Mapping The Web

2007-02-04T12:15:00.000-08:00

As an experiment in cross-media marketing (take a look at an interesting case study, but you've got to log-in), I've been developing a print, web, mobile & DVD package to promote both design, illustration and animation, working with ancient explorations of the world as a design template.
Naturally, in this project (as with many other multiplatform undertakings), the most difficult task is honing the possibilities down to present an inclusive yet concise and cohesive message, to present a spectrum of capabilities yet not turn that menu into a labyrinth.

Basically, I'm wrestling with the ever-present monster of project bloat. That is to say, the tendency of any given project to run over time, over budget and grow uneccesary appendages and organs. In order to maintain control, I've found that a list of message bullet points kept on hand at all times helps, and a periodic pruning of the metaphoric bush.
I've got to always remind myself: there are hundreds of thousands of exellent ideas, but it is in implementation that genius® shines through.

Inaccurate Maps to Uncertain Oracles

2007-01-29T15:25:00.000-08:00

Metamedia is coming into being, emerging from a cocoon woven with threads from older forms of communication. In the span of my brief life, we've seen electronic media evolve from Univac to Multi-Touch systems, the hybrid forms of cross-media marketing connecting entertainment to food to music to personal identity defined by corporate brand and anarchistic modes of expression and interaction... From the empowerment provided by inexpensive photocopying and the subsequent explosion in "Zines" to digital cameras and YouTube, Pro Tools and remote social/business networks, from Craigslist to eMule to where you're at right now, funnelling whatnot-to-wherever (the task for designers and communications specialists of all stripes being the refinement of form & delivery, becoming a sniper conveying a concise message to a specific target in the midst of a free-for-all shootout)... The means to create full length animated features fall into individual hands...Research for marketing, for academia, for reportage, for free is no longer the arduous labor of lugging directories and manuals to the Library desk, but at one's fingertips in myriad forms within minutes... As always, the behemoth organizations with top-down heirarchies and antiquated business models struggle to subsume the new media and new means, while the free-range creators explore with impunity and exuberance.
Brands take the place of Nationalities. Operating platforms transplant Religions. Andy's "famous for 15 minutes" statement now becomes a complex equation of famous-for-what-to-whom in a media web more labyrinthine than Daedalus' maze and begs the question: where is the Minotaur lurking?

CRAZY QUILL

Mapping The Web

Inaccurate Maps to Uncertain Oracles