Hello Sour Sally!

Only a short post this week. I’ve regressed back to my childhood a little with the discovery of a web site from a small frozen yoghurt shop in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia called Sour Sally.

The main reason that I fell in love with this flash based web site is the effort that was put in to make it an interactive design. You control Sour Sally and use either the nav keys to bounce around the environment or the mouse to float Sally, who is attached to a balloon, around the levels finding out about the product and shop as you go. Or for the less adventurous of you they have put a ‘normal’ navigation panel at the side.

The hidden features were also a big plus for me, on the ‘where is Sour Sally’ the avatar pops out from behind trees and when you click on her, polaroids of the shops interior pop up for you to view.

This site is a prime example of using interactive graphic design to draw the site visitor into the environment and encourage them to find out more.

I for one will be seeking out Sour Sally should I ever venture to Indonesia and I will certainly be paying them a visit – all from stumbling across their web site – in an increasingly online world the power of interactive marketing in today’s society cannot be ignored and this little frozen yoghurt company has truly embraced the phenomenon.

Visit the site and see for yourself.

Kontain :: Next Generation Blogging Platform

On November 17th Fantasy Interactive Inc announced the alpha launch of Kontain.com. It’s the first Flash-based blogging platform open to world wide free public access.

The guys from FI describe Kontain as;

“A free destination for users to media blog and share photos, videos and audio with friends, family, colleagues and even beautiful strangers. The core of each user’s experience is media-driven and Kontain takes the everyday concept of blogging to a wider audience by making it easy for users of all demographics to “kontain” and share their life online. Simple enough for Mom and Dad, yet flexible and sophisticated for a web veteran, Kontain aims to be the Internet’s premier destination for user-generated content.”

I was lucky enough to be one of the 10,000 accounts allowed in the alpha stage and have been playing around with it for about a week now. Kontain takes an old concept, blogging, and re-introduces it to a wider audience by focusing on ease of use and looks.

Now this isn’t a new idea. Six Apart is trying to accomplish it with Vox, Automattic with WordPress.com, and dozens of other startups have launched a wide range of other services. The focus of all of these platforms is to dumb things down to the point where users don’t need to think about anything from a technology point of view, but rather, can focus on putting content online in the quickest and easiest way possible.

To that end, Kontain does a brilliant job. From the signup process to its no-frills publishing tool, Kontain is incredibly easy to use. As the whole point of Kontain is to allow easy media sharing, the service also makes it simple to insert photos, videos, and audio. Rather than require the user to position multimedia elements within a post, they are added separately at the top of a post, through a simple built-in uploader.

I’m looking forward to the upcoming features that are due to be launched as well, with tools such as activity stats, HD video and High Def images, drag and drop media embedding (youtube) and inline editing – Kontain is raising the bar for the likes of Facebook and Myspace.

At the time of writing there are still some accounts waiting to be snapped up so sign up and take a look for yourself.

Google Chrome Review

It’s been 2 months since the launch of Google Chrome, Firefox 3.1 is on the way with IE8 hot on the heels – So what’s the difference? Which is the one for you? Will it finally get the remaining 20% of IE6 users to drag themselves into the 21st century and stop annoying our designers? Well after 2 weeks of posting about pretty gorgeous websites I thought it was time I sunk my teeth into something a little more substantial.

Ok so first things first – why should I use this newfangled Google Chrome? Google’s a search engine, what on earth makes them think they can develop a browser?!? Well they can, and they have, and not done a bad job of it to be honest. So what are the main plus points of Chrome that I miss when using the other browsers?

• Installation is both quick and easy and with the quick start videos you’ll be ready to go within minutes.
• Transfer both your IE and Firefox bookmarks, passwords and history with one click. Better than erasing/overwriting them like Firefox did last time I ran an update.
• Much more than an address bar – Google calls this the ‘Omnibar’ it doubles as a search box and gives intellegent autocomplete search suggestions.
• Multiprocess Architecture – Nothing’s more annoying than when you have loads of tabs open then one tab crashes and takes down the whole browser – This is no longer an issue when using Chrome as all of the tabs have their own ‘sandbox’ meaning that they cannot share information between tabs – so if one goes down you can close that within Chrome and leave your other tabs running. This is also benificial when it come to security – if one tab gets attacked by malware for instance, it will only affect that tab.
• Speed – Initially I didn’t find much to shout about with regards to the speed of Chrome – definitely not as noticable as the difference between FF and IE – until I tried running a heavey java script site on one tab and my hotmail on the other. Ordinarilly the java would slow down both tabs but not in Chrome thanks to the Sandbox.

Showcase and Showreel Websites

SciFi channel mini series TinMan kicks off their promotional campaign with an amazing flash based graphic journey though Infinite OZ. You can control the speed with which you fly through this beatifully designed landscape, pause on a scene to find out more information about that place, and if you wanted to find out more about the program just got to the main TinMan website. Airing on the SciFi chanel on December 2nd at 9pm – I will be interested to see if they can translate the backdrops to the small screen.

Portfolio sites – how do you get noticed and stand out from the competition? How can you give yourself the edge in the world of new media agencies? Well single-page design could work for you if you don’t have much content, but want to showcase just your work. If you’re a designer then using a single page design can save you time and cost as it doesn’t require much coding. Below are some of the best examples of single page web design I’ve found. Hopefully, they can give you some inspiration.

Inspirational & Innovative Interactive Marketing

Hello my name’s Chloe. I’m a graphic designer who has been working in the field of web design for the past 6 years. Over the coming months I will be bringing you a selection of sites that keep my creative fire burning, please feel free to leave your comments or queries about any of the sites I post and I will endevour to respond.

SAIZEN MEDIA STUDIOS is an internationally acclaimed and award winning Design Firm that specializes in highly cinematic and detail oriented imagery.

Well known in the industry, for its meticulous approach to graphics creation and attention to detail, Saizen Media Studios consits of a team of internationally acclaimed artists, engineers, programmers and animators, and provides services in the fields of Web Design, Graphic Design, Motion Graphics, Packaging and Music Production.

As expected with such a talented team, their own company website is truely a credit to their craft with attention to detail and creative use of flash animation, no matter how many times you look at the site you are guaranteed to see something you didn’t last time.

TVM Studio is a collaboration between Trevor Van Meter (hence the name) and his partner Ferg.

Between them they have a variety of sites including VanBeater, Jamungo, Pixelperson and my personal favorite… CrappyCat. This site includes a flash game of said CrappyCat which is completely pointless and utterly brilliant and I would highly recommend a walk around CrappyCats world!

The next in my list proves that single product information brochure sites most definitely don’t have to be dull, boring and text heavy. In 1993 11 milk processors in California agreed to allocate 3 cents of each gallon of milk sold to fund efforts to promote the consumption of milk and the GotMilk? brand was born. (I’m sure you all remember the ‘milk mustaches’ campaign – with over 200 celebrities representing the brand – In 2002, the ad was named one of the ten best commercials of all time by a USA Today poll)

In 2006 the the campaign diversified and began targeting the Spanish speaking demograph. Now the brand is back with not one but two interactive websites (one in english one in spanish) and the campaign to get nations drinking milk has begun once again.

I included my next selection to illustrate that, although good navigation is critical to a well designed website, breaking away from the industry standards doesn’t necessarily mean that the site will be inoperable. After a few seconds to get my head around the pencil/zoom function of the site I found that it was, in fact, quite easy to find my way around. Mind you I would expect no less from a 73 year old brand development agency that’s been responsible for campaigns such as Tony the Tiger, Pilsbury Dough Poppin Fresh and Earth Hour, and representing companies such as Kellogs, McDonalds and Levis.

Last but not least I have included the following site on recommendation from a colleague. With all of the DIY and DIC (do it cheap!) ecommerce websites floating around on the web nowerdays, it’s nice to come across a site that takes pride in the customer journey as well as the end result in making a sale. Although the loading times are understandably longer than a run of the mill ecommerce site, the graphics and functionality more than make up for the wait. Couple the smooth navigation and clean design with the vast amount of content (including learn to ride tutorials, news and events and even it’s own community!) Burtons is one of the most comprehensive ecommerce sites on the web today – and they redesign it EVERY year!!