Gif89a Banner Ads from the late 90's

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hanging out with the team that I worked with in 1997, at a company called k2 Design Inc. The firm quickly grew from 30 to nearly 100 people while I was there. Because it was so new, and there was so much innovation, the whole thing was sort of exciting an frustrating at the same time.

One area that was growing, was digitaldisplay advertising, or online banner ads. The most economical way of producing and distributing display ads continues to be the animated gif, or GIF89a. When I was an intern at Agency.com I completed a research project on the GIF, in order to understand animation, compression, and palettes.

When I started working as an Art Director out of school in (1997-1998), one of the biggest challenges was translating brand advertising into the paid media formats of the time. The file size limits were closely controlled as not to ruin the user experience. So 468x60 banners had to be under 12k, sometimes if you were lucky you could get 15k.  Below are some tests that I did to demonstrate some ideas.

3 frames / 10k / 9 colors – Fire

6 frames / 11k / 13 colors - Random Attention getting banner.

9 frames / 12k / 32 Colors- VolksWagen

10 frames / 11k / 16 colors - Mitsubishi Motors

132 frames / 10k / 16 colors - Financial Services

The Art of Packing

I really love how a brand can become a parent, teaching it's children how to pack their suitcase.

The 16th President of RISD

John Maeda was welcomed into the Art Directors Hall of Fame in 2008, at the time I was just joining the ADC board. It was inspiring to be part of an organization that was able to recognize the career of a creative person who is comfortable at the intersection of Design, Technology and Business.  Now just 6 years later it is amazing to see what John has accomplished at RISD, bringing technology to the design/education space and what he will do in at EBAY, in the technology/business space.

Telling people how to be creative is easy.

“Telling people how to be creative is easy, it’s only being it that is difficult”

— John Cleese

John Cleese, writer and actor, famous for his work with Monty Python, and British Sitcom Fawlty Towers, intellectualizes creativity in a profound way.

Exploding Cars - A how to by Fabian Oefner

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© Fabien Oefner

© Fabien Oefner

© Fabien Oefner

© Fabien Oefner

Such beautiful work it reminds me a bit of how Steve Ellis painted a series of cars.  By taking photographs of matchbox cars after they had been scratched up a bit, he would then paint in details that only real sized cars would have. Creating an ambiguity of scale, that is so pleasing in the work that Fabian Oefner has just shared.

© Steve Ellis

© Steve Ellis

© Steve Ellis

Subconscious Art.

Understand the Economy in 30 minutes.

Andrew Brown shared this, and I think it's a great combination of diagrammatic narrative that truly explains what is going on.  Also found this from Scott Burns, an explanantion of wealth in america, and how distorted it has become.  

THE ANSWER

Wealth Redistribution. It is commendable to hear about Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet giving a bunch of there money to charity to build educational and cultural resource.  It would also be great to see the Wealthiest American look towards a plan that would distribute  wealth, and agree to an appropriate tax plan.

Bill De Blasio Loves bikers?

I saw this on Gawker today. It reminded me of how ridiculous attack ads are.  I sort of wish that as a culture we would follow that simple rule we all learned in kindergarden.

“Blowing out another's candle will not make yours shine brighter.”

 

The Armstrong Lie.

Documentary film maker Alex Gibney, revisits his work following Lance Armstrong in 2009 during his epic comeback. After Lance's downfall, Alex investigates what happened.

If you make stuff, you should watch this.

Mike Monteiro gives a great talk on responsible design practices, and what we are all doing wrong.

Hers to Lose.

The New York Times put together an insightful documentary about  the Christine Quinn Campaign for NYC mayor in 2013. Interesting that the piece credits a campaign ad by De Blasio's campaign (below) to be the defining factor in New York's Change of heart. 

The Story of PhotoShop : Thomas Knoll

In early June 2013, Michael Reichmann & Kevin Raber sat down with Thomas Knoll, co-inventor with his brother John, of Adobe Photoshop. Thomas tells the story of two young brothers and the beginnings of Photoshop. Later in the video, Thomas talks about the controversy surrounding Adobe's Creative Cloud and the solution he proposed for photographers.

This is water, a Classic.

David Foster Wallace is Awesome. 

SWEDEN.

From 2000 till 2003 my life was very swedish. I was working on the Swedish owned Vodka brand, ABSOLUT at TBWA\Chiat\Day, with frequent business class flights to Stockholm. It was during this time that I met Mikael Marticki, Eva Wisten, Jenny Klintberg, Ted Pierson, amongst others.  These 4 swedes and their friends gave me an intimate portrait of swedish culture, and many fond memories.

Recently I spotted this on Upworthy and it made me thinks of the swedes that I have met.

UNSOLICITED REDESIGN.

Nike Sportswear x Matt Stevens

I recently ran into the work of Mark Steven at the Nike Store in Soho, which lead me to his site, where I found a blog post that he wrote on unsolicited redesigns.  In his post which I would recommend reading.  He connects his own unsolicited redesign of Dunkin Donuts in 2010, it's posting to Armin Vit's Brand New Site on April Fools, to a self defined kickstarted project to one of his latest client engagements working directly for Nike on an installation in their SoHo store.

 ©Matt Stevens

 What I take away from this, is that you make your own opportunities. If you don't have the relationships, but you have the talent, the time, and the ambition. You can make something, put it out there, and build an an audience, and the confidence to do more. You can choose to borrow the skin and reputation of a large american brand, as Mark did with Dunkin Donuts, as a redesign, or you can interpret something meaningful in your life like a sneaker.  If you stay focused, and motivated there are larger opportunities ahead.

Courtesy of Brand New

NYC BASIC TIPS AND ETIQUETTE

I recently found these really great tips for living in NYC so simply communicated through animated GIFs by Nathan W. Pyle.  This also remined me of instructoart, and the work of Matthew Vescovo.

BUILD YOUR OWN THINGS.

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STEVE JOBS, Woodside, CA 1984 © Norman Seeff

In the after glow of the 2013 Apple WWDC, in the post steve jobs era, it is important to remember some words he said. As a call to action to all of us...  

“Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is – everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.”

— Steve Jobs

I wish everyone would stop complaining about apple, and just make something better.