We just gave ACSM’s American Fitness Index its annual update. What are the nation’s healthiest and fittest metropolitan areas in 2010? Find out at www.americanfitness.index.org. See AFI’s new collection of Best Practices, where American communities showcase their AFI-selected community health & fitness programs. Read about the new AFI report in Shape Magazine’s June 2010 issue! Read about it at Forbes! Read about it at USA Today! Read about it at MSN and at Yahoo, too!
This spring, Glopilot created an elegant, audience-focused, interactive design for the Heffter Research Institute. HRI promotes research of the highest scientific quality with the classical hallucinogens and related compounds (sometimes called psychedelics) in order to contribute to a greater understanding of the mind, leading to the improvement of the human condition, and the alleviation of suffering. Our design strategy aimed to draw attention to HRI’s formidable researchers and their ground-breaking investigations into the science of consciousness and the treatment of anxiety in cancer patients.
Visit Heffter.org to view our work and that of this pioneering institute.
In addition, The New York Times recently published this article about Dr. Clark Martin, a retired clinical psychologist from Vancouver, WA, whose cancer-related depression was relieved during Heffter-supported research. Read it here…
From creationthemovie.com
In the world of Flash design (and Web design in general) there is this idea that one must always be on the cutting edge. If you want to make an impression on your audience you’d better deliver some form of bang-wow that they didn’t know was possible until you showed them, right? Software is in a near constant progression of capabilities and discoveries that compel the world of digital design to feel like it has some ever-changing high-tech image to live up to.
This happens all the time in the movie industry. It seems that every new mega-special effects project that comes along gets a whole new set of software designed for it just to try and make it the greatest yet. What happens though when you don’t push that boundary, but instead take the time to settle into a set of tools and really learn how to use them? The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, that’s what happens.
Being a decently devoted geek I have taken the time to watch all the extras on the disk sets of the LOTR movies. In those extras I learned that the special effects creators were delighted to make the movies because for the first time in their careers they were allowed to use “last year’s” software. They claimed that all the time they normally spent just figuring the software out was freed up and granted them the space to actually be artists. Imagine that.
I am not knocking all the cool bleeding edge flash sites and ideas out there. I love those, too. But all to often a simple, artistic, elegant and old solution gets overlooked in an attempt to feel like one is part of the frontier. Which brings me to the case study for this post, creationthemovie.com.
Creationthemovie.com is a site for Creation, a movie about the life of Darwin. The interface is as if you were looking at your own research desk, covered in samples, tools and a map. How you get around is by wielding the magnifying glass to zoom in on the little creatures in your collection and you click on their links. This elegantly widens the lens into a view port for the content of your selection.
What I love about this site is the overall period feel. It is a simple interface that really gives me the feeling of holding a magnifier over a table of samples. It not only gives me the impression of being in another era, but instantly puts me in the spirit of the role I am playing and makes me that much more curious about the movie. And how is this all technically accomplished? Why, that’s the same old little Flash magnifier technique that has been around since I got into Flash 8 years ago. Well done!
The funny thing is how close to home the design of this site hits. You can’t tell yet, but GLOPiLOT is undergoing a complete makeover and will have some style in common with Creationthemovie.com when we are done. We have been at work on this for the last month in our free time (which is Wednesday nights between 11pm and 2 am), so stay tuned…
Blogs as Broadcasting
This morning I listened to KQED’s Michael Krazny interview Scott Rosenberg, who wrote the recently published book Say Everything (2009), a history of blogging and an argument for its importance and staying power. Scott Rosenberg is co-founder of Salon.com. He blogs at: http://www.wordyard.com/
I heard about the interview through the blog of a friend, writer Rashaan Meneses, who blogged about it a few days ago. She made some interesting notes on the show and riffed a little herself on the art of blogging. (Read Meneses’s post.)
Specifically, Meneses mentioned a laudable caller, a writer who used blogging as an “open studio.” Meneses writes, “Blogging allowed her to share work with like-minded artists and receive feedback.” This is similar to the praiseworthy premise of Meneses’s own collaborative blog, Ruelle Electrique, where she hosts a salon of writers who write mainly on the craft of fiction. They write to learn from the practice of writing and from each other. They share technique as they showcase their skills and develop stronger voices as they go. It’s collective learning, practice and publishing, and it’s an outstanding use of the blog.
The writer who called in to the show to mention her open studio blog was a welcome jewel in the broadcast. Yet, as the interview went on, Krazny’s cavalier slights had Rosenberg in a continuous defense of blogging. Krasny was dismissive of and cool toward blogging, which is understandable. It’s threatening his turf: media broadcasting. Krazny seemed to use the show to continue the waning trend of tossing bloggers into the category of narcissistic exhibitionists and record keepers of trivialities.
For example, the first caller Krasny’s producer chose to put on the air was a woman whose cats blog. Yes. Her cats blog. She praised the rise of the blog as a publishing platform because it gave her cats a voice. Now, don’t get me wrong. I, for one, will never turn up my nose at comedically anthropomorphized cat prose. However, a cat’s web log isn’t really a full representation of the democratizing power of blogging. (Although, if cats would like to vote, I support them entirely.)
Having heard countless people praise the Internet as a revolution in communication that rivals the printing press, I see blogs as the fuel behind that revolutionary force. Each individual with access to the internet has the ability to write, speak, post photos, or vlog–to broadcast media–publicly. Access and media literacy remain limited, but are growing fast. If one’s voice is reasonable, credible and the content is important to many, a single voice can be heard and amplified through responding, commenting, forwarding and linking. Through that process one voice becomes the voice of a collective.
In sum, the blog is a phenomenal publishing platform, one that is rapidly leveling outmoded hierarchies of knowledge dissemination and media distribution. I mean, look at what it’s done for the cats.
Screencap from mnightshyamalan.com
I can never remember how to say this guy’s name. But it comes up often enough in our discussions of compelling mystery narrative creation that I have resorted to calling him Shyamalanadingdong (meant with the utmost of respect). Anywho, his latest site is a very nice example of immersive web design.
On a technical side it is mostly made up of pre-rendered CG walk (or fly) through sequences (similar in essence to wechoosethemoon.org) that the visitor scrubs forward and backward through to give the illusion of walking around a 3D environment. Over the last few years this technique has been used here and there to various effects, but this is the first one I have seen that seeks to create a sense of walking around a house. And I think it does this very well.
Take a look. There are quite a few micro-puzzles (re: click to solve) at the standing still locations and all the the graphics and animations are beautiful. Plus if you are a fan (which I am) you will find interesting quotes about his creative process peppered about.
Most sites I have seen use this video-scrub effect to move about rely completely on the wow factor of that movement. However this site manages to combine the wow factor of that effect with other elements such as puzzles/exploration and triggered ambiance to create a more effective and memorable experience.
Screencap from wechoosethemoon.org
I wandered upon this site the other day and think it is a fun example of an immersive online experience. The site offers visitors the experience of a fly along on the original July 20th, 1969 lunar landing. It does so by giving the visitor simple controls to experience computer generated photo-realistic animated sequences of what the various stages of the voyage would have looked like (to the accompanying aliens in saucers anyway). I love it!
As I flew along I got more and more wrapped up in what was happening. I felt I learned a bit more about just what had to happen for them to pull this off. Some of the maneuvers are just astounding. When I realize the math involved in such a coordinated feat I am humbled.
The beautifully rendered animations are made even more compelling by the inclusion of actual recorded audio communications between the rocket and mission control. Not just immersive, but fascinating to get a glimpse into the “actual.” The final touches include a clock that informs you of mission time and pop up access to various media about the event itself (archival video and photos).
At first glance I would not have thought much of the idea apart from it being educational. But the way the designers delivered it almost gave me the feeling of playing the lunar landing as a game. I got lost in the drama! It left me wanting more and though they didn’t offer that “more,” they were very successful with hooking me in. Good form!