Simple use of navigation but nice way of making vacancies very attractive.
Cirque du soleil 2006 - www.cirquedusoleil.com/CirqueDuSoleil/en/casting/default.htm

Catching up with good old classics in webdesign. Explore what the future may look like with Vodafone's Future Vision microsite. A perfect serve of content through the combination of visual, auditive and dynamic interaction was unseen at the time. More over, lots of stuff produced today is hardly a match for this classic.

North Kingdom for Vodafone in 2004.

Catching up with good old classics in webdesign. Think I might have some fun with this series. The animation-transitions were amazing back then, and still. this one is from 2003. Tokyo Plastic

North Kingdom Showreel 2009 from Designchapel on Vimeo.

Almost unbeatable. If not, unbeatable. Anyway, unseen, so far. North Kingdom.

via Fontanel

Stijn loves cows and horses. Spends his freetime on a farm. Doesn't drink. Never goes out. In short, your typical creative internet guy. Stijn Pauwels was the founder and Creative Director of Milk&Cookies, made websites for the rich and/or famous (Diesel, Prada, MTV, dEUS, La Fille d'O,...) and is leading the interactive design department @famousbrussels

When I started my career as an intern at Milk&Cookies I could barely find most of the tools in Photoshop let alone know how to build a website. Working on the new website of Culture Club got my dragged down the whole interactive design thingy with Stijn leading the way. He's undeniably the nicest guy in the advertising business.

Unfortunately I will miss this years edition but I suggest many of you to join me in tracking the event online as OFFF is a magnificent event.
Computerlove is looking for people to report from the OFFFestival in Oeiras (May 7-8-9). So if you're going and you're an enthusiastic blogger with something to say about graphic design and interactive applications you might wanna consider contributing to the CPLUV+OFFF blog.

Check inquiry here



Since 2001, OFFF is exploring software aesthetics and new languages for interactive and visual expression.

Every year, the festival features digital artists, web and print designers, motion graphic studios and avant-garde electronic musicians. But OFFF is more than an event about any of these disciplines. More than a design conference, a multimedia trade fair, or a digital animation festival. OFFF is an enthusiastic celebration of a new visual culture.

From exercises in interactive synesthesia that excite all our senses to stage performances made of lines of computer code. All this, and much more, is shown every year at OFFF; one of the essential meeting points for the international scene of postdigital creation.

Past participants in OFFF include legends of graphic design and visual communication like Neville Brody, Tomato, Kyle Cooper or Stefan Sagmeister; acknowledged software artistssuch as Jared Tarbell, Lia, Casey Reas & Ben Fry, or Daniel Brown; innovators of the moving image like We work for Them, Tronic Studio, D-Fuse or Renascent; explorers of advanced interaction like Soda, James Paterson, Amit Pitaru or Craig Swann; and the most important names that have defined the aesthetics of the experimental and creative side of the Web: Joshua Davis, Yugo Nakamura, Hi-Res!, Josh Ulm, or Erik Natzke. The festival has also a special spot for the main names in the Spanish scene (Area3, Vasava, Innothna, Cocoe, Dani Granatta, La Mosca...) and for creators of surprising new kinds of sonic landscapes: Tujiko Noriko, The Vegetable Orchestra, Sutekh, Taylor Deupree, System, Daedelus, Stephan Mathieu, Kenneth Kirschner...

OFFF is spreading the work of a generation of creators that are breaking all kind of limits. Those separating the commercial arena from the worlds of art and design; music from illustration, or ink and chalk from pixels. Artists that have grown with the web and receive inspiration from digital tools, even when their canvas is not the screen.

#update: CASEMOVIES









This time of the year everyone at the agency is running wild to prepare and finish all awardboards and casemovies. Freakin' hell. But the good side is, soon we'll be massive chitchatting and having fun at all these parties again, yippy. I've made a selection of the work my team is sending and a small wrap of all the cases we're sending with ProximityBBDO this season so far.






More of this years work is:

Summary:

6 real claw machines can be controlled and played on from your browser. Pepsi Max combines bytes and atoms. If you're passionate about something, max it. That is what Pepsi Max is all about. That and gaming of course. And how do you go about maxing a game that everyone is passionate about? You think bytes (as in 'internet'). You think atoms (as in 'real world'). You grab a soldering iron and connect both.

—
Full post:

MAX YOUR THOUGHTS
Take 6 real claw machines, hook 'm up to the internet and start playing. Unique codes can be stripped from the Pepsi Max bottles and used to add up for extra gaming credits. The lucky ones can win some cool prizes or grab a ticket for the final during which one plays with an 8 meter tall claw machine containing really huge prizes! Each finalist will be able to grab a huge bear and possibly win sunjets.be trips to Malta or Tenerife, or take home 50" plasma's and other cool Panasonic stuff.


OLDSKOOL CAMPAIGNING
The campaign is kick-starts with traditional online media. Bannering and an enticing e-mail to a database of Pepsi Max aficionados


SOCIAL MEDIA CUM
Today, more than 2.1 million belgian citizens are an active member of Facebook. So we integrated the power of Facebook Connect to make the game easily portable over the users contact network. Everyone registering with Facebook credentials, receives give-away codes for friends. Everytime anyone plays or wins it shows up in their friends newsfeed. How's that for viral?

Frankly, a huge amount of users can freely access the website but only 6 can play simultaneously. Of course these users don't want to be sitting ducks while waiting for a claw machines to become available. Statistics are put up to check when the site is very busy, a concept we introduced with, and was essential to, the Internet Is Mine case. Also, the claw machines Twitter when one of the slots is available.


KICK-ASS DESIGN
Phase 1: First wireframes were made in Powerpoint. They served as a basic feature-spec for the full website.

Phase 2: After being loosely briefed on the campaign’s concept and features, several paper sketches were made to serve as a rough guide. The concept at this stage was “a carnival or arcade, but maxed out!”.



Phase 3: Taking the best sketches into Photoshop, we created a digital painting that would serve as a moodboard and colour guide. This piece was also shown to the client in order to get the go-ahead for the look-and-feel for the rest of the website. You’ll also notice the (not-so) subtle use of Pepsi’s 3 main colours, creating a symbolic link between the logo and the site.



Phase 4: Using photos of the real grabber machines as reference, 3d models of the six cabinets, as well as a large “hero”-crane - a reference to the real-life final phase of the competition. The models were created and rendered in 3ds max 2008.



Phase 5: After all 3d models were animated and rendered, all assets were composited in Adobe After Effects and Photoshop. The mist was painted by hand.



Phase 6: After the final compositing of the scene, everything was then taken into Adobe Flash, where it was animated and integrated with the rest of the UI, which was also designed in Photoshop.




SOME HARDCORE GEEKNESS
Basically the client, your pc at home, simply browses to the webpage loading the Flash application. Through the Flash application the Socket Server receives the data of the logged in user and pushes that info to an Application Server on the same layer. The Application Server is there just to check the user data. N00bs would refer to this step as "checking with the database". Furthermore the Socket Server just relays feedback between the claw machine and the UI. To put it straight, the Socket Server is the connection between the client and the claw machines at our offices. If a connection is established then that triggers the Socket Server and extracts one credit. Whenever a client is logged and ready to play, the Socket Server checks whether the user still has available credits to play the game. Credits can be added by entering game-codes found on Pepsi Max bottles and cans.

So, the Application Server feedbacks on the user-request and talks back to the Socket Server. Finishing this simple cycle the Socket Server pings to one of the 6 computers hooked to a claw machine. Each one of these computers is linked to a claw machine through 6, USB interface, micro-controllers talking to one of 6, physical, claw machines.

The micro-controllers allow users to address the physical controls of the claw machines. The connection between the two buttons to navigate and the coin collector are intercepted and thus hijacked by the USB interface of the micro-controllers. The micro-controllers send the claw machines the same electrical signals normally send by the original connections of the physical buttons.

The bears in the claw machines are stuffed with an RFID-tag. If a user manages to catch and lift a bear, the bear is dropped into a slide passing an RFID-chip reader. Once the reader is triggered a signal is passed on back to the Socket Server. The Socket Server then checks that tag with the linked prize in the DB inside the Application Server. When the match is made the UI displays to the user what prize he, or she, has won.


By the way, Proximity BBDO is looking for more ambitious developers willing to enforce our team and start create more of these wicked web-apps and games. Anyone with an interest can apply here.

Check out more of our geekness at Adnerds.be and check the conversation at #pepsimax, #twapero and #proximitybbdo

ProximityBBDO at the beaches of Cannes, summer of 2008, originally uploaded by Proximity BBDO

A few weeks ago Suprasonic, a colleague of mine, started this little event called Twapero.

A Twapero is similar to a Twunch, Twinner or JongTuig, namely getting together with peeps invited via a Twitter network. Twapero is the combo of Twitter and apero. "Apero" is the French name for: drinks and a cocktail-party. Basically a meet and greet with peers and contacts that follow you on Twitter.

I told Supra that maybe it'd be nice if he tried to find a sponsor for every Twapero, and so we went knocking on our CEO's inbox. He doesn't have a door, let alone office. Anyway, he dug the Twapero - why wouldn't he, after all he owns a bar ;) - fixing the free drinks and location.


Thursday we're officially launching the new Max It and so the sponsored Twapero found it's match. Since months we've been working on a wicked and wild new webgame for Pepsi Max. Pepsi Max's campaign which lets you control real world stuff from your browser. I can't talk too much now but we've been pulling strings, throwing bears, connecting fiber wires and testing RFID tags till we drop to make this new project work.

Next to free drinks by ProximityBBDO and goody bags by Pepsi Max. The Adnerds will talk and walk attendees through the creative process and reveal some of the technicals. How did it come about? What does Facebook Connect bring and why the heck are those things Twittering?

Frankly, you're all invited. The Adnerds told me they will be handing out cheatsheets during the Twapero, sounds like geek-excitement to me!

Personal insights and learnings on designing portals and verticals.


This screenshot is an 'unpublished' design of one of the major Belgian newssites.

I tend to write long posts on topics I want to cover thoroughly. But I know some people don't like that, or have the time to read them. So I'd like to start with a small wrap of my most important remarks on designing newssites, portals and verticals.

• minimalism tends to swamp your content when the ads are strong, noisy and colorful.
• design within 950x600, in other words: don't make people scroll horizontally, the dimensions of most used monitors are still at 1024x768
• don't let elements of the main navigation menu disappear under the fold. Yes the fold is still considered at 600px from the top (see previous topic)
• visually guide people to the most important features, don't unisex all buttons for the sake of consistency. They need this guidance.
• where's the interaction? Few portals are equipped with features to make good articles rise to the homepage. Most available features are only included in footers of the full stories, not the short ones. I want to browse and favorite quickly and read full stories later.
• give advertisers value for investments. Don't bury the adspace under the fold or blankly out of the design, it looks shitty and people won't click it. i hate banners too but they raise money to both parties.
• big images are nice but don't let them suck up all the space on your homepage. Give larger versions of the image on secondary pages.
• don't swamp the navigation with subsections! (but of course, that's a remarks for the editors, not the designers)
• to me everything need to be pixelperfect, yes, so don't ever use Helvetica as a screenfont, thanks.

Why this post?
Recently GVA en HBVL renewed their websites. GVA and HBVL are two local newspapers by a publishing house called Concentra. Now, a renowned Belgian blogger, reveals an unpublished screenshot of the redesign of a major Belgian website called 'De Standaard Online'. Though nowadays I'm mostly occupied thinking out e-strategies and broader advertising campaigns, I'm still very intrigued by usability, design and information architecture as to me these should be hand in hand with the ideas of communication concepts.



I fell in love with usability reading "Don't make me think". Grew mature with understanding usability by working on the architecture of a major vertical called Hebbes.be. I structured and designed the portal, under guidance of Jonathan Detavernier, when I worked at Snow by LG&F.


Full throttle and review on all major Belgian newssites.

GVA en HBVL renewed their websites.
I never read either one of these papers but the agency I work for creates direct mailing and interactive promotion campaigns to push new readers into buying these papers, so naturally the redesign caught my attention. The redesign was done by Netlash. Ever since the launch my fingers had been itching to post an article on this topic but due to a lack of time I hadn't so far. During the first week of launch the website had a link labeled "we would like to hear about your feedback on the redesign of this website". Unfortunately the space for posting that feedback was restricted to 300 characters. And for some reason I'm unable to find that link again now, guess they must have buried it.




Although GVA and HBVL are two newspapers targeting a local crowd still they look almost exactly the same, why is that? In my opinion they should take a clear visual distance from each other. Antwerp is not Limburg! Talking to a different audience must result in a different design. I understand the papers want to relate to one another but still the skin should be visually differentiated. The images used for the major article are far to big. Using an image as wide as 515px is literally killing all other content and it brings no extra value to the overall look at all. The font was too tiny but they've solved that, thanks to reader feedback I guess.
Also, the portfolio image of Netlash shows that the original design was intended to split the center column passing the fold. Above the fold the main article would be accompanied with a series of less important but pushed articles on the right. Passing the fold, or below the fold, the articles would spread and use the entire width of the center column without using a decent divider to split from that fold, resulting in an unclear usage of the images in the articles below the fold. Because of this the images of the articles below the fold could be mistaken as from other articles. Luckily this has been altered in the currently used design.
I also tend to as myself why the skyscraper is out of sight when I'm browsing my 1024x768 monitor. Why they've introduced a huge IMU (466x466) further down, splitting the content like a hellraiser. And why there is no focus on the local news as this is their proposition. Or have they changed being a newspaper by the people, for the people and with the people?

'De Standaard Online' alpha.
Yesterday Michel Vuijlsteke posted a screenshot of an unpublished design of 'De Standaard Online'. 'De Standaard' is a major Belgian newspaper, Michel Vuijlsteke a consultant (information architect) at Namahn. I recall being contacted by Patrick, for participating on this redesign, somewhere between August and September of 2007. Patrick had great plans on redesigning and restructuring the newspapers their company, Corelio, was publishing. Since Corelio has launched 24.be. 24.be supposed to be an aggregator of newscontent based on NetVibes. I heard recently that the plug was pulled, and thus 24.be no longer gets pushed. It never ever really got off. Now, about 18 months after I first heard of the planned redesign of 'De Standaard Online' a first design is on a loose. I kinda doubt the strength of this so called alpha version considering the time invested researching and designing this vertical. But hey, these things can take a long time to get up off their feet within an organization the size of Corelio. It just crossed my mind that this post could as well be a deliberate leak just to get some feedback from the designer-groundswell.



Michel Vuijlsteke argues that this design proposal looks like a "NYTimes Light". I feel him in this statement but still I'd like to give the designer of this so called "alpha" some credit. Though I miss the skyscraper and the leaderboard being pasted in, I like the way the navigation is build up from the top down. Not using a vertical column but few horizontal rows that guide your through, nifty. This is not quite the case over at NYTimes, which uses that vertical column to stash some topics that might just be very important to me. Of course all credit should be going to the NYTimes, who have no doubt heavily influenced lots of media-companies on what approach to choose for marketing their papers well. Next to that it must be admitted that NYTimes keeps trying to innovate in many ways.
Why do I miss the 3-ad (= combination of a skyscraper, leaderboard and imu on one page) here? Not because I'm in advertising or because I love banners, no, not at all. I just know they might prove to be very important as they can generate a good income for the publishers, plus they add up to the value of bringing the information online instead of jealously keeping it away from the internet. The advantage NYTimes has is of course the fact that the banner-ads on their home-page are valued higher which results in a smaller size banner that still pays off. In Belgium we have to plaster the place with 3-ads to pull of some conversion. Yes, we all agree that it looks horrible but until further notice we're in for large size banner-ads.



Anyway the alpha definitely overrules the old one. The old one is too orange to me. Displays a horrible vertical navigation that is way to bulky And it doesn't give me enough articles to scan at the same time. I hate scrolling remember.
In my opinion every journalist should have it's own blog under the flagship of it's publisher. this way they can push their articles individually and create specific value for readers and advertisers, that is if you are especially interested in a certain style of writing or a kind of niche news — specific topics.



So @mvuijlst, @bartvanbelle, @talkingheads and @Pietel ... What's your opinion on De Standaard Online Alpha design?
- I would like to see some guidance by color.
- The 'most read', 'most recommended' and 'most recent' is a plus no doubt. certainly the significant space it gets on a 'topshelf'.
- I'd use more smaller inserts of some articles to enrich the provided content above the fold. For example I'd skip the U2 picture and put two article links there.
- I'd add sharing and bookmarking options on the articles of the homepage.
- I'd make it more visually clear that the 2 vertical navigation bars under the logo relate to one another.
- I'd push my search up to the top of the page creating extra space where the search is now.
- I'd use clear dividers separating the articles from one another.
- I'd label the pushed articles clearly so I know in what section they belong if I scan the homepage briefly.
- I'd try to experiment with mashup-widgets to get live-feeds, tweets or streams from my editors and journalists to the homepage, or a subsection.
- Would be nice if the 3-ad would match the entity of the content and design, and not be 'on-top' or outside of it.

'De Morgen' by far.



To me 'De Morgen' should be awarded for being the best serving online newssource in Belgium when it comes down to design, usability and interactivity.
The articles are clearly labeled on topic. One blink of an eye can tell me whether the article is on "economie" or "binnenland", should be expanded in my opinion but they're there. Also, the stream of recently posted articles has received a clearly important and readable spot within the entity of the content. Maybe the pushed article's image is too large but it doesn't quite bother me here because a lot of the other content shows. Too bad I have to scroll horizontally to get a full view of content and ads when I'm surfing 1024x768. They use a sharing button like most newssites nowadays but they nicely keep the other features tied to each other in the footer of the article. 'De Standaard Online' for example uses their sharing button in the footer and other features next to he header. I tend to find that a bit confusing. Just fyi: 'De Morgen' uses the AddThis for sharing, others like 'De Standaard Online' use AddToAny. They're basically the same. The horizontal navigation is a plus to me.

HLN: big as in butt ugly.
I tend to skip the review on HLN but I can't. Why can't I? It is simply the biggest one around. Not in size of course, but in traffic volume. I recall HLN being the biggest newspaper, and news site, in terms of readers, for a long time. Before that it must have been Skynet or MSN, but in my opinion they cheated a bit by installing their page as the default homepage upon installation of Belgacom or Windows.



HLN, you can't be running high with excitement, or into good taste if you like the design they used to skin they're content. No doubt the ugliest portal template I've ever seen for a 'vortal' with nationwide usage.
It is wrong. Top down wrong. The colors, the crispness, the structure, the architecture (maybe not quite, as people tend to find their ways in), the loudness of shouting out the news loud and clear, is wrong. But who am I to judge the design of a newssite that attracts most readers in Belgium. Dear Persgroep, don't be mad at me, please :)
In stead of going on and on about how I hate the HLN design let me point to a Norwegian newsportal.



SOL.no is the biggest news website in Norway. Their site, at first, looks as horrible as HLN but in fact isn't quite so. As a matter of fact, to me it is a very slick portal giving you instant access to many articles touching a broad range of topics. The reader is immediately introduced to plenty of info without scrolling AND the ads are nicely incorporated by the unity of the content. Advertisers are offered a wide myriad of possibilities for advertising and marketing their communication concepts, products or brands there without having to push away the information that actually attracts the reader. Win win I would say. By the way their style sheets are set to overflow:hidden so there is no horizontal scrolling for users on monitors smaller then 1024x768. A role model.
Sol.no got renowned for their banner campaign that struck like a meteorite at the Cannes Festival in 2008. The concept is as simple as it’s ingenious: the banner content changes continuously, thanks to an especially created program. A copywriter, whose task is to animate the banner, writes or draws on a pad and the information is transferred to the banner on the screen, exactly as it is and in real time. You can imagine displaying a banner with live feedback on the current content of the site you are browsing tends to catch your attention and will get rewarded by your click.

BBC for you and me.



The modular system of the BBC newsportal is my all-time favorite amongst the newssites. It is open to participation, suits my needs if I really want it to, and feels very intuitive to every profile of reader. Of course they didn't have to struggle pasting in a 3-ad and they haven't managed to entirely remodel the content into this system. The homepage links to the old grid of the BBC newsportal.



Of course I would be a dork for excluding this very nice papervision designed example by MSNBC, Spectra.

Stunningly small. Beautifully light.

The world’s lightest1 8" notebook, the 1.4-pound2 VAIO® P Series Lifestyle PC does more than you could imagine–with impeccable style. Email at the airport, IM from the park, or just show it off when you want some attention. Traveling to a new city? Turn-by-turn GPS navigation will get you there faster. Best of all, it fits right in your purse or jacket pocket.

The VAIO P can use both 3G Broadband and 802.11 wireless LAN. Sony boasted today that now a user can have access to the Internet anywhere he or she travels with the help of Verizon’s network.

With a screen measuring of about 8 inches, the VAIO P is one of the smallest (dare I say it) netbooks on the market as it can fit in a jacket pocket, handbag, or even a business envelope. Even though the screen may be small, it is wide enough to display the width of an entire website without any horizontal scrolling. The VAIO P is definitely one of the lightest of portable PCs, weighing in at about 1.4 pounds.

The VAIO P has a built-in GPS device for navigation that requires no internet connection. It is also Bluetooth compatible, and it comes with a Media Bar so the user can access their favorite audio and video files in the corner of a screen with a quick click.

Credits due (partly) to my old friend and collegue Farfields working as a designer at a belgian creative hotshop called Nascom

Social Souvenir is an installation and souvenir concept that creates links and social experiences between museum visitors. The concept is based on 300 T-shirts that are exhibited and put on sale at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Denmark. Each T-shirt is imprinted with a text fragment inspired by 15 renowned artists represented in the museum's collection, such as Yoko Ono, Erik Satie, Marcel Duchamp and Per Højholt. Visitors can buy a T-shirt of their own choice, the only condition being that they share a bit of personal information about themselves, or more precisely: their name and address. When paying for the T-shirt at the museum-shop, the information is automatically mapped in Google Maps, thereby making it possible to see where each T-shirt ends up after leaving the museum. During the course of the exhibition, the 300 T-shirts will gradually disappear from the physical museum space only to re-appear on the web. Consequently, by buying a T-shirt visitors do not simply get a personal piece of the installation - they also help contribute to its collective development and distribution.

A smart car, thinking about the environment and city space

A Global Research Show.





Yugop made an experimental voice-blog system for a radio program broadcasted by TokyoFM.

It's an enhanced podcasting site. All entries are provided by text and voice-sound data, which are played with synchronized motion. Posted sound data is analyzed in the server and it's volume history is visualized to the avatar's motion. The user can comment on each entry, which records a computer voice generated with a text-to-speech system on server-side. Unfortunatly it's all in japanese. But at least you be able to enjoy the atomosphere of this communication system.

producer : atsuko suzuki @ dentsu inc.
creative direction : yugo nakamura @ tha ltd
client-side design & engineering : takashi kamada @ spf design / takayuki fukatsu @ tha ltd
server-side engineering : keita kitamura @ tha ltd
sound : void productions

A showcase by David Fuhrer

Originally uploaded by Veerle Pieters

A nice theme by Veerle Duoh. She shared the design process of the creation of this WooTheme on her blog

Abstract, a Woothemes design (2nd page)
Abstract is a beautifully illustrated and colourful theme, the result of a collaboration of WooThemes and Veerle Pieters. Abstract sports a fun yet professional layout that is flexible enough to be used as either a business theme or a personal theme.

At WooThemes you will find some of the most cutting edge WordPress templates, packed full of features, presented beautifully with clean layouts, slick colour palettes and neat typography. All our themes are available for purchase individually or you can join the theme club and have access to all our masterpieces.

Proving no one grows ketchup like Heinz. Heinz poses that interacting with a tomato plant will result in better growth. And that the internet will help them prove it.

Everyone knows that people tend to nurse their plants by talking to them. To explore if a tomato plant grows better with human interaction, Heinz' set up a physical rig in a small room in their interactive laboratory in Gothenburg, Sweden. The rig consist of two plants. Both given sufficient light, the right temperature and water. One of them is provided a small speaker. The speaker is connected to a voice synthesis device - controlled by anyone participating in the experiment on the world wide web.

Go Talk to the plant

tnx for tipping: Bnox

Online Democracy and Pop Culture Trivia Take Choice-Making Beyond Anti-tobacco Awareness

The Challenge:
In 2008, Cactus Marketing engaged AgencyNet seeking to re-invent and re-launch the highly successful and awarded “Own Your C” smoking cessation campaign originally launched by the two agencies in 2006.

Based on the premise that no teen wants to be told not to smoke, our challenge was to empower teens to take charge of their own choices, ultimately making smarter, healthier decisions in everything they do.

The Solution:
It’s no secret that teens are spending their time online. More and more each day, teens are online sharing emotions— posting videos, photos, and comments— for the whole world to see. In turn, they expect feedback, opinions, and a dialogue. They want their 15 minutes of fame and, increasingly, they’re getting it online.

Knowing this, our solution was to empower teens to take ownership of their choices and give them what they want most— a soapbox to express themselves. The new Own Your C 2.0 is a rich online community that allows teens to share their opinions about the choices they face each and every day. From smoking, to fast food, to the existence of UFOs, every choice in this community matters. The result is a hotbed of debate, individuality, and self-expression that truly leverages the power of peers to influence behavior and decision-making. Choices can be expressed via text, photo, image or video – empowering a highly customized interaction within the community. An elaborate filtering system allows teens to view responses in a way that is most meaningful to them, whether by age, gender, response, or location.

The new ownyourC.com has now been awarded FWA “Site of the Day.”

The fully integrated campaign also includes a series of 15-second TV Spots, Online Rich Media Banners, and Live Events, inviting teens to participate in the new Own Your C 2.0 community and building on the website’s premise to “Connect, Influence, and Share.”

Production Highlights:
Prior to production, rapid prototypes were created to ensure that the front-end system would be able to render large amounts of dynamic data without overly taxing computer processors. Throughout the production of the site, animations were monitored and optimized to ensure that users could view the unique Papervision 3D experience without encountering adverse performance issues.

Software/ Technology/ Platforms:
The OwnYourC website takes advantage of the latest technologies in order to provide the community with the most robust and user-friendly experience possible.


Front-end was developed using Flash 9 and Papervision for the streamlined rendering of 3-D objects
Adobe Flex was used for all Action Scripting
The backend Content Management System and databases were developed in ASP.NET 3.5 on a Windows Server Platform
Panda Stream, recently released open-source software, was used to enable the uploading, encoding and streaming of videos
Amazon Web Services was used for media storage and delivery of content
'From the start, the Own Your C campaign has been about helping teens to understand that the choices they make truly define and shape who they are. The new OwnYourC.com takes that thought, couples it with teens’ natural tendency to socialize and communicate on the web, and offers a constructive forum for teens to share their stories about the choices they face every day. It’s a great place to connect and ultimately to realize that whatever you’re facing, you’re not alone.’
-Alex Morrison
VP Consumer and Brand Strategy
AgencyNet Interactive

‘The new ownyourC.com is built on Flash technology and Papervision, which have rarely been used in the development of Web 2.0 applications, and offer users a visually immersive experience. Slick transitions and ambient, 3D animations make the site feel alive—you can really feel the sense of activity and connection. Add in a robust community that powers the site, and ownyourC.com really is a great place for teens to Connect, Share and Influence.’
-Pierre Kremer
Senior Project Manager
AgencyNet Interactive

About AgencyNet
AgencyNet is an award winning digital advertising and marketing agency, specializing in developing emotionally engaging and strategic Digital brand experiences.

AgencyNet has been named “one of the hottest digital agencies around” by Advertising Age and our work has been the recipient of over 125 high-profile awards including an Interactive Emmy, FWA Top 20 agency sites in history, Cannes Lion, Web Marketing Association’s Best Interactive Service Web Site, South by Southwest’s Best in Show, as well as The Webby.

Over the last 14 years we have developed robust Brand Portals, ideated successful Buzz Generation Campaigns, created ubiquitous Digital Content, and served as a strategic consulting partner to some of the world’s most recognized and respected brands including Bacardi, Warner Bros, Ford, Sony, Howard Stern, Bill Clinton, and many others.

From SurfStation

Check out a similar project: MSNBC Visual Newsreader Spectra