The campaign that would have made tall girls walk tall doesn’t run.

What choices will you make?

We chose to create an interactive version of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde. The idea is to give people a few of the moral choices Dorian would have had to make if he were around today. It will be interesting to see if they do things differently. It may well be that these days the view is more than ever every man (or woman) for themselves. Or perhaps David Cameron’s “Big Society” will triumph?

LombardForWeb3

Called in to pitch for Lombard. The client was looking for an integrated campaign which showed the many facets of their business. We started off with the press ads – always a good way of boiling down what there is to say, and then expanded out from there. Banners, web layout, DM and Brochure mock-up. Teamed up with agency copywriter Sarah to develop the work and presented over forty mac visuals to the client. Here are just a few.

Slogan, logo, business card, brochure.

Career Evolution is a recruitment agency run by people with specialist backgrounds in outplacement, career transition, career management and coaching to support companies and individuals experiencing change of all kinds in the workplace. The company believe that the new constant in the workplace is continual change.  They provide strategies for organisations or individuals preparing for change, undergoing change or just coming out of a change cycle, and wanted a brand identity that reinforced that positioning.

Little existed in the way of corporate literature, which provided me with an opportunity to develop the strategy from the ground up. I wrote the strapline to make the customer the focus of attention. Then I devised the extendable career ladder as a metaphor for the customer’s ever changing position in the job market. The company were very happy with these foundations and from there my better half and talented designer Liz Thorp helped me fulfill the deliverables across a variety of media including business cards, stationary and brochures.

Co-founder of Career Evolution, Sue Thomas, was pleased. “Mike responded immediately with great creative input to the brief I gave and I’m delighted with the results. More importantly, my clients have given excellent feedback without exception. I would highly recommend Mike’s work.”

Middlesex University MA Design for Interactive Media Show.
September starters.
An exhibition of international, interactive audio/visual digital art and design.

Shoreditch Town Hall, London.
Opening night: Wednesday 29 September, 5pm – 8pm
Thursday 30 September – Saturday 2 October 2010, 10am – 6pm

Your chance to shelter from a virtual thunderstorm, fight samurais in the dark, make music with paint and play in a Wiimote band, all in the atmospheric setting of Shoreditch Town Hall Basement. Expect screens, projectors and speakers, immersive environments and games, audio and visual installations, sonic experiences and performance.

As we liked the way Rubbish Planet turned out not to be rubbish, Arminder and I
decided to work together on our second major project. This was to be more ambitious
than our previous one. We wanted to develop a Flash based interactive microsite and
import 3D modelling created in 3DS Max or Maya into it using Papervision.

We decided to make a microsite called 16^th Century Sikh Armour and Weaponry to publicise
a forthcoming temporary exhibition at the Horniman Museum. We followed the premise
it is best to write about what you know. Arminder was Sikh. I’d done a lot of research on
the Horniman for my small objects of delight project earlier in the year. I knew the museum
had an ongoing series of temporary exhibitions enlightening the public about different
ethnic groups. Information about future events was published on the museum’s main website,
often through a microsite.

We decided to model a 16^th Century Sikh soldier and his weapons in 3D. His weapons
would be on the ground. If the user places the weapons on the soldier where they would
be they will attach to him, arming him. When all his weapons were in the right position and
his was correctly armed he would animate. When the cursor rolled over the weapon in place
a panel would pop up explaining how it was used.

Planet Rubbish

You've nearly saved the planet.

Time to go back to the planet.

The opportunity comes up for students to exhibit at the “Young Designers Exhibition” at the Business Design Centre in London. Deciding not to take the title of the exhibition seriously, I decide to show the “Rubbish Planet” game Arminder and I created (above). Despite having a few issues with the animated pollution sometimes slowing down the planet, we are curious to user test it with real live children. Unfortunately, only a few come to the exhibition. There is an inverse relationship between the size of the people playing the game and their ability to do so. Youngsters go straight to the a, b and c options. Sadly their knowledge of environmental issues is not matched by their game playing savvy, and they then call on mum or dad to answer. The illustration style is liked across the board, but most people find it hard to accept the state of planet.

Teamed up with Arminder Kalra, senior UI designer from New Delhi for our first term major project. What a good decision on my part. He’s brilliant. We are looking for a way to develop our illustrator drawing and Flash animation work into an interactive game with a proper idea. We come up with Rubbish Planet, an environmental game for children. The child is asked a series of multiple choice questions about the state of the planet. If they answer the multiple choice questions correctly by using the a, b and c keys, rubbish is removed from the earth. If they answer incorrectly rubbish is added to the earth. We think the game could appear on environmental websites like Friends of the Earth, or those of councils promoting a greener way of life. Now all we have to do is build it in Flash with Actionscript and XML.

We (Mabel Okiro, Arminder Kalra and yours truly) worked with visiting lecturer Tracy Tsang Hiu Man to make “Elephant.”

‘Elephant’ is a memory aid. Record into a bracelet what you need to take to a meeting at your leisure. As you leave the house the bracelet triggers a sensor in an elephant by your door. The elephant replays to you what you said you needed to take. It never forgets.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the use of an object (usually called an RFID tag) incorporated into a person, animal or thing in order to track them. In an increasingly complex world ‘Elephant’ uses tags to help people keep track of things. Despite the name, the bracelet can be small. RFID microtransponders have been glued to ants in order to study their behaviour.

Technologies: Processing, Arduino, RFID tags.

Horniman Museum banner ad

As part of the ongoing work for the MA I decided to make an interactive banner for the Horniman Museum. The museum has a number of “hands on” exhibits which are objects visitors are encouraged to handle. These objects are labelled as part of the “Hands on Project” in the museum. This banner echoes the project. Thanks to Dr Magnus Moar and his comprehensive actionscript lessons, I was able to code the cursor to turn into a hand on frame entry, and made the shield stick to the hand wherever it went. The only way to put the exhibit down was to hit “surprises”, a click through to take you to the Horniman website.