Gone are the days of selling a product or service simply by communicating it’s benefits / unique selling proposition. Brands need to work harder at connecting with new customers and building stronger relationships with existing customers.

Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts talks about this in his book entitled “Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands“ in which he states that without some kind of emotional connection to a brand, the relationship will dry up like a generic raisin in the sun.

One of the oldest and most effective ways to communicate an idea is through telling a story. The online environment has evolved, and it’s the ideal place to take the user on a journey (that they can control) and weave a story around a brand or product.

A fantastic example of this is a new campaign for Dove. It’s called “Waking Up Hannah” and here’s a brief summary courtesy of Creativity-Online:

With “Waking Up Hannah,” visitors can choose from three storylines–Energize, Refresh and Cool Moisture–then watch the adventures of the title character as she recovers from a drunken night and gets ready for a blind date. Each of the narratives corresponds with different Dove deodorants and body washes. Within the interactive film experience, visitors can click on Hannah’s phone to view her pics and text messages, hear commentary and get Dove coupons. In fact, each scene offers four different views and there are seven different endings overall to Hannah’s day.

Additionally, you can send the film to friends, learn more about the products and participate in forum discussions.

It’s INSANE! A very girly example indeed, but a great one none the less. Even though this example happens to include a crazy amount of video and no doubt has a seriously large budget behind it, an online experience need not look like a big-budget movie in order to hinge around a story. All a website needs to do is take the user on a journey.

Our objective as people creating online experiences for brands should always be to MAXIMISE the length of time users spend interacting with the brand. So next time you have the opportunity to create something truly amazing, think about how you can weave a story into the experience. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the results.

Things are getting REALLY exciting at Stonewall+ on a number of different fronts. We’ve landed some GREAT new accounts and are doing work for some of the countries leading brands, including Virgin SA, General Motors (Chevrolet, Cadillac, Isuzu, Opel and Hummer), Investec, Pam Golding, Cadbury, Shoprite, Checkers and PriceWaterhouseCoopers to name but a few.

We aim to achieve a number of goals with our work:

1. Produce work of international standard
2. Create exceptional value for our clients
3. Push the boundaries of the medium and experiment with new technologies
4. Have fun doing it.

If you share these values, and you’re keen to join a dynamic, innovative company full of people you can learn from and produce some outstanding work, apply now! Here’s a short rundown of what we’re after:

• Interactive Motion Designer
  Are you an After Effects and Flash junkie who gets off on visual effects and constantly downloads showreels? Do you have an eye for animation and see video as the future of the web? This job is for you. Get in touch! Send a link to your showreel / portfolio as well as your CV to designer[at]stonewall.co.za
• Actionscript Guru
  You’re object-oriented by nature, and you communicate in classes and functions (). You’re not scared of conceptual thinking, and you know what Papervision 3D, Sharikura, and WiiFlash are. Don’t miss this opportunity. Send your CV and work samples to developer[at]stonewall.co.za
• HTML/CSS Programmer (Code Ninja!)
  You’re presentation layer is separate from your content, and you validate when interrogated. What are you waiting for? CV and work samples to developer[at]stonewall.co.za
• Senior Interactive Designer
  Photoshop is your playground and Flash is your friend. You so over the Web 2.0 look, and you eat complex design problems for breakfast. You make the most of every opportunity to create, and your portfolio speaks for itself. Come on - send it on to designer[at]stonewall.co.za
• Production Manager
  You’re a compulsive list-writer and you’re a natural born leader. You understand the web inside and out, and you’re able to bring out the best in people. Send your CV to studioproduction[at]stonewall.co.za

Peaked your interest? Maybe, just maybe this is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Get in touch - what do you have to lose? Oh, and if you know of anyone who fits the above descriptions, we also offer a R5000 referral commission. Go on then!

Man, there is a serious overload of super-hot work being produced at the moment. There’s an abundance of inspiration out there for anyone involved in interactive design - so no more excuses for producing mediocre work!

Here’s just a handful of the amazing stuff I came across today:

Let It Bleed: http://www.letitbleedbook.com/
Absolutely first class example of what can be achieved within the boundaries of a mostly HTML-based site.

Epsonality: http://epsonality.com/
This site just blew me away. Big Spaceship and BSSP really created something incredible here. And this isn’t just a big budget splurge on Epson’s part - this is a truly engaging experience for the user. I’m sold.

Red Issue: http://www.red-issue.com/
Beautiful and engaging website that allows you to browse by using mouse gestures. Why didn’t I think of that?!

Hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think.

I had the opportunity to attend the launch event for the all new Adobe Creative Suite 4 today… man, it totally freaked me out! I would have never expected an upgrade as big as this - CS4 is a quantum leap from where CS3 left off.

Here’s an outline of my favorite new features:

• Illustrator
  • Multiple “artboards” (pages) - it’s about freekin time! Freehand users can finally migrate across. This artboard functionality is super-cool - in a single Illustrator document, you can have an entire campaigns artwork layed out over the entire stage, e.g. an A2 poster, a flyer, a sticker, a CD, a web banner, etc.
  • The gradient tool has been totally upgraded - rather than using the gradient panel, the gradient slider control appears right on top of the object you’re applying the gradient to. You can change the gradient, add colors, move it around and change the style right there. Very nice
  • Blob drawing (Flash’s method of painting and creating shapes) has been incorporated.
• Photoshop
  • More sophisticated 3d object controls
  • Content-aware scaling - you can stretch out or compress an image without objects distorting (and people getting fatter / thinner).
  • Photoshop can now make use of your GPU (the processor built on to your graphics card) which speeds things up hugely. This enables slick, smooth zooming and panning (reminiscent of Microsoft Seadragon) and general speedy rendering and processing.
  • A new panel specially for custom and preset Adjustments.
• Flash
  • Tweening and animation has been totally reimagined. No more creating multiple keyframes for tweens, and no more guide layers to tween objects along paths. Creating a tween is a single-click process, and moving an object creates a bezier curve that it completely editable for creating complex motion paths. There’s also a handy “Animation Presets” panel to quickly create common animations, like ball bouncing, zooming out, etc.
  • There is also a Motion Editor panel that allows you to fine-tune motion easing.
  • For those of you who are familiar with creating animation in After Effects, Adobe have basically canned Flash’s method of animation in favor of After Effects methods and tools.
  • This also means 3D! Objects now have X, Y and Z positioning, so you can animate objects using 3D techniques. Divide a scene into a foreground and background to give the illusion of depth, or create more complex animations with objects flying in within a 3D space. Hectic. Only problem is that THIS functionality required Flash Player 10 to play. Sucky.
  • You can import an After Effects composition into Flash in order to add interactivity to a scene / animation. Freekin brilliant!
  • A new Bones tool allows you to join multiple objects together by creating a skeleton which can be animated really easily. This makes character animation such a breeze.
• Premier
  • Managing loads and loads of video clips is a total mission, particularly when you need to find a particular clip. Premier now includes a transcribe tool that… wait for it - scans video clips, performs voice recognition and transcribes the voice, to be used as meta data allow for quick easy searching. Seriously sophisticated stuff.
• Integration between the products totally rocks… a few examples:
  • Create an After Effects comp directly from Premier - edit the comp in After Effects and the clip immediately updates itself in Premier without rendering.
  • In Dreamweaver, drag a PSD onto the stage and you’re able to Save For Web and create a JPEG (or GIF / PNG / etc.) right then and there. Later, if you edit the original PSD in Photoshop, the JPEG created from it in Dreamweaver updates itself.
  • Open a video file in Photoshop and edit individual frames… *gasp*
• All of the applications now feature a consistent appearance with the following features:
  • A “breadcrumb” trail detailing where you are within an object “nest”.
  • Tabbed file editing (much like tabbed browsing in modern web browsers)
  • Stack modes allowing easy rearranging of assets within the workspace

Sincere apologies if I’ve gotten some of the terminology completely wrong, but I’ve done my best.

There really is so much more, but let me stop waffling on and on and leave the detail up to the professionals. Check out the following sites for much more detail:

• the Adobe website
• Adobe TV
• Adobe unveils CS4 suite (Macworld)
• Photoshop & Illustrator CS4 Video
• A whole whack of other videos available on YouTube

So here’s the new Wordpress Theme - based on the Starkers theme by Elliot Jay Stocks.The intention with this version was twofold:

1. To create something REALLY simple and fast and remove all the fluff and design bull
2. To adapt the interface to be more of a content aggregation tool - bringing in my Twitter and Delicious feeds.

It’s not meant to be a piece of groundbreaking design by any means - just something simple and functional. That said, it’s really quite difficult to force yourself not to add a shadow here and a swoosh over there. Intentional simplicity with a touch of class isn’t easy to achieve.

The TO DO list for the theme is still exceptionally long, but in the interest moving forward, here’s the 1.0 release that will be slowly upgraded over the next month or so. Let me know what you think!