Websites which don't look like websites but are websites

Flash Websites Research

I'm looking to make my website in flash for the current project and here are some examples of flash built into websites.


http://www.dieantwoord.com/index.html

Dieantwoord is a website for the band Dieantwoord, the band is from South Africa and i don't know if i like their music yet? It was quite by chance i found this website after watching a video from one of their songs then doing a search on google i came across their website.

The website is all done in flash with a slideshow background which changes every couple of seconds and replaces the background with a new image of the band which is quite a nice feature, rather than featuring a gallery. The site also plays music on start up, and on the right hand side there is a tab which opens a menu and allows the user to change the song being played, with about 20 songs to choose from.

The Left hand menu is very simple and each item in the menu brings up a feature about the band. The video tab shows a list of band videos, once the user clicks the video the website then takes the user to a page where a video from youtube is embeded.

The website is very well laid out and very simple for the user to understand with the big menu on the left hand side. Overall i like this website as it breaks away from more traditional websites. Some of the background images are abit subject to question but it is in the style of the band.

One more thing



There website also includes another flash element the 'secert chamber' an extra bit of promtoional work, the secert chamber is a full screen flash version of a room which is take from a photograph and certain parts of the room have been animated. When the user moves the mouse over a certain part of the room a voice clip plays, probably some of the bands opionions i'm unsure. The user knows which part of the screen to move the mouse over to hear the sounds because the parts of the room which are animated play the sound.

I like the flash design of this part of the website and it is very different to the actual main website. Also nearly forgot every 10 seconds a member of the band will appear in the center of the room, they fade in then fade back out again.




http://www.yearcourse.org/landing/index.html

Year Course is a website for anyone wishing to take a gap year or something in Isreal. Enough about what the websites about i'll focus on the flash. This has to be one of the most interactive websites ive come across. From the screenshot the website is basically a landscape of an area i presume in Isreal (or the best bits all in one image). At either side there is a arrow which allows the user to pan across the landscape. I really like this feature as it gives the user the ability to explore the website. Once the website has loaded a person comes and greets you, this is a nice video embeded into the website.

The best thing about the website is you get to colour it in! its a real simple feature when you think about it, abit harder in flash to code. There is a selection of colours at the top and the user can click on them and then click the area on screen to colour that are like the paint bucket tool on MSpaint. While doing this there are lots of little sutil animations going on all the time on screen and if the user hovers the mouse over them then they play a sound bite varying from sounds of the sea to music and even the sounds of camels.

Overall this website is very interactive and kept my attention for quite sometime, one of the reasons i think this was because the landscape is quite big therefore i wanted to colour most of it in. The website is what i would like to design mine like for this present project.

Statement taken from YAal Herman's portfolio website, (the man behind the yearcourse website)

yaal herman is a freelance multimedia artist that focuses on the development of creative solutions for businesses, organizations and individuals who require professional class web applications without the media buying, commissions and overhead of a full service agency. With extensive experience in various media, a unique perspective on the marketing-web-art world and a wide professional network, our aim is to provide a creative service that refines and delivers your message in the most efficient, yet artistic way.

I feel this is relevent to our course.




http://www.mauriciostudio.com/

Mauricio portfolio is a good example of creativity. Instead of the ordinary menu, he uses a kind of parallax movieclip, where the user must interact with the stage to explore the site. The user explores the website by moving the mosue to the desired area in realtime and then their are certain buildings/areas the user can click to find out more information. Failing that there is a menu at the bottom which takes the user to that area on screen.

One of the first things which came to mind while browsing this website was how familar to me it looks like a landscape from the Worms games series. The website to me just has the same feel as from the Worms game the navigation and the way the screen moves are very similar, but thats just what i picked up on.

The only bad thing about the website i can think of is the lack of interactive content, it doesn't keep my attention like the Isreal website once you've explored everything thats it nothing new to see and it just becomes looking at the same thing over and over again.

Overall the website looks great and some of his work is very nice but the only downside is it doesn't keep the user fixed to the website, i spent maybe about 5minutes looking at it but i won't look back at it again because there is a lack of interactive content and information relevent to me. But it uses flash very nicely and is quite an original design again breaking away from alot of traditional web design.


Related Information
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/07/50-beautiful-flash-websites/

DESIGN EXERCISE: 13 :: FLASH BANNER

Flash Banner

Scenario: You work for a web design company that has been commissioned to develop a new campaign for your mobile phone

The part of the site you will create is a simple FLASH animation that links to a main product website and is to be deployed across a variety of websites.

It should consist of at least 6-8 separate sections that include some animation and interaction.
Research your phone and its current advertisement and
build a new campaign banner

Finished Banner





Research
My phone can be found here along with the current exsisting flash advert.



Documentation
When designing my advert i did not want to waste the users time so i made all my flash pages relevent with only vital and important information. When designing my advert i allowed the user to skip to the next page with a button feature on each page so they could spend time watching the animation or not. My advert has few images and only close-ups of the mobile phone, i made the text bold and itatlic to give the impression that my phone is going places and by doing this i'm making bold statements with my advert. - 5 minutes writing this

All my animation in my advert is done using Actionscript.

Problems i encountered when using actionscript, the only reason i added the next button feature to my advert was becasue i couldn't get any of the code i found to move the the next frame after playing the animation it would all skip the animation and just jump to the next frame. I will learn how to fix this in my next animation, but for this advert i made the tactical descion just to include a button to go to the next frame and the user can control that.

I had a few problems with getting the buttons to work on each page, as Flash doesn't like duplicate pieces of code, very simple and easy soloution to this was just to add another character into the button code just changing part of the name and flash loves it.

Advantages i found to using action script to do the animation were i did not have to mess about with lots of frames on the timeline or make a lot of movie clips with actionscript it made it alot simpler in that respect. The only drawback i found using actionscript was i could not play the animation in flash beacuse it was only 1 frame long i could not see where objects would be at the end of the animation which meant alot of guessing and changes to the X & Y co-ords.

Overall i think it turned alright and will be looking to include flash within my main project, and will probably be doing more Actionscript in my flash.

Assignment Brief Two :: Project Design/Ideas 1

Assignment Brief Two

Brief: Artist/Arts Organisation Website
Design and build a artist / arts organisation website. A site which acts as a promotional website for an individual/organisation and which will increase both profile and online traffic for the client.
The choice of artist is wide and could include musician, craftsperson, writer etc etc. These must be real individuals either known to the designer or if not known then with sufficient background material available (on or offline) to make an effective ‘mock’ website (not historical or dead artists!). They can be real ‘live’ commissions if available.

For this project i have chosen Modern Toss as my artist/artist organisation. Modern Toss is created by Mick Bunnage and Jon Link. Originally Modern Toss started off as a series of cartoon booklets and books aimed at adults they also feature quiet regulary as a comic in the Gurdian, and recently they designed the cover for the Gurdian tv times pieces doing the cover and serveral other images inside to promote the live episode of Eastenders for some annerversry or something.


There biggest fame came when channel 4 commissioned two television series of a comedy sketch show of the Modern Toss featuring characters which appeared in the books and comics. The cartoons feature low-quality drawing, offensive language, violence, and satire of mundane life.


The reasons for choosing Modern Toss, well for one i like the show and always laugh at the cartoons. A better reason for choosing Modern Toss is they currently do not have a website set up. The creators have a blog set up and twitter feed and all that but they do not have a website which is can showcases there animations and creations. I would like to design a website to showcase their creations and solely focus on promoting Modern Toss.

Modern Toss is ace. It started out as a series of comics, some of which were later compiled into proper books and finally culminating in the production of 2 series' of televisual crudeness. The drawings are shit, the animation is sketchy, the subject matter's mundane and the language is extremely offensive - perfect.

sourced - http://www.wednesdayblog.co.uk/post.php?id=13

[Front cover for the Gurdian]

Ideas to follow this post and everything else!

Star City :: Nottingham Contemporary

Star City


So went to Nottingham Contemporary seen their latest exhibition 'Star city' with a pretty awesome tagline 'The Future Under Communism' The exhibition is showcasing art with a view to the future from a Communism viewpoint. Their are some quite intresting instatilation pieces. What i particuly like about it was the russian art from the cold war, which was basically propaganda art, to make help promote the soviet space program and to make people belive that this is the future and space travel is only a step away.

The art and instationation pieces showcased are from russian artists and designers, and i found it more intresting to see work from a different point of view rather than from the view of Capaitalism all the time. With Russia opening up more and more work is being displayed what the west would never have seen.

I like all the visonary images of what the cold war had planned for the future and see them as truely inspiring, and often wonder why we havent got a lot of the technology today, but i assume polotics has alot to do with it. Ideas from the Cold War era seemed to lack limititations and it seemed like anything was possible if they could beat America & vice verser.

Overall it was a intresting exibition piece and intresting seeing times and ideas from another point in the world i like it alot and in a way hope some of the pieces can help influence my work in the future.

Ive included some more photos;

[Valentina Petrovich Viktorov, Creative Forces of Socialism are Endless! 1959, poster]

[Soviet Poster]

[Images from the Russian space program.]

[One of the instilation pieces.]

[A model of Sputnik 1, 1957]

Twitter

Twitter

Signed up on twitter, now i have twitter feeds straight to my blog which is on the right hand side. Unsure what i will use it for. Probably only say i'm watching Steven Seagal on youtube or things like that.

Never been a huge fan of Twitter but to conquer Twitter, you must first become Twitter! So i figure i'll learn and watch how Twitter works to better defeat it in the future.

Some Twitter Stats

The biggest changes are in the U.S., which accounted for 50.9% of unique Twitter users and 56.6% of total tweets, which suggests Twitter users in the U.S. are more active than many users around the world.

U.K. users accounted for 8.1% of total tweets, compared with 7.2% of unique users, while Brazilian users account for 6.73% of total tweets compared with 8.79% of unique users.

Modern Toss

Modern Toss

"Modern Toss the stink of excellence in a world gone tits up!"

For a while now ive been thinking of how to write about Modern Toss and make it relevent to my work and practice and while rewatching old clips and finding more information about it i found a very nice application for Modern Toss in todays media.

I'll start by explaining what Modern Toss is and why it appeals to me. Modern Toss is a British series of cartoon booklets and books aimed at adults, and a television series based on them. It is the creation of Mick Bunnage and Jon Link. I first got into Modern Toss when they were shown on channel 4 a few years ago and have liked them ever since. I find their humour to be very dark and surreal and blunt at the same time. A similar show to Modern Toss was Monkey Dust which is probably a even darker comedy.

Some popular Modern Toss sketches incude:

- Mr Tourette: a French sign-writer who produces offensive signs bearing no relation to his customers' instructions. This usually culminates in his customer being totally unhappy with the work and Mr Tourette calling them "some kind of cunt"

- Alan: a sociopathic, scribble-like creature who plays extreme practical jokes on his middle-class brother-in-law, usually involving Alan turning up uninvited to a social event, causing a large amount of destruction to the tune of "I Like To Move It" by Reel 2 Real before running away, leaving his brother-in-law to shout "Come back, Alan, you wanker!"

- Citizens Advice: irate and often illogical complaints from members of the public about goods, services and employers, usually concluding with the question "where do I stand legally?"

- Work: conversations with disgruntled or complacent employees; for example, a man phones in from home, saying, "I've heard the printer's broken so I won't be coming in"

- Drive-by abuser: a man on a moped who shouts pointless insults at people, animals or inanimate objects he drives past.

- Fly talk: conversations between flies about humans they've encountered, sometimes mentioning celebrities including Chris Martin and 50 Cent..

Sourced http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Toss

Drive-By Abuser iPhone app

Aswell as Modern Toss being on television and printed in books it has managed to make its way on to the iphone with a very nice and simple appliacation. The appliacation consists of sound bites taken from one of the characters from the television show and allows the user to play them via the iphones speakers. This application looks very simple and easy to make with little bits of animation and a nice easy menu looks very easy to make and to develop. I like it because i like Modern Toss, i have a feeling people who have not seen Modern Toss may not quite get the jokes but unless they like the abuse then they'll find it funny if not then they won't. Here is a example of the application on the iphone.



Modern Toss work shown in gallerys

The last thing i want to mention about Modern Toss is how there work has been showcased in gallerys and some made into posters. In my opionion Modern Toss is not just a badly drawn cartoon, there are much worse than modern toss and have been drawn better but they all lack the originality and humour Modern Toss pocesses. I don't know if i want to go as far and say its art but i definatly like it and love the style it is done in and shows that you don't have to have the nicest designed picture that it can be just as good in any style you want. i belive the writing and the jokes to help alot too.
Catch you later, yeah?

More examples of Modern Toss and links.



video 1
video 2
video 3



http://www.moderntoss.com/
poster

Design Exercise 11 :: Ipod and beyond

Research and evaluate three distinct platforms for digital design display. Compare & contrast

The Ipad

Lets start at the Ipad shall we, this is going to be the first digital design platform i am going to be looking at. I'm a PC rather than a Mac but i'm going to discuss it anyway because its a new peice of technology and quite popular at the moment even though you can't buy one.

Is it really that new? I don't think it is, lets take the design and the main features, well its a rectangle don't get me wrong i think they've been around a long time now so the shape of the Ipad is definatly nothing new. The Ipad also has a touch screen, again nothing new, it allows the user to use their fingers but whats wrong with a stylus surely if they included a stylus they could make it a iSketch to rival the graphics tablet. The most successful touch screen platform on the market would have to be the Nintendo DS, which could still probably do more than the iPad. Lastly the third main feature i consider is the app feature which is nothing new and was all on the iphones which can't even run multiple applications. The ipad is nothing new!

So after establishing the iPad is nothing, new what are the social and political implications for the Ipad? On the social side there will be a monthly subscription for the Ipad required for Wi-Fi internet access, this won't include telephone calls. I don't see how it makes sense to buy an iPad over a laptop, with a laptop (no i don't mean net book) you have hundreads more features and they cost less and the user with a laptop would probably end up paying for a internet connection anyway which would cost less than the monthly subscription Apple charge. Socially the iPad can be used for facebook checking emails and probably some instant messaging client. The thing i have noticed while researching the Ipad is the lack of a camera, if the Ipad had included a camera then it would open up more ways for the ipad to allow users to communicate with each other, a fantastic example would be face to face video messaging, it would then justify why Apple never included a telephone feature and would probably kickstart the way we make phone calls in the future.

Political implications for the ipad, i can see the ipad becoming exclusive for information where companies and buisness start creating their content solely for the iPad. A example of this in the future could be news companies will start charging for their content with a small fee for iPad users. This would elminate a lot of lost revenue by giving away content for free.

[Ipad Vs A stone]

The Ipad is clearly lacking alot of features compared to Laptops one of the major features it is missing is the flash plugin. So any content off the web which requires flash won't run i belive flash to be very important in the future and will disccuss why further in this article. They might of done this to prepare for HTML 5 but HTML 5 won't be ready until at least 2012 which is still a whole two years before it is released (HTML 5 will play video without flash etc). Apple still won't allow flash, but that doesn't stop them from false advertising! All these features the Ipad lacks will obviously encourage hacking the ipad, because ipad users will want to view all the content they can't view. Hacks will ultimatly be deterimined by how popular it is if its popular then there will be lots of hacks aviable if not then ipad users will be left with limited view of the world and the web.

With so much restrictions on the Ipad; no flash, monthly subscriptions, subscription news services the Ipad becomes another tool controlled by the big corparations when they only let you see what they want you to see and therefore control the information. The only real upside i see to it if another rival company develops a tablet computer to rival the ipad and make it a stand alone piece of hardware then allow open source or other companies to develop software/operating systems then the potential for a tablet computer could be huge, rather than restrict access like Apple is doing. Theres so many things i could say about how bad the ipad is but i think i'll leave it at that.


Flash for TVs and set-top boxes

The second digital design platform i'm going to look at is for televisons. For so long televisions have been a one way form of displaying information with very limited interactivity like pressing the red button. For a long time now televisons have focused on the hardware and its only recently with set top boxes that manufacturers and broadcasters have thought about developing better software and applications for televisions.

Last year adobe announced they had done a deal to put its Flash software into many of the chips that go inside TVs and set-top boxes. It will enable developers and content providers to create applications to deliver web-based content such as news, weather and share prices to TV screens.

The implications for this technology are huge and will revolutionise the way we watch and interact with televisons in the future. The social implications of this technology are probably the greatest of all, it will allow users to interact in a whole new way and make it more like browsing on a computer with information at the end of the remote. I can see it bringing people together again because familys will sit down infront of the television and watch their favorite shows and be able to interact at the sametime, with the development of flash for set top boxes i imagine this will eventually become real time. At the moment its at a early stage of development with plans to release set top boxes with flash chips built in later this year. I can easily see ways how it would dramatically enhance the users experiance, take for example all the reality talent(or talentless depending on your viewpoint) shows a interactive voting system could easily be set up to vote for a favorite or to evict someone, rather than the system now when viewers can call in. This would increase the amount of votes any show would get because alot of people who watch phone in shows do not phone up, in turn this would give a more accuate opionion of what people actually like with more people voting. Then it wouldn't be hard to program some nice real time graphics to show the stats of everyone voting. This is just one of many examples i could see how it would improve viewing experiance.


The political implications i can see are taking alot of power away from the big companies and broadcasters and making it easier for users to generate their own content. With the development of flash for the set top boxes the television will become more like the web and how we use it will change. All it will take is a flash based browser to allow streamed content off the internet on to televisons. Rather than users watching channels provided now there will be even more choice with access to the internet, such sites as youtube and other video hosts. With sites like justin.tv and livesteam, it will be very easy to broadcast your own shows and rival the main chanels.

User live show ---> Host it on livestream, live ---> Flash browser ---> Stream on tv

I can only specualte as the technolgy isn't at this stage yet but within the next 5 years i would definatly expect to see something like it. It can be done today but does not use any of the flash ideas mentioned in this article.

There is so much potential with flash for televisions and this is what i do not understand why Apple are not willing to use it? Adobe are willing to develop it for apple products, i belive it has been developed for the iphone recently not just the lite version. But in the end i see televisions emulating what we see on the web allowing more user generated content which will be fantastic and take away alot of the controlled media. We'll probably also see that televisions become home entertainment systems and will be a all in one device. With this development televison has secured its place as a peice of technology everyone will have in the future and ideal to create and develop for.

Related links
Adobe Flash secures set-top deal
Flash moves on to smart phones


Smart Phones

Third and final digital design platform i am going to discuss is going to be the smart phones. Smart phones are the new breed of mobile phones with easier access to the internet and alot more interactivity than conventional mobile phones. They have become more accessiable to the masses literally within the last year because of falling hardware prices and becomeing cheaper to produce and lowering the price, also contract plans have become cheaper.

One of the smart phones main selling feature is the PC like functioning, that you can run applications like on a computer but don't have to be at a computer which makes them an ideal mobile browser with the internet to log on to social networking sites and update everyone what your doing every minute of everyday. And unlike the new Ipad they still have the abiltiy to make phone calls and keep in contact. With alot of the smart phones they also include Flash so are able to run flash applications and games, even the Iphone has the flash plugin even though it took abit of time to actually get it.

The social implications for the smart phones have already been witnessed over the last few years they allow users more access and plenty of ways to keep in contact with each other. But they are not just for keeping in contact most of the smart phones now have GPS and can use map finding applications a common one being Google Earth on many smart phones. There not just for looking top down though they can also use their camera and point it at certain spots to find information about a certain place or object. This is ideal say while travelling in a foreign city or viewing pieces of art without descriptions. The Smart phones also have the abiltiy to run numerous applications and theres a huge market and demand for them, some considered userful and others i see really no point to them but there there anyway here is a example of one.



[App controls a car]

Poltical implications for smart phones, there are ALOT of smart phones on the market and coming to the market this year all to rival the Apple Iphone which is the most sucessful smart phone at this moment in time. There are plenty of hacks for smart phones and the iphone being the most popular their are more hacks for that which allow flash plugins and allow even more access to the web because Apple like to limit it. One of the ways other smart phones can rival the smart phones is to allow users the abilty to edit the source code and create new apps and intrest in there phone i belive the google android have done this.

The future for smart phones will only grow and grow because no matter where we are in the modern world everyone has a mobile phone and there will be plenty of opportunities to develop and create new phones. I do not see a fall in in intrest for smart phones anytime soon they are here to stay.

In Conclusion

One Years time i see flash playing a huge role in developing interactive software and applications for televisions and smart phones across the industry. The ipad will probably sell alot for those who want a limited view of the world and the web, i think ive justified not buying one for myself in the near future. The potential for televisions is huge and we are only at the begining i see there being plenty of oppitunitys to design and develop this type of media in the near and distant future again like the smart phone the television will only become more popular.

Kyan Media

[Kyan Media Homepage]

http://kyanmedia.com/

Yeah!

Look up and think,

Kyan media is a web design and development agency based in Guildford, Surrey, England. The website is a showcase of their work and includes a gallery with links to all client projects they have worked for. It has a simple yet good navigation, interesting colors and a pleasant way to display content. Also, another thing that you can benefit from this site is the portfolio. You could find a lot of great samples for inspiration.

The main three colours (although white is a shade not a colour) blue and green being the other two. the colours are very bold with both bright blue and the bright green. The bright blue representing the sky and the bright green representing the ground to like grass. The colours work very well and is a change from alot of websites which use alot of white and grey.

The layout is nice for the home page with not having to scroll down and relevent information and news at the top. The bright blue takes up the top half of the page where as the lime green takes not nearly as much space up. There are also nice little qwirky graphics just hidden almost on the webpage with a paper aeroplane and a small worm burying its self at the bottom there are also clouds!

[Kyan Media portfoilo page]

Their style is very simple and almost comes to look like a old cartoon with the bright colours 'fun use of illustration'. It uses bold 'punchy' images in the top.

There are also lots of links to other websites to find more information and too promote themselfs, like twitter links, also a blog and some other things, flicker too.

Yeah the sites alright if you wish to view their work but thats all its good for, unless you want information about Kyan media then its great ... (i guess thats why its set up) but after looking at it for so long its all the same on the pages just are the same no differance.

[Kyan Media About Us page]