A Donkey on the Edge

Collaborative media creation and consulting: Conceive and create the Pea Harvest blog. Russell Davies comments on the Birds Eye pea blog:

I’ll admit I clicked on the link with trepidation, corporate blogs are not always the best, but this is lovely. I think a lot of the charm is it’s not trying to be more than it should, it’s a blog about the pea harvest and pea tasting and it’s just that, it’s not pasted over with agency copywriting or big brand gags, it’s just a look behind the scenes, using regular blogger tools, movable type, flickr, youtube, odeo. It’ll never reach an audience of billions but it’s not supposed to. Really nice work.

The primary objective for the project was to allow Birds Eye to show that even though it may be a large corporation, it is built on strong human qualities. Colin’s voice is now a trusted source of information and Birds Eye has taken the first step in a programme to build on dialogue, accessibility and transparency. Colin is currently taking a break, but will start posting about his sustainability programme soon.

As ever, Tim says it best:

The blog itself should become a projection of the bizarre mind of Isaac Mostovicz: karate expert, diamanteer, talmudic scholar, luxury marketer…

Isaac believes that embracing paradox can enable deep transformation. He’s written about 100,000 words on the topic so far, which I’ll be editing and extracting over the months to come—confusion will reign!

Any suggestions for links, topics and functionality tweaks on a postcard please. Big hat tip to Glasshouse associate Dug Falby.

Redesign and restructure bioinformatics extranet application. Lead team of scientists, programmers and marketers through a complete user experience architecture process resulting in an entirely new system design.

Note Acoustique Ecophon a multi-language Movabletype integration and information architecture project for client Fredrik Wackå

Redesign and restructure the main Flora website. Conceive information model based on customer insight. Develop information model into an information architecture designed to support the growth of the website and the inclusion of future advertising initiatives.

The website introduction explains it best:

Oxford Strategic Marketing, in partnership with Hunter Miller, has commissioned independent research to explore the critical issues facing senior marketers in their first 100 Days. The report will be available in January 2006 to download, and the critical issues will continue to be debated below. To keep abreast of the debate, subscribe to our rss-feed.

A couple more pure CSS application skins over at TruePlayaz and Lemonjelly and you know what, you learn something everyday—who’d a thunk you could get a dot-ky tld?

In the spirit of releasing early and often, experimentalpragmatics.org went live last night well before the design is actually finished. Dug can’t pretend to understand the concepts of relevance and utterance interpretation, but he’s happy to be able to help another non-profit onto the internet.

Dug has completed another pure CSS ringtone shop interface for those wonderful guys at YR Media. We’re now rapidly aproaching the point where the ringtone shops could be assembled into an unorthodox (because these are targeted at Firefox and IE6) CSS Zen Garden. More on that thought later…

A project to unify the IFA-facing web services of UK financial services giant Friends Provident. This was a challenging project requiring as much diplomacy as design. The new designs should go live in Ocotber 2005

Dug has developed both communications and user-experience solutions for a number of large finacial services institutions including:

• AMP Bank
• Standard Chartered Bank
• New York Stock Exchange
• OM Group
• Friends Provident
• Chase Leasing
• Flemings JP Morgan

Dug has just finished up materials for client Cognima’s “3GSM 2005”: tradeshow presence. This year, Dug developed a new stand design incorporating plasma screens into the stand walls and a new edition of Music to Replicate Data By, a series of music compilations launched in 2003.

Design of all CSS ringtone shop interface. The microsite is linked to from the skint.net website.

Motion graphics production.

Twenty minutes of ambient video communication for Saudi petrochem leader SABIC’s tradeshow stand at K2004 in Cologne. Films convey key brand messages (sample). Client: Bisqit Design

With the Twocultureclash shop, Dug worked closely with YR Media’s Mark Panay to really push the white-label application.

Mark’s semantic markup allowed Dug to build a design around CSS selectors acting on most parts of the site without need for specific class definitions.

For client YR Media, Dug designed a set of skins for the company’s white label graphics and ringtones store.

An impossible brief: a set of website templates that could repair themselves and shield the user from design mistakes.

Dug has worked with Cognima for a number of years. Over this period, he has developed

• A complete corporate identity programme
  • Brand mark
  • Brand guideline
  • Print requirements (letterhead, cards)
  • Website template system
  • Promotionals (T-shirts, mugs, mousemats)
  • Office signage and place-holding
  • Bilingual Japanese/English design
• Travelling exhibition stand design
• A collection of limited-edition music CDs

The Lecture List was launched in May 2004. Over the twelve-month design and development phase, Dug was responsible for the entire user experience, from functionality specification through to application design, human interaction and control of the final coding of the site’s interface.

Web designer: Lorenzo Sprenger

Some links to matrix solution sites:

• web.usna.navy.mil
• lar5.com
• jjorg.chem.unc.edu
• jeays.net
• www.schubart.net

The client asked for interactive ideas that would allow millions of people around the world to experience the 007 lifestyle.

Dug spent two years developing assets and strategies for Glidrose Publications Limited, the owners of the James Bond intellectual property. One of Dug’s favourite projects is the Ian Fleming Encyclopedia.

The site contains every word written by Ian Fleming, organised in a flexible, resilient and easy-to-use database. Designed for academics as well as amateurs, the search-and-comparison facilities will be cross-referenced with relevant course data provided by rss feed from university publishing resources.

While Dug produced mock-ups of search-and-compare web pages to add the film resources of Danjaq, LLC. and MGM to the site, the IP owners are still in legal consultation and this element of the project is temporarily on hold.

Designed standards-compliant version of the Guardian Unlimited website to satisfy accessibility/usability requirements of UK educational charity (The Lecture List).

White label design templates to merge AMP bank financial services into M&S ‘Unicorn’ financial product.

Web designer: Daniel Harman

Dug ran an audit of the client’s publishing methodologies and described a creative position. This enabled the new Discovery Health website to gain credibility among viewers and establish the channel it supported as a free-standing editorial offering.

Accessibilty consulting for interesource.com on a brief from US legal giant Lawtel.

Dug designed skins for a number of the applications pages.

As part of the brief, Dug also developed a methodology for the internal team to follow to protecting usability / accessibility during both the initial design and final implementation phases of the project.

Dug directed the design of the UK version of street.com

He paid particular attention to UK journalistic idiom so that the site was truly native as opposed to a ‘port’ of the US offering.

Dug designed the xhtml templates for the magazine which allowed multicolumn layout to function correctly at all seven browser font-size settings.

Dug has been developing advanced CSS-based design techniques since 1997. Donkey is the developmental test-bed for these techniques.

(Read ALA article for position-based n-column layout)

The brief was for an interactive campaign that would engage an adult audience with Shrek and encourage DVD purchases.

Dug consulted on accessibility / usability for Gibraltar-based gambling site.

I’m currently hunting down the pages and pages of work I did on the new James Bond logos, brand position and editorial strategy (including the design of a Bond magazine contract title)

Dug designed and specified an Ian-Fleming-based online lifestyle shop.

Corporate site design. First attempt at creating Javascript objects that generate fluid transitional and typographic effects.

For Blueberry interactive, Dug designed an interface for Gemstar’s VideoPlus online user guide.

Dug was asked by Strawberry Frog’s Brian Elliot to help out on the OM Group virtual stock exchange project.

The Dutch advertising agency had worked as a team with the client’s business analysts, the Boston Consulting Group, to establish the feasibility in business terms of running a web-based virtual stock exchange.

Missing from the equation was a team member with expertise of large, complex, web-based projects who was able to act as a bridge between the offline advertising team and the technical team at OM Group.

Dug’s advertising experience, coupled with his managing of pan-European data-distribution projects for Offworld Industries made him an ideal candidate for the job. Dug ran a creative and technology audit which he presented to the board of OM Group in Stockholm.

Dug is unusual in that if the project demands it, he can act as a technology consultant as well as a creative director. He has consulted on xml-based publishing initiatives for The Discovery Channel, Cataloguing for GE and Acer Computers among others.

Dug designed a site for Irish streetwear designer Electronic Sheep.

Dug designed white-label templates for the Vauxhall SkiNet microsite (system was implemented by IBM UK). The system used a design infrastructure established by Dug as part of the Ski Club of Great Britain’s European information-distribution system.

Dug designed site for luxury country-house hotel

Dug designed online shop for multimedia publisher Primal

Designed search and retrieve interfaces for three large trade associations.

Dug created the PIM components to be reused by all three companies. Each component was built from a neutral palette that allowed juxtaposition with each company’s web interface. Dug also designed the three web interfaces (but the PIM is the really cool part).

Dug designed the award-winning Ski Club site for four years.

Dug designed this independent Jazz label’s online shop and listening booths.

Shopping service. First magazine that allowed visitor to purchase directly items featured in the editorial. Dug designed the launch issue and the shopping interface.

Dug started life working in old-school advertising agencies (L’Entente Delacroix, Ted Bates and Lord Geller Federico Einstein in New York, GGK in London) where he worked on big, prestigious clients like The Wall Street Journal, Cognac Hennessy, IBM and New York Stock Exchange. Here is some work he has done recently.

For the last eight years he has worked in the interactive area, initially in an agency and then as a freelance consultant. During that time, Dug has worked on a wide range of projects and companies including Budweiser, British Energy, AMP, James Bond, GE, Standard Chartered Bank, TNT, Universal Studios, BA, Showstudio and The Guardian.

So Dug has a good understanding of conceptual communications and interactive media as well as the technology that powers it, but how does his head work?

This portfolio is a blog—this means two things: it is almost continually changing, and visitors are free to leave comments. Dug rekons he wants to work with people out there who share his beliefs and values, and to date he knows of no better interactive tool than the blog to find out about what goes on in someone’s head.

As well as the Portfolio categories in the left-hand menu (Recent, Brand, Web), the site has more general categories which may be of interest to the design comunity. These links take you out of the portfolio and into the main blog site:

• Advertising and marketing communications issues
• Design and usability commentary
• Internet culture politics and advocacy