You need to upgrade your Flash Player
This is replaced by the Flash content.
Place your alternate content here and users without the Flash plugin or with
Javascript turned off will see this. Content here allows you to leave out noscript
tags. Include a link to bypass the detection if you wish.
Congratulations to Potion for their 2nd consecutive year as a finalist in the Interactive Design category for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards!!
An official White House project created to increase national awareness of the role of design, the National Design Awards are given annually by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in recognition of excellence, innovation, and lasting achievement in design.
The Interaction Design Award is given to an individual or firm for the innovative design of digital technology. It is based on a body of work verses a specific project.
The jury gives careful consideration to the designers and firms whose work best embodies the Awards’ mission and portfolios are judged based on excellence, innovation and enhancement of the quality of life. Extraordinary originality in identifying, shaping, and solving problems is valued highly, and nominees whose work significantly broadens the conventions of their discipline, introduces formal innovation, and exhibits consistently high levels of imagination and insight are given special consideration.
The award ceremony will take place in October at the White House hosted by the first lady.
The lovely folks at Last.fm have selected rehabstudio as their digital creative and production agency in 2010.
Throughout last year rehab worked on a selection of campaigns with Last.fm in the UK and US. Initially they focused on creating a new standardized branding package which touched everything from the website to the mobile applications.
rehab also created and launched Last.fm’s first global branding campaign, which has been running throughout the CBS Network since summer 2010. If you’re in London you’ll have seen the cute bunch of Last.fm characters on the Tube projections.
Other product initiatives from 2010 include;
Band Aid; Created for SXSW in Austin Texas the service automatically generates a personalised list of bands you should see based on your music profile.
Last.fm Festivals; Generating a personalised compatibility rating of upcoming festivals
Last.fm Presents; a monthly club night in London
Last.fm Best of 2010; the annual rundown of songs based on users scrobbles
In January 2011 the first Last.fm Festival will take place in London, New York & LA.
Welikesmall, better known as WLS, is one of those shops plagued by the chronic anxiety of the looming “internal website” project. Start, stop, start stop. I guess that’s a good thing, they’ve been busy! Well, this summer, they finally sat down and committed to knocking it out. (Thank you!) Keeping things simple, the team redesigned the site with a few key things in mind :
Keep it simple. People are coming to the site for 1-2 reasons. To see the work, and to see what type of work they do. Those things are front and center and easy to navigate through.
Communicating their passion. As a technology-focused production company, some of your best work can sometimes go unnoticed. Lots of things are stirred up and played with internally to prototype, demo and just experiment with. The Technology section shows off all of the shops skillz from processing, to data visualization, to phidgets.
What role did you play? As a production shop, its important to communicate how you partnered with the lead agency to develop and expand their ideas. The work section is bigger than ever, jammed with their latest projects, as well as full of details surrounding project roles, process and solutions.
Why Utah? We get asked this quite a bit. Well, have you seen the mountains? What better a place for creative minds to play.Their brand is still very much so about free time, creative energy and the independent spirit that comes with being away from the big cities. Check out the company and you will see group of outdoor enthusiasts, yet all still garbed in the oh so familiar creative plaid.
Welcome to Templar’s new castle, an online destination that’s half portfolio, half video game. Following their philosophy of “don’t say, show,” they’ve crafted a unique experience that makes poking around their recent projects as fun as playing the games themselves. Each building in the castle reveals a different section, and the player is invited to explore all the areas to discover their contents. Here’s a few hints for your journey:
The Alchemist dwells in the tall tower on the left, preparing nefarious concoctions that summon various games
The Captain of the Guard trains in swordsmanship inside the Gatehouse, where is information on how to contact Templar
Inside the central Keep is the Great Hall, where knights feast and information about the company and clients is kept
Deep in the Chapel Tower, a knight kneels at his vigil while the Abbot blesses him with prayer; Advertising is found here
The castle’s Saracen scribe, keeper of knowledge, busies himself with blog entries in the lower Dormitory
and much more!
The site also features videos of Templar’s games (via YouTube) and links to play them, and will be updated with more content (hidden throughout the castle) as it becomes available.
Transistor Studios teamed up with Pereira & O’Dell on the launch of the 2010 campaign for the Women’s Professional Soccer League (WPS). The campaign, “Defend Your Turf” uses various media formats with a focus on large scale digital projections. Transistor supported the out-of-home projections with an athlete shoot in LA, post production support, and the interactive components that include sms capabilities.
In the projections, the imagery encourages fans to “Defend Your Turf” by texting messages of team support to a number that will transpose those text messages right onto the projections themselves. An auto-reply text will send the fans special ticket offers for their home team.
Bovine invaders from an alien world have landed on Earth, and it’s up to you to save your family in Templar’s new game for JWT’s Cadbury/Stride “Save the Arcades” campaign. You’re going to have to dust off your 1980′s coin-op skills for this one; it may be satire, but it’s still going to take some lightning reflexes to face down wave after wave of evil cows bent on destruction!
Transistor Studios worked with JWT NY to create the digital signage that you see in the video above as part of the spring 2010 campaign for Zyrtec. The waterfall effect was created using Real Flow (RF4) technology a tool used often in broadcast to simulate the flow of liquid while enabling the control of behavior and reactions of each element to impulses, force and acceleration. Transistor is one of the few agencies bringing this beautiful and ground-breaking technology to life in digital executions.
The campaign will run through the spring allergy season on the impressive Walgreens billboard in Times Square, New York City.
The guys over at Welikesmall received their new Microsoft Surface table recently and have been digging in, working on a wide range of ideas.
We thought we’d post up a video of it in the office and some of our favorite Surface Projects.
What is a Microsoft Surface Table?
Microsoft Surface is a revolutionary touch-screen computer that responds to natural hand gestures and real-world objects, which means goodbye keyboard and mouse, and hello to natural user interfaces.
Surface allows you to grab digital content with your hands and move information with a simple touch or gesture. What’s more, it can also detect and interact with objects placed on the screen, which allows you to move information between devices such as mobile phones or cameras with ease.
What experiences are complimented by a Surface Table?
From hotels to retail stores, Surface tables are popping up to create new interactive experiences for consumers. Beyond simple brand interaction and exploration, Surface tables work best when a “visual explanation” of process or data is the most powerful form of communication. We see wide implementations coming in the industries of Health Care, Finance and Government.
Here are a few of our favorite surface implementations:
Barclays Bank : Allows customers to visually interact with their account information.
Sheraton Hotel : The virtual concierge. We’ve seen these in NYC and Boston with crowds always huddled around the table. Guests can use the table to plan a route, book tourist attractions and discover POI’s.
Infusion: This is a tool that helps doctors explain visually to patients procedures, anatomy and drugs. RFID-enabled HMO Cards help doctors see what drugs the patient has covered and make suitable recommendations.
The Pits : This is a stomach simulator that shows how drugs work inside the human digestive system.
There are several more in travel and tourism, retail, architecture, hospitality and entertainment that can be seem in this great list from Fast Company.
If you are in the area and interested in seeing a demo of the table, feel free to hit up the guys over at Welikesmall.
Look what just arrived in Salt Lake…
The guys over at Welikesmall received their new Microsoft Surface table recently and have been digging in, working on a wide range of ideas.
We thought we’d post up a video of it in the office and some of our favorite Surface Projects.
What is a Microsoft Surface Table?
Microsoft Surface is a revolutionary touch-screen computer that responds to natural hand gestures and real-world objects, which means goodbye keyboard and mouse, and hello to natural user interfaces.
Surface allows you to grab digital content with your hands and move information with a simple touch or gesture. What’s more, it can also detect and interact with objects placed on the screen, which allows you to move information between devices such as mobile phones or cameras with ease. Read more here.
What experiences are complimented by a Surface Table?
From hotels to retail stores, Surface tables are popping up to create new interactive experiences for consumers. Beyond simple brand interaction and exploration, Surface tables work best when a “visual explanation” of process or data is the most powerful form of communication. We see wide implementations coming in the industries of Health Care, Finance and Government.
Our favorite surface implementations
Barclays Bank
Allows customers to visually interact with their account information. See it in action.
Sheraton Hotel
The virtual concierge. We’ve seen these in NYC and Boston with crowds always huddled around the table. Guests can use the table to plan a route, book tourist attractions and discover POI’s. See it in action.
Infusion
This is a tool that helps doctors explain visually to patients procedures, anatomy and drugs. RFID-enabled HMO Cards help doctors see what drugs the patient has covered and make suitable recommendations. See it in action.
The Pits
This is a stomach simulator that shows how drugs work inside the human digestive system. See it in action.
More…
There are several more in travel and tourism, retail, architecture, hospitality and entertainment that can be seem in this great list from Fast Company.
If you are in the area and interested in seeing a demo of the table, feel free to hit up the guys over at Welikesmall.
The Muppets!?!? Yes, The Muppets! We’re really excited to show off this work from Honest , who was able to lend a hand in this new campaign for Disney and The Muppets. Working with agency, Vanksen and director Michael Sugarman, the team at Honest got the opportunity to build this promotional website for the Disney Give a Day, Get a Disney Day new campaign.
Up to their normal scheming, the Muppets spread the message about volunteering, while they COMPLETELY DESTROY the site! Getting to work on-set with the Muppets, The Honest team came back to pull together the experience, doing all of the animation ( pre and post production ) , flash development and personalization tool to let the muppets speak to you about volunteering.
Visit this link, enter in your name and watch as the Kermit, Miss Piggy and the whole crew tell you about how you can get involved.
About the Campaign : If you have kids, you most likely watch Disney, and may have seen the commercials as well. It’s a pretty awesome campaign and Disney is giving away tickets! Disney wants to inspire one million people to volunteer a day of service to a participating organization in their communities. 1 day of service = 1 day at the resort. Get involved here : Give a day, Get a Day
The Experience. This interactive table enables visitors to play with cells and molecules as they are pumped through an open section of a blood vessel. The blood vessel even pumps in sync with the Giant Heart at the center of the exhibit. Visitors can reach into the blood stream and pull a cell under a magnifying glass with a sweep of their hands. In the viewer, visitors see detailed information about each element in the blood, including a step by step 3D animation. They witness how platelets clot a punctured vein, macrophages swallow-up dreaded bacteria, and how Vitamin C roughs up all the free-radicals in sight.
Visitors leave the experience understanding What’s In Your Blood…
We asked the crew over at Welikesmall a few questions about the project and their strategy for pulling off the build.
Who did you partner with on the project? The Organic Detroit office.
How did the two teams collaborate? The original concept and design was brought to us by the crew over at Organic. Our initial thought when we saw the boards was “live action shoot replete with helicopters, vintage muscle cars, expensive talent, burnouts.” But no, they’d already shot some great footage and this was going to be the home to show off the Charger as “not your father’s Charger.” Our role was the development of the site to include special features such as a car color visualizer and multimedia gallery.We took the Organic treatment to the next level, adding in our thoughts on textures, motion and ambient sound design. You can see this well in the gallery section. We were able to expand upon the creative and bring the wall to life adding in our thoughts on interaction, rollover and general motion.
The site showcases content that requires high quality, what was the development approach? The development was not overly complicated, but required a concrete site loading strategy. Our goal was to use the highest quality of video and imagery, without asking users to wait too long for load. We ran through several iterations of the gallery and colorizer to get the right balance. There was a degree of complexity in the gallery section because the rows loop so you never get the end of a row since they just repeat. This also required some logic to make the 40+ images and videos move efficiently. We also knew that Dodge would want to track interaction with these media types, so we implemented Google Analytics and Omniture Hitbox.
Can you go into detail on the loading strategy?
The loading strategy was straightforward except for the beginning loader. When the site starts it loads in the swf that contains manifesto and all the necessary nav, legal, and other basic items. When that load starts we also start loading the background movie. This made it so the users could watch the background movie while the other sections are loaded in. The nice part of this was that the site wasn’t reliant on the background movie completing to run. So if they were on a super slow connection the site would still run and the background movie could play up to the point where it had loaded to. Its a simple feature but made the site less “loader” intensive. For the gallery we also used a similar strategy where we embedded around 15 images into the gallery.swf so the user could see the content in the grid when it animated in and then images surrounding those would load in a predefined order. Other than that is just file size optimization.
What was the timeline?
The project duration was about five to six weeks from kick-off to live date, with no gaps during the December holiday break. The team stayed committed through the holiday to meet the launch the first week in January.
How was the experience working with Organic + Dodge?
We couldn’t have asked for a better partner. It was our first experience with both teams and we found it to be one of the smoothest. No delays throughout the process. Apparently the site is going to run in kiosks at the Detroit Auto Show this week and we look forward to hearing the feedback.
The Lufthansa social networking tool, MySkyStatus, has just been re-released with new features. A collaboration between the teams at Profero NY and ID Corp, the tool gives people the ability to send Facebook and Twitter updates while their plane is flying them about the globe. The update now allows auto-updates to be sent out via email. Users can also personalize the update, decide when to send it and select update reasons from a drop-down menu.
Here’s what one of our favorite blogs, Springwise, has to say about it.
When we wrote about Lufthansa’s MySkyStatus tool last October, it gave travellers the option of having their flight status updates posted automatically to either Facebook or Twitter. Some 17,000 automatic tweets have since been posted as a result, and now the German airline has expanded the free service with new capabilities.
Still available for passengers on any airline, the MySkyStatus tool now gives users the option of having their departure, in-flight location and arrival updates sent via email as well. Travellers can choose who will receive their updates and when; they can also add a personalised message. In addition, a new drop-down menu lets them share their reason for flying.
There’s no doubt it’s a real-time world out there, with heavy emphasis on up-to-the-minute updates on as many platforms as possible, and personalisation capabilities make the deal even sweeter. Keep the (branded) conversation-boosters coming!
Congrats to the guys over at Honest! Partnered with Mullen, the team at Honest was honored to be nominated for a MITX award earlier this month.
The MITX Awards recognize New England’s best interactive technology and web achievements. Awards were handed out to our friends at Hill Holiday, Sapient, Zipcar and Digitas among others.
The project focused on turning consumer-generated art into real $$$ and meals for hungry families. Users could create art, share it and learn about the nutritional value in the process. The successful campaign generated 175 million media impressions and nearly 25,000 pieces of bread art. That helped raise over $25,000 and counting, since every piece of bread uploaded was matched by a $1 donation to Feeding America.
We are very pleased to announce the addition of Lindsey to our team as VP of Interactive Business Development. Lindsey will effectively double our sales reach. Prior to joining Aarra, Lindsey has had prominent roles at AKQA and The Barbarian Group. Previous to that Lindsey ran new business and executive production for Velloff Interactive, a troupe of well-known “hired guns”, working as Flash development support for leading agencies.
Over the years, Lindsey has built relationships with a variety of notable agencies. She’s played prominent roles in projects for a virtual who’s who of major clients – MSNBC, HBO, Coca Cola, Purina and HP among others.
The Aarra model, which augments the traditional commercial broadcast model of representation to digital agencies, continues to receive praise from leading industry executive producers and creatives. The addition of Lindsey to our team will enable Aarra to expand our visibility and that of our roster companies to national and international agencies, as well as support direct-to-client requests.
Working with Profero NY, the ID Corp has created the mother of all API mash-ups. Pulling from Flight Stats, Google Maps, Twitter, and Facebook, ID created a tool for air travelers that packs a lot of punch into a very simple idea. It gives people the ability to send Facebook and Twitter updates while their plane is flying them about the globe. The press has been over-whelming and if you’re scheduled to leave anytime soon, or simply want to check it out, you can go to myskystatus.com.
Check out the Plumpinator app on Facebook. It’s an interactive calculator that allows a user to calculate how much money they spend on saltwater if they are buying “plumped” chicken versus natural chicken products that are not injected with agents of plump. The app also equates this data to how much sodium you would ingest on a yearly basis, expressed in the equivalent of large orders of fries. Each time the app is used, it taps a database and records these numbers, adding to a cumulative number for dollars spent and sodium. It also posts a feed to the user’s wall saying they just found how bad they’ve been getting plumped.
Yessian recently completed the music for a national Chevrolet spot entitled “Clay Model” for Campbell-Ewald/Detroit.
Yessian masterfully created a cover version of the classic song “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” with Dragon Licks, a licensing division of Yessian, artistically tying in the idea of an actual Chevy Malibu car coming to life underneath the clay model. The song was sung by Melody Gardot, a 22-year- old gifted singer whose voice blends jazz, folk and blues in a beautifully haunting style. Few artists master the art of capturing mood and emotion the way Gardot does. There is expression and yearning in her voice, reminiscent of greats like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone.
Yessian collaborated with JWT/Team Detroit on a :30 Ford TV spot entitled “Centrifuge” that debuted at the onset of Super Bowl Sunday, February 3, 2008.
Jeff Dittenber of Yessian/Detroit created the Sound Design for the spot, which was shot in Santa Clarita, California. The distinct sounds of hooking the car, the swirling sounds of the centrifuge, the buzzers and the thump of the Ford logo dropped to the ground at spot’s end, were all done with the skillful touch of Dittenber. Additionally, Yessian Composer Chris Plansker provided the eerie layers of rotating vocal textures for the spot.
To get the latest Aarra news, check out our Facebook and Twitter, or sign up for our newsletter.
About Aarra
Aarra is the first strategic sales management agency of its kind. We oversee national business development for a comprehensive portfolio of best-in-class digital shops. These boutique portfolio companies look to Aarra to procure work from world-class advertising agencies and brands, partnering in design and production to deliver award-winning creative across a variety of capability sets within digital marketing.
For the advertising agencies we support, our role is a mix of matchmaker, deal broker, strategist, catalyst, consultant and trusted partner. We connect clients with the capabilities they need, from mobile to microsites, applications to installations. We realize, however, that no matter the project scope, finding a suitable vendor goes beyond simply who can do the work. Partnership is rooted in culture and creative synergy, location and availability. We’re experts in these kinds of relationships. We maintain objectivity in selection, save valuable time for decision makers, and provide a framework to expedite ideation, technical approaches, budgets, and procurement. We’re the first in the digital world to offer this unique utility, and we’ve assembled only the finest in digital production to support it.
Earlier this week, 
