Broken/useless video game controllers

Heya folks,

If anyone has broken, useless, or no longer needed video game controllers (of any ilk), I'd be happy to take them off your hands. I need them for a school project.

Email me at mark.pantsari@gmail.com if you can help.

thanks!

--Mark P.

Desk for Sale!

Making The Adumentary - Trailer

If you're not following our blog, please help us out. Visit our site and click on "Follow".
www.MakingTheAdumentary.com
It will go a long way toward helping us finish the project. Thanks Circus people!

-Alex

Newest from Droga5

Never flirt with AJ.

Agency of the decade

Vote:

http://www.bestofthe2000s.com/agency1.html

Warning, lots of butt.

Mekanism Team Makes Naked Living Room a Reality (Video NSFW)

Alex Bogusky Talks About Student Portfolios

Thanks to Andy Pearson for this one. Every week Alex hosts a live talk show sort of thing. This week Tiffany Kossel is on (CD from Old Navy, Amex, did a lot of Mini stuff, etc.). They're talking about portfolios and reviewing some on air.

http://www.justin.tv/fearlessqa

Comp Paper Outside Heddy's Office

It's hard to believe it, but in five weeks, ya'll have gone through all that comp paper in the bin. Can we all make an effort to replenish it? If you see somewhat clean 8.5x11 or 11x17 scrap paper laying around, come donate it (neatly) to the bin.
Thanks, H.

Fail Huge.

Just look the other way. If you can't see them they can't see you. Right?

watch out for calico colored guinea pig

Help us get to 300.

Please take a second to check out the blog we've made for our advertising documentary. Chaz and I are hard at work spiffing up the site, but a simple version is up and running. Our goal is to get 300 followers by the end of November. Help us out by going to the site and signing up as a 'Follower'. Pass the link around to your friends and ask them to do the same. Thanks, Circus people!

-Alex

Here's the linky-link:

http://MakingTheAdumentary.blogspot.com

Six Creative Solutions in Online Advertising

By Mike Takahashi

Recently, there have been a lot of creative ideas and uses of online ads that have been pushing the traditional medium. Takeover ads, where ads takeover the entire site design have become more common. Apple has taken banner ads into a new dimension by creating ads that appear to interact within the design of a site. While others have been able to leverage platforms such as YouTube and Twitter to create an interactive experience. Here are some creative and unique trends that have been showing up in advertising online.

1. Interactive Ads

Samsung

Follow Your INSTINCT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoOCiaxIZF4

To promote their new phone Instinct, Samsung created an interactive online video campaign on YouTube called “Follow Your Instinct.” Using YouTube’s annotations feature, which allows clickable links embedded in the video to other videos, users can follow multiple story lines by choosing where to go next. At the end of each short clip you are presented with two choices. For example: 1) Follow you Instinct or 2) Go to your desk

TurboTax

http://look.daileyads.com/omma_submissions/twitteralpha/

TurboTax created a live Twitter banner ad that showed the five most recent tweets featuring responses to consumer questions and comments on taxes, product use and feedback.

2. Synched Banner Ads

By now you’ve probably seen one of the many creative and witty Apple ads featured on sites such as CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and Pitchfork. By breaking the traditional mold of static banner ads and utilizing synched ads, an interactive experience is created using elements within a site’s layout to grab the users attention.

Apple

Appeared in the Wall Street Journal

Appeared in the New York Times

3. Takeover Ads

Takeover ads takeover a sites existing layout, changing the normal flow and convention of what the user is normally accustomed to seeing.

Nintendo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSU-z-t9Ku4

Image source

To promote their new game Wario, Nintendo created what at first appeared to be a standard YouTube page showing a video of the game being played. However, as the video progresses, elements within the design of the page start to interact with the game. The entire screen shakes, items begin to fall down, YouTube’s navigation starts to crumble, and the page eventually becomes unrecognizable.

Apple

To show the features of the iPod Touch, Apple was able to create an interactive experience that interacted with Pitchfork’s design. This has also appeared on sites such as ESPN.

Madden NFL 10

To promote the game Madden NFL 10, YouTube’s home page was taken over by an ad that interacts with elements the home page as football players break outside the ad space and into the design of the site.

Star Trek

http://avatarclient.com/extranet/awards/2009/startrek/mtvtakeover/index.html

For the release of the new Star Trek movie, MTV’s home page was taken over to give the effect that the site’s content was being sucked into the warp of the Enterprise as it zoomed into the page toward the viewers.

Quiksilver

http://skate.quiksilver.com/thespot

As the video begins to play, the skaters start to jump outside the video and become part of the website, interacting with elements of the design by skating and doing tricks on the photos, video player, etc.

4. After Click Ad

After click ads expand and interact with the design of the page only when a user had clicked on it.

Braquo

Braquo is a crime TV series in France.

BMW Korea

5. Social Media

Traditional advertising has been able to successfully incorporate and leverage social media to create interactive experiences that can only be done online. Designers have been able to leverage the concepts and ideas of sites like Twitter to create an interactive experience with users that allow them to engage with the audience.

Jack Johnson

Twitter Promotion for Live Album
http://twitter.jackjohnsonmusic.com

A simple, yet effective concept that was done using Twitter to promote Jack Johnson’s live album En Concert. It allows you to Tweet up to 24 characters while the other 116 characters are reserved to retweet the message. Once it is sent, a link is given to download a free mp3 from the album.

I Wear Your Shirt

http://iwearyourshirt.com

Jason has been able to take online ads in a unique direction by leveraging the social context of his every day life. He has sponsors pay him to wear their shirt for an entire day, taking pictures and then blogging about his interactions and experiences with people on his site. Days are sold at “face value,” so January 1 is $1 and December 31 is $365. It’s become quite popular, with 2009 already sold out, and 2010 quickly filling up. He’s also added a second person in a different time zone to help out in 2010.

Red Bull

http://www.facebook.com/redbull?v=app_123793864961

Brands are incorporating interactive experiences with consumers on the web in more ways than ever. Red Bull has taken the scavenger hunt concept one step further by teaming up with Facebook to incorporate a virtual scavenger hunt across the United States. Using the website, you type in your zip code to find the locations of places where cans of Red Bull are hidden. The general locations are shown via Google Maps with clues on where to find the exact spot. Once found, you "claim the stash." Users can make comments on each individual location and upload photos of their stashes through Facebook.

6. Something Unique

The Million Dollar Homepage

http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com

Not really a trend, but worth mentioning since it was something truly creative and completely different at the time. Conceived in 2005 by Alex Tew, a college student who needed to raise money for his tuition, he came up with an idea to try and make $1 million by selling 1,000,000 pixels for $1 each on a single web page. He ended up selling every single pixel making $1 million with several imitators copying his idea.

Closing Thoughts

The creativity in the ads shown have engaged the audience with something new and different. They break the traditional online advertising medium by creating new experiences that people have yet to become fully accustomed to. But how long will these trends continue to attract audiences before the novelty wears away and people start to ignore them? Banner blindness is already a known problem. It’s probably only a matter of time before some of these ideas take on the same fate.

(via noupe)

You've probably seen this great spot:



But, have you seen the follow-up?



You're welcome.

-Alex

Piano Stairs for VW

A.R. Business Card

AR Business Card from James Alliban on Vimeo.

Ping-Pong Tournament

For all you new First Quarters...

Top 10 Most Common Errors Made Using Photoshop

The right kind of Black

It’s like assuming a person as black when in fact he is mulatto. A lot of designers at one point thought that setting the Photoshop’s K in CMYK to 100 would result in black. The hybrid would offspring a dark grey. At one point you can get away with it, but if you really want a darker shade of it in rich black set your CMYK to C=90 M=30 Y=30 and K=100 that would give you a richer black as a night shade.

Although you can get away with setting your K to 100 for black text, large areas of black should be set to ‘Rich Black’. Try using C=90 M=60 Y=30 K=100 – it will produce a much richer and noticeable black.

Inappropriate Extracting Technique

Inexperienced Photoshop users always rely on the infamous magic wand tool or the quick select lasso tool to extract backgrounds and objects in an image. Photoshop’s easy selections as well as extraction methods have come a long way since but nothing compares to the precision in using the Pen tool.

The Pen tool may not be your tool of the trade because it can be complicated and awkward for you to use. But once controlled you will never use any other method the same way again. Quick masking tool can be good too; however, stay away from the eraser tool for extracting technique. It would add up an improvement in the appearance of your images if you render a slight feather to your extractions.

Beveled, embossed and drop shadows

It is easy to abuse these features because; really it is fun to see those fonts come to life in a click of a button. However, in as much as we enjoy making it pop up with effects, little that we consider if we are making any sense at all. You can easily tell whether a designer is an inexperienced one through the way he treated these features in his design. Unless you have a valid reason to use the said effects, just like rainbow gradients-stay away from these and using it in moderation will be appreciated by the viewing public.

Drop shadows should be used with care. The shadow should match the source of light of the entire design. It is awkward to see contrasting shadows in your image and your fonts clashing each other inadvertently. This would render a “fake look” on your image and would defeat the natural look you want to achieve. Drop shadows should not come as harsh and dramatic; they should just support the image and not overshadow it. Tone it down a little bit and you’re good to go.

Creating logos in Photoshop

Some designers might disagree with this, because they have been using Photoshop to create logos. I think Logos should be rendered in vector-based programs like Adobe Illustrator as much as possible. Well, for one vector based graphics can be blown out way too large without losing its quality. Logos are meant to be seen in a crisp clear manner in able for the proper identification as it serves its purpose-represent the product through its name. Logo’s purpose might be defeated if they cannot be seen regularly in sharp detail such those rendered in Photoshop.

Using rainbow gradients

Just like Michael Jordan’s ubiquitous tongue, Rainbow gradients is everywhere, people have been using it like a million times. Every time we see those rainbow gradients, it became more and more loud and grating. However, that doesn’t mean that you should not use gradients totally. Using gradients should not limit your creativity it’s just a matter of how you will combine it with your other design. Try blending the gradients from light to dark using the same color. Blending two or more inconsistent color really hurts the eye.

Not learning shortcuts or the hotkeys

This is not only applicable to Photoshop, but in all programs out there. Learning the hot keys or the shortcuts will benefit your working habit a lot but many tools needed hot keys for added functionality. Many didn’t know this but you can create your own shortcuts if you are not compatible with the preset shortcuts the Photoshop has. Select edit>keyboard>shortcuts, then make your own shortcuts for your convenience.

Setting Body Copy

A Photoshop user should know the limitations and boundaries of using a design, especially in creating a fantastic text effects. Do not; by any means you should use those text effects on large areas especially for the body copy. Leave that to Quark, InDesign or to Adobe Illustrator. Texts are meant to be read for comprehension and figuring out its meaning-the reason why it should be clear enough to read in a sharp details. Your text will not par enough in a raster-based program like the Photoshop. You should know that a vector-based program can do justice with the letters of the alphabet for the large amounts of copy.

Layers and Folders lack of knowledge

Layers in Photoshop serve a great purpose. They’re not just there lying around for display purposes. Everything in Photoshop revolves around layering and utilizing it wisely will benefit your work greatly. It makes your work easier to edit, duplicate, move or delete. Renaming your layers and structuring them to folders is necessary especially if you are a web designer and having too many bits and pieces of design that needs to be organized. Layers will help you categorize and save you the headache of looking for something that wasn’t there.

To Desaturate is to convert to black & white

This is an often overlooked thing in Photoshop even by experienced designers. Desaturating an image often produces flat and lifeless images. Try this instead: go to Image>channel mixer>check off monochrome, and then adjusting the red, green and blue sliders. It would produce a lot richer depth image.

The advantage of guides and grids

Guides and Grids are there for particular reasons. They can make your design proportionately beautiful and believable and using them in the first place could spare you of adjusting things here and there accordingly. There is still so many designers who still do it by eye…

Congrats

to all the grads. Welcome to the fun.

If you ever need anything or just want someone to slip your book in at CP+B, hit me up. andypearson1.0@gmail.com