe that these were normal situations, when in fact, it was just a picture. Cowboy and Indian movies are nothing more than a fictional story intended for entertainment, however people are lead to believe the cowboy is the side to root for - therefore conveying and causing an opinion. It is amazing what you can convey and therefore get people to believe in purely via the exploitation of  the image.

I'm sure Adobe agree fully with the above - you too can exploit those around you via imagery for only [£932.95]!

Design Studies: My Tipping Point

Epidemics.

When most of us hear that word we think disease. Media induced mayhem. Catch it, bin it, kill it. Quick, you might catch something. Keep your children indoors and immediately phone round all your elderly relatives to make sure they aren't feeling a little "off".

Swine flu. Foot and mouth. Sars. Even in my relatively short life I have been exposed to several epidemics.

But, after reading Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" I have come to understand epidemics in another fashion. Not only disease, but society's behaviour is also susceptible to epidemics, epidemics of trend. Human nature after all, is imitation.

Contagious. There is another disease ridden word. Again though, after reading The Tipping Point I have come to understand that epidemics of trends are contagious. Not unlike a virus. It takes over, spreading through the population, working it's way through vast distances.

The kid wearing the shoes you don't think are "cool" anymore. What are they thinking? Well, 5 months later those same so called "uncool" shoes are on your feet. Trends start by special people, rare people. People who don't mind being out there, different. The thing is, these trends may drift by, unnoticed in the business world. A huge opportunity missed, as not only did they miss a chance of propelling their own product onto the stage under the beaming lights of mainstream, but they of course, and perhaps more importantly to them, missed out on profit.

Airwalk did not miss out. They spotted it. Trendy Southern Californian teens were wearing their brand. They were making a reasonable profit out of this but they were hungry for more. But how to catapult you're brand into the mainstream, yet keep it's underground original cool-ness? Mainstream after all, it not where trends are set. Mainstream is where the lingering dregs of trends hang out. By the time it's in you're local mall, it's not the newest, coolest thing out there.

This was Airwalk's issue.

So they hired a marketing company to create innovative adverts. Not unlike the viral adverts seen today, they created odd, off the wall adverts, that were highly contagious. But this took a lot of behind the scenes leg work to make sure the right topics were brought up via the adverts. They needed the topics that the underground hipsters were interested in, before it hit the fan of mainstream. This is where DeeDee Gordon comes into the picture, as she was another special type of person. Infact doubly special as she was two types out of the three types that The Tipping Point splits people into. Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen. These are the three categories rare people fit into, and the types of people who are required in order to tip a trend over the edge and into an epidemic. She is both a Connector - somebody who collects acquaintances and knows many more people than the average person - and a Maven. A Maven is someone who knows a lot. She is somewhat of a fashion Maven. Somebody who has the power of knowledge and has the ability to know when something is going to take off. Due to these traits, she was able to keep tabs on underground trends and use them through Airwalks adverts, early enough that it was new to Joe Public, but cool to the underground scene.

Thanks to the series of ad campaigns, Airwalk seen their peak profit tip $175 Million a year.

Pretty clever really. All by expoiting certain personality traits. This line of attack is seen every day in todays marketing world, although done subtly enough, you probably are blissfully unaware. Yet I'll bet you trudge as I do like a robot and buy whatever has been made into a fashion must have. Be it technology, fashion or a number of other things. Some epidemics are a matter of fate, such as the Baltimore Syphilis outbreak, yet others are constructed to happen with the benefits for the tippers themselves exponential.

Airwalk is only one of several topics brought up throughout Gladwell's "The Tipping Point".  It puts several example epidemics into the context of Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen, and explains why some trends take off, while others sink. The drop of crime in New York City during the 1990's. The Syphilis outbreak of Baltimore. The Hush Puppy trend. The Suicide epidemic of Micronesia. Paul Revere during the American Revolution, the examples are endless.

For Design Studies - part of our task was to mind-map the book and then select an area in which to mind-map further. Below is my joint one with Ross, with my own one to follow shortly. I have selected Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen as I find that the most fascinating area.